Madrid World Cup 3rd June 2007

Another World Cup is done and dusted for 07 and boy did it teach more and more about my body, and how it works under pressure!! I always feel great when coming directly from altitude, aerobically wise that is. I always seem to just lack the high end speed that is needed during a race like a world cup.

Pre race in Madrid I also had some bad luck with bad diarrhea. This sent me scrambling to my porcelain friend hourly. That was until I got my hands on some Imodium and dia-stop. I was always pretty relaxed about this race. I was looking at it from a training point of view and with no direct goal other than to make sure we were still on the right track towards Beijing.

So with all the above something that could throw me I felt pretty relaxed that everything would work out OK. One goal I had in the race was that I wanted to get out front early to avoid the bash and crash that most of the guys on the circuit know as the race to the first buoy!!! I succeeded and actually had one of the most comfortable swims of my world cup career exiting 5th.

I thought we may have a chance to get a small group away with the hilly bike course. But it all came together quickly and no one really was willing to work too hard or to commit to breaking away. By halfway everyone had decided that the winner would come from the run... And so it was a running race. I didn't mind much as it would show me where I was at after the hard block of training in Font Romeu It was fast right from the get go. And standard post altitude procedure would follow for me!

I was stuck in 4th gear and no matter how hard I pushed the clutch in, it wasn't going into 5th!! In the end I ran very steady and strong. With only 10 seconds difference between my fastest of 4 laps and my slowest. Again another good sign for me. In the end I was 11th not bad for no taper a big block and some porcelain issues....All my German mates did awesome with 5 in the top 12 great team performance.

Unfortunately my training partner from the last three weeks Brad Kahlefeldt had a bike crash and couldn't finish. Now I'm off to the big old US of A on the big Lufthansa bird. My next race will be the Des Moines World cup in two weeks. It will be a massive race with such a huge prize purse on offer. I'll be giving it everything as usual and will be a little bit fresher and faster than Sunday in Madrid. I'll keep you all posted on how that goes. Or check it out and follow it on www.triathlon.org.

Talk soon, Kris