Sweet and sour end to the 2016 season

Next race for me was Liverpool triathlon, which doubled up as British Champs and World Champ qualifiers. We had 6 weeks between the Bananaman tri and Liverpool, so this meant 6 weeks of hard work. During this time I also went to Sheffield for ASA Nationals with City of Norwich SC. Here I was part of the 17+ yrs 4x100m IM relay, swimming the butterfly leg. It was nice to be back in that environment one final time after being with the club for so many years and finished on a high, swimming a strong leg.  I was looking forward to Liverpool, as I always enjoy the course and race, especially being in with the senior women as well, making it a more interesting race. Not so much this year though. I had a terrible start in the swim, being 3 people back at the beginning and got madly caught up. I did manage to make my way through and around people and eventually got myself back up to near the front of the race, but didn't manage to get back on to the very front few swimmers, which meant I ended up in the chase bike group, which I was happy with, as it was just Sophie Coldwell and Jess Learmonth out front. Unfortunately, I didn't have the legs or the lungs to stay with this group on the day, being dropped back to the second pack and after that just lost my head. I finished the race after a painful but character building run. Just one of them races to forget about and move on. 

 Final race of the season was at the commonwealth games venue at Strathclyde park, Glasgow. I put in a really strong block of training between Liverpool and this race as I wanted to do my current fitness justice. We went up to Scotland on the Tuesday before the Sunday race day in order to have time to recover from the ridiculously long drive and acclimatize to the crazily cold temperatures up there. The race was early on Sunday morning with a 9am start and my race being the first of the day. I prepared well and felt good leading up to the race. I was very pleased with my swim, although I didn't get the best start, which is pretty standard for me due to not having as much speed as others, but then managed to make my way through the field and onto the feet of the lead swimmer. After about half way through the swim, us front 2 managed to get a bit of a gap on the rest of the field and this continued to grow for the remaining metres. The nature of the course meant it was hard for a breakaway to stay clear, as a result of this, after the first lap of 4 Emer Wintsch and I were caught. I tried not to let my head drop and keep working hard to make it an honest race. A few attacks were made but nothing stuck and the group was working well to catch any threats. I made a few tactical errors and in hindsight this probably made the cycle a lot tougher for me than it should have been. I went into transition close to the back, again making a silly mistake which had a big impact on my race. I started the run behind the lead pack and felt like id left my running legs 300 miles away in Norwich. I struggled through a bad stitch but was pleased to finish 8th overall after a tough race and long season. 

After the race I came down with a bad cold which summed up the race and the how tired i was and i am very grateful to have some time to rest and recuperate now before getting back into hard training.

During all the build up to my races I also received my A Level results whilst on an ETS camp at Leeds, I was over the moon to get into my first choice university, Loughborough, to study Human Biology and this was the main aim for this year to get to Loughborough. I am really looking forward to making a fresh start here and having new challenges come my way starting in October. 

My swimzi XK keeping me warm in the cold Scottish
temperatures.

Thanks to my sponsors for supporting me through an up and down season but their help made it much easier: Zone3, Precision Hydration, Carl Goose sports massage, SportsAid (Howes Percival)  and Swimzi.