After I started there in 2017 and came home with an 11th place, I had to beat this.
Since I had been struggling with an infection since my last xterra in Italy on May 26th and was only able to train again after 4 weeks, my goal was the top 10, but realistically I just wanted to have fun and finish well. With over 40 men, the elite field was one of the largest in the European Tour. Nevertheless, I gave everything. We lived together with friends from Portugal, Germany, England and Denmark to prepare for the race on site. The bike route was pretty tough with over 40km - which I really liked. As usual, swimming and running were 1.5 and 10 km.
On Sunday the 7.7. I started the race. The swim was unexpectedly long at over 1700m, but I still felt good. After that, the fun on the bike was very short. After the first few kilometers, my legs felt like lead. The uphills got harder and harder, and I even felt the downhills a lot. I lost position after position, I could hardly keep up with anyone. When I switched to running shoes, it hardly felt any different, my main goal was just to finish. Something is still wrong, the infection cost a lot of energy. Is it the lack of training in the past few weeks?
