Another Continent – Other Tactics – Same Result! (19.04.2010)

12th place at the ITU Triathlon World Cup in Monterrey; by Jan van Berkel

Just a week after the World Champ Series race in Sydney the next competition was on my schedule. An intercontinental flight of 14 hours and 7 hours time difference were also in between. The race in Monterrey attracted many American and Latin-American athletes. Because of my result in Mooloolaba I got the race number 2 but I knew that there would be many strong athletes on the starting line. My goal was to perform well again and to collect as many world cup points as possible. Though I was quite tired and I was not ready yet for another race.

My swim performance was good and I came out of the water in the leading group of the main field. I struggled with the high number of turns and the specific to bad riding abilities of the Latin-Americans. I need to do some road bike races to get used to that again and to feel confident in the field. On the run course I felt tired and I could not show my training results. Anyway in the final spurt I could beat all the others and became 12^th.

At the end there are some good news: At the moment I am on a top 50 place in the world ranking! I wonder if that will lead to a better treatment in plane flying home? I don’t think so ;-( But first the cancelled flights to Zürich have to be operated.