Hello from the Hague, where I'm relaxing with my Dutch family after the ETU Age Group Championships on Saturday. This was my sixth GB Age Group race, so a lot of the faces were now familiar, and it's becoming quite an agreeable habit. I was staying on a delightfully quiet, cheap and easy-going farm near the country and holiday town of Holten, in a heath- and woodland area in the east of the Netherlands. While very Dutch in its culture and architecture, the landscape is not so much the classic windmills and polders of Christmas cards, but in parts rather resembles the New Forest.

The swim in a large drowned quarry pit some 7k from Holten was, like Dorney, non-wetsuit, which worried some of the age-group athletes with the loss of buoyancy, but was the right decision, because when training with one on the day before (when it was still predicted to be optional), it became quite uncomfortable. I enjoyed the refreshing swim and was quite satisfied with my time of 25.49, since it was about 100m over-length. I'm probably just on the cusp of where a wet suit becomes a speed advantage. My house-mate on the farm, Jamie Hinton, loved the prospect, and ended up six minutes faster than me there, but then he was a US college swimmer, with a 100m PB of 53 seconds! Chris Goodwin recorded a cracking swim of 27.55.

The 43k bike was flat and fast at first, but became pretty tough with the 24 degree heat, especially when we entered the cobbled streets, chicanes, and surprisingly sharp climbs of Holten and its nearby forest, called the Holterberg ('Holten mountain', 59m high but quite lumpy). After a near wrong turn in spite of careful reconnoitering, I lost a few places on this section, including to a contemporary of mine from college, Simon Kenyon. Although I had a litre of energy drink on the bike, it wasn't enough if you do the calculations (and was of course sticky and nasty on its own). The body easily loses 2.5 litres of water an hour in hard conditions, and a 2% dehydration causes a 20% loss of performance, so I really should have taken at least two litres with me, including plain water, and have been drinking much more. I posted 1.06:39, and Chris Goodwin again did an excellent time here for a tandem, which is always slower on the hills, of 1.10:46.

The run felt equally heavy, and although I had a quick transition and managed eventually to pull away from Simon by some 22 seconds, it was really a matter of hanging on, not my usual gallop through the field. It just shows how important lots of hard bike miles (which I lack in my training) are, since I had plenty of puff left, but the legs were on a work to rule, and threatening to cramp.

Again there were some undulations, but the tremendous encouragement of the townspeople, and lots of feeding stations, cool showers and sponges kept us going. I agree with Julian that the effect of someone calling your name (even if it's just from the startlist) is electrifying, and helps you find new resources. Undoubtedly it's physiological, and based in endorphin responses. My time was 39.03, which is nevertheless pretty slow going, and especially slow compared to my recent running, and also to Chris' time of 36.17!

My overall time was 2.12:33, which put me as 5th Brit, and Chris' was 2.16:58, which of course was European Gold! Unfortunately I missed his presentation, which took place while we were racing, although the programme said it would be just after the men's elite race, so I made a special effort to attend, when someone told me it had already happened. Ex-Olympic gold medal rower and adventure sports enthusiast James Cracknell finished an impressive 8th in his age group in 2.08:07, with an excellent bike but similar swim and run times to me.

I think I aquitted myself, because I took the same place of 23rd as I've had in my last two international events. I was a third of the way down the field instead of a quarter, as in the last few, but the standard was definitely higher, and the winner of our age group (M40-44), Sylvain Le Bris from France, was under two hours and posted the second fastest time overall. For women, I think there's more opportunity and often fewer participants, and medals to be picked up at a fairly early stage in your career by those who are prepared to train moderately hard.

To be honest, unless you're competitive for a medal, the buzz in these events is more the occasion and the chance for sport tourism and sociability, rather than any sense of athletic achievement. And the party afterwards was certainly worth the effort: a balmy evening, laser shows, and a whole town cheerfully drunk on cheap beer, eating chips, and bouncing around to a very respectable band who played not only their own stuff, including a special championship theme song, but also some very convincing covers of everything from Robbie Williams to more recent stuff that I've heard but couldn't name. The elites would have missed out on that, because their race was the next day, but I'm sure they heard it!

I wonder how the Austrian Ironmen got on?

Update on Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 01:24PM by Marius Kwint

Some nice official photos of Chris Goodwin going for Gold can be seen as part of a slide show here, and his medal ceremony can be seen here.