Aquabike European Championships, 22 Jun 2024

My run up to the race didn't really go as planned as I fell ill 2 weeks before so training ceased. I managed a swim and bike just before setting off on our travels.

My race was Saturday and I felt vaguely ok on Friday after travelling so did my race activation, which gave me some confidence that I could manage to ride 90k at some pace. On race morning I felt ok but quite anxious still. It didn't bode well that the coffee machine threw my coffee all over me. We weren't starting until 12.30 , so transition was open to us whilst the triathlons were in progress. It was all a little disorganised, but they finally let us in. I did my last transition check, getting a look at the rest of my age group.

I walked across the bridge to the swim start chatting to a lovely young man. I wriggled into my wetsuit saying to my friends I'm not going to do a warm up swim I'll just go and look at the water. I wish I had stuck to that! I went in and the water was lovely. I couldn’t get back onto the pontoon, but the lovely man helped me back out. I stepped off the pontoon onto the jetty which was slippy, and went flying flat on my face hitting my replacement knee really hard. I sat for a few minutes dealing with the pain, lots of people helped me up and I hobbled back to the start with 5 mins to go until the race. Not the best start I thought but put it out of my mind and got in the queue for the rolling start swim.

My swim did go ok, felt my knee a bit but concentrated on swimming coming out in 39 minutes which is probably the best I've done for 1.9k. Transition went ok and I was happy to slowly jog to the mount line. I actually walked up the cobbles after the mount line to the road which proved no slower than those who rode up.

As soon as I started pedalling my knee hurt, I put it out of my mind and concentrated on overtaking people and not going too hard. I managed the first of the four laps in the time I was aiming for. The second lap was a touch slower as it was getting windier each lap. By this point my knee had stiffened up and I couldn't push hard on it. I realised I would have to accept a slower pace. I was struggling up the steeper bits of hill and I had a very weepy  moment when I realised I couldn't push much. After the 3rd lap I shouted to my hubby that my knee wasn't playing and I was going to coast round the last lap best I could. The last lap felt like forever and I was counting down the kilometres to the finish. I went past a lady walking with her bike her shirt all ripped, told myself to smile as at least I would finish .

A Portuguese lady in my age group overtook me about a km from finish - I briefly considered trying to get the position back but I couldn't push. I was relieved to finish I and hobbled in to rack the bike, before walking to the recovery area (sadly no finish line experience for aquabike). I collected my medal and went straight to the medical tent to get my knee checked. They assured me the knee replacement was all ok and I had probably ‘just’ damaged the tendons. I came 8th in my AG, the same position as last year. Without the knee injury I would have been 7th and I could have chased 6th. I was so disappointed. 

I've had a relaxing holiday in the Portuguese mountains and feel a lot better about it. A  4 hour hike without seeing another person gave me lots of thinking time. I finally persuaded my knee to go round to pedal up a mountain a week later and managed a much steeper one in northern Spain. I'm now heading home on the ferry, having  rewritten some goals and I'm looking forward to starting my training for the world's in October.

Julia Dolman