Michael Poole

I am 2 weeks into my racing tour of the USA already this has been an incredible experience. I have been having so much fun and seen a lot of cool stuff.

On Sunday May 1st I raced my first race the St Anthony’s triathlon in Tampa bay, Florida. This is probably the most prestigious race here and the field of competitors was incredibly strong featuring at least 8 Olympians.
And as I was still recovering from Jet Lag I wasn’t feeling that great so I had no expectations

The swim was shortened due to strong winds, which was a real disappointment but it wasn’t the athletes decision. I swum well coming out not too far back but I still have improvements to make

The run to transition was ridiculously far, about 1km and I gave it everything to make up a few seconds but was pretty shattered by the time that I jumped on the bike.

From the start of the bike I was smashing it. I averaged about 45km/h and my time was almost the quickest. The new Cervelo is ridiculously fast. I rode up to 8th position and was only seconds off being in the first three.

I started the run just behind Bevan Docherty which was a huge adrenaline buzz, and I was able to keep him in sight for the first 5km.

I then hit the wall hard, I had been feeling sick in the morning so didn’t have a good breakfast and this cost me. That is the hard thing about this sport that the tiniest mistakes cost you so much. I then faded back to 15th position in the last couple of km’s. But considering how world class the field was and that it was my first race of this level and I had only recently travelled half way around the world, there was a lot of positive aspects to draw on and the only way is up from here

My next race is in New Orleans on May 15th and I can expect a greta result here.