Double it

I had a small bet for this weekend's sprint race in Penacova (nearby Coimbra, 200Km's North of Lisbon) with my fellow training partner João Silva (multi-junior medalist). It was my motto for this race and so I was excited and anxious. Not that the race meant a thing to me but I'm always up for this kind of "battles" with a friend. I had won this race two years ago but João won it last year when I didn't race so this was a nice "off-season" challenge to put on before going to altitude next wednesday and restart my hard training/focus for the second part of the season.

Unfortunately, João had a bad day and the duel was over once on the run course. In fact he blew up big time and he - my fearest rival for this race - would eventually finish 6th without putting any real challenge. Still, the race course was the hardest I've done in my life with the new 7K run course going over some extreme hills. So the race itself represented a HUGE fitness challenge. I still had to sweat a bit on the run since I had let go a small break-away and was trailing by 30 seconds - on T2 - in second place. With a first loop of 3,5K "all out", I caught the lead and had a comfortable margin to cruise to finish line with the fastest run split of the day. For the fans, little Sedi, came from nowhere and finished 7th with the second fastest run split of the day.

After the race we went for THE STUFF. COOKIES. It has been seven hours now that I ate them but still feel them in my stomache. BUT IT'S ALL ABOUT COOKIES AT THE END! :-)