I planed to push harder on the first 200m so I could find my self in a faster group and try to draft from them. I did what I've planed. I followed one guy for some time, but half the way to the turnaround I lost him. I don't remember what exactly happend, maybe I passed him. I noticed that I'm swiming too much on the inside. I swam alone until the turnaround where I met a group of 4-5 people. They where swimming more on the outside. For a second I looked at my watch and I couldn't belive, my time was around 13:30, another bad swim. For the rest of the swim I swam in that group. Second part of the swim was as fast as the first so I exited the water after 27:00 minutes. At this point I tought that my time goals are not achiveable. I was exhausted after the swim and I could barely run into the transition.

Swim faster, but I don't know how.

All went good. It took me a little more time to climb on the bike. Transition times are included in bike time.

I was first of my swim group out of the transition. Me and another two cyclists formed a group and started pushing. My plan for the bike was to push hard on the first lap and then back off, draft as much as I could and save my legs for the run. After the first lap we averaged around 39 km/h. On the second lap we got overlaped by the lead group. It's ilegal to draft from the people who overlaped you, but judges here don't pay attention to that and everyone konws that. I've heard that there are some people who swim slower than they can so that they can draft from the leaders. I really didn't want this to happend. Everyone in my group stuck to the leaders so I didn't have much choice. If I let them go I would be left alone. They were pushing the pace really hard. We were going between 42 and 48 km/h all the time. It wasn't too hard to hold that pace if you were drafting. In the third lap it was my turn to go in the lead. I planned to lead for a couple of seconds and then move a side. Once I got myself into the lead I felt great. Professionals were drafting behind me. So I spent a little more time in the lead than I planned. I was holding around 43 km/h and that was on the part of the course with a little headwind. When I finnaly decided to move a side and let someone else in the front my problems started. I reduced speed to around 38 km/h and when I tried to speed up to hold on to the group I just couldn't. I knew that if I loose them now I'll never catch them again. A gap started to open up so I started to lose drafting benefits. Luckly after a minute of suffering they slowed down a bit and I managed to catch them. I was very angry on myself, but I learned a lesson for the next time. It took me a couple of minutes to recover and then I was as good as new. I decided to stick to the back of the group for the rest of the ride. After our fifth lap, leaders went into the transition and we had to do one more lap. We still had a large group so we didn't lose much of the speed. I was totaly recovered from that mistake so I gave one shift. On the bike I ate half of the Power bar, and I had some liquid calories.

Nothing much

Good transition. Time is included in bike time

Before the run I was a little concerned about how will my legs react to running. When I started running I was suprised how easy it was. But still I planed to back off for the first 5 km, and try to pick up the pace on the second half. Just after the transition I passed one guy and two other were around 100m in front of me. I felt light cramps in my stomach, but they were hardly noticeable. Besides that I felt great. There were water stations every 1.25 km, and on every one of them I drank a little of water and poured a little on my head. On the second lap I still felt great and I started to speed up. At the last water station, 1.25 km before the finish line I went all out. About 600m before the finish I passed one guy, and with 400m to the finish I passed another one. There was one more guy in my reach, but at the end I was 5 seconds short. My overall time was 2:07:19, that was way better than my goal.


I could have run faster from the start, but I was affraid of bonking. I think that I could run sub 40 min.

After the race I had a massage. That really helped me because my legs started to cramp and I planned to drive home (7 hour drive) later that day.


Swim


After the race we had pasta party and tombola. There were a bunch of prices and I think that everyone won something except me. This was probably biggest race ever in Croatia. There were 135 competitors and 75 of them were competing on the olimpic distance.