B&JRacing’s Ruth Owen-Evans Recaps her ITU World Cross Journey…

My Journey to the World Champs 2017

By Ruth Owen-Evans

It has now been nearly two weeks since the ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships in Penticton, Canada so I’m writing this as a reflection of the trip now that I have returned home to the UK.

After a frustrating performance at the 2016 World Cross Triathlon Champs in Australia I went into this event putting a fair amount of pressure on myself to achieve the illusive podium position that I’ve been dreaming about since my first World Champs in 2015. In hindsight, when I think that my first ever off-road triathlon was in 2014 and first world champs was 2015, to come 5th in the 2016 world champs was quite an achievement. But I was not satisfied with this having ridden myself into 3rd place on the bike leg and then being run down into 5th place within one lap to go of the run. I promised myself that I would make changes to my lifestyle and work hard on my weaknesses when I returned home from Australia, and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

In December 2016 I moved house, and set up a new life for myself, right next to the beautiful Wye Valley and the Forest of Dean. Having previously struggled to find good quality off road biking and running from my door at my old home, I now had it in plentiful supply!

The bike leg is my strongest element in an off-road triathlon, that is no secret and the run was my weakest. I would be lying if I said that initially I enjoyed the run and swim training, I didn’t particularly. In order to fit the swim training in I had to get up at 6am throughout the cold, dark months of winter to drive to the swimming pool before work. Thankfully I was able to fit in a run during my lunch breaks at work and at the weekends, so running in the dark was not a common occurrence.

I honestly feel that the main thing that motivated me to get out and run/ride during the winter months was a desire to explore the new area I was living in. I started to look forward to a long hilly run at the weekend, or a long bike because the countryside was stunning and I was exploring my new local area. This enjoyment factor really helped me when the conditions were less than favourable. When I’d get to the end of the weekend with a muddy bike, two sets of shoes and kit – it was a sign of a good training weekend and I didn’t mind going out in the wet.

The key difference this season to others I’ve had in the past is that I barely did any racing. I entered a couple of local road triathlons, which showed me how rusty I had become at transitions but didn’t initially give me much indication of whether my winter training had paid off.

My first big race of the year was Xterra France – I went into this having no idea how I could perform against a field of women I didn’t know at all. I didn’t even know how I’d performed when I finished and only found out that I’d claimed 3rd in my age group when I was driving home the next day! Conditions had suited me, with a long, wet and muddy bike leg and hilly run.

I then only had about 6 weeks after France before going to Canada for the Worlds. After a short break my training ramped up again and the last couple of weeks of training and a particularly busy period at work was tough. I had to work hard to focus on sticking with my training and believing that come race day I wouldn’t feel quite so tired and that it would all come together. Someone shared some wise words with me: ‘don’t look at the haircut half-way through’! Which may seem like an odd statement, but it made total sense – I was worrying about the training making me tired, which of course it would be, but come race day everything would fall into place and it was silly to stop mid-way through the process and expect to be ready.

Weirdly when I got to Canada I didn’t really feel nervous. In fact I didn’t really know how I felt. My result at Xterra France and some of the local triathlons recently had shown really positive indications that I could be in with a chance of doing well, but I’m never one to get ahead of myself and I set myself realistic goals, whilst still wanting to challenge myself.

I made a plan for race week and pretty much stuck to it, and this helped with any nerves that crept in. I felt happy with the course for each element and the only mild panic I had was the night before race day when I realised I shouldn’t have left any gels on my bike when putting it into transition – thankfully I managed to get back to transition in time to retrieve them before they were removed.

I slept well the night before the race – far better than I normally do! My nerves on race day were also not too bad and I was able to eat my breakfast, which is normally quite a struggle. I had a good warm up and went into the athlete call up area feeling good, but also very sick. This sick feeling stayed with me for the rest of the day – I have no idea why, I don’t think it was nerves and it didn’t let up until well into the evening.

When we were called up for our swim start I stuck with my plan of where I wanted to position myself for the start and held my spot whilst other women filled in around me. Then we were off…..my start was terrible!! I decided to swim as soon as it got too deep to run easily and it turned out I was the only one to do this and had to watch as others passed me whilst either still running or dolphin diving (a technique I need to practice). Still, I decided not to be deterred and just got into a rhythm and slowly I started to pull swimmers in and overtake.

I had an average swim, nothing brilliant, but came out of the water feeling good for the bike. Dropping my swim hat on exit wasn’t smooth and I went back to collect it just in case as I didn’t want any risk of a time penalty.

Transition 1, not my best but also not terrible, with a little bit of dizziness but nothing major. As I ran out of transition with my bike I was told I was in 8th position – ouch!! I had it all to do on the bike. That turned out to be fine though as right from the start of the bike leg I was overtaking people all over the place. This really spurred me on and I made a mental note of numbers as I overtook to see if I was picking off any competitors in my category. I paced myself on the climb up the KVR trail and into the singletrack climbing. I made sure to hydrate and eat before it got too tricky to do so and this was a good decision. All the way up the technical singletrack climb I was overtaking men and women, and trying not to get held up – I really wanted to make the most of my strongest element. Then when I finally got to the top and had pretty much only descending to do I was pleased to see a clear track in front of me. I tried to make up as much time as I could and carried on overtaking where necessary. My aim was to put time into any competitors I did pass so that if they were stronger runners I would hopefully be able to stay in front of them. Then in the final part of the singletrack descent I caught up with a queue of about 10 riders. ‘Oh no’ I thought, ‘this is going to slow me down for too long and others behind me will catch me and all my hard work will have been for nothing!’ I tried to stay calm and find a balance between aggression to get passed and patience. I picked off one or two riders here or there when I could by taking a shorter/steeper line on some corners and got myself towards the front of the queue. I then had to take one last manoeuvre and get passed – this was tricky! But I managed it and left the group behind and didn’t see another rider until I got back out onto the KVR trail for the last fast stretch back to Penticton. A Canadian rider caught me as I was about half way down the trail towards town and she was in my category. She complimented me on my brave overtaking and said she’d been trying to catch me for the whole bike leg! We then worked together on the bike as neither of us were willing to let the other get away and arrived into transition with her in 3rd place and me hot on her heels in 4th.

I then tried to have a quick transition and took strength in the fact I left transition before her. My biggest battle at the start of the run was getting into a steady pace and not constantly looking behind to see where 4th place was. I concentrated on always moving forwards, even when the hills got tough and the sun was beating down on me. I knew that if I could keep 4th behind me until the top of the main part of the climbing in the run then I should be in with a chance of fighting it out to keep hold of 3rd. As it happens I climbed to the top and to the first turn around point expecting to see her, but she was nowhere to be seen. In fact I was pleased to see 2nd place at the turn around point, less than 2 minutes in front of me! From then onwards I just concentrated on keeping on going. One foot in front of the other, swing the arms…

I took every opportunity offered to gulp water down and chuck it over my head as I was starting to feel even more sick and really hot – even to the extent that I was checking out places to pull over to be sick! Thankfully this was not required and once the course started to descend back towards town I felt like I could just about make it. As I ran onto the tarmac at the end of the off-road section I glanced over my shoulder – just to be sure and a spectator saw me and said ‘well done, keep going, I can’t see any women behind!’ she obviously could sense my concern that I may be hunted down. The last 1.5km of the run felt like the longest in my life and the finish really couldn’t have come sooner but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole race – being in the mix around my competitors is when I seem to perform the best, it stops me settling into my comfort zone and continue to push on.

All the hard work, the muddy running and riding and early sessions in the pool paid off – I achieved the 3rd place and podium position I had been hoping for.

The changes to my training and lifestyle have had a huge impact on my ability and performance this season, but that is only one aspect of it. I have an amazing support team behind me, my family and friends, my boyfriend, my coaches Ben & Jacqui Allen, fellow B&J racing athletes and colleagues at work. You can train as much as you want to but without the support behind you it is a very difficult task – the past year has shown me that in ways I never thought possible.