Two races, two super fun post-race parties, two million hours training and two zillion hours working for teamTBB has meant for one busy Emma! Just a week after Challenge Fuerteventura middle distance race (race report here) and many long, hard ironman training days in between, I raced the Volcano Olympic distance triathlon. I did this last year so I was excited to see where I’d sit in comparison. As it turned out, pretty good! I repeated the 4th position of last week in Fuerte and I was very happy to finish in a time that was over 15 minutes faster than last year! Sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees when you’ve given up everything to train full time, so when you race and see this kind of improvement, it makes it all worthwhile.

Rachel Joyce, top female Brit, currently ranked no. 5 on the Kona Pro Rankings, won. Last week’s winner of Challenge Fuerteventura, Eva Ledesma, was 2nd. I was 5 minutes away from Rachel, 3 mins of that was on the swim and 1 min each on both the bike and run legs. Like many triathletes, I struggle with my swim, having not swum competitively through childhood, instead I opted to do every sport under the sun ranging from horse riding to field hockey. Later mountain biking became my obsession, which is of course what led me to Xterra (off-road) and now my main focus is long distance tri.

My first will be Ironman Lanzarote this weekend – thought I’d pick an easy one? I have no expectations, just to go hard, do my best and finish!! Tri247 have just published a fun article which talks about my preparation (and there’s even a silly video of me cycling in Lanza) here. To find more about me and my fab sponsors, visit my website – www.emmaruthsmith.com