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So I’ve had a few days now to recover from a terrible stomach bug garnered from some post-race chillied huachinango in Maruata on the Michoacán coast – lovely place if you ever fancy £8-a-night beachside cabin, unspoilt coastline and more  - and thought I’d put finger to keyboard.

I arrived on the Wednesday to nearing 40-degree-C heat and 60% humidity. Aguascalientes had got me ready for ridiculous Mexican heat, but this was moving up to overdrive from 5th gear. Luckily, the Wednesday arrival meant that I had a chance to at least do some decent adaptation, even if I mostly spent the time hiding from the sun.

I tried the Wednesday evening to go for a swim – my coach had set me up a 2.5km session each day leading up to the competition – in the sea and immediately lost my goggles to a two-metre wave. After staring at sunset water in vain for my goggles, I swallowed my anger, pulled my socks up, my swim cap down and dived in. Such a lame display of heroics was quickly cut short as the sighting in the salty water felt like I was losing blood through my eyeballs. Best wait ’till tomorrow.

The next couple of days involved some: decentish sea swims and acclimatising to the strange stomach feeling caused by the salt; being frightened by the ever-increasing Pacific wave sizes, and amused that I wasn’t the only one to get thrown around like a sea smartie; a couple of bike recce 50 min easy sessions and a 30 minute jog on the Thursday.

Deep in preparation

Lots of pizza, bananas and litres of water later, I was there at 9.30 on the Saturday morning with the bike racked waiting nervously to get to the swim warm-up area. The running and the biking I felt pretty confident about, but the swim would be the first one this season, and the first one ever with an international elite field. When I heard that the swim was cancelled due to the waves I can honestly say that I breathed a sigh of relief. My running training has been rubbish in the off season with 4 months off and various niggles, but at least I know where it’s at.

So a duathlon it became: 10.30 am start, 3km up ‘n’ down run, 40km 2-lap rolling bike, 10k pancake run.

I was number 50 out of 61 starting, and that with never having raced an ITU race! So there must be some people worse than me – get in! Always thinking positively…

We got called up name by name to the start line, waited for one minute whilst the officials fiddled with their iPhones, and the horn blew.

It was now 10.40 and the sun was beating down like some kind of sick bully picking on us human weaklings. I don’t like to drink much before races but I was sweating like an Englishman on a foreign beach, all of which had consipred to make me visit the toilet 3 times in the 15 minutes before race start. At least I felt light and bouncy… The first 3k wasn’t a mad dash as I had imagined and I remained with the main pack – right behind Francisco Serrano, in fact – for the duration. All the liquids I had consumed in the few moments before the start to stave off dehydration had led me to have a bit of a stitch in the last 500m, but I managed to limit the loss.

A 10mins 31secs for the 3km + slowish T1 split and I was half on the bike getting shouted at by the official to cross the yellow line. A quick sprint up to 45kph, I looked up and saw the main pack was probably around 10 seconds ahead. I got in my shoes, found a couple of guys around me including Cuevas and we reeled them in within a minute or two.

I'm back in the chasing group...

From there the bike was a pretty simple task of not getting smashed down by some of the dodgy swerving going on by various parties, others would probably say with me included. The pace wasn’t hard although I clocked a 59.09, 40 seconds faster than the average split from last year’s event. A couple of times there were some big pushes and there was a small 20 second break at the front by 2 riders, on the biggest hill at the back end of the course I got left right at the back of the peleton as I was caught napping, but that woke me up and from there I stuck with the pack right back in to transition. I didn’t fight out the first-off-the-bike back in to T2 so was probably around 10-15 seconds off the leader going out on to the 4-lap run.

Straight away it was obvious that the run was going to be tough as it was now 12 midday and the sun hadn’t stopped playing his dirty tricks. I covered myself with ice-cold water at the first water station 1km in to the run and did so at every time I passed. Filling my suit up with ice cubes being handed out was one of the most euphoric parts of the whole event.

I hadn’t been training in wet Asics Hyperspeeds and quickly found that was a serious error as on the first lap the second smallest toes on both feet were getting what felt like champhered every step. In comes the philosophy of any endurance athletes – ‘The pain doesn’t matter now, deal with it later’. That worked for a couple of dozen seconds each time.

I was catching athletes in front of me on each lap which felt good, and was only overtaken by Sterghos – a gringo, of all people – on the second lap. There were a number of athletes spread across the course which you could easily measure yourself against given the dead point turns.

I was feeling good aerobically but the toes and now the calf muscles were starting to hurt. I could also feel some crap creeping in to the quads no doubt down to the dehydration, as the bike leg was pretty easy. I started to pick up the pace toward the end of the 3rd lap and on to the 4th, moving up from 20th to finish in 16th clocking 36.10 for the 10k.

Thanks to the Mexican Red Cross

That’s the fastest 40k bike and 10k run I’ve ever done, but both felt like they could of been faster without compromising the other. This remains to be seen of course!

I must take this moment to dedicate one of the biggest thankyous ever to the Mexican Red Cross. Crossing the line I didn’t feel too hot, but was given a freezing-cold towel and, after sitting in the tent, realised I was very overheated. Seeing other competitors, both men and women, being brought in on stretchers in comatosed states was particularly eye-opening, especially after it was just Olympic distance – if it was Ironman then its a different ball game – but 2 hours of competition in that heat had taken its toll.

Michoacán Paradise

I was off to sit on a Pacific-coast beach well away from the hellhole that is Ixtapa, a beautiful Mexican bay ruined by InterContinental, Barceló, Emporio, NH and the rest of satan’s offspring. Ranting aside, I was very pleased with a 16th place finish, with just 36 out of 61 finishing. Serrano didn’t finish, and I was just 1min 40secs off Cervantes, a 2004 Olympian. Get in!

On to the next…