Lucy Charles Barclay believes her first T100 victory, which came in London on Saturday, sets her up perfectly for the rest of the season.
The British star produced a near-perfect performance to win against what was surely the strongest women’s field we’ve seen this year.
The previous three T100 winners – Kate Waugh, Taylor Knibb and Julie Derron – came second, third and fourth respectively.
For Charles-Barclay it was a world away from her appearance at T100 London last year when injuries and health issues contributed to her being a DNF.
This time she led out the swim, was at the front throughout the bike and then paced the run beautifully to overtake Waugh with around 2km to go en route to an emotional win in front of a home crowd and many friends and family.
‘Don’t look back’
TRI247 caught up with the Red Bull athlete afterwards and when asked about the dramatic closing stages of the run, she revealed she didn’t look back until just before the line.
She told us: “I was very much running my pace, feeling in control.
“Obviously, you’re always pushing hard in T100 anyway but I could see that the gap felt like it was getting smaller and the crowds were screaming at me, saying ‘you can get this’, ‘you can win this’ – and I was starting to think that this could be my day.
“And as I started to close in on Kate I was thinking, okay, bide your time, get behind her, take a breath – and then just go. And don’t look back.
“I think we had about 2k left at that point. And, yeah, I just pushed from there all the way to the finish. I didn’t really look back until the end, and I couldn’t believe she wasn’t there!
“That meant I could really enjoy that finish line, which was pretty special.
“Last year I was so devastated to DNF in my home race. But this year leading into the race I was feeling good and have had a very consistent training block.”
Excited for what’s ahead
Charles-Barclay famously won the women’s IRONMAN World Championship the last time it was held in Kona two years ago and everything would now appear to be on track for a bold repeat bid – as well as being right in the mix for the overall T100 title and potentially another 70.3 Worlds too.
Asked if her London display has given her added confidence, she said: “Yeah, definitely. I think even when I was running in second, I was really happy with the overall performance, feeling strong across all three disciplines.
“And now knowing I’m going to go away and do another good block of work before the next half of the season, which is obviously where the major championships are, means I’m confident and excited for that.”
Speaking earlier on the live broadcast she had explained that the victory also underlined plenty of encouraging signs in recent training.
She said: “Coming into the race I felt like I was coming back to my best. We’ve seen some amazing numbers in training. But you never know in T100, anything can happen.
“I’ve been running really well and I even got a 5km personal best last weekend.”
That was at the Gunpowder parkrun – and she’s actually set new best marks for two weeks in a row. First she clocked 16:13 on 26th July to knock a chunk of time off her previous quickest and then on 2nd August she took another second off that with a 16:12.
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