Tom Bishop reflected on 12 months of strong progress after his victory at Challenge Wales on Sunday.
The 31-year-old Brit has moved from number 70 in the PTO world rankings at the end of 2022 to the top 30 thanks to a superb season so far.
He started it with second place behind Jason West at CLASH Miami, followed a week later with a win at Challenge Puerto Varas. Solid displays at the PTO European Open and The Championship were then rounded off with the win in Fishguard to keep the upward momentum going.
In the same event in 2022, Bishop had finished fourth, with the likes of Jack Hutchens and Harry Palmer just ahead of him. This time it was no contest as he dominated the race to win by over seven minutes.
Leading from the front
And speaking to us since then he talked us through how the race panned out: “I guess I was not really sure what to expect as I’m quite tired after all the racing and had trained pretty hard since I got back from Challenge’s The Championship.
“I just wanted to be aggressive and managed to get a gap with Andrew Horsfall-Turner on the swim so we kind of worked together to maintain it.
“I spent maybe the first five or so minutes just kind of recovering on the bike and then I thought, I’m going to go for it really hard out to the first turn point and then see what the gap is. I think it was about 90 seconds and we had a tailwind on the way back, so I just wanted to keep the pace really high.
“It was four minutes at the second turn point and I just tried to keep it controlled for the second lap but still managed to build my lead so I had about seven and a half minutes off the bike.
“It was a really tough run course with kind of gravel sections, really steep hills, steep downhills as well. So I was really conscious about not blowing up for a start, not getting cramp, muscle damage and so on.
“So it was nice to kind of have a race under control. I didn’t have to push the run too hard because last year when I raced, I was so sore for days afterwards, almost a week.
“With Harry chasing me down for third last year I was conscious of him and how well he runs so I did push at the start. Well done to all the guys who raced but I was really happy with the win.
“To come with the win when I came fourth here year was a nice improvement.”
It’s kind of shown how far I’ve come over the past 12 months.
Onwards and upwards
But there will be no resting on his laurels for Bishop, with a busy and important six weeks in prospect.
First up is an altitude camp, then Challenge Kaiserwinkl-Walchsee at the start of July, before the focus switches to the PTO US Open in Milwaukee.
Bishop added: “I’ve got an important month and a half coming up, especially with the building to the PTO’s US Open if I get a start.
“So just want to put my focus in the next six weeks with a race in the middle, make sure I can really push on and get in some better shape for the US Open in August.”
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