HPT athlete Ashleigh Gentle secured her second victory in the T100 Triathlon World Series in London. She employed a late-race attack to stride away from the field...even with a partially torn hamstring? Enjoy our Q & A interview with Ashleigh after her commanding win in London.
HPT athlete Ashleigh Gentle secured her second victory of the T100 Triathlon World Series in London. She dominated in a late-race surge to secure the win and make her mark.
In true Gentle fashion, she accelerated with half of the run leg to go, overtook Imogen, and crushed the final stretch of the 18km run. She took the win at a time of 3:36:17, almost three minutes ahead of Simmonds in second place.
Gentle performed consistently across all three disciplines, but took and secured the lead in the second half of the 18km run at the end of the race.
Congratulations on your race at the T100 in London. Did your pacing plan play a role in that win or were you more or less reacting? How did you manage such a strong last-half run?
I didn't have much of a plan in the sense that I was going to stick to these numbers on the bike or this pacing on the run. I'm pretty well aware of where I need to be sitting to kind of get the best out of myself. [When] I go into one of these races the dynamic can be changing quite a bit with different athletes around me and the strengths that they bring. Also very dependent on where I come out of the water and am positioned on the bike.
So for me, it was definitely just about racing my own race and staying adaptable to those things around you. So that's how I raced London.
On the flip side to that, there did come a point where I was like, “Okay, I have to stick to more of my numbers now” because I knew I was going maybe a bit too far into the red trying to just stick with Imogen.
When I got onto the run I definitely ran the first three laps very fast to try and catch [people] as quickly as I could. Then, the last three laps were more about consolidating that time. I actually dropped the pace quite a lot in the last three laps, but I was still kind of gaining on second, so I felt very comfortable that I could just run my own race.
Can you share any key moments or strategies from London that contributed to your win?
I think that I was fairly strong on the swim. It never really seems like that when someone's coming out of the water a 1’45” in front of you, but I mean, it's Lucy, Charles-Barclay – so that gap is more or less expected in my mind.
The difference was having a good bike ride and holding my position. Sometimes it's not even about making it to the very front of the race because my weapon is the run. It's more just about being as strong as I possibly can on the bike to still be able to use my weapon, but also get further away enough from the runners that I know can outrun me at times.
There are lots of people that bring different elements to the race. I feel like I'm always having to be very aware of everything around me while also just trying to focus on myself.
Is there anything in particular to this course in London that makes it different, special, or challenging in any way compared to the others?
First of all, it was a really good vibe down there. I think they had a lot of great age groupers that were racing throughout the weekend. So I feel like it was really well supported, which to be honest, makes such a huge difference to us out there.
We're a bit out of the town of London, so there was a lot of construction, speed bumps, and roundabouts to negotiate. It added to the focus that you had to have because you had to make sure that you were safe through those elements, but you also had to keep making sure that you did push those limits a little bit to try and keep up the pace.
It was a lot harder than I think a lot of people anticipated with some of the technical elements to it.
What did your fueling plan look like for this? Give us a breakdown of your nutrition and if there was anything particular about this event.
Pre-Race
Leading into the race, I had the Gnarly Hydration and some Enervit Chews as well. I think I probably just had half a packet of that as something to snack on that was easy. I had a PowerBar Gel with caffeine before I started the race.
During Race
Then during the race, I mainly used Precision Hydration gel mix that I put with water in my internal hydration on the bike. I also had a little pouch on my bike where I stored a couple of PF&H gels with caffeine in them as well. And then I had some 1500 PH in a water bottle for the electrolytes.
I had quite a lot of carbohydrates during the bike. I had about 210 grams worth of gel mix and I reckon it would've been about 150mg of caffeine as well.
What does this do for you mentally going into the remainder of the season?
Well, I hurt my hamstring on the last lap of the run. I've just got a bit of a torn hamstring, so that was a bit annoying coming off this race. Just depends. My legs were pretty destroyed from that course, and I was carrying a lot of load going in.
I think that the recovery will be pretty quick and Ibiza is eight weeks away. So at this point, I'm not very stressed about it. I think it'll force me to have a little bit more recovery maybe than I would've otherwise. Sometimes for athletes, that's not the worst thing.
[The goal is] getting over that and getting strong again. Trying to be super consistent in not getting injured, not getting sick, and honestly fueling properly. I think I've fueled better than I ever have before and I feel like it's made one of the biggest differences in my progression. I feel like I look back at a younger version of myself probably under-fueled for most of my career. Now, I feel like I'm a lot more knowledgeable and I'm a lot more aggressive with my nutrition.
