2018 Holten ETU Triathlon Junior European Cup


The journey to my first International triathlon, the European Cup in Holten (Holland) began with an early wake up on the 12th June. After almost pulling an all nighter, needing to get up at 2.50am and only having 1 hour of sleep, I thought that I’d be able to sleep on my 11 hour flight to Dubai. Let’s just say that it was quite an unpleasant and restless 18 hour journey to London.

Training in England was a lot harder than I had expected, the worst part was the roads to ride on. They were no where near as good as they are in Perth and were extremely busy. It took me about a week to adapt training in a different environment, but I enjoyed every part of it. I had the opportunity to train with Lucy Charles, her partner Reece and their friend Guy. Samuel and I swam in the London Olympic pool with them a few times and went on a 100km ride with them, which I may have bonked on…

Another opportunity I had was having a swim technique session with Ray in an endless pool. Happy to say my technique was pretty much perfect but theres always little things to work on to make you the best possible. 



I also did all the usual sight-seeing in London (Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Sky Garden and the London Eye) which was rather lovely.

Fast forward to Thursday 28th June, myself and Samuels family drove over to Holten for the European Cup. We went on a train under the ocean which was nice but what was not so nice was the traffic, the heat, not having aircon in the car, sitting in the middle in the back seat and the 10 hour drive to Holten. Eventually we made it to the motel we were staying at and I settled in quite nicely. Since the end of March, I’ve had a bit of a niggle with my knee (shoutout to Gary in London for helping me out), but I was on and off running during May and had to take 10 days off running prior to Holten which was a bit annoying but couldn't do much about it. 

Friday morning started off with Samuel doing his pre race run intervals, followed by a swim course familiarisation and then a bike course familiarisation. Later in the afternoon was registration and briefing.

Saturday morning was the day of the race. It was nice to not have to wake up at 4am. Samuel and my race were an hour apart, so we both rode down to T2 (as it was an unfamiliar place and I didn't want to get lost riding down on my own) and Samuel put his gear in T2 while I had a quick phone call to mum pre race and waited until it was my turn to set up. Following that, I rode over to the man-made lake where I found Samuel and wished him luck and finished setting up T1, then went onto complete a quick warm up jog with a couple of efforts. 

I then did a swim warm up and was feeling rather good and was happy that it was a non-wetsuit swim. We were called to line up in number order and then jogged down to the pontoon. I’d never done a pontoon start so I lined up on the far right side where no one was to get clear water as I knew I was a fast enough swimmer to meet up with the leaders. I had an absolutely fantastic swim, coming 5th out of the water, but my race was soon to go downhill quickly. European racing is a lot different to racing in Australia and I just could not hold a wheel and went from just hanging onto the lead pack to dropping back to the 3rd main pack of about 20 athletes. I kept on putting myself in the ‘red zone’ and going up the hill twice on the bike didn't make things any better, but I did what I could. Coming into T2, I was one of the last athletes out as I was at the back of the bike pack and I built the run, rather than going out hard and burning out. I failed to get a good leg turnover going but made it to the finish line coming across in 40th place. Of course I was bummed with my bike and run performance, but racing in Holten was a great experience! 

ytb richard murray


Coming out of the race, there are so many things to work on during my Australian off season before I set out towards the end of the year to kick some butt!

I spent my last final days in England with chilled training before I left to go back to Perth on Wednesday 4th July. 

I’m so keen to get back into the swing of things (after I recover from jet lag) and put in the hard yards and start running again very soon. 

Thank you to the Mileham family for looking after me for the 3 weeks, my parents helping me out with funding my trip, the Eclipse Crew and my friends for their constant support!





Photo 2: Samuel Mileham
Photo 3 & 4: Nicki Mileham

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