The Belgian Pieter Heemeryck is a very successful triathlete who is mainly successful on the Middle Distance, and even though he finished second at Ironman Kalmar this year, he doesn’t seem to be putting the right puzzle pieces together for a Long Distance yet. Last weekend Heemeryck was at the start of Ironman Cozumel, but due to the Mexican heat things went wrong and a DNF followed.
While the swim and bike still went more than well for Heemeryck, which put him in a perfect position to start the run, his race ended up in a big disappointment. “I clearly came for more than this. My preparation was perfect so I had a lot of confidence going into race week.”
“I had a solid swim in the front of the race. After a slower T1 I moved fast to the front, pacing smart waiting on Magnus (Ditlev, ed.) to make a move. The feeling was good and I could push much more watts then in Kona, which gave me a lot of confidence. Once on the run the feeling wasn’t perfect but the pace was more then ok.”
But….”After the first turning point the body started to react with symptoms of overheating, which forced me to quit the race. One hour later on the apartment I went from having extremely warm to having cold and stayed in my bed for most of the day. I can’t really find a reason for this but definitely have to find a solution to battle the heat when it’s more then a five hour race.”
