Busy weekend for Alnwick Tri Club members

At the Clumber Park Duathlon - Sprint & Standard (both age-group qualifiers), there were good conditions on Saturday morning. This is always a big event with 450 entries in the sprint and nearly 500 in the standard.

Carole Page went in the Sprint (F55-59) and at the end of T2 was in a tight tussle, 20 or so seconds behind the age-group leader and a couple of paces in front of the third placed athlete. Carole made the most of the hard uphill start to the final run, overtook the leader, and finished with a gap of over 30 secoods .

Three club representatives in the Standard: Ian Miley coming first M55-59 with Denise Drummond 4th in F50 – 54 and Ian Simon just missing out on a top ten pace in the very competitive M45 – 50.

Sunday saw two members, Lynne Bannister and Tony Jackson at the Sun City Duathlon in Sunderland. Weather was clear with windy conditions, although it wasn’t as the expected forecast, which was 40mph gusts!

Lynne Bannister achieved first in her age group.

Elsewhere Tracey Sample took part in the Fire fighters 2 up duathlon in Preston. Tracey teamed up with a rival team member Zoe from Tyne and Wear Fire Services Tri Club. The race partners had to race and be within 20 m of each other at all times, not an easy thing to do! Tracey and her team mate Zoe did a great job finishing in 3 hours and 39 minutes. This is a fantastic result considering Tracey had major surgery on her hip only five month ago.

Meanwhile, much further afield, one member of Alnwick Tri club, Tony Jackson started the season with a race 10,000 miles away in Australia and has lived to tell the tale!

Raby Bay, near Brisbane, hosted the seventh, and final, round of the Gatorade Queensland Triathlon Series combined with the 11th race in the Summer-long Nissan State Championship Series. With two lots of championship points on offer there were a number of elite athletes and top age group competitors racing.

In total over 1200 adults and children took part in races across four different distances with 418 adults starting in the Long Distance race in which Tony competed over the 900m swim/25km bike/6k run course.

At the 7.30am start time the air temperature was already up to 27 degrees Celsius. After overcoming the worries about jellyfish and sharks, coupled with the unusual feeling of swimming in the sea without a wetsuit, Tony managed a respectable swim time but was well down the field in 375th place going into the first transition. A much more competitive bike leg saw him improve his position and move into the top 300 coming into the second transition. In the run he further improved on his overall position to finish 268th.