Marathon running, long weekends in France/Spain and Cotswold Super Sprint

Time for an update on the TriPurbeck racing crew……..

Lots of marathon action over the last couple of weeks with Chris Kelly 3.19 (a pb) Liz Goldsack 3.42 and Rose with a 10min pb in the London marathon. At the same time, in the mini marathon, Serena O’Connor stormed through in 17.10 for the 3miles, finishing in the top 15 overall – very impressive! Crazy Liz Goldsack decided to race the North Dorset marathon the next week as well………sounds like a dubious plan to race one marathon to me but two in two weeks??????

Fran decided it was too cold to race in England so we were ‘forced’ to go to Aix en Provence for the bank holiday weekend and ‘endure’ the 28 degrees and sunshine. Oh I would soooo rather have been in Wareham…..Anyway, it was cool and and excellent race was only slightly scuppered by Fran falling over on the start line. And then incurring an outrageous (she told me to write that) 5 min penalty on the bike (in fairness, there was huge bunching in the first 5 mins of the bike as the 2500 athletes streamed out of transition and it’s really not clear what rule was infringed). Oh and then her drinks bottle collapsed onto her front wheel effectively resulting in her brakes being on for most of the ride. So a 2.42 split for 90km (would have ranked 8th in the pro field) probably suggests that the early season form is not too shabby. A hot 1.43 run and a 5.15 finish was good enough for 4th in a very competitive field but I suspect without the penalty…… I probably wouldn’t mention it…..

So on to this weekend and Serena and Simon O’Connor were racing in the Cotswold Super Sprint which, for Serena, was an elite Southwest Series Youth race. This is the first time she has competed at this level in a triathlon so a fantastic result to finish third with her customary fastest run split of the day. Simon was testing out his injury and came through with an excellent 7th place in his age group.

And finally (for now) while Jed was training with the junior squad, John Skilton was in action at Ironman 70.3 Mallorca (any excuse for a holiday big man…. like I can talk….). Excellent early season form from John finishing in 5.47. The next time John is in action he’ll be joined by Fran, Cheryl, Liz and Javier Gomez in Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire. My money’s on Gomez