Fast and Furious at Hanningfield, Drafting at Eton

22 May 2017 - By James Montgomery

The Triathlon season is well under way and several Witham RC members were in action across two events over the weekend. On Saturday, Tony Wallen, Stuart Mills and Wendy Martin took part in the Hanningfield Triathlon. This was a Sprint distance of 750mtrs swim, 24kms bike and 5kms run. Tony reports that the race was well organised, but they couldn’t do much about the water temperature at still only 14degC making the jump off the jetty into the lake proving a shock to the system, especially as it was Tony’s first foray into open water this year!

The bike course is fast and furious (we occaionally use parts of the route on our Saturday rides for a “burn-up”) with good sections in the “aero” position to knock the time down.

Onto the run, which was off-road with obstacles in the form of tree roots, steps and gates to keep things interesting to the finish line.

Sounds like one for the to-do-again list.

Splits:
Tony:
Swim:    00:16:02
Bike:      00:46:04
Run:       00:23:02
Overall: 01:27:39 (9th Overall)

Stuart
Swim:    00:12:56
Bike:      00:45:44
Run:       00:19:39
Overall: 01:20:27 (3rd Overall)

Wendy:
Swim:    00:12:49
Bike:      00:50:22
Run:       00:23:15
Overall: 01:28:23 (2nd female, 10th overall)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meawhile down in Berkshire on Sunday, Alex and Liz Stuckey had both entered the Eton Dorney draft legal Sprint Triathlon. With similar distances to Saturday’s race, the main difference with this format is the rules allow for drafting on the bike leg and the benefits that brings, especially to strong runners, so it’s important to get out of the water with a group.

Liz was off at 9am, Alex at 10.30am. The swim was a single lap of 750m and at 15.8degC not too cold. Both Liz and Alex had slow T1s as they struggled to get their wetsuits off before setting off on a 4 laps bike course. Being draft legal and not having to worry about drafting rules made it fun working with others. Liz did the first lap solo then found 2 girls to work with for the next 2 before joining in a slightly bigger group for the last lap. In the men’s race, Alex had also found a group to work with although he says he did more work on the front!

Finally onto the run, which Liz measured slightly longer than 5k at 3.25 miles, Liz slowly worked her way up field having many to chase down and points out that she was quicker on the run than Alex however, Alex didn’t have as many to chase.

Splits
Liz:
Swim:    00:16.04
Bike:      00:39.29
Run:      00:22.41
Overall: 01.21.23

Alex:
Swim:     00:14.46
Bike:       00:37.44
Run:       00:23.07
Overall:  01.19.23