WRC Members in Triathlon Action at Maldon Promenade Park

1 August 2016 - By James Montgomery

Three members of WRC took part in the Maldon Sprint Triathlon on Sunday, held at the Promenade Park in Maldon. Liz and Alex Stuckey and Tony Wallen took to the 750 mtrs swim, 28kms bike and 5kms run.

Liz was using this as a warmup for the upcoming Age-Group World Championships, which will be taking place in the sea, so needed the benefit of a sea swim triathlon and the swim took place in the salty and murky tidal waters of the Blackwater estuary. First out and into T1 by some margin was Alex, but unfortunately, his race pretty much ended there after suffering some shoe cleat issues at the bike mount line. Next out was Liz, followed closely by Tony.

Onto the bike, with Liz quickly into her pace and Tony in hot pursuit on the out and back route but a little way along the course both got caught up in Sunday traffic, making the aero-position impractical and progess slow. This wasn’t helped by the strengthening wind and Tony had overtaken Liz before the turn around point, which was somewhere in the middle of nowhere. However, it seemed exactly where the middle of nowhere was wasn’t clearly marked and with no marshal to indicate several competitors found it rather confusing costing both Tony, who made the turn first and Liz, not far behind, some time.

Back into the park, which was now getting busy as there was a funfair and circus also going on in the park, the route to T1 was little fun and there were plenty of clowns getting in the way!! Tony was first in to T2 with Liz about a minute behind. The run was 2 laps around the park and partially off-road and it was thought that the level of marshalling could have been improved upon as there was little in the way of crowd control. During the run to the finish line Tony kept the same gap to Liz as both posted near-identical run splits, finishing 6th and 3rd respectively in their categories.
Splits:
Tony Wallen
Swim:         21mins 37secs
Bike:         52mins 38secs
Run:          22mins 22secs
Overall:  1hr 39mins 04secs

Liz Stuckey
Swim:         20mins 57secs
Bike:         57mins 02secs
Run:          22mins 24secs
Overall:  1hr 42mins 55secs

Alex Stuckey
Swim:         16mins 34secs

And one I missed from last week…

On Sunday 23rd Andy Notley took part in the Island Races Sprint Triathlon that took place on Mersea Island. David Jobling was also supposed to be taking part but didn’t make it to the start line.

Splits:
Swim:        10mins 04secs
Bike:        49mins 23secs
Run:         26mins 18secs
Overall: 1hr 16mins 12secs

 

Well done everyone!

James