Welcome back everyone to the sixth issue of the club’s newsletter. We are deep into the season now and there seem to be events happening every weekend. It’s great to see so many club members getting out there, pinning on a number and toeing the start line.
We are also getting into the business end of training time for those club members who have an appointment with the Big Dance in Tenby on 11th September. It’s inspiring to see the graft and effort people are putting in to make sure they can have a day to remember on that long journey from North Beach at 7am with Thunderstruck ringing in their ears!
Race news
Ironman UK
Ironman UK took place in Bolton on July 3rd, and our very own Evan took part in a race which must rival IM Wales, certainly in terms of a tough bike leg. Evan put in a fantastic performance with a 1.15 swim leg, 7.21 bike, rounding it off with a 4.26 marathon to come home in a total time of 13hours16 minutes - outstanding effort!
Long Course Wales Weekend 2-4th July
LCW returned to the waters and streets of South Pembrokeshire after a couple of years absence due to you know what. If you are unfamiliar with the format, it’s basically an iron distance triathlon completed over a weekend (swim Friday evening, bike Saturday, marathon Sunday). The full course event is added to by a variety of shorter distance events over all three disciplines - so there is something for everyone! So many club members did something on the weekend, so rather than trot out times, places etc, I’ll paint a picture with some images!
Monmouth Aquathlon and Parc Bryn Bach Aquathlon
Fancy a change from having to lug all that kit around to races (i.e.. bike, helmet, bike shoes etc) - then why not give aquathlon a go! Club members have been having a ball at these events recently.
Coaches Corner
Draft legal racing - even for age groupers! Not quite a coaching tip, but more a reflection of a type of racing we don’t often encounter.
If you ever fancy throwing your hat in the ring for one of the GB national championship races, you may well find yourself in a draft-legal race, which is quite an unusual experience for most of us age groupers. First thing to note is that you’ll have to use a road bike (no TT bikes allowed) and if you have clip on tri bars, they have to be the short stubby ones that don’t extend further out then the drops - the kind you might see the ITU athletes using, but not common for most of us.
The recent Cardiff Sprint Triathlon was a GB National Champs (as well as a Welsh Champs) race and therefore draft-legal. Having done it, along with Paul B, our reflections are that it is a very different form of racing! Much like you’ll hear in the ITU races, it’s all about making it on to a pack on the bike - if you don’t (and this was my experience!), you plough a very lonely furrow around the course, and if it’s a lapped course, peletons will sweep past you, and it is very difficult to latch on to one as they go past as they tend to be moving much more quickly than you.
My experience in the Cardiff race was that I had an OK swim but wasn’t able to swim on the feet of the faster athletes of my AG wave. This meant that by the time I got out of T1, the train had left the station, and I wasn’t on it! In this instance, it really is all about the bike. Despite having the third quickest run time of the day, I simply couldn’t make up the ground I’d lost on the bike leg. Food for thought!
Brutal (Bonkers) Events
Some of the exploits of PYB members often seem pretty extraordinary - be it Ironman, epic sportive, or completing their very first sprint race….but have you come across the madness that is the Brutal Events that have just taken place at Allerthorpe Lakeland Park near York. They run a series of ultra endurance triathlons over a ten day period, including a Deca (10 days of an iron distance race every day) and a continuous Deca in which competitors have 288 hours to complete the event - just to blow your mind, the swim is a pool swim of 1520 lengths, the bike is on a 8 mile loop and the run a 1.2 mile loop around the lakeside. If you are not familiar with YouTuber Triathlon Dan, I would recommend you looking him up and watching some of his vlogging as he was part of the support crew for his friend James Simpson who eventually won the daily Deca event -truly astonishing stuff!
Pro News
Since the last edition of the newsletter there has been a lot of pro racing with the iconic Challenge Roth, IM Frankfurt and Hamburg to name but a few. Perhaps the biggest news in the pro field was the inaugural PTO Canadian Open in Edmonton. This year sees the PTO really beginning to flex its financial muscle with its race series, alongside the Collins Cup. What is perhaps most significant about these races is the huge (in tri terms) prize money on offer. Top of the podium brings in a cool $100,000 and the prize money then runs deep into the field. To put this in perspective, Lionel Sanders commented in his latest YouTube video that in coming (a disappointing) 7th in Edmonton, he won 6 times as much prize money as when he won Ironman 70.3 Mont Tremblant outright a few weeks earlier.
In terms of the podium, on the men’s side, the Norwegians dominated, with Gustav Iden proving he really is the current king of middle distance racing, as after suffering cramp on the run, Blu was unable to quite chase him down. Aaron Royle showed that his Challenge Fishguard result was a good guide to his form as he took the third step.
On the women’s side fellow Aussie Ashleigh Gentle took the top step, followed by home favourite Paula Findlay and rounded out by America’s Chelsea Sodaro.
Non Stanford
And finally for this edition, a big shout out to Swansea’s Non Stanford who is retiring from international competition (will we now see her follow her partner Aaron Royle into long course racing?) after running a superb anchor leg for Wales in the mixed triathlon relay to secure the team an (unexpected?) silver medal. She has had a fantastic short course career, culminating in winning the World Championships in 2013 and an agonising fourth place at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Showing my age a bit here, but I can remember watching Non clean up at the Welsh Schools Cross Country Championships in Brecon many moons ago- she was so far ahead of the rest of the field, it was like she was in her own race!
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