A BEAUTIFULLY sunny day greeted four Stratford athletes at the ultra-friendly Bredon Hill Triathlon.
The quartet were to some extent on the comeback trail. Sarah Odell took the honour of first back on her 2017 open water triathlon debut.
Although apprehensive beforehand, she started with a very strong swim and finished with a strong run to finish in 1hr 35mins, ninth in her age group.
Lisa Whittington is still struggling without full movement in her shoulder following her cycle accident earlier in the year, however she was delighted to finish the race, particularly as she struggled with cramp in the warm conditions towards the end of the run.
Her partner Daniel finished ahead of her in 1:38 in his first race of the year and was a little short of training given the absence of the usual prodding from Lisa during her recovery period.
The final Stratford triathlete, Brian Weetman, knew before the race that his calf was unlikely to survive the run and he was right!
However, a solid swim was followed by a pretty decent bike section and, apart from picking up a DNF and a wasp sting on the bike, he thoroughly enjoyed the event!
STRATFORD Triathlon Club’s Paul Nash completed his final warm-up race – the Ironman 70.3 Otepaa in Estonia – before heading to the USA for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in September.
The course was both lovely and challenging, with extra complications caused by some significant rain and thunderstorms and gusting wind.
The initial swim is around an island in a lake which turned into extremely choppy waters caused by the strong winds to add to the washing machine swim.
However, Paul managed to battle through the crowds in 41mins, 17secs to get safely to T1 in 421st position.
The bike was a rolling two-lap out and back ride during which Paul managed to get on the power quickly and was soon moving up the field as the miles went by.
Despite the constant rain and major wind gusts on the return leg, he gained 50 places and posted a good bike split of 2hrs, 52mins in the challenging conditions.
The final run was painful as the rolling course actually equated to an unexpected hilly 250m of climbing. Paul decided he must read the course notes in detail next time!
Nevertheless, he battled through to a creditable 2hrs, 57mins run time which meant an overall time of 6:41:34 for position 645, but even better 13th in his age group.
