Good morning from Jackpot HQ! Grab a cup of tea for this week’s spectacular!

It all started on a grey Saturday at Holme Pierrepont – thunderstorms and lightning, very, very frightening indeed.  But not enough to put off the Saturday team racing this weekend at the National Triathlon Relays Championships 2016. The team made up of Craig Boggon, China Clarke, Paul Freeman and Gordon Kilroy won the non BTF Open Category…to cut a long story short, there is a large number of teams in this category.

The race format is 500m swim, tag the next person – 15k bike, tag the next person – 5k run, tag the next person. The cumulative time is taken.

Some very fast times came out of the race including Craig’s 16 minute 5k run! Also, this was China’s second run since completing Ironman Zurich a month ago and he still ran a slightly longer 5k on the finishing lap in 19 minutes! It made for tremendous racing and tremendous watching!

Moving onto a dry Sunday where the races allow for teams of people to mix up from different clubs.  The format is different to Saturday whereby each person in a team of four completes a mini lung buster of a triathlon before tagging the next person – 250m swim, 5k bike and 1500m run.

Interestingly this year, most people raced without a wetsuit…people are starting to do the maths. There were also more rat traps on bike pedals to save the changing of shoes. Jackpot had two Men’s, one Ladies and one Mixed team. There were many men’s teams meaning competition was high. The men’s team ‘2’ just missed out on qualification for the afternoon race but the team of Chris Brown, Alistair Cooke, Paul Freeman and Tom Linton-Neal still belted around the course finishing in a superb time of 1:21:06.

The top ten teams from each category (Mens, Ladies, Mixed and Open) from the mini triathlon went through to the final at noon. The final was double the distance of the morning race but drafting only within your own team all the way through. Jackpot’s Men’s ‘1’, Ladies and Mixed went through to the big one.

The ladies teams were off first at minute intervals. The ladies team was made up of Claire Pickersgill, Chloe Scotchbook, Jenni Muston and we had borrowed the very speedy Jenny Latham for the day.  The ladies had discussed tactics after the morning’s race. Jenny and Chloe led the swim, Jenni and Claire drafted…Jenni needed to stop at the first buoy for air and in search of a defibrillator and the team carried on, overtaking two teams already in the water. Onto the bike. Magic. Chaninganging all the way through (though annoyingly slowed by a draft buster as the team became stuck behind another team), the ladies shifted into first place. Onto the run and the team increased the gap between them and 2nd positioned ladies to finish with a glorious gold! The ladies showed true grit and determination – they also worked extremely well as a team.  Thank you Jenny for lending us your superpowers!

The mixed team consisted of Jess Learmonth, Hannah Drewitt, Mika Brown and Kieran Hill.  They put on a spectacular performance for the ticket holders and demolished the competition with a wonderful win! Second gold of the day and third of the weekend! The photo below shows the team in action…currently we do not have any photos of Jess where she is NOT chatting 😉

The men’s team went in to defend their title. Competition was strong and the day was getting warmer. Max Hazell came back for more punishment after last year’s absolute best performance and raced again with the Bishop brothers and Jack Hall. The weather was getting warmer and sunnier – unfortunately Jack Hall suffered with cramp in the run. The men’s tea were first to finish in the morning however had to settle for fourth in the afternoon. Still great racing from all of you!

A great set of results from the weekend!  Best of luck to Chloe who moves to The Netherlands this week for a year!

Ian Gilham was back out in force this weekend podiuming overall at the Chiltern Aquathlon and winning his age group! This is Ian’s last race before he heads over to Mexico for the Worlds in September! many congratulations Ian and best of luck to you too!

Finally, Richard Knell-Moore set tongues wagging with his cracking race at Ironman Copenhagen last weekend. Richard finished in a time of 10:20:29….wait for it kids….putting in a 5:01:57 bike! Absolutely brilliant!

More scores to add to the board from the British Championships at Liverpool from this weekend.

Adam Bowden took a bow winning the men’s elite sprint race in 54:58 (!) with Tom Bishop also podiuming (new verb I think) in 3rd finishing in 55:23. Add to that Chris Perham in a very close 5th in 55:46, Aaron Harris in 56:16 and David Bishop -who only the week before nailed the London Triathlon with an almighty win – in 12th in 57:12 – real racing looking at how close these times are. Top racing!

Over to the ladies and Jess Learmonth and Heather both podiumed with a silver and bronze respectively! Jess finished in a very speedy 1:01:44 and Heather very close behind in 1:02:02.  We need a new silverware cupboard at the Jackpot HQ! Wonderful racing ladies!  Many congratulations!

It does not end there!  We had three of our age groupers in the standard race and Ian Gilham kindly gives us his own account of the race for him:

‘…I was 6th in my AG (super wrinklies) national champs today.

Not the best preparation in that I thought I’d entered the sprint distance until I got the start list through earlier in the week – who said “preparation is the key to success”? (!!!)

Lost the lead group in the swim so ended up by myself doing a billy-no-mates 1500m, that is apart from a couple of thousand jellyfish keeping the spirits up (were these the same jellyfish from Mallorca?!)! Got through the amazingly long and complicated T1 and made up some time on the bike despite being passed by ridiculously massive peletons with not a draft-buster in sight. Grrrrrr.

Got passed by a few folks late on the bike but got a couple of places back in T2 and out onto a decent run in perfect conditions – frustrated to miss a sub-40 minute run by a couple of seconds but pleased with 6th place. Now off to train in the sauna in preparation for Mexico next month.’ Well raced Ian and we shall look forward to hearing about Mexico!

Craig (to)Boggon whooshed to 4th on his age group (25-29) with an overall time of  2:01:46 including a tremendous 34:24 run! Craig was 20th overall 🙂 Brilliant!

Tim Ashelford popped an age group podium with a 3rd! Great great great! Tim finished in a speedy 2:08:23! Congratulations Tim!

Gordon Kilroy was also out to play after his recent visit to the Alpe d’Huez long course triathlon. Gordon popped a 22nd in his age group with a time of 2:15:28.

Two weeks until the National Relays! Jackpot have a few teams registered for Saturday and Sunday – there should be some glorious racing there!

The Big Smoke saw some of our athletes – David Bishop, Jessica Learmonth, Heather Sellars, Aaron Harris and William Cowen – race to podiums at the London Triathlon at the weekend in the elite race!

David raced to Gold in the Olympic distance (pardon the pun!) race with an incredible run split of 32 minutes (!) – well, it was all incredible really.  Posting a 17:45 minute swim, followed by a 52:09 minute bike, David was ahead of 2nd position by over a minute finishing in 1:45:13!

Still in the mens race, Will Cowen raced strong finishing in 1:53: 24 just ahead of team mate Aaron Harris who finished in a tremendous 1:53:51. A brilliant set of results and performances to match!

Switching to the ladies, Jess finished less than a minute behind the ladies race winner but posting the fastest swim split and bounding to second place in 1:57:13!  Heather shot to third place in 1:58:02. Just WOW!

Colin Hill scored 4th overall at Allerthorpe Classic Olympic distance on Sunday and 1st in his age group (45-49!). Super racing Colin!

A bit of an international weekend for some of our Jackpotters this weekend just passé…Alpe D’Huez and Ironman Maastricht beckoned.

John Swallow, Gordon Kilroy and Eddie Howarth headed to the Alps for the long distance event. With a 2.2k swim, a hilly (!) 115k bike and half marathon, the sun welcomed our athletes (by the way – this was to celebrate John’s 50th Birthday!) for a loooooong day of racing.

Eddie was the first Jackpotter to finish in a time of 8 hours 6 minutes (fast!); John and Gordon finished together (how did that happen?!) (Gordon has just got over a broken collar bone and ankle!) in 10:18 after a gruelling bike and tremendous racing. Eddie finished 27th in his age group, 195th overall; John 50th in age group and 648 overall; Gordon 133rd in age group and pipped John at the post 647th in position (how mean! On his birthday!)! Well done chaps!

In Masstricht, Max Hazell was 9th in his age group (AWESOME!) in 10:36 with the following splits: 50:47 swim (how fast?!), 5:37:05 bike and a 4 hour 2 minute marathon.  Max was 14th overall out of the water! Max describes the race as follows:

‘Swim was okay, got out with the front guys. Got carried away at the pointy end on the first bike lap and paid for it big time for the rest of the day. I’ll make up for it at the next one I promise.’

Swim was more than okay Max but we shall look forward to your next Ironman!