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!
