Mostly in Mallorca and some very fast running

We’re fast running out of superlatives as the race performances continue to rack from the team. The triathlon action has moved off shore now as we are well into October and this week we had Jess and Marta lining up at Challenge Paguera and Hector in the full ironman event on the other side of  the island. The absence of Fran, me and Annie from the start line in Paguera is a sore point. To placate ourselves, on Saturday whilst tracking the others, we booked 3 holidays. At the time of writing we are still meant to be out there so goodness knows how many we will have booked by the end of the day.

Anyway back to the important stuff and superfast racing. Quick mention first for Helene who won her last race of the season outright at the Southam sprint last week – great way to sign off for the year.

It’s definitely winter as the cross country season has started and Jen kicked it off in style with a 3rd place finish in her XC race on Saturday. Meanwhile over in Mallorca, Jess, Marta and Hector were all swimming well. Hector was out of the water in 62mins and went to work on the tough IM bike course. Jess and Marta both had strong swims and quick transitions before heading out the also tough Challenge bike course. Particular mention for Jess here as it is only 4 weeks since she had to DNF on the bike at Weymouth due to stomach issues but this time she stormed through and ran well to finish 7th in her age group – an excellent performance. Marta has only had 3 months to get herself ready for this race – a huge achievement and given how tough it is – and she delivered a super consistent performance and had a great day finishing in just over 7 hrs. IM racing leads to long days but Hector also managed to sustain his level almost the whole way and got through the last few km of the run to finish his first ever full distance race – and he picked a tough one. Fantastic effort in a shade over 13hrs.

On Sunday it was down to the runners now it’s too cold for sane people to swim. Sophie had a good run in the Cambridge half marathon and goes from strength to strength. Jon – who clearly doesn’t want to stop racing this year – produced an excellent 63min time at the brutal Studland Stampede trail run which finishes running on the sand along the beach and 6th in his category whilst Anna stormed to the female senior swim at the same race finishing a few seconds ahead of Jon. Finally over in Amsterdam, Georgia ran through half the elite field in the Mizuno Half marathon to finish a brilliant 9th overall in 1hr22min – fantastic run.

We’re not quite done yet with triathlons with Portugal 70.3 and Sardinia 70.3 next week and Turkey the week after. Oh and Fran’s booked another trip to Lanzarote while I was writing.