70.3 Mallorca, half marathons and Challenge Salou

The triathlon season is very much up and running for the GS team now with Michele and Katherine taking on 70.3 Mallorca, Mark running a speedy half marathon in Bristol and Eric, Annie and coach Fran at Challenge Salou in the middle distance.

Just to throw a bit more challenge into the equation in Mallorca, Michele arrived but her bike didn't (it finally arrived just before the race) and rather unluckily Mallorca chose Saturday for a big storm warning. Despite this, both athletes put in great performances with Michele putting together a consistent race all round and Katherine running though to an excellent 5th in AG :-)

Fortunately, for those racing in Salou, the race was on Sunday not Saturday when the Mallorca storm came through. By Sunday morning the sun was out and roads had dried up. Annie had a great swim and a first ever sub 3 hour bike split before running herself into 8th in her very competitive AG. Eric had a storming race all round to smash his best time for a 70.3 which he had set at this race last year even though they extended the bike to the full 90km this time round - fab performance and second in AG behind the dad of the overall race winner! And after the disappointment of being ill at Challenge Gran Canarias, Fran put it a great swim and rapid 2.32 bike split to gap the rest of her age group by 18mins onto the run. Just as well, as Frans bike and hip seized up after the bike, which resulted to a jog walk strategy in the final 10k of the run, but it was enough to bring it home to take the top step on her AG podium :-). Back to the drawing board though as to why this keeps flaring up running off the bike in races.

More racing coming up next weekend from the team, this time tackling the sprint distance!