Race Report W/E 15th March
Welcome to the latest Ful-on Tri racing news report, and hopefully not the last for the next few weeks. Despite the impending end of civilisation, it was good to see several events had gone ahead at the weekend. Obviously, the news has not all been positive. You will have seen major events moving to postpone, including the London Marathon and at least one Ironman race. This will also mean a potentially busier autumn.
Things will continue to be rather fluid as everyone continues to deal with a situation filled with more unknowns than genuine doom. For our part, as a club, both the Chairman and Comms secretary have continued to monitor what we should be doing and pass on sensible advice. Most of us are not in “at risk” categories, though, as with winter flu, basic hygiene practices are something we should be following anyway – if you’re suddenly worrying about licking your fingers after touching exercise bikes perhaps this is a good opportunity for self-improvement.
That being said, one thing the club cannot control is how you interact with your older relatives. In light of the rather shockingly selfish panic buying, we should also all perhaps take a deep breath (more than 2 metres away from others!) and take some time to ensure those we know who are less able to do massive shops or will have greater need to have less contact are ok and have enough supplies. Importantly, unless already ill, no advice is advocating a lack of fresh air and exercise (all possible without close contact with others). If there is a positive from all this it should be that we become a more caring society. I certainly plan on spending Easter with my parents – even if it’s via video link.
For those of you who are on the brink of hiding in concrete shelters, I can’t recommend enough turning to sensible information sources – such as the BBC Reality Check – and turning away from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Newspaper headlines for the remainder of Lent.
And on a more positive note, who knew there could be so many jokes about toilet paper!
(Hampton Court) Palace Half
The “other” Hampton Court half marathon took place this weekend, following a fairly similar course to its fellow race the other week. Despite the mood elsewhere in the country, 2,757 runners took part.
From the club, we had 5 registered as running for the club, plus two extra, identified from our Strava Group: Caroline Buckland; David (Siu Kwan) Lo; Johann Olivier (only a former member unless he very, very recently renewed); Colin McAffrey; Edwina (Yee Kwan) Chung; Stewart Juroszek; and, Alex Courage.
Stewart was (unofficially, as unchipped) first home for the club, going near a full minute sub-1:40. Alex followed, going sub-1:45 by just over 2 minutes, finishing well within the top 10% of her age group and the top 20% of the overall field! Colin stormed in exactly 5 minutes later in his first ever half marathon!! Caroline narrowly missed the 1hr50min mark, followed by Edwina and David finishing either side of 2hrs!! Great running by all!!
Bath Half
The Bath Half Marathon is a great course for targeting PBs. Starting from near the riverside rugby stadium, the course winds out of town over two relatively flat laps.
We only had one racer this weekend: the other half of our Membership team, Will Manns.
Will had a superb race, smashing out a PB time of 1hr 19min, coming 161st of nearly 7,000 finishers!!!
WLCC 25 mile TT
The latest instalment of our TT season also took place on Sunday. This time a windy 25mile time trial near Great Missenden. These are our best value for money races during the year – less than a tenner to enter!
It looks like we had 7 intrepid riders: Phil Roker; Colin Frew; James Ellis (making great strides towards being back on form); Shaun Wood; Mark Sempers; Alexie Calvert-Ansari; and, Sybille Schorm.
(Based on Strava and a shot of results on Facebook) the finishing order seems to have been: James (flying despite the wind), Alexie, Shaun, Mark, Phil, Sybille, and Colin. Given the slowest time was only just under 77min, that’s some fast riding in those conditions!
Once again, that is your lot for this week – and I do hope we continue to have some racing to entertain ourselves whilst protecting the last sheet of bog roll over the coming weeks.
As usual, do email me with omissions, upcoming races and things to add to the race calendar or extra bits of news that help add colour to the reports (always welcome) – fixtures@fulontri.com
Keep smiling, training and racing!