Addiscombe CC club cycle rides on Saturday and Sunday mornings leave from the car park of Coulsdon South station (on the west side of the station, next to platform 1 for London bound trains), about 0.25 miles south of the SLH clubhouse. You might hear Addiscombe members refer to this as CSS from time to time.
Thanks so much for coming to our end of season social and awards night at the Imperial on 10 November. It was a great night and really good to catch up with so many of you. Not everyone that won awards were there - but here's a list of those that were presented on the night - we'll be in touch with those that weren't there and won awards.
Men's sprint triathlon - Gareth Parr
Men's standard distance triathlon - Gary Laybourne
Points trophy 2017 - Nick McNamara (at last we awarded it!)
Points trophy 2018 - Ross Gentry
Captain's award - Leena Lindvall
If anyone is interested, here's a link to the brief season review that Andy read out on the night. A longer season review appears lower down in this news bar.
Ben
Our 2018 racing season has finished as it began - with Andy Collins finishing second v50 in a duathlon. This time it was the Ballbuster on Box Hill. Well done to Simon Manning and Steve Fortune too, great performances in the race. Always an incredibly tough course, as it is an 8 mile run, 24 mile bike and 8 mile run up and down the zigzags.
Gina Coulson has won bronze at the ETU European age-group aquathlon championship in Ibiza. In an unusual but very fun race, we were taken out on a boat playing party music to a deep water start, then swam 1km back to land and ran along the Sunset Strip at San Antonio past diners at Cafe del Mar and the beach front of Cafe Mambo. All of this at sunset. Gina followed up her silver medal in this event in Bratislava last year with her second international medal. Elsewhere Steve Rigby and I both finished 19th in our age groups.
The middle distance race and aquabike was a tough day all round. A huge storm on race morning flooded part of the course and it was treacherous. Unfortunately Nick crashed on the bike leg and is now recovering. All of us wish him the best for a speedy recovery. Simon Arnold - 'Le Hair' had his first experience of GB age group racing and finished 26th in his age group in the middle distance event having been stung by a jellyfish during the swim leg. Steve raced in the aquabike and was 13th in his age group this time.
Full results to be found here.
Ben
They did it.
Rob, Gary and Jim all completed the IRONMAN World Championship at Kona in under ten hours.
You know the deal by now - 3.8km swim, 180km bike and 26.2 mile run. In the heat of Hawaii. And it's not a fast course either, though at least the wind wasn't as strong as it sometimes is there.
Each one of them deserves special mention for their performances.
Jim went faster than on his previous Kona appearance, when he came so so close to breaking ten hours - this time no question about it. 9:56:20, including a 3:25 marathon. 23rd M50-54 in the world and the fastest British athlete in that age group.
Gary was concerned going into the race about his quad and unfortunately it went with about 50km to go on the bike. He had to walk every hill in the run but in his last race before retirement there was no way he was going to register the first DNF of his life. And he didn't just finish in any old time either. 9:48:52. What an Irrepressible.
And Rob... what do you say? Quite simply, he was the fastest British age grouper. In fact he was faster than Tim Don and Will Clarke too. 8:44:05. 51st finisher overall. 7th M30-34 in the world. Phenomenal. And yet he came away from the race wanting to have done better, like the champ he is. But it's a performance to be incredibly proud of.
None of us watching the live stream in the SLH bar back in Coulsdon could ever imagine doing a performance like that, though who knows. There were quite a few of our Young Athletes there for a while, maybe they will be inspired to follow in the footsteps of Rob, Gaz and Jim. We had two dozen of us there, following the elites, cheering on the age-groupers fighting to beat the swim cut-off, tolerating Jamie's drinking game and absolutely raising the roof when we saw Jim on the screen. Thanks to Mark and Steve for arranging it and getting it to work so well.
It was a magic night. We'll have to do it again next year. Who's up for racing for SLH at Kona 2019?
It’s been another highly successful season for the triathlon team with a number of outstanding individual performances and others in the club hitting new personal heights of achievement. The overall highlight within the club might be that we have three athletes going to the world Ironman championships in Kona – that’s covered in a separate article above so this article covers the achievements of the other members of the club. Once again there has been a definite focus on long distance racing.
Our club middle distance championships for 2019 will be the Swashbuckler Triathlon in beautiful Buckler's Hard, Hampshire. SLH has been given a discount on entries - code is on Tri Irrepressibility and there's a further discount to everyone who books before the end of November. It's a great event and we've already got a good crowd going.
That's it for our multisport racing in 2018 - apart from the I'm not aware of any more races any of us are doing now until next year. Here's a complete list of the races we did in 2018. Please do drop me a line if you're in swim/bike/run action and you'd like recognition here and in the spring 2019 issue of the Gazette. (For performances that are specifically related to running, please go to the main SLH running website where we will continue to cover our performances in cross-country and young athletes races through the winter.)
Anything that we're up to will probably first appear on our tri WhatsApp group, Tri Irrepressibility. Have a word with one of us if you'd like to be added to the group. Our Facebook group is also worth a look.
Hopefully see you at training soon - don't forget we're swimming twice a week and running lots through the winter. Here's the full training timetable.
Ben
