Race 5 Gatorade/Active Feet Race Report

Everyone was looking forward to Race 5 of the Gatorade & Active Feet Tri Series at Elwood Beach. This is our ‘home ground’, we train at Elwood twice a week and so race day nerves were a little easier as everyone was familiar with the race venue. Our 18 TRY-the-TRI’s even felt great leading into their first race after competing 6 weeks of beginner training and we were confident they were going to do super well.  Coach Bernadette gave them a pep talk prior to the race and there was nothing more to do other than go out and race! 🙂

This race numbers wise was a massive one – with 93 Tri Alliance athletes racing in either the Gatorade or Active Feet Distance – this is a huge number of athletes and is fantastic to see. Not only for athletes out on the course being able to cheer each other on, but our cheersquad from the sidelines enjoy it as well. You can’t take your eyes off the course for a second otherwise you are guaranteed to miss one of our athletes! 🙂 And we had some great support on the sidelines from athletes not racing – and this was fantastic to see, so thanks to you all for coming down and supporting your fellow athletes, it is greatly appreciated by everyone who races!

You could not have asked for a better day for a race. The bay was relatively flat – although if you didn’t pay attention you may have found yourself swimming wide with a slight tide pushing most athletes off course and from reports, athletes felt the swim was a little long (or at least slow) and the run a tad long, so if you just missed a PB – don’t worry. You probably weren’t far off!! 🙂 The ride had perfect conditions with only a very slight breeze so race wheels and disc were in full force for many athletes and bike PB’s would have been right up there for most.

We have a growing pool of athletes who were looking to cement their places on the podium – or land on the podium for the first time. Always a big thrill to get on the podium in front of all your fellow athletes! Just ask young Emily, who although we were sure was super excited on the inside, I’m sure we embarrassed the hell out of her with our screaming and cheering as she took away her first podium finish in the F 15-19! Well done Emily, we are all super proud! 🙂

This race we had a numberof athletes stepping up to the Gatorade Distance for the first time which is a major milestone for them including Wendy Wates, Caroline Houston, Renae Villani and Brianna Laugher (apologies is I missed anyone). Well done girls – a fantastic achievement and the satisfaction of completing your goal is worth the effort!

We had some fantastic results from a large number of athletes, with our biggest haul of medals for the season with 9 athletes landing on the podium and a large handful nearly getting their chance to step up. Well done goes to the following athletes on their achievements:

Ryan Bourke – 1st M25-29, riding a sub 30min and running a 18:06.
Sarah Grove – 1st Open Females
Lisa Dominquez – 1st F30-34
John Grant – 1st Clydesdales, finally cracked the number 1 spot!
Caroline Houston – 2nd F55-59
Renae Villani – 2nd Female First timer!
Brad Campbell – 3rd Clydesdales, continues his great form for the year
Geoff Taylor – 3rd M55-59 on his comeback trail!
Michelle Grocock – 3rd Athenas (as pro for the day!) 🙂
Emily Hosken – 3rd F15-19, her first podium for the season and the crowd went wild!
Sean Fleming – 4th Clydesdales, with a fantastic run time.
Tori Carroll – 4th F20-24
Narelle Crooks – 4th F35-39, her best result for the year as she prepares for her wedding to Nathan Sims in a couple of weeks! 🙂
Jill Sultan – 4th F50-54
Peter Rainey 5th – M45-49
Lisa MacFarlane – 5th Athenas
Andrew ‘Chappo’ Cahpman – 7th Clydesdales, making a come back!
Kathryn Siddle – 8th F20-24
Howard Barton – 10th M50-54, top 10 well done Howard!
Camilla Forss – 11th F25-29
Chris Mutimer – 14th M45-49 his highest finish to date!
The steam-roll of girls in the F25-29 category including Alison Werstuk, Steph Lowe,
Eleesha Nesci, Michelle Reckerman
The ‘hundreds’ of girls in the F30-34 age group! Tri Alliance filled just under 30% of the F30-34 field!
Brinn Tavener – top work on breaking the 20min barrier on the run
And we continue to stack the Athenas and Clydesdales fields with 5 of 12 in athenas being TA athletes, and 5 of the top 10 clydesdales wearing the blue yellow and white also! Keep up the great work guys! 🙂
It was also great to see Jussie out there after completing 180km on the bike and 8km run the day before, why not do a Gatorade Race the next day! All the best Jussie in IM NZ next weekend!!
Juliet Cooper – 1st Active Feet
Anthony Leverington – 2nd Active Feet, a step down due to family commitments but a great result none the less!
Diana Angelini – 3rd Active Feet
Daniel Kelly – 4th Active Feet
Team Warriors – there was a Tri Alliance Team who raced the Active Feet and we are yet to find out who this was! Whoever you were you guys/girls did super well, finishing 4th! 🙂

Our fastest athletes in their combined transition times (T1 & T2) were not surprisingly our fastest male and female athletes Ryan and Sarah with combined transition times of 2:06 (no wasting time there!), with Mark Casey was next fastest with a slick time of 2:17, with Tim Grant 2:23 and Des Minton 2:24. And a number of girls rounding out our fastest times at 2:26-8 including Lisa Dominquez, Sarah Lausberg, Narelle Crooks, Cam Pegg and Jeremey Williamson. Well done guys – just shows you that transition practise pays off and can save you seconds (or minutes!) in your race.

Well done also to our graduuating TRY-the-TRI’s in competing their first triathlon:
Active Feet:
Mary Leahy – and finished 4th in her age group!!, Connie Mah,Caleche Watson, Sarah Deas, Caitlin Syrett, Samantha Houghton.
Gatorade:
Sam Baker – did super well with an ankle injury, Lauren Sheldon – fastest finisher we saw! :), Kiera Sjogren, Katie Wilson, Jennifer Marshall, Vanessa Paparone, Nicole Small (Kleid), Lucy Baker – did well to get through with an injury, Edward Terry – finished 5th in the male first timers, awesome effort!
Others who didn’t get the chance to race – but we look forward to seeing them out there next race! Nicole Brolan, Lisa Leong and Jason Goodrich.

Coach Bernadette said of her new ‘triathletes’ , “I was just as nervous as my group of fabulous new athletes, but by the end of race day I was extremely proud of each and every one of them for achieving what they set out to do 6 weeks ago. As a diverse group of people new to the sport they not only successfully challenged themselves personally to push their own boundaries, but showed great empathy and support for each other throughout the whole program. They are all such brave and enthusiastic people and I’m going to miss coaching them! I hope to see most of them around the squad in the future giving our core athletes a run for their money! ;)”

CLICK HERE to view full Tri Alliance athlete results
CLICK HERE to view our pictures from the race

*Remember, if you do not find your name of our list then you do not have ‘Tri Alliance’ as your squad/club in your SuperSprint Profile. So make sure you check it out.

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FACEBOOK COMPETITION:
WIN a SHOTZ SPORTS NUTRITION PACK!!
Following each of our last races for the season we are running a facebook ‘caption’ competitiont. All you need to do to WIN for this week is:
1 – ‘like’ both Tri Alliance and Shotz Sports Nutrition facebook pages
2 – provide a ‘caption’ for this picture of athlete Anthony Leverington, hydrating himself with Shotz Hydration prior to his BIG Active Feet race on the weekend. 🙂 We already have some great captions and with the competition closing this Friday – you want to get thinking! Best caption WINS as voted by the TA office. (bribes not accepted…) 😉 CLICK HERE for your chance to WIN!

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Thanks again to our valued partners for their ongoing support:

• Lakeside Sports Medicine Centre – Khann, Justin & Tara for their much appreciated massages pre and post race!
• CBD Cycles – for assisting our athletes pre race
• Xtreme Fitness Australia – for our awesome warm up bikes!
• The Performance & Sports Psychology Clinic – thanks for your time Daniel!
• Shots Nutrition – your gels, bars and hydration ensure our athletes have the best race nutrition available
• Ascend Sport – for the best recovery drink on the market!
• Nissan – for their contrition to our Race Day BBQ – the beef and chicken burgers were a big hit!

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Upcoming races:
Sun 4 March  – Ironman New Zealand
Sun 4 March – Nissan Corporate Triathlon, Melbourne
Sun 18 March – Race 6 Gatorade/Active Feet Series, Port Arlington
Sun 25 March – Ironman Melbourne
Sun 1 April – Race 7 Gatorade/Active Feet Series, St Kilda

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New to triathlons and want to improve your race times?
Why not check out our tips here. And even if you are a seasoned athletes, why not check out – you could learn a thing or two and allow you to refocus for your last few races of the season! 🙂

Happy Training & Racing,
Team Tri Alliance