Wow, that’s soon come around again! The organisers of the East Riding Triathlon once again came up trumps with their Sprint Triathlons that can’t be far from being the first and last triathlons on the British race calendar. The April event always kickstarts the season and can serve as a test for those cold winter hours invested in training but can also be a cruel reminder that you don’t improve through gaining a winter coat and hibernation.
The gamble of course this early in the season is the weather and cycling in little more than your swimming cossie down hills at speeds of 30mph isn’t everyone’s idea of fun.
This challenging and more technical of bike courses, along with the inclement weather has you deliberating tyre and wheel choice but despite the strong wind and rain it was surprisingly warm.
The Lincsquad ladies in Caitlin Bower and Ruth Wilson outshone their male counterparts when it came to lifting the silverware. Both girls won their age groups despite making it tough on themselves. Caitlin, still racing as a youth, produced an effortless swim of 6 min 16 secs which proved by far, the fastest swim of the day. A respectable ride followed by a somewhat painful run in some ill fitting trainers (didn’t listen to Dad) still saw the swim champ appear perfectly at home in this multi-discipline event.
All ready and packed for next week’s trip to represent Great Britain, Ruth Wilson almost scuppered her chances of wearing the red white and blue as the tricky conditions saw Ruth………..fall off! By Ruth’s own admission she was in cloud cuckoo land for the next several miles as a bang to the head and road rash took it’s toll. Not one to sit and mope, Ruth put in her customary run to finish top of her age group. It still isn’t clear if there was an error with Ruth’s finishing time and she may have won top female overall too? Unfortunately her timing chip was lost during the swim but her time was almost 15 minutes slower than her efforts in the same race in October. We could see this left Ruth scratching her bruised head to why this could be? What did happen in those missing 15 minutes? I’m sure Ruth will put this one down to experience and be grateful she can still fly the flag next weekend.
Steve Grocock (4th) and Huwie Davies (6th) both seemed pleased with their early season form. The dicey wet conditions nearly saw Steve joining Ruth by almost hitting the deck in an effort to hang on to the biking big boys in Daz Sharpe (2nd) and Kev Dawson(3rd). Steve didn’t mind admitting there was certainly a little ‘bottling it’ going on after that initial fright. Huwie, now riding what must be the number one contender for the ‘Prettiest Bike Award’ was especially pleased with his 5k run time of 19 mins 23 secs.
Stuart Grocock persuaded(bullied) into competing at the eleventh hour by his slightly older brother had a great race considering his Sunday was supposedly meant to be sat with his feet up watching the Grand Prix! Some goggle faux pas’ didn’t do much to dent Stu’s enthusiasm. Arriving back at the Leisure centre in what seemed no time at all had the Lincsquad newbie thinking….’Oh,…. is that it?!’
Jonthan Bower was handed the task of chaperoning his daughter in the swim and keeping a watchful eye on her from the neighbouring lane. Not quite sure how that was going to work when Caitlin beats every other swimmer by a length?! Still, not wanting to be wholly upstaged, Jonathan showed where Caitlin gets her inspiration from and a cracking time of 6 mins 57 seconds proves this swimming malarkey really is a family thing. I think the run may well be the topic of conversation at the Bower’s dinner table as Dad was also seen hobbling in agony along the motorway towpath. Trying to career around some of the slower runners saw Jonathan picking the wrong route resulting in the onset of calf pain!
With some good finishing positions and enough Club members this time to meet the criteria the icing on the cake was for Lincsquad to be crowned Club Champions!………..Erm, not quite sure what happened here as we all waited with bated breath it seems this prize didn’t get awarded? Not even sure if our top 5 accumulated finishing times would have been enough to beat the Barracudas or not? If somebody wants to do the Math we can ask the question? Since going to press the East Riding Tri guys have sent their apologies as we did win the Team prize after-all. Well done everyone.