Pactrac held their final Mini-Series Triathlon of the year at Oundle last Wednesday.
Paul Vernon raced in 7 of the 10 events and won again on Wednesday recording the fastest bike and fastest run splits. Paul was 16th out of the water from 45 athletes, and moved up to 2nd after the bike section.
We had two waves and the fastest swim of the night was recorded by Chester Homan in his first ever triathlon. Chester was in wave 1 and led the wave by nearly a minute from Natasha Johnson. It was a perfect split with all those recording over an hour in wave 1 (20), and those under an hour were all in wave 2 (25). It's the first time that I have ever known a "handicap" to work so perfectly! 24 athletes beat the hour - all of wave 2 minus Christina Cork who pulled out after the bike, not wanting to aggravate a running injury. Christina was 7th out of the water in 5:59, with just 7 athletes beating 6-minutes. She then had the 6th= fastest bike split to come into T2 in 8th place.
In 25th position and first of the first wave was David Talbot in 1:01:11. First lady was Natasha Johnson who caught Chester on the bike, and then led the race until 1/3 mile to go, where David overtook her and crossed the line first. Paul Vernon then just caught Natasha in the sprint finish to cross the line as the overall winner, having started 12-minutes behind in wave 2 (this wasn't a Handicap race).
Richard Moys had led the swim in wave 2, but their was some really fierce competition behind, with 10 cyclists recording under 24-minutes for that discipline; and 11 athletes coming into T2 in well under 30-minutes.
Antony Brown moved into pole position on the bike and came into T2 in 28:59 with Paul Vernon the first of 6-chasers to come in between 14 and 20 seconds behind. Another 22 seconds past, and another 4 cyclists were in.
Paul Vernon soon took the lead on the run, and again powered home in under 50-minutes. This was Paul's 5th win from 7 Mini-Series races this year and increased his points tally in the Mini-Series to 50 from a maximum of 50. He has only been beaten by Nathan Tweedie and Paul Lunn. Richard Moys was 7th off of the bike but had the 2nd fastest run of the night to move up into 2nd overall. Steve Giles moved up to 3rd overall having been 19th after the swim and 9th after the bike. Steve competed in 9 of the 10 races and was never out of the top 5, gaining 3 x second places and 3 x third places but never managing the overall top spot.
Every week we offer a £20 Bristows Cycles Voucher to both the fastest male and fastest female who have not already won one. This final week saw the vouchers cascading down to Peter Harris in 4th place overall and Claire Piercy, 2nd lady in 30th overall.
18 PBs were recorded on the night, with only 2 amongst the top 13 competitors.
We had 329 competitors over 11 races (10 plus the Novice only race), averaging 30 per event, with the most being 45 on the last one. The sun has shone brightly on all but 2 nights. Paul Vernon won 5, Nathan Tweedie 2, with Simon Hoppe, Richard Moys, Paul Lunn and Francis Mulhern all 1 apiece. Nathan, Paul L and Francis all remained unbeaten. The overall, bike and run course records remained intact whilst Nathan Tweedie brought the swim course record down from 4:07 to 4:03 and then 4:02. Nathan also recorded the fastest time this year on the course when he romped to a 49:08 in Mini-Series nr.6. Nathan (twice), Paul Lunn and Paul Vernon recorded the only 4 times under the magic 50-minute barrier.