PACTRAC held their first event of this year's Club Championships at Oundle on Sunday, with the Aquathlon consisting of a 400m pool swim followed by a 3.1 mile run. 19 competitors lined up on a cool morning, with Adam Clark leading from the front. Adam came out of the water first, 7-seconds ahead of Paul Davies and 28 ahead of Simon Guerin. 21-seconds further back, Christian Richards led Susie Freeman out, ahead of Liam Higgins and Graeme Kane.Adam had the fastest run of the day to extend his lead to 2:36 by the finish. Graeme Kane with the second fastest run moved up from 7th to 2nd with Christian catching Simon for 3rd. Susie finished 7th and first lady.
Results:
Adam Clark .............. 5:30 .... 19:08 ..= 24:38
Graeme Kane ........... 6:32 .... 20:42 ..= 27:14
Christian Richards .... 6:19 .... 21:59 ..= 28:18
Simon Guerin ............ 5:58 .... 22:38 ..= 28:36
Rob Hammond .......... 7:00 .... 21:58 ..= 28:58
Sam Pettitt ................. 8:01 .... 21:58 ..= 29:59
Susie Freeman .......... 6:21 .... 24:33 ..= 30:54
The next event in the Club Championships is the Duathlon from Oundle on 14th April.
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A roundup of the 2024 season so far:
Amy Mellor, Graeme Abrahams and Laura Hardy competed in the British Ice Swimming Championships in early January with Amy winning a BRONZE medal in the back stroke, a SILVER medal in the 100m freestyle and a GOLD medal in the 250 metre freestyle. Although Amy broke the Age Group record in the 250m with a Personal Best time, the temperature was just slightly too high for the record to be ratified.
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Amy and Graeme then competed in the PHISH (Parliament Hill Ice Swimming Hootenanny):
122m
Graeme Abrahams .... 8th 1:39 minutes.
Amy Mellor ................ 9th. 1:46 mins.
244m
Graeme Abrahams .... 4th. 3:32 mins.
Amy Mellor ................ 9th. 3:46 mins.
Relay 122m x2 .......... 7th.
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Amy Mellor and Graeme Abrahams were then selected to represent GB in the European Ice Swimming Championships in Oradea in Romania, where the 50m pool was at a temperature of 3.8C. Graeme competed in the 500m freestyle, recording a time of 7:22 and knocking 3-seconds off of his previous best time. He said "I started off about 6 seconds slower for the first 100m this time and finished 6 seconds quicker with a 3 second PB!". After just a 15-minute break, it was straight into the 50m fly, before competing the following day in the 250m freestyle.
Amy competed on all 3-days coming 5th in her Age Group in the 100m backstroke, whilst being one of 7 swimmers to break the old Age Group World Record. She also competed in the Relay event on day one, missed out again on a medal on day two, in spite of another PB, and on the final day recorded another PB by 1-second in the 250m freestyle.
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15 PACTRACers then competed in the local Folksworth 15. Paul Lunn came home in 6th position ahead of Sam Chapman in 15th and Harry Pitcher 32nd.
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PACTRAC's Nathan Keir finished 4,141st in the Zurich Marathon de Sevilla in a PB time of 3:30:55. Nathan had a very consistent run with the 3rd 10k slightly quicker to enable him to finish with negative splits (1:45:59 + 1:44:56).
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Simon Guerin competed in the Barcelona marathon finishing 9,136th in a time of 3:58:50, slowing just slightly in the second half but holding on to come in ahead of the 4-hour barrier.