Success with Stamina - Athlete Achievements
Photo: The Outlaw Half
Sport is unpredictable, it has it's ups and downs but it's why we do it - right?
This weekend was no different, it was busy for ESC coached athletes with performances at Barcelona 70.3; The Outlaw Half; Southport Sprint and Standard (BUCS event), Nottingham Sprint, and Eton Dorney.
On a weekend with many strong performances Sam Pictor stepped up or rather ran through a strong field at the Outlaw Half to take 1st place. Sam's been showing his potential in training for a while now and not quite piecing it together in racing but The Outlaw Half was the time to put together the race he had planned. Excellent execution allowed him to run strong at the end.
The day before at the same venue Ollie Holman started what was to be a double header weekend by racing the sprint distance event before heading over to Southport for another sprint distance event. With a strong recovery plan from race 1 and a warm up plan for race 2 racing two races in quick succession didn't appear to effect Ollie too much and he performed very well in both races.
Southport also saw the BUCS standard distance championships and with exams in full flow only a small group of athletes travelled up from Bristol however, Hugh Brashaw showed his continued improvement by finishing 8th in the mens field and Kate Mactear built perfectly into her race putting in a storming run to move from 12 in T2 to finish in 4th overall.
Down at Eton Dorney Maria Powell was excited to be back into the full flow of triathlons after a number of bike races and run events to get warmed up over Spring. The race didn't disappoint as Maria won her age group (I'm sure she won't mind me saying 50-54), over 4 minutes ahead of the rest of her wave and also finished 11th overall. It's great working with Maria because we keep analysing her performance, looking for small areas to make improvements and then going away and working on them, it continues to work! Meanwhile in the Mens race Jon Waring (also 50-54) finished in 4th after narrowly missing out on 3rd in a sprint finish. Jon and I are now in our second season working together and we are establishing that this kind of performance (only a dream last year) is now becoming 'standard'. So now is the time to continue to push on.
So after the ups comes the down. Natalie Seymour was going well on the bike leg of Barcelona 70.3 but unfortunately came off suffering a badly cut leg and a broken wrist. It's a big knock right now but she's one of the toughest people I know. When the time is right we will set appropriate targets to come back stronger, because that is what Natalie does!
