Don’t you ever rest ?

Sphinx 5

Coventry War Memorial Park

Wednesday 3rd June

Report – David Jones

This race ticked a couple of boxes for many of our club members. As well as being a Warwickshire Road Race League (WRRL) fixture it was also the June Shakespeare Race and this resulted in 37 of the 469 finishers being our club members.

First home for us was James Lake, finishing 24th in the impressive time of 30:04. James was 36 seconds ahead of our next finisher, Ian Stevens (33rd – 30:40). Ian was followed by Gavin Fowler (38th – 31:20), Bogdan Ede (44th – 31-27) and Stu George (51st – 31:56).

Arguably our best performer on the night was Marijka Tear-Verweij, who finished not only as the leading female junior but also the first female overall in a time of 32:17 –  57th overall. It was then Donna Allen, our 2nd place lady and also the second placed female to finish. Her time was 32:59 and 74th overall. Next quickest was James Coy in 33:08 followed by Ade Mason (33:18). 

 M65 Mike Hayward was next. Mike finished in 96th place and his time of 33:45 ensured that he comfortably won his age category by some 2 1/2 minutes. Next were Santa Pavlika (102nd – 33:54) and Bronwen Mansel (106th – 34:01). They finished 2nd and 3rd respectively in the senior female category.

Ted Burch (136th – 35:51) was followed by a couple more of our ladies –  Suzie Ross (153rd – 36:12) and Helen Platts (156th   – 36:34). They were followed by Graham Hill (160th – 36:36), Nigel Chidgey (187th – 38:00) and Mark Barker (193rd – 38:16). 

It was then the turn of 5 more of of our ladies, led by Yumiko Turner (226th – 39:31), then Kim Lee (233rd – 39:57), Lisa Lambourn (267th – 41:22) and, running at a superbly consistent pace, I know because I tried in vain to catch them, were Emma Davis (279th – 42:07) and Pip Bell (280th – 42:10).

I followed in 290th place with a time of 42:35, finishing 2nd in my M75 age category, some 27 seconds behind the category winner. Richard Hartwell was next (43:00) followed by Clare Goodwin, who despite saying she would take it easy following her recent injury, still managed the more than respectable time of 43:37.

Our next 9 finishers were: Sue Mothershaw (44:02), Simon Dexter-Jones (44:12), Kath Pester (44:45), Joanne Meyrick (44:51), Lisa Stevens (45:08), Dave Maundrell (45:40), Rebecca Parker (46:03), Kate Sergent (48:55) and Hannah Stockill (49:21).

Finally it was the turn of our 2 racewalkers – Jan McLure (53:54) and Paul Hawkins (64:24).

The race was won  by Tesfaye Weday from Kenilworth Runners in the super quick time of 25:02.

Midlands Senior and U20 Championships

Report – Paul Bearman

The Midlands Senior and U20 Championships was relatively light on entries this year and so for the club this is where quality outweighed quantity and Seb Hillard and Catherine Reynolds certainly showed their quality with medal winning performances.

Without a huge amount of training behind him over the 400m hurdles with exam revision taking precedence, under 20 Seb ran a controlled race to finish 2^nd winning the silver medal in 56.20s

Seb reflected on his race saying “I felt strong coming into the home straight, although it is still the 7th hurdle that I need to work on, either speed up into it to make 15 strides or practice the left leg hurdling. It was very windy on the back straight and in lane 1,  so overall I’m happy with the result and the silver medal”. (Coach comment…. he’s getting tired by hurdle 7 so guess what, he’s practising 4 stride sprint left leg hurdling to see if that makes a difference!!)

Under 23 Catherine is known more these days as a 400m runner but she decided to run the 200m and it paid off. She qualified for the final of the 200m finishing in a comfortable 2^nd place in 24.75s.

Going into the final Catherine said “I was 4th ranked on times going into it, so I wasn’t expecting to be on the podium but finishing 3^rd and with a bronze medal was a very nice surprise. With my Master’s thesis still to write at Uni I’m not competing for a while now and going to get some good training in then I’ve got the England Champs at the beginning of July and I’m doing both the 400m as well as the 200m”.

Vet’s League Track and Field – Meeting 2, Wednesday 17^th June.

A message from Nathan Darby
 

The second fixture of the Vet’s League is next Wednesday and I am back with another shameless plug!

Kathryn Woodcock and I are very excited about this particular meeting, because it is our first at home. This gives us a great opportunity to show the other teams in the league just how good our club is.

This is where you all come in!

We need your support. As the recent results in the Hilly 100 and the competitive spirit I’ve witnessed at the Shakespeare Races show, we have some very talented endurance runners who can transfer their skills to the track.

This meeting features the 3,000m in 3 different age groups, which is a bit of a stretch for most of our regulars!

If you have been considering taking part in the league this year, then this is the perfect time to get involved. I promise you that you will not regret it. It is a home match, so easy to get to and plenty of friendly faces to help cheer you on.

Talking of which… If you are unable to compete, either through injury, not being over 35 or any other reason you can think of, we would love you to come down and support the team. The last fixture was incredibly close, and we should be ensuring that we make the most of home advantage.

Please take a look at the timetable of events above, and let me know on the invitation on Spond if you can make it and what events you would like to compete in.

I look forward to seeing more new faces hurtling around the track!

Blenheim Palace Triathlon report

 Sunday 7 June

Report – Jill Wilson

Lots of SuAAC folks were doing triathlons this weekend – at Coventry (Suzie Ross and Jen Cockayne) and Blenheim Palace (me, Miranda Maloney, who I did see and several others who I didn’t.)

Sunday was day two of the Blenheim Palace Supertri which all takes place in the fabulous park grounds. 

First the 750m swim in the crystal clear lake, out at the boathouse and an uphill 400m ‘run’ to the bikes which are racked up in the palace courtyard.

Time for a quick honey sandwich (not so quick it turned out) then out on Doris the trusty racing bike for three ‘undulating’ (always a worrying word for me) laps of the lake. Strava now tells me there were three hills and two long descents in the 19.8k distance. I lost count but was glad to get to the end, having only been out on the road bike twice since the Stratford tri in 2023. 

Then the bit I was looking forward to: the 5.4k run (because it meant I was nearly there….) only my legs weren’t keen.

Just the two ‘undulating’ laps where my policy of arbitrary Jeffing – walking briskly up any sort of incline and running (after a fashion) everything else paid off.

My pace wasn’t bad at all (for me), and I strode past two ladies who were gamely running up the last hill (who commented ‘that looks like a good idea’).

My ‘training’ for the event only commenced when I signed up about 3 weeks beforehand (thanks to Emma Vickers for telling me about it one evening in Shipston Pool).

Since I can swim, cycle (albeit on the e-bike of late) and run, what could possibly go wrong? Kevin Zwolinski kindly answered that for me: transition and transition. Kevin you were right. Maybe the three different outfits, as well as losing my bike momentarily and the honey sandwiches contributed to the rather rubbish transition times.

But overall I was delighted. It’s a fabulous course, stunningly beautiful, and it’s an event where real triathletes take part as well as lots of people like me, giving it a go.

Jonny Brownlee was there – taking part in the ‘Weekend Warrior’ – as many back-to-back tris you can complete…apparently he did seven on Saturday and a further three on Sunday. 

It was a very inclusive event which felt much more of an achievement than Stratford, my only other tri, three years ago. 

The best moment of the day? As I was stuffing my face with churros, being asked in all seriousness whether I had always been an athlete. Absolutely made my day! I am an athlete – no longer an imposter! Hooray! I’ve arrived!

I’ll be back next year to see if I can improve on my time of 2:15:59. 

Report – Jennifer Cockayne
 

Never in the world of things did I ever think I’d do a thing like a triathlon. 

A couple of months ago someone posted on the club Facebook page about the Coventry Sprint Triathlon and it being beginner friendly and obvs it’s local and we should be supporting our local clubs. So I signed up. 

For the amount of time I spend in water I’m actually a pretty rubbish swimmer, I hadn’t ridden a bike in nearly a year but I thought I’d be ok with the run. I turns out running after riding a bike is quite difficult 😂

Many thanks to Miranda for taking me out on my bike before the event and making sure I could ride 20km and also giving me lots of tips.

Thanks also to the swim coaches at the club who got me from swimming like a brick to swimming like a slightly streamlined brick in just a few sessions.

In running events you turn up and run. In triathlons there’s quite a lot of rules to remember which I wasn’t expecting.

Thankfully everyone at Coventry Triathletes were super friendly and helpful. 

I thought it would take me near 2 and a half hours but I managed it in 2 hours and a minute according to my watch. 

400m swim – 12:40

20km cycle – 01:05:52

5km run – 36:06

I really enjoyed it, it’s a totally different atmosphere to a running event. I even gave out a few whoops on different bits of the course coz I was having so much fun.

I think I might do another 😊