Concept Sport have been organising the Fast twitch Triathlon at Marlborough Leisure Centre since 1984 and so it is probably one of the oldest UK triathlon events still on the racing calendar. It is an interesting race because the distance of each of the three disciplines is non-standard in terms of not being a typical sprint or Olympic distance. Three Evesham based members of Worcester Triathlon Club went to take part in the event and Michelle Parsons once again claimed a superb victory having never completed this race before.
The race starts with a 400 metre pool swim where the competitors are set off in waves of 10/12. Once the swim is completed it is a quick dash out of the pool to the transition area where the athletes mount their bikes to take on a challenging 20 mile bike course around the surrounding area before retuning back to the transition area for a final 5 mile out and back run.
Michelle, as usual knew her swim would leave her having to make up a deficit on the bike and run but this time she was only chasing down a 2 minute gap to Swindon Tri’s Cathy Cook on the bike. This she did with ease recording the fastest female bike split of the day by almost 6 minutes at 57 minutes and 25 seconds. Onto the run and although the run course had been shortened slightly because the amount of rain had rendered one of the paths impassable, she still managed an incredibly impressive 29 minutes and 42 seconds. That gave her a total time of one hour 35 minutes and 16 seconds and a margin of victory of 3 minutes over the fast finishing Cook (1.38.17).
On the Men’s side it was Evesham Running Club member Iain Jennings who led the Worcester Tri Club members home recording an excellent swim time of under 6 minutes for the 400m swim. He then put in the 9th quickest bike split of the day before rounding off the race with a superb 25.26 run split to finish in a total time of 1.25.48 in 5th place overall and first in his age category.
In a very tight team Worcester Tri Club edged out the Army Tri association thanks to Michelle out-pacing the third counter in the Army team by 34 seconds. Worcester’s team was Michelle, her husband Phil and Iain Jennings, the first time a mixed team have won the team event beating the three male Army team members