Great results for Dinamic athletes including a couple of African Championship titles!
Great results for Dinamic athletes this past week including a couple of African Championship titles!
Globe trotting from Boston – South Africa – Scotland and Morocco…
With Ironman SA out of the way the attention turns to a number of other races and activities that Dinamic athletes have been taking part in.
In Boston Sue Kingston swam the Boston marathon. Ok she ran it but in conditions where she felt a wetsuit would have been more appropriate. While disappointed not to do a PB the reality is that the conditions were never conducive to doing so. The women’s winning time was the slowest since 1978! Sue stuck in there and gutted it out to the end and can be proud of her result, managing to finish with a fantastic top 20 in Cat!
Up in Gauteng at Germiston Andy Robertson took part in the CGT Duathlon champs. This is a race Andy has done many times before, this time however we had been training using STRYD running power meters to maximise his efficiency. As such he races strictly according to a power based strategy and achieved a 2nd in Age Group and a 6min PB on the course. Congrats and proof that training with power on the run works.
In St Andrews Scotland Dave Kingston kicked off his tri season with a fantastic podium finish taking 3rd in Cat. Well done Dave!
On to Morocco.
Dinamic had four athletes racing at the African Continental Championships in Rabat Morocco.
There was some challenging conditions with delayed starts and very difficult Swim conditions due to strong and adverse currents and tricky road surfaces on a course with lots of turns which led to a number of athletes succumbing to a crashes and DNF,s.
In the Junior Race Bridget Theunissen gave it everything coming out of the swim in 2nd place, holding onto that in the bike despite the carnage around her to be able to come into T2 still challenging for the win. At the end of the day Amber was a little too strong for Biddie on the run but She stayed in contact to finish 2nd overall in the Junior race and take her silver medal slot on the podium.
In the paratri David Jones used his experience and ever improving swim to take a lead and defend it on the bike before running away from all opposition to be the first Para athlete across the line, (a significant achievement for a visually impaired athlete. David successfully defended his title of African Champion, and also earned valuable points towards his end of year Goal of Worlds in Gold Coast Australia.
In the Women’s elite race Shanae Williams who was racing u23 elite exited the water with Olympian Gillian Saunders and Anel Radford more than 3 min ahead of the next women. On the bike the 3 ladies pushed hard for the first few laps to build a solid lead only for Shanae to fall and lose valuable time to the other two. Despite this Shanae pushed solo on the bike to build a further 3 min lead to the chasing girls. Onto the run and the positions were already decided with Gillian and Anel taking 1 & 2 and Shanae cruising in to take 3rd 8min ahead of 4th place and to also take the title of African U23 Champion. This is just reward for an athlete who has trained so hard and been so unlucky with technical and mechanical issues in her last three races. Now we are back on track!