Paul Ambrose, Guy Crawford, Michelle Wu and Kate Bevilaqua place well at Boise 70.3 Triathlon

Paul Ambrose, Guy Crawford, Michelle Wu and Kate Bevilaqua all raced and placed highly in a very competitive field. The men’s race was a tight affair with only 20mins separating the top 14 guys. Winner Ben Hoffman of the USA put in the bike of the day with a 2:05 just over 4mins ahead of the next fastest. It was enough of a gap to get him over the line with a 1:18 run. The run (s) of the day went to 2nd placed Nicholas Thompson of the USA and Jeff Symonds of Canada. These guys ran 1:13 and 1:14 respectively. While Thompson ran five minutes faster than Hoffman it wasn’t quite enough to bridge the gap and he finished two minutes back.

The Aussies performed well with Ambrose coming in 4th overall with the fastest swim time of the day. His bike was a handy 2:11 and he ran a solid 1:18. Ambrose was one of the first Aussies to hit the USA long course season and has already notched up a couple of 70.3 races. In April he raced at Oceanside 70.3 in California only days after arriving in the US. He flatted not far from the finish on the bike leg and ran well to place 6th. In May he raced in the US 70.3 champs in Galveston Texas with another flat. This time early on in the bike leg and with a hot field Ambrose didn’t bother with a spare.

Guy Crawford says he didn’t pack his swim/bike body for today’s race but he was up there with the leaders but off the pace a bit on the run. He still put in 4:02 for 8th overall. Crawford placed a solid 6th in a tough field at Busselton 70.3 in May.

The women’s race was a Canada 1-2-3 with Magali Tisseyre coming first with a more consistant bike/run combo over her compatriots Heather Wurtele and Rachel McBride. Heather Jackson from the USA was 4th with our own Michelle Wu 5th. Kate Bevilaqua admits that her 9th place was due to a lack of not much recent training and travelling the world.

Michelle Wu had a strong swim although still a minute down on the leaders. The swim is Michelle’s weak leg although it has got considerably stronger this year. We saw that at Huskisson this year in the long course race when she surprised the lead girls and came out of the water with them (then went on to win the race). Wu is heading back to her training base in Santa Monica with coach Siri Lindley.

Ironman Western Australia 2010 winner Kate Bevilaqua did her first 70.3 in nine months today. On top of this, as mentioned previously, she has had four weeks of not much training with a lot of travelling thrown in. Kate’s swim was slightly off and in a tweet to Trizone today she mentioned that her legs didn’t come to the party in the race. Still it was a solid first up hit out and no doubt Kate will only get stronger.