Triathlon NSW Club Championship Race Report and Results 2011

By Karl Hayes (I write this both as Trizone and a Balmoral member. I have tried to include as much general stuff as I can. So apologies in advance if it appears in any way to have too much Balmoral info). Please email in anything you would like me to add to this as I only know what I come in contact with or am told. Results below are sorted by age group. Club points table to come.

The 2011 Triathlon NSW club championship was held last weekend on May 14. The event was a huge success and the evening was a big hit. I am not sure about everyone’s thoughts but it seemed to be a lot more enjoyable than previous years. Apart from the 16+ degrees water temp, the head wind which seemed a deja vu moment from Port two weeks ago and the looooong 8km run it was a pretty good day. Just for the record an in case you are still trying to figure out why you ran so slow a quick go on Map my Run last night had the run course at 2.88kms per lap or 8.64kms in total.

Congratulations to the winning clubs and to Cronulla for coming back and taking out the overall honours. They planned their campaign well, had top triathletes and had the most age groups covered.

Huge applause to Tri NSW for the jackets that all the competitors and volunteers received. They were a big hit and perfectly timed. Possibly one of the best goodies to be given away at a triathlon at this level.

This years race had a much larger number of speedsters than the last three years at least. We were missing Christian Kemp, Sophia Amor-Smith, Pete Schokman, Pete Jacobs, Matt Palmer, Todd Israel and more. This year however we saw pro ironman Adam Holborrow, Michael Fox and Sam Douglas who have been battling it out this season in the Sydney Sprint series and the Elite Energy’s olympic distance triseries, former pro ironwoman and now Olympic distance specialist Lisa Marangon, Mick Maroney, Robert Hurley and a host of other young speedsters. Also new to triathlons, Dean Degan is showing that at 39 years old he could be one of the next guns. Sign him up to your development squad Mick. His first triathlon was at Nowra in January. He ran the second fastest run of the day on Saturday and did a handy 49:35 on the bike.

Another speedster who raced for Macarthur Tri Club was Ric Rosenkranz. Ric won the 40-44 age group and was 5th overall. Rosenkranz has a triathlon pedigree as a former pro duathlete, an 8:50 ironman in 1999 and is a former USA Triathlon athlete development director. Currently he is Lecturer & Research Fellow at University of Western Sydney which is where the connection to Macarthur Tri comes in.

Swim of the day has to go to Graham Bruce in the 45-49 category. His swim of 12:32 was the fastest overall. Four times Australian ironman champion, Bruce Thomas was not happy being pushed in to second place in this age group. It was good seeing him washing away his unhappiness later at Club Forster!

Lisa Marangon was very dominant being the fastest woman overall with a dominating performance in the swim and bike and finishing tenth overall.. Brooke Langereis was not far behind in the swim though and and 5th placed female from the recent Ironman Australia, Rebecca Eveleigh put in the fastest female run of the day. Eveleigh finished Ironman in 10:07.

Like Rebecca many of the competitors were backing up from Ironman Australia only two weeks ago. They all put in somme good performances.

One of the biggest age group winning margins was Brook Langereis in the female 15-17 category. Brook came home around eight minutes ahead of the second placed girl. Merri Mack also stormed home in the 65-69 age group beating home her competitor by just over nine minutes.

The male 35-39 age group saw a dead heat for 1st with two Balmoral members crossing the line together. Whilst they were holding hands they did push each other to the max with Matt Webster really pushing the limits trying to keep up with Dean Degan on the run. It could have been Balmoral 1-2-3 if Todd Israel had been fit. Todd could have gone faster. He has an Olympic distance 1:52 under his belt, did a 9:12 at Kona in 2010 and went 8:50 at Ironman WA in December.

The mens 40-44 age group saw three guys outpace the field but you could have thrown a blanket over 4th to 11th with 1:50 separating them.

Ironman legend Stephen Bingham has just completed his 20th Ironman Australia race and is usually much more at home doing long distance races such as the 250km ‘Racing the Planet’ run across the Kimberly Ranges last year where he finished 5th overall. Trying to complete a triathlon in as close to 1:40:00 as possible must have been a shock to his system. He finised a credible 6th in 45-49.

2011 Tri NSW Club Championship Points Table

Full results on Multisport Australia available here.