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International Triathlon Championships 3rd September 2005
Three Richmond and Zetland Harriers took centre stage last weekend with victories in triathlons and fell racing.
The fourth annual Inter-Regional Triathlon Championships took place on Saturday 3rd at the Austin Rawlinson Leisure Centre, Speke. Eleven teams of Tristars and Youths (aged from 11 to 16 years old) representing the nine English regions, plus Scotland and Wales, took part in the competition with each competitor selected from the regional series events that were staged throughout the summer. The racing was extremely competitive and exciting and there was great vocal encouragement from the many team supporters with the overall performance standard higher than ever. All three of the Roberts youngsters were selected to represent the North East of England. Doug Roberts came 1st in the T3 event: the 300m swim in 4:55 saw him third out of the water; his 8km bike ride in 12:38 was fastest of the day and put him ahead by 7 seconds and a 3K run in 8:38 brought him home in 26:11, 51 seconds ahead of the runner-up. Jessie competed in the Y class and was 5th but she lost her race on the first discipline, finishing her swim in 23rd place, 92 seconds behind the first girl out of the water; she then biked 16:03 and ran 12:37 to total 35:52, just 57 seconds behind the winner. Her bike ride was fastest of the day by 19 seconds and together with her run, she had the second fastest combined bike/run time which augers well for the duathlon. Fergus, the youngest of the trio, was the third to compete and he finished 10th in the T2 class: swim 4:53, bike 11:37 and the fourth fastest run 7:10 totalling 23:40.
World Masters Champs - Keswick 3rd September 2005 & other action on the Fells
Garry Bastow, Shaun Purkiss and Rhett Harrison at Keswick
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On the fells, Gary Bastow had a hectic week even by his busy standards. Gary ran his fourth local race at the Muker Show on Wednesday 31st August; he was 5th overall and 1st Veteran Man and was happy with that. He followed that with something more-than-a-little-bit bigger - on Saturday 3rd he competed in the World Masters Mountain Championships in Keswick. There was a record entry of 1115 competitors from 27 countries for the races. Gary was in the M45 race, 12K over the shoulder of Skiddaw and back, and finished 29th in 62:17 from 187 finishers. Two more Harriers, Rhett Harrison and Shaun Purkiss, competed in the M40 race which, with 191 finishers, had the biggest field of the day. It also proved to be the most competitive with several big names failing to make the distance: Bashir Hussain ex-GB international got to the top in 37:00, but was in 14th place and over 4 minutes behind the leader and couldn’t hack the descent. Rhett finished 52nd in 61:17, Shaun was 127th in 69:33. As if two races in one week wasn’t enough, Gary then travelled to Burnsall and ran in the BOFRA race. His hopes that the stiffness from Keswick didn't prevent him running well and getting the points that he needed/wanted were realised when he finished 5th overall and 1st M45, ahead of Adrian Pickles and just one good race away from his season’s ambition!
Rich Hunt was the third Harrier to make the winner’s podium when he triumphed in the Helvellyn Triathlon. This was no ordinary triathlon as it started with a 1 mile swim in Ullswater, followed by a 38 mile bike ride which included Kirkstone Pass and then an 8 mile run to the top of Helvellyn and back to the Showground at Glenridding. Rich freely admits that swimming is his least-strong discipline (at this level it could never be described as weakest) and his mile took 21:15 - he came out of the Lake in 10th place, 2:20 down on the leader. But he made up this deficit with the fastest time of the day on the bike element and his 1:46:46 took him to within 2 seconds of the new race leader, Mark Livesey, his Army colleague who had beaten him in the World Championship Trials earlier in the year. Rich is also a match for most in his running and although his 1:21:54 was only the fourth fastest, it was enough for him to slice 7 minutes off the course record and finish with a total time of 3:29:56. He added that the reception at Glenridding was so loud, it must’ve been akin to winning the Olympics, perhaps a taster of things to come in Hawaii later this month when he takes on all the best over the Olympic distance in the World Championships.
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