With team members racing on both sides of the Atlantic, we had a busy weekend keeping up with what was going on.
In the UK many races over the country were cancelled due to high winds, but Alice Lethbridge and Vicky Gill braved conditions to race the Bentley course. A few mechanical issues for both ladies and difficult riding conditions didn’t deter them from taking 1st and 2nd place.
Cancellation of some races on Saturday meant we could spend a little more time following Kimberley Morrison’s bid for a Kona Place at Iron Man Texas. Out of the water in 5th place after the swim Kimberley looked in great shape as she took to the bike leg. With her ENVE SES 7.8 front and D2Z disc nicely decaled up in yellow, along with her new pink themed D2Z Endura suit, there was no way of missing her!
Kimberley looked smooth and powerful throughout the bike leg– she has clearly been training with the position she had worked on with Simon Smart in the studio and wind tunnel. Kimberley set a course record breaking time of 4:36:39 – impressive. Leading out of T2 into the run Kimberley looked like she was really enjoying the race. Those of us watching were pacing the room as the 26 miles came closer to finishing and it looked like she could hang onto the fourth place she needed for the Kona qualification. With just 1km to go she was overtaken by Lesley Smith and so finished in 5th place. We were all gutted for her but we know Kimberley well enough now to say that she will carry on working achieve that perfect race and Kona qualification. We are really proud of her.
Saturday was also event day for another triathlete on our team – Lee Piercy. Lee was the first triathlete to join our team when he was UK based some years ago and has done a great job spreading the D2Z word to the USA following his move there. Hot on the heels of winning his age group at the USA National Duathlon Champs a few weeks back, Saturday saw him become the World Duathlon Champion for his age group coming within 25 seconds of the overall winner. Congratulations Lee! The World Championships also saw one of our wind tunnel clients, Rachel Wiseman, put in an amazing performance becoming age group world champion and putting in the best AG performance overall.