September has been a busy month with many races and last weekend took the MEC athletes to yet another continent in Europe.
3 of the MEC athletes had their eyes set on Ironman Italy as a destination race, one of the great things the sport of triathlon offers is the ability to train and race in some amazing locations and cultures.
Coming into the race and in a way a 'home' race for Tim Martelli, he had been showing much improvement and getting stronger across swim, bike and run under the guidance of coach Andy White. Tim set out and had a great day producing an iron distance swim and bike personal best times. Tim was running well on the marathon however a misjudgement of how many loops were required meant that he lost a significant amount of time before realising and rectifying to finish the race. Some lessons learnt but a fantastic effort from Tim in his 2nd Ironman.
David Lloyd has been on a streak for the last 2.5 years making great improvements and well into his 50's showing no signs of slowing down. 6 weeks ago however on a recovery run he misplaced his footing and tore his hamstring. Even with all the reasons and excuses available to him as to why it wasn't going to work for him he set about doing what he could and got it done. He got through the last 6 weeks of training with a swim/bike focus and adding in run/walk as the hamstring regained strength.
David got through Sunday in a iron distance best swim time to at the very least reward all that time in the water over the last 6 weeks. A good ride and managing himself on the run he crossed the line in his 4th Ironman and while not a personal best time, was still 15 min quicker than his first Ironman 2 years ago where he was in full health. David is a great example of what we encourage all athletes to do in trying situations, find solutions and give the best with what you have. Well done David.
Unfortunately due to coming down with an illness in race week Marie Backstrom wasn't able to start. A tough call but one Marie is happy with to ensure she is looking after her health.
Back in Australia Adrian Polidano took himself up to Ballarat for race 3 of the Tri Vic duathlon series. It was a shorter than normal format and with a niggle at race 2 that stopped Adrian from opening up the throttle he had no trouble doing so on Sunday. With such a strong running background Adrian has worked much on his swim and bike over the last few years. This is certainly showing through and the gap is closing on his competitors on the bike. A strong race had Buddha finish 5th in his age group. He will line up next for race 4 in Melbourne in a few weeks time.
