4 members of Wight Tri, Natalie Lawrence, Jan Fletcher, Liz Dunlop and Trevor McAlister made the trip across the Solent to participate in the Bournemouth International Standard Triathlon organised by Challenging Events.

It was Jan and Liz’s first race of the season, but also Natalie’s first ever Standard Distance triathlon. Natalie, Jan and Trevor were using this to get a qualification time for selection for the IOW Island Games triathlon team for Guernsey 2021, whilst Liz was looking for a 2021 European Age Group Championship qualification time.

All were hoping for good results, and the race came up trumps for them all.

This event has been organised for over 30 years, with a few changes made to transition areas and courses, but it always brings out good competitors, even with Covid 19 restrictions.

Due to social distancing limitations, there was no mass start in the swim, with all competitors starting on the beach and being set off in 15second intervals for the 1500m sea swim. A long climb up the West Cliff zigzag took them to transition in West Cliff Gardens, which was then followed by an undulating 40km cycle along open roads to Ringwood, finishing off with a flat 10km run to Sandbanks and return.

1st to finish for Wight Tri in an incredible time for her first ever Standard Distance Triathlon was Natalie Lawrence in a fantastic time of 2:20:07, which would have been even better if not for the long run and climb up to T1 from the beach!

With splits of 23:44(including this long run up) for the swim, 1:13:41 cycle and a PB run time of 39:28, this was a brilliant debut performance, gaining her an automatic qualification for the Island Games team, having achieved well inside the female A standard. She was also 2nd female overall and 2nd in 20-29 Age category.

Trevor had a great race, and posted a PB time of 2:24:02, with PB swim and bike splits of 26:52 and 1:11:29 respectively. He was slightly disappointed with his run time of 41:59, and knows there is still room for improvement. However, this is a great performance for Trevor, having just taken up triathlons last year. He has trained hard to improve his swim and bike and has certainly earned this PB time and 17th in the 30-39 category.

Jan also posted a PB time, taking over 5 mins off her time on this course from 2 years ago, even with the longer transition and bike course.

A solid 28:08 swim, followed by a swift 1:10:17 on bike and a PB triathlon 10km run of 46:12, gave her an overall time of 2:27:48 to finish 3rd in her 40-49 age group and in 11th female overall.

Jan’s time is also inside the A female standard so qualifies automatically with Trevor inside the male B standard, so he is hoping these times will be good enough for the final team selection.

Super veteran, Liz also had a good race to finish in 2:41:14 ( unofficial time), posting her fastest swim and run splits (51:39) for several years and a solid 1:16:42 for the bike. She finished 1st in the 60-69 category and also would have been 1st in 50-59 Age Group. This should be good enough to get her European Age Group Championship Qualification.

NB AG results have now been updated and at long last they found my result..but added 30s. Jan is also querying a 30s error.