With Ironman 70.3 Turkey, Crocodile Trophy, the Xterra world champs in Hawaï and the European championships swimrun our athletes were performing on 4continents past weekend!

Raphael and Sophie started in the EC Swimrun with the goal to qualify for the famous Ötillö, world champs swimrun in Sweden! Raphael and Sophie, both very compatible on the swim and run got a virus earlier this week and this made last week a bit difficult.
They both bite through that sour apple and on raceday they were well motivated to race hard! They got rewarded for this and not only got 4th on the European Champs but both qualified for the World championships in Sweden in 2017! The first WC qualifier of the day…but we didn’t know what would come later that day!

At the same time Bjorn was finishing the 2nd stage of the Crocodile Trophy (Australia), before the stage he was 7th in amateur category. Today he was on his way to another very well performance but flatted and lost approximately 20’…despite that he kept pacing and didn’t loose 1 single spot at the end of this tough day! Still in 7th position in the GC at the beginning of stage 3 tomorrow!

The biggest, and unexpected, surprise came from Adrian. After last week’s 2nd place in Alanya (Turkey) today he raced the Ironman70.3 in Turkey. His maingoal and last race of the season. Adrian did a splendid race, with a good swim, a very fast 2h16 bikesplit and a negative split half marathon towards 6th overall and winner in his agegroup!

 

Only 4h18′ he needed to complete the race and run towards his most remarkable performance in his career! Some later he must have been motivating for Guy who finished the race 13th in his AG. Congratulations!

Of course Adrian was able to qualify for the World Championships Ironman 70.3 in Chattanooga, USA 2017! Adrian decided to pull back on this one and to not go to the WC next year.

Late in the evening we went back to…Hawaï where they not only host the Ironman world champs, but also the Xterra Offroadtriathlon World championships!

Joeri was our man at the right place in Maui and was keen on performing well in his AG. The mission was to pace well, and race steady coming off the bike! Joeri came off the bike 16th in his AG and biked himself to 11th off the bike!

Then the most difficult part still had to come, but he managed well and finished 12th in this difficult race! A long season with this qualification for the WC race! Not only did he qualify once, but twice…proving he earned his spot over there!

Meanwhile our athletes who are building up towards  2017 already came together for groupsession #1. The focus today was a an aerobic fartlek run with easy miles around it, followed by a strengthening bike session on the rolling hills of Flanders! Motivated athletes were stronger than the first really cold weather in Belgium. Let’s have a good winter, a dry winter!

 

Ciao

 

Jesse