Ironman Barcelona today, last race of the season for Bert in his first year racing in Pro category. 48Pro athletes at the starting line, only 7 days before the Ironman World championships the pro’s who missed Kona 19 have a big chance to qualify for Kona 20. A lot of them aiming it seemed!
Barcelona is known as a fast race: a sea swim, flat bike and run course. But windy!
2 of our athletes Bert (Pro) and Kurt (AG50) racing today.
Bert in his last race of already a very strong season with strong results in Ironman Lanzarote and Ironman Vitoria, Kurt in his first A-race after having severe heart problems 1,5years ago, getting surgery and then a long recovery back to Ironman racing.

Bert, working fulltime and combining this with Ironman racing on pro level, knew a strong swimming performance was necessary to keep contact with the other pro athletes. Coming out of the water after 51′ in position 30 says a lot about the swimminglevel in Ironman. For Kurt (AG50) the swimming meant his most difficult part of the race and came out after 1h17′.

On the bikecourse we saw steady racing of both of our athletes, Bert started the flat bikecourse at 280watts to finish at 270NP. On this flat course an excellent poweroutput to not blow up the legs before the run. Which is not easy when you are surrounded by other A-level athletes. Good for a speedoutput of +40km/h avg with a marathon ahead!

Kurt from his side has the cyclingpart as his favourite and strongest discipline, riding the 180K in 5h00 exactly he puts down his bike with the possibility on a personal fast time!

Triathlon wouldn’t be triathlon if it wouldn’t end with a run, races are always won on the run course and so was it today! In the pro field Angert took the win before Belgian Van Lierde in 7h45, finishing off with a 2h48′ marathon. As we said Barcelona had a big field of pro athletes at the starting line and high level density so a couple of minutes + or – could make a big difference. Putting down the bike in 30th position Bert immediately went running in a strong pace with the first 12K in 4’15/km, after those 12K he had to cut short his effort a little bit but could keep pacing correctly to finish the marathon at 4’31/km in 3h10′ and moving up towards 22nd position! Behind him Pro athletes such as Jean Eudes (Former Cofidis pro cyclist and French elite champion triathlon on the long distance), Kyle Buckingham (South Africa) and Christian Kramer (Ger).
Crossing the line in 8h35′, a new PB in an excellent race! 8h35′ is fast, very fast in Ironman! A nice fact: if Bert would have raced in AG he would have taken the win with +6′!

Kurt continues his race and finds himself in tougher conditions in the last 10K of the race but continues and finishes in 10h49′. Well done!

But a pity the message we got from several angles about the big draftingpelotons in the AG race, that’s far from the real triathlonspirit to beat yourself, then the others!

But not only in Barcelona our athletes raced strongly!
AG Vice World champion lond distance duathlon 2017 and 2018, Wim, takes the win in a 10K road race around the Berendries and slowly but surely picks up shape.

Our cyclists have a very good season behind them, all riders took 1 or several podia. Anthony won the General Classification of the German cycling cup earlier this week!
Dries (U23) took 3rd today in a 6man breakaway with riders who all have experencie riding UCI 2.2 and 1.2 races. Dries has many possibilities to develop to a certitude in front of the race.

Junior Lars kicked off with a lactate test in our labo earlier this week which was really good with a 4.9watt/kg AT and 6.2watt/kg MV. Testing is not ‘a believe or a hope to be good at…’, it’s science, science combined with a positive mental focus means results and also this time…taking silver on the national Team Time Trial Championships!

Now loading mind and bodies towards October 12th, my birthday…but more important for mankind 🙂 Ironman world championships in Kona, Hawaï. 4 of our 5 athletes racing this weekend are in Kona already. More about them earlier this week!

Ciao

Jesse