Athletes push themselves for triathlon event

Long course competitors at the CATS December triathlon on Sunday Aaron Davey (overall handicap winner) and Trudy Griffiths with the season’s biggest improver, Raymond Jones who won the short course handicapped event.

Many might see a triathlon as a race of athletes against other athletes, but for many of those athletes it’s more about the race they run against themselves.

The Cobar Athletics & Triathlon Squad (CATS) club fosters this belief by running handicapped events and rewarding athletes who continue to improve.

One of this season’s biggest improvers is junior competitor Raymond Jones.

At Sunday’s December triathlon event Jones shaved almost six minutes off his previous best (PB) time for the short course (300m swim/10km ride/2km run) finishing on Sunday with a very good time of 41min 7sec.

Also competing in the short course, Chris Powell finished the day with a PB for the season and Karen Menadue was just six seconds outside her PB.

Having previously only completed the short course, Aaron Davey stepped up to tackle the long course (500m swim/20km ride/4km run) for the first time on Sunday.

He completed it in a good time of 1hr 16min 16sec.

Davey was the overall handicap winner of the day with Jones second.

Third overall was the Done Well team of Zoë Harland (swim and run) and Lydia Wells (ride) who completed the short course in a time of 41.18.

Done Well won the teams event ahead of the Zoomers (Byron Lynch completed the swim while dad Adam did the ride and run legs) with Team Lynch (Noah swam and mum Kylie did the ride and run legs) were third.

Trudy Griffiths finished second in the long course while the short course places were filled by Raymond Jones (1st) followed by Lyndsay Klopper second, and Sam Dixon was third.