Lunn overcomes illness Down Under to make it to Hawaii

Lunn took part in Ironman Cairns in Queensland, Australia, and by finishing sixth in his 45-49 year age group he qualified for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, in October for the third year running.

The event, which attracted over 1,000 athletes, was over the full Ironman distance of swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run 26.2 miles and Lunn finished in 9:40:24 for 42nd place overall.

Lunn said: “It wasn’t the race I wanted but I got the job done. My day didn’t quite go to plan to say the least.

“All was going well until I hit 100 miles on the bike when I felt ill. I very nearly called it a day but managed to nurse the bike home.

“I was still feeling ill during the run but I wasn’t being passed by many, so I just had to keep moving.

“Anyway, after a lot of soul searching I managed somehow to cross the finish line.”

n PACTRAC had three competitors in the British Championships at Leeds over the weekend, plus another, Jonathan Oakey, in the Junior Super-Series race.

Oakey had another good day out, coming second in the Elite Junior race. This followed on from his second place the previous week in the Junior Elite Triathlon at Blenheim.

He completed the 400 metre lake swim, 6.25-mile bike ride and 1.5-mile run in 33:28.

The other three PACTRACers in the main race were Dan Wilson 71st in 2:15:15 (age group 11th); Aaron Godden 140th in 2.21.13 (age group 22nd) and Simon Guerin 192nd in 2:26:25 (agr group 25th).

n Dick Rollings of PACTRAC competed in his first triathlon for a fair few years, the Dartmouth Triathlon, and did well to foinish fourth in his age group.

He completed the 750 metre sea swim, 12.5-mile bike ride and three-mile run in a time of 1:48:23 and was 112th overall.

n PACTRACers Susie Freeman, Carol Smallman and the team of Sarah Haslam and Willow Worthington all won their various categories in the AsKeenAsMustard swim run events at Ferry Meadows on Sunday.

The format was either a 10k race involving six runs and five swims or a 21k race with 13 runs and 12 swims.

Competitors were constantly changing discipline from run to swim and back, and had to run in their wetsuits and swim in their training shoes.

PACTRAC results:

10k event: 4th Susie Freeman 1:19:08 (1st female); 8th Andrea Robinett 1:24:36 (3rd female); 16th Heather Watts 1:34:32; 18th Carol Smallman 1:36:17; 19th Pedro Polson 1:37:17; 39th Georgina Jennings 2:12:24.

21k team event: 5th Sarah Haslam & Willow Worthington (1st female team) 3:47:39.

n The third PACTRAC Mini-Series Triathlon (swim 366m, bike 10 miles, run 3.5 miles) of the summer at Oundle produced a third different winner with Scott Lloyd winning his first Mini-Series event.

Lloyd took the lead early on the run and finished in 56:38 to secure victory by three and a half minutes from David Edis (1:00:03), who just pipped David Talbot (1:00:12 ) on the run-in.

Susie Freeman, who was fourth in 1:00:28, was leading lady.