Team Race Recap – 26 Sept 2022

Strong weekend of racing from sprints to 50k ultras for @MQ, @john-sims, and @arianna-werts.

The weekend kicked off with John tackling the Three Sisters 50k, his second 50k this season. Throughout the race, which features 3700ft of climbing and 4700ft of quad-busting descent, he set a new PR for his trail marathon and the 50k distance while improving his AG placement to the top 75%. John is new to ultra-running and spent most of the season building his aerobic endurance in prep for his first 50k. Following his first 50k, John put in a hard threshold block, speed work block, and a final build into the Three Sisters. John’s hard work let him safely increase his monthly distance by 850% since December and his threshold pace by 13%; welcome to going ultra. Between races, John improved his normalized graded pace (NPG) over 50k by 7% to set his new PR. Insane work John!

Michael took on the IRONMAN 70.3 Augusta on Sunday, where he broke the 5:30 barrier en route to a 5:05 finish and new distance PR. Michael has done incredible work at the 70.3 distance since his first attempt in 2019, where he went 6:25 at IRONMAN 70.3 Waco. Michael joined Triple Victor in August 2020 to improve his 70.3 times and tackle the full IRONMAN. With limited racing in ’21, this was Michael’s first full season with the squad, where he improved from a 5:51 at IRONMAN 70.3 Florida in December of ’21 to a 5:05 this past weekend in Augusta. That is an improvement from the top 56% for his age group in Waco to the top 32% in Florida and now the top 17% in Augusta. Overall, Michael has improved to the top 7% of his age group with IRONMAN while achieving an All-World Ranking of Silver. Up next for Michael is the IRONMAN Florida.

Closing the weekend out, Arianna rocked the Tri the Illini with the OA female win, improving on her 4th OA female and 3rd collegiate female positions from last year. This marks Arianna’s second win at a Mideast Collegiate Triathlon Conference event this season and sets her up well for the Conference Championship in October.