LPS Ladies shine at ITU World Multi Sport championships

Penticton is a stunning Canadian lakeside resort surrounded by mountains with forests (full of deer, bears and rattle snakes). It was a great choice to have the ITU World Multi Sport championships for sure though given the beautiful lakeside/ beach combination setting that any sports orientated individual would just love.

Atheltes were being flown in from Vancouver on small planes so many of us landed without our suitcases and bikes as there simply wasn’t enough room which brought a little stress at the start of it all but we managed to get them a day or two after arriving.

When we arrived, there had also been some bad forest fires which have been happening over here for the last few weeks so it was quite a smoky atmosphere which wasn’t great to run in but the first run (was meant to be 5k but was 3.3 miles) was nice and flat and was 2 laps of a lakeside course, next came the bike course (20k) which had a fair amount of steep climbs and fast descents past vineyards and mountain side views of the Okanogan lake. The last run was 2.5k and again shared the flat course of run one but this time just 1 lap.

The results are as follows:

Helen 4th – 1.11.42 age group 30-34

Lisa 10th – 1.17.39 age group 35-39

Helen narrowly missed out on a bronze medal podium position just by 11 seconds and I was only 10 seconds behind position 9 in my category.

We both did really well and have made huge improvements since the European championships in April at Soria, Spain.

Also we both finished 3rd Brit home in each of our age categories which means we have both pre qualified for next years world championships in Denmark which is great news.

I ran with a very painful ankle that despite many cortisone injections just hasn’t cleared up so I am having a short rest now to recover over the coming weeks.

In summary – a great result all round for Team LPS ladies with both of us now being in the top 10 of our age group world wide!

Report Lisa Gawthorne