Paula's Triathlon Page (or 'Impington Swimming Club Triathletes')

Paula's Triathlon Page [2]

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, we were happy just being a friendly little swimming club. Then one day, prompted by the sight of mysterious fit people at our pool on a saturday morning (the proper and official and most excellent Cambridge Triathlon Club ) someone, who for arguments sake, we'll call 'Paula Collier', decided it'd be a great idea if loads of us swimmers had a go at that too. How hard can it be? It's just a bit of cycling and a bit of running after a tidy little swim.

Actually, it's really good fun and the 'Impington Swimming Club Triathletes' are all very grateful for Paula's excessive motivation and enthusiasm for our latest new thing.

This webpage is therefore devoted to the exploits of an increasing number of us swimmers who have been led astray in the direction of cycling and running. If you reached this webpage looking for serious triathlon club, please check out our friends at Cambridge Triathlon Club instead - they're a great club, very friendly and with a wide range of abilities (they even have a junior squad).

Results

Results of our triathlon, cycling or just running exploits.

2008

Lots of us stil do Triathlon but have got a little slack with writing up the results. Many of us belong to the most excellent Cambridge Triathlon Club - take a look there for photos and race results.

2006

Collier recovery complete - half marathon prove it

Back to work for Paula she's just proved herself back on form with a time of 2:06:06 in the St Neots half-marathon. Nice work Paula. Ironman here we come... Posted by: litsl (21.11.06)

Results (running): The Chariots of Fire - September 2006 - by Charles Mead

On the 24th September 2006 it was time for the annual Chariots of Fire race
around Cambridge. For those who are not familiar with the format - it
involves teams of 6 - each person running 1.7 miles in a loop around central
Cambridge before returning to the start to hand their baton over to the next
team mate. It's all in aid of the Cambridge Air Ambulance. This year the aim
of all the fund raising by all the teams was to pay for the cost of building
a heli-pad on Addenbrooke's hospital roof. Currently the helicopter lands
nearby and patients are transported from there to the hospital - which takes
10 minutes - so much time can be saved with a heli-pad.

So 6 Impington Swimmers had an early night on saturday and awoke refreshed
for an early race start of 09:30. As "team captain" I suggested we all
meet-up in our designated meeting zone at 09:00 (this detail is important
for later on in the report). The team this year consisted of:-

Me, Louise, Leighton, Jo, Tim, Panda (Paula)

5 team members turned up around 9a.m and we were missing Panda Paula. We
sorted out our numbers and race order and decided to put panda last. Jo was
first up in the order, so she went to the starting line.

Panda Paula arrived just before 9:30a.m (mascarra in place) - she thought
the start time was 10! We confirmed her place as last - however panda used
her immense negotiation skills to not go last ("I don't want to go last") -
so some number swapping was required.

The race soon started and the large pack of runners went past us - and we
spotted Jo as she went past.

We were soon joined by chief performance coach "Mr Nick" and team physio
Judith for support - and watched both Mary and Jeffrey Archer run past us
for their respective teams.

I was in position 4 for racing and went to the start line. Panda soon came
into sight and handed over to me and I was off. I soon settled into my race
pace around the route - and passed several bemused tourists and sunday
shoppers on the course. There were also quite a few spectators along the
course cheering every runner on which was nice. My racing strategy was to
over take as many other competitors as I could manage on the route to give
us the best possible position overall. Pretty soon I was back approaching
the start line and handing over to Louise for her run and collecting my
medal and much earned bottle of water.

After we had all finished we went for some refreshments from Costa Coffee
conveniently located opposite Kings College - so we sat on the wall in front
of it with our drinks. I gave a few team members a massage with my popular
nukkles (www.nukkles.com - before anyone accuses me of some violent act!) -
and then we all went our separate ways to enjoy the rest of our sunday.

As a team we finished 158th overall in a time of 1:16:08. Looking at the
times if we could all get 20-30 seconds quicker by next year we would easily
be in the top 100 by then - so whilst I/we all enjoy swimming keep the
running going! Posted by: litsl (15.11.06)

2004

Chariots of Fire - 19th September - for the first time Impington had their own official team for the Chariots of Fire relay (in previous years some of us have run for other teams). This years team comprised Alan, Paula (old version), Georgia, Rachel, Phil and Panda (young Paula), in that order. It's clear these swimmers were able to show the running community something about 'warming up' on the day!

Paula reports,

Each ran 1.7 miles on Sunday morning around Cambridge for the relay. Just under 400 teams took part and it was great fun! Our team came 245th out of 392 teams and finished in 1 hour, 20 minutes and 59 seconds. We were 111th out of 207 mixed sex teams! Not bad for swimmers hey!!

The team would lke to thank everyone who sponsored them - all money raised goes to Papworth Hospital.

Panda & Rachel
Demonstrate appropriate
warm-up routine

Phil's years of
experience clearly show

The Team
Panda, Rachel, Phil, Alan,
Paula, Georgia

Panda goes for it!

Old Paula goes for it too!
Grunty Fen Half Marathon - 12th September. Ivan and Lesley had a bash at this event with respective times and places of 1:34:35 (127th) and 2:01:47 (455th).
Roade Triathlon - 26th September (414m pool swim - 20k bike - 5k run) - Paula's race report said, "Well chuffed!". Clearly her and Ivan beat their previous year's times by quite a lot. Great that Georgia finally got to join the Impington Triathlon club after all the training she's put in.

            Pos.    Swim        	Cycle		    Run		        Total
Georgia      437     00:07:33 (169th)  	00:54:23 (436th)    00:31:34 (446th)    01:33:30
(93rd in the female open competition overall / 36th female novice)


Ivan        165     00:07:27 (158th) 	00:42:32 (217th)    00:20:04 (118th)    01:10:03 
148th in the male open competition overall / 30th male novice
(3.5 minutes quicker than last year!)

Paula       321     00:07:10 (129th)    00:46:35 (328th)    00:25:53 (391st)    01:19.38 
47th in the female open competition overall
(5.5 minutes faster than last year!)

Paralympics!!! - Two Paralymic Bronze Medals for Sharpy! - our old friend Ian Sharpe (Sharpy) has struggled to get the pool time to train for the swimming events in this year's paralympics so this time he switched to cycling. I found this quite a shame because Sharpy is such an awesome swimmer to watch, especially doing fly.

Sharpy wins second
Paralympic Bronze
of the games!

Sharpy and Paul
in action!

Anyhow, he did good! Very good in fact. At his first paralympics concentrating on cycling, he comes home with 2 bronze medals, to add to his previous 8 paralypic medals. Ian and his teammate Paul Hunter (guide rider) were not even focussing on the 1km time trial event and were unable to get even one practice run in, if they had they would have realised they were under-geared and could've done more. As it was they beat the fully funded professional pairing. There main event was the 4km Individual Pursuit, in which they also got the bronze.

Sharpy was hugely disappointed with getting a silver in the Butterfly in the last Paralympics (WE WEREN'T!) but is much happier with his cycling performance this time around.

We remain in awe of Sharpy's athletic abilities which never seem to be held back by partial sightedness. This cycling is a great success but I hope we'll see Sharpy back in the pool before too long - perhaps what he is really gearing up for is Paralympic Triathlon! (is that an event yet?).

Milton Keynes "Big Cow" Olympic Distance Triathlon - July 25th - Paula Collier has done her first Olympic distance triathlon (1500m open water swim; 40k bike; 10k run), results: Total 02:53:05 (33rd in agegroup, and 542 out of 607 overall). Swim 00:24:52 (17th); Transition 1 01:53 (16th); cycle 01:28:54 (33rd); Transition 2 01:23 (28th); Run 00:56:03 (33rd). Overall an incredible achievement to get in under her 3 hour target time! Here's what Paula had to say about it,

Paula

Loved every minute of it!!! Finished in under my 3 hour target time, chain came off bike again!! but looking for another olympic to do now!

Swim was very odd, over 100 women scrambling for a place, feet in your face, then its really hard trying to navigate as I kept veering off on my own!!

First transition was ok, I got out of my wetsuit no problem and even had a chat with Helen!!
The bike, well, it was flattish, 2 laps with a steepish incline at the end of each lap, my motivation qoes on the bike though as I get bored and my mind wonders - especially as everyone always overtakes me!! Anyway, chain came off (typical!). Put it back on and even wiped my oily hands in the grass as my hands were black!! Then carried on my bike ride.

We had to run 3 laps of the park for the final 10km run. Again loads of people zooming past me, 'come on Cambridge' they were saying!! I was just enjoying the atmosphere!! and then the finish line came around and I was so pleased that i had a) finished and b) finished in under my target time of 3 hours!

Excellent stuff Paula - keep it up!

Bedford Sprint Tri - June 27th Paula finished with a time of 1:31:08, 5th in her group (ff) and 142nd overall. Breakdown - 7:17 swim (52nd); 57:23 bike (138th); 26:30 run (160th).
Paula Collier's season has also included Braintree Police Triathlon on June 6th where she came 98th with a time of 1:26:06 (8:16 400m swim; 48:10 20k bike; 29:40 5km run)
Waveney Triathlon 16th May (400m swim / 20k bike / 3.2k run) - huge congratulations to Paula Collier and Georgia Knight in this event, Paula's second triathlon and Georgia's first. Paula came 114th in 1:10:29 (s 06:53 / b 44:50 / r 18:46) and Georgia came 125th in 1:16:42 (s 07:27 / b 49:25 / r 19:50). Full results are on the http://www.tri-anglia.co.uk website.

2003

Cambridge Wildlife Trust 10k - 5th October - Carl, Georgia, Ivan and Paula took part in this 10k along with a few Histon Hobblers and Cambridge Triathletes and some 1,300 others!.
Kudos to the Histon Hobblers, who, all dressed as Wonder Woman completed The Great North Run recently, and even made it onto the BBC website! (Ivan's wife Rachel was one of the wonder women!)
Northants Roade Triathlon (414m Swim, 20k bike, 5k run) - 28th September - Carl, Ivan and Paula's first triathlon (absolutely loved it - when's the next one?!).
Chariots of Fire (17th September) - Carl, Georgia, Paula and Paul ran this relay through town for Paula's old company, Celltech.