Manly Freshwater Competition
15 Competitors that made their way over to Sydney...
On Tuesday 17th– Monday 23rd of January, 15 competitors that made their way over to Sydney for the Manly Freshwater competition.
Whilst over there, we saw many amazing sights and did some very worthwhile training run by our amazing coach Troy Baird. Our days were pretty jam packed with early morning training sessions with breakfast being at 5am and on the beach for 5:45am. Once we recovered from the morning with some downtime then lunch, we were back down to the beach for an arvo training normally with some more challenging conditions, followed by a debrief at the end of the day.
Thanks to Troy, we got to do one of our swim sessions with an Aussie Ironman Champion, Craig Riddington. He taught us some amazing body surfing skills and also helped us get to know the beach and how to use the permanent rips along Manly Beach. In addition to Craig, we also got to see many of the professional Ironmen and Women like Ally Day, Lana Rodgers, Georgia Miller, Matt Bevilacqua and our very own Wes Gould in action.
Day one of the Manly Open competition was on Friday the 20th which was only the Open Iron. We had Jade Bamforth, Leah Martin and Soraya Lee all competing, which was a huge effort as they were up against the big league. Special mention to Soraya who made it through to the semis!
Day 2 was unfortunately cancelled due to shark activity at Shelly beach. It still a great atmosphere but it was a long day of waiting around for confirmation. It did give us all time to shop for a bit of merch though.
The 3rd and final day was at Freshwater Beach. It was a wet and cold day but racing still went on with some amazing results. After the carnival we celebrated with a team dinner at the Dee Why RSL to unwind and debrief.
Amongst all of our hard work we managed to get an afternoon free to go into Sydney Harbour and do some sightseeing and shopping. It was an amazing experience with huge benefits to all of us. A huge thank you to all our chaperones/coaches Cam Rapley, Troy Baird, Carlo Tenaglia, Gemma Jones, Roseanne Barrowclough and Paul Bean. We can’t thank you enough for driving us everywhere, making sure we got to places on time and making sure we were all comfortable and confident. We couldn’t have done it with out you.
Another huge thank you to our amazing Club for allowing us this fantastic opportunity. I think its safe to say it was a very worthwhile trip!