Whangarei multisporter Katherine Anton continued her bright build-up towards the World Duathlon Championships by winning the Auckland half-ironman title on Saturday.
Anton powered home from her position in fourth place after the bike leg to win the event - not a bad effort in her first ever half-ironman event.
"I was pretty
pleased with the way I went; I had a few difficulties with the bike-run transition and I didn't do that great on the bike but I got into my rhythm on the run after about 4km," she said.
Anton is building toward qualifying for the World Championships later in the year and is hoping to peak at the national selection race for the event, in Christchurch in six weeks.
She has been building her base fitness for some months and wasn't even targeting the race for anything other than the big distances involved.
"I did it as part of getting some big miles in," she said.
Coming off last week's cycle tour of Northland, where she finished in a very respectable third place, Anton expected to be competitive in the cycle leg but conversely that wasn't the case.
"I don't know what happened in the cycle leg - maybe there weren't enough hills. The flat time trialling doesn't seem to really suit me," she said.
"I had a very carefully managed week after the tour and then went down and did it and although there weren't any Jo Lawns in the field or anyone like that I was still pleased with the way I went."
She was in sixth place after the 2km swim and picked up two places on the 90km cycle leg but her deficit on the leaders increased during the leg, leaving her around eight minutes to catch up on the 21km run.
"It was a good endurance event for me and I think that I'm in pretty good shape, after being pretty unwell last August and not being able to compete at the Worlds, so I'm pretty happy and I think that's down to Ian Babe's coaching and following a very carefully managed fitness rebuilding regime," she said.
The World Duathlon Championships are in September in the United States.
