After taking third and fourth place in Saturday’s long course competition, Andrew Maxwell and Jason Smith battled it out for first and second in the Co-ed Sprints competition this Sunday at the Santa Barbara Triathlon.
It was a family-filled affair at East Beach with over 1,000 competitors competing on the short course, which consisted of a 500-yard swim, a six-mile bike and a two-mile run.
It was a close Co-ed Sprints race with three competitors, Smith, Maxwell, and third place finisher Carl Parker who all came off the bike portion of the course within 40 seconds of each other. After crashing in Saturday’s competition the bike leg went more smoothly for the front-runners Maxwell explained. “After all of us crashed yesterday we were all a lot more timid on the bike, which I think suited me to not have these guys flying through.”
Smith came out first to start the two-mile run at 15:03 after catching Parker and Maxwell on the bike leg, but couldn’t hold off to Maxwell who passed him up to finish the race with a 10-second lead in a time of 36:00.
Parker finished behind Maxwell and Smith with a time of 39:07.
The first woman finisher to cross the line in the Co-ed Sprints was Adrienne Binder who came in at 43:26.
Binder says she’s been working on her running more the last month or two, which helped her this race. “I feel like I really needed it because I was definitely being chased down in the end.”
Alexandra Forest was the second woman finisher in the co-ed race with a time of 45:12.
In the Women-Only competition 15-year-old Veronica Russell crossed the finish line first with a time of 45:08 despite coming out 15th on the swim leg and also earning a time penalty on the bike leg.
“My run is my strongest. I run track and cross-country, so I like to run.”
It took Russell’s strong run, fastest overall in the leg, to overcome second-place finisher Laurie Sigloch who had been fastest in both the swim and bike legs of the course.
Lacey Payne came in third in the Women-Only race behind Russell and Sigloch at 49:13.
The sprints course field of competitors Sunday consisted of a wide range of all ages.
Fourteen competed in the 14 and under age group in the Co-ed Sprints, with a Santa Barbara local, Ben Brewer, finishing first for the group and eighth overall in a strong time of 41:45.
At 85-years old, Chuck Freuler was the only competitor of the day in the 85 and over age group and finished with a time of 1:25:38.
There were 15 competitors in the 14 and under age group for the Women-Only race. Mara Muslea, age 14, finished first for the group and eighth overall in 50:32.
Many more young competitors raced in the Parent-Child Sprint.
Only one parent-child team finished both in less than an hour. The Reynertson’s held parent-child times of 52:15 and 59:35 at ages 14 and 49 respectively to be the fastest on the course.
