Rachel Sets Canadian 20km Record

On Sunday, March 13th, five TEAMmates made the trip to Huntington Beach, CA to compete at the USA Master's 20km RW Championships in the open division. Chris, Janelle and Katie decided to get an early 20km race in right after NAIA Indoor Championships to get their qualifying time in before USATF Nationals in June. Rachel and Tim came to show their support and to get a good 2nd workout and hard effort in. Tim also wanted to try and walk under 1:29:00 so that he could "guarantee" travel expense money for USATF Nationals.

Unfortunately, Janelle had a knee injury that started a few weeks before NAIAs and got sick while at NAIAs so she didnt end up finishing the race but she already has a qualifying time for Nationals with her 5km race from Texas in January. Katie however had a fantastic race doing the whole thing alone. She had a big negative split and finished in a time of 1:44:37. It was a 7 minute PR for her. She looked so strong and has a lot more time that she can take off over the next year leading up to the Olympic Trials. This time now officially qualifies her to compete at the 2012 Olympic Trials.

Tim was lucky to have Mike Tarantino to key off of for the first 5k before over taking him. After that it was a lone effort, pushing forward and putting the hammer down. He finished off the race in a time of 1:28:48 which is a great start for him and a time that should be good enough to rank him in the top 4 going into Nationals.

The big story came from Rachel as she felt great going into this race and had no pressure going into it. She had great help from Chris as he did his first 20km (race or workout) in 2 years. His goal was to qualify for the Olympic trials for next year and for Nationals this year. They both just worked together throughout the whole race and Rachel knew by 10km's (47:32) that she had a good chance at breaking the 11 year old Canadian record. As the race continued, they just kept getting fast and did a great negative split finishing the second 10km's in 46:50 to finish the 20km's in 1:34:22 and set a new Canadian record! She finally had a big breakthrough race after a rough 2010 season. Chris qualified for both the Olympic Trials and Nationals for this year with a time of 1:34:21. We are so proud of Chris for being back in the game and he has so much ahead of him. We are looking forward to a big drop in his PR this year!

Below you can watch the race courtesy of Chris Rael with Racewalk Planet TV. Unfortunately, the official results have not become available yet but when they do, we will post them.





Up next for the TEAM is the Pan American Racewalk Cup where we will have three TEAM members (Trevor, Tyler and Nicolette) competing on the USA team. Maria was set to compete also until an injury forced her to not make the trip.

Stay tuned!

TEAM