Post-Race UCLA Triathlon: MTS
UCLA traveled north to Lake Lopez to compete in their championship race, MTS. This was the 1st olympic distance race of the season and served as excellent preparation for nationals! The race consisted of a 1500m lake swim, a 40km hilly bike course, and 10km rolling run. In spite of the colder temperatures and long course, the Bruin's persevered to have an excellent showing!
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On the men's side, the day belonged to Edoardo Leone who quickly established a gap on the swim to the next nearest Bruin, Emiliano Olivo Cauberghs. With a strong bike(on his Trek road bike) and a smooth run Edo was able to finish 2nd in 1:56:54.1, less than 50 seconds behind Wiktor Rajca in 1st. Scoring next for the team was Emi in 21st with solid swim, bike, and run splits. He was followed by Nathan Montanez in 44th who made up for his lackluster swim with better run and bike splits. The final scoring athlete was Jacob Niyazov in 77th, who finished in spite of a nasty crash in the opening half mile of the bike. With a spread of over 40 minutes, the Men's team could use considerably more depth(though Marius Genton was notably absent following his Oceanside 70.3 race). This is in stark contrast to the much deeper UCLA Tri women's team.
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The women were led out of the water by strong swimmer Kayla Kashima, followed closely by Julia Martin. On the bike, it was Julia out in front with Ai-Lan McGoldrick and Josie Goodson not far behind. Julia narrowly maintained her team standing on the run, finishing 9th in a time of 2:29:40.4. Coming in 10th was Aliyah Anderson who, after a phenomenal 41:39 run split, made up almost 5 minutes on Julia to cross the line 7 seconds later. After a tough finals week, a fading Josie came in 16th followed by a novice to the olympic distance, Ai-Lan, in 18th. This gave the top 4 women a spread of less than 4 minutes!
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These team finishes allowed the women's team to finish 3rd and the men's to finish 8th for a combined finish of 4th.Â
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Women's Results:
9th Julia Martin 2:29:40.4
10th Aliyah Anderson 2:29:47.6
16th Josie Goodson 2:32:49.1
18th Ai-Lan McGoldrick 2:33:00.8
28th Kayla Kashima 2:38:25.9
37th Lily Aronovitz 2:43:52.3
39th Mia McKiernan 2:44:59.3
56th Alison Arndt 2:56:03.9
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Men's Results:
2nd Edoardo Leone 1:56:54.1
21st Emiliano Olivo Cauberghs 2:10:45.2
44th Nathan Montanez 2:21:29.6
77th Jacob Niyazov 2:38:33.5
87th Jerry Shi 2:43:49.5
95th Waleed Alzarooni 2:47:20.3
