Richard Murray ran himself into fourth place at the ITU World Triathlon Series race in Hamburg on Saturday. Murray won this race last season. This time around he was beaten only by the Olympic podium of Jonathan Brownlee, Alastair Brownlee – World and Olympic champion respectively – and Javier Gomez.
Photo credit: Janos M. Schmidt/ITU Media
Murray started the last leg outside the top 10, but with a run consistent with the pace of the top three he climbed his way to fourth place. He ran the 5km in 14 minutes and 19 seconds.
Jonathan Brownlee’s winning time was 51 minutes and 5 seconds. Murray finished in 51:42. Only the Brownlee’s had a faster running time than Murray.
Murray is very happy with his fourth place in Hamburg. His second best result in the World Series thus far. He finished second in San Diego. He is currently in third place overall in the series. Gomez is in the lead.
Murray’s countryman Henri Schoeman was in fourth place at the start of the run and ended the race in 11th place.
“That was my best swim to date. Seeing things moving forward each year drives me to keep on pushing. I was a mere 5 seconds off being able to join the front bunch and this would have set me up for an amazing performance.
“I was in the second group and a gap formed at about the 1km mark and the string snapped causing a second group to form. There was some good cyclists in the group and I was sure we would be able to bring the front group back before the end of the bike, but is didn’t happen.”
The gap was 30 seconds with the start of the run.
“The mindset of the Kenyan runners came to mind when I was running, and fond memories of last year’s win on the course drove me to push myself to the limit. I closed down five guys on the run and managed to pull myself to fourth place with 1.5km to go.”
The front three were just too far up the rode. “I managed a good run despite a stomach pain.”
At Sunday’s team relay South African finished as the fourth Commonwealth team. “It is a good result for us and will help in the preparation for the team relay at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.”
After Hamburg Murray returned to Banyoles, Spain to train under the watchful eye of his coach Joel Filliol.
His next race is on 24 August in Stockholm, Sweden.
awesome stuff