Set in a glorious, rural area of Yorkshire, the Castle Howard Multisport Festival presented a wonderous selection of race opportunities to choose from. They included sprint and standard distance triathlons and triathlon relays, aquabike, aquathlons and duathlons. There were also swims of varying distances and 10k, half marathon and marathon runs as well.
Bournemouth AC lady Ella Preston was at the event and she took part in the 10k race, which featured an undulating, countryside route through the Castle Howard estate.
The first kilometre was mostly downhill, which gave Ella the chance to get off to a fast start. After that though the climbing started and the inclines were fairly frequent from that point on.
It was a fairly tough finish, with most of the sixth mile being on an upward curve. Ella tackled it well though and ended up completing the course in 55 minutes and 39 seconds, which put her in 22nd place out a field of 110 runners.
And what’s more, she was third placed female and only 16 seconds behind Julie Hall who was second lady and finished one place ahead. Julie Masterman was first female and she crossed the line in 54:13, so it was a great race for the top places and Ella was right in the mix.
Her sister Rachel was at the event as well and she competed in the Super Sprint Triathlon, finishing in 59th place overall and 22nd female in a time of 2:01:32. Hence it was an excellent weekend for the Preston sisters.
Ella put in a good performance on course with plenty of undulations
Having been a regular attender at the Bournemouth AC training sessions for quite some time now, Ella made her debut for the club at the Round the Lakes 10k in Poole Park where she recorded a fabulous new PB of 49:24.
She’s also been working her way through the alphabet of parkruns over the past few years, trying to do one for each letter. She even recently tackled Woolacombe Dunes, which is notorious for being one of the toughest in the UK.
It wasn’t long ago either that she ran her fastest parkrun to date, completing Stratford-upon-Avon in 23:25. That points towards the steady progress Ella has been making since training with BAC and is a good testament to the fact that if you put the work in training, you will invariably get results.