Despite carrying a painful back injury, Tyler Butterfield produced an encouraging performance yesterday, Sunday 8th July, to finish 7th amongst the professional men in 8 hrs 38 mins 58 secs at Ironman Frankfurt.

Tyler exited the swim in a solid time of 49 mins 34 secs, 7th overall, and then had a strong bike in 4:33:30 to enter T2 within 6 mins of leader Josh Amberger of Australia who held a few seconds  lead over the German  Jan Frodeno (2015/2016 Ironman World Champion) with Patrick Lange (2017 Ironman World champion) and Sweden’s Patrick Nilsson a few seconds further back.

Tyler spend 10 mins in transition trying to loosen his back but despite the pain produced a gutsy time of 3 hrs 2 mins 53 secs for the run, well below his best.

Jan Frodeno meanwhile laid down a marker for the 2018 edition of Kona as he took the win in 8:00:58 with a very quick 2:39:06 marathon (despite walking the last part of the run up the finish shute) ahead of Patrick Nilsson (8:08:15) and Lange ( 8:09:26).

Sadly Allison Petty, competing in her first full Ironman race, was unable to finish, after suffering a crash at mile 80 on the bike and despite continuing the damage to her bike meant she had to pull out just 8 kms from the finish of the bike leg.

Allison had an outstanding swim of 59 mins 57 secs which put her 1st in the 35-39 age group and 14th woman overall. She then produced a very strong first portion of the bike up to kms 121 with her speed in the middle section of the course ranging between 31 and 35km per hour.

Allison bravely carried on after the crash but at a reduced speed but a derailleur failure meant she was forced to pull out agonisingly close to the finish. Evidently Allison was very bruised up so we wish her a speedy recovery.