28:46 minutes: in that time, you could run a quick load of laundry, mow the lawn, prune a few plants, or tick off any number of minor household chores in under half an hour. Or, if your name happens to be Alex Yee, you could run 10 kilometers. At yesterday’s WTCS Grand Final in Pontevedra, the Brit recorded the fastest 10k split ever run during an Olympic Distance triathlon.
The previous record was already held by Yee, who ran 29:00 flat during the Olympic Test Event in Paris. At the time, that was a narrow improvement on the record set by Alistair Brownlee, who clocked 29:07 at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Yesterday, Yee smashed his own record down to an incredible 28:46.
The achievement is all the more impressive given that the course in Pontevedra was anything but flat. The athletes covered three laps featuring a tough, several-hundred-meter climb on each circuit – and while what goes up must come down, steep ascents and descents are rarely friendly to a runner’s average pace. Yee’s 28:46 split works out to an astonishing average speed of 20.86 km/ and a blistering pace of 2:52 per kilometer.
Yee started the final run 48 seconds adrift of the lead group. Within just a few kilometers, he had bridged much of the gap, ultimately catching leaders Matthew Hauser, Vasco Vilaça, and Ricardo Batista at the 7-kilometer mark. The quartet ran together toward the finish line, where Hauser ultimately edged out the sprint finish, Vilaça took second to claim his first World Title, and Yee rounded out the podium in third.
