Liberty University Club Sports Athletics
Schott in top 20 percentile at off-road World Championships
10/26/2014 12:00:00 AM | Triathlon
Liberty University triathlon team member Greg Schott placed 144th out of 751 participants in Sunday's XTERRA World Championship Off-Road Triathlon in Maui, Hawaii, completing the extreme course in 3 hours, 15 minutes, 18 seconds.
In a field that included amateur and professional triathletes from 28 countries and 42 U.S. states, Schott placed sixth out of 12 competitors in the 15-19 age division, less than 20 minutes behind the first-place finisher.
Schott started with an exceptional performance in the 1.5-mile rough-water swim, posting the 70th-fastest time overall in 23:40. That leg of the race included two surf-break dashes from Kapalua Beach through eight-foot waves into the Pacific Ocean.
He proceeded to tackle the 18.89-mile mountain biking stage on the slopes of the West Maui Mountains in 1:56:51 before clocking a time of 50:07 in the 5.9-mile run along off-road trails, described as a tropical roller-coaster ride through pineapple fields and forests.
The XTERRA World Championships is the last in a series of nearly 100 off-road triathlon races held in 16 countries and more than 30 states.
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| Liberty freshman Greg Schott nears the finish line of the XTERRA World Championship Off-Road Triathlon, Sunday in Maui, Hawaii. |
Schott sat out last Saturday's Mid-Atlantic Conference Triathlon Championships at Smith Mountain Lake to rest up for the race in Hawaii. He also missed the Flames' previous event, the Sept. 20 Richmond Rox Olympic-Distance Triathlon, to compete in the XTERRA USA National Championship in Utah, where he placed 96th out of 266 entries in 3:19:41.
The freshman from Chesterfield, Va., who trains in the offseason through Endorphin Fitness in Richmond, has made the most of his first semester on campus this fall.
"He's been loving it at Liberty with all of the trails that we have, practicing on the Liberty Mountain Trail System on his mountain bike," Flames first-year Head Coach Parker Spencer said. "He's in one of the best environments in our state — or on the East Coast — for training for off-road triathlons with all of the trails Liberty has. We had him on those trails daily and the amount of incline and decline were perfect preparation."
