Torres tops Nautica Triathlon in Malibu

MONICA Torres, the Philippines’ top female triathlete, ruled the pro elite race of the Nautica Triathlon which started off on Zuma Beach in Malibu, California, over the weekend.

The 28-year-old Torres clocked 2 hours, 18 minutes and 2 seconds in ruling her class in the 1.5K swim-40K bike-10K run event. She wound up 54th overall.

Australia’s Juliana Bahr-Thomson was runnerup in 2:19:55 and 61st overall.

Americans Chris Foster and Tim Hola finished 1-2 in the men’s side and overall, submitting times of 1:49:52 and 2:04:08, respectively.

The 5-foot-5 Torres finished her swim leg in 25:11, the bike race in 1:08:14 and her run leg in 41:36.

“I was behind most of the way but had a solid run,” Torres said in her Twitter account. The Filipino champ also said she had granola, vanilla yogurt and strawberries for breakfast.

Torres, who is married to fellow triathlete and coach Jojo Macalintal, is a three-time Ironman 70.3 Philippines elite champion and was ranked as high as No. 4 in the 2010 ITU World Duathlon rankings.

A cum laude graduate of Sports Science at University of the Philippines where she also served as team captain of the school’s dragon boat team, Torres plunged into serious triathlon training in 2006 and made the national duathlon team the following year.

“The human body is amazing,” Torres once said. “You can train it to do anything.” Romina S. Austria