Elvet Striders

City of Durham Duathlon, Meadowfield, 18th April

Run 3M, Bike 15M, Run 3M

Alan Smith

I am going to start by telling you what happened at the end of the event - you probably all know by now that I won the M60 prize. However, this was because I was the only male over 60!

The day started off dry, sunny and slightly cool. We all had to register at Meadowfield Sports Centre. Roz Layton was one of the friendly faces who helped to register us. I had my race number written on my leg with a marker pen. We had stickers with our number to fix to our helmet and bike and numbers to fasten on our back and front. Registration was followed by a compulsory briefing on what we had to do and not to do. At a certain staggered junction we had to stop and put one foot on the ground even if there was no traffic, otherwise we would be disqualified.

The race started on the grass next to the transition area. The first run was 3 times round the field at Meadowfield, a total of 3 miles, which were not too painful. Dougie pulled ahead of me after 2 laps and I did not seem him again until the finish. I pulled ahead of Louise. I did not see Shaun.

The first transition i.e. from run to bike seemed to go quite well for me. This also involved changing into my cycling shoes which clip on to the pedals. We had to put our helmets on before we touched our bikes and then run with our bikes to the "mount" line. We cycled down to the Stonebridge roundabout and then up the hill and through Ushaw Moor, Esh Winning etc and eventually came to a very steep hill. Before I got to the hill Louise overtook me on her road/racing bike, but I managed to overtake her on the hill but as soon as we reached the downhill, Louise shot past me. We came back through Brancepeth and then back to Meadowfield. There was light rain just before the end of the bike ride, but nothing to worry about. There was a dismount line on the road, before which we had to get off our bikes. I could not get my right foot unfastened from the clip on the pedal and had to stop completely in order to dismount.

I then had to park my bike in the transition area. Instead of putting my bike into the rack with the back wheel going in first which would have enabled me to hook the saddle over the bar, I tried to put my bike in with the front wheel first, which was virtually impossible to do, as I found out. As a result, I lost a lot of time.

I then changed into my running shoes and tried to run. It was very, very hard to run after the 15 mile cycle ride and the pain in my left hamstring hurt a lot, which slowed me down. I eventually saw Louise ahead of me, but couldn't quite catch her. Congratulations Louise!

Photo courtesy and © Durham Triathlon Club

I would like to thank everyone who organised the event and also the marshals and the supporters (in some cases the same people). I was going to go home, thinking that I could not possibly have won anything, but decided to stay for the presentation and was very pleasantly surprised to win a prize for my age group and have my photograph taken with winners in the other categories.

I can thoroughly recommend this event next year to anyone thinking about it.

Results

81 finishers, inc teams.