Monday 21 July 2008

6th for Julie in New York

Many thanks to Zui Hunafusa for sending us through this picture of Dibs in action

Saturday 19 July 2008

Another weekend another step towards D2T Domination

Julie kicked off the weekend with a very solid 5th place finish at the L.A Life Time Fitness Triathlon, after a slightly disrupted spell of training it looks like Dibs is finding form, she's racing the next round of the U.S big money series in New Your this weekend so Go Dibs!

On the home front Patrick won his age group at the Dorney Lake steelman to book a slot for next years European Championship team. Lorne also got back into racing giving almost Driven To Tri member Abbie Bayley a run for her money in the Portland Bill triathlon on the Sunday then backing it up on the wednesday with solid hit out at the Boscombe Beach Aquathlon.

Not quite Driven to Tri Business but some of the young South West athletes I have been helping out raced the European Youth Relay trials at Eton today clocking the fastest run splits in the boys and girls race. Also a mention for Rhys who trains with Pete and I down at Kelly and should have secured his slot on the european team, Good Work Rhys, the winter is paying off!!

Finally I got my level 3 certificate through this week so am now officially a British Triathlon Level 3 coach. That means that unless Pete of Julie read this update i'm going to refer to myself as "head coach" from now on!!

Friday 11 July 2008

New Driven to Tri Bike kit is in The Country!



It was a little bit like Christmas in the Dibens household as all the kit arrived last week. Everyone should now have all the stuff they ordered. Apologies for the delays. As it's the first time we have done this we didn't quite realise that when the Italians say they are racing to get something done they are actually talking about snail racing! Still we think its awesome kit (apart from the arm warmers which Julie thinks are hideous) Don't worry, Pete and I have over ruled her on this one.
We will get photos of all the stuff up on the web as soon as possible, the Driven To Tri World Domination range now includes.

Bike: Long sleeve and short sleeve jerseys Gilet Shorts, leg warmers arm warmers over shoes gloves, vests.

Run: Vests Triathlon: Race Suits Casual: Hoodies, T.shirts and Beanies Kids: T.shirts

Unfortunatly I managed to rip the bum out of my kit on it's first outing!

Joyce Takes 10th in the Etape

Joyce went over to france to race the Etape de tour last weekend as part of her preperation for Ironman WA. Joyce had a fantastic ride to finish 10th in her catagory in a time of 7.34. That put her 10 minutes infront of Snugg and Driven to Tri Wetsuit making extrordinare Malcom Ball. There were over 75000 starters in the 169km stage from Pau to Hautacam.

Tuesday 8 July 2008

Wacky, Wacky Races!

Triathlon World Cups….. Those are the things we normally watch on triathlon.org like all the other tri geeks to see how all the big boys are going in the lead up to the Olympics. So… we’re packing for the French Divvy 2 race, ready to leave when we check e-mails for the last time to see we can both have a start at Hamburg World Cup! An hour later and already late for our flight to France, we’ve booked flights from Paris to Hamburg and we’re off…. Accommodation will have to wait (we’ll come back to that).

The French Divvy 2 race finally worked out for us, we managed to stay away in a working group of 12 on the bike and come off with 20s on the main pack. At 35 degrees the run was HOT! I’d packed my legs and ran for 1st which was very pleasing. Harry, who pretty much had gimped for me on the bike decided to leave his legs ‘dans le velo’ and ended up 13th. We ended up 3rd in the team standings which left the team manager a bit pissed off! So pissed off in fact that we got dropped at Charles De Gaulle airport that night to sleep on the floor without any dinner. All for the love of sport of course!

After a ‘great’ nights sleep we jumped on the plane to Hamburg, got the bus to the city centre and set about the task of finding a hotel for the week. 1 hour later and we’ve found a 41 Euro a night hotel bang slap in the centre, bargain! It came with free cigarettes (half smoked of course) and a 6 light chandelier, 1 of the lights even worked! Easy access to the city centre and the race and even easier access to the girls who were standing on the corners outside……

We survived 5 nights and by race day were ready to go! Well, Harry was ready to go, I started racing after about 20 minutes by which time I’d missed the front two packs in the swim, not the ideal start. Harry performed his usual magic tricks with ‘the claw’ to appear at the front of the field after the swim. Deciding to give the big boys a chance he waited patiently on the bike and sat in the front group until the run.

Now, when you watch on the little screen on triathlon.org they don’t seem to be running that fast! They’re a little bit quicker in real life, or so Harry assures me. I was still somewhere out the bike course when they started running! Although not being spectacularly fast, Harry put in a solid run to finish 13th which was still a good result in only his 2nd World Cup. I managed to run ok but ended up 24th, minutes down on the winner and never really in the race. Still, great experience all the same.

Saturday night saw another sleep in an airport before a 1 hour BA flight, 1 hour underground, 2 hour South West train and a 2 hour car journey back to Tavi just in time to be tri geeks again and watch the girls race on triathlon.org. They didn’t look to be running that fast…. But I’ll never know, I’m too scared to check if they out ran me or not!

Saturday 5 July 2008

World Cup Wonders

Big CONGRATS to Harry, who looks like to have come 13th at the Hamburg World Cup earlier today. Truly an awesome performance, and a great reflection of how far Harry has come since he won the World University Championships. All that hard work and dedication is starting to pay off! Fingers crossed and the BTF should now put him on the "World Cup squad". Pete also looks to have had a good race, despite missing the front swim pack (i think?). He hung tough on the run posting another 32min 10km time, which again as i giant step in the right direction. He looks to have finished 24th....which ain't too shabby either.

No doubt the guys will give us there own reports soon too!...and hopefully some pics as well.

You can check out the results on the ITU website. www.triathlon.org