Racing, Racing Everywhere!

The past weekend might require a couple of Blog posts as there were races with D2T athletes in a couple of continents and results are still coming in. We'll start off in the states and work our way back home......

New coach Toby Jameson has headed to the states and finished 27th at St Anthony's - hopefully more to come from him as the distances get longer and the swimming gets less important! Joyce had her first major top 10 result, finishing 9th overall at the Lisboa Half Ironman - more importantly she just pipped her sister in to 10th!

On this side of the channel we had a few athletes at the Elite National Duathlon Champs. Jill and Nicola both had very good races with Jill finishing 4th in the Women and Nicola 5th in the Junior Women. For both of them this is their first real season of elite racing so that was a good start.

I'm still waiting for results from some of the local races but so far know......

Bill was 8th in his Age Group at Ashbourne Duathlon

Steve won the Llandovery Triathlon - his first triathlon win

I won the Plymouth CC 10 mile time trial on my Open Debut - my legs hurt lots now!

More results when I have them.

Pete

Watch out World!

Well the tri season is finally here - I think I'm allowed to say that as D2T had loads of athletes racing at the weekend both here and abroad. We'll start off with Ampleforth as that's where the majority were racing - firstly we've got to say we're impressed so many athletes turned out to race on April 4th - it didn't get above 10 degrees in Devon until mid afternoon so I've got no idea how they managed to keep warm and race so well.

Alex was the first finisher, 18th overall and 6th in his age group was very impressive for a relative newcomer to the sport. Nicci put her Big Weekend training to the test to come home 5th in her age group, I'm still investigating how she picked up a 2.00 penalty for 'sporting impedance.' (Update - apparently it was for marking her transition spot with Talc) Bill, was also 5th in his Age Group which should have given him qualification for the European championships in Holten.

Further South Amanda recorded a PB (1.44) at Taunton Half marathon, taking 4 minutes off her time from last month which shows great signs of progression leading up to the season. Steve also knocked a massive 10 mins off his half marathon PB to finish in 1.27

I'm slightly biased because I coach her but I'm going to give performance of the week to Joyce. Her aim this year was to run under 41 mins for a 10k - her fastest time last February was 44 minutes so that was going to be no easy task. However, she decided 41 mins was far to easy and ended up running 40.09, proof that hard work does pay off as she's nailed pretty much all her run sets this year.

Nicola stromed to 2nd in the National Colleges Cross Country Championships to follow up her 16th at the English Schools two weeks before.

Last, but by no means least two of our coaches (Julie and Jim) were racing half way round the globe at the Guam Xterra triathlon. The swim was pretty much as expected with Julie leading out by a couple of minutes. It took Sam Gardner (1st male pro) about 20-30mins to catch her and Julie headed into T2 second overall with Jim not far behind her. According to Julie, Jim passed her on the waterfall section and he never looked back. Jim finished 2nd overall and Julie was 1st lady and 3rd overall - apparently she even managed to stay upright for the whole bike ride.

Pete

Weekend racing

The D2T team were out in force at the weekend across GB and NI with some great performances. In no particular order......

Ryan finished 3rd overall in the Welsh Duathlon Championships.

Joyce finished third in the Limerick Duathlon, taking over 2 and a half minutes off last years time.

Jill smashed her 10k pb, storming home in 36.53 to finish 7th at Eastleigh 10k.

Harry, although not very happy with his race did set a PB at Eastleigh 10k but we're pretty sure there's more to come from him.

The UK triathlon season starts this weekend with the Ampleforth leg warmer where a couple of the team will be looking for selection for the European champs in Holten. Lets hope this sunshine continues through the weekend!