The last two weeks

There are a few races to catch up on so here goes..........

Over in Ireland we had a number of starters at Eireman. Unfortunately due to poor weather and some slightly dodgy course markings the day was slightly different to normal. Joyce and Dave took on the Half Ironman which turned into a duathlon of 4k/90k/ about 15k. Joyce ignored this and had a stormer to win the ladies race by a large margin and Dave put his great training into practice to record 5.14 and set him up for a good race in Barcelona later in in the season.

The star performer of the weekend was Emma who aged 19 put herself on the start line for the full Ironman. Despite the swim being cancelled the weather conditions made it a very hard day at the office. However, after 7 hours biking and over 5 hours running she crossed the line as 6th woman and just in time to get out the rain and head off to somewhere sunny on Holiday!

Nicola's also been a busy girl recently, 4.40 on the track for a 1500m and 4th at the National Junior Championships - the 'reward' for these performances and her hard work is a French Grand Prix start. 70 bitchy girls trying to tears strips off each other - it's more violent than the guys race! Rhys had his best result of the season coming 6th in the British Junior champs and despite a bad transition Sam had a solid race to finish 18th in the Youth race after winning a round of the South West series the previous week.

Piers took on Norseman a few weeks ago and lived to tell the tale. He got to the bottom of the mountain early enough to get the coveted Black T-Shirt and at one stage on the run was in the top 25. It all got a bit emotional late on in the run and when there's literally a Mountain to climb this isn't the time to blow. It soon became apparent that there would be a little bit, in fact a lot of walking up a Mountain involved and when you're blown a walk up a Mountain can be quite slow. Harry and Piers figured everyone would walk up it a similar speeds, however the first woman walked up 26 minutes quicker which disproved the theory and showed how tough the event is!

Harry and I went to the Czech Repiblic to race a Eurpoean Cup. We decided to do this about 4 weeks ago as there weren't many races around. This seemed like a good idea until we realised there was a 20% hill on each of the 7 laps! Not perfect if you've been running lots and not doing big bike training. I avoided this problem by crashing in a crit race the previous week and therefore ended up watching the pain fest. Harry sat in the front pack which was "easy for 4 laps, mental for 3 laps!" His running legs were left halfway up the hill so we haven't looked at results!

Off for a FGP round a race course in Paris.

Pete