Driven to Tri....One step closer to World Domination

With the season getting closer we've had quite a few athletes in action recently so we're due a news update!

Nathan headed off to the Silverstone half and put in a great performance in his 1st half marathon of the year running 1.58 in pretty horrendous conditions. A good confidence booster for the Half Ironmans later in the year.

Barry decided a standard aquathlon wasn't enough so added a couple of lengths to the swim section, Harry's including maths lessons in the programme now! Despite this slight error he recorded the fastest run split of the day to register 5th in the Exmouth race. He'd also run 10.01 over 3k earlier in February so with the counting sorted he'll be well on the way to some decent results this season.

Patrick headed to Clumber Park for his 1st full distance duathlon and achieved his goal of qualifying for the World Duathlon Champs this year. This is a great achievement for someone who's been on a swim based programme all winter and sets him up well for the Tri season.

Lorne learnt a lot about what you can and can't eat before a race and unfortuantely this resulted in a slightly disapointing race and the Colehill triathlon, finishing 8th. We're sure he'll come back strong and get the results he deserves though!

The rest of our athletes are beginning racing soon so make sure you visit the website to stay updated with our world domination!

Serpentine Triathlon Camp

This weekend Driven to Tri hosted 20 of London's Serpentine lady triathletes in Bath. This was our first ’ladies only’ triathlon camp (except for the guy coaches) and we had a great time. We had a good mix of seasoned veterans and relative new comers. It is always a bit daunting when you get triathletes attending your camp when they have been competing in triathlon twice as long as you have!!! One of the attendees , a Serpentine coach(and triathlete), has 20 years in the sport.

We were very lucky with the weather and had two days of lovely sunshine and mild temperatures. This made our track and outdoor bike transition session an absolute pleasure.

On Saturday night the ladies organised a meal which was good fun. It was a nice way to wind down after a full-on day.

We hope everyone took away something and enjoyed the weekend end and are looking forward to some feedback to improve our next camp.

A special thanks to the Serpentine coaches Katie and Beate who helped organise things and a big thank you to Jenny Gowans, one of Serpentine's seriously fast chics, who sparked the idea of the Serpentine ladies only camp.

Good luck this year to everyone who attended. We hope each one of you reaches or exceeds your goals!

Winter Frollics!

Happy new year to everyone reading this! We hope you had a great Christmas and didn't eat too many mince pies. The last month has been a busy period for Driven to Tri. We ran our run camp in late November which was great fun and we hope all the athletes got what they wanted from the camp and went away looking forward to their winter run training!

Pete and Harry headed to Poole on boxing day for the annual 10k. The flattish course attracted some decent runners and pretty soon there were a group of 5 away including both the boys. Harry's tummy decided to play games with him and he dropped off after about 4k leaving Pete to fight it out with Nige Leighton and Huw Edwards. Halfway round the 3rd of 4 laps Pete opened up a small gap which gradually increased over the closing stages and resulted in a 10k PB (31.10) and a win showing the big miles are at least paying off! Harry finished, (and I quote 'like a busted arse') in 5th claiming the fancy dress impeeded his progress!

A couple of days later they made the short journey to Exeter for the 'Last Chance 10k'. The pace was on from the start with Kairn Stone pushing at the front. Harry blew at 2.5k and eventually decided to start racing after 4k by which time he'd lost contact. Pete spent most of the race with Kairn on his shoulder, but unfortunately his finishing speed was akin to that of a Sloth still recovering from the excesses of Christmas and he had to be content with 2nd. Harry had a much better 2nd half of the race and came home 4th.

Now it's back to the big miles and the cold weather to come!

Happy New Year!!

Julie 4th at 70.3 Worlds

Julie finished off her season with 4th at the 70.3 World Championships in Florida. Not one to shirk a challenge Julie took the race out from the start and came out the swim 30 seconds up on the chasing girls. By 20 miles on the bike this had developed to 2 minutes over the chasing group. There was no holding back and by the time she headed out on the run Julie had 4 minutes on the chasing group, recording a bike split of 2.13!! Julie looked strong for the first lap but a combination of a lonely, fast bike and some very quick running from the other girls, meant Julie was caught in the closing stages and collapsed across the line in an agonising 4th place. Still a fantastic result and I'm sure Julie will be back next year looking to go a couple of places better!

Big Congratulations to AJ and Leanda who both picked up Bronze medals. Fraser Cartmell had a storming race to finish 7th in a very strong field and Toby Jameson put in a 1.15 half marathon to run himself up to 27th. When he learns to swim I'm sure he'll be a force to be reckoned with!

Julie Dibens WORLD CHAMPION!!!!

Julie won the xterra World Champs on Sunday.... woooohooooo

For full details check out her website www.juliedibens.com

Also keep your fingers crossed as Julie is having another go at the the World 1/2 Ironman champs in Clearwater next weekend.... Cummon Dibs do the dirty double!!

We have a Wetsuit Winner!!

Congratulations to Toby from St Albans who has won our Wetsuit Giveaway. Toby will be sporting a top of the range Snugg wetsuit for the coming season!

Thank you to everyone who entered and to Snugg Wetsuits for their ongoing support.

Swim Camp!

Sunday saw the first Driven to Tri swim camp of the winter. We were fortunate to have a great bunch of guys and girls along for the camp which made it a fun day to coach on! The standard of swimming was pretty high and we had some fun in the afternoon analysing everyone's stroke on the big screen. It was great to see the progress everyone made in the afternoon session and look forward to hearing of the improvements to come following the camp!

Thanks to everyone who attended, your CD's will be in the post shortly. We still have a few spaces left on the January camp, to sign up visit the camps section of the website.