National Duathlon Championships, Edinburgh, Sunday 14th May

Report by Nina McArthur

There were only two MTC members at this event in Edinburgh, myself and Dean Frost. As the registration was so early in the morning, my family and I had to travel down on the Friday night and as we were so unorganized at booking accommodation, we ended up staying 40 minutes away in Dunfermline. So you'd expect it to take us 40 minutes to get to Holyrood Park where the race was being held? Well, if you add on getting lost twice while trying to follow step-by-step instructions off the internet and then having to ask a postman to find the venue, it ended up taking almost one and a half hours. Lucky we left early then! After having registered, racked my bike in the crowded racking and checked out the course, I was in my MTC race kit and ready to go. Dean was off about 1 hour after me so I had some added cheers as the gun went off and the Youth wave sprinted down the hill to the first bend.

The opening run was 2 laps of a 1.25km course around the edge of Holyrood Park. I was settled in 4th place as I went into transition with the 2nd and 3rd place athletes in my sight. My transition appeared to completely shatter that. As a bike had fallen over onto my bike, I had to untangle my bike off the racking and then after that small problem I started running with my bike with my trainers still on so I had to drop my bike, take off my trainers, run back to my rack, put them down and pick up my bike again. Phew! By the time that fiasco was over I had lost a large amount of time so I had my work cut out for the bike. I pushed on throughout the bike with the 3rd place athlete not too far ahead of me at the turnaround point. The course was undulating throughout the bike so luckily it was in my favour. Coming off the bike I kept relaxed and could see 3rd place ahead of me but I just couldn't quite make it, although having a strong last run. My 4th place was a good achievement in my first year of the youth age category and hopefully I'll never have a worse transition than that in a duathlon again!

Dean also had a good race coming in 84th overall and 27th in his age-group. Let's hope to see more MTC members in the Duathlon Champs next year!

Youth Results (2.5km - 10km - 2.5km)

Position	Name	Run 1	T1	Bike	T2	Run 2	Overall
4	Nina McArthur	12:40	1:11	20:04	0:36	7:54	42:25

Senior Results (10km - 40km - 5km)

Position	Name	Run 1	T1	Bike	T2	Run 2	Overall
84	Dean Frost	35:37	0:51	1:10:42	0:51	22:18	2:10:19

Back to main results page