Teggs Nose Duathlon, Thursday 16th August 2007
Report by Martin Webb
Given the potential conditions an impressive eleven hardy souls entered the final ‘summer’ duathlon supported by eight marshals and three sets of parents. At one point there were more marshals than competitors. Despite the recent weather we were treated to a dry evening with a bit of wind. All the marshals seemed very happy not to be racing!
A mass start saw runners negotiating a steep downhill section for 600 metres that was really too steep to let the legs go and giving everyone something to look forward to as they run back up this hill on the second run. This was followed by a long uphill drag back to the transition area. 'Storming' Andy Norman was pushed all the way by Alex Young with Jon Dabbs not too far behind in 3rd. Andy started the bike leg with a 23 second lead over Alex and rode away from the rest of the field on his borrowed titanium bike. Chairman Dabbs gave his new flying machine another outing and put it too good use by overtaking Alex on the fast downhill section, a lead he held into transition, and extended on the final run.
A special mention for Rob Harvey who had cycled out and finished 4th looking a little bit tired. Mark Benton and Richard Hyder battled it out for 5th and 6th place with only 20 secs (in favour of Mark) separating them at the finish.
The battle of the other two juniors in the race, Owen Mitchell and Nina McAthur, resulted in Owen taking both run legs and Nina the bike leg. There were two solid runs from Viv who also won the award for shipping her chain the most times during the race! It was also nice to see Sally & Cathy both finishing in more than respectable times. This event was run regularly from the early to mid-nineties and is fairly unique so the only real way to measure progress or compare performance is to actually do the race – we plan to run at least two of these next year, so hope to see you there! Looking back at the records the fastest time I can find previously is 43:58 so it won’t come as a surprise to see that Andy has well and truly smashed this!
Thanks are due to Helen, Rob Harper, Michelle, Kat, Martyn, Skip and Guy for helping out with marshalling.
| Run 1 | Bike | Run 2 | Total Time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andy Norman | 9:00 | 23:30 | 10:16 | 42:46 |
| Jon Dabbs | 10:03 | 24:57 | 11:08 | 46:08 |
| Alex Young | 9:23 | 26:03 | 11:30 | 46:56 |
| Rob Harvey | 11:07 | 26:40 | 12:48 | 50:35 |
| Mark Benton | 11:54 | 26:17 | 13:11 | 51:22 |
| Richard Hyder | 11:26 | 27:02 | 13:14 | 51:42 |
| Owen Mitchell | 10:58 | 29:15 | 12:09 | 52:22 |
| Nina McArthur | 11:26 | 28:11 | 13:19 | 52:56 |
| Viv Slack | 12:21 | 29:02 | 13:23 | 54:46 |
| Sally Griffiths | 12:58 | 30:56 | 14:03 | 57:57 |
| Cathy Atkinson | 13:45 | 29:17 | 16:02 | 59:04 |
Back to main results page