Triathlon does Duathlon

Another weekend, another duathlon for IC Triathlon. This time we ventured outside of London to the Bedford Autodrome; a racing circuit for cars built on an old airfield. The Bedford Autodrome duathlon is a unique one in the Triathlon race calendar, as it is the only national competition that we take part of outside of the university system. Forget BUCS medals, placing top 3 in your age-group or finishing within 110% of the winning time in this duathlon qualifies you automatically for the GB Duathlon team and secures you an entry at the European Duathlon Championships in 2020, in other words, racing well makes you a bigwig. With a massive 400 entries, this race was a big one.

There were two race distances on offer: a ‘sprint’ and ‘standard’ duathlon. The sprint duathlon was a 5km run, 20km bike which was followed by another run – mercifully only 2.5km. I think it says something about the sport when the sprint event takes over an hour to complete. The standard distance is the same format but double the distance in every leg.

Arriving at the Autodrome we discovered that there was wind. Lots of wind, 40kph worth, to be exact. This made the bike section more ‘character building’ than was initially anticipated.

Henry “I hate cycling” Hart knew that the running leg would be his strongest, so made sure to go out strong and hope that he could hold on for the cycle. With a blistering fast off the bike run he finished in 10th place overall, and 3rd in his age category. Matt Ryan, as well as showing that he could count laps this time, also had the fastest transition time of the whole competition in an incredible 26 seconds. Matt finished 12th overall and 4th in his age category. Cedric Ormond flew by on his new bike to finish 3rd in his age category.

Alex Mundell was 3rd fastest in the first running leg. Amy Davila was not far behind with the 4th fastest overall running leg for both runs (before and after the cycle). Big respect is to be had for Jacob Kay and Mari Funabashi, who finished despite not being at full fitness.

Incredible success was enjoyed by all, with many top 3 age group finishes and lots of potential qualifying times. We will have to wait until after Summer once all the qualification races are out of the way to see who qualified for team GB. Stay tuned…