Marathon (and a half) Weekend

With Multisport events on the wane the amount of club members racing is dropping off as they start their 2 month taper for Christmas.

Chris Stone and Simon Edney are keeping the end of season ticking along by racing their 2nd consecutive weekend of Duathlons and their 2nd consecutive weekend of top 10 finishing at the Thruxton Mass Attack Duathlon.
With two of the countrys top Duathletes in the field you'd have thought all the racing would have been for 3rd place, but Simon had other ideas when hit hit the bike course and posted the 2nd fastest split of the day to hit T2 in 2nd place. Unfortunatly the season long running injury has robbed Simon of a bit of run speed and he had to settle for a comfortable 3rd place finish while winning his age group by over 5mins. Not a bad performance for an old man in his first proper season of Tri/Duathlon. We really really need to teach him how to swim though. After pushing Simon so close last weekend Chris must have felt confident of chasing him down but it wasn't to be. Still he showed his recent end of season form is strong by posting qick solid times in all 3 disciplines and one of the fastest 2nd runs of the day to take 9th place overall and 3rd in his age group.

After a season off from the 'long stuff' Mark Alderman rocked up at the tough Dartmoor Vale Marathon and finished 8th in a solid 3:09:04 while Alan Ward made the trip over to Boyo Land chasing a new Half Marathon pb. Unfortunatly the pb wasn't to be, but a solid 1:29:50 placed him 271st out of the 5,800 finishers and more importantly under that hallowed 90minute barrier.

I suppose I should mention that our Glorious Leader James was out cyclo-crossing again, but as he got his ass whooped again then I won't ;-)

A week behind (ooops) 12/10/08 catch up.

The last 2 weeks have been choc full with members racing events of all kinds as they spread their net towards the end of the Tri season.

The final local Triathlon of the season was on the 12th October and turned out to be a bit of a club disappointment. With 5 names on the start list only Steph Hulford turned up to fly the flag for North Devon Tri. Despite having to suffer the joy of swimming an extra 50m due to some erratic lane counting and stopping for a bit of a social in T1 she battled on to finish 93rd overall in 1:54:13.
Closer to home Tim was jogging around the Braunton Fun Run, a 4.5 mile event which it seems wasn't long enough for Tim as he decided to turn off the course somewhere random to get a bit extra in. Even with his diversion he stll managed to finish 4th overall amd the rumours that he was the only one there not wearing Wellies appear to be unfounded. Official times and results for this event???? Well, if you can find them you're a better man than me.
Another local event/sport where getting finish times would be a bit of a novelty is Cyclocross. With Winter drawing closer a few of the lads are trying their hand at this and taking on some REAL cyclists. The race at West Buckland was Round 3 in the South West Series and James turned up with his eyes firmly set on his good mate Blake Pond. At least he had until the race started when Blake disappeared into the distance on his way to a fine 4th place finish. James got his act together enough to finish 22nd just 5 places ahead of Marc Woolacott while John Bronze finished in 42nd place. Worth noting was the fact that both James and John 'LET' members of Southfork staff finish ahead of them - the things you'll do for a bit of extra discount.
The final event of the weekend was the Devon Duathlon, a strange format of race for Triathletes who can't swim and one which it seems the NDTC non-swimming brigade are quite good at as the three members who travelled 'down south' for the event all finished inside the top 10. In a closely fought battle Mitch Barclay took Club honours by finishing 6th in 1:26:13, his stronger 2nd run being the difference maker between himself and Simon Edney who finished 8th just 54 seconds later. Both of these boys took their biggest chunk of time out of 9th place finisher Chris Stone on the 1st run leg with Chris's strong 2nd run bringing to within 25seconds of Simon.

From the Coach :-)

It wouldn't be right if a weekend passed without an epic piece from myself... This ones for the Journal...

The last two weekends have been very succesful for North Devon Tri....

Bude Quadrathlon - 04/10/08 - Full Results
(800m swim/30k Cycle/10k Kayak/10k run)
1st Senior Male James Marshall - 19:00(0:29)55:01(0:16)53:50(0:30)42:31 = 2:51:38
3rd Senior Male Phill Miles - 20:06(0:45)58:24(0:12)1:04:39(0:19)45:23 = 3:09:49
21st James Birkley - 21:15(1:29)1:10:00(1:08)56:43(0:36)49:03 = 3:20:15
36th Steve Ditchburn - 29:13(3:06)1:12:53(0:29)1:12:39(0:41)55:28 = 3:54:30












This was one of the National Trophy Series Event with the series winner being declared National Champion. Firstly a mention for Steve Ditchburn who only joined the club in January of this year. Steve turned up to his first swim session and barely competed a length of the pool. Yesterday he completed the swim that was nearer to 1 kilometre than 800m in a far from calm sea, even overtaking as he went out on the second loop and completed what many people wouldn't believe possible. On a day were the weather scared off many competitors, James Marshall led the solo event from the start leading the swim and then storming through the severely hilly 30k bike course and out onto the 10k Kayak. As they came off the water James could have let up his lead was that large, but pushed on to test himself against the clock which by now was his only competitor. The second place senior male was Olympic potential Ben Brown who showed the rest of the field how it was done on the Kayak section with a very rapid 39minute split (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/canoeing/6691705.stm), however he finished 7 minutes back on champion Marshall.

ITU World Duathlon Champs, Rimini - 21/09/08

13th AG Simon Edney - 39:50(0:54)1:07:24(1:01)21:09 = 2:10:20

Coming off the back of a recent UK Duathlon were he recorded the fastest bike split of the day, including the Professional athletes competing. This is an excellent performance by Simon against the Worlds best competitors in his very tough age group.

Bodmin Sprint Triathlon - 28/09/08

4th Alan Ward - 5:55(0:38)39:38(0:53)37:02 = 1:24:07
5th Mitchell Barclay - 6:55(0:59)40:43(0:53)35:04 = 1:24:34
6th Chris Stone - 6:50(0:55)40:23(0:49)35:54 = 1:24:51
7th Tim Reed - 7:29(0:57)41:45(0:48)34:39 = 1:25:39
12th Phill Miles - 5:49(0:45)42:38(0:49)38:19 = 1:28:21
29th/1stFemale Helen Banbury - 7:35(1:11)50:08(1:23)37:49 = 1:38:07
67th Damian Railston - 6:11(1:17)51:18(1:02)52:28 = 1:52:17

Newly joined member Helen Banbury took another win for the club being first women home, this must surely have been a very long wait for this womens overall victory and reflects the growth in the clubs female membership. The Club also gained the team prize at Bodmin Triathlon for 3 best placed competitors from the same club, with 3 competitors finishing within 45secs of each other it was tight at the top!