Duathlon

So I have not had much to post about recently, only riding to work and that has not been very exciting.

So a little while ago when I saw a tweet from @dashing_divasuk asking for a cyclist to take part in Dinton Duathlon whilst she did the running it seemed like a plan.

Dinton Pastures is not far from me and I ride a bike a bit, so I duly answered the tweet to offer my services. Then the details came through, what time did I have to get up on a Sunday morning?!!

An email arrived from Sian to check that I was ok stil for the event and a text and a tweet, she had just checked the timings too!

Anyway I duly dragged myself out of bed at 5.30 put on my kit and drove off to Dinton Pastures, a lovely site and well worth a visit even if not competing at silly o' clock in the morning.

Sian arrived and we registered, collected our numbers and timing chip, the baton for the relay. I collected my bike from the car, numbered it up and racked it in transition, we were ready to go.

There was a mandatory race briefing, including the reason behind the early start, which was short and to the point followed by a quick explanation of how the transition for teams would work, I have never done a triathlon or duathlon as part of a team so this was all a bit alien to me.

At 8.40 Sian set off on her first 5k run and I went to get myself ready in transition to await her return. Her arrival was announced by the commentator picking up her number and giving a shout out to team Dashing Diva & Dude! fairly soon we were transferring the baton  and I was off on the bike.

I had guessed that it would take me about 40 mins for the ride but I had a bit of a stormer and surprised Sian by turning up back in transition about 6 mins before she was expecting me.

When Sian returned from her 2nd 5k run we had finished as the 4th placed mixed team, both quite chuffed!

The event was great, organisation was excellent and a good course, well worth getting up early for. Big thanks and congratulations to Ellie and the team for organising and marshalling a very successful event. Maybe next year I should return to complete the whole thing as an individual!

After leaving Dinton Pastures I headed over to Mum and Dads to say hi, blag some lunch and raid Dad's garage for bike bits to complete my cross bike. With the bits I had already and some spares from the garage along with nicking some bits of my brothers old cross bike I now have a complete bike! Just need to enter a race now!