Serpie Planner - event reports
ITU World Duathlon Championships (standard) (04 Sep 2010)
On Saturday nine Serpies (as far as I'm aware – apologies if I missed anyone) were amongst over 800 athletes from 23 countries racing at the World Duathlon Championships in Edinburgh having qualified to represent Great Britain and Ireland with top age group results at a number of designated qualification events throughout the course of the season.
The athletes enjoyed some uncharateristic late Scottish summer sun for the race around Holyrood Park which comprised a 10km run, a 41.6km cycle and a further 5km run to finish. The venue delivered stunning views but the price paid for enjoying them was a requirement to ascend the hill up to Arthur's Seat five times on the bike – the total climb on each 8.3km lap was the equivalent of the height gain on the Box Hill zig zag. To maximise specatatability, the run was also laps (four on the first run; two to finish) including a long drag up the lower reaches of the bike climb. With ups, there were of course downs and on the bike this took the form of a super-fast sweeping descent with a couple of tight corners. At the bike recce on the Friday evening, racers were debating how many braking points there were on the way down, if any, and everyone was relieved about the dry conditions as it would have been pretty treacherous in the wet.
First off in the morning was Rory Maguire in the men's 25-29 age group who after a long season of competition over all distances up to Ironman, set an early benchmark for the day with a 2:10:40 finish to place 11th of 54 starters. Also in that wave, Chris Priestley recorded a 2:36:29 finish for 33rd place out of 50 in the 55-59 age group.
Next up, there was strong Serpentine representation in the female 55-59 age group with Jan Farmer, Hilary Walker and Anna Priestley all racing in a field of 20. Competition was tight but Jan was first to cross the line in 7th place in 3:01:06. Hilary was next in just two places back in 3:05:35 with Anna a further two places back in 11th with a time of 3:10:09.
The third wave saw one of our converted runners Liz Wynn (`I just started doing a bit of cycling when I got a stress fracture') feature in the female 30-34 age group. In a strong field of 35 – including former Olympic cyclist Ceris Styler (and she didn't even win) – Liz finished in 20th position with a time of 02:36:05.
The lunch time wave saw the male 30-34 and 35-39 age groups go off with Richard Phillips hoping for a place on the podium in the latter category. A recent duathlon convert, having added a bit of biking to his lightning run splits, he lead the wave – including James Gilfillian, the eventual overall winner and only competitor to go under two hours on the day - into T1 with a split of 32:12 for the first 10km leg (suspected not to be accurately measured, but not far off). After seeing a number of more seasoned cyclists overtake him during the course of the cycle he set off on the second run in 5th place in the 35-39 age group. Upping the pace on the final 5k saw him climb back into 4th place before the 2nd and 3rd placed runners took a wrong turn on the final lap turn (still don't know how!) to catapult him into the silver medal position which he held onto to the finish line, completing the race in 2:07:23. 2nd in the world – not a bad result for a first season of multisport.
Further back in the same wave, Jon Rae posted a 10km(ish) pb of 35:15 on the way to 12th position in the 30-34 age group with a time of 2:15:28, narrowly beating recent Serpie recruit Iain Robinson after exchanging positions a number of times during the race. Iain finished in 15th place in the same age group (2:16:48).
All in all, a great day's racing with fantastic weather, competitive fields, a really interesting and challenging course and stunning scenery.
If you want to have a crack at GB qualification for any of the World or European Championship duathlon or triathlon teams next year then check out how to apply here [http://www.britishtriathlon.org/age/] – it may not be as remote a possibility as you think and is certainly a great incentive to push your performances on to the next level. Hopefully we'll see some of these athletes doing Serpentine proud at the Jekyll and Hyde duathlon at the end of October.
Report by Jonathan Rae
ITU World Duathlon Championships (standard) (25 Sep 2011)
Jan Farmer - Silver 60-64 AG
Becky Glover - Bronze 25-29 AG
ITU World Duathlon Championships (standard) (23 Sep 2012)
Becky won gold in her age-group
ITU World Duathlon Championships (standard) (10 Aug 2013)
The 2013 World Duathlon Championships were held in Ottawa, Canada, on August 10th. Harry McDermott and Elizabeth O'Connor (husband and wife, and both Serpie members) were selected to represent Triathlon Ireland in their respective age groups for the Sprint Duathlon championship. Elizabeth finished 4th in her race, narrowly missing out on a medal and podium finish. Harry finished 18th in his race.
ITU World Duathlon Championships (standard) (21 Aug 2017)
Program notes:
Draft Ilegal
Technical Delegates: Thanos Nikopoulos/GRE, David Markham/CAN.
Race Referee: Ulf Schuetze/CAN.
Competition Jury: David Markham/CAN, Loreen Barnett/CAN, Paul Huyer/CAN.
Distances: First Run 10 km (4 laps); Bike 40 km (4 laps); 2nd Run 5 km (2 lap)
Air Temperature 19.7ºC
ITU World Duathlon Championships (standard) (10 Jun 2022)
Targu Mures, Romania
10k/37.5k/5k