Fulontri Duathlon

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon, so I thought I would take a moment to tell you about the Fulontri Duathlon that I competed in today down at Cranleigh in Surrey.


Actually, the course was an airfield (still in use !) and is also where Top Gear is filmed. Actually as BB drove in I did keep saying that we were 'the man is the reasonably priced car'. It was quite funny.


So.. as it was a duathlon, we started off with a run of 6km, which was two nice flat loops of 3km. The ground was rather pot-holey, but otherwise fine.. I completed that in about 28 minutes.


Then on the bike, 5 laps to make up 24km and this was round the outer road, where they do the car testing - so at this point I guess I was 'the girl on the reasonably priced bike'.


The course was flat, which was great, but this was not helped by the howling wind/beating rain, nor the faster athletes who kept whizzing past me - my top speed was 41km (which I was quite pleased with ..)


Third loop in, I saw BB not on his bike.. he had a puncture so it was game over for him today ..


On I plodded through the driving rain, that last lap felt long... but not as long as the first lap of the run was going to feel.


I got to T2, jumped off the bike and my legs wouldn't really move .. I racked the bike, took the helmet off and started running, but it wasn't really running more of a stagger.. consequently those faster riders who were on their 2nd lap, were now whizzing past me on the run too...


By the time of the second lap my running legs were back (kind of..) and I managed to over take one person.. thankfully the last 3km passed quickly and before I knew it I was crossing the line.


Although it was run and bike loops, which I don't particularly like, I would do this race again for the closed-road, flat, fast bike course. My results tell me that I was 5th female in my 40-45 age group, which I'm relatively pleased with.. The 24km bike too me 49 mins.. and that last 6km took me a whole 30  minutes. Overall my results were 1:49 so just under 1:50.


Here's a link to the site in case you fancy giving it a bash next year - you never know you might see me there.