News

17/03/2008 - Hamsterley Forest Sprint Duathlon

The 2008 North-East Duathlon season got under way on Sunday with the Hamsterley Forest Sprint Duathlon, a 5kms run – 25kms bike – 5kms run event in Hamsterley Forest, County Durham. Now in it’s third year this year’s race had a record entry with many of the region’s top duathletes taking part and entrants from Scotland and the south of England.

The first run through the tracks of the forest took place under dark clouds and Phil Coulson of Total Racing Inc, a new team, had a tough battle with Dave Brown of Team Milton Keynes. These two drew away from the field and eventually Coulson entered the first transition 16 seconds clear of Brown in 16:25 with Will Kemp of Durham University just beating last year’s winner Gary Grounds of hartlepooltriathletes.com for third spot by 2 seconds with a time of 17:02.

In the ladies race super-veteran Hilary Ross of Durham Tri Club was having a three-way battle with Vanessa Butler of Ryton Tri Club and Lisa Tweddle of NE31 Tri Club and just managed to beat them into transition. Once out anto the bike it was Jenny Holland of Tyne Tri Club, another veteran who returned the fastest bike leg of 59:30 but who had too much ground to make up to threaten the overall lead. Ross led again into second transition.

Meanwhile the men’s result was being settled on the wet and windy bike leg around the country lanes between Hamsterley and Woodland. Brown immediately took the lead and simply rode away from the rest of the field with a time of 45:09, nearly four minutes ahead of Coulson. David Bell and Haydn Maughan, both of Ryton Tri Club were next fastest on the bike and moved up into second and third respectively but they had too much time to make up from the first run. Coulson dropped back to sixth at this point.

At the start of the second run Brown had a 2:14 cushion over Maughan with Bell only three seconds further back. However Coulson was determined to get back into the places and put in a tremendous run to claw his way back to second with a split of 17:35. Brown lost 2:33 but still had enough spare to beat the previous course record by 1:31 with a final time of 1:21:58. Coulson was also under the old record with a time of 1:23:05.

In the ladies race Butler had by far the fastest second run but had fallen back badly on the bike and couldn’t make up enough ground She finished in fifth place 8:04 behind Ross who dominated the field to win by 4:12 from Holland with Tweddle a further 14 seconds back. Kath Blakey of Cleveland Tri Club completed the top five with a time of 1:50:53 in fourth spot.

The Hamsterley Forest Sprint Duathlon is the first in a series of five events which form the North-East Regional Duathlon Grand Prix. The next event is the Stokesley Duathlon on 30 March and other events are the City of Durham Duathlon on 20 April, Scarborough Duathlon on 27 April and the Hamsterley “Hammer” Duathlon, which is also the regional championship race, on 4 May.

Results