South West Duathlon Championships.

I travelled down from Atlantic College to Castle Combe Race Circuit on the Sunday morning following the Welsh Triathlon camp to compete in the South West Duathlon Championships, courtesey of DB Max. I arrived at about 11.30, following a long trip in the mini bus, with my fellow team mates.

My race was due to start at 2pm, which included a mixed race of youth and junior, both male and female. The race included a 2 mile run, followed by a 10 mile draft legal bike race, ending in a 1 mile run. A mass start saw 33 athletes compete for honours. The 1st 2 mile run of 11:07, saw me coming into transition in 11th place.

All the transitions were quite similar for the faster athletes, with mine taking 44 seconds to get out of my running shoes and onto my bike.

I started the bike ride, and soon caught up a few more riders. The draft legal race meant that we could hopefully work together in order to make up some time on the other cyclists. However, as only two of us knew how to draft properly, this couldn't be done, and I lost some more time to the leaders. After 10 miles, which took me 26:22, it was time to enter transition again for T2. I was out in 42.7 seconds, and I was off for the mile run.

Just a mile to go, and hopefully time to catch up some athletes on the run. With 6th fastest run of the day inm y Inov 8 F Lite 230's, I came home in 8th place, 9th overall.

A great day of racing at the circuit. The only disadvantage was the 5½ hour trip home!

Some pictures of the race can be seen on the SportpicturesCymru website.

Cerist Tri Earlybird Winter Aquathlon Series Race 2 - Owain Llŷr James

Second day of racing with a 5am wake up call, in order to start for Machynlleth, and the second in a series of three races in the Cerist Triathlon Winter Aquathlon series. 1½ hours later I arrived at Machynlleth. Only 35 people made the trip, less than the 1st race, perhaps the longer swim and 10kM run kept people away?


The organisers at the Cerist Triathlon Club are all very friendly, and both the aquathlons and triathlons are well organised.

All too soon it was time for my 600m swim in the Bro Dyfi Leisure centre 20m pool. The fastest time of the day saw me exiting the pool in about 7 min 30sec, and a relitavelly poor transition saw starting the 10kM run after 8 min 7 seconds. After a flat, 2Km start, the course soon turned hilly with steep road climbs. After about 5k, I Started to get blisters on my arches, as I wasn’t wearing any socks following my swim. These were getting more and more painful, but if I wanted to win, I needed to run through the pain to the finish. The hills eased off after about 6.5k, before I returned to the road and along to the finish. The official 10k was actually about 10.2kM, and I finished with cramp in my stomach in 40 minutes 2 seconds, giving me a total race time of 48:09.


My feet were bleeding after the race, testimony to the hard and hilly run. It was a great race, which saw me take my second win of the series, putting me in 1st overall position. One race to go, which I’m not sure that I’m doing yet, as there’s a clash with the local Pwllheli triathlon. I’ll keep you posted.

Results from TRI247.com can be seen here.