European Championship Bronze for Fran and marathon man John.

What a weekend for the Tripurbeck team. With Fran competing for GBR, John in the London Marathon and Mandy, Mark, David and Liz all out on their bikes there were bound to be some stories…….

Fran stormed to the bronze medal in her age group at the European Duathlon Championships in Limerick on Saturday, clocking a personal best 2hr05min in her most impressive performance to date. Still struggling with a leg injury, she put in a solid 40min 10k before destroying the bike course with the fastest bike split in her age group of 1hr4min for 40k, taking her from 7th to 2nd place. With her leg tightening up badly at the beginning of the final run, Ireland’s Cathy Wyse sneaked past to take the silver but Fran finished strongly to secure the bronze medal. Needless to say we are all very proud of her and it was great that her mum and dad were also there to see her race in a GB top for the first time. The field was strong with Fran beating last year’s silver medallist by 8 minutes  and taking 3 mins out of last year’s world championship triathlon bronze medallist. Who knows how fast she could go if she actually trained for this event! (this was the first standard distance duathlon she has done since last year’s event)

John Skilton may have been a little nervous on Sunday morning and the weather was set up for sprinting – unfortunately John was starting the London Marathon! Despite the conditions, John put in an amazing performance coming in behind Mutai of Kenya,  just sneaking in 1min faster than his target time of 4hrs (who needs official timing when you have a Garmin!!). Clearly John will have very good stamina for the upcoming triathlon season.

Mandy (bronze), David (silver) and Mark (bronze) all completed the White Horse Challenge – riding together in just under 7 hrs and Liz showed some early season cycling form, clocking a silver time in the New Forest sportive, averaging over 17mph.