Speedy Sam, Fast Fran, Nippy Neil, Super Simon, Cruising Clare and Dynamo Dave

The TriPurbeck speed merchants were up to their tricks at the weekend……. Sam Brown stormed to a 36min pb in the Bournemouth Bay 10k, finishing 7th overall….. that’s after a tough bike and swim set on Saturday – awesome. Neil McD made the sensible decision not to go up directly against Sam in the 10k and did the half marathon instead producing a not too shabby 1hr22min finish in a good field. Great racing as well from Simon who clocked an excellent 1hr42min time in the half and Clare McD who finished the 10k in 57mins.

This weekend also saw the season’s first unveiling of the Planet X rocket machine as the mighty Franster tested out whether the winter training was paying off at the Newbury Duathlon. The recent flooding led to a slight lengthening of the run course presumably to reduce the chance of mud getting on the mostly flourescent new racing flats sported by most of the athletes on the start line. Looking for hat trick of race wins at this event Fran put in a solid 20min first 5k and a bit run in some dodgy off road terrain. Leading into transition but with another girl on her shoulder, Fran proceded to gap the field by 6 minutes on the bike. So the training’s going ok then. Nice easy run back to take the win by the same 6 minutes she led by on the bike finishing in 1hr30min. In a bizarre twist of organisational fate, Fran was awarded the Vet40 prize rather than being announced as the race winner. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh we laughed! (that’s a slightly artistic use of the word we by the way ).  Also testing out the winter training at Newbury was TriPurbeck’s Xterra wizard Dave Anderson swapping the mtb for the tt bike didn’t seem to provide too much of a challenge and I think he probably won his age group with an excellent race in 1.32.29 although its a bit tricky to say from the results. Here’s a picture of Fran and Dave – no Guy I notice…..