BUCS DUATHLON 2022
The day began with an early start as we boarded the coach to head to Castle Coombe circuit near Bristol. Some expert bike packing in the van meant we only had to beg the coach driver to let us put 3 bikes on the coach. Big love Mr Tiger Coaches.
We arrived in plenty of time for some race prep and to sort out the compulsory face painting that needed to occur. Silly fresher Jake Evans decided he was too cool for the green and gold and ended up with a singular green go-faster stripe. Definitely looked less silly than the rest of us good effort.
Another fresh Ben J was so determined to maximise the aero that he put his bike sticker on upside down. Marginal gains people.
Time to head to the start for wave 1 so we walked over to the area with an enormous arch that said “START” where the loudspeakers were. We were happily taking photos and waiting for everyone else to turn up when suddenly we heard the cheers for the actual start of the race about 50m round the corner. A panicked dash there and a few profanities later, wave 1 were on their way. Shout out to the marshals who watched us make this mistake and decided not to mention this for the 10 minutes we were stood there. Quality support, appreciate it.
Starting the race on the back foot didn’t phase our athletes and there were some cracking 5km runs despite weaving their way through the crowds of athletes who did manage to locate the correct start line. After making it through T1 they were out onto the 20km bike course round the race track. A sharp hairpin turn back into transition and bikes were racked, trainers back on and helmets ditched and onto the 3km run to the finish. Unfortunately the weather turned against them on the bike resulting in some very cold hands leading to bit of struggle to put trainers on in T2. Or at least that’s what fresher Ben H claimed, despite the accusations that he just needed a little sit down. Congratulations to Aidan on a cracking performance and our first athlete home in wave 1.
Wave 2 was the turn of most of the female athletes who learned from the previous mistakes and did make it to the start line at the correct time. Our first female athlete home was Fern Kimber, turns out training with the athletics club isn’t as horrific as we originally thought. Build bridges not borders.
Wave 3 was the elite men’s wave and wow were there some impressive performances. The bikes were flying past us supporters so fast they couldn’t even hear the visionary chants coming from the megaphone. Now I don’t know about you, but we sure do fancy Jamie Pugh after that flying mount. Wow. Shout out to Gregory McVicker who was our fastest boi of the day.
Honourable mention to our DOTD Torin, awarded this award for stealing Mr Thompson’s bag which we were searching high and low for, leaving it in his parents car for the day and then suddenly appearing with it later. Way to psych out the competition, love the strategy Torin.
We had so many amazing performances we can’t mention everyone but we had so many people doing their first duathlon which is incredible. It made us extremely proud of you all and you should be equally proud of yourselves. Can’t wait to see lots of you at our very own duathlon at Harvey Hadden on the 3rd December and then the countdown to BUCS sprint is on!
George and Clarissa