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REPORTS |
| Vanquier 220 Verte Sprint Duathlon! This race was sponsored by 220 Triathlon magazine which offered the lure of good media coverage and was conducted by the organisers of the famous French Iron Tour (a triathlon series) in a little town in the Alps near Grenoble. One of the guys on the Montlucon team is Yannick Bourseaux (see picture below), a Paralympian in Biathlon and winner of the past two ITU World Handisport Triathlon Championships (last year by 15 minutes!). Yannick is a fantastic athlete who swims, bikes and runs like a train and was heading to the race as a guest of the organisers. He has been very kind in looking after Lianne and I in Clermont Ferrand and we took up the chance to head with him to the Alps for the race. The mountains around us at the start were a little daunting (we were 50k from Alpe D’Huez!) but the organisers at least managed to find a flat run along a river and then throw in the long climb of varying grade followed by return descent on the bike! The sprint duathlon format in France is 5k/30k/5k and after gaining a small lead on the first run I attacked the first half of the bike as planned and had a good lead at the top of the climb. Inefficient descending on the sweeping turns meant that one team rider caught me at the end of the bike but the 3 chasing individual competitors were still over a minute back. Just goes to show how important the descents are here- very hard to pick the right line for me at the moment but seems to be getting better and the brake pads aren’t getting worn as quickly! The final run felt great as I pulled away from the team competitor and found a good turnover. Even better the 2nd and 3rd place finishers were my Montlucon teammates Cyril Moreau (French U23 Tri team) and Yannick. A great day for the team! If you want to hear my attempts to make a speech in French, click here! Next week we have the Lucon round of the French Duathlon Grand Prix over the 5k/30k/5k format. The race is in the west of France in the region of Vendee Good luck to everyone in final preparation for Busselton Regards
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