Dalby Forest Duathlon, 22 May 2022

Dalby Forest was the location of my first off-road duathlon, it's a great place for cycling and running, and somewhere that I often visit. Being local, I’d had a chance to practice the cycling route the weekend before, which really helped for the more technical sections! I was taking part in the sprint duathlon, but there was also a standard duathlon and a gravel ride taking place at the same time. Luckily the different duathlon races were started separately, allowing me to get an idea of where I was in relation to my competitors.

We started in the field in the centre of the forest with a 5km run, I set off close to the front, letting the fastest men go ahead of me and then soon settled into the position of second female. We started off downhill and then continued onto a flat-ish section, which although uneven ground, was preferable to the couple of steep hills that came later on where my pace dropped and another woman overtook me. After a bit more hopping over tree roots and a steep climb, I reached transition, grabbed my bike, a drink and a few jelly babies and was off for the 20km bike leg.

As there were other bike races taking place at the same time, there were lots of bike signs and it was easy to take a wrong turn, luckily I knew the route from my practice session the previous weekend. The ride was all on gravel trails, which I love and the course was undulating, skirting around the edge of the forest before going back into the centre, offering some great views over the valley. I heard “on your right” and another lady cruised past me effortlessly and I resigned myself to fourth female, I lost sight of the other cyclists and spent the last half of the ride on my own. Not having any other competitors around me made it difficult to pace myself but I just enjoyed the ride through the forest and soon came back to transition where I quickly racked my bike and set off for the final leg, the 2.5km run.

The second run followed a similar route to the first but missed out the final steep hill, which I was pleased about! The run went fine but again, I was on my own so found it difficult to get an idea of how I was doing and just tried to go at a steady pace. No one passed me though so I was confident that I was still fourth female when I got to the finish. I came to the clearing in the field and on hearing my fan club cheering for me, I pushed over the finish line and was presented with a wooden medal, which was a nice touch.

On reviewing the results the following day, the lady that I thought had been ahead of me seemingly took a wrong turn and ended up with a much slower bike time so I actually came in as third female, which I was very happy with. Unfortunately, the gps on my watch didn’t connect so I wasn’t able to analyse my performance afterwards but I was happy with my bike handling on the technical parts of the course and definitely realised that I need to improve my speed up hills.

Sarah Hunter