Duathlon Fans – are you doing the double ? National Federation, have you entered your teams ?
April has arrived. The sun is supposed to be shining and we are all looking forwards to the warmth of the summer months after a long winter.
For some, the focus will be swim / bike / run but for others it will be run / bike / run. Duathlon is not an easy option and with off-road options available we are seeing an increase in popularity in all distances.
Sprint, standard and long-distance and even the mighty Zofingen event with it massive climbs and tough run courses are waiting for athletes to sign up.
First up this year on 11th & 12th April will be the 2015 Horst ETU Powerman Long Distance and Sprint Duathlon European Championships. With a change from the old course Horst will see medals decided over the long distance for Elite, Para and Age-Group athletes. The first run will be 10 km (4 laps), then 60 km bike (3 laps), and a final 10 km run (4 laps). Horst, as a Powerman City will also host the Sprint Duathlon European Championships for Elite and U23 athletes. This will be over a shorter distance of Run 5 km (2 laps), bike 20 km (2 laps), run 2.5 km (1 lap).
The duathlon focus then moves to Spain where medals will be decided over the weekend 25th & 26th April amongst the Elite and U23 and Age Group athletes over the Standard Distance, for the Juniors, Para-Athletes and Age Groups over Sprint Distance and finally the fast and furious Elite and Junior Mixed Team Relay.
It will be a busy weekend in Alcobendas where the LOC has worked well with the city to deliver a full programme of races, will culminate in the visually exciting relay races. Every time the relay medals are raced for we see the athletes going just that bit faster; just that bit harder to make sure that their team, their country, gets maximum benefit from their hard work.
There is still time for national Federations to enter their teams for the relays and with the massive amount of athletes from all over Europe this will really be a showcase finale to the weekend. If you want to race for the share in gold, silver and bronze in the Mixed Relays, the LOC needs to know. Point of contact for the event is jorge.garcia@triatlon.org
All athletes in the Alobendas event will receive a rather special souvenir. What is this going to be ? Well, the announcement will be made on Monday but inside information says it will be pretty good. In addition you can pre-order a commemorative T-Shirt that will have all the competitor's names printed on it.
Long, Standard and Sprint distances over two weekends. Will there be any athletes racing at both events ? If we find any it would be great to run an article about their motivation.