East Lothian 3 Peaks Duathlon
15th March 2009

There are some simple principles behind a duathlon. For example, you bring a bike; you don’t have to take the bike with you when you run; you have to do some research on a route which is totally unmarked and very tricky; you don’t follow others who seem to be reading a manuscript rather than reading the road; you learn how to mend punctures beforehand (don’t you learn this at school any more?). But the club never follows simple principles and some competitors introduced novel rules of engagement which suggest we should run a competition for wacky innovations for the next event.

It was an almost ideal spring day with a strong tail wind for the cycling and clear skies on the hills, quite a contrast to last December’s snowdrifts at Blinkbonny (I prefer the Blytonesque “Blinky Blonky”, as one competitor thought it). The handicap start made for some interesting position changes on route, especially involving the novelty entries. Richard left his bike at home and ran the whole route across country acquiring an interest in ploughed fields and fish-processing effluent on the way. Bob carried his bike over the three summits as well as in-between. Master Navigator Ewan experimented with simultaneous map-reading and sprinting on the bike, leading to a novel detour via Haddington with Andy on auto-pilot following on behind. The alternative lines tried up Lammer Law showed that there was little to choose between them. Willie and Moira demonstrated uphill tandem power by out-climbing Keith on his own local hill out of East Linton. Punctures proliferated and led to impromptu puncture repair teach-ins on the road. The handicap start led to a good compression of competitors at North Berwick Law, where the timekeepers struggled to keep up with the rush.

Interrogating the wacky entries leads to some interesting conclusions for the next event. Bob Johnson’s attachment to his bike for the Lammer Law ascent gave him an extremely fast descent back to the Blinky Blonky transition. This was offset by the counterproductive transport of the bike to the other two summits. So we clearly need to insist on Bob’s impeccable self-imposed rule for this category; you have to take the bike all the way to each summit to take advantage of the Lammer Law bike bonus. Willie and Moira clearly gained dramatically on the road due to a fresh stoker not encumbered by paralysed legs from running. So if a tandem team has a non-running stoker, they need some extra handicap time to account for this advantage (by contrast, tandem teams with a non-stoking runner will be totally buggered). Richard’s solo pedestrian free-ranging cross-country category needs a neck-implanted chip for satellite tracking of competitors, and breathing apparatus for the Newbyth fish meal plant passage.

The North Berwick Fry fed and watered us very well. Enormous thanks to my hard pressed helpers on what was a minimalist organising machine; Barbel Burns, Bob Waterhouse, Irene Gowrie, Colin Pritchard and others pressed ganged to help with the peak loads.

Keith Burns