TurnAround: A grand day at Grand Desert; Cyclesmith 25

A grand day out at the Cyclesmith 25 Duathlon was had by all today. After seemingly six weeks of rain (Noah had less), the clouds parted for this event's silver jubilee.

Exactly 100 athletes toed the duct-taped line across Rte 207 at Lawrencetown Beach for the off; 85 in the main duathlon, nine youth and three teams of two. As predicted, the main race was stacked with talented athletes with the winners of both this years duathlons (Evan Pemberton and Jamie Haynes), two Cabot Trail Relay leg winners, past provincial champions and a ringer from Montreal.

In contrast to previous years, where the overall leader led out from the gun (or horn or whatever) this year wasn't quite so one-sided. Montreal's Garry Mathieu and our own Gerrad Lewin led the main pack in off R1, closely followed by a pack including Shawn Amirault, Mark Campbell, Dan Thompson, Matt White, Jamie Haynes, Alan Miner and Denis Choquette. Evan quickly exerted some dominance over the field on the bike, converting a 20 second deficit on R1 into a two minute lead by T2.

Behind him there was, regrettably, some silly buggers going on, with quite the pack being reported to TD Pat MacDonald. We'll cover the drafting rules in a post soon, but for now, let us just say some people were lucky the TD was not in a red-carding mood.

However, on the plus side to such shenanigans, we are lucky our races are attracting such a deep field!

Speaking of drafting, we were amused to hear one of the officials "officially" advise athletes to "pass aggressively". Of course, what they meant was once you go through, don't immediately slam on the brakes but keep your speed up. But of course, what we heard was something different, as "passing aggressively" to us means overtaking someone then throwing a stick in their spokes!

So much for sportsmanship and fair-play!

Back to the race, and Evan extended his lead on R2 to finish in 1:37, some five minutes ahead of Gerrad Lewin with Garry Mathieu another thirty seconds back.

If anyone is counting, Garry Mathieu posted the fastest R1, Evan the fastest Bike and Lee McCarron, who we think was one of the CTR leg winners this year, the fastest R2.

In the ladies, former provincial champion Suzanne Ferrier, looking natty in her Team Canada skin-suit lead from gun to tape. She was closely followed into T1 by Ellen Klein and Brigitte Sabourin, there were only seconds in it, but she pulled out a two minute lead on the bike and maintained that on R2. Behind her, Hali Bauld came through Brigitte on R2 to take third, behind Suzanne and Ellen. Meanwhile, Micheline McWhirter came in 5th, but posted the fastest ladies' R2.

Big thanks to RD Paul Shaw in his traditional orange hat, Cyclesmith, Paul's volunteers, Gary and Mary from Atlantic Chip Timing and the officials from TNS for making the event happen.