Gallery: Forest of Dean Tri
Race shots from last weekend's new triathlon in Gloucestershire
This weekend saw the inaugural Forest of Dean Triathlon from Trimax Events take place at Mallards Pike in Gloucestershire. Taking on the super-sprint and sprint categories were a field of 125 racers consisting of first-timers and some hardened racers.
220 raced alongside them in the sprint wave (the race took place within 1km of the unlimited food supplies provided by our in-laws, after all). The swim kicked off in Mallards Pike pond, the first time an open-water swim has taken place in this location, with Geoff Twinning posting the day’s fastest 750m split in 7:36mins.
We followed another 7mins later before our obligatory slow T1 time of 3mins (despite transition being located 4m from the water) the fourth slowest of the day. After surviving the Slateman Full a few weeks before, any misconceptions that the Forest Tri would be easy were obliterated by a bike course, beautiful though it was, lacking a single flat stretch and boasting over 20 climbs in its 21km route.
Damo Littlewood posted the day’s fastest bike split of 40mins on his way to scooping the inaugural FoD Tri title, with a 19:12mins 5km run split confirming the victory. Petra Vymetalova won the women’s event in 1:23mins. 220‘s sub-par performance, meanwhile, after suffering a classic ‘shoes stuck in pedals’ crash on the bike leg, was redeemed somewhat by a 23mins trail run split to scape into the top 70% of finishers.
Overall, even if we failed to achieve our pre-race aim of spotting a wild boar on course, we’d recommended this grassroots race in 2015 for all levels of racer. Head to www.trimaxevents.com for info.
Matt Baird
Editor of Cycling Plus magazine 
