NZSS Duathlon Championships 2019

By Justin Gardner | Posted: Thursday August 22, 2019

Last weekend, James Gardner and Ronan Melville contested the Under-14 Teams section at the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Duathlon Championships.

The event was held at Teretonga raceway, in Invercargill. Their grade raced over a 2.6km run, 10.4km cycle and 2.2km run.

In fresh conditions, Ronan started the first run strongly. Competing against a representative runner from James Hargest, he entered transition less than 2 seconds down.

The battle continued into the bike leg, with James passing the Hargest rider (who is also a competitor at the South Island and National level) on the first lap. James maintained a 20m margin until late into the second lap when this gap was again reversed in favour of Hargest. It stayed like this until the final kilometre where James was able to reduce the margin to just a few metres.

Ronan exited out of transition and out on to the final run only to lose a couple of metres due to a slip on the gravel. The first lap of this last run was very close, with only a few metres separating the two teams. In the end though, the James Hargest runner was able to find a little more in the final 300 metres and took the win by 5 seconds.

An exciting race with nothing in it. James and Ronan competed very admirably finishing a credible 2nd place in a National event.

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