Anyone have any experience of something like this;

linky

Any good? What have your experiences been like?

I appreciate this one has gone for this year…

Did a two duathlons a few years back, I am a pretty good cyclerist and an average runner I would say… First run was fine, bike was fine (sorted everyone out on that, came back in 2nd I think) but MAN did my legs feel like jelly/empty when I went for the 2nd run!!! Coming off the bike and back into running is harrrrrd in my experience! So yeh, just remember to leave some for that last run as excited as you may get on the bike 😉

Its hard not to go like the bike stage isnt a race all on its own and blow up on the last run.
Alot of fun in a im going to throw up in my shoes in transition kinda way.

I’ve done a few but I’ve mainly done triathlons.

Running after the bike is weird, practice it before you do an event like this!!

I’ve done a few. Some can be good fun with racers who know what they are doing, others can be full of people who’ve never ridden off-road in their lives and are a hazard to trees. 😆

I’d echo what they’ve said ^^^^ about the last run. Your legs will feel like jelly.

And don’t do what I did in my last one… I went out for a nice meal with my wife, Saturday lunchtime. Couple of glasses of wine. Later on just a beer or two. (Genuinely, I didn’t drink much either at lunch or later, but..) Early start the next morning so I didn’t feel like breakfast. It was a couple of hours drive to the start and I found that I’d left my food and water at home. Of course I blew completely on the last run and basically crawled across the finish line. When I thought back I realised that I hadn’t drunk any actual water since the previous morning… I’ve done far too many races to do stupid things like that, but I still do them. (The stupid things, that is!)

others can be full of people who’ve never ridden off-road in their lives and are a hazard to trees

😀
This I can vouch for. I can’t go round a corner to save my life, but in the one event I did, I became an offroad demigod compared to triathletes + mud 🙂

I did a couple of the Human Race winter series events earlier on this year. One was ok – on some army training course in surrey. Basically two 5k laps of a course which climbed 6 different sides of a steep little hill which made me seriously want to vomit. 3 laps of a 6k bike course, then 1 lap of the run course again.

I was middle of the pack on the first 10k run, made up 30 odd places in the biking, because, as others have said – most of the duathletes couldn’t corner for s**t. Lost a couple of places on the second run because my legs were shot after the ride and I couldn’t take the hill climbs again.

The second event was awful – sending riders around churned up fieds in thick mud. Couldn’t run, couldn’t ride. It was not fun.

That looks like a good race.

I did an off road duathlon in January down by the SE coast, so was on waterlogged terrain.

Road run about 2 miles along the promenade, then 2 laps of mostly flat waterlogged tracks on farmland behind the seawall, then 1 cross country running lap of the mountain bike circuit with 5 water filled dykes to cross as well.

Do some brick sessions beforehand so your used to the change over from cycling to running, also elasticated locking laces are a good time saver. I also used the bike session to take on fluids, running with a bottle drives me mad.

I unwittingly ended up at Whinlatter on the same day as the duathlon last year. Looked like a tough event, but probably more fun as a run than a ride – lots of long queues backing up the singletrack, not many opportunities to overtake.

I find any event that combines different sports dumbs down each of them, so these events often serve up average trails. I would absolutely love a technical run and technical ride offroad duathlon, but they seem to be very few and far between. Its a shame, as lots of mtb singletrack is good for running so it shouldnt be hard to set something good up

Most events off road have been pretty good. With regards to the courses the bike has to have elements where overtaking is possible so you cannot have it as all single track and techy down hill, it is a race after all.

The best advice is to practice the run after a ride. There are quite a few guides on how to do this so see what works for you.

They are often very relaxed and supportive races, so be prepared to ask to get past people, if you are faster, or pull over if fast guys come past. That goes for both run and bike. Often the faster guys tell you what they are doing and ask to go past, but don’t expect you to do it in daft, or dangerous places.

Do it and have some fun.

Thanks for the responses. Still sounds like a good idea, but much practise required at the actual discipline.