I figured that Gregg Shrosbree would be racing and also saw that a mate of mine, Steve Ferguson holds the course record so I knew it would be fast. I had got to know Gregg in 2011/12 when I helped him find a place in a French cycling team and its been fascinating to see him now making a strong move into Pro Xterra racing and building on his background as a triathlete. His swim is really string and he' s an Elite mountain biker too so his 5th place at last years Xterra England was, although a significant breakthrough, no surprise to me.
I had of course figured that in order to beat Gregg i'd need to get rid of him on the run. Once the two of us were shoulder to shoulder I tried a couple of times but actually we were running pretty evenly and so we came into T2 together. Things stayed pretty close for the first half of the bike with Gregg maintaining a gap on me with he took out of T1 but then he extended to enter T2 with just over a minute over me. I clawed this back to 60 seconds by the finish and it was a well earned win by Gregg who took Steve's course record by 12 seconds in the bargain too.
We pushed each other on and both had a great race as a result. I'm looking forward to seeing Gregg develop in his first year as a pro and wish him all the best. The ladies race was won by the evergreen Helen Dyke who must by now have won more races in the UK than me by now. Well done Helen and well done to the Results Triathlon team for serving up a Christmassy Dorset treat.
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