Nick Saunders, our roving long course specialist, was down in deepest Somerset this weekend at the UK Ironman 70.3 race. Here's his report on the race and we have also compiled a PicasaWeb photo gallery and loaded some video footage of the race onto Google TV.

I raced the UK 70.3 event over the weekend in Exmoor, I think it is safe to say that it is one of the hardest, if not the hardest half Ironman course in the world. Not many first timers are put off by this fact, I am not sure of the exact figure but a large proportion of the field were doing this distance for the first time.

I knew it was going to be a tough day of racing from the end of the swim...

There were only about 15 pro men and 10 pro women entered and we set off in the first wave at 6am sharp. The swim start went well because of the small number of athletes in our wave and I tried to hang onto the lead group of four which included Stephen Bayliss, Fraser Cartmell, Paul Ambrose and Julie Dibens but the pace was a bit to fast for me so I settled into the second pack and came out the water in just over 24 minutes, about 1.40 down from the leaders. I used my Orca 3.8 for the second time and had a much better swim, it really is comfortable and one does not overheat in it, I find the shoulder flexibility good and it does not tighten my shoulders.

Once out of the swim, that's where the fun starts! You are confronted with the first of many hills on the course leading up to the transition, it's a 400m run uphill, and then you're out onto a two lap bike course, again it is straight into the hills while trying to recover from the run to the transition. You don't get much time to do this as it is undulating the whole way and it is hard to get into a rhythm and stay down in your aerobars as one is always getting out the saddle to climb. There are two very steep climbs on each lap, they are not long - not more than 500m, but on our second lap we saw a few people even pushing their bikes up the hill on their first laps!

I rode the first lap with Challifour and Neyedli, Lebrun rode up to us towards the end of the first lap and we then we caught Bayliss at the start of the second lap. Ahead of us were Gilfillan, Ambrose and Cartmell and it would stay this way until the start of the run. We started our run nine minutes down from the the leader as I headed out with Bayliss and Lebrun for the three lap course with second and third place about five minutes ahead.

We ran the first lap together, each taking turns at the front, and we were making up time on the leaders. I started to feel like I needed to go to the toilet at the start of the second lap, I tried my best to hold this off, but to no avail, and was forced to make a stop at the next aid station. I thought that if I kept running it would result in the obvious and could possibly make Bayliss and Lebrun run even faster to get away from me so it was a lightning fast pit stop and then off again having lost about 40 seconds.

I tried my best to catch up but was unable to and ended up finishing sixth, one up from last year and a few minutes quicker in 4:30. Fraser Cartmell held off his chasers for a gutsy win, Gilfillan took second and Ambrose third with Stephen Bayliss was fourth, feeling a bit tired after his great result at IM Brazil, and Lebrun fifth.

It was a good result for me after my race in Austria, I am trying to build on my results each race this season, and now it's off to Belgium for the ITU European Long Course and then to France to train leading up to the ITU World Long Course in July.

Safe training and racing.