Kona Land of the Yeti Duathlon

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The only way is down - Day Two - Namche to Lukla

Press Release / 01.11.2008

Yesterdays stage had took its toll on the Kona Yeti duathlon. Nearly all the competitors awoke with aches and pains in various locations and needed an hour or so to get sore and stiff muscles working.

Today's stage started with a 700m sandy/rocky descent, which was as hard on the quads as going up, but at least everyone was able to breath normally!! Ian Sharman was gunning for a stage win, hoping the lower altitude would work in his favour and was in the lead at the bottom of the first descent. Unfortunately, even after 10 days at altitude he wasn't as acclimatised as Dipak Raj Rai (HeatmaxUK) and the first real ascent saw him slip into second place. He did, however, put in a sterling effort to hold onto that place, beating third placed mountain runner Jabir Rai into Lukla by over 6 minutes.

Dipak covered the 630m of climbing over 10 miles in less than 2 hours and came in to Lukla with a cumulative time from Gorak Shep of only 4 hours and 54 minutes.

Ian Jones, recovering from his cold, did well to come home in 4th place but still over 60 minutes behind the leaders.

Various ailments slowed the remaining international and local entrants with Chandra Chhetri, carrying an old knee injury, bringing up the field in over 5 hours.

Tomorrow the mountain biking starts but with some very technical sections and over 1000m of climbing it will be interesting to see if the more experienced mtb'ers can claw any time back on the elite runners.

Results for Day 2

1 Dipak Rai (Heatmaxuk) 1.51
2 Ian Sharman 2.11
3 Jabir Rai 2.17
4 Ian Jones 3.09
5 Phil Evans 3.19
6 Joel Watson 3.42
7 Chandra Chhetri 5.17

Top 3 places as on Day 2

1 Dipak Rai (HeatmaxUK) 4.54
2 Jabir Rai 5.51
3 Ian Sharman 6.26See All Event Posts