Jennifer Roussel approaches the finish. (0716150)

IAN SCHOLES and Katrina Thomson were the individual winners of the first of this winter’s duathlons.

Bright sunshine greeted the 44 competitors at the Portelet startline but temperatures were a chilly 2C with added wind chill for the Guernsey Triathlon Club organised event.

The set distances for the series are a two mile run, 12-mile bike, followed by a second two-mile run. All told it represented a good test of the entrants’ winter training regimes.

The men’s race was very competitive with less than two-and-a-half minutes separating the top five.

Scholes led all the way, always just holding off Matt Dorrian in second and Jonathan Greenfield in third.

It was a tight race for fourth, with Richard Stapley eventually beating the very fast finishing Adrian Thorley to the line by 10sec.

Thomson dominated the women’s race with an excellent winning time of one hour and four minutes, which placed her seventh overall.