Achieving GB Age Group status was my 2017 goal and this event was epic.

Registration easy in the hotel  I stayed in and lots of other GB aathletes there too. 

Swim familarisation was good to get to see the lake and temp and the Race Briefing in the afternoon sadly lacked and was probably the worst part of the event.

The swim itself was good with a calm and cool lake and easy exit to T1. 
The bike course was basically fast and flat with only 1 real hill to deal with and T2 back in town was well organised as just hand over your bike and move on to the run.

The run course was 4 laps of 5km with 3 water stations equally spread so easy topace and rehydrate regularly.

Finish was well supported and the usual high profile experience.

Overall Age Group racing is expensive in my view but an experience not to be missed if the opportunity arises. Now I have the kit I guess I need to try to qualify again.

Herning as a town was great too and the support (particualrly  on the run) was excellent.

A good course for a PB (which I achieved) and an amazing GB experience.

The main reason for me racing this event is that I qualified to race for GB in my age group in the European championships. To be honest I had never heard of Herning before or even been to Denmark for that matter! Haveing said this i was pleasantly surprised on many different levels. The first thing that struck me was how good the road surfaces are, certainly compared to the UK. 

Registration was easy and straightforward with very helpful staff who were knowledgeable and happy to help. The race briefing was very detailed mainly as it was a championship race. 

The race itself consists of a fresh lake swim ( think the temperature was about 16 degrees). It's almost certainly to be calm as well. The bike looks flat on paper but it hardly feels flat mainly due to the tough winds that is a common feature in Jutland! If it was very windy which is highly likely the bike would be extremely tough indeed!! The run consisted of four laps of approximately 5km around Herning. The support on the run was amazing as you run through cafe lined boulevards where all the locals come out to support the athletes. 

I certainly recommend this race but just potentially prepare yourself for a wet and very windy race. The wind is the main element to consider. 

This was my 1st International and 1st 70.3 event.

I chose this event as a friend had qualified to represent GB in the age group race and I was going along to support, but the news of an open event being run as well led me to book and take part.

Im so glad I did!

Firstly Denmark is lovely and i really dont think ive been somewhere where EVERYONE was so friendly and couldn't do enough to be helpful. It;s also very green and pretty.

We got to our accomadation (a very helpful person at 'visit Herning' sorted this for us) which was located in Herning, a small sleepy town. Well it was when we were there.

We went to the race briefing on the Friday, which was informative but just a repeat of what was in our race packs, which was just as well as the person giving the briefing English was her 2nd (or more) language and it wasnt that clear.

We then went to register which was a short walk away, this process was smooth and we got all that was needed and everything was explained. (Apart from number tatoos, they were being delivered later that day, so we needed to collect later when racking bikes) So no issues there.

We had to rack and deposit our bike and run bags the night before, again this was all clear and straightforward, although struggled to find T2 but it was throwing it down and a tad cold so I dont think we were looking that hard we just wanted to get home and dry.

Race day........ The weather changed and thank god it did, it made the day so much better. We got to the start via coaches laid on, at the lake the atmosphere was buzzing, which was a 1st as it seemed everyone was hiding in their rooms up until this point.

There were waves for the starts, stating with elites, then age groupers. Once they had all gone off, we open racers had one and a half hours to wait for our start, which was nice, the buzz calmed down and my sense of feeling over whelmed by it all calmed down. Our start was going off one by one every 2 seconds, which made for a good start and i wasn't swimming over people or being kicked or punched either :)

Swim was nice, an easy one loop, slightly hard to sight on the long stretch but that was fine. It was a bit choppy in the water as it was quite a windy day.

Out of the water to T1 was fine and as expected, got my bag into the change tent, then out to bike, I did get a telling off (i didnt read the no running bare fee holding shes rule) but the official was very nice and just gave me a ticking off and then told me to enjoy the rest of the race ( told you they were all nice).

Bike route was flat with a few rolling hills but nothing of note, i was on a relatively new TT bike and was worried about hills but i needn't of, it was a lovely scenic ride but it was a bit windy. It was heavily marshalled, and there was no oportunity to get lost ( it happen to me often). The roads were not closed as we originally thought, but this made no difference in my opinion as there were so few cars on the road. The traffic lights were ignored and marshals controlled the flow through the lights so i did not have to stop at all. The marshalls were brilliant. There were two re fuel stops at 30k and 60k i didnt use these so cant comment.

T2 was just as it was supposed to be, grab your bag and change in the tent and run......

The run, I'm never going to be very positive about the run, I hate running and am very bad at it, I did not recce the run route so went out blind really as to what it was like, I knew there was a long out and back and a run around the town and we needed to do this 4 times. After running it once i decided the out and back was the best bit it was the only time you could get any sort of rythmn going the part in town was so twisty turny, and there was a sharp, short hill up over a flyover, which was a killer. But it was was it was and i was glad to get on tot he fourth lap.......Now the finish, that was something else, Im a bit of a slowbie so i finished later on in the day, but you wouldn't have thought that, the finishing shoot was packed out and the support was amazing, It was one of the best finishes. In fact the support around the run route was very high and i really take my hats off to these people who stay around all day to do just that! 

Will i do it again, yes! Only thing that stops me going back to Denmark is my wish to visit other countries, its definitly one to do.

The 2017 edition of Challenge Herning was to be the ETU Middle Distance Championships, and from the wide variety of posts on social media in the build up, plus the big name sponsors that they managed to secure (Garmin, Red Bull, Tyr, 3M to name a few) I was sure they were going to put on a spectacular event.

I arrived on the Thursday (with the race being on Saturday), and was surprised at how little sign there was of any race going on. There was a big banner in the main square, but walking around the town centre, it didn't have the same buzz as other events I've been to, which I found especially odd, given that it's a championship event, with close to 2,000 competitors descending on a place with a population of about 50k...

On the Thursday afternoon I popped out to recce a bit of the bike course, and there was nothing to indicate that there would be a race in 2 days time. None of the usual signs up warning traffic, or spray painted directional signs on the road, though I did see T1 being set up (it was a split transition race). As I made my way back in to town, to where T2 was to be, I couldn't actually work out where it would be at all - again, no sign of anything.

Friday morning saw me head out to recce the run course. Again, no real sign of anything, despite there having been a 5k fun run the previous evening, following the same course. I couldn't work out the final part of the run loop from the map, but I knew it went through the centre of the library (yes, through the library) and figured it would be alright on the day.

The swim recce went much better, with it being one simple loop around the perimeter of lake Fuglsang, with plenty of orange (albeit small) buoys marking the course - four larger buoys were put out for the race itself.

The briefing was a bit haphazard, with rules being changed from what had previously been advised (including a 20m draft zone on the bike, and that it wasn't going to be a closed road race), and a general lack of clarity about what was required. They did take questions from people, but despite being asked several times, didn't repeat the questions when providing answers, so unless you were within earshot of the person who had asked the question, it was pretty difficult to know what was going on.

Registration was a bit of a faff. They didn't have all of the bits (streetwear bag or number tattoos) until the Friday afternoon, so couldn't give everything out, and it was held in a pretty small room upstairs in the main event hotel, so got over-crowded incredibly easily.

For some reason, the organisers decided it would be a great idea to give the number tattoos out at bike check-in, which would have been fine in theory...but it was chucking it down, so I know lots of people whose numbers were completely spoiled as they got so wet. Thankfully I managed to get mine in a waterproof bag sharpish, so didn't have any issues myself.

In terms of T2, we had to have everything in our bag that we needed on the Friday evening, as there wouldn't be any access to this on race morning. I encountered loads of people who were really struggling to fid where T2 was - it wasn't very well marked on the map or signposted at all. When I found it, I was surprised, and somewhat worried, to find that there was next to no security. Anyone could get to the bag racks (my other half just wandered in with me, and there weren't any fences up at all)

On race morning itself was the first time that I felt any real atmosphere - probably helped by the fact that it was the first time the sun had come out. There was a real buzz around the swim start, with a stage with live band playing. The start process was really smooth - the male pros went off at 10am on the dot, and every wave followed from there. They managed the entry to the water process very well, but didn't communicate that the warm up area was only open up until 5 mins or so before the first wave went off (which seems silly, considering some waves weren't going off until close to an hour after that!)

Once in the water, it was great - a clear, flat lake, with plenty of buoys to follow, and plenty of marshalls to ensure safety. Swim exit and T1 were great too, with carpet laid down over the whole of the transition area. The bike mount line was really clear too, with a giant inflatable gantry marking the point.

The bike was the part of the day that I was worried about the most, thinking that a 20m draft zone and no closed roads was going to make it impossible. I was comletely wrong, however. The bike was probably the best part of the day. The course is beautiful, though the fact that it is pretty flat (gently rolling at worst) makes it windy at times. The roads that the course followed were very quiet, so we didn't encounter much traffic, and at every junction, there were marshalls controlling the traffic, so that we never had to worry about stopping, or even slowing down really.

The aid stations (one at 30km and one at 60km) were great, with plenty of stock and the volunteers were fantastic. They had water, isotonic, and energy gels.

The only criticism I would have of the bike was that there weren't enough draft busters. I'm not sure if because I'd started so close to the pros, they were focussing their efforts there, but I only was 1 bike, and only saw that bike 3 time. It didn't seem to do much either, as there was some definite drafting going on!

In to T2, and it was a case of hand your bike over to volunteers, rather than having to rack it yourself, which was great. 

Then out on to the run, which was a 4 lap course, with 3 aid stations per lap. The run is deceptively tough - you have to go over a spiral bridge, which is a killer on your quads and joints in both directions, followed by a long, straight out and back, and a technical final section with a few short but stepish ramps, including the section through the library.

At the end of each lap you were meant to be given a band to signal hw many laps you'd completed. The marshalls manning this were absolutely useless. Other events I've done that have this setup have different funnels for you to run down on the different laps, but here, they had a few marshalls who were giving out all of the bands. I tried, from a long way back, holding fingers up and shouting to indicate which lap I was on, but it was always a last minute scramble to get it sorted. I missed one as a result, but thankfully it didn't cause any issues when I got to the finish.

Most of the aid stations were great, but when I got to one of them on my second lap there were no volunteers there. Literally none. This was the first station out of T2 as well, so I saw a number of people coming out on to the run who weren't able to get any water etc for that first stint.

The atmosphere at the finish line was brilliant, with crowds 3 deep. This was perhaps because the run course took up so much of the main walkway that spectators were forced in to being so tightly packed!

It was in the post-race organisation that this event was really let down. it was reminiscent of what I'd heard about the 2016 WTS Leeds. I thought I'd pick up my bags and bike straight away after finishing, seeing as not many had crossed the line by that point. They were operating a system (to start with) where they had a table set up, you queued, gave your number, and they sent a runner in to the underground car park where the bikes and bags were being stored to retrive your items. Haing gone through that process, I was told that my bags from T1 hadn't arrived yet, the runner came back with my bike to run bag only (I'd said that I didn't want my bike at that point).

Fair enough - I went to find my family, which was easier said than done. Navigating around the town centre was chaos. They had one temporary bridge over the run course, but it could only accept traffic going one way at any one time, which caused absolute carnage. about 15 minutes after having set off, I finally made it the 200m or so I needed to travel...

A couple of hours after finishing, I went back to get the rest of my stuff - managing to find a route avoiding the carnage (which did involve having to squeeze through a part of the fence that I shouldn't have!). By this point, they had given up on sending runners for people's stuff, and it was a free for all. Anyone could head down to the car park to pick up their stuff, and then queue to sign it out afterwards. So, down I went to get my bits. Still no sign of my bags. I asked a marshall if there were any more deliveries to come, to which I was told "probably". Probably? Not 'yes'?? Thankfully there was another delivery, but by now they were just dumping the bags in any order, rather than sorting them numerically. Eventually I managed to get all of my stuff, and make it away.

The post-race festivities were also great, with a number of bars in the town centre, plus they also put on an official after party, with an outdoor stage/DJ/bars, and a real party atmosphere in the town.

Overall a good, enjoyable event. Will I be back next year? Probably not, but it's an event that is worth doing, if they can fix the simple issues (I also wouldn't travel for more than Friday-Sunday)

Loved this event. Lake for the swim is beautiful and had a fantastic atmosphere at race start with live music and commentary. 2 laps with Australian exit for full distance. Buoys a little difficult to spot with low sun, but marshals excellent at helping out. Bike course on beautifully smooth roads, well marshalled, so no problems with the small amount of traffic - felt no different to riding on closed roads. Denmark is flat and roads open, so wind is a factor to contend with - we had headwind for 140km! Definitely a course for aero bars.

beautiful and varied run course - 6 loops for the full distance and plenty of places for supporters. 

Based at Lalandia - think quality Center Parcs - with everything on-site created a great atmosphere and ideal for friends and family coming to support. Legoland is also within walking distance.

Brilliantly organised, brilliantly marshalled and refereed and fantastic atmosphere. Would highly recommend.

The whole event was super well organised and it was a lot of fun from beginning to end. Having a split transition can be very difficult with lots of logistics to over come but in Denmark they made it so easy for everyone. There were regular shuttles from billund to herning on both Saturday and Sunday which took you directly to the race venue. They dealt with everything so well and after the race all our belongings were waiting for us at the finish line.

The race itself was beautiful. The lake was warm and the water was super clean. The bike course is flat and fast, also 93km which is great for anyone who loves biking. The run course is filled with spectators as you complete 3 laps around Lalandia where the finish line is bit you also run through a Billund town where a live band is in action. 

All in in all I highly recommend this race. It's very easy to get to from the UK and flights are cheap. Take the whole family and you can explore Lego land and have fun in Lalandia after the race. I know I'll be back next year