MICHELLE Parsons claimed her first national title of 2003 by winning her age group duathlon category at Swindon last Sunday.

It was the Vale athlete's third age group victory out of the season's three national ranking series events.

Last weekend's race started with a 10K run which the Evesham entrant completed in a time of 38 minutes and 37 seconds.

At this point she was holding a two-second lead in her age group race over last year's winner Elizabeth Lumber.

That advantage was extended over the hilly 38K bike course to 16 seconds ahead of the final 5k run when Parsons' stre-ngth came to the fore as she lengthened the gap gap to 21 seconds to finish the course in two hours 19 minutes and 37 seconds.

This represented an improvement from her 2002 time of almost 17 minutes!

Parsons has now confirmed her place in the Great Britain Age Group team for the World Duathlon Championships in Switzerland in August when she will be joined by husband Phil who also managed to gain selection to the male age group team by claiming the sixth and final qualifying spot in his age group category on the same day.

Evesham's former rugby club captain completed the course in a time of two hours seven minutes and 31 seconds.

Lee Perry of Tri UK was in action at Sun-day's Malvern Sprint Triathlon and would have secured a top finish but for a technical infringement that saw him disqualified on the bike section of the race.

Perry also suffered at the hands of an errant official in the swimming pool having to complete an additional 50m in a counting error.

To his credit he kept going and finished strongly on the run when he recorded the second fastest time of the day.