Gavin Hastings, Terry Christie, Frankie Barron, Steve Reeve, Nell McAndrew, Ian Cruickshank and Chief Executive of FirstGroup, Sir Moir Lockhead.

A ScotRail train driver from the Aberdeenshire town of Keith led his team to a second place finish at Britain’s most famous duathlon, the First Monster Challenge.

The gruelling event for teams of four saw 44 year old Steve Reeve and his team-mates run and cycle around the entire circumference of Loch Ness. With 275 teams in total taking part, Steve was delighted with a second place finish.

He said: “The ‘First Flyers’ did extremely well – we are very proud of our efforts and are still buzzing from the event. In 2008 we finished the event in third place and we thought we might have a small chance of finishing first this year. It was not to be – we were around 12 minutes behind the winners – but we are delighted to have improved on last year’s time and finishing second is a real achievement.”

The First Flyers completed the 120km course in a time of five hours 47 minutes. The team consisted of team captain, Steve Reeve (44); Frankie Barron (44) from Keith; Iain Cruickshank (51) from Keith and Terry Christie (35) from Banff.

Also competing in the event were two well known faces – rugby legend Gavin Hastings and arguably the UK’s fittest celebrity Nell McAndrew. The pair were in a team of four called ‘Beauty and the Beasts’. Speaking after the event Nell, who was competing for the third consecutive year, said: “This event is almost as tough as running the London marathon! But its great fun, very well organised and has a tremendous atmosphere. I don’t think we were ever really in with a chance of winning, but we have done wonderfully well to finish in 9th place with a time of 6 hours and 28 minutes.

The winning team, The Great Glen Grunters, from Inverness finished in a time of 5 hours 38 minutes just falling short of/ the course record by three minutes.

Organisers FirstGroup, the UK’s largest bus and rail company, hailed the First Monster Challenge a resounding success with the event attracting a sell out 275 teams (1,100 competitors). Chief Executive, Sir Moir Lockhead, said: “Congratulations to Steve and his First Flyers team. They deserve special credit for finishing in second place – lets hope they can go one better in 2010.”

He added: “I am thrilled that the event has grown so quickly and has proven to be so popular with the participants. Our Monster events in 2007 and 2008 were tremendous, but 2009 has surpassed our expectations. Although we have yet to calculate a grand total, tens of thousands of pounds has been raised for our charity partner, Save the Children, and other good causes.”

The First Monster Challenge, which has been officially accredited by the British Triathlon Foundation, consists of teams of four. Each competitor is required to complete two legs of the eight-legged event – one 10km run and one 20km cycle.

To access the results in full or for more information about the First Monster Challenge, log on to www.firstmonster.com