Coach Patrick’s triumphant Tri

●● Marc Evans, Oliver Major, Toby Hamer and Lee Collins of Rossendale Triathlon Club GRAEME COURTNEY

NO fewer than 11 Rossendale Triathlon club members travelled the short distance to Salford on Sunday to compete in the Salford Triathlon at Media City.

This popular triathlon offers competitors two distances, Sprint and Standard. Sprint being a 750 metre swim, 20km bike and a 5km run whilst Standard doubles these distances to 1,500 metre, 40km and 10km.

The swim takes place in the surprisingly clean waters of Salford Quays while the bike and run course are multi lap circuits on partially closed roads in and around the Media City and Lowry Theatre complex. This provides competitors with fantastic support as they pass family and friends on a number of occasions.

The stand-out performance of the day goes to club head coach Patrick Walkington who finished the standard distance race in 17th position overall and 1st in his age group with a time of 2 hours 17 minutes.

A handful of club members finished with similar times, Marc Evans: 2:32, Toby Hamer: 2:36, Oliver Major: 2:38, Lee Collins: 2:43, Andy Nurney: 2:55 and Charlotte Hartley: 2:57.

Andy Kellar finished the standard distance race in 3 hours 21 minutes and in her first attempt at a standard distance triathlon club secretary Margaret Mannion came home in a solid 3 hours 22 minutes.

There was an inspirational performance ●● Rossendale Tri Club’s Alex McIver from club member Ian Connolly. Ian could hardly swim two lengths of a pool this time last year and here he was attempting a 1500m open water swim.

Ian started to get cramp toward the end of the swim but despite this carried on and had a strong bike section where he was overtaking a number of competitors.

However, three miles in to the run a recurring knee injury forced him to retire. Ian was far from disappointed saying “I reminded myself how far I’ve come in such a short space of time.”

Michael Hilton was the only member doing the Sprint distance and he posted a fantastic time of 1 hour 23 minutes giving him 12th place in his age group.

Alex McIver took on a triathlon at completely the opposite end of the scale!

The Snowman triathlon in North Wales, billed as one of the toughest triathlons due to the hilly bike and run routes and unpredictable weather.

After a 1 km swim in a lake called Plas y Brenin competitors then faced a 70km bike route with 1200m of ascent. Straight off the bike after a final 6 mile ascent into a headwind Alex started the run.

This part of the U.K. Is known for its hills and mountains and the organisers had planned a route which went straight up Moel Siabod, so this turned out to be more of a walk up the boggy mountainside and a jog back down for the total 10km.

Alex finished in a great time of 6 hours and 26 minutes and jokingly said: “It was worth going to the top of the mountain for the lovely view.”