At the beginning of the year I had this triathlon firmly on my ‘must-do-list’. The Wenlock Olympian Games was founded by Dr William Penny Brookes in 1850 and sparked the rebirth of the Olympian movement and the modern Olympic games. The games have numerous events as you would expect and has been running for 125 years. And yes, the official Olympic mascot is named Wenlock due to these games. I took part in the triathlon and won the event outright…

I was one of the last athletes to start the pool based seeded swim and got to work on the 500m swim leg. I was feeling good and lapped the guy in the next lane twice (I had the fastest swim split of the day).

Out on the bike I let the Merida fly. The first third is mainly downhill so I was tucked in the aero position and pedalling as fast as I could. As the descent was not especially steep and had numerous corners I was pleased to be hitting +70k/h. The rest of the course was definitely undulating including a rather nasty 15% climb! I later found out that some people were forced to walk the climb – I was just thankful for researching the course and swopping my cassette on my bike to give me a few more gears.

The run is quite long (to be considered as a sprint event) and is held on a mixture of surfaces. You start on an over grown disused railway track. This made for some comical ducks just before you got carotid by a branch! Once you leave the trail it is uphill for 2k on the road until the turn-around point. Just before this I saw a friend about 0.5k in front, this definitely spurred me on. The return leg generally follows the same route back so I just put everything into the final leg, winning by 5 seconds overall.

A great event with a lot of history:
www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk

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