Ulverston Tri Club to hold inaugural children’s triathlon at Salt Ayre

Ulverston Tri Club will hold their inaugural child and youth triathlon event later this month at Salt Ayre Leisure Centre.

As well as it being their first event for under 18s, it will be the first time that the club have held an event at Salt Ayre.

Around 70 people between the ages of eight and 18 have already signed up to participate in the triathlon, which takes place on Saturday July 15, and there’s still time to enter!

The event starts at 11am, beginning with a pool swim in the 25m indoor pool, then a tarmac bike section held on the traffic free Salt Ayre criterium circuit and finally a run on the track in the athletic stadium.

A medal and a gift will be given to each participant on the day, with additional prizes for the top competitors in the female and open category groups for the different age groups:

(Competitors will enter into the age category that they will be in on December 31, 2023):

TristarStart (age 8): 50m swim, 1.5km cycle, 600m run

Tristars 1 (age 9-10): 150m swim, 4km cycle, 1.2km run

Tristars 2 (age 11-12): 200m swim, 6km cycle, 1.8km run

Tristars 3 (age 13-14): 300m swim, 8km cycle, 2.4km run

Youth (age 15-16): 400m swim, 10km cycle, 3km run

Junior (age 17-18): 400m swim, 10km cycle, 3k run

Entries cost £25 if you’re a British Triathlon member and £26 if you’re not. Entries close on Wednesday July 12 and you can enter through SiEntries, by logging in https://www.sientries.co.uk/login/login.php or registering for SiEntries https://www.sientries.co.uk/competitors/register_details.php

Joanne Percival, events organiser at the club since 2019, spoke to Beyond Radio about the event.

“There’s quite a lot of interest from the different triathlon clubs,’’ she said.

‘’We’re very inclusive and open, I had someone contact me because she was worried her daughter couldn’t swim the distance for her age category and wanted her to drop down an age group so that she could just have a go.

“We’ve also got young people who represent Great Britain in their age group taking part so there’s a massive spread across the different participants, from people trying it out to people who already represent Great Britain.

“These kinds of open events take a lot of effort and we’re only a small club, so we do about five or six events a year. This is the first children’s event that we’ve done, usually we run duathlons and triathlons for adults.”

The club chose to hold the event at Salt Ayre due to its safe environment.

“There’s loads of local triathlon clubs that people can get involved with. Most triathlon clubs will do coaching sessions with you if you’re a club member, and that’ll be paid either as part of the membership fee or as a small extra amount.

“All triathlon clubs have dedicated and qualified coaches that will help people train for triathlon and run sessions for bike, run and swim and also they’ll help out with transition [from swim to bike and bike to run], which people sometimes forget to train for.”