Offering swim, bike, run sessions through the winter for their members takes on a social emphasis with plenty of opportunity to get everyone involved for Cambridge Triathlon Club.
Whilst the three disciplines of triathlon will always be the focus for the club, helping their members to be engaged and ensure that regardless of experience or ability all of their members can keep active is a key driver for the club.
“Sessions are put out for mixed ability, it doesn’t matter if you’re a 30 minute 5km runner or 17 minute 5km runner there’s something for everyone,” commented Matt Pullen, Chair of Cambridge Triathlon Club.
“What’s quite nice is that we have quite a good social scene. We have ‘long runners on Sunday’ where people can come and go on a Sunday, and distances vary from 15-20km and we can actually end up spending more time drinking coffee than we ran for.
“There’s a good social scene on things like that. Also our swim sessions on a Saturday morning, a huge number of people will stay for a coffee afterwards and some bring their own breakfast just to catch up with like-minded triathletes.”
The social side of club life is provides opportunity for club members to develop their skills away from swim, bike, run, as well as helping to encourage members to get more involved and feel part of the community.
“It was definitely there before Covid, and I can say this as someone who’s part of the Sunday running group, but it used to be a travelling go to a local café and eat cake, and we’ve made it one of our training bases now,” Pullen explained.
“People bring along homemade goods now. Our membership secretary, his baking skills have definitely rocketed up, not that they needed to rocket up as they were fantastic before, but some of the things he brings out are absolutely fantastic. There haven’t been many bad things that Mary Berry would object to I have to say.”
With close to 200 members, the club have recently surveyed the club to find out more about what the members like or feel could be improved, helping them to push forwards into 2022 after a couple of years of disruption.
“There’s a new year, new vigour, especially from the running side. They’ve already done a local county cross country and taken the flag there. They went along to a local multi-terrain half marathon and there was a good turn out there. It’s literally let’s fly the flag for the club at these new events.
“I think with this winter just gone, it’s going to be a busy year and competitions should be back to normal. We’re going to have a full competitive club championships this year, so hopefully everything will go ahead.”
Winter will give way to spring and summer, with the club hoping to have a strong showing at the Triathlon England Club Relay Championships.
“We used to be a good team at the national relays,” Pullen added. “It’s been a few years since we’ve entered teams for those, so if we can get a great women’s and men’s teams out that’d be fantastic.
“Even if we don’t and we can get teams out to represent the club that’d be fantastic too.”
