In the East Midlands region, PACTRAC (Peterborough Area Combined Triathlon Club) is one of the longest-running and most active clubs.

Organisers know how easy it is for non-elite participants to struggle in keeping up their pursuit over the long, dark nights, outside the regular season. Undertaking a gruelling swim, cycle or run can be daunting enough on a sunny day, let alone on a freezing night in December.

Scott McLeod, chairman of PACTRAC, is well aware of this problem across the sport and at the club but has hatched plans to keep people involved. He said: “I have had to stop worrying about the weather, but it is quite hard. Anything that is outdoors during these months is going to be very weather dependent.

“The consistent training we can do is for swimming, but we also hold other training events during the winter time as well.

“We are lucky in that we also participate in a local running competition with other clubs during this time in Cambridgeshire and east Northamptonshire - the Frostbite series. This involves running on a mixture of terrains and gives some of our members that competitive element.

“We are starting to hold weekly turbo sessions, they are usually very popular once the weather does close in. It is about getting a regular group of people along to these things and then I find it grows organically.”

McLeod believes ensuring members still have some form of race to attack is crucial, but participants also just want the chance to interact with their peers and not face the struggle of training alone during this time of year.

In his words, “they end up being social gatherings as well as training gatherings.”

PACTRAC also don’t want to solely protect those training from the outdoor elements. Through innovation they have kept members racing out-of-season.

McLeod explained: “We also host winter aquathlons, as we are lucky enough to have access to an outdoor pool.

“The aquathlons involves a set swim in the pool, getting out and dressed in as many clothes as you need to add, then going for a 5km run. So we do that and introduce a bit of fun to it, for example, running the second race as a handicap dependent on the time from the first race.

“That keeps the interest high and keeps people active. Most like having that racing element involved, even if distances are shorter than in summer.”

In recent years PACTRAC and McLeod, and other tri clubs around the UK, haven’t just had to deal with losing members to the winter months. Multiple Covid-19 lockdowns has led to drop-outs, but the chair is confident his club is over the worst.

“It has been difficult building up membership again post-Covid,” McLeod added. “We dropped to around 60-70 members after the first lockdown.

“A lot thought ‘there is no point re-joining’ if you can’t train with others. So both ourselves and the rest of the clubs had various ideas about getting people back in.

“I am hugely encouraged by how it has picked up over the last few months. We have essentially doubled our membership which is great. People are still making enquiries as well.

“While that may slow down slightly during winter, we hope it will increase again in the spring.”

Like everyone involved running clubs like PACTRAC he knows the importance of his coaches. He added: “This is all down to the dedication of our coaches and them giving up their spare time.

"The coaches have to allocate a block of time every week, and I recognise their sacrifice, it is really important that we keep the number of coaches as high as we can. That is crucial to this club.”