Why Age-Group racing is for me

Published:

Guyanese British triathlete Helen Godfrey is a member of the Great Britain Age-Group Team and is keen to see more people get involved in swim, bike, run at all levels.

Racing for the Great Britain Age-Group Team provides British Triathlon Home Nation members with the opportunity to challenge themselves to that next goal by competing against other top athletes across Europe and around the world at Europe Triathlon and World Triathlon Championships.

“I’ve been a swimmer my whole life,” she said. “I was a good competition pool swimmer growing up and carried on swimming for fun throughout my twenties. 

“The idea of triathlon first came to me during a spinning class, (back in the days where not many people had heard of spinning!) as I was enjoying the class a bit too much and daydreaming.

“Someone in the spinning class mentioned you could do a pool version, so I suddenly got it into my head that I could do a triathlon. I booked one and started park running with a friend with 6 weeks to go. I raised some money for Sedgefield Harriers for their ‘Back the Track’ charity and I just got the buzz for it and loved it.”

Having dipped her toe into the world of triathlon, Godfrey jumped in head-first with some friends to complete the ‘Double Steelman’ race as a relay a couple of months later with her taking on the open water swim, something she was a bit anxious about despite being a strong swimmer.

Fast forward a few years and Godfrey had parked triathlon as life took over with children and work. As not a particularly strong cyclist, she carried on swimming and running casually to keep active until rupturing her ACL whilst skiing in 2017.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d ever run again and did rehab really carefully for 12 months before getting back running,” she said.

“My friend was running a winter series of 5km and I just happened to be able to do every single one. I was one of the last people coming in, but the feeling from the marshals, volunteers and friends cheering me on and telling how well I’d done was just beautiful.

“I started running a bit more and doing 10km, and I was asked to be an ambassador for the Great Tees 10K. As part of that a place came up for me to do Stockton Duathlon as an ambassador and feeling that race buzz again, the event village and just getting on and doing it sparked a little bit of wanting to get back into it.

“In February 2019 I dipped under 25 minutes for Parkrun, something I’d been trying to do since 2013. I don’t know what made me look, but I realised that I had qualifying potential for the aquathlon [to represent the Great Britain Age-Group Team].

“I started training harder with a view to qualifying, did an aquathlon that summer and won my age group. I managed to get the swim and run times to submit. Getting the qualifying email from the Age-Group manager must have been one of the most surreal things in my life but that’s how I got into the aquathlon team and it was so exciting.”

Multisport offers a variety of opportunities to combine two of swim, bike and run. With Godfrey taking on aquathlon (swim and run), there’s also duathlon (run and bike) and aquabike (swim and bike), helping to make opportunities to give pairing sports up a go as well as offering opportunities to represent Great Britain internationally in them.

Having qualified in 2019, Godfrey was due to make her debut in 2020 however that was postponed due to Covid-19, with her races again being rolled over from 2021 into 2022.

On the day that Godfrey and the team were due to race in Walchsee at the Europe Triathlon Championships, members of the team donned their kit and went about their day jobs dressed in style and did a photo montage which they shared to the British Triathlon groups.

“They’re lovely [the Aquathlon Great Britain Age-Group Team], and I managed to meet up with a few of them at the AJ Bell World Triathlon event in Leeds,” Godfrey concluded.

“Everyone’s feeling a bit bad in the pandemic that we can’t train or compete properly and that we couldn’t wear our kit, so it was a bit of fun dressing up that day and we had a lot of fun posting our pictures to our WhatsApp group.

“It seems to be a really nice little group, and it bonded us together. I can’t wait to meet more of them as soon as possible.”

Each year, British Triathlon coordinate a series of qualifier races and criteria to enable Home Nation members with the opportunity to qualify to represent the Great Britain Age-Group Team at Europe Triathlon and World Triathlon Championships.

To find out more about the Age-Group Team and how you can qualify to race in 2022, click on the button below to visit the Age-Group webpage.

AGE-GROUP

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