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Come and Give it a GO TRI Duathlon for Limb Power

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Taking place on 24 and 25 October, Limb Power and Cerebral Palsy Sport (CP Sport) GO TRI sessions are an accessible event for both able-bodied participants and participants with disabilities to test their fitness or chase an elusive PB, with all the profits being donated to Limb Power.

“Partnered with Limb Power and CP Sport, our aim is to encourage the participation of triathlon amongst amputees, people living with Cerebral Palsy and able-bodied participants,” said event organiser, Andy McAnally.

The event takes place in Woodford Community Centre, Stockport, and is expected to be attended by around 60 participants to take on either the super sprint, or super super sprint distance. The GO TRI is one of three events out of a year organised by McAnally, as he’s also responsible for both the Manchester Airport and Dunham Massey Duathlon.

“The event is totally accessible. The course is pancake flat, so any participant who wants to join who has any amputations or any disabilities can do so. The beauty of GO TRI is that absolutely anyone can take part,” McAnally explained.

“You can’t really tell that it’s a GO TRI event because you get participants from top to bottom, it’s just like parkrun. You get the people starting at the front who are desperate to achieve a target time and you also get people who just want to make it to the finish line.”

When organising an accessible event, McAnally not only considers those with disabilities being able to take part, but also varying fitness levels and ages too, saying: “It’s so important to have the inclusivity of everybody being there at the same event.

“I get people emailing me saying that they really want to do an event but are looking at next year because they think they need to train before it, but my initial reaction is to say, ‘don’t do too much training, just come and do the one coming up.’”

He continued: “I genuinely believe that the events are accessible enough that you could pretty much pick your bike up tomorrow and get around it, because you don’t necessarily have to be sprinting around the whole time, you could just get around it at your own pace.”

Of course, there is still an emphasis on making the event as accessible as possible for participants with disabilities.

McAnally added: “On top of the accessibility for able-bodied participants, it’s great that we can also look at participants with disabilities and say that this is also for them. There are disabled participants that we’ve seen take part that have had absolutely phenomenal journey’s through the sport.

“We’ve had people who come to us for their first event, and we’ll see them a couple of years later in a GB kit because they’ve caught the bug.”

The event has changed this year, both in format and organisation. Switching from a triathlon to a duathlon, as well as bringing in certain structural changes to align with Covid-Secure guidelines.

Despite this, McAnally has embraced the changed and is likely to carry them into future events, saying: “We had to call off three events throughout lockdown which was unfortunate. Now that we’re putting events on again, we’ve had to change the format, so we run four waves across two days.

“It might take up more of my time, but it also runs a lot smoother, so once the restrictions are over, we’re going to continue operating in the same way. There’s less queuing now. I make a video for the event brief which means everyone comes to the event already prepared.  I’ve made a lot of changes but on the whole, they’ve actually been for the better.”

Find out more here. [https://www.gotri.org/events/go-tri---come-%26-give-it-a-go-tri---limbpower-duathlon_12438]

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