Graeme Cox is a coach and co-founder of Brighton Tri Club, with the club’s winter programme helping to keep their members swim, bike, running all year round.
“We have a track session that we run pretty much year round, but over the winter months of December, January, February, we stop the track and just move to getting as muddy as possible and getting people outdoors.
“Our run coach lead, Ian, is absolutely fantastic on skills and strength development so he does a lot of priming work building up into the winter. That’s been enormously popular.
“There’s a lot of people who spend their whole life running on roads, particularly in a place like Brighton that’s dominated by the seafront. There’s a lot of people who do quality running but they do it on pan-flat roads, so getting them up north of the city into the mud and the hills is positive for them mentally and physically.”
A key factor to club life is the social aspect of swim, bike, running together, with the club helping to ensure that enjoyment and togetherness is a reason for members to come together and get involved with training.
“For a lot of our community, they’re just in it for the fun,” Cox explained. “Getting people out on a bike ride is that much easier if they know there’s a coffee stop at 40km and that there’s good banter along the way, and that the ride is going to be organised and safe.
“As soon as we were able to get people back together again [after lockdown], we saw more and more people coming back together in the club.
“More than anything I’ve seen that return of the energy and enthusiasm and that sense of people wanting to be part of something after the isolation of lockdown has come around that swimming, which I think, of the three disciplines we’re involved in, swimming is the one that people benefit the absolute most from being with others. You never work as hard as if you’re in a squad.”
On top of their training, the club also organise a club championships by making the most of events local to them. This provides a great chance for members to compete but also provide club camaraderie as they turn out together.
“We have our own internal club championships which are focussed on sprint and Olympic distance and they’re all based on races in the local area in the south east of England – Sussex, Surry, Kent is as far as we go,” Cox added.
“That gives us both the ability to provide support to local races and race organisers, and also it means we get the most people possible travelling to those events. We have a really strong turnout for local, south east of England triathlons.
“One particular event that we tend to be able to turn 70-90 people competing in, every year, which is the Southwater Relays which is the only triathlon relay event that takes place in the south east and is a major part of our annual calendar.”
