Triathlon at Sunderland.

[Chris Hobson]

The weekend of July 29th & 30th saw the UK heat of the World Triathlon Championship Series at Roker Beach Sunderland. This event took place at a convenient location for myself, wife Liz and her sister Jill as my daughter Hannah and her partner Rob live just up the road at Seaburn. So we have been sleeping on sofa beds at Hannah's gaff for the duration of the event. Non of us were taking part this time as we are all getting too old and knackered so we attended this bash as spectators only. On Saturday we saw both the men's and the women's Olympic distance heat, finding a good place on the side of the road. Both events were won by France. This triathlon series works a bit like F1 car racing as there are heats in different countries and the competitors gather points throughout the season and the big prize is awarded to the contestants and teams that have the most points. This time some of the top GB triathletes were missing which was a little disappointing. In the evening, back at Hannah's house we watched the action again on the telly. Interviews with some of the competitors provided us with the revelation that the North Sea is cold. On day two we had grandstand tickets to see the four person relay. In this event teams of four MFMF each do a super sprint triathlon before tagging the next team member to do the same. Despite fielding a slightly weaker side GB came second behind France and ahead of Norway in third. The grandstand was slighly disappointing, we had a really good view of the transition area and a partial view of the swim but had to settle for watching the rest of the action on a giant telly. Altogether we had a great weekend, we all clocked up sixteen thousand steps on both days too.