Social & Information

Two intrepid Harriers, Heath Reilly and Martin Haigh, travelled to Lancashire on Sunday 5th June to compete in the Rossendale Triathlon. Driving over the Pennines, the rain was beating down and the athletes were thinking the worst, knowing that the Rossendale Tri has a big climb on the bike leg. In the event the weather was not too bad, just a bit blustery out on the course.
Martin was first in the pool having estimated a swim time of 10 mins. This was optimistic as his previous swim time in this pool (400m) was 11:57. However, Martin showed that the couple of swimming lessons he had attended at Brighouse pool had paid off as he posted a time of 9min 48seconds on the day. So he ran out of the pool and on to the bike with a reasonable transition time and headed up the hill.
Just over an hour later Heath entered the pool and posted a fantastic swim time of 6:29. This put Heath in a strong position for placings as he then jumped on his bike and headed North.
Martin battled the winds on the bike and returned a time of 1:02:39 for the 20k course. This time was a little bit down on his previous Rossendale best, partly due to the weather but also down to the fact that he stopped to help a fellow competitor who had a puncture right out at the furthest part of the course.
Heath was enjoying his bike ride until he came across a road traffic accident and had to slow down to be guided round the incident by Police. However, Heath's split time of 56:44 was very credible.
So, on to the run. Trying to run the on road/off road course straight after dismounting the bike can be somewhat challenging but Martin returned a time of 28mins 16seconds for the 5k run. Heath looked very strong on the run and did it in 25:39.
In the end Martin came 140th in 1:40:43 and Heath was 80th in 1:28:52. The winning time was 1:05:22 by Duncan Anderson of Preston. Rossendale is a fairly low key but very friendly event with pie and peas and lots of spot prizes in the club house afterwards. After the race the two Harriers called in the White House at Blackstone Edge to replace the fluids lost on the tri.

Martin in action below and Heath ready for the off.