Turbo highlights & key dates
Lots of various bits to cover; the AGM & committee roles, HOP weekend swims, Monday night Turbo sessions, a welcome to new members, the Club Championship standings, a Caz Buckland appreciation post & the Halloween Relays.
Club AGM
Please hold the date for Monday 18th November at the Anglers (not just the formalities of the accounts & election of officers, but also a chance to review the year’s highlights and a darned good social). We do have a few key roles to fill to ensure smooth running of the club; please take a few moments to read Rob Hart’s attached note on the role details. Hopefully there will be a few of you with a little time & energy, who’ll volunteer to help put back into the club.
Weekend swims
These have now transferred from Shepperton to HOP. If you haven’t already, download the YMCA SPG app & register; this will give you a Member Number (accessible via Account). To link you to Turbos, we need you to enter this membership number to your Spond membership details. Very minor one time set-up. Thereafter in the YMCA app, there’s a Clubs section, choose TTTC Weekend Swims and select the day you’re heading.
Monday night Turbo sessions
A reminder for those not in the WhatsApp chat that the Monday night sessions have started again. Though the session is run around a Zwift workout (with group bounding so everyone stays together regardless of the power you’re putting out), you just need to have a smart trainer to join and Nick will guide you the session via Zoom (so much more motivation to do as a group).
For those on Zwift, make sure you’re following “Nick Cox TTTC” in Companion – to help Nick in sending out the invites, please add TTTC to your moniker & join the Zoom call minutes in advance of the 18:30 start (so Nick can admit you). Accept the meet up request in Companion (or when opening Zwift), join the meetup & then follow the instructions through the Menu > Workouts to select that week’s chosen workout.
Huge welcome to our new members (month of BOGOFs).
Of the recent triallists to sign up, we’ve have Alice Pengilly & her dad, David, who’ve been done triathlons at Dorney earlier in the year, but encouraged to trial by Caoimhe. Katie’s friend (and fine swim / runner) Anna Johns has now persuaded her dad, Gareth, to trial. Very simple, invite a new member who stays with the club 6 months, and on request, you’ll have a month’s membership refunded.
Relatively new to the area, Lowri Crimmins & Tom Savage, the latter who’s already eyeing an Ironman for 2025. And finally, Pierpaolo Sidoti, who’s fresh from the European Championships in Vichy and finalising his prep for the World Championships in Torremolinos, where he’ll be joining Jess Rusby, Will Harding & Lauren Steadman.
Club Championships
We’re into the final weeks of our season, with only Bushy Parkruns, Rob Hart’s Cascais 70.3 and the various Torremolinos and Kona world championships to count. On the women’s side it’s a very simple equation – if Jess can finish within 107% of the Age Group winner in Spain, she’ll take 100 pts for the best Olympic performance and share the title with Nicole on a perfect 400 score (would be a fitting result for two such fine triathletes). It’s a fair indication of how much more active club members have been that we’ve had 20 men & 7 women who completed the 4 required different disciplines (compared to 11 & 1 last year).
Results
Great to see a fabulous Turbo turn-out for Parkrun’s 20th anniversary, with Tim’s 19:10 giving him an 80.87% age grading to just sneak into the lead. At Kingston on Sunday, Oli ran a 1:58 achieving his sub-2 target, but pride of place to Gordon Reid, finishing 4th in the 10k with a big new PB of 36:26 (whenever you’re ready to come fully back into the Turbo fold big fella!)
With the international qualifiers all done, looks like we could be sending a decent Turbo contingent to Istanbul for the European Championships. Caoimhe & Will have qualified for both the sprint & standard distance, Ryan in the standard, with Richie on the waiting list.
It’s been fair to say that Turbos have displayed more than a fair amount of resilience this season; from Thomas completing an Ironman five weeks after appendicitis. Ryan completing the same Ironman after a month of debilitating illness; then having been in an ambulance with hypothermia at Weymouth, ending up in an ambulance again in Almeria (taking on a brutally hot off-road cycle, without his inhaler, the airline having lost his luggage). It would have stopped most, but Ryan got back on his bike & decided to continue with stages 2-4 the following day!
However, I don’t think anyone can touch Caz Buckland. 8.5 days to cross the Pyrenees TWICE, navigating your her route for most, following specific parcours (including off road) for other. The strict time cut-off meant there had only been 3 women complete last year. On the first night she lost 12 hours waiting for the one local bike to reopen to replace a shredded type & playing catch-up on next to no sleep for the remainder. 2,000km with 40km of climbing – ultimately beating the cut, finishing 4th woman, 27th of the 32 finishers from 105 who set off. Just mind-blowingly nuts and awesome in equal measure.
Social events
We have the Halloween relay returning on Weds 30th at track, followed by drinks in the Alexander Pope; Lauren has promised to join; would be great to help her celebrate her Paralympic success. The fancy dress relay is very simple; teams of 3 to be drawn from the cauldron on the night, each runner running 3 legs of 666 yards (approx). Given I’ll only be returning on the Wednesday morning, I’m likely to be dead to the world (less make up required then, I guess), hence looking for a couple of volunteers to help run this & cajole support.
Also, if anyone fancies pre- World Championship drinks in the Beech House after training this Thursday, I hope a number of others could be tempted to join.