About

Welcome to Triathonline – your one stop shop for information, tips, equipment and clothing to help you perform to your best and achieve greatness in triathlon. You will find articles and product reviews about all things triathlon-related, and get great deals on swimwear, cycle clothing and running gear, as well as equipment to help you in your training.

So whether you are a beginner or a veteran, and whatever distance you aim for, let Triathonline help you be the best.

About Me

Hi folks! Glad you found my site and I hope you find something interesting here to help you along with your sports, whether you’re into the full on ironman triathlon and other ultra-endurance events, or whether you just love swimming by itself, or cycling or running.

My name’s Neil and I’m a lifelong sports fan and participant. I would classify myself as a ‘try-athlete’ rather than a ‘triathlete’ mainly because my swimming is atrocious, and I am currently bikeless after wrecking my last bike in a crash with a car. So basically that leaves running, which is something I’ve returned to after a fairly long absence due to career commitments over the last decade or two.

So my background starts back in high school, where I got into athletics, soccer and men’s field hockey. My athletics events were 100 metres and 110 metres hurdles. In competition, I was seriously bad at the 100m and good to average at the hurdles, although our school only competed three times – I won twice and came second in the other race.

As I moved into my late teens I started running half-marathons, and ran three of them although I don’t have a clue what times I posted for them. I think at the time, all I wanted to do was finish the course, and I never did any training for them – just turned up and did them, and spent the following week walking backwards due to stiff legs!

I never raced on my bike – at least that’s what I always told my parents because I’d have got an earful otherwise; you know things about safety this, and danger that. But I spent a serious amount of time in the saddle, and rode in charity bicycle marathons followed by a nice bike ride as 26 miles was nowhere near enough.

At 18 I went to uni and moved into other sports-type events, mainly martial arts, which I pursued for the next 20 years, but I regretted giving up on the running and the cycling. Then I got a mountain bike (which I hated) but had a crash and destroyed it a few years ago.

Me sneaking a glance at the next pesky hill-climb during the Huddersfield 10K. (Photo Copyright FlamingPhotography.co.uk. Reproduced with permission.)

Last year, having reached the age of 40, I took up recreational running again, and haven’t looked back. It’s now something I absolutely love doing, and I’m looking forward to competing in loads of the competition and charity runs around the UK, and maybe even further afield if I get any good at it. So far this year, I have a couple of 10K runs and a half-marathon in my sights. I’ll report back here how I get on.

And I discovered a phenomenon last week called ‘parkrun’. Apparently, they don’t like it spelt ‘Park Run’ or even ‘Parkrun’. A bit picky, huh? But anyway, I love it! It’s a weekly timed 5K time trial run in local parks all over the UK, as well as Denmark and a couple of locations in Australia. I seriously encourage you to look it up (http://www.parkrun.org.uk) and if there’s one in your town, go and give it a try. I wrote a blog post about my first one here. It was great fun, and very sociable.

So that’s me. Hope you like my site. I’ll post times for my races etc here from time to time, hopefully to see (and demonstrate) my progress – and apparently, in my early 40s I’m classed as a ‘veteran’ according to parkrun. The cheek of it! Not even a ‘senior’; you’re past ‘senior’ and over the hill when you reach the decrepit age of 39!

Anyway, I really hope you enjoy my site here at Triathonline. I’m always adding new stuff, so feel free to come back often.

Neil

Races, Results and Stats, Etc

parkrun Events 2012

Event #	Date	Position	No. of Runners	Time
46	2/4/2012	104	205	26:21
47	2/11/2012	80	190	25:58
48	2/18/2012	95	179	27:23
50	3/3/2012	117	276	25:40
51	3/10/2012	119	275	25:41
83	10/20/2012	113	263	26:14
84	10/27/2012	119	270	25:37

parkrun Events 2011

Event #	Date	Position	No. of Runners	Time
8	5/21/2011	35	108	27:31
9	5/28/2011	26	109	25:44
11	6/11/2011	40	122	25:33
13	6/25/2011	33	92	25:33
21	8/21/2011	49	105	27:14