Monikie Country Park, near Broughty Ferry, is a great venue for hosting a triathlon (indeed the British Championships were held there a few years ago) and we were blessed with great weather. I travelled up with Neil’s wife Seona Burnett (who was competing for Pentland Triathletes) and we both agreed that the field looked strong*, relative to recent events in the Borders Series.
*Based on arbitrary factors of bike bling, representative age-group tri suits and the tall/skinny gauge so favoured by Jim Hardie when assessing athletes.
The swim was in the smaller of the two reservoirs and it was in two waves, around a looped buoy course with an added channel at the end. It felt longer than 750m, but the long-ish run in to transition through woods could have added to that, and certainly the swim times were longer than, say, the Solstice Tri. The bike leg was a road bike effort on country roads, with some tricky climbs and head winds with a lovely 5km run to finish around both reservoirs.
A great event, well organised and it did indeed prove to be a strong field. I was 71st from 139 finishers (swim: 131st (ouch!), bike: 46th and run: 11th) and Seona was 110th (swim: 117th, bike: 114th, run: 80th). Monikie Tri 2015 Overall Results
There is a limited set of pictures here (sorry if you’re not on Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.1073275622701963&type=1
Mike Lynch