East Fife Triathlon Club
Press Release
16 July 2020
Undeterred by a global pandemic East Fife Triathlon Club has been stimulating its members with various innovative initiatives, both during lockdown and increasingly as lockdown is eased.
Both the club committee and the coaching team have been encouraging adults and juniors alike to feel they are members of a club by offering online classes in strength and conditioning and in spin, to ensure that muscle tone wasn’t lost. These have been supplemented by run training programmes, so that members could maximise use of their daily exercise allowance, and fun challenges that saw members acquire skills in handstands, skipping and balance.
Now that lockdown is easing and people can travel further afield the coaches have been coming up with innovative and entertaining ways to encourage cycling, including exploring lesser known parts of Fife.
There is an ongoing treasure hunt where a member will place a club buff somewhere in Fife, photograph it, and post a clue for club members to hunt down. Once found the buff is placed in a new location and the hunt starts again. It’s socially distancing whilst getting members out on their bikes, and it’s fiercely competitive, while being great fun.
Last month the club ran two virtual cycle events, first encouraging members to gain as many metres in elevation as possible over a distance of 25 miles, the winner being the person who climbed the highest, and the second asking cyclists to gain the least height. This required considerable planning and took members to new parts of their local environment.
Last weekend saw 16 members participate in a “3 activities challenge” (Swim Cycle Run), based around a swim in the rock pool at Cellardyke, an 18k cycle and a 5k run, each member recording their own time. Club President Alasdair Hood said that “it was a fantastic feeling to think you were in a race again. The only difference is that you were on your own, as you were given your own personal start time.”
The club is looking forward to restarting its main coached activities again when we can and will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2021. Our anniversary year will include an exciting new adventure triathlon race as well as our usual Cupar triathlon, one of the most popular races in the early part of the season.
If you’d like to join a local, friendly club that both provides a fun and supportive introduction to triathlon and has members racing at elite level throughout the UK and internationally or just race at very non-elite levels locally contact eftchair@gmail.com.