2010 will see the Perranporth “extreme” surf triathlon in its 23rd year.  I’ll be honest, when I was searching for the “ideal first triathlon” I was looking at the dates and the distances and not much else.  I wanted to find an event of around sprint distance in late summer, and the 2 events which would have been ideal (The St.Agnes Triathlon and the West Cornwall Sprint distance at Hayle) both happen to be on weekend when I have to attend friend’s weddings!

So, scouring through lists of triathlon events I came across the Perranporth Triathlon, hosted by the Perranporth Surf Lifesaving Club.  The date looked fairly ideal – 12th September which gives me a few months to train (and learn to swim properly!!!) and the distances look acheivable – 800 – 1000m swim (depending on conditions), 35km bike and then 7.5km run – easy!  Well, that’s what I figured when I committed to the event here on the blog yesterday.  Now I know that the north coast can be very unpredicatable, and and there’s a good change it will be a rough swim, but there’s also a chance it will be flat calm so I decided not to worry about that – and I know I can manage the 35km bike OK, and hell it’s not even a 10k run!

“The toughest triathlon in the Southwest”

Well, that was yesterday, and since then I’ve been doing a little research on the race, and I have a little more respect for it now!  Adventure Cornwall called it “the toughest triathlon in the Southwest” which sounded ominous, but then I figured maybe that’s because there aren’t too many tough triathlons down this way!

Then I found an article on the BBC website calling it a “gruelling test of stamina” while the Independant had an article stating it was “one of the toughest UK events” and the author wrote after entering the event in 2007 that he and the other competitors were “so weary that we could barely speak, we all wore a look of dazed, strung-out joy, the kind more regularly associated with hallucinogenic drugs”

Oh!  Well look on the bright side, he did use the word “joy” in there!

Finally I stumbled up on this list of the ten toughest triathlons in the UK (according to Scott Bikes and Look) and low and behold there’s the Perranporth Surf Challenge at number 7!

So why does the event have such a fearsome reputation?  Well, as I already mentioned the swim has a lot to do with it.  The Atlantic coast can get pretty rough, even in summer and I’ve lived in the area all my life so I know what the sea can be like.  But it’s not just the swim!

The bike route is 2 laps of a 19 km loop, and being Cornwall it’s fairly hilly.  In particular the first mile or so is a really nasty climb, and you have to do that twice!  One reporter wrote “The 2 lap 40k bike course starts immediately with a 20% climb, has no real flat sections and can be tough in the wind” – nice!

Then if that wasn’t enough, a run of 7.5km might not sound like much, but it’s on sand which means it saps your energy – just want you need at the end of an event like this!

So, I have 16 weeks to prepare myself for this.  It was supposed to be a gentle “dipping my toes” into the sport of Triathlon, but it looks likely to be quite a challenge, and a good taster of what the Ironman might be like next year!  I’ll just keep my fingers crossed for calm water like in this video of the 2006 race:

Tags: Triathlon
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