Thanks, MARSHAL!
Open-road racing, cold-water immersion, maximum exertion. There have always been risks in tri, but with the C word never far from anyone’s thoughts in 2020, trying to organise swim, bike and run fun has never been a more serious proposition. As the triathlon season would usually be petering out, the UK scene is finally returning to racing, knowing that to instil any confidence for next year it can’t afford any missteps.
Organisers have talked a good game but when the masks are off (or on, in this case) will it work? To find out and earn his volunteering stripes for the weekend, 220’s Tim Heming travelled to Nottinghamshire’s Thoresby Park where Outlaw X marks the spot.
FRIDAY
3pm In late spring, as the world reeled and organisers wracked their brains as to how triathlon could ever return, I spoke to Iain Hamilton, the founder of One Step Beyond about its flagship events. If there was just one race he felt confident to deliver, it’d be Outlaw X. The brand’s year-end jamboree that debuted in 2019 has found a welcome home in the sprawling grounds of Thoresby Park, and Iain believed it could tick every socially-distanced box the government asked.
And so it’s proved. This year’s event, despite being in a spectator-free 1,000 acre bubble, feels momentous in every sense. Not just the enlarged transition, the $15,000 prize purse put up by the Professional Triathletes Organisation to make it a de facto middle-distance champs for British pros, nor the spotlight on the Covid-safe protocol that, like a melee at the first turn buoy, might not survive first
