On Sunday 5th September, three Imperial athletes, Danny Bellion, Richard Winchester and Josh Butler competed in the Helvellyn Triathlon – recently reported in Triathlon 220 magazine as being the toughest in the UK. Captain Danny Bellion recounts the story:
The alarm woke us at 5:20 in the morning. This would be perfectly normal had it been during term time but not on a weekend during the summer break. The reason was in a few hours we would be competing in the gruelling Helvellyn triathlon. It consists of a 1.6km swim in a lake followed by a 60km cycle around the Lake District including some savage climbs with gradients over 20% and, to cap it off, a 15km run up and down Helvellyn, the second highest mountain in England.
Helvellyn
Of course we had not gone unprepared. A few days earlier we had travelled up to the infamous Big Hill (where Will Todd found out to his amazement that there were in fact roads north of Oxford!) for some altitude training. After a long cycle on Friday, Richard Winchester was telling us about the importance of carb loading for endurance events, “According to my high five energy supplement it says the best way of carb loading is to do a few minutes of exercise followed by taking in carbs and repeating the process”. It was therefore decided that the best way of doing this would be a night out in Lancaster where a few minutes dancing followed by a VK apple was thought to be the optimum formula. On Saturday morning, Richard reported that he "had felt better”. Saturday was mainly spent resting although we did find time for a short swim session (ok jumping off rocks into a river) before eating our own body weight in pasta and heading off for an early night.
It was at 8:29, one minute before the start that I began to wish I had done more swim training. Bobbing around with 700 other competitors in water that the race organisers claimed was 16 degrees, 1600m suddenly felt a very long way. A few minutes into the race I was convinced I would not make it and even caught the eye of Richard who, when temporarily along side me, was thinking exactly the same thing. We both eventually got into a rhythm and started to claw back some places. Meanwhile Josh Butler was way up ahead and emerged from the water in 41st place after just 26 minutes and after a lightning fast 55 second transition was off to face the bike leg. In contrast, Richard who trailed by 6 minutes had a more casual approach to transition, taking time to decide which energy bars to take with him and which songs should be on his playlist. Finally, a further 4 minutes behind Richard, I finished the swim and set off in pursuit on the bike.
There is one hill on the bike route that is known as “The Struggle”. Apart from a small flat section in the middle its gradient is consistently around 20% for about two and a half miles. Tom Bell, who was watching the race from the top of The Struggle, along with Will Todd and Seitse Braakman, recounts the story; “We watched the first few guys come up and they were all on time trial bikes with aero helmets. Then we saw Josh who was at this point laying in 10th place overall”. When Josh reached them he even had the energy to raise his arms and say “where’s the steep bit then?” Josh’s jovial attitude was not shared by those around him, “About halfway through the ride I asked another guy how long we had been riding for and he shouted back “why don’t you get a bike computer” so I told him I couldn’t afford one. Richard and I enjoyed huge amounts of cheering as we reached the top as the others had convinced half of the crowd to cheer for us. It was then straight downhill back to transition.
To describe the third section of this Triathlon as a run is a bit inaccurate. It’s more of a fast walk/scramble/using your hands to climb across a rock face. People usually take a day to walk up and down Helvellyn; we were aiming to do it in less than two hours. However we all made it to the bottom with Josh coming in first out of the three of us in 4:18 which put him 53rd overall (605 started and 580 finished). Richard arrived shortly after due to a super fast run in 4:24 which was 79th overall and I finally arrived (greatly delayed by my inability to run down a mountain) in 4:59 which was enough for a solid 265th. We were all pleased with our performances and although completely spent, we enjoyed it and have promised ourselves to be back next year.