The curtain-raiser on the local triathlon season is the Southwell Sprint Triathlon held in May and the season closes with the Last Minute Triathlon held over the same course as the May event.

In May, Hudson won her age group with a time of 1:16:59 and bettered this by over two minutes to take her unique double with a time of 1:14:51.

Hudson’s performance rounded off a busy three weeks of competition as two weeks earlier she had completed her first middle distance race in the Vitruvian, and just one week earlier had delivered a fast time in the Robin Hood Half-Marathon in Nottingham.

Best performance of the day came from Chris Dale who finished fourth overall in the men’s race with a time of 51:43, which was another improved time over the 55:14 he posted in the May race.

This result gave him second place in his age group (M15-19).

This race saw debuts at this level for the Goodyear brothers, Callum and Harry.

Callum (16) was racing in his first adult men’s race and posted an excellent time of 1:03:01, which gave him seventh place in the Male 15-19 age group.

Callum’s younger brother Harry teamed up with Gemma Barnett and delivered a personal best 400m swim time of 6:32.

Under race rules Harry’s age prevented him from cycling on the road so Gemma took this leg and posted a personal best cycle time of 55 minutes, leaving Harry to finish the race with a run time of 20:26.

Also racing in the team event were Abigail Hallam (swim), Jayne Broomham (cycle), and World Championship competitor Hannah Mulcaster (run).

Ami-Dolls

Running as ‘The three-Ami-Dolls’ Abigail, Jayne and Hannah took second place in the Team category with a combined time of 58:08, beaten only by a strong male team that posted the fastest time of the day (49:00).

Anton Newell and Steve Melhuish continued their friendly rivalry and both posted identical times of 57:36, with Newell just shading it on fractions of a second.

This result placed both Newell and Melhuish in the top 30 male finishers, and gave them both fourth place in their respective age groups.

A strong presence from Mansfield Triathlon Club was completed by Mike Jones (1:00:37), Chris Shooter (1:00:51), Barry O’Sullivan (1:04:36), Sarah Hutchinson (1:05:55), Sean O’Sullivan (1:07:33), Ian Burdis (1:08:00), Lewis Bilzon (1:15:36), Michael Bird (1:25:30) and Steven Kerr (time not accurately recorded).

Of these performances, Hutchinson’s time secured her third place in her age group (F30-34).

The local triathlon season has now come to an end but the racing is not over.

During the winter period many local triathletes will be competing in duathlons (run, bike, run) and local road races of varying distances.