British Championships Middle Distance Triathlon - The Northumbrian - 28 Jun 2026

Age Group 🥇

Overall 10th

Super pleased with the result, but as ever, lots to work on. Whilst a good result, quite a bit went wrong…

1. The swim was (at least) 400m too long. Which for someone for whom swimming is the weakest disciple, this is NOT good news. Throw in waves from rescue boats that created ridiculous wash and some strong currents, it was not a good combination of events. But, on the plus side, I enjoyed the swim, focused on my breathing and left arm placement, so it wasn’t too bad. Until…

2. On pulling my wetsuit off my number completely detached from my race belt and flung the clippy things all over the place. Thank you to the nice man waiting in the relay pen who sorted my number out as I put my helmet on and got ready for the ride.

3. 43min into the bike my (new) watch decided to have a protest at the hill I was climbing up and froze. Whilst frantically trying to sort out my watch to measure the bike timings (more so for me to know when I needed to eat), I passed an official photographer. Let’s say, I didn’t pay for those photos…

4. 90min of the bike was spent navigating 30mph winds and rain. When I recce’d the course a few weeks ago there were some gorgeous views of the valleys and viaducts. Needless to say, I didn’t see any of these during the race. And that was due to the clouds and rain (not just because I was so dialled in to the bike!).

5. I nearly dismounted straight into a marshal. I couldn’t unclip my left shoe, so rather than doing a flying dismount I had to go hard on the breaks to emergency stop and clip out. Not very elegant. Closely followed by nearly falling over going around the corner into transition!

6. Pouring sticky electrolyte drink over my head during the run. had been told it was water by the lovely volunteer, but it wasn’t, and my whole face and hair was covered in sticky gloopy juice for 80% of the run.

7. I died on the run. I made the mistake of running with two other ladies at a pace that, in hindsight, was too ambitious. The hill (the main 1.5km monster hill, as opposed to the hills all around the route) broke me on the first lap, so the whole of the second lap I was just in a whole world of pain.

Despite these errors, mishaps and misfortunes, I am very proud of myself for finishing, finally winning the British Championship in my age group after two 2nd places. Yes, there were things that went wrong and that I’d have liked to have happened differently, but I’m starting to be more like my 2023 self, I’m hitting better numbers again, and the best bit is that I know there’s still more to do (and get better at)!

Sarah Harding