Tri-Anglia Juniors and Youth Club Members
This race report has been written to provide our club members with an update and some information on the junior section of our club. For safeguarding reasons we tend to not publish many photos of them or shout about them too much, but we are very busy, very active and sessions usually run to full capacity.
Specific Junior training session information can be found on the website training page. You can contact our Junior coaches at: juniorcoaches@tri-anglia.co.uk
Norfolk Cross Country Championships
We have just had a big turnout of Junior and Youth Development Squad members at the Norfolk Cross Country Championships. 17 of our awesome members entered across all the age categories from Under 11s to the Under 20’s races. Coaches – Caroline, Matt and Steph were there to warm the younger Juniors up and support them all. They all ran superbly and gave it their all. Very well done’s go to the following:
Bertie, Albie, Noah, Henrietta, Ben, William G, Camilla, Pippa, Seth, Baily, Daniel, Will D, Tom, Tessa, Amelie, Zak and Jack.
The Junior Club
We currently have about 35-40 active Junior and Youth members in the club who attend our weekly run and swim sessions.
They range from 8-18yrs with a huge variety of experience – some being completely new to triathlon, some go out with their families for bike rides, some are improving their swimming. Others are parkrun-ers, school and Norfolk cross-country runners, stronger cyclists, runners or swimmers – even a cold water swimmer!
Some are racing in local and national cycling, running and swimming leagues and in British Triathlon Super Series, Junior East Series, BUCS, British, European and World Multisport Championship races, half ironman events… they really are everywhere!
Several have also trained as Lifeguards for us, one has achieved his swim teacher qualifications and another is now a British Triathlon Level 1 coach!
Our sessions have also supported the physical element of many DofE Awards and helped with GCSE PE assessments too.
They are all absolutely awesome, we love spending time with them and we are very proud of every one of them.
We also have a Youth Development Squad which is a group of our more competitive Juniors who meet once per month for coached track running and swimming sessions. They are highly self-motivated, amazing, young, competing athletes with so much talent and skill.
The club, committee and trustees all strongly support us and we have a wonderful team of coaches who are passionate about promoting and encouraging healthy, active lifestyles and making swim-bike-run fun, accessible and inclusive for all.
Training
Our sessions mostly take the form of weekly swim and run training throughout the year.
In the summer months, we also:
- deliver bike skills session,
- practice triathlon transition skills and have fun in teams with Super Tri style, mini relay triathlons,
- run a water safety session in line with the RNLI Drowning Prevention Week,
- take the lane ropes out and sink some buoys to create a pool/lake and practice open water swim skills,
- coach Open Water Junior sessions at Whitlingham with our Open water swim coach – Sue.
In the winter we:
- meet the Juniors for run training at parkrun and at our Lakeside Challenge social runs.
- support them at running events like the recent Norfolk Cross-Country Championships
- ran our first 2 hour training session in Autumn 2024, with our expert bike coach Chris, to introduce and support our Juniors who are interested in Cyclo-cross.
We have a very fun and full range of sessions to keep our Juniors swim, bike and run-ing!
Events
Last year, Sue and Justin hosted yet another brilliant Tri-Anglia Junior Triathlon at Whitlingham, which was well attended and a lot of fun with an open water swim, off road bike and trail run.
This year, as well as attending our Adventure Tri again, we’ll be targeting a few events in the British Triathlon Junior East Race Series calendar with the aim of competing and supporting each other as a team of Tri-Anglia Juniors.
