IT was a very chilly three degrees and clear skies as the sun came up at around 5:30am on Sunday morning and 500 competitors began checking their bikes in for the DBmax 51Fiver standard distance triathlon, including eight competitors from the DRC Tri team from Dursley.

There were three swim waves in the event and DRC had competitors in each of them with the first kicking off at 7am.

The swim involved a 1500m swim in Lake 32, which had a layer of mist rising from it at this time as the water temperature was just under 16 degrees, so a lot warmer than the air.

For Nick Fennell, this was his first triathlon race and also first experience of the washing machine effect of a bunch start in the swim, others reported it being a bit frantic at times until things settled after the first 500m.

Next came the transition from swim to bike, with lots of wobbly athletes trying to find their running legs whilst trying to find their bikes, whilst trying to peel their wetsuits off.

DRC’s Damian Lai, now being more experienced, fortunately didn’t repeat his schoolboy error of removing his timing chip and then forgetting to put it back on, so his transition was significantly faster than last year.

The sun was warming the air by now and 40km later, the athletes came streaming back into transition, this time to switch to running mode. All the DRC competitors passed safely through with no mishaps.

The third and final element was the run, involved a three lap 10km race around the lake, making for good spectator viewing with many chances to cheer on the guys.

Fastest run of the day and first home for DRC was from Zoe Lamerton who clocked up an impressive 47:15.

The final DRC athlete to finish was Sarah Willcox who was competing in her first standard distance triathlon and to say she was nervous at the beginning is a massive understatement, but she did it and with rapturous applaud coming in with a very respectable overall time of three hours 15 mins.

Team results: Zoe Lamerton 2:41:49 AG 7th (0:30:10/1:20/47:15); Richard Lewis 2:41:51 AG 77 (30:13/1:15/52:13); Nick Fennell 2:44 AG 88 (0:32:53/1:14/52:41); Chris Young 2:51 AG 72 (0:30:44/1:20/54:42); Andrew Kilby AG 5th 2:53 (0:36:46/1:19/51:01); Damian Lai 2:55 AG 78 (0:40:02/1:13/53:35); Jo Robinson 3:05 AG 19 (0:29:14/1:31/56:53); Sarah Willcox 3:15 AG 24 (0:35/1:19/1:13)