We now have our new swim and cycle coach - Anna, who is taking us for Spin classes at Ratho Climbing Centre on Thursdays. Times and costs on the Training Timetable page.

If you are unable to make the spin classes, we are offering our club turbos out for hire for the winter, at a cost of £10, £5 of which will be returned if the turbo is undamaged when it comes back. Catherine Barr is in charge of turbo, hire, etc, so please contact her regarding this.

More club news is in our latest Newsletter.

Most of you have probably already received a note from Norma regarding Club membership renewal for 2010/11. For anyone else thinking of joining, please see our updated Membership page.

We have sourced and designed some new club kit which is going to be available from Endura (an excellent manufacturer of sportswear). You should have received an email about this, please reply to Verity as soon as possible if you would like to order something.

We also have some of our Pentland Triathletes technical tops available for sale, these are the black short or long sleeved shirts with our logo on the front and back. Current stock levels are as follows:

• Short sleeve tops; 4 x 34"/1 x 38" @ £17.00 each
• Long sleeve tops; 2 x 34"/2 x 36"/2 x 40" @ £18.00 each

If you would like one of these tops, please contact Norma Bone.

Our club AGM is on Sunday 21st November (note the change of day from Saturday) at 19:30 at The Grey Horse Pub in Balerno.

This year we are having a Pub Quiz after the AGM - Euan is hosting it. All partners and friends are welcome. The pub has given us the room on the right hand side of the front door for the evening.

Our most recent event was the Tri-a-Triathlon on Saturday 6 November 2010. This was open to members and non-members. See the Events page for details.

We were lucky to have the best of the weather of the weekend, it was bright, dry and hardly a breeze. Apologies to anyone I blasted past going up Mansfield Road - remember, I skipped the swim and just did the cycle and run. And a special mention to Frank and Ali (& anyone else?) who did the whole event in a wet tri suit at 2°C in November - that was a bit brave for Ali going by the post run shivers!

The club committee recently had a meeting in which we discussed various matters, some of which you will be aware of from emails that have been sent out. I have detailed below a brief summary of activities we were looking at that hopefully more of us could participate in together as a club, e.g.

• Putting some teams together to do a half ironman at Aberfeldy 2011, i.e. a runner, open water swimmer and cyclist. It would be really good to get a few teams in from our club.
• Frank is going to regularly lead cyclists out after swimming on a Saturday morning, i.e. approximately 0845 departure from Balerno High School.

Some of our members have had some great experiences over the summer months: a first triathlon, two members completing Half Iron Men, marathons run, and cycles from London to Paris in 3 days. Congratulations to everyone who has accomplished a goal and got the t-shirt.

As a taster of two of these accomplishments Euan and Frank have written about their different experiences:

So after a year learning how to swim in the 'slow' lane at Balerno I ventured to my first 'tri-a-tri' at Stirling University with Caroline Dunn.

The whole experience was excellent. I watched the good tri athletes do their stuff, including an old football colleague who won the vets and came third overall. As I watched him transit from bike to run it looked so smooth and easy - well, that was until I tried it as I'd never practiced a transition!! God I thought - do my legs ever actually start running.

Out of 124 'athletes' in the novice race I came in 65th. 114th in the swim (and how chuffed was I that I actually came out of the pool before 10 others!), 56th in the bike and 21st in the run.

I was absolutely knackered as I crossed the line (Caroline waited patiently for me to finish) but the sense of achievement was great and recovery time was much quicker than I expected. So all in all, a great day and now I'm hooked.

In Athens to present at a workshop on company start-ups, I took advantage of the Hotel's central location to 'do Athens' before the meeting began at 9 am. I was out well before dawn and the dreadful traffic that blights the city and ran to the Lykavittos Hill, the top of which is the highest point in Athens.

It's an easy 910 ft climb through a park with mature olive trees and the panorama of the coast and mountains in the distance and the city laid out below was particularly breathtaking as dawn broke. The Parthenon on the Acropolis Hill looked magnificent with the early sun casting deep colourful shadows. I was the only person there except 2 smartly uniformed soldiers who with great ceremony despite no-one watching them ran up the Greek flag on the flagpole outside the whitewashed St George's Chapel.

Taking careful bearings, I set off for the Acropolis Hill. A few miles later, I was at the locked gates into the park- disappointed as I had hoped to run up the Hill to see the ruins but the park doesn't open until 10 am. I circled the hill and got lost in the maze of streets, churches and ruined temples eventually ending up at the central fish market just as it was closing - a barn of a place that was an assault on the senses. Then back to the Hotel before the conference - 9 glorious miles.

In Rome on holiday, Elaine Scott and I left our spouses still asleep and continued our training for upcoming London and Edinburgh marathons with a Sunday dawn run. The additional benefit of this is that we did the sights without any jostling crowds and traffic.

We jogged the 2 miles past the Forum to the Coliseum and ran around it- it's a magnificent structure with the 3 teirs comprised of from top to bottom: Corinthian, Ionic and Doric columns. Just around the corner we ran around the Circus Maximus whilst thinking about chariot races (Ben Hur). From there we ran past the La Bocca della Verità (Mouth of truth) familiar from Roman Holiday (Peck and Hepburn). Then over the Tiber by bridge; bad form for a Triathlete- I should have swum across but the river was in spate and a rather frightening colour and consistency (old fiats and pizza boxes).

Down the Via della Conciliazione to St Peter's Square which was empty apart from a few Swiss Guards in their harlequin suits. Back past the Castel Sant Angelo (you know, the one from Angels and Demons) then over the Tiber again and to the Pantheon (not allowed in as shorts not a suitable attire for a church). Then on to Piazza di Spagna and up the Spanish Steps and eventually getting lost a few times before finding the Trevi Fountain, back to the hotel. About 8 miles but took nearly 2 hours as we kept stopping to take photos.

Swimming
The last swim session is on June 26th @ 0730 as usual, and will form part of our Tri-a-Tri morning.

Unfortunately it is also the last session that will be coached by Neil as he is emigrating. For those of you who have attended Neil's sessions, you will be aware that he has been an excellent coach, but we hope to replace him with someone equally as good for the September term. We will keep you updated as to start dates, etc.

Remember if you don't pay for a block of swim sessions up front (this gives you a session price of £4.00), you can still come along and pay £5.00 on the door which is still extremely good value for an hours coached swimming.

Tri-a-Tri on 26 June
Ali will be sending out an invitation to come along to Balerno High School on 26th June for one of our famous Try a Tri's. An informal sprint level Tri for everyone at whatever level to have a go at, and take as seriously or relaxed as they wish. It is also an opportunity for you to bring along friends/family to join in and check out what this Triathlon stuff is all about.

As a club we pride ourselves on post event refreshments, so it is definitely worth coming along for the post Tri cakes, etc. Hope as many of you can come along as possible.

This informal get together on the 26th replaces the Open Water Triathlon we had hoped to host this year, but due to the work at Threipmuir, and the extremely low water levels we have been unable to organise this. Hopefully this Open Water Triathlon event will be reinstated in 2011.

Events
We thought it would be nice for us as a club to focus on some specific events that as many club members as possible participate in, and to 'fly the Pentland Triathlon Flag'.

This is short notice, but there are quite a few of us doing the Edinburgh to St Andrews cycle ride Saturday 19th June, the start point for this is Inverleith Park at 08:45.

The Eyemouth Triathlon comes highly recommended and it would be good for as many of us as possible to target this in our training, enter it and get it in the diary. It is on the 26th September and is part of the Triathlon Border Series. To find out more go Border Sport & Leisure Trust.

It would also be good if you are able to participate in these events for us all to wear our club shirts. Don't forget you can buy long or short sleeve club shirts.

Summer Training

• Whilst the Saturday morning swim sessions end for summer on the 26th June, we are going to use Wester Hailes swimming pool on a Monday night between 20:10 and 21:15 which offers lane swimming for £3.00. It will be self led, but it will be nice to bump in to familiar faces who can urge each other on, and compare Scottish sun tans through the summer months.
• Tuesday evening cycling will continue. We leave Foulis Crescent (Juniper Green) @ 1900, meet up with other cyclist @ Balerno High School @ 1915 and go for a nice cycle - the distance of which varies depending on the weather and amount of light. User friendly to whatever level of cyclist you may be.
• All the running sessions with Harmeny continue throughout the summer holidays, which is great.

Club Meetings
We held a club meeting last Sunday evening which it was good to see so many people at.

If you fancy coming along to our next meeting it is on 22nd August at 1930 at the Riccarton Arms in Currie, it would be great to see as many people as possible.

One of the topics we discussed last Sunday was whether we should develop a junior section to our club which Ali Gordon is looking in to. If you do have any views on this idea, drop her an email.

AGM
The club recently held it's AGM to review 2009, and to make some plans for 2010. By the way, we now have a new venue for club meetings which is in the Riccarton Arms, Currie. Part of the agenda involves stopping the chat to take orders for a round of drinks and more crisps. Everyone is welcome to club meetings, and the next one is at said pub on 21st March @ 1930 - so come along and join in - the more the merrier.

At our AGM we concluded that 2009 had been a quieter year for Pentland Triathletes than previously, particularly as we didn't have the focus of the Balerno Ladies Triathlon in the summer. However, the clubs training schedule was felt to have been consolidated during 2009.

Training Timetable
Please check out the revised training timetable on our website to ensure you are not missing out on anything.

Highlights to seek out are our new swim coach on a Saturday morning at 0730 @ Balerno High School (BHS), who is proving very popular, and the input of a turbo coach at some of our Tuesday evening training sessions. Just to let you know, the Tuesday cycling session will move to road training as soon as the evenings are light enough, (and this information will be emailed to you).

You have also hopefully seen the emails detailing Saturday morning cycle sessions. Some Saturdays, the club can now offer you a choice of;

• either hill running with Iain Morrice at 0845 starting at Threipmuir car park,
• or a cycle session/other training after swimming

Emails will keep you up to date with what is going on as an alternative to hill running.

Activities
In addition to emails, Pentland Triathletes have been given some space on the notice board in BHS reception area which will be up dated with activities. We are also going to be more proactive on our website in providing more frequent information of activities, so do keep your eye on that as well.

Training plans for 2010 will include 'fun' sessions whereby we can put our disciplines to the test. E.g. open water swims, off road cycling, a sprint triathlon, a Duathlon, brick sessions. Not only will this give us excellent training opportunities, it will give us the chance to get to know each other better in a more 'sociable' atmosphere. We would also like to offer more social events, e.g. mountain biking at Glentress, water polo, etc.

If anyone has any ideas as to what would be fun for us to do together as club members, then please let us know.

Committee Changes - Big Thanks to Ali
At our AGM we also agreed the following roles for some of our members. See the Contacts page for details.

You will notice that Ali is no longer our chairperson as Mark has taken on this role. Ali has done a great job for us over the years, and we all owe her a huge thank you for leading the club forward over the past few years.

This takes us up to the summer holidays - we will decide before then what is happening over the holidays and I will let you know.

Fees are due in three blocks on the following dates;

• 27th Feb (£20, to cover 5 weeks)
• 24th April (£24, to cover 6 weeks)
• 5th of June (£16, to cover 4 weeks)

Cheques made payable to Pentland Triathletes.

Should any non member like to participate the fee is £5 per session and this will be dependant on spaces in the pool.

Iain Morrice has been leading a Saturday morning hill run with Harmeny folk for a few months now, and has kindly agreed to a new start time of 08:45, to allow the swimmers to get out of the pool and up to Threipmuir car park.

The meeting place is Threipmuir car park at 08:45, (give or take a few minutes), but try not to keep folk waiting, particularly in the cold weather, and Iain will lead a hill run in the Pentlands. Iain is very good at finding interesting different routes, it is not a competitive session, it is sociable, but including some good hill work, which is excellent fitness training for all disciplines.

Event replaced with the Tri-a-Tri. See Events page for details.

Pentland Triathletes are also going to host an open water/mountain bike triathlon based around Threipmuir on 26th June, so get that date in your diary.

This event will be open to members and non-members, and for those of us who don't fancy a swim in the reservoir, there will be the option of a Duathlon instead.