Being a summer sport, it is hard for triathlon competitors to stay focused on their training through the long, dark, damp winter months, writes Ellie Dominey.

With no competitions on the calendar, winter can be a lonely time and so N1 Tri Club decided to trial a winter run series to give members an incentive to keep up their winter fitness, but also provide an opportunity to get together as a club throughout the ‘off-season’.

The format of the series made use of the existing and ever-popular local Parkruns and their age-graded scoring system.

We started with a club assault on Killerton Parkrun back in November, followed by Exeter in December, Seaton in January, and back to Killerton last weekend for the series finale.

We were delighted with how many club members engaged with the series: a total of 46 different N1 athletes ran at least one event, with 17 of those completing the minimum of three events to score for the series prizes.

Most encouraging was seeing whole family groups getting involved together, with triathlete parents persuading their junior offspring to give up their Saturday morning lie-in to run a 5k at 9am in the gloom of winter.

There were many exciting family battles – the Livingstones in particular often finishing as the first (Patrick), second (Johnny) and third (Alan) runners overall across the line at each of the events they ran in.

There were also some fine inter-club tussles, pushing many members on to improve their 5k PBs as the series progressed.

Once the numbers had been crunched, however, the victorious podium placers, based on age-adjusted performances, were revealed as Johnny Livingstone, Alan Livingstone and Garry Perratt for the men, and Moira Glen, Anne Ephraums and Rae Owen for the ladies.

The club now looks ahead to its Westpoint Summer Duathlon Series. This run-bike-run series is also open to non-members; however, we do ask that you get in touch with the club first to announce your intention to take part, as priority is given to N1 members and places are limited due to course congestion. See the N1 website for information, www.n1tri.club