BTS Club Champs 2025 Race Report

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Event	BTS Club Champs 2025 – One Race TRI Sprint
Distance	Sprint triathlon — 750m swim / 20km bike / 5km run
Date	7 September 2025
Location	Dorney Lake, Berkshire
Condition	Sunny, light wind
Kit Highlights	Scott TT bike, BTS’ club kit
Entry fees	Subsidised by BTS’ main sponsor Westbrook Waste

Swim	Bike	Run
750m lake	20km	5km

Goal	Target	Result
Finish it		✅ Done
Assess collarbone recovery		✅ Answered
Decide on IronMan Cascais		✅ (three weeks later)

Finish Time	Age Group	Gender	Overall
1:12:23	2nd / 23	5th / 79	5th / 134

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Some race reports are about chasing PBs. Some are about redemption. This one is about getting a wetsuit on with a healing collarbone and not embarrassing yourself in front of your club mates.

Five months after breaking my collarbone, this was my first (triathlon) race back. The BTS Club Champs at Dorney Lake, a venue I know well, a club I love, and a race that asked one simple question: are you ready?

Reader, I was not sure. But I showed up anyway.

Dorney Lake holds no surprises for me. I’ve raced here enough times to know the car park, the registration queue, and the way the wind always seems to find you on the wrong half of the bike course. No nerves about the venue.

What I didn’t know was how the body would respond. Five months is a long time to be away from racing. The collarbone had healed, but healed doesn’t mean tested. Swimming and riding in a TT position are two different things from daily life.

Then there was the wetsuit. Anyone who’s tried to wrestle a wetsuit over a recently repaired shoulder will know the particular joy involved. I genuinely wasn’t sure I’d get it on. And once it was on, I wasn’t sure I’d get it off in T1 without losing significant time or dignity.

The atmosphere helped. Racing with club mates changes everything. BTS is a friendly club with athletes across all abilities — some here to win, most here to have a good day out. The energy in transition was relaxed, warm, and exactly what you want for a comeback race.

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Dorney Lake is flat, calm, and as forgiving as open water gets. Perfect conditions to ease back into racing.

I was slow. 17 minutes 22 seconds for 750 metres is not what I’d call a performance. But here’s the thing: it was four seconds faster than the same race in 2024. I’ll take four seconds. Four seconds is four seconds.

The wetsuit removal in T1 went better than expected. Managed it without incident. Small mercies.

The Dorney bike course is deceptively hard. Flat on paper, but the layout means you spend roughly half the course grinding into a headwind with nothing to hide behind. It’s a different kind of suffering.

On a good day, I’d be in the TT position, low and aerodynamic, hammering it. This was not a good day in that sense. The shoulder made sustaining a proper TT position uncomfortable. So I rode in a slightly more upright position than I’d have liked, managing the discomfort rather than racing the bike.

Four minutes slower than last year. That’s where I was. No point pretending otherwise.

I was glad it was only 5km.

A minute slower than 2024. The legs were there in spirit, if not entirely in practice. I ran it, I finished it, and I didn’t collapse at the line — which, given everything, felt like a reasonable outcome.

1:12:23. Five minutes slower than last year overall. Second in category. Fifth on the day.

And exhausted in a way that only a race can make you exhausted — that particular mix of relief and depletion that feels oddly satisfying.

The recovery prescription was straightforward: food and drinks at the local pub with club mates. Whatever lingering concerns I had about the race dissolved somewhere between the first pint and the chips. That’s what club racing is about.

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Swim	T1	Bike	T2	Run	Finish
17:22	1:28	31:30	0:56	21:04	1:12:23

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• finished. With minimal preparation, a collarbone that had been held together with plates and screws six months ago, and genuine uncertainty about whether I’d be able to get a wetsuit on and off, I raced a triathlon and crossed the line. That’s not nothing.
• I didn’t panic. I didn’t blow up. I managed the bike sensibly around the shoulder limitation rather than pushing through and paying for it later. And — crucially — the body gave me enough information to start thinking about Cascais.

• What I’d change: Nothing, honestly. I couldn’t have pushed harder on the bike — that’s a physical fact, not an excuse. The slower times are the times I was capable of that day. Racing is sometimes about accepting where you are rather than where you want to be.

As a race, the One Race Sprint at Dorney is ideal for beginners, as a pre-season shakeout, or — as it turned out — for a post-injury comeback. The location is stunning. The bike and run courses are straightforward to the point of being a little monotonous. But that’s fine. Not every race needs drama.

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Organisation	8/10 – Low-key but well run
Course	6/10 – Olympic venue, honest about the boring bike route
Atmosphere / Crowd	9/10 – Club racing at its best
Spectators	5/10 – It’s Dorney, not Roth
Value for Money	20/10 – Fully subsidised by BTS — thank you Westbrook Waste
Overall	7/10

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Three weeks after finishing this race, I booked Cascais.

Not as a race. As a holiday with a triathlon attached. But the decision wouldn’t have been possible without Dorney. This race gave me what I needed: proof that the body still works, that the collarbone holds under load, and that I still want to do this.

Five minutes slower than last year. Second in category. First comeback race after a broken collarbone.

I’m back.

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