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Event	Blenheim Palace Weekend Warriors
Distance	Sprint: 750m swim / 19.8km bike / 5.4km run · Super Sprint: half distances Total ~6km swim / ~157km bike / ~43km run (7 sprints + 2 super sprints)
Date	11–12 September 2021 (originally planned for 2020, postponed due to Covid)
Location	Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, OxfordshireConditions
Condition	Sunny
Kit Highlights	S-Works Venge, homemade vegan energy balls, Sungod sunglasses
Entry fees	£239.40

Goal	Target	Result
Complete triathlons7+	7+	✅ 9
Enjoy the weekend	–	✅
Top 10 finish	Top 10	🥇 8th & Age group win

Finish Time	Age Group	Gender	Overall
	1st/26		8th/171

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Blenheim Palace needs no introduction. The backdrop is ridiculous — baroque architecture, manicured grounds, a lake that looks like it was designed with triathletes in mind. Getting here is straightforward. Getting your head around what you’re about to do is less so.
I did some maths before the event. Not reassuring maths. Just enough to work out that two full middle-distance triathlons — spread over a weekend — was a reasonable way to think about it. Beyond that, I decided I’d take one triathlon at a time and figure the rest out as I went.
Preparation
Same routine I’d use for any race. Bike check the day before — Di2 charged, Wahoo charged, everything in working order. Kit laid out in order: swim, bike, run, then nutrition. Breakfast prepped. Energy balls are made a few days ahead. Bed early. Journey planned with plenty of buffer for the inevitable toilet stop or mystery mechanical.
Nothing glamorous. Just the routine.

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Nutrition strategy:

One plant-based energy ball before each swim
Rawvelo electrolytes on the bike, sip every 10 minutes
Plant-based energy bars on the bike, a bite per lap
Tenzing. Lots of Tenzing.

Weekend Warriors go off in the second wave, behind the VIPs. A rolling start — still a Covid hangover — and we’re entering the water one by one. Swimming isn’t my strength, so I take my time going in. Once there, I focus on what my coach has been drilling: technique first, pace second.
The transition is 400 metres and hilly. I run it every single time. All weekend. I don’t know why. It becomes a point of pride.
I’ve gone with the S-Works Venge rather than the TT bike. The thinking: this is an endurance weekend, not a time trial. On the hills, I’m overtaking TT bikes. On the flats, they’re coming back at me. Swings and roundabouts. The Venge is comfortable. That matters more today than aerodynamics.
I wear socks. First time under Olympic distance that I’ve done that. This is an endurance event — the few seconds lost per transition are irrelevant over nine triathlons. Future me appreciates this decision enormously.
The bike course gets crowded as the day builds. I find myself shouting “keep left” and “on your right” more times than I can count. I don’t usually ride like that. I’m also cheering for people I pass — someone on a hybrid bike giving it everything, someone doing their first triathlon, someone in a club jersey from somewhere up north. You can’t not, at Blenheim.
Each finish line is the same: cross it, grab the medal, grab a Tenzing, and walk back to transition. Shoes off, race belt off, wet wetsuit back on. It goes from unfamiliar to mechanical quickly.
The wetsuit, fortunately, feels like a pyjama at this point. I’m counting my blessings.
What I discovered early: five sprints isn’t happening. No one does five sprints. But four sprints and a super sprint? Manageable. I file that away and adjust.
There’s a moment in one of the T2s where I recognise an Instagram follower heading to the swim start. I catch her on the run later. We chat briefly. That kind of thing keeps you going more than any nutrition strategy.
As does the crowd. The marshals. The volunteers who are still cheering at sprint number four with the same energy they had at sprint number one.
Saturday total: 4 sprints + 1 super sprint = 5 triathlons

Nutrition strategy:

Alternating energy ball and Rawvelo gel before each swim
Rawvelo electrolytes on the bike, sip every 10 minutes
Plant-based energy bars on the bike, a bite per lap

The second day was always going to be shorter. Based on Saturday’s results and the wave schedule, I knew three sprints was on. A fourth — a super sprint — was possible but not certain.
Same approach: one at a time, not pushing too hard, walking back from the finish line.
A Berkshire Tri Squad teammate appears at some point, heading to a wave start. I bump into their partner in transition, who has a vegan flapjack for me. It’s my birthday — 11 September. Racing nine triathlons on your birthday, with cake in transition. There are worse ways to spend it. When your club brings cake to a triathlon, you know you’re in the right club.
My wife and daughter show up while I’m on my third triathlon. Always a lift, seeing familiar faces on a long day.
At the end of triathlon three — number eight overall — there are ten minutes left before the final wave of the weekend. I look at my wife. “I’m going to do another one.”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Are you kidding?”
I wasn’t.
I sprint to transition, dump the shoes and race belt, grab the wetsuit, and run to the swim start. The organisers give us an extra five minutes. I complete the final super sprint of the weekend like it’s a lap of honour — chatting in transition, taking my time, soaking it in.
I lose more time than I should. Probably cost myself one or two places overall. Lesson learned.
But I got nine.
Sunday total: 3 sprints + 1 super sprint = 4 triathlons

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	Sat	Sun	Total
Triathlons	5	4	9
Format	4 Sprint + 1 Super Sprint	3 Sprint + 1 Super Sprint
Distance	~3.3km / ~95km / ~24km	~2.7km / ~75km / ~19km	~6km / ~170km / ~43km

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Nine triathlons. More than an Ironman distance in two days. I felt — genuinely — better than expected. There’s something to be said for keeping the effort controlled across each leg rather than going deep into the red.
The Tenzing helped. So much so that at the end of the weekend, the Tenzing team handed me an entire cardboard box of cans — 24 of them — apparently impressed enough to want to send me home well stocked. I wasn’t going to argue.
I could also have walked away with nine t-shirts — one per triathlon. I took three. One for me, one for my wife, one for my daughter. Felt like the right call.

• Pacing discipline. Keeping each effort controlled and steady across nine triathlons was the right call. No blowups.
• The wetsuit. Feeling like a pyjama by day two. No complaints.
• Nutrition. Rawvelo electrolytes and the energy balls did exactly what they needed to do.
• Transition management. Running a 400m hilly transition nine times without a second thought. Apparently that’s a thing now.
• Racing mindset. One triathlon at a time. Never thinking about the next one until the previous medal was in hand.

• Final sprint execution. The last super sprint on Sunday was too casual. Chatting in transition mid-race cost places. That doesn’t happen again.
• Day 2 nutrition planning. Alternating energy balls and gels worked, but a more deliberate fuelling structure between efforts would help.
• The medal system. Nine medals are excessive. One medal — a proper one — with a pin added for each completed triathlon would be so much better. Something you build over the weekend rather than just collect. A small thing, but it would make the format feel even more special.

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Organisation	9/10
Course	9/10
Atmosphere / Crowd	8/10
Post-Race Experience	7/10
Value for Money	20/10
Overall	10/10

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At £239.40 for nine triathlons, this was the cheapest race I’ve ever done per triathlon — saving something like £700 on individual entries. Worth noting that the event was originally planned for 2020 before Covid pushed it back a year, which made finally getting to the start line feel that bit more earned.
Nobody tells you that doing nine back-to-back sprint triathlons over a weekend is possible. I certainly didn’t believe it going in. And then I won my age group. Blenheim does that to you — the setting, the crowd, the marshals, the whole ridiculous carnival of it — it just keeps you going.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. Do nine if you can.

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