Triathlon Team

Background

The Hall School Triathlon Team is an ever changing and truly inspiring group of mums, dads, teachers, nannies and friends who come together in June each year at Blenheim Palace to compete in a sprint distance triathlon for a carefully chosen charity. Each year within the team there are returners – triathlon veterans for whom racing to raise money for a cause is an annual fixture. But the majority of the team comprises absolute beginners – not just first time triathletes, but novice runners, those have taken up swimming for the first time since childhood and even those for who riding a bike is a newly-acquired skill. Fitness and confidence are gained in equal measure within a supportive environment that has seen members of the Tri Team training hard over the year, in groups and individually, in preparation for the annual triathlon.  The event is the culmination of that training and preparation – those cold winter runs and cycles, those icy dips in the Hampstead ponds and the pounding around the streets of Belsize will come to make sense! Each year the Tour de Godwin cyclists join in the fundraising, by riding from the school to Blenheim, a distance of around 110km.

The Hall has entered a triathlon team at Blenheim for the last 10 years and the beautiful surroundings of Blenheim Palace have proven the perfect setting. The competition is a huge personal challenge for each and every member of the team – for first-timers and old-timers alike; but over the years, over 100 women have completed their first triathlon and hundreds of thousands of pounds have been raised for various charities, including:-

• to provide mental health and wellbeing support to children affected by epilepsy under the care of our local University College London Hospital
• to fund Apart of Me, a pioneering charity which supports children who have suffered bereavement
• to help Coram’s Fields, a six acre green site for children in Bloomsbury & its resident children’s & family counsellors
• to support Cure EB‘s research into treatments and ultimately a cure for Epidermolysis Bullosa, a progressive, debilitating and very painful genetic skin condition which causes internal and external blisters at the slightest friction.