Hi All,

Making the club more digital – This year the world has been forced to become more digital, (we all know why, so no mention of the reason here), however there are still a few things that just don’t change.

This year we have done all we can to adopt a more digital footing for all members to access information about the club and the training session.  As many of you now know, and are successfully using, we have moved to an online booking system, and for those sessions that we need to charge for we now have an integrated online payment system.  ‘ClubSpark’ and ‘Stripe’ are the names of the tools that enable us to do this.  This is helping us understand the needs of the members more and in turn the coaching and venue capacity needed to meet the needs.  This is still being developed and we are constrained by the availability of venues like the pool however, I hope you can all see the future benefits that this can bring.

There has been a lot of work behind the scenes to build, test and deliver this service for the club and all the members. we are always looking for user experience and feedback on how you are finding it (please send feedback to northdorsettriathlonclub@gmail.com).

We have more to do in this space, including the development and delivery of a junior programme that will provide a future strategy to develop junior talent or all abilities in this multisport event for the local area and we hope 2021 will enable this.

The things that don’t change - at the heart of this club is the will of all the members to train and compete.  Whatever your motivation we all want to do the best we can and that cannot always be done in a digital way. Although virtual training this year may be on the increase it feels like a poor replacement to a real training session or a real race.  

The technology I have used this year has not made the training any easier but it did make it bit more accessible and less weather dependant.  Many of us have been using digital tools to track and share activities and progress but we all still need to put in the effort.  A great coach once said to me ‘train hard to race easy’, a balance that has been hard to find with so few races on this year. 

Hope to see many of you all training soon and remember to keep it up over winter to be sure to build a good base for next year.

Stay safe

Chris Petersen

Club Chairman