The King of The Hill triathlon took place in Kinsale on Saturday the 21st of July. This event, which has been running for 19 years, was organised the Cork Tri Club. Two members of the Blackwater Triathlon Club, Shane Collins and Dave Murphy were among the 320 athletes who took part on the day. After all the recent good weather, there was a change of conditions on Saturday morning with showers and high winds. Fortunately the rain stopped before the start and the showers held off for most of the race. The race started with a calm and enjoyable 750m swim at the sheltered Dock Beach in Kinsale. This was followed by an undulating 22km bike ride in tough conditions with a substantial headwind making it quite a challenging cycle.  The event finished off with a 5km run out and back over the eponymous hills, the highpoint of which was the 750m downhill section to the finish line. The first kilometre of the run was up the hill that the race is named after and to some of the triathletes it seemed to go on forever. It was especially difficult watching some of the competitors virtually skipping up it.  When you get off the first hill you go down the other side which is steep and then it kicks in you have that to look forward to on the way back! There was at least a nice run on the flat piece for about a km to help people recover a little though, before it was time to turn around and do it all again in reverse. Back up the steeper side of the hill and then 800 metres downhill to finish line. Dave was the first of the BTC pair home, just passing Shane on the run route and finishing a mere 30 seconds ahead in just under 1 hour 24 minutes. This was an excellent performance on the day from both the guys and an improvement of three minutes for Shane on last year’s race!  It was a really well organised event with lots of marshals plenty of spectators. And the sun even arrived eventually. Well done to everybody who took part on the day.