Ironman Jon Glyde was the top Wiltshire athlete in the Marlborough triathlon on Sunday and is now targeting success at November’s World Championships.

The Calne athlete completed the weekend’s course, a 400 metre swim, followed by a 19.5 mile cycle and a five mile run to finish, in a time of a 1.33:36 hours to finish seventh overall.

However Glyde, 44, was competing just a week after qualifying for the world championships, to be held in Florida, with a half-ironman triathlon where each discipline is substantially longer and more gruelling.

“The legs were feeling fairly heavy on Sunday morning,” he said.

“It all went to plan for me though. I did speed work in the week leading up to it.

“I do quite a lot of training, usually around 15 hours a week including Saturdays, Sundays, most weeknights and sometimes I swim in the mornings too.

“The Marlborough triathlon was just like a normal training day to me.”

Glyde says he will now take a couple of months off before doing another half-ironman in September and a full ironman event in Barcelona in October before flying to the USA for the November 14 race.

“It makes the season quite long as I’m normally finished by September,” he said.

“I’m quite looking forward to Florida. I’ve never raced against that level of competition before.

“My personal best for a half-ironman is four hours, 41 minutes but I’m aiming to do it in four-and-a-half hours.”

On Sunday 180 runners completed the course, including 20 from the Marlborough Tri Club. Matt Newman of the Bristol-based Bad Tri club won the race in a time of 1.26:25. Tracy Cook was the first female to cross the line in a time of 1.36:53.

Mad Tri awarded their athlete of the year prize to Wootton Bassett’s Jacqueline Wells, who went round in 2.01:54, an improvement on 16 minutes from last year’s race. “We sat round afterwards discussing highlights and lowlights,” said Glyde.

“Everyone had a story to tell. It was great.”