It was held over his pal Paul McGreal's simply evil Nineteen Durty Triathlon course in the Yarrow Valley. A 750m swim across the Loch of the Lowes. An insane 15km mountain bike run over the hills. And a gloriously scenic 5km run round St Mary's Loch to round things off.

And, if that wasn't enough, you always had the option to do it twice.

One of those taking the sensible sprint option was Souter Murray.

He admitted he wasn't all that keen on the swim, as he wasn't a front crawler and had to breast stroke round the course. But he made up for it on the bike section, coming into transition in the lead, which he lost in the transition, but was still in with a great shout.

Unfortunately, he couldn't quite match the time set by Edinburgh man Martin Gore on the run, but held onto his second place.

He said: "I don't do the crawl, so I had to breast stroke the best I could. I do a lot of cycling, though, and that was always going to be my strong point.

"I just held on in the run and got second – I was pretty chuffed.

"I think I'm still friends with Paul McGreal – he did me a few favours with the bike section, he knows what I like and there was plenty of that there.

"This is my first off-road triathlon. There's not many of them around and I think there should be more because it is a really good event."

Not everyone was so enthusiastic about McGreal's cycling course, though.

Indeed, he received a couple of half-joking death threats as the long-distance guys prepared to do it all over again.

McGreal was unperturbed. He told TheSouthern: "I've been called certain names by a few people who finished the bike section.

"It started tough with the swim – it was fairly windy here this morning so they did get thrown around quite a bit in the water.

"The bike course is quite tough. There's no two ways about it, it's a proper mountain biking course.

"This is an off-road triathlon. There's no point in doing things by halves."

Quite so. But if he plans to organise a race like this again, perhaps he should think twice before putting in some of the harder elements.

Just to be safe.