Running Archives

Alcohol and Triathlon

July 4, 2022July 5, 2022SimonOlney

Most athletes have wondered at some point what the relationship is between alcohol and triathlon. Should they drink at all? How much is too much? Why is alcohol free beer such a big thing in our sport? In this article I hope to sort fact from fiction, and help you make informed choices. The first half will be science focused, in the second half we’ll look at a few strategies you can employ, and my personal feelings on the subject. If you’re looking for a quick wrap up, scroll on down to the conclusion at the bottom.

I’m not going to try to talk you out of drinking, rather help you decide whether one more pint really is a good idea, help you understand the effects it has on your performance, and make more informed choices. We’re all individuals with our own set of values, and I’m not going to try to impose mine on you.

The Metabolism of Ethanol

Ethanol is known by some as the fourth macronutrient. We already have carbohydrate, fats and protein, with ethanol sneaking in as a fourth. So what role does ethanol play? Well, it doesn’t play a role at all in a healthy diet, it’s completely optional and of no benefit to an athlete. Carbohydrate and protein both contain 4 calories per gram (so 100g of sugar would contain 400 calories), while fats contain 9. Ethanol contains 7 calories per gram, so is calorifically dense. This can add quickly over the course of a night out.

The body has no way to store ethanol, so it is perceived as a toxin. The quickest way to remove ethanol from the body is to metabolise (burn) it, so the body prioritises burning ethanol over carbohydrates, in the same way the body prioritises carbohydrates over fats when training. This means that the food we were already digesting prior to alcohol consumption or following it becomes excess calories. When you consider that some of the food decisions we make during and after alcohol consumption can be… interesting… combined with the fact the body is getting all the energy it needs from ethanol, this has the potential to leave us with a lot of excess calories

What does the body do with excess calories? It stores them as body fat. When you consider that dietary fats can take up to seven hours to digest, any fats you had for lunch or dinner before you start drinking may be translated directly into body weight. Ethanol metabolism also creates acetates in our body, which reduces our body’s need to utilise its fat stores. When you consider this alongside the fact that a small glass of wine contains 100 calories and a pint of real ale can easily hit 200, you can start to appreciate how counter productive alcohol consumption is for an athlete trying to watch their weight. One night of heavy drinking can undo a week’s worth of healthy eating and training.

The Effects of Alcohol on Health

I’ve yet to meet a doctor which recommends the consumption of alcohol. There are a few studies you can find which will talk about the benefits of certain types of alcohol (normally on the front page of a tabloid newspaper) due to the presence of antioxidants, but these effects aren’t always repeatable in other studies, or may only be limited to specific population groups. If there are any health benefits from certain drinks, they’re outweighed by the effect that regular alcohol consumption itself has on the body, as the diagram below shows.

I probably don’t need to talk you through the above, but it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Alcohol is a class 1 carcinogenic, which means it has a very significant risk of causing cancer at some point compared to other substances.

Alcohol consumption also increases heart rate, which in turn increases blood pressure. It affects our testosterone and/or oestrogen levels, which are critically important for sexual function as well as athletic performance.

You may believe that alcohol helps you get a good night’s sleep, but it disrupts our sleep patterns by restricting the amount of REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep we can access. I can’t think of many individuals who feel refreshed and well rested after a big drinking session. No matter how late they sleep in the next day.

The Effect of Alcohol on Triathlon

Now we’re done with the theory, let’s put it into practice. How will alcohol affect your triathlon performance and training?

The biggest issue is with regards to recovery. As mentioned above, alcohol has a huge effect on sleep quality (not quantity). Swimming, cycling, running and lifting don’t make us fitter, they just create a training stimulus. Without sufficient recovery we won’t actually get any fitter, we’ll just run ourselves into the ground. If you sink a few pints to “recover” from your ride, you will undo some, if not all of your hard work. While the exact effects alcohol has on adaptation to endurance training haven’t been researched extensively at the time of writing, it has been proven to have a notable effect on muscle protein synthesis (Duplanty et al., 2017; Parr et al., 2014). This is the process of your body using proteins to create new muscle fibres, giving us bigger, stronger muscles. This is more of a concern for bodybuilders than triathletes, but may make an endurance athlete’s DOMS last for longer than they’d like.

Chemistry aside, what are the real world implications of heavy drinking? Alcohol affects your proprioception, which is your awareness of the world around you and how to react to it. This can result in entirely avoidable injuries such as a sprained ankle or fracture from missing a step on your way to/from the toilets. More than once an athlete of mine has been coming into good form after a hard winter of base training, but come back to the UK with their foot in a medical boot and their season in tatters after a heavy drinking session combined with ice on a ski holiday.

If you drink so much that you vomit, you lose a lot of the nutrient stores in your body, and are unlikely to feel up to high quality training the next day. If you wake up hungover, you may well miss a day’s training, or have a very poor session as you try to push through a thumping headache and nausea. Considering the weekend is both the time you’re most likely to drink heavily, and have your important training sessions, this can cause significant long term disruption to your training schedule.

There are a lot of uncomfortable truths in relation to triathlon and alcohol, but the more information we have, the better informed we are to make our own decisions. What follows is less backed up by science, and based more on my opinions/experiences.

At this point you probably think I’m a tee totaller. The truth is that I do mix alcohol and triathlon, enjoying a drink or two with friends once every couple of months, for the reasons that it’s social and helps us relax. If an alien species observing us saw the pros and cons of combining triathlon and alcohol they would find it hard to justify, but it’s ingrained in our society. Any major life event from a new arrival to a new job or leaving drinks to a funeral will be marked with alcohol in most circles. Alcohol helps us let go of our inhibitions, tell some tall tales and switch off that background noise in our head. It leaves most people feeling more relaxed and friendly, which as a sociable species is important.

The key in my opinion is moderation. If you have a couple of drinks once a month when catching up with old friends, get to bed at a reasonable time and still hit your workout the next day, I would be a very unreasonable coach to tell someone this wasn’t acceptable. If however your average Friday night looks like consuming 10+ drinks, falling face first into a kebab shop on the way home, then spending the next day with your head down a toilet as you bring it all up when you could be getting a long run in, this becomes more of a problem.

However, peer pressure is massive for some. They simply can’t turn down a drink, and the only social activity they can enjoy with any regularity in their friendship circle is heading to the local bar for a few drinks. In their eyes, they’re not making a choice between alcohol and triathlon, they’re making a choice between a social life and triathlon. As a social support circle is a huge part of training, it would be very short sighted to expect your average triathlete to choose between the two. It may actually do more harm to their performance to ask them to walk away from their friendship groups than is caused by the alcohol intake itself.

This is where non alcoholic beers come in. Many athletes enjoy the taste of alcohol and don’t want to miss out on a summer evening in a pub garden with old friends. You can you stick to non alcoholic beer all night or simply switch to them when you feel you’ve had enough and are worried how it may affect your training tomorrow. They are now widely available to enjoy in most drinking establishments, and come without the connotations associated with sitting in front a glass of cranberry juice.

As well as avoiding the metabolic effects of ethanol and the negative effects on our central nervous system, non alcoholic beers also contain less calories than their full strength counterparts. Most brands non alcoholic offering contains between 20-30% of the calories of their alcoholic counterparts.

However, some people might still take issue here. They’ll berate you for “not keeping up” or suggest you’re weak for avoiding having a “real” drink. At this point, I would be reviewing my relationship with these people and looking to surround myself with more like minded individuals who share my current values. Your local triathlon, cycling or running club is a good place to start if you want to mix training with socialising.

Conclusion

So, we’ve ascertained that alcohol is inherently bad for you, but it can be important for social and relaxation purposes. So how as triathletes should we apply this knowledge?

Firstly, it all depends on your goals. Are you trying to go under 10 hours in an Ironman, or are you hoping to complete your first super sprint? How much have you already invested in your performance? Would the happiness and sense of accomplishment you get from achieving your goals offset some potential social isolation?

If you’ve spent thousands on a high end bike, invested in high quality coaching, optimised your nutrition, and are looking for that extra 5% to help you excel, then cutting out or reducing alcohol intake is an easy win. If however you are just doing a short race for fun with some friends and training 2-3 times a week, it would be disproportionate to go tee total if moderate alcohol consumption is an important part of your social life.

When trying to make decisions, I always ask myself what I’m more likely to regret. If I fail to make the bike cutoff at an Ironman and reducing alcohol intake may have made the difference between me getting round or not, how would I feel? Equally, if I abstain completely for the sake of a race where I have a mediocre performance, will I regret taking such a hardline approach? In the same way athletes periodise their training, you may want to consider periodising your alcohol consumption. Being a bit more relaxed when the training is easier, then cutting back as you approach race day.

Finally on a more sombre note, athletes can be more susceptible to excessive alcohol consumption than non athletes. This often takes the form of having a single drink in the evening after a training session, which can tip your weekly drink consumption into the double digits if you’re not careful. If you feel the need to use alcohol to moderate your mood or others comment on the amount of alcohol you are consuming, I recommend you seek support from your local health provider. I can’t recall anyone telling me they regret going sober. For athletes in the UK, here are some NHS approved resources and support services where you will be able to receive non judgemental support and advice: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/alcohol-support/

The author Simon Olney is a British Triathlon High Performing Coach and Certified Nutrition Coach

Taking Your Triathlon Training to the Next Level

December 10, 2021January 2, 2022SimonOlney

Once you’ve completed your first event or two, you’ll be riding the high of achievement, yet also slightly downbeat. While you’re proud as punch of your performance, you can’t quite get over why you got dropped so quickly at the start, how fast the cyclists who lapped you were going, or quite how it’s possible for the announcer to be calling in the winner as you come into T2. You make a vow, it’s time to take your triathlon training to the next level.

But what does this mean? The intention is clear, you want to get faster, but how do you plan to achieve that? There’s a lot of information out there, but much of it is conflicting. What you may think makes you faster just exhausts you for no tangible improvement to your times.

What follows is a list of recommendations to help you improve how you train, and therefore your performance. We cover the very basics first, the low hanging fruit which will provide the greatest benefits, before we start digging in a little deeper.

The focus here is on improving the training process, rather than the best way to improve your performance. While there are all sorts of products, gadgets and tips to help you race 1% faster, consistent, considered training needs to be the foundation.

Follow a Structured Plan

This doesn’t have to be a complex paid for plan from a website such as TrainingPeaks, but having some structure to your training will really help you develop as an athlete. This could be as simple as knowing you will have a long ride and a long run on the weekend which gets progressively longer each weekend, with two swims in the week and other workouts dotted in as and when you can fit them in. Alternatively, it could be an incredibly specific plan, tailored for you as an individual with specific targets on each day.

The benefit of a structured plan is that it holds you to a kind of accountability, and if you follow the basic principles of periodisation, will help ensure you’re doing the right kind of training at the right time of year. There are plenty of free, basic training plans available online, the race organiser of your event may even have one on their website.

Consistency is king in triathlon, and following a plan ensures you stay consistent. This is a guaranteed way to take your triathlon training to the next level.

Take Rest Days and Recovery Weeks

white and tan english bulldog lying on black rug looking tired — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Training breaks your body down, recovery makes it stronger. You may think that training for seven days a week proves your dedication and will propel you to greatness, but the chances are this will just result in non-functional overreaching and long term exhaustion. When we back off and allow our body to recover, we reap the benefits of our training, and are able to go hard at the next time of asking. One day of complete rest a week, and an easier recovery week every 3-4 weeks is recommended for the vast majority of athletes.

Get More Sleep

A woman sleeping — Photo by Ivan Oboleninov on Pexels.com

Most of us don’t get enough sleep. Between work, family, training and the desire for some “me” time in front of the TV, we can slip into the habit of getting less than six hours sleep per night. While rest days allow our body a break from training, adaptation to the training stimulus itself happens primarily during deep sleep. Ever wonder why you can do a hard session in the morning, feel fine for the next 12 hours, then upon waking the next day feel like the tin man? It’s only when we sleep that our body sends the signals to repair the muscles and generate more mitochondria. If we’re stingy with our sleep, our performance will suffer, and we increase the risk of burnout. There’s no point taking your triathlon training to the next level if you’re not receiving the benefits.

Eight hours may not be achievable for everyone due to work/family, but heading to bed at 10:30PM and waking at 6:30AM isn’t unreasonable for most people, and ticks the box of the magic eight hours.

Work on Your Weaknesses

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re not the world’s greatest swimmer. In fact the mere smell of neoprene may initiate a fight or flight response in you. I struggled with this for many years. I overcame this not by hiding from it, but by getting in the pool three times a week and slowly chipping away.

It’s human nature to focus on what we’re good at, however if we really want to succeed in triathlon, we need to focus on where we can make the most time. If I spent an eight week training block focused on running with weekly hill reps, track work and long runs, I might be able to save a minute over 5K. This is a huge amount of time, and I’d feel very satisfied. But I’m not a runner, I’m a triathlete. If I had spent the time swimming instead focused on my running, I could have saved 2-3 minutes over 750M, resulting in a much greater improvement to my overall performance.

Get Some Swim Coaching

Swimming is the most technical sport by a long way, and you can only improve so much by ploughing up and down on your own. Whether you want to hire a coach on a 1to1 capacity or join a swim squad where the coach provides intermittent feedback, having an experienced set of eyes look at your stroke will work wonders. Coaching for cycling and running is also very valuable if you feel you struggle, but swimming provides the most gains for the majority of athletes.

Introduce Strength and Conditioning

Strength and conditioning for triathletes? Sacrilege! Well, it may not be your idea of a good time, but an effective strength and conditioning plan will provide you with a number of benefits to take your triathlon training to the next level, including but not limited to:

Reduced chance of injury
Improved muscular force
Greater range of motion
Reduced rate of technique breakdown
Moving better in day to day life

This doesn’t have to mean taking out a gym membership and tackling the free weights if you don’t want, but taking the time to strengthen your core, improve your balance and stretch/roll your tight muscles, even if only for 10 minutes a day, will provide an invisible yet important benefit to your training.

Get a Bike fit

A rider taking their triathlon training to the next level with a bike fit. A fitter gesturing to an image on screen — Image copyright Sigma Sports

Hopefully when you bought your bike they helped you choose the right size bike, and may have raised/lowered the saddle for you to get it in the right ballpark. However there’s much, much more to being comfortable on a bike than this. From choosing the right saddle, right handlebars and right shoes to getting these setup millimetre perfect, a professional can really help you get dialled in. When we’re comfortable on our bike we can put out more power for longer, and run better off the bike. Visiting a fitter based in a shop comes with benefits as they have lots of different components on hand for you to try out. Expect to pay £200 for a comprehensive experience, before parts or labour installing them.

Take Your Bike Training Indoors

An athlete taking their triathlon training to the next level by riding indoors — Image copyright Wahoo

Chances are we took up triathlon because we love the outdoors. But if it’s February, raining, and we only have an hour available, by the time we’ve bundled up and head out the door, we’re not going to get much of a session in. Combined with the risk of ice and low light levels in winter, training indoors becomes a very efficient alternative. The benefit of riding hard without worrying about traffic is not to be underestimated, which combined with software such as Zwift can provide an engaging experience.

Riding inside help maintain consistency, and consistency breeds success. This combined with the ability to ride intervals is essential when taking your triathlon training to the next level.

Monitor Training Intensity

Swimming, riding and running to feel will get you a long way. However if you really want to get fitter, you need a gauge to tell you what’s easy and what’s hard. Whether you use heart rate, power or pace isn’t of huge importance at this stage in your triathlon journey, but measuring your data, understanding it and reviewing it is key to high level triathlon performance. I recommend picking up a book on training to help you understand the data and decide what to do with the results.

Get Race Specific With Your Training

You’re swimming in open water on the day? You’d better get to your local lake once a week. If you’re planning to ride 180KM on a triathlon bike, you need to be doing your long rides on it. If the on course nutrition is a brand you’re not familiar with, you’d do well to try training with it ahead of race day to see if it works for you. When training for a hilly race, you’d better get some climbing in your legs. Once you get within a few months of your event, you need to start thinking about your workouts and how they help prepare you for race day.

Work With a Coach

Triathlon is an incredibly complex sport where we have a lot to fit into our training schedule, and need to learn to pick our battles. Working with a coach who understands you, communicates well with you and knows how to get the best out of you is the best investment you can make in your triathlon training, and will help you race much faster than spending thousands on fancy wheels for your bike. There are hundreds of coaches out there, offering different levels of service for different budgets, so don’t assume you can’t afford it.

We offer very comprehensive training programmes, as well as consultations for athletes looking for someone to point them in the right direction. Take a look if you’re dedicated to taking your triathlon training to the next level.

How to Fall Back in Love With Triathlon

September 1, 2021September 2, 2021SimonOlney

As with everything in life, what once raised our pulse and dominated our every thought becomes slowly mundane. When we started out in triathlon we were all smitten with the bike tech, wetsuits, different events and all the toys we never knew we needed. We completed our first race, got faster quickly, raced progressively longer distances, until a day came when we no longer jumped out of bed to train every morning. How can we fall back in love with triathlon?

It could be that your performance hit a plateau, you picked up an injury, or you achieved everything you wanted to. For whatever reason you’ve lost your mojo and triathlon no longer gives you goosebumps. While you can never recapture the thrill of the first year or two in the sport, there are steps you can take to remember why you started, and hopefully get back to enjoying training. These tips are very generalised, and depend on why you’ve found yourself out of love with the sport, but should hopefully help you get back into the swing of things.

Find New Training Routes

To start with, exploring the roads in your local area by bike was a real buzz. Whether putting in a big training ride or simply saving money on petrol/public transport, it was a new way to see the world. Fast forward five years and you know every pothole, every corner and every gradient change within 10 miles of your front door. The list of places to explore is dwindling and with it the satisfaction of achieving something new.

To start with, look into some route planning software such as Komoot, Strava or Ride with GPS. These can help you both find new routes uploaded by others, or help you create a new route based on a destination such as a cafe or a piece of coastline. Be careful here though, as some software will try to take you down overgrown bike paths, through muddy forests or a really convoluted, slow route using cycle lanes, so it’s worth checking the route before you blindly set off.

Focus on a Single Sport

If you’ve always been a pure triathlete, you’ve probably missed out on a lot of events. It may be worth looking into cross country running, time trialling or long distance swimming. These events are usually much cheaper than entering a triathlon, and you can train for them alongside the other two disciplines. They may push you out of your comfort zone, but this is a good thing, as being outside your comfort zone was probably one of the things that appealed to you about triathlon in the first place! You may not even need any new equipment, just a sense of adventure.

Mix up Your Multisport

The start of The London Duathlon — Athletes begin the first 10KM run at The London Duathlon

Triathlon is great, but so is duathlon, aquathlon, aquabike, swimrun, quadrathlon, off road triathlon and other variations that I’ve no doubt forgotten or have yet to be invented. If you are struggling with a running injury? Have a go at aquabike. Always way behind in the swim? Spend your off season racing duathlon to see how you perform there. Triathlon may still be your ultimate goal, but this is a good way to shake things up a bit. Falling in love with other multisports for the first time will probably help you fall in love with triathlon again.

This is a high risk, high reward strategy. You need to put money on the table here, but there’s nothing quite like a race on the calendar to focus the mind and get you out the door, which can be the hardest part of some workouts. Make sure it’s something which is challenging enough to feel you have to train for it, but it’s also achievable within the time you have to train for it. Signing up for an Ironman with three months to go and minimal fitness probably isn’t going to end well.

Treat Yourself to Some New Kit

Let me make this clear, I am NOT suggesting you go out and drop four figures on a new bike to help motivate you. The chances are this motivation will be short lived, and very expensive if it doesn’t work out. Instead, think about buying yourself some new sunglasses, replacing your worn out bib shorts, or getting some new goggles you can actually see out of, things like that. This is unlikely to have a huge effect on its own, but should help make your return to training feel that bit more exciting, and different to last time.

Try a Structured Training Plan

A screenshot from a training plan — The week from one of our Ironman training plans

Many clients I have coached have commented on how I have helped them fall back in love with triathlon by delivering flexible, detailed plans. The sense of specificity and the accountability of a coach who will ask questions if the training isn’t done and the knowledge that they’re working towards something special help motivate them. If you burned out in the past, failed to finish your big race or trained randomly with mixed results, structured training can help refocus the mind and get results. If you’re not looking for a coaching relationship, a training plan is an affordable way to bring structure to your training.

Step Away from Structured Training

10 cyclists cheering at the end of a group ride — A social bike ride is a great way to reconnect with cycling

If you have spent the last four years moving from coach to coach, or training plan to training plan, and you’re just feeling drained, taking some time away from a structured regime may be what you need. This could be for an entire season of self discovery or just for a few weeks, but it can really help you recharge mentally. Once you are back into the swing of training 5-6 days a week, you can if you wish look at returning to a more structured plan.

Join a Club

If you are used to training solo, which definitely has its advantages, it can be a lonely existence. While training in a group may be less effective at getting you race ready for a non drafting event than a solo ride on your race bike, it’s better than no ride, and can bring joy in its own way. Whether it’s the mid ride banter or getting to know other members at a cafe stop, it can be a reminder of why we started riding our bikes in the first place. After the isolation of Covid-19 lockdowns, this is a good way to re-engage with the human side of the sport.

Squad swim training sessions can be a good way for someone to have a look at your technique, while running sessions at a track add a competitive aspect to your intervals. Even if you only join in with the group workouts for the off season and early base period, it can help you build the momentum you need to get back on the triathlon wagon.

Athletes jumping into the water from a boat at the start of the Norseman Xtri — The Norseman is one of the toughest races on the planet. Image credit Norseman

You’ve already achieved more than you thought possible, but what else could you achieve? Perhaps you could step up to a half or a full Ironman, or if you’ve already done that, perhaps an extreme triathlon, an off road triathlon, or just a tough Ironman course like Nice. If you’re genuinely unsure whether you’ll be able to complete a race or not, this can put the fear into people and encourage them to train with the same urgency as when they signed up for events earlier in their triathlon career, and saw the experience as a huge step into the unknown.

Aim to Qualify for a World Championship Event

A collection of athletes with national flags on Port Elizabeth Beach — Athletes flying their national colours

This may not be in the reach of everyone within the next 12 months, but aiming to qualify to represent your country at a world championship event, or qualifying for the Ironman/70.3 championships as an individual is an admirable goal you can apply yourself to. While the qualification itself is never guaranteed and depends on who else turns up on the day, it’s a good way to really apply yourself and aim to perform to the best of your ability, rather than simply ‘good enough to get round’. To qualify you will normally need to be one of the top 3 in your age group to finish.

Choosing the right target race is also very important to maximise your chances of success. If you target a big early season race such as Ironman 70.3 Marbella you’ll struggle to make an impression, where if you find a less popular race in late summer your chances of success are much greater. Aquathlon and duathlon are also less competitive, and a good way to snag your first spot on the age group team.

Even if you don’t manage to achieve your goal of qualifying, you’ll probably be in the shape of your life and be able to place very well at some more local races as a result.

Attend Races as a Spectator/Support Crew

I encourage all athletes to attend at least one triathlon they’re not racing at. This may be a local race you’re not targeting, or supporting someone at a bigger race, but watching from the sidelines really helps give you some perspective. Not only can you learn from other athletes by watching what they do well (or not so well), chances are it will give you the itch to compete yourself. When I attended the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in South Africa in the early days of my coaching career, it really helped me fall back in love with triathlon. Not only was there the fact I got to travel out to South Africa, but the buzz of the event, watching athletes prepare, spectating the pro race, attending the expo, it inspired me so much I signed up for a 70.3 myself the next weekend.

Follow Professional Triathletes

Professional triathletes are some of the fittest athletes in the world. In this age of social media we can gain an unparalleled insight into their lives and their training regimes, as well as their lifestyle. Instagram is an especially well used platform by the pros, where you can find plenty of genuinely inspirational photos, videos and advice to help get you down the pool or out on a run. Watching professional athletes race is an acquired taste, especially over the Ironman distance, but is a fantastic way to see just what the pinnacle of the sport looks like, and what the human body can achieve. It may even help you identify the location of your next event!

Consume Triathlon Media

The cover of 220 triathlon magazine — 220 Triathlon is one of the most popular triathlon magazines

You can find triathlon themed documentaries, magazines, podcasts, books, videos and more to help teach you about the sport and engage with it more fully. This can be time consuming, and you’ll never finish them all, but it can give you ideas for new training sessions, new target races or simply entertain and inspire you. You need to take it all with a pinch of salt (everyone can’t be right), but broadening your horizons and finding new ways to enjoy the sport goes a long way to getting you out the door.

Sort out That Injury

You know the one, that niggle in your knee which stops you running fast, or that tightness in your hip which makes cycling progressively more uncomfortable after you hit the three hour mark. Not only do these injuries affect our ability to train the way we’d like to, they also present us with a big psychological roadblock. You may tell yourself “If I can’t run pain free, why bother with the cycling and swimming?” Suck it up and spend some money on a physio who can help you identify the cause of the injury, then do the exercises required to address the cause of the issue. Having a glass ceiling placed there by an injury which doesn’t allow you to train to the best of your potential causes the best of us to fall out of love with the sport. If you’re based in London, we recommend https://physioonthegreen.com

Recover Better

Are you struggling to fit training in because you feel so run down all the time? Are you working hard but not seeing results? There’s a good chance your issues stem from poor recovery. Most triathletes should aim for at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night, with many pros getting closer to 9 with a nap in the afternoon. The best way to achieve this is to simply get to bed earlier, forgoing that last episode of The Next Generation or that glass of wine and heading straight to bed instead. Getting to bed by 10:30PM and up at 6AM to train should be achievable for most, and nets you a decent 7.5 hours of shut eye. Sleep is the only time the body can truly adapt to exercise, and no amount of caffeine will offset the damage done by consistently failing to get enough sleep.

Ensuring you refuel after workouts by eating sufficient amounts of carbohydrate and protein as well as allowing sufficient time between hard sessions are key to allowing your body and mind enough time to recover well. Without sufficient recovery you won’t really get any fitter, just dig yourself a hole which will take months to recover from.

Start Coaching

A coach addressing a group of swimmers in front of an open water venue — Introducing a group of new swimmers to the open water at London Royal Docks

I’m not suggesting a career change here, but coaching people, formally or informally, is a great way to reconnect with the sport. Whether you’re a qualified coach on poolside with a whistle or simply teaching a club mate how to fix a puncture, sharing your knowledge/expertise with newcomers not only helps them out, but gives you a sense of satisfaction that you’re helping the next generation of athletes.

Take a Break From the Sport

Have you been in a constant state of training for several years? Does the sight of your bike fill you with a low level feeling of dread? Do you check what today’s workout is while cowering behind the sofa? Is there a picture of your coach’s face on a dartboard somewhere in your house? The chances are the most productive thing you could do to help you fall back in love with triathlon, is take a break from triathlon. Distance makes the heart grow fonder as they say, and taking a step back from training may help you realise how important it is to you. I recommend athletes take at least one full week away from training at the end of a season, and normally a few more weeks away from proper structured training. Neglecting this can result in burnout and a loss of interest in the sport.

What if None of This Works?

I’ve listed some of the techniques which work for myself and those I’ve coached, but we’re all individuals at the end of the day. Ask yourself why you got into the sport in the first place, and how you can reignite that. If you started the sport for a sense of adventure, think about how you could make your training more dynamic. If you enjoyed using it to push your limits, find a race which will push you further than any event before. Perhaps you started the sport for its social reasons, but moved towards solo training over time, it might be worth reconnecting with other athletes, even if just for your easy workouts.

Sometimes though, no matter how hard you work at it, how much time you invest or money you throw at the problem, you won’t be able to get back in the groove of training. It may be that your priorities lie elsewhere now, you have too many responsibilities in more pressing areas of your life or recent events in your life have rearranged your priorities. This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy exercising occasionally or that you can’t return to the sport properly at a later date, but sometimes it’s better to accept that you need to park your triathlon hobby for now and wait for the right time to restart. After all, not training every week for the rest of your life doesn’t make you a failure.

Conclusion

An athlete holding the Union Jack wearing a medal

Falling back in love with triathlon is unlikely to be a life changing experience like when you first discovered the sport. It will be more like putting back on a favourite pair of slippers, or rediscovering one of your favourite hangouts as a child. It will motivate you to get outside and make the right choices for your mental/physical health, and help fortify your identity as a triathlete. Even professional athletes lose motivation sometimes, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

I hope this has helped you find your triathlon mojo again, if you have any tips that worked for you, leave them in the comments below to help others.

Covid-19 is still a problem in many countries, and will continue to be for many years to come. If you decide to travel outside of your local area for training or racing ensure you respect local restrictions at all times, regardless of your vaccination status, and research entry requirements for different countries if you plan to travel internationally. It is also worth researching the covid-19 refund policies different race organisers may or may not offer.

Introduction to Running Power

January 28, 2021January 1, 2022SimonOlney

Often the butt of many jokes on Twitter and dismissed by many experienced athletes. I believe running power is a misunderstood technology which can provide an athlete with unparalleled insight into their training. Here I want to give a more balanced introduction to running power for those considering it.

The running power meter was inspired by the bicycle power meter, which collects data from a strain gauge in a pedal, crank arm or wheel hub to calculate how much force is being applied by the athlete. This allows them to pace and race better on hills, into headwinds, at altitude and in the heat. The running power meter is not a true power meter in the respect that it is based on an algorithm, using accelerometers rather than a strain gauge. Combined with the pace at which an individual is running to generate a number measured in watts, this gives the athlete an insight into how much energy they are expending to achieve forward momentum.

As a runner, I would put money on you having trained with pace, heart rate and RPE in the past. So to start with I’ll break the pros and cons of each method down to help you make the right decision for your training.

RPE

Rate of perceived exertion is how hard you feel you are running, whether you are going eyeballs out in a race (RPE of 10) of gently jogging along on an easy run (RPE of around 4). It’s an important skill to develop for runners of all abilities even if they also use technology, as data doesn’t have all the answers and can fail at any point.

Pros:

If you are having a bad day, RPE will make sure you don’t over exert yourself and push you towards exhaustion or overtraining
It removes the risk of setting targets that are too high/low for an event
Free

Cons:

Newer runners will struggle to understand what their bodies are telling them, and may be based on what they perceive as “getting a good workout” rather than achieving the goals of the session
Will cause most runners to head out too fast when fresh, then fade as they didn’t pace themselves well enough
Difficult to accurately measure training load, fitness or fatigue
Requires many years of experience to dial in, and even then the best of us make mistakes

Heart Rate

Pros:

Heart Rate gives us an unparalleled insight to how the body is performing, if your heart rate is outside of normal parameters, your body is trying to tell you something. This helps us avoid overtraining by pushing too hard
Relatively inexpensive, most modern running watches will come with a heart rate monitor built in or come with a free chest strap
Tracking your heart rate over time provides a valuable insight into how well your body is adapting to exercise.

Cons:

There is a large delay between your body’s exertion and and an increase in heart rate, so it is difficult to use it to pace races with lots of hills/surges as the feedback isn’t immediate, and your heart rate may continue to rise for up to 30 seconds after a tough section
Lots of factors outside of training can artificially inflate our heart rate. A lack of sleep, high levels of stress, temperature, altitude and mensural cycle to name but a few will all affect our heart rate and may result in us running faster/slower than we should
Prone to dropouts or false readings. Where 10BPM is a huge difference, battery or connection issues can leave you vulnerable
Sticking to heart rate based training can be incredibly frustrating for new athletes as they feel they need to walk to keep their heart rate in the correct zone

Pace

Pace is probably the most popular method of measuring running intensity, and is still the most important. Let’s assume I put a running power meter on the foot of every athlete starting a 5K run. The winner wouldn’t be the one who put out the highest number of watts or the best horizontal power. It would be the one who ran the fastest. However there are issues when using a GPS watch to measure pace

Pros:

Cheap, comes with all fitness tracking devices, or you can use you phone
The winner of the race is the athlete who runs the fastest, so it’s the purest way of tracking intensity

Cons:

GPS watches can lose signal, or struggle to find it in areas such as woodland or around high rise buildings
Large events place so much strain on GPS systems that they cannot keep up. This resultis in athlete’s watches giving false readings, and getting out of sync with the race organiser’s distance markers. This can result in widespread confusion and frustration
GPS watches are very sensitive to changes in direction. They expect you to continue running in a straight line. Making a U turn or sharp corner can leave the GPS struggling to catch up
It does not take gradient or headwind into account. If you are running up or down a hill, pace data is of very little use
Susceptible to headwinds

Power

Finally, this brings us onto the running power meter. For my money, this goes a long way to correcting the flaws of other methods:

Pros:

Takes hills and wind into account (new generation Stryd only)
Provides advanced running metrics such as stride length, ground contact time, running efficiency, form power and leg spring stiffness
Reliable data in all situations
Measures distance precisely using the accelerometer inside the power meter, giving you an exact pace rather than GPS estimate
Allows you to track improvements easily
Unparalleled treadmill accuracy

Cons:

Can be confusing at first, requires time investment
Expensive, at £200 for a Stryd unit, on top of a compatible watch, it’s a definite investment in your running
The data can become all consuming, and athletes run the risk of losing sight of the bigger picture (running faster)
Any long term changes in athlete weight require re-calibration and redundancy of previous data
Can be tricky to use if you are aiming for a specific finish time

The biggest benefit for running power for me is consistency and the low margin for error. While the algorithm behind running power is up for scrutiny, as long as the data that is outputted is consistent that’s the most important thing. Whether an athlete is running on a treadmill, up an alpine pass, a road marathon or simply on a jog with friends, I know I have good data which represents their effort, using it to track improvements and calculate fatigue.

Hopefully that has given you an insight into the advantages of using running power over other methods. Next up I’m going to delve into a bit more of the science:

What is running power?

Running power is measured in the arbitrary measurement of a running watt. This is a combination of force (in newtons) and speed (metres per second), with higher numbers translating into faster running. When you hit a hill the power meter will recognise this and increase the power to represent the additional effort you are using to fight gravity. On the downhills it will recognise the gravitational assist and lower the power number to represent the reduced level of force you are having to generate yourself. This helps us pace our runs much more accurately.

Training with Running Power

Hopefully by now the concept sounds appealing at the very least. So how do you get started? First off you need a running power meter. I would recommend against any power meter which generates numbers based on speed derived from a GPS signal. This will normally involve an algorithm which looks at your cadence and your speed to generate an estimation of power. For my money though, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. Running power in itself is an algorithm. So an algorithm that is required to generate another algorithm has a large margin of error. I use a Stryd footpod which is easily the most popular running power meter available currently. I will be writing the rest of this article on the assumption this is what you are using.

These numbers, like those from a cycling power meter are fairly meaningless without a benchmark. Is 250W a lot? What should you be hitting in your intervals? Is there a number you should be staying below during your event? When is your run too easy? To find the answer to these questions, we need to find a threshold, a point where an effort becomes unsustainable. The simplest way to use this is to use the Stryd auto CP (critical power) calculator. This harvests the data from all of your runs to give you an estimation of your ability. It’s important you feed it a variety of data points, from sprints to 5Ks and long runs. Don’t expect an accurate number after a few easy runs.

A graph illustrating a runner's personal bests across various timeframes, used to calculate a run power threshold — The WKO5 power duration curve informing us that this runner’s threshold is 231W

Zone training is nothing new as we have zones for pace and heart rate. What’s different here is the fact that threshold is calculated by looking at thousands of data points rather than a single point. This means our threshold is much more accurate. It also updates automatically with time. Smash out a big hill session which included your best two minute power? Your threshold may improve by a couple of watts. Absolutely storm that cross country race? You may see a nice big boost to represent that. It’s important to note that these are based on a 90 day rolling average, so any data older than 90 days will disappear. This can result in sudden increases/decreases to your threshold power even if you’ve spent the day on the sofa.

The way our power threshold updates itself automatically reduces the need for formal testing every 6-8 weeks. For me this is arguably the biggest benefit of running power. Ensuring your threshold is always up to date.

Indoor Running

I don’t like running on a treadmill, however, sometimes it’s a necessary evil. This can be due to the weather, or when we’re in a country where wearing sports clothing in public is not appropriate. One of the frustrating issues I encounter as a coach is accurately recording treadmill workouts. Treadmills vary significantly in accuracy, and the indoor running mode included on sports watches leaves a lot to be desired.

You may be lucky enough to have access to an indoor running facility such as a sprint track or even a full 400M. The lack of GPS signal can be a issue if we want detailed information from our session, but a running power meter provides us with all the information we need, without the GPS accuracy issues which plague even outdoor tracks.

Running with power is the perfect way to record your indoor runs as we get meaningful figures that can be directly compared to your outdoor runs. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you’re a serious runner who trains indoors regularly, a running power meter is an essential purchase.

My preferred way to train on the treadmill is using Zwift. This is software which takes you through a virtual world as you run where you can also join races and complete workouts. It’s free for runners and pairs with your power meter, so download it and give it a go.

A runner on a treadmill in front of a screen displaying Zwift, which she is using to record her run — Image copyright Zwift

Post Run Analysis

A graph depicting various data points during a run — Fatigue Indicators Chart developed by Steve Palladino, available on WKO5

Once you get back from your run your watch will upload your data to an analysis platform of choice. Most software now supports running power, however the level of support varies considerably. If you are a basic user the Stryd Power Centre will offer enough information for you, with the bonus of being free. TrainingPeaks offers some basic functionality, but if you are a serious runner only looking to analyse data, and have little to no interest in purchasing a TrainingPlan then I recommend using WKO instead. It costs the same as a year of TrainingPeaks premium with far greater support for running power. There’s a steep learning curve however, so if you’re a new runner this is probably overkill.

Assuming your threshold is accurate, you will be able to see in detail how hard you ran. This data will be far more insightful than pace or heart rate, and pick up small, rapid changes much better. This could be jumping over a fallen tree or sprinting for a couple of strides to make it across the road before the lights turn green. While these aren’t necessarily actionable data points, the power meter ensures that these efforts are recorded and reflected in your training load calculations.

If you are so inclined, you can take a real deep dive into your data looking at the advanced metrics offered by WKO. Here you can see your leg spring stiffness, duty factor, percentage of power generated horizontally or vertically, and all manner of other metrics, which I’m not going to go into here.

Two metrics that are worth paying attention to however are running efficiency and horizontal power.

Running efficiency (RE) looks at how effective you are at turning watts into speed. As you may remember, higher speed means higher watts. But you can also create power simply by jumping up and down on the spot, so this metric looks at how efficient you are. Running efficiency is quite a finite metric, but when running at threshold, anything below 0.97 requires improvement, 1.0 is a good score, and 1.03 or above is likely the realm of elite runners. An improvement in RE over time at the same pace/power suggests that you are improving as a runner.

Percentage of power generated in a horizontal plane (or horizontal power) tells you how much power generated is transferred into forward momentum. As mentioned above, you can create power by jumping up and down on the spot, which would create 0% horizontal power, and 100% vertical power. You can’t create 100% horizontal power, but if you can get it up to around 75-80% this suggests you are moving fluidly.

These metrics will vary from run to run, and will be lower on easy or hilly runs so make sure you’re only comparing these with like for like runs.

The real danger here is getting lost in the numbers and over analysing every single data point. Or believing you aren’t capable of more than the software’s predictions. We should still be runners at heart, hitting the roads/trails for fun and the challenge of pushing our limits. Running power data is so in depth we can run the risk of becoming data analysts first instead of athletes.

Running Power for Triathlon

So, if you’re a triathlete, how does this fit into your training? How can you use it to run faster off the bike? The answer is in form power.

When we run off the bike we’re never going to run as well as we will at a standalone event. Depending on your event and ability you may be up to ten hours into the race at this point. Your legs will be tired and stiff from the repeated pedalling action on the bike. Your mobility may be impaired and your legs will be fatigued. This can mean you find yourself not running as quickly as you’d like. Add to this the accumulation of fatigue over the rest of the run and pace isn’t as useful.

Running power takes this into account. It recognises that you’re putting in the effort, even if you’re not travelling as quickly as you would normally. This is form power, it looks at the vertical and lateral movement from the foot compared to the horizontal power which we touched on above. While generating a high amount of form power is bad news for our running, what’s worse is not taking this into account and pushing harder because we feel we’re slacking off.

This becomes imperative to our pacing. We may know we can hold 5:00 for a marathon when fresh, but after a hard 180Km on the bike this may be 5:20, maybe even 5:30. If we stick to our guns (and pride) aiming for 5:00 per KM we could well be slowly running ourselves into the red. Aiming for a power target instead takes our loss of form into account, ensuring we focus on what our body is doing, as opposed to what we think it should be doing.

Conclusion

So, you may be wondering why more people don’t run with power at this point. I’ll break down a few most common issues people have with running power

Elite athletes don’t use it

It’s true, not many professional runners use Stryd. There are some notable exceptions such as Ben Kanute and Olympic Triathlon Champion Gwen Jorgennson. More often than not this is the choice of their coach rather than the athlete, who will adapt an “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. Truth be told, if I had an athlete who was winning races training with pace and/or heart rate, I probably wouldn’t suggest they switch to running power. Elite athletes are often training at a level where they can’t afford to try something new, especially going into an Olympic year, so they stick to what they know.

Technophobes

Some very successful coaches out there won’t even want their athletes to wear watches. They’ll stand next to the start/finish line of a track with their stopwatch, barking splits out to runners as they complete every lap. While this is an extreme example, many coaches who qualified in the 20th Century aren’t interested in opening their minds to new training methods. There is nothing inherently wrong with this if they’ve been coaching for 30 years and had great success with their current methods, but they may not be getting the most out of their athletes.

This also extends to athletes who may not understand what running power is, how to set it up, or how to use it to make themselves faster. To them it’s just a number that appears on their watch. I hope to demystify it in more detail with more articles in future.

Just not appealing

For some, training with heart rate and pace is enough, or even too much in some cases. If you live a very busy life and don’t have the time, headspace or inclination to look through your numbers after a run. For some, running is a time for them to switch off, lose themselves in nature, or blow off some steam. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s not a “mature technology”

It’s true that our understanding of running power is accelerating at a rapid pace. In fact it could be argued that the entire concept is in beta testing with rapid developments and new interpretations of the data on a regular basis. The concept is based on an algorithm and it’s hard to see how that could be changed currently, so it’s hard to see it becoming as reliable as cycling power any time soon. That being said, look at the way Team Sky and British Cycling advanced the knowledge of cycling power, first developed in the 80s, to emerge as a dominant force in 2012. There is a lot of potential in running power, and early adopters with the right guidance can capitalise on its benefits.

Early versions were poor

Running power meters first arrived on the scene back in 2015 with the Stryd chest strap. By the company’s own admission more recently, it left a lot to be desired. New generations have improved the accuracy and the stability of running power significantly.

The best thing of all though? Just because you record running power doesn’t mean you can’t also run with pace, heart rate or RPE. You can record all four at once, and choose whichever you want to dictate the intensity of your workout. Following a MAF plan? Increases in power can reassure you the training is working.

It may be you want a running power meter simply to record your pace more accurately, or you’re only interested in a single metric such as leg spring stiffness or horizontal power. As with everything in our sport, you only need to take it as seriously as you want. If you have the cash I recommend you give it a go though. It may be just what you need to take your running to the next level.

Don’t Let Ironman Ruin Your Marriage

January 10, 2020November 7, 2023SimonOlney

As someone once said to me, “Training for a sprint is a hobby, training for an Ironman is a lifestyle”, something many of us can relate to. You likely started out at sprint and Olympic distance where a long ride was three hours and you rarely ran for longer than an hour. However when taking on an Ironman, this just won’t cut it, and your longer workouts tend to dominate the day once you include the preparation, execution, recovery, cleaning/washing and the obligatory nap afterwards.

All of this can take a strain on your relationships, which can leave your other half feeling neglected and overwhelmed with jobs such as looking after kids and food shopping which you can’t help with while you’re out putting in the miles. Training for an event like an Ironman will likely change the dynamic of your relationship, but there are some simple steps you can take to stop it being a change for the worse.

Choose your moment

If you’re moving house, expecting a new arrival, your workplace have announced redundancies or a family member is unwell, you have to ask yourself whether this is really the best time to engage in an expensive and time consuming challenge such as an Ironman. When you get closer to the race you may be out of the house for six hours at a time on your long ride, you may find yourself stressed if things aren’t going to plan and the physical exhaustion you’ll experience towards the end of the hard weeks can make the best of us come across as a bit short tempered and surly. The Ironman distance isn’t going anywhere, so don’t feel you have to cram it into an already stressful period in your life.

Make time for them

If you love someone the greatest gift you can give them is your presence, just to be around, even if it’s just sitting on the sofa watching a film together. Ironman training will reduce the time you can spend together, and your other half may take this personally if they believe you are growing tired or bored of their company. Even if you’re not able to spend as much time together as previously, making an effort to put time aside for them, and following up on this goes a long way. If you can’t spend an evening sat on the sofa browsing Netflix for five hours together, take them out to dinner for a couple of hours to make them feel special.

Patrick Lange proves that Ironman can strengthen relationships as he pops the question after smashing the course record at the Ironman World Championships in 2018

Involve them with the process

If your partner is less than keen on your Ironman habit the best way you can turn it around is to involve them so they feel some ownership over the process. This doesn’t mean forcing them to train with you, but it can be something as simple as asking them to hold you accountable to your training plan, asking them which event you should enter or combining your training/racing with a family holiday. If your partner is a stickler for organisation, sharing your precise schedule with them, or inputting the times you plan to train into a shared calendar can help ease any anxieties about you disappearing at short notice.

Keep the sex life going

If you’ve already spent six hours sweating away on the bike in the morning, the thought of spending more time getting sweaty between the sheets can be less than appealing, especially for male athletes as prolonged aerobic exercise decreases levels of testosterone. While every couple has their own preferences on how regularly fornication should occur, it’s important not to let this slide too much when you start training. Your intimate sessions may be shorter than normal and you may have to adapt if you’re feeling truly exhausted, but leaving your partner to their own devices for several weeks or even months because you deem your training to be more important is unlikely to go down well.

Keep perspective

Your training may mean the world to you at this point in time, but the saying goes that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. If you duck out of seeing your in laws for the sake of a big swim session or refuse to spend time with your sick children because you’re afraid you’ll catch a bug that will stop you training this can add up over time. No single session in your training plan will make or break your race, but the anxiety and stress of relationship problems that stem from being inflexible and selfish will have a far greater effect on your performance as not only will you struggle to keep a clear mind, those around you may remove their support for your quest and that run down the finishing chute will feel very lonely.

mIMWinnerFamily — Matt Russel crosses the finish line to find his family. Image copyright Ironman

Be transparent

Show them the Strava file from your run, show them the photo you and your friends took together at the top of the climb, maybe let them track you while you ride/run for safety purposes (most devices allow this), and just generally keep them up to date with what you’re doing. This will help ease any anxieties about where you’re spending your time and who you’re spending it with.

Pick up the slack on your rest day

Most athletes should be taking one day completely off a week. If you have a young family you should see this as an opportunity to pull your weight and pick up the slack; looking after your children to allow your partner some time to to socialise, relax or exercise themselves. Even if you don’t have children, this is a good opportunity to clean the bathroom, mow the lawn, do the dishes, fold the laundry, all jobs which you’ve probably let slide in favour of ploughing up and down the pool. This gives you the double header of a grateful spouse and a clean, organised environment to train and live in.

Look into home training solutions

In this day and age there are several solutions for training indoors; treadmills for running, smart trainers for cycling and endless pools for swimming. While some of these are more affordable than others, something affordable like a turbo trainer not only allows you to work in a very efficient way, it also allows you to be in the house waiting for that parcel, keeping an eye on the kids or allowing you to stay on standby if your other half is in bed feeling unwell. It’s often preferable to train outside, but sometimes this is unrealistic, and it’s better to take your ride/run indoors than to miss a session.

Go easy on the credit card

Yes, triathlon is an expensive sport, there’s no getting around that, but you really don’t need to spend £100 on titanium skewers, £700 on a wetsuit, £10,000 on a bike or £70 on a carbon fibre bottle cage. We all like toys, but there comes a point where you have to put the family budget first. It’s only a hobby at the end of the day and most of the equipment won’t actually make you that much faster. If you’re lucky enough to be in a position where you’re able to splash some cash, don’t be surprised if your other half wants a new set of golf clubs, a weekend skiing, or for you to finally get round to replacing the dated three piece suite.

Be honest

If you spent more on your new bike than you said you would, fess up. If you’re going to be out for seven hours then don’t tell them you’ll be back for lunch. If you know you’ll be exhausted after your long run, don’t make plans you know you’ll probably have to cancel when you get home and collapse onto the sofa. Honesty is the cornerstone of any relationship and being flexible with the truth or hiding receipts from them is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.

Talk problems over

If you can tell there’s a sense of resentment growing at the time/money you’re investing, rather than ignoring it, ask them what you can do to make things work better. This also gives you a chance to explain why you’re disappearing for six hours every Sunday (You need to get your long rides in to boost your aerobic capacity as part of your base training, these rides will become less frequent in the build phase which starts next month). If your partner vocalises concerns about how much you’re spending, explain your rationale behind your decisions and talk them through any more expenses that are due before the big day. By explaining the rationale behind your decisions you can help them understand why you’re making the decisions you are, and that there’s no ulterior motives.

Successful relationships are all about give and take, and while training for an Ironman there’s a good chance you’ll be taking a lot more than you’re giving; making a few adjustments to time management and how you go about your training can help prevent any conflict.

If you’re looking for a training plan which is customised around your family life, have a look at our online triathlon coaching and custom training plans.

Want more content like this delivered to your inbox on a monthly basis? Sign up to our newsletter here:

From First Middle Distance to Sub 13 Iron Distance in 2 Months

September 19, 2019December 15, 2020SimonOlney

When I first started working with Naval in the early summer he had two middle distance events booked, the Owler which he wanted to use as a sighter, and Challenge Almere which he wanted to use for a big performance. Luckily I had already known him for a couple of years by this point through the club, so knew a lot about him and his training from day one.

We changed his training quite significantly, not so much the number of sessions but the length of them and the content. He is an incredibly strong cyclist and is one of the few people who can hold my heels during a hill session, but this doesn’t translate into a strong half marathon after you’ve already been racing for around three and a half hours by the time you put your running shoes on. He was told to either sit in the wheels on group rides or keep his heart rate below zone 4 when on the front. By spending less energy showboating on the hills and sprinting allowed him to both maximise the aerobic benefit of these sessions, run well off the bike when he got home and keep training well in the first half of the week rather than spend the time recovering from a very hard ride. We also changed the majority of his run training from intervals to longer runs, as with a month to go he hadn’t run much over 12K before.

We only had a few weeks to prepare for the Owler, so when he lined up we hadn’t got close enough to 21KM in training as I would have liked, but he pulled it off and managed an impressive 1:50 run split off the back of a 2:51 ride. With some speed work and tempo runs we could get that run split down to 1:40, and hit the bike harder, taking 15-20 minutes off in the two months we had wasn’t out of the question.

Then a couple of weeks later I got a call from Naval. Instead of beating his PB in Almere, he wanted to step up to the full distance.

He explained that he was unsure if he’d have as much time to train next year due to other commitments, and worried that this may be his best chance of completing the distance, a long term ambition of his. While I always do my best to help people achieve the goals they come to me with rather than tell them what they can and can’t do, this was a big ask.

I decided to look at the facts, for a start the swim would be manageable. He’d completed Ride London in well under 6 hours, and had ridden the hilly 200KM Ditchling Devil audax, so 180KM of riding on flat roads were unlikely to cause him a problem. Using the conservative estimate of 90 minutes for the swim and 7 hours for the bike, this gave us around 7 hours to run/walk 40KM. I’ve learned to never take completing the run course for granted as cramps, digestive issues or sheer exhaustion can leave someone weaving across the road, but I thought he could do it.

Naval really wanted to step up the running distances which is understandable, but as he has a history of running injury, increasing the distance dramatically would most likely result in injury and crush his dreams, although we did need to increase the run volume to give him his best chance of success. I decided the best way to do this was to include two middle distance runs during the week to increase his weekly volume rather than jump straight up to 30KM long runs. The marathon was going to be brutal, we both acknowledged that, but there wasn’t a huge amount we could do otherwise. It seemed a risk worth taking

He pulled it out of the bag, finishing in a highly impressive 12 hours and 53 minutes. Coaching isn’t a silver bullet, but this is a perfect example of how good communication and thinking outside of the box can create results.

Aerobic and Anaerobic- What You Need to Know

January 11, 2019January 12, 2019SimonOlney

Aerobic and anaerobic are two words that many in the endurance coaching world including myself bound around on a daily basis, yet for the aspiring triathlete these can cause confusion at first.

The terms refer to how the body generates energy, imagine a six year old at sports day, belting across the school field towards the finishing line. When they finish their run they will likely be breathing heavily, exhausted from the 25M sprint they have just completed. When they move into secondary school and start running the 1500 on the track and cross country they soon realise something, if they want to run longer distances they have to slow down.

Once they run longer distances at a lower intensities they are not nearly as out of breath at the end of the effort. They may be exhausted and collapse in a heap with sore legs and no energy left, but their lungs will not burn in the same way as before, they will not be recovering from what is known as an oxygen debt.

The reason you experience an oxygen debt after short efforts is due to the body relying primarily on its anaerobic system heavily for short, hard efforts, this is where your body creates energy without oxygen. I won’t go into the science of how it works here, but what you need to know is that the anaerobic system can only function for around 2 minutes before the athlete accumulates a large oxygen debt and has to slow dramatically, this is our fight or flight reaction that allows us to escape from danger. Many predators in the animal kingdom rely on their anaerobic system heavily as they sprint after prey, if the gazelle manages to slip from the cheetahs grasp or zig zag enough to tire the cheetah, it can avoid becoming lunch as the cheetah has created an enormous oxygen debt it must recover from, akin to the six year old who has sprinted full pelt over a short distance and has nothing left at the end.

Cheetah_hunting_impala-photo-safari_Masai_Mara_3285.jpg — A Cheetah relies on its strong muscles and high anaerobic prowess to hunt down its prey, but if it mistimes its sprint or the animal escapes, it is unlikely to make the kill (photo credit Federico Veronesi)

On the other side of the equation we have aerobic fitness, this is energy created using oxygen. This is much more efficient and is one of the leading reasons for our dominance as a species, where our prey relied predominantly on their anaerobic system to escape danger, we were able to keep them in sight and slowly run them into exhaustion as they were unable to hold the pace that we were over longer distances.

As triathletes we are focused almost entirely upon the aerobic system, as it is very rare that we will be putting the hammer down and become predominantly anaerobic when racing even a sprint distance triathlon as we will need time to recover from this effort. The exception to this is in draft legal triathlon where you may launch an attack off the front of the pack to try to bridge to the next group, which upon joining you will be able to sit in the wheels of for a minute or so while your body recovers from the oxygen debt.

This is the reason that so much triathlon training is done at an “all day” pace, to ensure we are building and strengthening our aerobic system and not our anaerobic system. The mistake that many athletes make is doing all of their training way too fast and making very little headway on the aerobic development side of things. You may be able to run a very quick 5K, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a great marathon experience, I can vouch for that one personally!

This is where things get confusing, I am a fairly gifted anaerobic athlete, I can push myself harder and go deeper than many others over shorter periods, but tend to suffer over especially long efforts. Normally when I mention that I have a strong anaerobic system and that 5K is my best distance to an athlete a metaphorical finger is waved in my face. “Aha! But a 5K is over 2 minutes, so it’s not an anaerobic effort”. This is of course true, but what people don’t always realise is that your body is never generating energy on a 100% aerobic or anaerobic basis. If that were the case a 100M sprinter could run with his mouth gaffer taped shut and still hit the same time as his rivals.

Anaerobic energy is created in addition to the energy that is being generated aerobically, you are using anaerobically generated energy while reading this. It is only an incredibly tiny fraction of the energy being created (think several decimal places), but is it ticking over like a pilot light, ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice.

To illustrate this more clearly here is a graph created using WKO4 (more information here) that visualises the energy systems used by an athlete at different timeframes. The data is collated using the athlete’s best performances at the time periods listed on the X axis, with the maximum power than can sustain for that period on the Y axis. I use these graphs to help athletes gain a better understanding of their individual physiologies to help us understand where we need to focus our training effort.

Today we want to focus on the green and the blue lines, the green line represents aerobic contribution, the blue line anaerobic. If we start to the left of the chart we can see that at 1 second there is very little contribution from the aerobic system as the body has not started increasing the rate at which it pumps oxygen to the muscles yet, but using glycosides the body can create energy within the muscles and get us moving immediately. As we look closer towards the 10 second mark the aerobic system is really starting to get up to speed now, additional oxygen has been absorbed from the lungs and is being pumped to the muscles to get them fired up.

For this athlete, it is at one minute 6 seconds that the crossover occurs, and the aerobic system takes over as the primary fuel source. The aerobic system has fuel, it can continue indefinitely for as long as it has fuel, the anaerobic system making a tiny contribution that can increase on hills or when accelerating hard.

Looking at the 20 minute data point, the anaerobic system is still contributing 10W of power, which is still a respectable amount, I’m sure if this athlete saw their FTP drop by 10W they would be mortified. Remember, this is looking at the athlete’s best 20 minute effort, not all 20 minute efforts use such a proportion of the anaerobic system.

Going back to the graph, it would look very different for a track sprinter compared to a time trialist (which this athlete is classified as). In a sprinter the anaerobic system would make a much greater contribution, it would continue for much longer before the intersection with the aerobic system as sprinters need to hold maximum power for as long as possible. Their aerobic system will be very weak comparatively and they would struggle to keep up on a gentle Sunday club run as a result.

So now we’ve gone through the science, let’s have a look at the takeaway points, and how a better understanding of the two energy systems can aid your training:

-There is no benefit to developing your anaerobic system for most triathletes. I know an extremely successful athlete who has raced at Kona, yet claims he can’t sprint for toffee (never seen him sprint so can’t confirm this). He doesn’t need to train or develop his anaerobic system, he’s happy to let it fall by the wayside almost entirely to focus entirely on his aerobic system. That’s not to say that he won’t start leaning on anaerobic pathways during some sessions (such as hill reps), but the goal of these sessions is to develop muscular force, not to increase anaerobic ability although this may come as a byproduct.

-You’re never completely aerobic or anaerobic, the body is always using both, even if in very small amounts. Your anaerobic threshold is where you start to produce energy primarily from the anaerobic pathway and should be avoided for the majority of your sessions

-Avoid using large amounts of anaerobic energy in your training. It feels good as it leaves you feeling more fatigued, and changes in your anaerobic system are faster to gain and easier to track than gains in your aerobic system (“I’m 5 seconds faster up that hill!”), but are of little use to the vast majority of triathletes when it comes to race day. I know I’ve certainly fallen foul of this one in the past.

-Many fitness tests require you to use large proportions of anaerobic energy, as triathletes we are not testing you for improvements in these areas, rather trying to assess your current weighting between aerobic/anaerobic energy sources. If an athlete puts out the same amount of watts over a set period as his previous best but the anaerobic contribution is lower then the previous test, this will result in an increase in FTP when uploaded to WKO4.

I hope this has given you a better understanding of the role that aerobic and anaerobic pathways play in endurance sport, leave any questions in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Understanding Your Annual Training Plan (ATP)

October 3, 2018February 1, 2019SimonOlney

When you begin training with us here at Phazon Triathlon, one of the first things we do is create your Annual Training Plan, or ATP. This is a framework which we use to base your training off of, so you can understand decisions we make and can see how your training will progress over the year. However the acronyms and numbers can be confusing so I wanted to take some time to explain the meaning of all the figures you see to help you better understand and use your ATP.

For this example I will be using an ATP I have just written myself for the 2019 season, here is a screen grab for you.

As you can see, there is a lot of information squeezed into a screen here, so let me talk you through what it all means.

The most attention grabbing part of the screen is the chart at the top with various colours of lines and bars. The most important of these is the big blue shaded area that fills the majority of the screen. this is my CTL, or critical training load, which simply put is how fit I will be at that time of year. I am currently sitting on a figure of 44 and am forecast to hit 99 before IRONMAN UK in July. Notice however that the line is not a straight line, it levels off and even drops at points, this is because I need easy weeks for my body to recover, continually building fitness throughout the year is a sure way to burnout.

The mustard coloured shaded area is my form, this is how race ready I will be, as you can see here it peaks in two periods during the year, for my A races. When we train we add fatigue which impacts on our form, we must lower the training load for our form to increase, a process known as tapering.

Our training load for each week is represented by the vertical bars, these are the TSS targets I have set myself for each week. As I complete each week these will become shaded to tell me whether I have missed, hit, or overshot my target for the week. The blue and yellow dotted lines will also start to move around, these represent my actual fitness and fatigue, I can use this to see whether they are closely corresponding to the shaded areas, and whether I’m on track. As you can see from this screen grab I was slightly below target for my first week of the preparation phase, but I didn’t miss it by much and it will make next to no difference to my performance on race day.

What may confuse those of us new to the sport are the period names at the bottom of the chart, these are preparation, Base 1, Base 2, Base 3, Build 1, Build 2, Peak, Race and Transition.

Preparation
This is a very relaxed phase of the training, these is much less in the way of structure here, the only really structured work taking place in the gym where we begin the anatomical adaptation phase (more on this later). Why would you have phase of unstructured training you may ask, especially if you’re feeling apprehensive about your event. Triathlon training is tough, it takes a lot of time and energy to train for these events, it takes a toll on the body and the mind in equal measure. With the preparation phase we give new athletes a chance to get their head around working with a coach, and give experienced athletes a chance to wind themselves back to up to full tilt.

Base 1

The purpose of this period changes depending on your level of experience, if you are a rookie triathlete you will spend this time moving to a more structured programme, focusing on improving aerobic endurance and your speed skills (technique). If however you are an experienced triathlete and are confident in the gym there is a big focus on weights at this stage to build our maximal strength, this allows us to swim, bike and run faster while also preventing injuries. We also use this time to work on our speed skills, primarily our swimming technique.

Base 2
We continue the theme of building on our endurance and speed skills here, stepping back from the heavy gym work to allow us to focus more on our aerobic endurance and speed skills. Lifting big weights is an effective way to improve your performance, but it has an effect on your ability to swim, bike and run in the following days so is generally consigned to the Base 1 period.

Base 3
This is the period you will spend most of your time in, for the rookie athlete who may just be looking to get round their event, the rest of the year may be spent in base 3. For those who are looking to build speed we will repeat this phase until we are 8-12 weeks out of our first A race, so depending on when you start your season dictates how many times you will repeat base 3. You will also return to base 3 after an A race if you have enough time, and will return to base 3 if you have more than a few days off of training at any point in the build phase.

Build 1
This is where we focus almost entirely on muscular endurance work, extending the periods for which you can maintain your threshold and race pace efforts, the exact contents of this phase depend on the distance you are training for, for Ironman athletes it will involve longer workouts set at or around race pace where for short course athletes it will involve much more in the way of speed work. Either way, as we get closer to our race our training must better reflect the demands of race day.

Build 2
This is simply a repeat of the Build 1, but normally with a slightly higher TSS target, the focus remains on muscular endurance with less time spend on long easy workouts.

Peak
This is also known as your taper, the time in the year where we back off of the hard training and allow our body to recover to become race fit. Remember how the orange shaded area (my form) shot up as we approached the races? That’s because I back off training then and my body reaches peak fitness. Training doesn’t make us stronger, anyone who tells you they feel stronger after a long run is telling your porkies, it’s the period after our training where our body repairs itself that we become stronger, a period of peaking (1-2 weeks) ensures our body is well rested and as strong as it can be for race day, you don’t want any lingering fatigue from your training as you line up at the start.

Race
Self explanatory, it’s race week! Very little training, with a focus on intensity one volume to ensure we’re raring to go when we wake up on race day.

Transition
This is a period of rest after an A race, where we take a well deserved rest. You can still train at this point, but it should only be for fun. This is a great time to try other sports and just generally enjoy being active.

Going through every phase is a very lengthy process and so can only be achieved two or three times a year. In an ideal world I would have longer between my A races but as Bolton is relatively easy in the season I couldn’t get a warm up 70.3 in any earlier without travelling to the Southern Hemisphere.

This leads us onto B and C priority races, currently I only have one other event on the cards, my club championship 5K race. I want to perform relatively well to take back my title from 2015, but I’ll be in the base period at the time and I can’t afford to take too much time out to prepare for it, so I’ll perhaps do a few 5K specific workouts in the days before, have a rest day on the Saturday, and see where it takes me. As I’m organising some training around it, this makes it a B race. The final category is a C race which is normally a race entered with friends, to gain experience, or just for fun. They are treated just like a hard workout with no preparation beforehand.

So now we’ve prioritised our races, and have split our year up into periods, the next step is setting our training volume, which I set as a TSS value for you. This is where things start to become more personalised, TrainingPeaks has an algorithm which can split the year into periods for you and you can set a target CTL, it will do the maths and hand you an automated ATP.

You may have been doing some reading and heard that a CTL of 95 is recommended for an Ironman, so you put a target CTL of 95 in and get cracking with your training. The problem being that you may be a rookie athlete training for their first Ironman and there is no way you can hit those numbers, either you’ll burn out in the first few weeks or even worse you’ll succumb to complete over training later in the season, sidelining you for the rest of the year. You may also be an athlete who recovers more slowly and your recovery weeks need to be easier than TrainingPeaks’ algorithm allows for. By analysing your training history and asking questions we can start to put target TSS values together for you to ensure your TSS targets are realistic. We don’t work to a target CTL for your A race, we instead start by inputting numbers we believe you can maintain, increase them steadily through the year and see what our final CTL value is. If it’s too low we see how training goes and will consider increasing the volume in the weeks and months that follow.

At this point it is worth remembering that the human body is not a mathematical equation, people have got round Ironman races with far less than 95CTL points, and if that’s all you’re looking to achieve then there’s no need to sacrifice your social life upon the altar of triathlon to hit an arbitrary number. These figures are great for helping us to track progress, but they are not the be all and end all.

CTL is probably the most important number, but what we also need to take into consideration is how we increase the number, and for that the form number is an underrated tool to help us ensure we are making improvements and not stagnating. Your form number can sit in the following brackets:

25+ should only be reached in times of transition, or a total rest from training, or perhaps if an athlete is injured and unable to train.

+5 to +25 is the range many will aim to hit for race day. A higher number isn’t always better as you also lose some frying from your legs, and run the risk of feeling empty on race day.

+5 to -10 is a bit of a great area, and where a lot of untouched athletes will sit, they’re certainly doing some training, but probably not enough to illicit enough of a training response for them to get enough to see significant fitness gains. Athletes will often find themselves in this zone on easy weeks.

-10 to -30 is the optimal zone to sit in for a good training effect, you can’t stay here forever as it’ll start to fatigue you, but this is where the best gains are made.

below -30 is the high risk zone where you run a very real risk of overtraining. If you find yourself on the wrong side of -30 which can happen to the best of us sometimes, you need to lift and coast, reducing volume, perhaps even taking an unplanned rest day if you feel you need it. Spending too much time at this level of fatigue can cause long term problems to both your performance and health.

My CTL is set to peak at 99, which is a good CTL for someone looking to perform well at an Ironman race, however the chances of me reaching that exact number are incredibly slim. I may start the build period and feel I’m having to hold back to hit my weekly targets, in which case I could try kicking everything up by 25 TSS points a week, which would give me a CTL closer to 110. By the same token, I may crash my bike on some ice in February and have a week with little to no training, which means I’ll have to readjust my targets.

This is an important point, your ATP is not set in stone, it’s incredibly rare (possibly unknown) for someone to make it through an entire year hitting every target as life happens. Business trips are sprung on you, your kids may become unwell, your bike may have to wait a long time for essential spares, a lot can get between you and your perfect season of training, but the good thing is that an ATP is pretty flexible. Phases can be reassigned, targets can be adjusted and even your target races changed, the important thing is it ensures that we are both on the same page.

Next up is weekly limiters, this is where the experience of a coach and their knowledge of you as an athlete really comes into play as we make each week specific to you.

Using myself as an example, I can break each sport down into strengths and weaknesses to show how an ATP can be curated to each individual athlete

Swimming
I know that as an athlete two primary areas are limiting me in the swim, my technique and my force, or more importantly the application of force which is intrinsic with technique. I can comfortably swim well over 4KM so endurance is not a huge concern for me, but enhancing the speed that I can hold for longer durations is important. This year my focus is going to be primarily on technique with an additional focus on force (improved by using paddles), with muscular endurance and endurance taking a backseat for now. As I live in London where the weather is not conclusive to year round open water swimming I swim exclusively in the pool until April/May at the very earliest as the lakes start to open. Therefore my plan is to focus on technique and force work in the pool, before taking to the open water in the spring and applying the gains I have made in the pool into the open water whilst building me endurance to ensure I can still comfortably swim 4K at my improved pace.

Cycling
I have come to acknowledge in recent months that my aerobic fitness is just not where it should be, and I struggle to replicate my success in short course racing over longer distances, with this in mind my focus throughout most of the year will be on endurance. You may notice that I include some muscular endurance work during the base period which is doesn’t fit in with traditional periodisation. This is because the weather in the UK can be very inconclusive to outdoor riding due to the freezing temperatures and torrential rainstorms we experience, and I don’t have the time to sit on the turbo for three hours every time I want to ride. By introducing muscular endurance work on the turbo this is a way for me to ensure I keep improving when I don’t have enough time to build my endurance. When the weather starts to improve in April/May the focus will shift away from muscular endurance and almost fully towards endurance when I can get regular long rides done on my TT bike out on the open roads. This is known as reverse periodisation, and is a method I have used to great success with my athletes in the past, as it still follows the golden rule of periodisation, the closer you get to race day the closer your training should resemble racing, and when your aim is to ride 180KM, leaving the really long rides to the end of the year makes sense.

Running
My main limiter in running is injury, so the focus is almost entirely on improving force (specifically exercises building my hamstrings/glutes) and endurance runs. I know I have top end speed in spades but struggle over longer distances so the priority is to become injury free to allow me to train for longer at higher speeds. This is achieved by increasing volume and intensity gently, with much less work on speed.

You can see here the adjustments that need to be made to an ATP even for an experienced athlete to make the most out of their training and make it specific to them. The limiters field also includes the ability to schedule tests in advance, ensuring that our threshold values stay consistent and are not outdated, resulting in inefficient training.

The final part of our ATP to decipher is our strength period, there are three options here, anatomical adaptation, maximal strength and strength maintenance. Anatomical adaptation is when we start working in the gym with light weights and a high number of reps, maximal strength is when we start to lower the reps and increase the weight for some high reward strength training. For the rest of the year we focus on strength maintenance which will involve weekly visits to the gym to ensure we do not lose the strength gains we made in the winter.

I hope this has given you the tools you need to understand the importance of having an ATP as well as helping you understand some of the jargon that is attached to your ATP. If you wish to improve your knowledge of periodisation and the way each phase of training contributes to your fitness, I recommend picking up the most recent edition of Joe Friel’s “Triathlete’s Training Bible) which this article was influenced heavily by. If you are interested in having a bespoke ATP made up for you, why not head to our apply page to begin your coaching journey.

The 2018 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships

September 20, 2018SimonOlney

After one of my athletes qualified for the 70.3 World Chamopinsip in Port Elizabeth at Edinburgh on the 1st July, in a haze of excitement I told him that I’d go out there with him, the race was his hometown and it was his dream come true to race there. As he was the first athlete I had trained to qualify for a world championship, it seemed like a good opportunity to see a part of the world I’d heard so much about.

In the days preceding the event I made the most of the local area, going on Safari, checking out some of the local history and getting escorted out of a park because it was too dangerous to be there on my own, but before I knew it Thursday had come around and the event programme was kicking off, starting with the parade of nations.

This is a traditional event held in the days preceding world championships where countries line up under their country’s flags and engage in a parade with their compatriots, complete with commentary from the race announcers.

The Parade of Nations arrived on Hobi beach, impossible to capture the scale of it in a single photo.

The biggest country by some margin was the USA, but Great Britain, South Africa, Germany and Australia also bought their fair share of athletes to the event dubbed “The fiercest race in the friendliest city”. The parade made its way through the Boardwalk area where the event was based, and towards Hobi beach where the race finished. Several thousand athletes converged on the seafront to hear speeches from the top brass on the World Triathlon Corporation (who own Ironman), as well as being treated to some traditional African music by a choir.

This was followed fairly soon after by the welcome banquet. My roommate who had his possessions stolen in London finally joined us in time for the food, which was surprisingly good quality and followed by a welcome ceremony and series of (mercifully) short speeches by a series of dignitaries, including the shortest ever speech by a politician courtesy of the newly elected mayor of Nelson Mandella Bay, who has been in the job for two days after a vote of no confidence in his predecessor. The oldest competitor was bought onto the stage, and was asked what kept bringing her back. After an evening of people predictably towing the corporate line it was amusing to see the borderline chaos that broke out when she replied simply with “stupidity”.

The next day had an altogether different feel, the women’s race was taking part on the Saturday so everything was much more subdued as people started to get their race face on. The expo was busy with people buying last minute nutrition and spares (hopefully not temped into buying some bling piece of kit they planned to use on the day of the race) and the practice swim was looking very busy. I had a go myself and was amazed at the clarity of the water, as well as the speed at which I was overtaken at a couple of points, I was certainly swimming with the sharks!

On race morning itself we were treated to the most incredible sunrise over the beach as the Ironman machine was in full swing, dozens of safety craft in the water booming music and the very best athletes in the world warming up in the water, I’m pretty sure it gave everybody present goosebumps at one point or another. The pros received a traditional blessing before the start, then when the cannon went they sprinted into the ocean as I sprinted over to the swim exit for a good view of the leaders.

The pro women line up to the sound of African drums

Lucy Charles was first out of the water in a time of 23 minutes followed by Fenella Landridge who I met in Johannesburg airport and spent a few hours chatting with. I thought she had an amazing swim, which she did, but it turns out she managed to gap the field so impressive by body surfing a wave into shore, giving her 5 seconds on the main pack, impressive!

Lucy Charles is out of the water with one of the biggest leads I’ve ever seen at Ironman racing

Onto the bike course Lucy Charles and Daniella Ryf made it clear that it was a two horse race for the win, both averaging the best part of 40KPH for the 90KM, admittedly with a tailwind that appeared on the way back but most of us are happy to see 40KPH appear on our bike computer at any point, let alone as an average speed for a middle distance.

On the run Daniella immediately started to pull away from Lucy, although the gap did stabilise after the first few kilometres as Charles made it clear she was not letting go. It wasn’t to be for the Brit though and Ryf took the win in stunning style, before subsequently covering up as her tri suit had been stuck open for the entirety of the race leaving her sports bra on show and her tri suit flapping around, hopefully she’ll look back on the race for the tour de force it was rather than feel embarrassed because of a wardrobe malfunction.

The following day I was awoken by my roommate’s 4:30AM alarm call and I laid there in bed so caught up in the emotion of the event, questioning why I was lying in bed rather than getting ready to race myself. I’ve dedicated nearly all of my time and energy on growing my business in recent years so time for training has been limited and I’ve struggled with injury, but these were still excuses at the end of the day. A visit to the British Triathlon website later and I had signed myself up for a middle distance in seven days time with absolutely no specific training. “I think I’m going to live to regret this” I thought to myself, but I could at least use it as a marker of where my fitness is currently and how I can get to the start line of the world champs in Niece.

Sadly the weather wasn’t quite as glorious for the men, it was a grey day with drizzle which isn’t what springs to mind when you think of racing in Africa, but it was what it was and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Having scouted the swim start area out the day before I placed myself at what I believed to be the best spot to watch the start, which was also next to the entrance the pros took to the start, allowing me to wish every pro male good luck, by name if I recognised them!

The lead men came out of the water in a stunning 21 minutes (Brownlee later lamented the lack of pace in the swim), and were quickly onto the bike. A much larger group formed at the front of affairs in the men’s race consisting of Brownlee, Gomez, Kanute and Frodeno. Coming off of the bike Brownlee was unable to hold the pace as Gomez and Frodeno lead the charge. Unfortunately Gomez suffered a stitch causing him to stop briefly, allowing Frodeno to take the win in emphatic style and Brownlee to pass the Spaniard for silver as Gomez hung on for third.

My athlete did incredibly well, finishing in the top 50% of his age group with a new PB by 5 minutes. We were concerned about his heel which he fractured during Edinburgh (how he managed to qualify with that I’ll never know), but he pulled a textbook race out of the bag to come home in 4:40. To PB in his hometown clearly meant the world to him and I’m proud to have been part of his journey.

I hoovered up some merchandise and made my way home, it truly was the trip of a lifetime, and I don’t use that phrase lightly. Since starting my coaching in 2016 it was the first time I had away from London, acting as both a break and a real surge of inspiration for me, showing me what can be achieved and what we’re working towards. I’m determined to get at least one of my athletes to Niece in 2019 so I can attend myself an go some way to reliving that incredible week I spent in South Africa.

You didn’t think you were getting away without at least one photo from my safari did you?

I can’t wait till my first athlete qualifies for Kona so I have an excuse to head out there!

The London Triathlon Race Guide

August 1, 2018January 1, 2022SimonOlney

The London Triathlon is the world’s biggest multisport event, attracting thousands of athletes year on year. Its location in one of the world’s largest cities and its beginner friendly nature makes it very popular for those looking to compete in their first event. The flat, fast nature of the course means it also appeals to PB hunters.

Distances

There are multiple distances available:

Super Sprint: 400M swim, 10 KM bike, 2.5KM run

This distance is ideal for those just looking to dip their toe into the world of triathlon. It’s a less popular distance, so less places are available.

Sprint: 750M swim, 20KM bike, 5KM run

Very popular with first timers, this is a challenge in endurance in its own right. Don’t let the word sprint deceive you though, it could take you over two hours.

Olympic: 1500M swim, 40KM bike, 10KM run

This distance gets its name from its inclusion in the Olympic Games. This will be the greatest sporting achievement of many people’s lives. The winners may go just under the two hour mark, with most people coming in somewhere between 2:20 and 3:10. There is a separate wave for those who can go under 2:30 to allow them a clearer, less congested course.

Olympic Plus: 1500M swim, 80KM bike, 10KM run

This course will appeal to stronger cyclists, and works well as a stepping stone to a half iron distance.

Logistics

Getting to the start of the event can a challenge due to the road closures for the event. Especially on the Sunday where the road closures are more extensive. As a result I highly recommend you take public transport to the start if based in London. If you are travelling from afar, it may be worth booking a local hotel. There is a limit on the number of bikes that are permitted on each DLR train, but this is rarely enforced.

Make sure you arrive at least two hours before your wave starts where possible. This allows you time to set up your transition area, collect your number, mark up your bike, get changed into your wetsuit, make multiple trips to the toilet and still be there 20 minutes before your swim start.

Ensure you take time to watch the briefing video and familiarise yourself with the layout of transition area to save you valuable seconds during your race. The clock doesn’t stop between the disciplines!

Swim

The swim is held in the London Royal Docks, which isn’t as dirty as it looks or sounds! The docks have long been abandoned and the water quality improved dramatically in the last 15 years with the installation of a filter at the intake point. NOWCA run swim sessions most days at the west of the docks. I have spent countless hours in the water coaching without ever falling ill, so the likelihood of you picking something up during a race are incredibly low. Just try to avoid swallowing any water.

Wetsuits are compulsory for The London Triathlon. I believe it is due to the large number of weak swimmers at the event. Make sure you have a suit ready in advance as there are none available to hire on the day. If the water temperature is over 25 degrees wetsuits will be banned and athletes will need a tow float instead. To my knowledge this has never occurred in the history of the race. But given the summer we’re experiencing at the time of writing it’s not out of the realms of possibility.

You will receive an update on the weather conditions when you arrive at the swim start. Once you walk outside and down the steps you will find yourself on a floating pontoon. You can enter the water however you like, whether you prefer to dive, jump or tentatively lowering yourself in. You can be waiting for quite some time if you’re one of the first in the water. If you’re nervous hang towards the back to avoid time spent treading water.

The swim course is as simple as can be. It consists of a one lap clockwise loop dependent on the distance that you are swimming. Start on the right if possible to shorten the distance to the first buoy. Start towards the back if you are feeling nervous or are a slower swimmer to avoid any incidents.

Once you climb yourself out of the water you have to remove your wetsuit. There are wetsuit strippers on hand to assist you with this. You need to place your suit a plastic bag to avoid water dripping on the floor of transition. Next you will head in the direction of the stairs that lead back up to transition.

Be careful here if you are feeling dizzy after the swim. Don’t run up the stairs if you aren’t feeling steady on your feet.

Bike

151030_AJ-Bell-London-Triathlon-2015 — Image credit London Triathlon

Once you collect your bike, you will then follow the signage to the “bike out”. This will lead you to a mount line. This will be very clear as marshals will be holding flags to denote the position of the line. Once you have crossed the line, you can mount your bike and begin the longest of the three disciplines.

The course varies depending on the time and the day you are racing. On the Saturday you traditionally will be on a much shorter course. On Sunday the course will be longer, going all the way out to Westminster for some waves.

The course is fast and flat but technical in parts due to the amount of roundabouts and 180 degree turns. Keep your eyes on the road, and don’t take any risks.

Even though The London Triathlon is held on closed roads, this doesn’t mean you can switch off and ride where you like. If anything it means you have to keep your wits about you even more as you will be sharing the course with a large amount of cyclists. Some may be travelling at twice your speed, or riding in a very unpredictable fashion. Ensure you always ride on the left and check over your shoulder before any change of direction. If you hear a call of “right!” that means a rider is about to pass you on your right, and this is a polite reminder to hold position or move over to let them past. Be wary when taking corners of riders going around the inside or outside of you. Hold your line and avoid erratic movements to keep everyone safe.

After you complete the bike your legs will already be tired, but it’s time for the most physically demanding discipline, the run!

Run

The London Triathlon run course is 2.5KM long and absolutely pancake flat. The course is incredibly busy as hundreds of athletes are crammed into a 2.5KM stretch of tarmac. Things have improved in recent years with a simple out and back course rather than the twisty course used previously. I’ve never been overtaken by another runner on this course. Primarily as many are competing in their first triathlon and starting to run out of gas by this point. If like me the run is your strong suite, be prepared to do a bit of dodging and weaving to maintain your pace. If you are starting to struggle yourself then stay to the left of the course to avoid blocking faster athletes.

The run starts and finishes in the main exhibition hall. This includes a 200M section inside the exhibition hall itself so your GPS watch will struggle. The course comes up considerably shorter than advertised, especially at the 10K distance. I believe the Olympic distance is much closer to 9KM in total, although as I haven’t competed since 2015 this may have been addressed since.

Once you cross the line you will find yourself in the finisher’s area where you will receive your medal. You can have your photo taken, pick up some alcohol free beer and relax for a bit before you make your way back to transition to collect your belongings.

Rules

If this is your first triathlon you may need to brush up on some basic rules to avoid any penalties/disqualifications. I’ll run you through some of the most essential rules to avoid embarrassment:

No drafting
Drafting is the act of riding behind another cyclist and gaining an advantage due to less air resistance. The London triathlon has a 10 metre drafting zone behind each competitor that you cannot enter unless you are overtaking. If caught gaining an advantage in this way you could be liable for a time penalty.

Helmet on before touching bike
Not only are helmets mandatory, you must have your helmet on your head and fastened securely before you even touch your bike. Not doing so can result in a time penalty, and riding with an unfastened helmet is a good way to get yourself disqualified.

No nudity
Ok, so this goes without saying I hope, but most importantly this extends to keeping your torso covered. If you have a full length zip on your trisuit you can’t run with it open if it gets hot.

Bike in good working order
Your bike needs to be safe to take part in the event. This means the brakes need to work, nothing is loose, and if you have dropped handlebars, that they have plugs.

For more insights into a successful race day check out our article on Triathlon Race Day Success

The information provided here is correct at the time of writing, but be sure to check their website for the latest information

Hopefully this has given you a good idea of what to expect and will ease the pre race nerves. Whether this is your first triathlon or you are taking part in an elite wave, I wish you the very best of luck with your race!

The Metabolism of Ethanol

The Effects of Alcohol on Health

The Effect of Alcohol on Triathlon

The Social Aspect of Alcohol

Conclusion

Follow a Structured Plan

Take Rest Days and Recovery Weeks

Get More Sleep

Work on Your Weaknesses

Get Some Swim Coaching

Introduce Strength and Conditioning

Get a Bike fit

Take Your Bike Training Indoors

Monitor Training Intensity

Get Race Specific With Your Training

Work With a Coach

Find New Training Routes

Focus on a Single Sport

Mix up Your Multisport

Just Sign up for a Race

Treat Yourself to Some New Kit

Try a Structured Training Plan

Step Away from Structured Training

Join a Club

Sign up for an Event That Scares You

Aim to Qualify for a World Championship Event

Attend Races as a Spectator/Support Crew

Follow Professional Triathletes

Consume Triathlon Media

Sort out That Injury

Recover Better

Start Coaching

Take a Break From the Sport

What if None of This Works?

Conclusion

RPE

Heart Rate

Pace

Power

What is running power?

Training with Running Power

Indoor Running

Post Run Analysis

Running Power for Triathlon

Conclusion

Elite athletes don’t use it

Technophobes

Just not appealing

It’s not a “mature technology”

Early versions were poor

Further Reading

Choose your moment

Make time for them

Involve them with the process

Keep the sex life going

Keep perspective

Be transparent

Pick up the slack on your rest day

Look into home training solutions

Go easy on the credit card

Be honest

Talk problems over

Distances

Logistics

Swim

Bike

Run

Rules