I don’t think I’ve raced a sprint triathlon in about 5 years but because we were involved as a sponsor race director Anthony suggested that seeing as we were going to be onsite anyway that I should race.

That was a week ago. Because of that and probably because I’m focused on long course racing I’m not particularly nervous before the start. There’s an excitement and buzz in my belly, but no real nervousness.

Read More

Sometimes the way to get a faster Ironman finishing time can be a little bit counterintuitive. Slowing down can often lead to faster finishes. But surely the best way to finish faster is to swim, ride and run faster? Yes and no. You must balance a number of factors which will effect your ability to maintain your speed, some of which are:

• Your aerobic efficiency at different work rates
• Your energy cost at different work rates
• Your ability to eat and digest food at a given work rate
• How your work rate effects your core temperature
• External temperature and weather conditions
• How your effort level effects your sweat rate
• How much salts & electrolytes you lose in your sweat
• How much you can drink at AeT

Lets take a look at some of these variables to see how pacing and effort can affect them.  Read More

Most of us mortal triathletes look to the pros for a clue to how they get so fast. Lionel Sanders recently broke the Ironman series world record (Jan Frodeno has the fastest time over the full distance but that was set at Challenge Roth not an Ironman event) Sanders is renowned for his unorthodox training methods which includes doing almost all of his biking indoors on his Wattbike.

Lionel and the Computrainer

In a recent interview he was telling Bob Babbitt that he’d just moved house and had his new training room all customised. He also joked about not telling the people who bought his old house about the use (abuse) his old training room got. in fact he has gone as far as setting up his new training room to be able to replicate extreme conditions that may be encountered in races like Kona. He has sealed the walls, upgraded the heating and added a humidifier. I think he can now get the temperature up over 100 Fahrenheit with very high humidity.

Read More

There are plenty of articles out there talking about the benefits of marginal gains as they’ve been popularised by the Team Sky procycling team. I’ve written myself about the subject a number of times here and here and I think that although the biggest part of getting fast comes from just doing the hard work there are lots of smaller additional gains to be made by looking after the smaller details.

These are very much the “one percenters” but if you add enough of them together along with the big gains made from training (the 90%) they can sometimes be the difference between a podium, hitting a time target or a Kona slot.

But at what point does chasing these small gains become ridiculous or even a liability?

Read More

One of the attractions for me of doing my first Ironman was the idea that completing one would be life a changing experience and also something that would change me as a person. I thought it would somehow be enlightening or provide a new insight on life or myself.

As I crossed the finish line of my first Ironman in Nice, France back in 2008, I like a lot of first timers was in pretty bad shape. As I came to a stop and a girl placed that medal around my neck I wasn’t that delirious that I’d forgotten why I was doing this. I was almost looking skyward waiting for the expected epiphany. As I stood there I started to black out and slowly crumpled to the ground. The staff assisted me out and put me sitting on the grass. Once they ascertained I was ok they left me alone. All the time I was still waiting expectantly for that epiphany, for that moment of enlightenment.

Read More