Are you planning on racing with a bunch of clubmates or friends? Do you know how you will cope? Will you be the easygoing traveller, or will you be the one who carries their nerves quite obviously? Coach Philip addresses some key points of self-reflection that athletes should go through before travelling to a race with others.
The 2017 Ironman World Championships was my 3rd experience of racing on the Big Island. I qualified at Ironman Weymouth in September 2016, which gave Philip and I a little over a year to prepare. Thirteen months to dream, to plan and to train for just over 10 hours of swimming, biking and running. I went to Kona aiming at the age group podium and in the end, I fell slightly short. When I started to think about this race report, I was reminded of one a good friend of mine once wrote about a race at which he qualified for Kona whilst also not quite hitting several other goals. He entitled it “A Rather Glorious Failure” and in many ways this is how I feel about my 2017 World Champs race.
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In this blog, TTH Race Team Athlete Jason Walkley describes how he manages to fit training for IRONMAN racing around a full time job and two young children. The reality of being a top age group athlete means that flexibility and adaptability are key to getting the training done when finding the time and motivation is hard to come by.
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Ollie Stoten, a long term coached athlete, race team athlete and friend of Tri Training Harder embarked on an adventure in 2016 to cross the Antarctic (1,100miles) with a team of reservists (SPEAR17).
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In my book, pretty much never. If I pin on a number, I want to perform as well as I can on that day, with whatever fitness I have. Personally, I don’t see much point in a “training race” where I purposely hold back. That’s not to say there isn’t a benefit for some people – but I think when you reach a certain level of experience, you don’t necessarily need a race in order to test nutrition, or equipment. I can do those things in training, or in a sportif if the requirement is for a longer ride. For me, a race provides things a training session does not; competition and a level of intensity it is extremely difficult to replicate on your own. Removing these aspects would negate the point of coughing up an entry fee.
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As any triathlete knows, training is hungry work and training multiple times a day means you have to be a little bit more organized about what you eat and when if you’re not going to fall victim to junk food cravings. Here, Tri Training Harder Race Team athlete Elaine Garvican lets us in on what she ate – and the training that food fuelled – and registered nutritionist Helen Money from The Bosworth Clinic casts her expert eye on the day’s intake.
Read MoreElaine Garvican reflects on her 2016 season. Her coach, Philip Hatzis dissects some of the observations and offers some insights to where changes were made in order to improve her overall performance in the races that mattered.
Read MoreBeing told to take things back to basics is never easy, especially when it stops you from doing what you want to do. However in this blog Race Team athlete Elaine Garvican writes about how she made huge gains with her running by doing just this and actually, rather counter intuitively stopping running.
Read MoreRace Team Ultra-Runner Ollie Stoten has opted for a different off-season away from running, and has just embarked on an attempt to ski across Antarctica.
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