The Need to Win, the Desire to Win, the Sting of Loss

What gets you up at five in the morning to go for a swim, a ride, or a run most days of the week?

For many athletes just starting out in the sport of triathlon, it’s the thought of getting fit enough to finish their first race, as well as the camaraderie you build with like-minded people and the mix of experiences as you begin to discover multisport. As you grow in the sport, it might turn out you actually enjoy swimming, cycling, and running as part of a healthy lifestyle, and the people in the sport become good friends. It has a way of positively infecting your life from a social and physical perspective.

I think it starts like this for everyone, whether you end up as a pro or not. At some point, especially for myself and my peers in the professional ranks, the goal of laying claim to a title and beating the competition soon supersedes any desire to be just fit. Fitness is simply a product of the workload that comes with pursuing competitive goals.

For myself this evolution happened over time. When I was in college it was a huge part of my social fabric, but my life focus was directed elsewhere. Triathlon was a great way to be healthy, hang with friends and satisfy my competitive drive. I enjoyed a very nice balance of life, study and sport. At that point, triathlon was not my business or profession; it was an outlet that gave me freedom from where I thought my responsibilities lay, which was to find success in school and then work.

When it became my profession, it started to envelop a larger portion of my life, which meant I drew on other things within my life to get the outcome that I was looking for. Soon enough it was my occupation, it was where my friends were, it was what consumed all my time, it was everything.

Taking the path of professional athlete was not a common one in Australia, and most certainly not the life my parents had envisaged I would pursue. To some degree, the pressure of pursuing this direction in my life came with disappointing the vision my family had for me. The way I engaged in sport as a child was how sport was perceived in my family: it was something you did on the weekend as an outlet of fun and friendships.

So what motivated me to change my life that much and pursue it as a full-time profession, and what motivates champions in the continuous pursuit of winning for a living?

They Need to Win

“Everybody loves a winner.”

As a professional athlete you just don’t get paid if you fail, so you must care about the outcome. We all like to say in those interviews we give that we are process-driven individuals, but I have yet to meet any professional athlete who is not influenced or moved by race-day outcome to a great degree. Failure has trickle-on effects: maybe your bike or shoe sponsor drops you to go with the new winner, maybe you needed that race success to be selected for a team or qualify for a championship that influences your future racing and income-earning capacity.

My father once said to me, “Don’t be the fittest guy in the unemployment line, son. If you are going to call this your profession, then treat it as such.” Pushing for success was paramount if I was going to be a professional athlete, considering what I was walking away from: a stable and secure job with potential to climb the corporate ladder. Triathlon came with significant risk and unknowns, but at a young age, it also filled my aspirations and dreams and was the path less taken. I wanted to do this more than anything, and I wanted to be successful at it.

In my head I knew I had a finite amount of time in the sport. It’s not like a corporate career that can span 40 years. For professional sport it can be a fourth of that. I could either be in it to make friends, or be in it to win titles and commercialise any success I had. So I took it very seriously. It was in every sense my profession, and I treated it like a corporate start-up from the beginning.

While age groupers can be ridiculously competitive and just as driven and motivated as professionals, they’ve got multiple outlets through which to let the steam out and it’s not all singularly focused on triathlon. They can be personally disappointed, but it doesn’t dig as deep because they go back to work on Monday.

A whole bunch of things are attached to competitive outcomes for professionals, as opposed to those for age groupers. Sure they are similar, but without being melodramatic, there is a lot more skin in the game once you get your pro card.

They Want to Win — and Hate Losing Even More

I always believed in putting your ambitions and goals out to the universe, of going after what you want, openly saying you want it and how you intend to get it. There is a lot of power in this. It makes it real — in your own head, to the people around you and it holds you accountable to an outcome (which can be quite overwhelming).

This concept was the driving force behind everything I did, and I needed that. A lot of the time by putting it out there I wasn’t picking a fight; it was just a matter of taking ownership on something before I’d actually achieved it, which obviously upset the other people who also saw themselves as potential owners of that title or that goal.

I would often read that I was a confidence athlete, almost cocky, because I was ambitious. I did find it odd that this behaviour was shunned in an environment where we were chasing perfection, excellence and world titles.

For some reason the sports world is not as receptive to a person stating intentions openly. Being ambitious (and to some degree impatient) is scorned, especially if the status quo believes you haven’t “paid your dues.” It was very different to international banking where ambition and impatience led productivity. In the corporate world this is part of the operational DNA of any company, woven into their fabric as a road map to where the organisation is going.  Name a single company in the world that doesn’t state what they intend to do, and how they hope to shape the market.

I recall being interviewed after my first ever World Championships as a professional in 1996. I had finished just outside the top 10 and was asked if this was “better than I hoped for.” My reply took the interviewer back a little because I said, “I don’t hope for anything. Hope is not a strategy. Hope is an emotion. I didn’t train all year and quit my job to come 13th place. If anyone is happy with 13th place, then maybe they should look for a new occupation. I don’t intend to build a career on 13th place finishes. I want to win, and won’t be happy until I do.”

I needed a certain desperation and flight-or-fight type response to racing to keep me engaged and active. I needed that mindset and hunger in order to deliver in training what was needed to beat athletes who were highly talented and successful athletes in their own right. I went on to win that ITU World Championship final the following year. I stated my intentions to the universe, and the universe answered. Chris McCormack, World Champion! Funny how that happens.

I needed to pretend as if those titles I wanted were mine already. That’s what got me up every day to train, that’s what made me do what I was doing, that’s what made me say the things I said, that’s what made me race as hard as I raced. In my head I was the winner of Kona before I’d actually won it. In 2006 even though Normann Stadler went on to win it (besting me by 71 seconds in one of the closest-ever race finishes – watch it here), I treated that as if it were mine. I spoke about it like I already owned it, I defended it like I already owned it, and I did that every race I ever did.

I truly believe that most athletes think the same way, but keep that inside their tight-knit group or family and don’t state their ambitions. I just went about it differently and vocally. I like to talk things out, instead of privately whinging to a group of friends and publicly pretending winning or losing doesn’t matter. It most certainly does; that’s what gives champions the extra edge to execute a race strategy with confidence, or close out a sprint finish.

I was bewildered that to many of my peers, being openly ambitious was considered a negative. I saw this as a huge weakness on their part, almost a spotlight on their internal nervous energy or fear of failure. If you are too scared to admit it openly, then it is going to be tough to deliver it on game day.

It’s a killer instinct, and I think all champions in any sport have that. They may publicly portray it differently but when you know them personally and you’ve been in those private conversations with them and there’s no one listening, it’s there.

People paint a public persona of themselves, which is fine; back in my racing days we used to have to use the media and engage certain individuals to help us shape our tone and brand. Nowadays you have social media platforms to build it for yourself, which has its strengths and weaknesses.

Garnering Likes and Followers for the pretty pictures seems very important these days, but a bunch of comments and a few thousand followers do not replace an athlete’s results. Winning and success are what brands and potential partners buy into, and the framework you build around this both in a social media sense and an authentic sense is critical.

When you try to present a perfect facade because you believe this is how you can show your commercial value or what you think people want to see, you hide the warts and scars of battles, and the uniqueness, passion, and emotion of yourself as an individual. The long-term outcome of this is a disconnect in the understanding of the reality of what success looks like and what it takes to pursue it. Sure you have a Hollywood-perfect snapshot of a life, but none of it is reality.

To get to the top of any mountain is not easy; it can be ugly and problematic. But beauty and inspiration can be found in the honest telling of that journey, and that should not be filtered or self-censored.

Still I do feel that beneath what many of these star athletes portray themselves to be, there must exist a killer competitor. Those emotions that at times can be ugly and almost brazen (but exist within every one of us) are the main fuel to the mongrel that drives every endurance athlete.

There are competitors like Kristian Blummenfelt, Javier Gomez, Daniela Ryf, Katie Zaferes, Jan Frodeno, and Alistair Brownlee (to name just a few off the top of my head) for whom losing hurts. You see that in the way they finish when they have not broken the tape first. That fake smile they give and that almost-rehearsed post-race interview when they say, “I was beaten by the better athlete today and I am happy with the result…” But you can see how the loss marks them.

Hiding from this is acting, and if you look for it you can see why they are athletes and not actors. I know this is part of the game, to put on a brave face. They say all the right things to the press and congratulate their competitors on the media feeds, but trust me when I say they are devastated. In that inside circle, in those after-race conversations where the disappointment or elation pours from the heart, unfiltered and raw, this is the magic. This is when you see the ingredients and authenticity that make up a champion. I just wish we saw a little more of that today.

A loss is like a tattoo or a scar; you bear it for a long time. It is not in any way disrespectful to the athlete that beat you. Sure your friend might have won and you can feel happy for them, but it still hurts when they win at your expense. Never in your visualisation of your success do you place them ahead of you. The perfect outcome is your friends finish just behind you, but you are the winner. It is always that. For champions, it burns inside.

Any athlete that doesn’t feel that sting is never going to be a world beater. I think even the publicly-perceived world’s nicest athletes like Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal still sting when they lose, and behind closed doors are mortified by underachieving against their own expectations and perceived potential. If you get a chance, watch the 2017 Australian Open Final between those two and watch Rafa’s face at the podium celebration. Despite having played one of the greatest tennis matches ever, he lost in a five-set thriller by literally a single mistake. Rafa is not much of an actor, and these two are best friends. The pain is real. It says everything about why he is who he is. It is why they are champions.

Chris “Macca” McCormack is a four-time triathlon world champion with the biggest winning percentage in the history of the sport. He is a co-founder and partner in Super League Triathlon, CEO of the Bahrain Victorious 13 team, board member of the Pho3nix Foundation, and CEO of MANA Sports & Entertainment Group.

“Triathlon: Why be good at one sport when you can suck at three?”

It’s a humorous take on the sport, but triathlon definitely puts the whole body through its paces. Swimming, cycling, and running each put stress on the body and challenge different areas and muscle groups, affecting performance across all three disciplines.

For instance, ankle mobility is paramount for a good kick in swimming freestyle, but a certain amount of stiffness in the ankle can make you a faster runner. Hip mobility is great for running biomechanics, but cycling for long periods of time can shorten the hip flexors. What is a triathlete to do?

To maximise efficiency and prevent injury, you need to fix faulty movement patterns, bio-mechanical issues, joint instability, and incorrect muscle activation.

Jason Oei is the head of Precision Athletica’s Exercise Physiology Program and works with athletes from many sports, including triathlon. He identifies three common problem areas for triathletes to work on so they can train and race efficiently and prevent injury.

RUNNING: lower limb stress reactions

“I have often found that assessing hip and ankle mobility is a good way to begin. Poor mobility in these areas for runners can easily change the load distribution and shock absorption capabilities for every step taken.

“Once addressed, ensure the runner has the proper biomechanics and technique to maximise efficiency. This also needs to be reinforced with activating and using the right muscles, which for runners would centre mostly around the gluteal muscles and calves.”

SWIMMING: shoulder impingement

“Assessing that the swimmer would have good shoulder range and thoracic mobility would be my way of addressing this issue. After this, I would assess if they have proper core and hip control to maintain posture in the water which will have a significant effect on how much load goes through the shoulders. Poor postural control = increased shoulder load.”

CYCLING: Lower back pain

“First a bike fit is crucial – if this is not done, your body is placed in a more injury-prone position. It is common practice for cyclists to be in a prolonged lumbar spine flexed position when riding.

“I like to encourage cyclists to balance out this prolonged flexed position by getting on the foam roller post-race and extend their spine. I also encourage cyclists to bend more from the hips to maximise their ability to use their glutes. Finally, increasing their core activation will create a better support system for the lower back – especially during periods of high revolutions.”

Your Pho3nix Club membership offers a wide range of triathlon training plans to suit your fitness and goals. You may also inquire for customised plans.

by Tim Ford

Much like triathlon involves swim, bike and run, triathletes have a number of things in their lives that they need to balance as well. Jenna-Caer Seefried is a mom to a 5 year old son Ryker. I wanted to catch up with her and find out how becoming a parent has impacted on her training, how she managed her training while pregnant and how she plans to maintain her training and racing in the future. She gave me some insight into how she managed to keep training right up to giving birth and how she even races with her son now.

Jenna made her Ironman debut in 2013 with a 10:56 and was used to a strong training load when she realised she was pregnant. Being active and wanting to maintain her fitness, Jenna managed to train through most of her pregnancy. Keeping active also helped Jenna to manage some of the symptoms of pregnancy.

“I know that keeping active helped hugely with keeping pregnancy symptoms at bay I took a few weeks off for travel and that’s when all of the symptoms showed up I had back pain, couldn’t sleep and was exhausted, when I got back to training it all went away.”

During her pregnancy Jenna focused on low heart rate training as well as strength work. Coming from the high volume and intensity she was used to she found this low intensity work easy to manage. During her first trimester when she was experiencing fatigue, nausea and back pain she kept herself motivated by acknowledging how much more it would hurt trying to regain her fitness and strength had she done nothing. She remembers getting some funny looks at the gym and even an amusing story involving a personal trainer.

“I did have a personal trainer come up to me in my 2^nd trimester saying he could help me tone up and get into great shape, he asked me what my goals were.  I responded with a big smile, “I’m looking to gain about 25lbs and a few more inches around my waist over the next few months.” He was very confused, I think it took another month when I really started to show that he got it.”

Jenna worked closely with both her coach and doctor during her pregnancy. Constant blood tests were used to ensure that Jenna was able to train safely with no impact on her baby. By working closely with her team, Jenna was able to train right up to the day that she went into labour, managing a run and strength session earlier that same day.

Jenna started training about 2 weeks after Ryker was born. The recommended time to wait is 6 weeks but she started walking and decided to try a little run and felt good. She stared riding again 4 weeks after giving birth and got back into the pool 6 weeks after giving birth.

Returning to training brought with it challenges that Jenna hadn’t faced before. Specifically with sleep deprivation as Ryker was up hourly until 9 months old, day and night.

One thing that I struggled with was the hormonal and physical implications of the severe lack of sleep when he was younger.  I ended up overtrained and burned out, not because the training was anything crazy but because of the lack of sleep.  I ended up having to cancel my race plans and take 3 months completely off exercising.  So I recommend to new moms now to take it slowly and don’t set any big goals until you can start getting some solid sleep again.  Most of us are A type and if we have a goal we will find a way to fight through, however after pregnancy it’s the time to listen to your body and let it take the lead.

Jenna has found a new training partner in Ryker. She built a play room next to her training room and does a lot of her training on her treadmill and bike trainer.  That way Ryker can play and be entertained while she trains while always being within view.

The biggest piece of advice I have for parents that want to train for Ironman is communication with your partner.  It takes a big commitment from the family and managing expectations, schedules and needs on both sides makes the process a lot smoother.  Last year while training for Ironman Cork the majority of my training was done while Ryker was napping or in kindergarten a couple hours a day to try to fit it all in with less impact to family time.  Except strength workouts, for those Ryker and I pump up the tunes and he likes to do what mommy does.

Since then Jenna has gone on to win her AG at the ITU Long Distance World Championships as well as an AG win and Kona Qualification at Ironman Cork.

Burning myself out post pregnancy taught me a lot about how to be successful in the sport. As a parent you truly have to find some form of balance.  It takes a lot of time to train and triathlon is a big commitment for the whole family.  I love the Ironman distance most but now I only race Longer distances every other year to somewhat balance life, family and training.  There are definitely challenges training as a parent, but I hope that being active and pursuing something I’m passionate about will inspire my son to do the same.

Not having children of my own, I am amazed how parents are able to fit their training around their children and it always puts a smile on my face when I am out racing or training and I see a parent doing something active with their children. The fact that Jenna has managed to adapt to her new life and is able to maintain her training shows that it is possible to maintain balance in life and training.

Jenna’s Tips for New Parents:

• Make it count – I’ve transitioned to higher intensity lower volume since I have less time to train
• Plan ahead with your partner to schedule in key workouts,
• Include your kids where you can. Ryker likes to walk/run on my treadmill while I’m on my bike, and during strength workouts he likes to follow along!
• Get it in early. When they are young each day is a new adventure and the schedule is constantly changing so getting it done early stops anything from getting in your way.
• Don’t worry about getting to pre baby weight. I still haven’t lost all the baby weight but I know it will come with time and consistent training.
• Listen to your body. A lot of things change with child birth and its like having a whole new body so pay attention and give your system what it needs. I recover and move differently so I have to pay attention and cant assume I can do things the same way as pre pregnancy.

What have you done with your children to include them in your triathlon journey? How do you manage to fit training around your children?

I have been a triathlete for over a decade.

Putting that in writing is actually quite weird to see. In so many ways, I still feel like I am a beginner. I am still trying to figure out how to optimise my performance. I am still trying to work out what I need to do to get myself to the finish line as fast as possible. I am on the precipice of a sub 2-hour Olympic Distance triathlon and my PB over the half distance is 4:06, but I know there is still so much I can learn and do to improve.

Looking back at the last ten years, the biggest take away or benefit I have gotten from triathlon (apart from having more lycra in my wardrobe than a super hero does) is the structure it has given my life. Saturday is a long ride. Swim squad is on a Monday and Wednesday. Friday is my easier day and Wednesday and Thursday are usually pretty full on. I have learned to organise my life around my training to make sure I fit everything in.

Including the athletes I coached, I had a fairly small tight-knit community within the sport that made up my social circle.

We were all fiends for triathlon; we ate up all that the sport had to offer. We would watch classic races and dissect the performances. We would have arguments about who the best of all time was and loved taking sides in the great debates like Macca vs. Crowie.

Over two years ago I managed to achieve what many people would dream about. I turned my passion for triathlon into a career. Triathlon became not only the sport I love, but also my job.

But now that my job is triathlon and I deal with triathletes of all walks of life on a daily basis, I realise that we were an aberration. You see, triathlon has a problem. A problem that I am becoming more and more aware of in recent weeks.

Triathletes don’t stay triathletes for very long.

I am a big believer that to consider yourself a triathlete you need to swim, bike and run. You don’t need to do an Ironman or qualify for 70.3 Worlds or ride a $10k bike. It is more about living that swim, bike, run lifestyle.

So how to put this delicately… I think the problem with triathlon is that we all take ourselves a little too seriously. I am happy to put my hand on my heart and say that I absolutely take my triathlon incredibly seriously. I train hard and expect a lot out of myself. But I know that at some point over the last decade I got to a point when I realised, I was taking it too seriously and took measures to counterbalance my life.

I am going to paint a ‘pathway’ through the sport and be honest, does this sound familiar? A person hears about triathlon. Maybe through a friend, or they saw a story about something to do with it. They do their race and enjoy it. They train a bit harder and do another race. They make a big improvement. They start thinking to themselves, ‘maybe I’m not too bad at this triathlon thing.’ They start to look into the pros. They use the professional performances as a yardstick to their performance and at the same time start paying attention to age group placings. They decide that they should take this a bit more seriously and get a coach and make even more improvements. The thought ‘maybe I could go pro’ enters their head. They train even harder and more determined than ever. Their coach starts telling them to back it off a bit, to focus on recovery. They keep pushing. They plateau or get injured and can never quite close the gap to the professionals. They realise that they will not go pro and give up on the sport realising that their obsession with triathlon has cost them more than a small fortune.

Here is a second pathway. A person wants to do an Ironman. They have heard the stories, seen the tattoos, they want to challenge themselves. They train for it and do their Ironman. It is one of the hardest things they ever do. They hear the words “You are an Ironman” as they finish the race. They tick it off their bucket list and for the rest of their lives are able to dismissively state ‘Yeah I have done an Ironman’ whenever triathlon is mentioned.

I know, I know. I am making sweeping generalisations here but I think that most of us will either know someone or be someone who has gone through something similar to this.

I played team sport for most of my life. Even when I was well over 100kgs (I think that is about 57,000 pounds?) I could still rock up once a week for a game and have a few beers after the game. I was an athlete. I played weekly soccer with my mates. I watched games with them, had social gatherings with them and it didn’t really impact the rest of my life too much. I had a moderate relationship with sport.

That is a story that many people see as impossible in triathlon.

We all hear that triathletes are a certain type of person. They are type A personalities that are laser-focused on their goal. But that is the problem that I think triathlon has. We need more moderation. Now I know I am so guilty of this but who says you need to race X number of 70.3s a year? Why do you need to do an Ironman every year? What is wrong with taking a few years to just focus on some local short course events?

I have seen a real focus on making triathlon more ‘television-friendly’ but is that really what the issue is? I mean, watching an Ironman can be as exciting as watching Jan Frodeno on his indoor trainer (yes I am judging you!) but maybe the problem we are having with really making triathlon a long-term popular sport is the complete lack of moderation. We are all so certain of our own athletic prowess that we get caught up in what we are doing and lose sight of why we were all drawn to the sport. I bet it wasn’t really for a PB or a finisher medal. It was probably more for the challenge or the sense of self-achievement.

I am writing this fully aware of how hard I have been chasing a certain result for years. I know that when I was within a minute of that time last year I contemplated giving the sport up. I mean 48 seconds is close enough right? But then I realised that while I love chasing PB’s and getting as fast as I can, I love the structure it gives my life. I love that it helps keep me in shape and how my training actually helps me to do my job better too.

What will fix this issue? I don’t have a definite idea. But I know that this obsession with chasing Ironman as the pinnacle of our sport is not the answer. Neither is trying to maintain 20+ hours of training a week or pushing ourselves to the point where injury is ‘just something you need to deal with.’ Maybe if we focus more on moderation in our training, racing and personal and professional life there will be less burnout? Maybe by focusing less on what is sexy, like how hard our training was, and focusing more on what is important like sleeping 8 hours a night? I am still waiting for the sleeping version of Strava where we give each other kudos for sleeping hard!

Maybe by keeping more people in the sport will help to make more people want to watch it? I am sure as many people who are reading this article have ideas about how you could help ‘fix’ triathlon. But I think lots of people would have to admit that it needs to start with moderation. The candle that burns brightest doesn’t last and neither do the athletes.

But what I really hope that you get out of reading this article is the realisation is that what makes triathlon great isn’t the top professionals, or the plastic age group trophies we chase — or even the excuse to wear training clothes so much. What makes it great is the people who make up the community. I am constantly blown away by the stories I see come up from our MX members and despite not knowing what will fix triathlon I do know that the more of us that are triathletes, the better off we will all be as triathletes.

Tim Ford is a member of our team of coaches. He has gone from being a complete novice weighing well over 120kg to a top athlete with a 4:06 PB for a 70.3. Through his time in the sport he has learned skills which help him to assist athletes of all levels and abilities.

by Chloe McLeod

When working with athletes of any type, but particularly with triathletes, managing hydration is often considered to be one of the more confusing aspects of getting the race right.

Whilst there’s plenty of people recommending to drink when thirsty, there is also plenty who state that a specific plan in place is required.

So, to drink to thirst or drink to plan?

What we do know is that most athletes don’t rehydrate well enough during their events or training, with most usually not consuming adequate quantities to remain hydrated enough.

Whilst it may sound like I’m being a fence sitter, hear me out when I say ‘I suggest both’.

When I’m working with a client individually, I’ll always ask how much they usually consume before/during/after their training sessions. Based on this, we will develop a plan.

This is done by weighing before a training session holding bottles of water/sports drink they plan on consuming during the session. After the session is done, jump back on the scales, again with their (likely now empty) water bottles. This allows you to check sweat volume. Sweat rate is the volume divided by time.

Whatever the difference is, this is what is required to rehydrate afterwards, times 150%. Ie, if you’ve lost 1kg, rehydrating with 1.5L of fluid over the next 3-4hrs is suggested.

So that’s after, what about during?

If the sweat rate shows more than 2% loss of body weight, performance is very likely to be inhibited. Even 1% can result in poorer performance. As such, more liquid needs to be consumed during the session, and this is where development of a hydration plan comes in. Research indicates that drinking to match sweat losses, or at least minimising to 1% does provide a performance advantage.

What to drink?

Water, sports drink and/or electrolyte drinks are my go to recommendations. Mixing these up throughout the event will help reduce flavour fatigue, to help you feel better as well. Sipping as you go, or drinking regularly is suggested, as smaller amounts on a regular basis will hydrate better than a large quantity of fluid all at once.

When to deviate from the plan

Whilst having a plan is obviously helpful, there are so many other things that come into play than simply relying on how much you sweat on a given day. Race day conditions will impact how much your body needs; as an example, if your hydration plan is based on sweat rate from a mild temperature day with a few clouds in the sky, but race day is either cold, windy, rainy, or the other extreme of sunny, hot, dry, or some other variation from when your sweat rate was tested, you are likely to require more or less fluid than the plan describes. This is where drinking to thirst comes in.

Take home?

Do a session on the bike or in your favourite runners for an hour, during likely race day conditions, weighing in minimal clothing before and after. Have a look at the difference, then plan your hydration from there. Keep in mind other potential factors that may influence hydration on the day of the race, or on other training days.

Chloe McLeod has had a keen interest in nutrition from a young age due to food intolerances as well as a realization about the important role food plays in an active lifestyle. She has a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition & Dietetics, a master’s degree in Public Health, has received Sports Dietetics training through the Australian Institute of Sport, and has earned qualifications for ISAK Level 1, and is a member of DAA, SDA, and PINES. She is a two-time marathoner, avid trail runner, and also enjoys staying active through snowboarding and Pilates.

There’s a term I have heard thrown around a lot recently in triathlon – GOAT. It stands for Greatest Of All Time, but while it’s a great topic for conversation some people are not considering what it really means.

In sport we are talking about people’s careers, maybe over 20 years, so to be labeled the greatest of all time at a sport should be not an off-the-cuff statement reflective of a couple of great races in a season. It’s actually a debatable and arguable statement. It has more depth than a couple of race wins and a social media following.

GOAT is a term that I first heard in the USA. It was a solid debate in boxing and in baseball, that was openly discussed on all the major sports shows. In American sport it’s always been backed up with a lot of statistics.

You see that now if you watch The Last Dance with Michael Jordan where the facts make it clear that to call him the GOAT in basketball is warranted.

In triathlon in particular it just seems to be thrown about without people giving enough thought to it or properly backing it up. It has become a statement of respect of a performance more so than the study of a career in relation to the sport and its history.

I hear a lot of these conversations and I often think “he’s an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about” or “he’s been in the sport five or six years and doesn’t know his history.”

It is unfair — and almost at times rude — to compare athletes across generations, but it is something that will always occur and will always be argued as generations celebrate their current stars in relation to those who shaped the pathway before them.

With this in mind and buying into the argument, what I find is that the majority of people in triathlon who put these polls up or open up this can of worms in discussion tend to have a big bias towards Ironman racing when presenting their argument.

While Ironman represents a large portion of the mass participation market in this sport, it does not represent the high performance ambitions or the entire foundation of triathlon at its core. It is part of a bigger picture of a sport, especially if you want to have this discussion openly and unbiasedly.

To discuss it properly you have to be a true fan of swimming-biking-running. You have to appreciate the massive historical changes that have come through the sport, in particular the formation of the ITU in 1989, the development of World Championship events off the back of unofficial World Championship events that existed prior to set dates, and of course the shift in short course racing to a draft legal format in 1995 that saw the entire evolution of this racing fork at this juncture.

If you talk with Bob Babbitt who has been in the sport since the beginning as both an athlete and a reporter and media voice for the sport, or have this discussion with some of the professional athletes and coaches about the greatest of all time, you immediately hear relevant questions asked, prior to giving an answer – is this in relation to a specific distance, a specific style of racing, or to triathlon in general and an athlete’s ability to compete in the sport at all its styles and formats – from Super League distance to Ironman distance?

The foundation of my argument when this has been brought up is that to call someone the greatest of all time in a sport, you have to go across the entire sport and an athlete’s ability in its core deliverables of swimming biking and running regardless of the length of the event. That has to be pivotal in making this judgement. In basketball the athlete with the most points is not necessarily the greatest player. Other factors like Rebounds, Games Played, Free Throws, steals and time played are major statistics used to show an athlete’s overall influence on a game.

The same sort of analysis needs to apply when talking about triathlon, so to talk about the greatest triathlete of all time is to look at several things:

• You need to have excelled at all distances on the highest stage
• Where do you sit alongside the best in the sport at that time at the three distances within the sport and what is your balance of disciplines?
• Have an impressive win-loss ratio in those distances, giving world championships extra weight but head-to-head racing needs to be considered
• Racing frequency, because the modern day triathlete’s racing frequency is minimal compared to even my early years where I raced 20 times a season and not six
• Did they shape the landscape during that period and did they influence the way other athletes prepared?
• Longevity – how long was their influence felt?
• Another little bit which isn’t as important is were they commercially viable? Did the brands within the sport at the time find them valuable

So for men from my perspective (and not including myself) you have to put forward Jan Frodeno, Mark Allen, Greg Welch, Simon Whitfield, Alistair Brownlee, Javier Gomez and Simon Lessing.

These athletes have to be shortlisted and despite different specialisation and success over different distances, their dominance within the sport was felt during their reign and the argument can then proceed by focusing on the clear statistics around the racing and their influence.

I still think Mark Allen is the greatest triathlete to ever do the sport. He was ahead of his time, owned his era of racing, and influenced the era beyond his significantly.

While many are aware of his Ironman history you have to appreciate his racing across all distances, over all terrains, all over the world as his trump card.

He won the first official ITU World Championships in 1989 despite being “unofficially recognised” as the best in the sport for the years prior to this.

He won six times in Kona which is where his legend was established to the masses. There was no 70.3 World Championship (this started officially in 2006) but the Long Course event in Nice, France, was the equivalent and he won that ten times.

The Unofficial World Championships for the Half Ironman distance up until 2006 was recognised as Wildflower Triathlon and Mark also won this event every time he competed in it.

He won in Zofingen, Switzerland, in the duathlon event that stopped the world, and literally won every event he competed in season after season.

His win-loss record to everyone in the sport he competed against was in the 90 per cent range. In short, you wore more defeats to Mark than you did victories over him in that era of racing, across all distances. He won all the major titles and defended them.

He raced a lot in his early years against some of the strongest to do the sport with athletes like Pigg, Molina, Scott, Tinley, Bustos, Welch, Zach, and at the end of his career even Hellriegel and Lessing.

He only did non-drafting but that was irrelevant because he shaped the landscape of competition and everyone had to change their game for it.

His longevity was remarkable. His influence is still talked about. He shaped the sport and for me was the first to migrate from the pioneers of the sport into the modern racer.

This is an arguable point, but the Ironman racing in the early 1990s, and his dominance of it, was legendary and beyond impressive. He delivered when he had to, and that is why titles matter and owning them and executing on them is a pivotal point in this discussion. Mark owns every title in the sport across all distances of triathlon.

Jan has won three times in Kona, an Olympic gold medal, is the fastest ever to compete at the distance of Ironman and the record holder in Hawaii, won the 70.3 world title multiple times against some of the best in the world and is the modern day force. He never won an ITU World title and he never dominated at that distance but was most certainly a presence.

So, how do you compare them? Jan has five world titles but if you count Nice and Wildflower, Mark has a lot more. Looking at Jan’s win-loss ratio in the long course era is very similar to Mark in the Ironman and half Ironman space, and his presence is just as mystical and influential as that of Mark.

What it does lack is success in the ITU era, but that is being very picky (which you have to be when deciphering and comparing athletes across generations).

He won a gold medal at the Olympics in Beijing, which Mark couldn’t do because triathlon wasn’t in the Olympics during his racing era, but he never won as frequently as Mark at Olympic distance racing, nor did he possess the same fear over his competitors at this distance as he does at Ironman. Mark’s fear as an athlete by his competitors was felt across all distances.

In the case of Jan Frodeno this can be credited to the fact that Alistair Brownlee existed in his era alongside the Spanish juggernaut Javier Gomez. This as well as Simon Whtifield, who was in the era before but crossed into both eras, led to a perfect storm of talent that made success at the ITU distance an argument to be presented.

So, do you then count that against Mark Allen? No. And that’s what people need to understand. It might have been 1994 but they were great athletes and without all the trendy bikes, aero helmets and gels. He did Ironman with a couple of figs and a banana in 8:06. A superstar.

I have caught myself a few times saying Jan Frodeno is the greatest of all time because I am such a fan of his work and he has truly showed at this moment in the sport’s history he can do it all, when it is asked of him on the biggest stage.

However, I cannot let my appreciation of an athlete and the way he executes his craft blind me. I have to put Mark Allen up there. Mark Allen did so much more than win Kona!

I also think about Simon Lessing who straddled non-drafting and draft legal ITU racing and was amazing in both, dominating the sport during his racing era and winning when it mattered, Peter Robertson, who won three ITU World titles but was a title targeted athlete, Javier Gomez, who has longevity, a phenomenal winning percentage and has gone across all distances with only one world title missing from his resume.

Simon Whitfield, Hamish Carter, Mario Mola, Craig Alexander, Dave Scott, Scott Molina are athletes who also have to get a mention for so many reasons.

There are people who have won across all disciplines, and won the biggest titles at those distances during their time of dominance.

Winning across all facets of the sport has to be a prerequisite for discussion or a trade-off of certain wins/dominance/influence against titles won.

Do I see myself as good across all distances as Jan Frodeno and Mark Allen? Absolutely not, but like them I focused specifically on being the best in that period of time in my racing, and winning the biggest events at that time was my motivation.

Most athletes migrate up in distance as they age, so Ironman success comes later in a career. I put those gentlemen well in front of myself and Greg Welch, who also won across all distances, but in a much different way.

People mention Alistair Brownlee. He is the greatest short course triathlete ever. No one is in the same ballpark as that guy. He is standalone.

Did he shape the landscape? He moved it so far it took people three years to even catch up. His win-loss ratio? He didn’t lose. Major titles? He took them all. Frequency of racing? Exceptional. The only thing that limited him was injury because he couldn’t stop racing.

Influence? Remarkable – look at the British system. Commercially successful? He’s the most successful. He’s bigger than triathlon.

He is without question the most exciting and dynamic triathlete I have ever seen come onto the scene, and his desire to win and the way he raced thrust him into the spotlight so rapidly.

I have never witnessed an athlete so technically brilliant, who worked so hard, and had both a racing mindset and strategic planning component that made each and every win of his appear even better than the previous.

He hasn’t won Kona, but I can also say Jan Frodeno didn’t win an ITU world title or dominate a world series like Alistair.

In head-to-head racing, the balance sits well in the Brownlee camp side when it comes to racing wins against each other in comparison to Frodeno, and if you want to put Gomez in that discussion also. Yes, Jan Frodeno won a few ITU races, but Alistair has won a couple of Ironmans. And his Ironman journey has only just begun.

So where does Alistair sit in this discussion? That’s why it’s so hard and why it continues to change as the sport evolves, but having some consistency of statistical comparison is critical.

The greatest Ironman athlete of all time is Mark Allen. The greatest ITU athlete is Alistair Brownlee. Jan Frodeno is not the best Ironman athlete of all-time or the best ITU athlete of all-time but we are throwing him in the discussion as one of the GOAT’s because of how close to the best he has been in these two styles of racing, and the influence he brought over both.

On the women’s side, I think it’s Emma Snowsill. She never did Ironman but this conversation is so loaded to Ironman and we only ever really hear Daniela Ryf, Paula Newby-Fraser and Chrissie Wellington put forward.

I have argued above that range of athletic success is almost a prerequisite, but I also say that you have to trade dominance with titles to allow comparison to those athletes who did not cross the distances.

Simon Lessing and Simon Whitfield above for the men fit this argument. Their influence, dominance and success is not unrecognised. This is the case for Emma Snowsill.

My argument against Emma is Michellie Jones (another Australian) who won an Olympic silver medal – I feel it should have been gold given the woman who beat her in a sprint finish a few years later tested positive for banned substances.

She won two ITU world championships along with medals at world championships for almost a decade. Two World Cups series victories, nine Escape from Alactraz titles when that race was the biggest in the world. Ironman Hawaii at a distance she did not enjoy but came across at the end of her career to “collect the title”.

Her win-loss ratio was winning 80 per cent of the time she raced. She was remarkable, and as an athlete I trained with and witnessed first hand her sheer dominance season after season is still something I will never forget.

She could do it all and had a racing mindset that saw her longevity in the sport surpass all her peers. She is an age group world champion today still in triathlon.

But the arrival of Emma Snowsill onto the circuit in 2000 after winning the junior Olympics, was identical to what Alistair Brownlee would bring to the men’s racing.

She came in like a tidal wave and moved the bar so far forward that the entire world of women’s racing took so long to catch up.

The balance of athletes you see today in the women’s racing scene is a direct product of the standard that Emma Snowsill brought to racing. She did it across the three disciplines of the sport, gave us the triathlon we know now and her times would still be relevant today.

She was robbed of two Olympic gold medals because she was left off the Athens team as World Champion in 2004 and I believe she would have won that gold. The ignorance and politics of Australian Triathlon in that era is legendary, but robbed an athlete like Emma of Olympic success that was warranted. She won that Gold medal in the Beijing Olympics four years later in a crushing victory.

She gave up her career to have children and support her husband, Jan Frodeno, post the London Olympics – where again the Australian selectors opted to follow a strange selection policy – so we didn’t even see the best of her.
What we did see when she raced was dominance like we have never witnessed in the sport.

Erin Baker in the late 80’s had it, but ‘Snowy’ executed her racing with no mercy and her winning margins are the biggest in the sport’s history.

She never did long course so you might ask how I can say this. How is she the GOAT?

I think the way she raced the transition would have been natural, and the athletes she dominated – Mirinda Carfrae and Daniela Ryf – went on to dominate in Kona.

It might be speculative, but I put her above Michellie just because of that sheer dominance.

This is why these arguments are great to have, and more so when you look at an entire career, and all races, not just a season or two. Speak to Daniela and Mirinda on who is the best they have raced, and Emma Snowsill’s name will be at the top of that list for sure.

It’s a great debate, and I’ve enjoyed just talking about it, but hopefully this column proves it really deserves some proper analysis rather than just an off the cuff statement.

The history of this sport is amazing and if you have the time you should check out some of the old racing videos on YouTube and appreciate where the sport has come from and the modern day advantages that we take for granted that simply did not exist on the racing field 15-30 years ago

It is a great discussion and for the lovers of the sport of triathlon a real treat to have in these times of isolation when we are not witnessing any new racing.

Chris “Macca” McCormack is a four-time triathlon world champion with the biggest winning percentage in the history of the sport. He is a co-founder and partner in Super League Triathlon, CEO of the Bahrain Victorious 13 team, board member of the Pho3nix Foundation, and CEO of MANA Sports & Entertainment Group.

by Dr. Nikita Fensham

I’m a medical doctor. A qualified performance nutritionist. An athlete. And a PhD researcher in this field.

And I have RED-S.

I know what it’s like. To love sport, to be a perfectionist, to have performance goals. To become consumed by being better, the best. To forget about the health consequences. To think that it’s a worthwhile sacrifice, just for now.

I also know what it’s like when that mindset backfires. When the effects on health put an abrupt end to performance. When years of having no period, of chronic fatigue, of unrelenting psychological stress, of insomnia, of social isolation, of flatline moods… all catch up. Paces drop, FTP’s become stagnant, PR’s become impossible.

And because I know what it’s like… I’m here to help. I’m here to stop the silence, to echo the stories of so many athletes like me, to tell you that you’re not alone. To encourage a new culture in sport where we achieve both performance AND health.

What is RED-S?

RED-S stands for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, which aims to describe the various disruptions in body systems that occur when an athlete does not fuel adequately to meet both the demands of their training as well as the requirements of their organs to function optimally. It was built off the original “Female Athlete Triad” which centred around females who exhibited amenorrhea (i.e. no period by the age of 15 or missing three consecutive periods), low bone density, and low energy availability or disordered eating. Recognising that males also suffered from the consequences of inadequate fuelling, it was deemed necessary to come up with a term that not only included both sexes but also acknowledged that there were other health and performance effects beyond reproductive function and bone density.

Although more research needs to be done (emphasising the importance of speaking out about this issue!), it seems that the body responds with a general shutdown. In the beginning, many athletes see performance improvements, ironically, as the body prioritises the nutrients to sustain training… to the detriment of the organs that just cannot function optimally. As a result, athletes experience a reduction in metabolism, absent or irregular menstruation patterns, lack of morning erections, increased injuries and illness, increased stress fractures due to weak bones, low mood and excessive fatigue, and constipation. Eventually, performance suffers too with the inability to recover from and adapt to training resulting in a slower, weaker, and less resilient athlete. It’s like your body becomes the rebellious teenager: once you’ve restricted it’s function too much or too long, it responds by kicking you where it hurts most… the ability to perform in your sport.

Why should you care?

It seems obvious, right? I need to be healthy to perform at my best! But strangely it isn’t that obvious and there are most certainly many athletes who suffer in silence. This may be because they feel pressure from coaches, the sport culture, social media, or peers to look a certain way or achieve a certain body composition, or it may be because they simply don’t know that they’re getting it wrong! It’s difficult… not only to measure how much you might be expending and taking in in a day, but also to manage all of this on top of life stuff!

Personally, I haven’t had a period in five years… but I’m a doctor. I should know better. Unfortunately, we don’t always. Medical education prepares you to deal with dire emergencies, with chronic disease, with infections… not athletes. It was only when I started pursuing my own education in sports medicine and performance nutrition that I truly understood this physiology. My own gynaecologist even prescribed the oral contraceptive pill back in the day to “kick start” my cycles (which, by the way, is completely wrong… an article for another day). But even then, with improved understanding, I put it on the back-burner. Working as a doctor in South Africa, I was always stressed. High patient-load burdens, shifts that ran into 28 hours on the trot, often no gap for lunch during the day… worrying about my own health wasn’t a priority. And strangely, I thought I was still performing in my sport.

Until it hit the fan. This year I developed diffuse swelling, first in my feet and eventually in my abdomen and face… for the first time, I became a patient. My albumin levels (protein in the blood) were low, and this causes the fluid part of blood to shift from your blood vessels into your tissues (“oncotic pressure” for the nerds). I was chronically fatigued, my moods were always just “flat” without highs or lows, and, although I was fortunate to not have suffered any significant injuries, my performance tanked. My swim and run times got slower, my FTP on the bike dropped, and I couldn’t lift the weights that I used to be able to. When I look back, it was a slow decline that I just failed to notice. And, unfortunately, it took a serious wake up call to kick me into action and do something about it.

So what do you do?

Firstly, you speak up. There’s no shame in admitting that things aren’t always rosy. I have the qualifications and I got it all wrong; I failed to look after myself. By speaking up and sharing experiences, we discover more about what happens to health and performance, we pick it up earlier and prevent others from following the same trajectory, we educate athletes, coaches, and doctors, we change the culture, and ultimately we raise performance by being healthy first. I’m speaking up… I neglected my own body… and I paid the price in declining performance.

But now I’m doing something about it. This year, I stepped back from hard training to get my health on track, to prioritise nutrition, sleep, and mindfulness practice; I applied what I, ironically, already knew. In a few weeks, the swelling completely resolved, I got my appetite signals back, I started sleeping better, my sense of humour returned… and, not surprisingly, I’m stronger on the bike, and the kettlebell I bought for lockdown already feels light!

This is a lifelong journey for me and there is no quick fix, magic bullet, glorious epiphany, or simple switch. It’s an everyday commitment to conscious practice of theoretically simple, yet often neglected, principles of sensible training, complete nutrition, quality sleep, and psychological inquiry. It is also a daily acknowledgement of imperfection, of being okay with making mistakes, of asking for help when needed. Athletes, by nature, are dedicated to achievement, to ticking green boxes, to crossing I’s and dotting T’s… often a contributing factor to landing up in a situation of RED-S. But here’s the kicker: celebrate it. That part of your personality also contributed to your being successful in your life. And it is the same part of you that can turn situations around. Channelling my drive for achievement into health, into better routines, into introspection gave me improved performance in life and in sport as a corollary.

I transitioned from medical practice into a PhD this year to pursue my passion for this area of sport, where nutrition meets medicine. I want to change the landscape where athletes’ performance goals are underpinned by a healthy body and mind, where coaches ask about periods and erections, where doctors don’t automatically prescribe the pill for missing periods in athletes, where good nutrition and optimal hormonal function are recognised for their “legal doping” effects.

I am incredibly grateful for this experience and the opportunities I have to make a dent in this space going forward. Navigating this journey personally, and having to apply my professional background to practice, I feel that I am now in a privileged position to guide athletes through this maze.

If you think you already have symptoms or may be heading down the path of RED-S, speak up. Join the crowd. Find support. You’re not alone.

And if you don’t know where to go or what to do, email me (sharedexonline@gmail.com). Whether you want to share your story, be a part of a bigger movement, or seek help from a network of professionals… I’m here to help in any way that I can.

Useful resources:

IOC Consensus Statement: Mountjoy M, Sundgot-Borgen J, Burke L, Ackerman KE, Blauwet C, Constantini N, et al. International Olympic Committee (IOC) Consensus Statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S): 2018 Update. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2018;28(4):316-31.

shaREDex website: http://www.sharedex.online

British Association of Sports and Exercise Medicine: http://health4performance.co.uk/athlete-dancer/

DISCLAIMER

This article should not be considered medical advice and is instead intended to be the opinions of the author. Always seek independent medical advice before making any decisions based on your health.

by James Bale

Lockdown. Restricted access to the outdoors. No events are running. Everything is moving to the end of 2020 or beyond.

Now is not the time to have any structured coaching surely? Well, you’d be wrong – now could not only be the right time to have someone giving you some guidance, but a critically important time to receive advice on how to stay active and healthy as we look towards a massively altered year of training/racing.

Coaching isn’t just for periods in an athlete’s training cycle when you’re pushing hard towards your next goal; coaches are not just there to give you the push needed to get faster and understand how to improve performance focused on a peak. A well-engaged coach will help guide you through the difficult times without putting undue stress on the body while fostering a healthy path through the year.

You may have lost access to the pool, be unable to undertake long training rides, or struggle to know how to integrate running into your plan as we all face restrictions on movement. Instead of focusing on the negative with their being no races to train for, your relationship with your coach should allow you to adjust your goals to become something more than merely preparing to execute on race day. Together you should be looking at why you are training and how to adapt to cater to this need. How not to overload the body and how to work sessions in and around the restrictions you are facing.

Right now, everyone you know is under pressure as we try to process the global problem that is much bigger than any of us individually. Thinking and worrying about how the week of training has to look is one thing you can make more manageable by having a good relationship with a coach. It can stop you from making training decisions that could negatively impact your ability to recover and support your immune system.

A coach who understands you, knows your situation, has a regular dialogue with you, and can set sessions based on your exact needs, can remove the fatigue, giving you a road map to come out of this time in the best possible shape. Knowing how to look after yourself now and sensibly keep moving through this crisis means you’ll ready to take on the challenges ahead without having dug yourself a physical and mental hole.

James Bale has been involved with endurance sports for most of his life and is now working with athletes one-on-one to exceed their goals. To get in touch with James or one of our other coaches visit our Expert page.

Have you ever been crushing your training – every session you get better and better – then suddenly you do a session and it is a disaster? Your heart rate is too high, you can’t hit your pace or power numbers. You want to give up but limp through the session before admitting it was a failure. How does it make you feel? Have you panicked and thought ‘I just need to push harder!’ or ‘All my hard work has come undone!’ or ‘If I keep training like this there is no way I will finish/PB/qualify for Kona!’

Isn’t it amazing that despite what could be weeks of amazing training, that one single session can make you question yourself and undo all of the confidence you have built up? I get it all the time. One of my athletes sends me a message about why their session was a failure and how they know what they did wrong and why they will do it right next time.

Guess what… A bad session is actually a good thing!

There are a number of extremely technical ways in which someone can explain training adaptation, but lets keep it simple. When we train, we break down muscle fibres then allow them to repair stronger than before. Or even more simply, we punish ourselves then allow ourselves to recover so that we can take even more punishment than before. While both of these descriptions lack a certain level of panache, they do have something in common. Can you spot the similarity? In order to reap the benefits of our hard work we need to allow our body to repair or recover.

If you train hard and have an off day are you starting to see now why it is happening? It is because you have reached a point where you can no longer perform. Instead you need to recover to allow your body to absorb the work you have put in and come back stronger than before.

This is the classic fork in the road moment.

You can either continue to push through your training, ignoring the fact that you are not performing well. What could go wrong? More is always better right? You only need to listen to ‘fitness influencers’ on the internet who will yell at you to harden up! While your ability to perform drops, so does your ability to recover and you end up spending more and more time in the useless grey zone. You can call this stuff ‘junk miles’, or a dumb stupid idea.

Your other option is to take the session that didn’t go well as a sign that it is time to allow your body to recover. This might be a rest day or a recovery session or whatever it is that will enable you to maximise your recovery and maximise your adaptation. It isn’t weak; it is smart.

(Now this is a very complex part of training that is being incredibly simplified in this discussion. Sometimes you want sessions done with fatigue, other times you will want a person to try and push when they are exhausted – but these are not weekly events or common occurrences and are usually best done when a coach has included them in your program with some long-term goals.)

But put simply, if you have been training well, it is inevitable that you have some bad sessions which indicate that you have pushed yourself to the point where recovery is needed so you can reap the rewards for your hard work.

This is where the art of coaching really does shine. Knowing how to push your athletes to the point of fatigue then backing it off properly so they can improve is one of the single biggest responsibilities for a coach. It is how a coach can avoid injury, sickness and maximise the improvements their athletes make. Dancing with that fine line becomes even more critical as you get closer to the big race because the edge of the knife you are balancing on becomes even thinner the more primed you are.

Honestly, understanding how far to push and when to back off is critical to improving your performance. Having a coach absolutely helps because the decision making is often out of your hands but if you don’t have a coach, all you need to do is look out for that session that doesn’t go according to plan. When it happens, don’t beat yourself up or convince yourself you are being weak and push through. Nothing good will come of that. Instead, pat yourself on the back for all the hard work you have put in and reward yourself with some high quality recovery.

Tim Ford is a member of our team of coaches. He has gone from being a complete novice weighing well over 120kg to a top athlete with a 4:06 PB for a 70.3. Through his time in the sport he has learned skills which help him to assist athletes of all levels and abilities.

Having successfully lost weight and kept it off and seen my race times continue to come down since I entered the sport, I am constantly being asked about ‘the secret’.

I think I have said this more times than I can count, but it really is all about consistency. I remember when I was younger and panicking that I wasn’t getting fast enough. I asked a pro triathlete and friend of mine Clint Kimmins, what should I do. He told me, “Just keep doing what you’re doing! It’s clearly working!”

It is weird those pieces of advice you actually take on board and those that you don’t. This piece of advice from Clint definitely changed my approach. Where before I was getting frustrated because my program was always very similar, I now understood it didn’t need to be different every week. When I first started coaching I felt that pressure to give different sessions week in and week out. But then that voice came back and I realised that consistency is really much more important than giving flashy trainer sets every week.

I have now been coaching for 5 years and I think that trying to make athletes be patient and consistent are two of the biggest challenges I have faced. Some athletes took up so much of my time and effort because I was constantly trying to convince them to do less and to stop looking for short cuts, while others would train the house down for a week or two then drop right off.

I recently asked a group of athletes what is the thing that they would need help with. The overwhelming response was consistency. This made me think, is consistency something you can teach people, or is it purely down to the individual to suck it up and force themselves to be?

I am conflicted. No one taught me how to be consistent but I am now at a point in my life and training where I don’t see it as optional. I plan my days as much around my training as I do my work. It isn’t always fun or easy but there is rarely a day or week (or month) where I simply didn’t have time to train. I make it happen automatically.

But did I really do this myself or is it something that I was taught by my coach and mentors?

I genuinely think that consistency does come down to a person’s own will. As a coach, I cannot force a person to actually do the workout. But I now definitely  think there are things I can do as a coach to help people find ways to develop their own consistency.

Central to my approach to coaching is to set up my athletes for success. What does this mean? It means I am not going to try and force my athletes to train 20 hours a week if they already work 80 hours a week. I will not try and force them to fit into my programming. I try and make my programming fit their life. By making a program achievable (not easy) it makes it easier for them to get it done and therefore make it part of their routine. I think this is a big step to developing consistency.

One tool I really love to use that I know a lot of my athletes don’t love is benchmarking. This isn’t science-based. I am not going to get into the benefits of a 20-minute FTP compared to a ramp test. But I like to use three key tests to help my athletes see the benefits or the losses because of their level of consistency. If someone has been training better and better but might start questioning why they seem to be doing so much of the same training, there is no better response than a 15-watt increase in FTP, taking 3 seconds off their CSS, or a drop of 5 seconds for their threshold run pace. Similarly, if someone has been less consistent than they should be, it can be a great way to shock them into that realisation. (Although the excuses I hear after a bad threshold test usually put a smile on my face.)

Another way I think I am able to support my athletes to become consistent is to closely manage their fatigue. This is something I use the most as a coach. One of the things I love about Today’s Plan as a coaching platform is that it monitors both objective and subjective metrics. So if someone has abnormally high fatigue, I can see if that is purely from training or because they might have had a fight with their partner. By effectively managing fatigue, I am able to back off the load when it is needed, push when it can be pushed and make changes on the fly – because even the best-laid plans can change.

I have had so many times when an athlete has reached out to me and go “How did you know I needed a rest day tomorrow?” I often lie and say it is because I am just an amazing coach. But in reality, it is because I know how to read their numbers and have a good understanding of them as an athlete.

Coaching consistent athletes is easy. They are a lot less demanding. They get their program, ask questions if they aren’t sure, but for the most just get it done. As a coach, this is usually my first priority; I want to help them become consistent. Not just because it means it makes my life easier, but also because it is the single best way for them to improve.

So if you are struggling to be consistent, try and use some key things to help you develop good habits. Perform your own benchmarking. This might be a 2km loop you run every 2 weeks or a certain Strava segment you attempt every week or even a certain pair of pants you want to fit into. Once you develop these good habits, just keep doing them! You will see better results in the long run than you ever will by looking for short cuts in the short term.

Tim Ford is a member of our team of coaches. He has gone from being a complete novice weighing well over 120kg to a top athlete with a 4:06 PB for a 70.3. Through his time in the sport he has learned skills which help him to assist athletes of all levels and abilities.

by Chloe McLeod

What to eat during your race is a question I get asked about a lot. We recently discussed which foods are best choices for before physical activity, in particularly endurance sessions.  Today, we’re talking food timing during exercise.

Why eat whilst exercising?

When participating in endurance events, or training for one, our bodies are using up glycogen as our main fuel source. Glycogen is carbohydrate in it’s stored form. Carbohydrate is the main source of fuel in endurance exercise with enough to last around 90 minutes of activity before you really need to top it up (less if your work rate is higher).

To keep it simple, you eat your gel, or sports drink or bar, and it is digested to glucose. This then moves to the muscle to be stored as glycogen, and then converted to a substance called ATP. ATP is what your muscles use for energy so they can contract and work. The time it takes for the food you’ve eaten to digest depends on the glycaemic index and type of carbohydrate. For example, a gel is available for use within minutes due to a special combination of carbohydrate to improve absorption, and a high GI level, whereas your morning porridge will take much longer to digest.

When not to eat

Of course, it is not always necessary to eat during training sessions. If the session is particularly short (less than 60 minutes), or you are purposely doing a lower intensity session to help improve your body’s ability to burn fat, including fasted sessions (sessions where you haven’t eaten) is recommended.

How much is needed?

Recommendations vary between 30-90g per hour in various research studies. If the event is 1-2 hours, 30g/hr is optimal, 2-3 hours and recommendations go up to 60g/h, above 3 hours and the suggestion is 90g/hr. To be really frank, many individuals walk through my door (or answer my skype call!) consuming around 20g/hr, sometimes less than that. And the thought of consuming 90g/hr (around 3 gels worth per hour, depending on brand) can be mildly nauseating.

There is one key caveat though with these quantities; whilst performance seems to go up when consuming carbs in these quantities, this is subject to the gastrointestinal tract’s ability to tolerate these amounts. Feeling well and comfortable is more important than getting that extra bit of carbohydrate in.

Practicing your nutrition plan, and how much you will have multiple times in training, so you have it entirely sorted, and trust it 100% will make life much easier for you come race day.

The other thing to keep in mind is how much the body can use at once. If only consuming one type of carbohydrate, the body cannot digest more than 60g per hour; when different types of carbs are consumed at once, this number increases, due to the use of different transporters.

What to choose?

Gels, sports drinks and sports bars are all popular, convenient choices, and often contain these different types of carbohydrates mentioned previously.

If that’s not your jam, making your own food is another great choices. Sandwiches, wraps, homemade bars, dried fruit are all popular choices.

Some of my favourite suggestions of homemade food include:

–        Vegemite sandwich (yep… I’m an Aussie!)

–        Honey sandwich

–        Jam sandwich

–        Egg wrap

–        Dates

–        Dried fruit

–        Rice bar

A sneaky recipe from me: Nutella and Rice Slice

I make this pretty regularly for some friends who go out on day long bike rides, and it is certainly a favourite! Whilst there are a few variations to this, this provides a great base:

• 2 cups Sushi rice
• Nutella
• Salt
• Tart cherry juice
• Berries or banana (your choice)

1. Boil the rice in a mix of the cherry juice and water
2. Press half the rice into a tray lined with baking paper, to create a 1-2cm thick layer.
3. Spread with Nutella, then sprinkle with salt
4. Layer with fruit of your choice
5. Add rest of the rice and create a top layer.
6. Place in fridge to allow to set (approx. 2 hours)
7. Slice up into small bars, and wrap with paper or foil!

Chloe McLeod has had a keen interest in nutrition from a young age due to food intolerances as well as a realization about the important role food plays in an active lifestyle. She has a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition & Dietetics, a master’s degree in Public Health, has received Sports Dietetics training through the Australian Institute of Sport, and has earned qualifications for ISAK Level 1, and is a member of DAA, SDA, and PINES. She is a two-time marathoner, avid trail runner, and also enjoys staying active through snowboarding and Pilates.

LoveApril was always representative of my birthday, Easter and Ironman Australia weekend. Those were the best days ever, when the endurance world was known for their craziness and their parties, when races were tough, but parties post these events were next-level.

Driven to Win on Debut

To be honest I had not really ever thought of my debut ironman happening as early in my career as it did, but I always knew that I would one day race at Ironman Australia.

I opted to do Ironman after some disputes with my National Federation about Olympic Games preparation for Athens; they had made monumental errors in selection procedures for the Sydney Games that had them fail in an event they should have won. They left both myself (world number 1) and Greg Bennett (world number 3) off the team for Sydney — and subsequently failed to even medal.

In the aftermath after a reshuffling, I found myself pushed to realign with a new relatively amateur and restrictive Australian high performance program, which I thought was a product of excuses and buck-passing as opposed to a value-added restructure built around the aim of success. I was still the number 1-ranked triathlete in the world and from my perspective I was being athletically successful and commercially relevant to partners under the training camp and structure I had built out of the USA. I opted out of the program offer, and they literally turned their back on me. I was basically left with only one place to go, and that was Ironman, since Ironman 70.3 racing didn’t exist back then.

It was the end of 2001, I had won three World cups that year, had crashed at World Championships when I had the race won, had won Goodwill Games, and had won every race I competed in for the past two seasons. I was at the height of my short-course racing career, but with no racing available to me in Australia or on the World Cup circuit up until May, I opted to enter the Ironman Australia event as it was the one I knew the most. I was familiar with the course having watched the event for many years, and felt comfortable preparing for an Ironman race at my home base in Australia over the early new year of 2002.

There were only 10 Ironman races in the world at that point, so every Ironman was stacked and winning one had substance; you could build a career from it. Ironman Australia was always the heaviest-stacked event, and I always was drawn to competing against the best guys. An Australian hadn’t won this event for 12 years, and I was driven to be successful on debut — but winning an Ironman on debut was almost impossible. Only Dave Scott and Luc Van Lierde had ever achieved that feat, and I wanted to match that.

(I did.)

The Perfect Setting for a Race

The town of Forster is three hours north of Sydney and is an amazing venue right on the beaches and lakes of Tuncurry. It is a holiday destination and simply beautiful place. The locals were right behind the event, and it was the first town that truly adopted the sport of triathlon years earlier. This event had grown up here, becoming massive; every single major star in the history of triathlon had competed here.

As a triathlete in Australia it was the place you went in April every single year. I think more than anything, the race signaled the final event of the season Down Under. So many athletes from all over the country came and used the weekend as a celebration of the sport, and the bars and pubs were open all day.

The layout was so spectator-friendly because of the way the town is built and the two cities of Tuncurry and Forster which shared part of the course. The famous bridge across the causeway created this natural downtown amphitheatre and the crowds were incredible. The masses of intoxicated but friendly crowds would spill out on the streets, and this vocal support was amazing. Everything about this race was epic. I still believe the finish straight of this race was the best in the world. All the hotels and high-rise apartment buildings ran along the finish straight for 800 metres and these would be packed with people and music and atmosphere.

The course also to be honest was challenging and this was in an era where people pursued events that presented a challenge, not obsessed with these times that are absolutely irrelevant and push race organisers to continue to develop easier events. Forster was just damn hard in every aspect of course design, and you proved yourself a hard athlete if you raced here.

I think it was just the perfect setting for a race and that can be very rare. Most of the time, you have to create hotspots and natural spectator viewing areas, but this course just had it naturally occurring, so there was a real authenticity about the crowds and this fed the party that surrounded the race. There will never be another race like it. I raced many Ironmans in my career, but this was one of the best by far for all of these reasons.

That Record-Equalling Fourth Win

I think for me the top memory was winning the fourth title in a row. I always wanted to match the feats of Pauli Kiuru who I watched as a kid race this event and watched him be so successful in Hawaii. Every Australian of my generation knows who the flying Finn is. He was a legend here.

Obviously winning on debut here was massive and then defending against all comers for the next two years after that was amazing, but going into the race to equal Pauli’s record was huge in Australian triathlon, as everyone assumed this was not going to ever be able to be done again. The Australian press and to some degree I myself had built up the story of the record-equalling fourth win.

The Australian contingent was getting very strong, especially in the second bike group, and my concerns were always about these big bikers and some of the French stars closing on the back section of the bike course and nullifying my advantage. Young Australian Luke Bell who had finished fifth in Kona the year prior was someone who was riding a lot of momentum and was strong on this course. I was also in the position of everyone watching me to “make the race,” so basically breaking the race up and controlling it was going to be left to me, and some of these athlete stars including Bell, Pete Jacobs, Jason Shortis and Patrick Vernay had the luxury of sitting back and allowing the race to come to them.

I really worked myself up for the event and was aggressive from the onset; I dictated the swim and exited the water with a large group. I was immediately aggressive through transition and onto the bike. The winds were up in Forster that year with a predominant side wind, which made the bike ridiculously tough to ride. I opted to really attack the bike and throw caution to the wind, in the same way Pauli Kiuru would do it. I started to break the group up by about 60km, and only Bell could follow.

Going through town at halfway I felt Luke starting to struggle into the headwind, so I attacked him in the cross winds that were prevalent for about 30km of the section out of town. This ultimately split the field up and I opted to really drive the nail in on the bike.

It was a stinking hot day (it was the day before my birthday) and I jumped off the bike a little dehydrated and fatigued. The temperature hit 35 degrees out on the run course which was brutal, but I was able to keep it together for the marathon and run defensively to win my fourth title.

I was absolutely ecstatic to win this one. I really felt coming out of this race that my ability to control and race these ironmans was getting much more refined. I had won every Ironman I had ever done except Kona, so I felt that my experience was pushing me towards Kona success that year, and the heat was something I felt I was conquering as this had been an Achilles heel for me. It was my best takeaway experience from the race for many reasons and the 4th, record-equaling win made it one to remember.

Moving on to win in Hawaii

My failings in Kona in October were huge frustrations and now legendary to some degree in the history of the champions of the race. In my head I would almost make up for them by winning Australia a few months later in April and proving to myself something. But by 2006 and 2007 I was a lot more comfortable with how I raced the distance and my position at the top of the Ironman tree and was free to do it my way, and was not defining myself by my early-season racing. I think fear and self-doubt can shape things for you when you indirectly allow them to, and much of my racing was as much about the race as it was building my own self-confidence that I was both capable and able to be competitive in this distance.

I am a racer at heart and anyone who followed my career knows how much I loved pinning on a number. Athletes now have a Ironman 70.3 series they can feed that racing drive with if they desire, and had that been around back then it would have satisfied many of the needs I had as an athlete. I think without question over the half-ironman distance between 2001 and 2006 I was by far the best in the world at that racing. It suited me more than the ironman. We just never had a platform to display that on outside of Wildflower, which I dominated and also the Strasbourg and Pucon Chile events.

Failing in Kona probably came from the fact I was doing three ironman builds in a season and mixing these shorter races in the mix to satisfy this need to compete. But as we got into 2007, we had some more of these 70.3 races and I was able to focus on those in the early season.

By dropping that Ironman in Oz, I started my preparation around much faster and refined racing. I was able to compete in a few half-ironman races and-non drafting Olympic distance events in South America and the USA, then move to Europe in May and prepare for Ironman Germany or Roth, which I would dominate. Coming into those much fresher than previous years I was able to do some amazing things against my current peers who were winning in Kona.

I literally came off that lack of Ironman Australia racing and won Ironman Hawaii.

When Triathletes Blew Up — During and After Races

We raced off feel and perceived exertion and appreciated much more the cerebral racing within this sport and the courage it takes to take chances. There seem to be much more blow-up stories back then. Where most stories these days centre around nutrition complaints or watt errors, these just didn’t exist. The common story in the old days was: “I went out too bloody hard.”

The meltdown parties were a massive part of all racing back then. It was a built-in component, with awards parties always supported. It was just our mindset of competing, where working hard, playing hard and being hard were defined differently. I guess it was much more raw. People enjoyed that community and social aspect of the sport at afterparties; they were the place where everyone came together and discussed the race appreciating the good and bad stories.

These seem to be less significant nowadays and have been relegated to be more of the Ironman slot roll-down and a quick awards ceremony to highlight the winners. I think the sport has lost a piece of its soul and identity there.

Chris “Macca” McCormack is a four-time triathlon world champion with the biggest winning percentage in the history of the sport. He is a co-founder and partner in Super League Triathlon, CEO of the Bahrain Victorious 13 team, board member of the Pho3nix Foundation, and CEO of MANA Sports & Entertainment Group.

Love

by Chloe McLeod

Making the right choices around your training sessions is essential for participating adequately fuelled, so you get the most from your sessions.  Today, we’re going to focus on food timing before your training sessions.

But when you have a heavy training load, job, family, friends… life in general to manage, having to think about it can be a challenge in itself! And, the last thing you want to do is be up at 4am just so you can eat in time for your session! So, what are the best food choices to have before training sessions, and what is best practice when it comes to timing?

Sometimes do it fasted

In a recent post, we talked about including fasted training sessions into you training program. This often works really well to do these sessions first thing, so you don’t have to get up even earlier to have time to eat, and as your glycogen stores will have naturally reduced over night.

Fasted sessions are recommended for low to moderate intensity training sessions, for example an easy paced run or a recovery ride.

If you want/need to eat something

If your training session needs to be fuelled, ie it’s a longer, higher intensity jaunt, fuelling up before hand will help ensure you get the best from yourself.  Choosing something that is easy to digest, rich in carbohydrate, low in fat and fibre and provides adequate fluid is ideal.

Timing wise, if you are consuming a full meal, this should be done 2-4 hours before the session.  For example, maybe you’ve had a big bowl of cereal, or maybe lunch was a sandwich with meat and salad, along with a milky coffee. Smaller portions, or more easily digested choices are better the closer you get to your session from a timing perspective. As an example, a smoothie or other carb rich drink may be a great choice if it’s being drunk ~45 minutes before hand, or potentially even sooner if your drink is digested very quickly.

Again, it is important for you to play around with this so you know what works best for you, to get the most out of your performance. Getting the right balance so you’re not too full at the start, or too hungry later on is imperative.

What’s my favourite recommendation pre-training session?

I love a good smoothie. Blending banana, oats, coffee and milk really is delicious. It digests quickly as it’s a liquid, but it still is rich in healthy carbs. Plus, the shot of coffee gives a great kick due to the caffeine.

Banana and Coffee Pre-Training Smoothie

5 minutes preparation time

Ingredients:

1 banana

1 shot espresso

1 cup milk

¼ cup oats

1tsp maple syrup

Method:

1.     Add all ingredients to a blender and pulse until smooth

Serves 1

Per serve provides:

Energy: 1261 kJ, Protein: 13.4 g, Fat: 5.3 g, Fibre: 4.3 g, Carbs: 47.4g

Keep an eye out for Part 2: Timing food around training sessions – After

If you have any ideas for future articles, let us know through the facebook group!

LoveWith nearly the entire world staying home over the next few months to reduce the rate of transmission of the coronavirus disease, suddenly you’ve got a whole bunch of athletes training indoors (or worse, turning into couch potatoes).

Some video streaming platforms have begun offering longer free trial periods to help people pass the time. Not to be outdone, TriathlonLIVE has offered a 365-day free trial for new subscribers.

I’m a self-confessed triathlon and endurance sports geek and absolutely need to get my fix, but with no live races on it got me thinking about what races are a must-watch, especially for those of you who might think triathlon began in 2017.

Here’s my Top 10 list, in no particular order. Some of them are available on the abovementioned platform, and some of them you’ll have to get somewhat creative to find (if you know what I mean).

Obligatory spoiler warning!

1995 Ironman World Championship

This is a great one. Plenty of drama with defending champion Paula Newby-Fraser collapsing mid-race and Thomas Hellriegl nearly running away with the win.

1992, 1995, 1996 Ironman World Championship -Women

Paula Newby-Fraser won her fifth Ironman Hawaii title in 1992 and continued to win until 1995. She then made a roaring comeback in 1996 to win her record eighth title, an achievement that hasn’t been challenged since.

2007 Paris-Roubaix

This was the 105th running of the Paris–Roubaix single-day cycling race, often known as the Hell of the North. Stuart O’Grady beat out favourites Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen to become the first Australian to get in the Top Three and eventually win.

1997 ITU World Championships

This one is memorable not just because I won. Set on a scorching day in Perth, it was an Australian shut-out of gold and silver as Emma Carney fended off Jackie Gallagher, and I beat Hamish Carter.

2008 Olympic Games –  Men’s Triathlon

Watch Jan Frodeno put in a virtuoso performance to beat out Simon Whitfield and Bevan Docherty.

2012 Olympic Games – Men’s Triathlon

Alistair Brownlee and Jonathan Brownlee made a British gold-and-bronze sandwich in London, with Javier Gomez pulling off a valiant effort for silver.

2018 Super League Triathlon Jersey Men’s Enduro

Swim-bike-run-swim-bike-run-swim-bike-run nonstop with eliminations if one falls behind meant every transition, every corner was critical!

2002 Commonwealth Games

This was the first year triathlon featured at the Commonwealth Games as a competition sport (it was a demonstration sport in 1990). Simon Whitfield had won the first Olympic Games triathlon gold medal two years previously and was on fire through this period leading into his second Olympics.

Any WTS Series race from 2009

This year demonstrated the emergence of Alistair Brownlee. He won 5 of the 7 races that made up the World Triathlon Series. This was also the first year the WTS started using the points system to determine year-end champion. Brownlee’s dominance in the series plus his win at the Gold Coast final made him the undisputed #1 athlete in the world.

2014 WTS London – Men

Mario Mola beats Richard Murray in a sprint in the final 100 meters after coming off the bike in a group of eight with Joao Pereira, Alistair Brownlee, Jonathan Brownlee, Javier Gomez, Joao Silva, and Ryan Bailie. An absolute ripper of a race.

Bonus: 2015 WTS Grand Final London – Men

In which Javier Gomez, having been outsprinted by Alistair Brownlee in several races past, finally comes out on top.

Chris “Macca” McCormack is a four-time triathlon world champion with the biggest winning percentage in the history of the sport. He is a co-founder and partner in Super League Triathlon, CEO of the Bahrain Victorious 13 team, board member of the Pho3nix Foundation, and CEO of MANA Sports & Entertainment Group.

Loveby Lucy Richardson

Since the start of November my husband and I have been based in Phuket, Thailand so i can spend my winter triathlon training with a local triathlon group led by Jurgen Zack, the German triathlon legend.

Up until 2 weeks ago, unless you read the news, you would not have really known that there were any problems in the world as Phuket seemed to be in its own little bubble! Then things got real serious everywhere and you could not help but hear about what was going on and see people that were being effected by it all as we have people from all over the world training with us. Some couldn’t come, lots couldn’t leave, some were going home early and then others were not concerned at all. We weren’t to start with, we were due to fly at the end of March, things didn’t seem too serious in the UK and we were thinking we would ride it out and go home as normal.

How wrong we were!

Firstly, around 10 days ago we had an email from our flight provider Gulf Air saying they were no longer flying and they would help find us new flights home. After some long waits on the phone we got help from their office in Bangkok who advised us to leave earlier as flights were being cancelled and with airlines shutting down. She managed to get us on a flight a week earlier on Emirates.

All ok?

No.

The next day she phoned and said Emirates would not take us (we now know they have stopped flying too so perhaps they knew that was coming even then) so she had put us on Oman Air but she also said that things were changing by the minute so to expect changes. We also arranged to fly to Bangkok as soon as possible so we could be near the big airport should we need or have to, fly out at short notice.

So all of a sudden my training camp had come to an end, my last 2 races had been cancelled anyways, a Olympic tri race in Thailand and the Tour de Bintan cycle race in Indonesia, so I, like everyone else, was training for no reason other than fitness and habit anyway!!

We arrived in Bangkok on Saturday night, the airports at both ends were so quiet, unlike anything I have seen in the usually chaotic thai airports. There were temperature checks and screening areas but not too much in the way of changes.

When we awoke the next morning it was to news that Bangkok was going into lockdown, only essential food supermarkets were to open and people were advised to stay in as there had been a ‘second wave’ of the outbreak. So that meant all the facilities in the hotel could not be used. I couldn’t use the gym and pool, WHAT!?!

It seems funny what you worry about when things happen and I had it in my head I would go to Bangkok enjoy being in a lovely hotel for the last few days of my travels, do some quality gym work, swim in the pool and forget about going back to work soon. And then thats taken away and it leaves you all out of sync!

Fitness and exercise is what keeps me sane and with a focus and purpose, which I’m sure most athletes would agree with, and suddenly I couldn’t do those. It seems stupid to worry about that with everything going on in the world and it annoyed me that it bothered me but it did and I have to be honest about that. But thats when the Thai hotel staff stepped in and brightened my day by showing me a route around the hotel grounds that would allow me to run safely and quietly away from the city streets. It was only about 500m through the car park and around their grounds but with them pointing the way and cheering me on, it was an amazing 500m that I will never forget. And every time I have gone down there to do my looping runs they have been encouraging and happy to see me running.

In any situation you have to make the most of it and look for positives, this is the situation we are all going to have to deal with for some time now so we have to adapt and work with what we have and be happy with that.

It also means I can work on areas that I know I neglect, stretching and body strength work. Despite my husband being a yoga teacher and doing his daily practice in the room everyday, I do not do enough of it so now is a good time to remedy that. Like he says, 10 minutes a day is better than nothing and a great place to start, so that is what I have done.

The sun salutations are a good warm up to your main activity or can just be a great start to the day. For me I feel about 110 when i start and can barely touch my toes when I bend over but that does not matter in the slightest. By the end you always feel better and more focused to get on with the rest of the day.

So today is supposed to be my last day in the hotel and we will fly early in the morning. Many more airlines have stopped flying and we have just found out we will be flying into a kind of locked down England. Unfortunately for me this means I will not be able to open my shop when I return home. I have a seasonal beach shop with ice cream kiosk that I run in the summer (hence why I travel in the winter) so my big opening for the Easter holidays will no longer happen. This leaves me feeling very nervous and anxious for what will happen to my family business but there are thousands and thousands of people out there in the exact same situation as me.

We have to get through this together, being positive and doing what we can to come through this as happy and healthy as possible. At times like this family, friends and loved ones and yours and their health are the number 1 priorities now. I am pleased to see we are still allowed to exercise outside and I think this is critical now more than ever. Getting out in the fresh air, getting those endorphins that exercise gives you, and having a fit healthy body is super important, but only doing so alone and away from others is also crucial. If you can not do that then then are a million ways to keep fit at home. I know my husband has had to close his yoga shala but has adapted and now put classes on you tube for people to follow at home, many other trainers have done the same with workouts, HIIT sessions, you name it you can follow it at home!! I think more cyclists than ever will be racking up the miles on the turbo, I know I will be jumping back on Zwift and catching up with friends and MX Endurance members from around the globe.

Just because you are in isolation  does not mean you have to feel isolated, and chatting to like minded poeple on zwift whilst riding or running, or taking a group online yoga class is a great way to stay connected and talk to others about how you are coping and feeling.

Stay fit, healthy, positive and happy and we will get through this together and I believe come out as better people at the end. Is this the worlds way of making us stop, think and change the way we live and act. Maybe.

LoveWith so many mixed messages about nutrition before training sessions, it is not surprising that it can be confusing knowing what the best plan of attack is. So, is training fasted a good idea? Check out the ins and outs below.

Is training fasted a good idea?

The short answer to this question is a resounding ‘yes’, however it does come with a great big ‘but’ attached. The but relating to ‘but it depends on which session’. The most recent research shows that completing some training sessions fasted, or with low carbohydrate availability improves the body’s ability to use fat as a source of fuel, store glycogen, along with increased development of mitochondria in the cells. Mitochondria are often referred to as the ‘powerhouse’ of our cells, so more of them can mean better performance. However, it is not wise to complete all sessions this way, as we need to also be able to use carbohydrates well as a source for fuel; if we do all sessions fasted, this may blunt the bodies’ ability to do this. Mixing up our sessions to be fuelled, and fasted results in best performance.

So how do we pick which sessions to eat before, and which to not eat?

Our muscles store carbohydrates as a substance called glycogen. There is enough of this in well-fuelled muscles to last for approximately one and a half hours, depending on intensity of session and fitness level. The fitter you are, the more you will likely find you can do without fuelling before hand. This doesn’t mean you don’t need to fuel; it just means that your body is more efficient, and if you do fuel well, it is likely you will perform even better.

When to train fed?

As a general rule of thumb, fuelling up before training sessions is recommended in the following situations:

–       Long (more than 1.5hrs), endurance session that includes efforts

–       Higher intensity sessions more than 1 hour

–       Resistance training sessions

When to train fasted?

Fasted sessions, or those completed with low carbohydrate availability are best completed for low-moderate intensity sessions. Including some higher intensity sessions fasted is a good idea.

As an example:

Training day 1: 1 hour run, easy pace in morning + 2 hour hill session bike in the afternoon – morning session do fasted, afternoon session do fed.

Training day 2: 4 hour bike + 1 hour run in morning – do this long session fed

It is important you listen to your body, and individualise how this is incorporated into your training plan, due to differences in how well each individual responds to fasted sessions.

Chloe McLeod is the Pho3nix Club Dietitian and is available to answer all of our members questions.

LoveIt is a strange time in the world, and many athletes in the various countries affected by the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) are starting to see it affect our usual modes of training. For instance, cycling has been banned in Spain, movement restrictions have been implemented in many other places, and it seems to be vital to #FlattenTheCurve and keep medical services from being overwhelmed by number of cases to #StayTheFuckHome.

But even as we adhere to quarantine and social distancing guidelines in the places we live, continuing to train and staying active is one way we can remain healthy both physically as well as mentally.

Here are some ideas for how to continue to train indoors in the time of Coronavirus.

Swim

If your neighbourhood pool has not been closed yet and you are not under home quarantine it might be worthwhile to get some pool time in.

However, you do need to make sure you wash your hands, as the virus is known to stick around on surfaces for a while. You may not be exposed while in the water (pool treatments kill viruses and other microbes), but once you get out of the pool is a different story.

One alternative to swimming — and it’s only a partial one — is training using swim cords or resistance bands, and turning to the dryland workouts swimmers use to boost their arm and core strength.

Try this workout with swim cords:

Complete each exercise once, rest for 30 seconds, and then repeat the entire circuit a total of 4 to 12 times (10-30 minutes).

• Bent-Over Two-Arm Pull with Resistance Cord (30 secs)
• Prone Flutter Kick (30 secs)
• Bent-Over Alternating Single-Arm Pull with Resistance Cord (30 secs)
• Supine Flutter Kick (30 secs)

In the video above, swim expert and head coach of Effortless Swimming Brenton Ford takes you through some exercises that will increase your strength and power in the water.

• Arm pulses (60-90 secs)
• Push Ups (5-20 reps)
• Crunches (45-90 secs)

Brenton also presents 10 things to do while your pool is closed.

To get the full cardio equivalent of a swim workout, it might be better to turn to bike or run workouts (or if you have access to a rowing machine, rowing!).

Bike

We’re sure athletes who live where winter drives them indoors half the year are quite used to this sort of situation. Also, in the past few years due to difficulty training on open roads, we’ve seen more and more athletes — including the professionals — turn to indoor bike training. With Zwift and other platforms it’s also easier to plug and play a workout simulating course elevations and conditions, and there’s opportunity to make things social and competitive with virtual racing and virtual group rides. You can actually get quite a good workout in on a trainer, since there’s no coasting and you’re constantly pedalling.

In the video above, Chris McCormack talks about how much of training one can do indoors versus outdoors. While he doesn’t encourage all workload to be done on a trainer, he recognises that it sometimes needed to be done.

If you are using an indoor trainer, you need to be specific in the workload with time- and effort- (or power-) based intervals and targets to hit. You can also use this time to spin and focus on little things you need to tidy up, such as pedalling, strength, and position issues.

Many of our bike sessions in our Pho3nix Club training plans as well as the individual bike sessions in our video library can be easily transformed into indoor trainer sessions.

Run

Depending on the availability of a treadmill at home or conditions of quarantine, you may or may not be able to run during this time. Treadmills are easy as you can run any kind of session on them.

But if you can’t go for a run, the best thing you can do during this time is cross-training.

One easy way of cross-training is just to add more time on the bike. While the movements are not the same, cycling works many of the same major muscle groups and also helps maintain your cardiovascular fitness so that when it’s time to get back on the road, you won’t be left gasping for breath.

Another way is to do some much needed physical training to work on your core strength, shoulder and hip flexibility, and other movement imbalances you may not usually have time to work on during a normal season. Our Sportoga video sessions available in the Pho3nix Club library offer a great starting point for this sort of work.

As we live through these challenging times, know that the same mental disciplines you use in endurance sport can apply. Chris McCormack has often said, “Control the things you can control, and ride out of the storm.”

Love

This post has been updated to reflect the latest knowledge and guidance about COVID-19. (May 2021)

What is a coronavirus and COVID-19?

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses known to cause respiratory infections. These can range from the common cold to more serious diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

This new coronavirus has been named SARS-COV-2 due to its similarity to the original SARS virus (but with notable differences). First identified in Wuhan, China, this virus causes Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) symptoms of which are cough, fever, shortness of breath, severe pneumonia, and acute respiratory distress. Currently the virus has affected more than 150 countries worldwide.

How is COVID-19 spread?

According to the latest brief from the US Center for Disease Control, the principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2  (the virus that causes COVID-19) is through exposure to respiratory  fluids carrying infectious virus.

Exposure occurs in three principal  ways: (1) inhalation of very fine respiratory droplets and aerosol particles, (2) deposition of respiratory droplets and particles on  exposed mucous membranes in the mouth, nose, or eye by direct splashes  and sprays, and (3) touching mucous membranes with hands that have been soiled either directly by virus-containing respiratory fluids or indirectly by touching surfaces with virus on them.

(Current evidence strongly suggests transmission from contaminated surfaces does not contribute substantially to new infections.)

Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from inhalation of virus in the air farther than six feet from an infectious source can occur, increasing in likelihood under circumstances that include:

• Enclosed spaces with inadequate ventilation or air handling within  which the concentration of exhaled respiratory fluids, especially very  fine droplets and aerosol particles, can build-up in the air space.
• Increased exhalation of respiratory fluids if the  infectious person is engaged in physical exertion or raises their voice  (e.g., exercising, shouting, singing).
• Prolonged exposure to these conditions, typically more than 15 minutes.

How can we help prevent the spread of COVID-19?

The available evidence continues to demonstrate that existing  recommendations to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission remain effective. These include physical distancing, community use of well-fitting masks  (e.g., barrier face coverings, procedure/surgical masks), adequate ventilation, and avoidance of crowded indoor spaces.

What is social distancing?

Social distancing is one way to help slow the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. This includes staying at home when you are unwell and keeping a distance of 1.5 metres between you and other people whenever possible.

It is important to minimise physical contact especially with people at higher risk of developing serious symptoms, such as older people and people with existing health conditions.

In the context of endurance sport and racing, that means races and events taking place within the next two to three months are advised to be cancelled or postponed in order to avoid potentially exposing large numbers of people to the virus.

Individual countries and jurisdictions have begun to implement their strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in their populations. Some athletes may be able to continue daily training routine with some modifications (no group runs or rides, for instance). Other athletes may be completely homebound due to more aggressive mitigation strategies.

Whichever strategy is in place in your locale, taking these social distancing precautions can help protect the people in your community who are most at risk. While endurance athletes are generally of good health and may experience zero to mild symptoms as our bodies fight off the virus, we may inadvertently expose more vulnerable people to it.

If your local authorities advise you to stay at home, here are ways you can continue to train indoors.

Who is most at risk of a serious illness?

Some people who are infected may not get sick at all, some will get mild symptoms from which they will recover easily, and others may become very ill, very quickly.

(About 20% of cases develop severe symptoms, such as pneumonia requiring ventilators. The percentage of deaths due to COVID-19 stands at around 3-4% globally, although the likelihood rises five-fold in people above the age of 85.)

From previous experience with other coronaviruses, the people at most risk of serious infection are:

• people with compromised immune systems (i.e. cancer, transplant receivers)
• elderly people
• people with diagnosed chronic medical conditions (i.e. asthma)
• very young children and babies*
• people in group residential settings
• people in detention facilities

*At this stage the risk to children and babies, and the role children play in the transmission of COVID-19, is not clear. However, there has so far been a low rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases among children, relative to the broader population.

How is COVID-19 treated?

There is no specific treatment for coronaviruses. Antibiotics are not effective against viruses, and no proven specific treatment or anti-viral drug for COVID-19 is currently available. Most of the symptoms can be treated with supportive medical care, provided based on the patient’s clinical condition.

For many countries, high numbers of COVID-19 patients risk overwhelming hospital facilities, in which case those with mild symptoms are told to self-isolate and recuperate at home.

Self-isolating at home means you:

• do not go to public places such as work, school, shopping centres, childcare or university
• ask someone to get food and other necessities for you and leave them at your front door
• do not let visitors in — only people who usually live with you should be in your home
• if you reside with family members, you should stay in a separate room and your caregiver must don personal protective equipment (surgical face mask, gloves, gown) when caring for you, then dispose safely of the PPE and wash hands and take other sanitary measures to reduce risk of transmission to other household members. Do not share glasses and utensils.

You do not need to wear a mask in your home. If you need to go out to seek medical attention, wear a surgical mask to protect others.

What do I do if I develop symptoms?

If you develop symptoms (fever, a cough, sore throat, tiredness or shortness of breath) within 14 days of travel from affected areas or within 14 days of last contact of a confirmed case, you should arrange to see your doctor for urgent assessment.

You should telephone the health clinic or hospital before you arrive and tell them your travel history or that you may have been in contact with a potential case of COVID-19.

You must remain isolated either in your home, hotel or a health care setting until public health authorities inform you it is safe for you to return to your usual activities.

For further information, please refer and defer to your country’s public health authorities.

Much information in this document is sourced from:

• Ministry of Health Singapore
• Australian Government Department of Health
• United States Centers for Disease Control

Header photo by Pille-Riin Priske on Unsplash

Love

by James Chen

Metrics are great. My first GPS watch (Garmin FR10) way back in 2012 allowed me to see in real-time how fast I was going. Previous to that all my times were estimates of my Casio G-Shock with some Google Maps creativity. Since then, GPS watches and activity tracking have exploded, especially in the realms of running and cycling.

Unfortunately the hunt for a viable method for swim tracking still remained elusive. Sure your multisport watch could track indoor swimming but could often be inaccurate (Garmin “bonus” distance or Garmin distance “taxes”) and doesn’t really allow you to view real-time metrics without having to look over to your wrist, hence slowing you down and increasing chances of miscalculation through the accelerometer.

One of my biggest gripes with the wrist-based systems has been drills, in particular single-handed drills — if you aren’t stroking with the arm which has the watch on, it simply doesn’t track. In a day and age where Strava is gospel this often leads me to avoiding drills just for the sake of accurate readings (vain, I know).

Enter FORM Goggles. FORM look to alleviate many of these concerns with the accelerometer in the goggles (meaning I no longer have any excuse to avoid single-arm drills) and the main talking point: a heads-up display built right into the goggles to display metrics as you see fit.

Unboxing

Pretty simple box, not too dissimilar to other goggle packaging.

Very premium goggles case. A Polar optical HR mount included, although the Polar HR was not but is readily available online.

A wide selection of nose pieces means they’ll fit anyone.

There they are in full glory

The charging mechanism is a proprietary magnetic one that plugs into a standard USB port.  They charge up pretty quickly and have a rated battery life of 16 hours. I haven’t had a chance to drain it completely but given my current usage that seems to be on point.

You may think that these will be bulky and cause neck pain when swimming, but they are pretty much in line with other high-end goggles for sizes. See photo above when comparing to blueseventy Contours which I use for race day. They have a similar size goggle section and fit pretty well.

In comparison to my training goggles, Speedo Biofuse, they are much smaller but that’s to be expected.

Here’s my ugly mug with the goggles on. It makes me look like I have a cyborg eye or perhaps a power level monocle like Vegeta in Dragonball Z.

In terms of fit as mentioned before, I have no issues: the standard double strap adjusting band at the back made finding a fit quick and easy.  If you have any fitting issues it’s most likely to come from the nose gap, but FORM have provided multiple nose pieces with the goggles.

Setup

Setup was pretty breezy. You’ll need the FORM app which is available from the iOS or Android store. It’ll connect via Bluetooth and you can punch in your metrics there.  Nothing fancy.  You do get the option of having the HUD on the right of left which is nice.

I tried to take some photos of how the HUD looked but I just couldn’t make the camera work. What I can say is that the pictures listed on their website are pretty much 100% accurate for how they look in use.

During the setup you can choose how you want your data displayed. There are two recording modes: laps, or structured. Basically, in a structured setup it’ll give you time for the interval before you rest but not individual laps. In lap mode you’ll get splits of every length of your pool. This makes your data a little prettier when you go to review it later.  After setup, you are ready to swim.

There are two buttons on the goggles themselves – a front and back button. The front is also the power button which you long-press to power on and off as well as the “ok” button. The rear is used to scroll one way. The menu on the goggles is simple and FORM have done well to keep it clean and intuitive with their two-button system.

Swimming

Starting to swim is easy. Choose your pool length and off you go, really. The HUD will show whatever you have chosen, and lap screens will be shown to your desire too. A myriad of choices but you can only view two metrics at a time. I had timer and distance shown, with last lap pace displayed per lap. Of note: the distance counter shows the distance completed rather than the distance you will complete at the end of your lap like Garmin does. For instance, if I’m at 200m on my kick off the HUD will display 200m until my next kick off then display 250. For Garmin’s case once I kick off at 200m it’ll display 250m until your next. No biggie really, just something of interest.

The display is great, super clear and easy to read. The goggles themselves are pretty nice too and would gladly say they are up to standards of all other premium goggles I’ve used. What I did find was that I was extremely focused on the HUD. To the point where I almost forgot about what was around me. But I did get used it after a while. The HUD also restricts some vision, obviously. The anti-fog seemed to last a decent amount of time.

The data it records is great and accurate. Most importantly it was still able to record my completed lengths even with single-arm drills no matter what! The only time I found it to have a slight issue in recording was when I ran into someone in the lane midway through. As it uses accelerometers, I didn’t find this surprising and is basically in line with all other indoor swim trackers at this stage.

Once you are done it uploads to the FORM app on your phone seamlessly and all data is displayed. The app also auto uploads to Strava, TrainingPeaks, and even Garmin Connect.

One final thing: it doesn’t track open water swimming though as it doesn’t have a GPS chip in it and relies on accelerometers! But considering most triathletes I know train in a pool, it hopefully shouldn’t be a big issue.

Conclusion

Well you ask and you shall receive. I always had minor gripes over the wrist-based swim tracking format, and the FORM goggles seem to answer them all. It’s easy to use, accurate and works flawlessly in my experience so far.

These days hardware is only half the story, though a strong software platform is essential. The fact that FORM has utilized the ability of existing platforms such as TrainingPeaks, Strava and Garmin connect means that it ticks this box too.

If I had one minor gripe is how distracting the HUD can be sometimes. But I guess that’s just me being picky; I mean, after all I wanted real-time stats without having to look over to my watch and this is the only way to get it.

I’ll also admit that it’s completely not essential as a training tool, useful but not something that I would call 100% essential.  It also lacks any open water swim tracking ability. It would be great to see it sync up with a Garmin or equivalent and display information when racing. It adds a lot to normal swim sensors but won’t be life changing in your day-to-day training.

That being said, I’m not sure I can go back to swimming without seeing those green numbers flashing at me constantly anymore.

9/10

Pros

• Simply works
• Great app platform
• Great battery life
• Actually a good pair of goggles
• Can swim one-arm drills and still get proper distances

Cons

• HUD can inhibit vision
• Won’t actually make you any faster in the pool
• No open water swimming mode

A note from Form:

• We have a mode where you can have the display turned off between the walls (which you can set in “Dashboards” on the app), which enables just showing you data when you turn and at rest, so the display doesn’t have to be on all the time if you don’t want.

What the pros are saying:

Lionel Sanders “I think the goggles are the single best training aid to come to swimming. It makes swimming fun and enjoyable, and I can’t imagine doing another swim without them!”

Sarah Crowley “I am loving that I can now consistently and accurately pace my steady-state efforts so I can finish as strong as I started, which is so important for Ironman. They are so simple to use, and finally, they provide a way for my efforts to be recorded for my coach to analyse”

Love

Get out there and swim.

The swim is the discipline that kicks this sport of triathlon off, and all of us feel quite foreign in the water. You put your head under water and that lack of being able to breathe anytime makes you feel claustrophobic and panicked.

I think for most people who come into triathlon, the swim is the biggest fear, without question. To overcome a fear of anything, you just need to get confident.

A lot of people thinking of doing a triathlon try to learn to swim by turning up to masters swim sessions. They think, “Where do I start? I don’t really know how to swim. I don’t understand what we’re doing. I feel uncomfortable in the water.” The coaches I’ve spoken to who do learn-to-swim programs for triathlon encourage athletes not to start with a master’s program. It’s too advanced.

Instead, you need to get comfortable in the water. That could mean just going to your local pool and doing a couple of laps and getting familiar with breathing. Then learn the basics from a coach. Get a good coach, someone to look over you and help you fundamentally understand what you’re doing in the water. Swimming is very much a technique-based sport, and learning proper technique allows you to move better through the water and boosts your confidence.

Then keep building confidence by doing more and more swimming. Technique first built with a lot of fitness and time in the water is the only way to improve your swimming.

Do whatever it takes to keep you in the pool and build your fitness. If that means swimming with fins, with pull buoys, with paddles, with snorkels, just do it to try and get more and more mileage. You walk away from the session not feeling intimidated and nervous, thinking ‘I got nothing out of that except a horrible time at 5:30 in the morning’. Instead you go, ‘Wow, I swam one mile today and I felt great. I might have done that mile with fins, but I did that mile’ and then you get back doing it again and again. Before you know it you’ve done two or three months of consistent swimming.

Then you need to practice your open-water skills. There’s no black line when you go out into the open water. You’ve got different buoyancy and suddenly you’ve got people around you. You can get dunked and held underwater.

So it’s important that you do do some swim sessions in some open water before you dive into your first triathlon. If not and you can only swim in the pool, learn to swim with your head up — what we call a polo stroke. Your swim coach should help you with that, maybe do some sets of 25 meters with your head up as if you’re a water polo player. That’s always good for teaching you confidence in the water and understanding how to sight.

Learning that polo stroke also teaches you how to hold your body horizontal in the water. Whenever you’re horizontal with your legs near the surface it’s very, very difficult for you to be sunk; you’re in the safest position. However, most people when approaching a buoy or treading water have their feet pointing downwards. That is what I call a non-safe position in the water and it’s easy to be swum over, or have someone push you underwater by the shoulders. So remind yourself every 15 or 20 strokes to kick and bring your feet to the surface and that way you know you’re in a safe position and no one can hurt you or get in your way.

Then it’s all about positioning at the start of your race. Try and stay out of the scrum; start to the sides. A lot of newbies who are apprehensive about the water tend to start at the back. I tell you, you can get up close to the front, but start at the side so you don’t get caught up in that hustle and bustle of swinging arms and legs.

Try to relax. Don’t start too fast; breathe every second stroke. A lot of people like to breathe bilaterally, but I find it better at the start of the race to breathe every stroke because a lack of oxygen is what creates anxiety. So make sure you can breathe and have that oxygen.

Understand that if you have any trouble there’s a lot of water safety and there’s a lot of people looking after you. But you’ve done the work and you can be confident you’re gonna get through the swim. And when you get back on land, that’s when you can do serious damage.

Chris “Macca” McCormack is a four-time triathlon world champion with the biggest winning percentage in the history of the sport. He is a co-founder and partner in Super League Triathlon, CEO of the Bahrain Victorious 13 team, board member of the Pho3nix Foundation, and CEO of MANA Sports & Entertainment Group.

Love

Step away from the gadgets.

With the advent of social media and uploading training sessions onto Strava and other platforms, many athletes enjoy pissing contests comparing watts dropped, KOMs recorded, even total mileage recorded weekly. While this “game-ifying” of fitness is good for training motivation, it doesn’t mean these numbers taken individually can accurately predict race day performance.

(We all know athletes who “win” each of their training sessions, but crap out spectacularly at The Big Dance.)

Many triathletes can get so caught up in training that they neglect to look at the big picture: performance on race day.

While knowing your power and heart rate thresholds can help you modulate effort and finish strong in your races, what happens if your watch gives out on you, or you lose it in the scrum on the swim?

This is why it’s important to train not just by numbers, but correlate those numbers to feel. Heart rate monitors and power meters are tools, but they are just that: tools.

What does “easy” feel like to you? Moderate effort? Hard?

When I begin training for any distance, what I am looking for is an ability to feel my way through the speed I am targeting. I have found that the key to making improvements is learning to trust your own pace and exertion.

I make it a point to go periodically for an hour-long run without a watch. I use feel by pace and effort to estimate just how long and far I have been running. The fitter I am, the closer I get to accurately estimating that hour.

The more in tune I am with my body, the better I can hit the effort prescribed for training sessions even without looking at the numbers. And it is that ability to feel and understand how your body is going that could be your biggest strength in a race situation.

Some athletes race like clockwork: you know exactly what power they will be going for on the bike, what split they are going to run. Once challenged by a competitor they are unable to answer surges and other tactics because they are afraid they will hit the wall if they add extra effort; they have not trained to shut off the numbers and go by feel.

If you are simply going for a finish or a new PB then yes, race your own race. But if you’re on the pointy end, it could be the difference between the win and just a participation medal.

Chris “Macca” McCormack is a four-time triathlon world champion with the biggest winning percentage in the history of the sport. He is a co-founder and partner in Super League Triathlon, CEO of the Bahrain Victorious 13 team, board member of the Pho3nix Foundation, and CEO of MANA Sports & Entertainment Group.

LoveIf last night’s shrimp cocktail isn’t sitting right, or that leftover takeaway in the fridge has given you the runs, there’s usually nothing you can do but let things take their course. But what if you’ve got a race on the horizon? How do you make sure you’ve replenished everything you’ve lost?

A member asked, “In eight days I’ll be racing… Unfortunately a week ago I got pretty sick. Starting to come good again, but training has been a no-go for a whole week. My sickness involved an episode of vicious vomiting, bit of diarrhea, complete loss of appetite and very little till no energy. On top of that, a bad cold with a very sore throat.

“The first three days of being sick I had sports nutrition, one to two electrolyte tablets, and lots of water. By Wednesday had a bit of solids again. Because this is so close to racing I was wondering if you can recommend any type of nutrition in particular that might be good for me to use.”

Chris McCormack replied: “Fluids are key, but really try and get all those micronutrient and mineral stores back up. You will be big-time depleted and you cannot rush the return of the foods. Stick to high-nutrient foods with easy digestability and nothing too heavy. Pull your proteins out of vegetable and legumes more than the meats, but if meat go the fish or white meats.”

Our sports dietitian Chloe McLeod concurred. She said, “Really get stuck into the fluids and electrolytes so you’re rehydrated. I’d suggest to keep everything pretty plain until you’re feeling good again, with plenty of carbs to help return your energy levels to normal, and plenty of veggies/fruits that sit comfortably for the micronutrient/mineral content.

“Get plenty of rest – the training is done, so let’s get you well for the race!

“Also, the other thing I love to suggest is the following. It doesn’t taste good, so wait until your stomach has settled. Blend together 1tsp each turmeric and ginger, a little cracked pepper and some blueberries with 1/2 cup water to help you get better.”

(Photo by Kristopher Patterson on Unsplash)

Love“I’m flying in from Europe to race in Asia. How should I prepare when I arrive?”
Many times an athlete will prepare for the race of their lives, only to mess it up by doing too much just before the race. It’s even more complicated if you’re coming from a different climate. So what’s the right way to shake off long flights but still stay fresh for your race?

Our member Lucy Richardson writes:

“I fly to Singapore and then on to Malaysia next week from the UK and have 9 days before IM70.3 Langkawi. My flight arrives at 3.30pm, should i do anything that afternoon/evening to get the legs/circulation going? And then is it just a case of easy sessions for the 9 days leading up to race, or should I try to do 1 or 2 longer/harder sessions, and any tips to get used to heat training/racing pretty quick. Thanks guys.”

Belinda Granger recommends:

“When you get to Langkawi don’t rush things: settle into your accommodation and then I would try and do a bit of a swim in the pool (if you have one where you are staying). It’s not so much a swim session but more a “roll-the-arms over, do a bit of kick and even just walking” in the water. Don’t think of it as a session but more to get the circulation moving and wake up some sleepy muscles and nerves. Go for a walk and get your bearings. But definitely no training session as such. Try and sleep as much as you can that night and the next day.

“Eat well and then try and do some easy sessions: a 30-minute run, put your bike together and go for a very easy spin.

“I have a little story for you. A very good pro athlete who is a good friend of mine recently came to Malaysia with me to race a half. On paper she was by far the best athlete on the start list. She had travelled all the way from the USA and she literally got off the plane and straight into some hard sessions. Long story short, come race day she led off the bike and then finished as last pro female. It was an eye opener for her.

“The next week she raced IM Taiwan. I told her not to do any real training sessions — just little bits of everything. She won! This is a woman who is full-time, crazy fit and very good; she just didn’t respect the elements and they kicked her arse. She learnt the hard way but came back with a vengeance.”

Loveby Chloe McLeod

“I was struggling to lose body fat rather than weight. My weight goes down very easily but making sure I am losing fat and not muscle mass is something I struggled with.”
What can you do when you can’t train any harder but want to keep improving?

I have been working with our members to find workable solutions and sustainable changes in lifestyle so they can feel healthier, boost performance, and achieve their goals.

Each part of this series will highlight a member who sought help from me: what unique challenges they faced, goals they set, specific interventions I recommended, and the progress was made.

Part 1 features someone you may already be familiar with: our member Tim Ford, who is a weight-loss and triathlon inspiration in his native Australia as well as to his thousands of followers worldwide who follow his journey over Instagram (@tford14) and his website oztriathlete.com.

Tim’s initial goal was to complete a half-Ironman in 4 hours 5 minutes, which was how long it took him to finish his first Olympic distance triathlon when he was overweight. After losing 50 kg a few years ago, he wanted to learn how to manage body composition more effectively and reduce fat mass further.

“I decided to approach Chloe when I was struggling to drop body fat rather than weight,” said Tim. “My weight goes down very easily but making sure I am losing fat and not muscle mass is something that I had struggled with.

“I had thought about seeing a dietitian for a while but had been a little bit intimidated about how it would all go. In hindsight, I wish I had done it much sooner.”

Name: Tim Ford

Age: 30

Location: Australia

Weight: 74.6kg

Skinfolds (Sum of 7): 31.4

Training: 15-20hrs/week – 1 strength, 1 interval, 2-3 swims, 3 run, 2-3 bike sessions

Initial Eating Habits: Generally healthy diet, however eating around and during training sessions required improvement. Often no food before long sessions, very little during.

I recommended an initial plan that involved meal planning to provide adequate nutrition day-to-day, with a particular focus around structuring meals around training for better energy availability. Due to Tim’s schedule as a full-time law student, this meal plan also allowed for differing days depending on how much training and studying would be involved.

As we continued working together throughout the season, we continued to tweak his day-to-day plans as well as flesh out other nutrition-led ways to improve his performance.

Tim revealed, “The thing I love about working with Chloe is that she really focuses on all aspects of my life. Obviously, my athletic performance is key but Chloe helps to make sure I am clear and energised when studying (trust me this can be a real struggle with law.) I have also noticed that I am sleeping much better when I am eating well.”

Focus/Outcomes of Further Sessions:

Hydration education
Incorporation of fasted sessions + education on importance
Race day plans
Supplement plans
Continual tweaking of day-to-day plans
Strategies for managing/maintaining energy levels at elevated training load
Identification of over-training
Education/discussion about weight and immune system
Continual assessment of body composition

Tim has noticed that on days he’s eating more carbs, training sessions feel easier. Conversely, fasted sessions are harder, but this feels “normal.”

Along with a better day-to-day and race day nutrition plan, Tim has had significant improvement in training and race times. He has also managed to reduce body fat percentage without losing muscle mass. Tim has committed to continue working with me as he moves ever closer to his 4:05 half-ironman goal.

“I think there are different classes of people who would benefit from nutritional consulting,” mused Tim. “Firstly, people who struggle to keep their weight down in general. Following a structured plan helps.

“Then you have people who are training and struggling with their weight. Chloe will be able to make sure you are eating what you need to.”

Those at the top end of the performance spectrum who are looking for the final one percent will also benefit. “Race nutrition and recovery are so much more important than I ever realised and Chloe helped me to work out rock solid strategies around them,” concluded Tim.

Editors Note: Since working with Chloe, Tim has improved his 70.3 PB from 4:29 to 4:06.