After my well earned rest and holiday in Canada I landed at Heathrow and looked up directions to my new home. This felt weird! My contract as a researcher at Bristol Uni was due to end in October so I decided to move up to the Midlands to train full time with the Paratriathlon squad at Loughborough Uni after the World Champs in September. Many of the other para-athletes have also relocated to the Loughborough Hub, including one vital athlete who was going to influence my training – Alison. She is now spending 2 weeks in Loughborough and 2 weeks back home near Edinburgh each month, so I’m able to guide her when required. This is great as I get to spend more time on the tandem with her and better understand her visibility in various lights.
After one more week of bumming around (or off season) when I got back to the UK, I was back to training for a solid block of winter training. First I was asked to guide a male visually impaired athlete at a Talent ID day, and having not run for over 3 weeks I had to run 5 Km on the track. My legs were SO sore the next day, mainly from the impact but also track running hurts your calves. The first day started with a 6 o’clock swim session – time to get used to this, and a steady bike session where the tiny inclines felt like mountains. Day 2 was a swim ‘speed’ session (or lack of) and strength and conditioning in the gym. Just as my legs started to feel less sore I’d have another gym session. I had DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness – although I’m sceptical of the delayed part on this occasion) for 9 days. 9 days!!! My body hurt so much as I eased back into training but now we’re well into the winter training block and I’ve already made so many gains. Training is very social and I love spending time with the squad.
Training in Loughborough with so many other elite athletes is quite different from my previous lifestyle to say the least. This is Loughborough uni; where I turn up to swimming training at 6 in the morning and the swimmers are already well into their main set; where everyone in the gym is already in shape and they’re lifting weights to get stronger, and where it’s normal for men to wear lycra leggings. Welcome to Loughborough....’where history begins.’ This is not the beginning for me but hopefully this is where my long path continues.
Relocating from Bristol to train in Loughborough meant leaving a lot of my close friends behind and probably most importantly as an athlete, my coach. I was changing everything; from my training environment to my programme, so why not change it all?! I’ve worked with Andy for the last 2 years and I owe him a lot for getting me to where I am today. 2 years ago I had barely ridden a road bike and I’m sure he was laughing at me as I could only grab my drink with my left hand and I’d still wobble. Signalling right didn’t happen much. And don’t even get me started on trying to ride on a set of rollers. I remember sweating perfusely from the anxiety and my eyes stinging as the sweat had dripped into them, but I daren’t take my hands of the handle bars to wipe my face. Now I can almost take both hands of the handle bars on the tandem (no-one tell Alison I’m trying!). It wouldn’t have worked well being coached long distance, given I’m rubbish at communicating anyway. Thanks to Andy for all his help and tolerating my moaning, my numerous questions and my naivety with regard to triathlon. My new coach has been in my exact position, competing in the super series races whilst acting as a guide, ideal really. I’m sure Luke will learn a lot about me very quickly and it seems to be working well over this first block of winter training.
So the first thing that comes with winter training is lab testing. We all love obtaining and using numbers for training, and now I have a new Garmin watch I can actually use the data to train. Since I’ve moved over to a new coach, Luke wanted aaallll the data and so I was one of the very few athletes to do every single test. This included swim test, sub max bike, max bike, sub max run, max run, 20 Km bike time trial and strength and conditioning. If this wasn’t enough, I have to do the max run test again using a different protocol! From these we can find my aerobic and anaerobic thresholds and hence work out the zones I need to work in for different sessions. My VO2 max is certainly nothing to rave about but apparently my running economy is good. So if I want to change sports AGAIN, I can always consider marathon running. Ha, that’s a looonnng way to run and a long way off!