Well what a month! We started our own triathlon company and our ‘One Year To Go Pro’ journey and what a ride it has been so far… literally. From training to van conversions to the company, Sophie and I have had ourselves a busy month full of ups and downs, arguments and reconciliation, frustrations and celebrations. Even though its only been one month, it could quite easily have been a year already and we have loved every moment of it, the bad and the good!
The training
I still can’t believe this is our full-time jobs. Sometimes I have to pinch myself just to check I am not dreaming because I have loved every second of it. Even when sessions don’t go to plan, it gives you something to aim for next session, then you feel even better when you do achieve it.
The swim – We have gone from strength to strength here. Sophie and I both came back to the UK with a long period out from swimming, so it felt like we were starting from scratch. But since then, Sophie is/has overcome her fear of open water swimming, learned to tumble turn consistently and we have both massively increased our endurance and overall speed.
The bike – Moving back to the Lake Districts hills and a drastically different climate (rain and cold) was a huge learning curve compared to the flat (mostly pot hole free) riding and warm weather of Singapore. But what Singapore didn’t have to offer was wall to wall scenic views, more bike routes that you could imagine and hills that you would be scared to drive up. All in all making the perfect training ground for us. With a combination of turbo trainer (for those seriously wet/ cold days) and outdoor riding, we have gone from strength to strength on our bikes. Now all we have to do is test out our new found strength and endurance in a race!
The run – Now this is the area where we have seen some minor set backs. With some niggly running injuries, we’ve had to reduce the amount of running we would realistically like to do on a week by week basis. One learning point here to behold is… If you think it is time to buy new trainers, get new trainers. Running injuries are easy to avoid if you get the simple things right… warm up, stretch and roll, wear the correct equipment and progressively increase your load from week to week. Even though we haven’t had the perfect running block, we have both improved in some areas this month… Sophie in her descending and myself in my trail running ability. With some learning points to take from this month, we are excited to move onto the next running block (niggle free!).
The van
We had been discussing for a long time that we would love the option to throw our bikes in a vehicle and travel around Europe training along the way in beautiful destinations. We dream of training in the crystal clear sea water in Majorca, the scenic mountain routes in France, and the trail running routes in the Scottish Highlands. So we bit the bullet and bought ourselves a Vauxhall Vivaro Van (Also known at Victor). With the much needed help of my Dad we have started the conversion process. The plan is to have a simple van with bike storage and a seating/ sleeping area. Keep up to date on our progress on our social media.
The company
From the launching of the company to training Tri2 athletes to speaking with business consultants, our first month has been a busy month (on top of our training). In between blogging about training, sharing recipes and consulting with our business mentor, I spend the majority of my time analysing Tri2 athletes data and working with them on their training plans to get the most out of their training. We have had a big month of training for them and hope to share some exciting race results in the near near future. When Sophie isn’t blogging or taking stunning photos, she is the queen of nutrition either researching her next vegetarian banquet or baking up some yummy snacks to keep me happy in my moments of hanger 🙂
The Race
With all the good things going on for us, we were bound to have some disappointment at some point. If you had been following our social media stories, you will have seen that the race we had been building all our training up to Ironman 70.3 Weymouth was cancelled. While we were not surprised, we were still upset as we have still not raced this year and are itching to pull on our race shoes again and get amongst it. With no races on the calendar in 2020, we found out that there was a local race happening with professional athletes at Helvellyn. It was too late to enter but we went down to spectate and watch everyone in action tackling a crazy hard course (cold lake swim, bike route over ‘the struggle’ and run route up and down Helvellyn). We had race envy and were inspired to find a race. This is when we found Epicman Windermere Triathlon…only to discover it was fully booked. At which point I emailed the organisers to see if there would be any more slots for people pulling out. 6am the next morning I had a reply… “Yes, we just released 20 more slots but be quick.” Enter… Yes, we are in… Dancing around the room that we are racing soon. Sophie asks about the route… In all my excitement I didn’t look at the route (rookie mistake). So it turns out, next weekend we are racing one of the toughest middle distance triathlon races in the UK with a 1.9km lake swim in a chilly 12 degrees, 90km bike ride with 1593m of elevation and 21km trail run with 468m of elevation. While this isn’t the typical hot and flat middle distance triathlons in Asia that we are used to, we are really looking for to this race and the challenge it will be. It is going to be super exciting to see how our training in the Lake District translates into this race. Bring it on and bring on the next month of training!
