Fast Forward

Fast Forward a few months, and I've had an amazingly successful XC season, where I achieved my aim of having a whole XC season without any injuries.

Even managed to qualify to run in the UK InterCounties Champs and World Trials at the end of the season.

Results from all my races are on the wonderful Power of 10 site, absolute heaven for athletics geekery, and reveals my progress over the last few months plus a couple of good results from years gone by:

http://www.thepowerof10.info/athletes/profile.aspx?athleteid=31834

Highlight is probably a 39.25 10km and the possibility of what was to come in 2008 after I finally knuckled down to training properly at uni, giving me a taster of what I could actually achieve with a bit of consistency and dedication to doing things properly!

Onwards from the XC season I had 2 aims:

- Midlands & National Road Relay Champs

- Oulton Park Duathlon

At the Midlands we didn't put out our strongest team, but I completed my first road race in 3.5 years without any problems - over the moon!

And then at the Nationals everybody in the team put in amazing performances as we came 7th!

Possibly our best ever performance at the 6 stage!

Telford Athletic Club: Womens National Six Stage Road Relay

As well as putting in some consistent training and longer runs, I'd been attempting to add in more cycling to my training regime with a weekly spin class and a bike ride on a Sunday (usually after racing on a Saturday and running 10-13 miles on Sunday morning) - at this point I wasn't exactly loving the bike! As a bit of a novice I think I was using the wrong gears and picking the wrong routes - being too scared to try the main routes I was winding my way in and out of potholes down some very windy country lanes.

Luckily for my slightly girlish attempts at cycling a change of scene was just around the corner, forcing me to explore some new routes and accidentally discover some main roads!

A Laidback Approach

Following my "How hard can it be?" philosophy I considered the challenge of doing a Triathlon and decided the bike would be the hardest part due to my fear of falling off.

Not a ridiculous fear as I've not done a lot of bike riding since falling off going down a very steep hill and cracking my head open some 7 years ago and since my injury have only been able to actual pedal a bike for a few months.

After considering entering a bike race or similar, I decided the easiest way to overcome my bike riding worries was to enter a Duathlon before the Triathlon, so when I got to T-day I'd already have experienced cycling with a large number of other people. At this point I was also really concerned about cycling on roads with traffic, due to my tendency to wobble a lot, so I entered the Oulton Park Duathlon in April - an entirely off-road (but on tarmac!) affair at Oulton Park Race Circuit.

This gave me 2 target events to aim for, positioned nicely after the end of the XC season so as not to conflict with XC racing at all.

So how to train for this?

At the beginning of January I planned to continue with my current training pretty much as normal but adding in a couple of bike rides - one at the weekend and one spin class each week. Of course, I'm not the only person who decides to go to a spin class in January, so I struggled with getting spaces in classes and got very frustrated by this - but when I did go I found the classes excellent and they quickly improved my leg speed and technique.

I was already swimming twice a week at the gym, doing about 300-400m breaststroke each time, and given the swim in the Wilmslow Triathlon was only 400m I decided this would do fine for the time being and I'd attempt some front crawl closer to race date!

I was looking forward to trying something different and attempting a challenge I was aiming to finish instead of reach a certain performance level in. Plus the extra training would definitely help my running performances as I was very wary of increasing my training volume there given injury history.

Adding in a couple of bike rides a week...How hard could this be?

Why Not Give it a Tri

I've just got into / am getting into Triathlon and after reading many elite athlete blogs I thought I'd follow their example - at least in one respect, by cataloguing my slightly comical and naiive attempts at becoming a Triathlete!

My New Year's resolution for 2011 was to enter a Triathlon, so on 2nd January 2011 before I could really think about what I was undertaking I entered the Wilmslow Triathlon in May.

I've always wanted to do a triathlon - but I've been slightly scared of not knowing where to begin. At the start of 2011 I was incredibly pleased to be able to do any sport after years of injury and I thought, I can ride a bike, I can swim, and I can definitely run - how hard can it be.

This probably sums up my attitude to everything related to Triathlon to date "How hard can it be?" Not sure whether this makes me sound ignorant or incredibly arrogant, but in the last couple of months I've already had a couple of moments of realisation that training for a triathlon is hard in ways I hadn't anticipated!

Ever since watching Alistair Brownlee at the Beijing Olympics where he ran amazing race without fear and then went on to have an outstanding 2009 season to become World Champion, I've thought Triathlon looked like an amazing sport and was inspired to one day have a go. Unfortunately injuries have conspired against me up to this point, and it's only in the last few months that I've been able to put together any sort of training to enable me to consider giving triathlon a reasonable attempt.

My love of sport started at a young age when I used to swim pretty much every day. In fact I can't actually remember not being able to swim and always wanted to swim in the Olympics but I never really had the opportunity to see this ever becoming a reality and at age 14 I lost interest, fed up of smelling of chlorine and not having time to hang out with friends. That didn't mean my love of sport had disappeared though, and 1 1/2 years later I followed my other love, running, and joined the local athletics club having already represented my county in a couple of races and competed at the English Schools. There can't be many people who take up Athletics at 16, but I was one of them and loved it!

Speeding up to recent times, I was seriously injured at the end of 2007 and didn't run again until 2010, having been told in 2009 that I wouldn't be able to run again and should just be thankful I could walk. Not that I'd ever let something like that stop me - I'm far too stubborn for that and have been back running since April 2010, building up from 10min jogs to a full Cross Country Season in 2010 / 2011 which brings me to my New Years Resolution...Complete a Triathlon!