by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

Ironman Wales 2020: a socially distant dragon?

It is almost a whole month since I wrote anything. Well, anything that isn’t an email, a text or a set of instructions for my students, who have been distance learning now for almost four weeks. The world has ground to a halt, but somehow I seem to be more exhausted now from my working day than ever before.

Six weeks ago, I was recovering from a busy few weeks at IM 70.3 Dubai and Oman and a skiing trip to Almaty, Kazakhstan. We were getting ready to set off for a family trip to Canada. My training was on track and my fitness was rebounding after two weeks of rest following the racing. Then suddenly, on the 5th of March, the world from our viewpoint went mental. Within a few short days, the situation in the UAE went from a vague awareness that people were standing further apart, to all gyms, pools and parks being closed. These were swiftly followed by beaches, restaurants and shopping malls, but we were still allowed outside if we were ‘socially distant’.

I now live in a world where it is normal not to step foot outside my apartment for six or seven days at a time. A digital permit is needed to leave, even for essential goods such as groceries and medicine. I haven’t swum since Oman and I haven’t run since the 22nd of March. My training for Ironman Wales consists of endless hours on the turbo trainer and the Insanity program.

Now, I’m not naïve enough to be assuming that Ironman Wales will go ahead, and to be honest I don’t even know if I want it to. Not for any of the usual lack of fitness, scared, or “realised I actually hate triathlon reasons”, but because I don’t know if it should. At the point of writing this, over 115,000 people have died from COVID-19, almost eleven thousand of those in the UK alone. We are banned from any large gatherings, banned from seeing family and banned from visiting our elderly or vulnerable relatives. All this comes at a time when we probably need all these things the most. One of the main draws of Ironman Wales for me is the fact that it takes place in my home county, in a town which I and countless others have been visiting since we were tiny. There are almost 30 NEWTs racing this year from my old club in the UK. I have friends and relatives coming from all over the country to watch me race. Will they be able to come? Will my dad, who suffers from COPD, be safe to travel the 30 miles down the road by September? My best friend, who has severe asthma?

Above mentioned best friend facing the dragon in 2018.

Countless numbers pour in to the Iron Town of Tenby to watch athletes face the dragon every year. These crazies hail from all over the world, from first timers to pro athletes hunting that ever-elusive Kona slot. Visitors swarm all over the village from Friday afternoon through to Sunday evening, with every pub, restaurant, cafe and chippy cramming in as many tables as they possibly can to capitalise on hungry Ironmen (Ironwomen?!) and even hungrier supporters. Hand rails are grasped, shoulders are bumped, and several thousand proud pairs of lungs bellow Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau at the swim start.

IMW Swim Start

Are you beginning to see where I’m going with this? The honest truth is that Ironman could probably let the event go ahead with a limit on spectators and with social distancing measures in place. My question is, do we, as athletes, want to put the people who make our racing possible at risk? Do we want to race in a race where spectators can’t scream encouragement in your face as you ascend Heartbreak Hill for the last time? A race where I don’t get the yells of “Don’t be shit!!” thrown at me like lifeline all the way up NEWT Hill? A race where you can’t high five kids who have been standing on the side of the road all day ‘high fiving for energy’?

I don’t know if I do. I’ll keep training nonetheless, but I’m starting to wonder whether the dragon should have a year off this year, to roar all the louder in 2021.

NEWT Hill. An entire hill taken over by members of the best club on the planet.

Photo credit: Emma Palfrey, Thomas Amery and Ironman Wales

by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

IM 70.3 World Championships: why I turned down my slot allocation to race in Taupo, NZ.

Last week, I received one of my most unsettling emails to date. Amid all the confusion and cancellations surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, Ironman had emailed me telling me that I had been allocated a slot at the 70.3 World Championships in Lake Taupo, New Zealand this November. What. The. Hell?!

Of course, my initial reaction was absolute elation, quickly followed by utter desperation at the fact that with a recently corona-cancelled holiday to Canada and flying back to the UK for IM Wales in September, there was absolutely no chance I could afford to go. Nevertheless, my little brain started whizzing around trying to work out how I could scrape the funds together. I spent the day agonising over a number of options, including deferring my IMW entry until next year.

By the time evening arrived on Friday, I had shed a number of tears and run through thousands of scenarios in my head, none of which would work fully. I ended up deciding not to take the only World Championship slot allocation I am ever likely to get for a number of reasons:

  1. The fact that I would have to defer my IMW slot. I was bloody lucky to get a slot at this year’s 10th anniversary of one of the most iconic Ironman races on the calendar. The race sold out in 3 minutes. To throw this away, as well as all the prep I have already done, seems ungrateful. I also intend to spend a full 6 weeks this summer training back home in Pembrokeshire, specifically to prep for the race. If I defer my place, this means doing this in the summer of 2021. This brings me nicely on to my next point..
  2. We live in Dubai for a number of reasons, but one of those is undoubtedly the fact that we live in the ‘middle’ of the world here, and it’s so much easier and cheaper to travel to new and exciting places from here than from the UK, or many other places. My husband and I have said that we would love to spend a summer travelling around NZ or even Latin America in the next couple of years, and if I defer IMW again, these plans get pushed back. Talk about first world problems but that’s our very fortunate truth.
  3. This is the biggie. I don’t feel that deserve that place. The slot was allocated from my time at IM 70.3 Dubai, where I finished in 5:46. I just made it in to the top 50% of my age category if you count my combined time for the three disciplines (wait for the explanation…). However, due to an almighty cock-up with the swim start, half of the field did not have recorded swim times, meaning that for half of my age group, our official finish time was calculated on bike, T2 and run. IM has attempted to calm the understandable fury at this by doubling the World Championship slot allocations for each age group. Now, if we take a way the swim, I finished a vaguely respectable 15th from 44 who suffered the same fate. A good friend of mine came 4th in the same group and has a thoroughly-deserved World Championship slot. Pre-swim-deleting she had a phenomenal time of 5:11. If we take in to account the fact that some of the top athletes had qualified for the Taupo race before Dubai, this means that in order for that slot allocation to have rolled to me, at least 10 other people have turned down the slot. Whatever this is due to, I don’t feel that I deserve that allocation. I know a lot of other people will disagree with me but if I’m going to go to the IM 70.3 World Championships, I want to do it on merit rather than on technicality.

So when the call came from Ironman yesterday to confirm that I hadn’t taken up the place, I had no regrets in saying that I wasn’t going. My aim, for 2020, is to finish IMW in front of my family and friends, on the hilly, soggy grass of home. It isn’t to fly alone to New Zealand and take part in a high-calibre race for which I feel didn’t deserve to qualify. Maybe one day…

by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

New Year, New..nothing. Just improvements.

So we are well in to January, the weather out in Dubai is all a bit weird and I’m sitting on my sofa wondering what I am actually hoping to achieve in the next few weeks. I have an Olympic Distance race this Friday in Ras al Khaimah, more to remind myself of how to rip a wetsuit off than anything else, and two 70.3s looming in February.

My training so far has been sporadic at best but I actually feel fitter than I have done in a while. I know I’m not going to hit any PBs this early season but as my ultimate goal this year doesn’t involve PBs, I don’t want to get too hung up on my 70.3 distance times. In the last week, since being back at school, the main thing to have struck me is how much better I am feeling, and therefore performing, with better sleep and better food. Now I know we all know this but here is what I have noticed:

Sleep:

I’ve always been an easy sleeper. I can hit the pillow, read my book for five minutes and be asleep in ten. I’ve always been super careful about screen time before bed, and I sleep with my phone on night mode so nothing disturbs me during the night. I do eat quite late, usually between eight and nine in the evening but this has never seemed to have an effect on my sleeping pattern. However, I am partial to a G&T. As a rule, I try to stick to only drinking on the weekend, but during the Christmas break I lapsed entirely and definitely had a beverage every evening. It was Christmas! But in all honesty, the sleep quality I have had in the last week, sans boozy bedtime tipple, has been so refreshing that I feel honestly guilty for having deprived my body for the last month. My new Garmin VivoSmart tracks my sleep, and tells me how many hours of light vs deep sleep. The pattern is obvious. Booze batters my sleep. Now, I am absolutely not going to say that I’m giving up gin, but this week really has made me think about how that one (ok, two) cheeky indulgence will, ultimately, affect my training and therefore performance come race day.

Diet:

Well, it’s January the 12thand I have already been overwhelmed by the use of words like ‘keto’, ‘paleo’, and ‘intermittent fasting’. Fair play, if that’s your thing then go for it, but something that really hits me at this time of year is how these buzz words take over our conversations. I am in no way a nutritionist, but I am absolutely a foodie and I also spend a lot of time training. My fuelling strategy is bound to be different from that of a more sedentary person or, from that of a body-builder. That doesn’t necessarily make it better or worse, and I absolutely hate conversations which compare diets. For me, diet is really personal and I don’t actually want to argue with people about it! I have my own opinions on ketosis and fasting but I try to keep them to myself, mainly because the amount of calories I have to take on during a long day on the bike would send a fasting person into spasms of calorie driven envy.

I love food and I love to cook, and I also love a cheeky Nando’s at the weekend. For me, balance is key. I eat a well rounded, homemade, fresh diet in the week, then go in for a couple of treats (and a gin!) at the weekend. The honest truth is that I could do with losing a few kilos for my races in February so; I cut out all midweek treats. I eat eggs, fruit, steaks, tuna, homemade curries, casseroles and soups. I think salads are boring, so I don’t eat them. I drink sparking water made with my brilliant Sodastream, coffee (lots of) and have just discovered green mint tea. And guess what? With plenty of hydration, loads of fruit and veg and a high protein intake, I am slowly losing my Christmas padding. 

I know that it’s a new decade and everyone wants to better themselves, but there are so many , far easier ways of doing this than spending a fortune on ‘fast results’. I train for long distance triathlon – I need the carbs, so Atkins and Keto don’t work for me personally. For me, cutting out that after-work treat every day, or prepping all our food on the weekend to avoid the temptation of a midweek takeaway makes that huge difference. 

As I said, each to their own, but personally, I’m not even vaguely interested in the weird metallic taste you get in your nose when you are truly in Ketosis. I get it after long, poorly fuelled training sessions and it’s vile. I know that we all want to make improvements and there are a million ways to do this, but we are all different in our bodies and our lifestyles and therefore what works for one person will not necessarily work for you. So, whether you’re an endurance athlete, a life-long Atkins-er or just trying to make some healthier choices.. make them for you. Not because someone told you pasta is evil.

by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

The Christmas Spirit

It’s been almost a month since I last managed to write a post. A hectic, exhausting month where finding the time to sit and peacefully reflect on training and Ironman prep has been almost impossible. The usual mental run up to the Christmas Holidays that every teacher experiences every year had been, as with every other year, forgotten about. This was until I realised it was 9am on the last Sunday of the term, I was on my third coffee of the day and had already done over 6000 steps racing around school catching various students and members of staff who I needed to talk to before the end of the year. I’ve also been enrolled on an online training course which, whilst being incredibly useful, has been a huge drain on my time. Nevertheless, we are staying in Dubai for Christmas and I actually feel like this may be the year when the Christmas Spirit doesn’t kill my training!

                  At the time of writing, I am almost exactly six weeks away from my first big challenge of 2020; Ironman Dubai 70.3. As always with this tricky sport, I’m feeling varying degrees of confidence in each discipline. 

                  My swim isn’t great at the moment, but rightly on wrongly this isn’t concerning me as much as maybe it should. With the swimming, I know that I can swim the distance at a relatively respectable pace. My run is getting there, in that I’m already extending my long runs to 15km with six weeks to go. Usually, I stick to 10km max and throw in a panicked 16km a couple of weeks out. 

                  But, my bike. My bike, my bike, my bike. I’ve hit a complete wall with cycling. It’s as if I have convinced myself that I am utterly incapable of cycling at any decent pace for any sustained period of time. Last weekend, I had planned to go out with a friend for 100km. This was to be a nice, steady 100km ride, averaging around 25kph. No bother. Supposedly. At 30km in, I was talking myself in to going home as I had been feeling under the weather the day before. I spent twenty minutes battling with myself until I finally got a grip and carried on, settling in to a comfortable pace and ending up fully enjoying the remaining 70km.

                  The same happened this weekend. I got back in the gym the week before Christmas, the result of which was agonising muscular ache in my legs as I set off with a friend for a steady Zone 2 85km ride on a Thursday morning. As I got out of the car I made sure to make my friend aware that my legs were aching therefore I would be slow. And lo and behold, 20km in, I had decided I was going home. Fortunately, this friend is familiar with my mental breakdowns with regard to my cycling and managed to talk me out of quitting. She knew full well that if I went home I would end up kicking myself later in the day. So, I settled in and finished the ride. Admittedly, I was destroyed by the end (my legs really were in pieces), but the point was that I had, for the second week running, gone past my mental block and completed the ride.

                  So, this Christmas, my spirit really needs to be aimed at my cycling. On making sure I pack in the long rides, the hill rides, the interval sessions and the brick sets. I have six weeks to go until my first test, and those six weeks really need to be focusing on my tendency to mentally sabotage my own races.

by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

…a mantra that I should have been singing to myself much more often for the past few months. Sadly, I didn’t, and now I find that I can’t.

                  Okay, maybe a slight overstatement as I clearly can still swim, but nowhere near as well as I once could. The annoying thing with swimming is that if you don’t keep it up on a twice or thrice weekly basis, the skill quickly begins to evade you. A few years ago, I swam upwards of 2km twice a week with my triathlon club in South Wales, at a pretty respectable pace. Currently, I’m struggling to keep that pace up for anything longer than 200m. 

                  I find swimming the most intimidating of the three triathlon disciplines. Maybe it’s because it’s the most dangerous, but also maybe because it’s the discipline with perhaps the biggest leap between ‘good’ and ‘freak of nature who should have been born amphibian’, and I certainly don’t fall in to the latter category. It’s also absolutely bloody knackering. But, with 10 weeks and counting until my first race of 2020, I suddenly realised that pottering along in the 25m school pool just wasn’t going to cut it. So, I decided to trial for a swim club of sorts at our local fitness freak gym complex.

                  Now, I’ve seen these people swimming. They’re bloody good. Two years ago I would have had no qualms going for a trial, but now… well, let’s just say I let the pressure get to me a bit.

                  I organised the trial for a Sunday evening, planning to go straight from work to the pool. I conveniently realised on the way that I needed petrol, and that I would have to battle my way up the bottleneck of Hessa Street in order to get there. There was just no way I was going to make it. So convinced was I of this terribly unfortunate situation that I thought I would pop by the pool anyway, just to introduce myself to the coach, express my deepest regret at how long it had taken me to get fuel, and promise to be there next week. I sincerely hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm.

In the event, I actually got to the pool with enough time to get changed and sprint to poolside, and so steeled myself for the trial… only to arrive at poolside to discover that some thoughtful child had neglected their pre-swim toilet routine, resulting in the pool being closed for 48 hours. Such a shame.

                  However, this now meant that I had to re-steel for my trial this Tuesday. On the day, I got home, did a hill set on the turbo and reasoned with myself that really, I should go to the trial fresh, having not done any training so… I’ll just curl up on the sofa. Luckily, my hero of a husband came home, and in a firm but loving manner, hoofed me out of the door. I arrived at the pool and introduced myself to the coach who as conducting the assessment. We talked through my background, times etc, to which he responded that I would probably be put in the Beginner Fitness Class. I’ll be honest, my ego was crushed. He hadn’t even seen me swim and had already written me off as a non-swimmer! How dare he?! So in I got, determined to show him how good I was (note use of past tense here). In the event, after watching me swim a few lengths, the coach got me out and stated that, actually, I should definitely be in the Advanced Class. Ego rebooted, I switched to the lanes next to the aforementioned class to complete my own set and to have a nose at theirs. They were doing IMs. For the non-swimmers amongst you, this stands for Individual Medley and consists of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. Back to back. Flat out. On repeat. I haven’t even attempted fly since I was about 12. I haven’t needed to! Ego back at the bottom of the pool, I completed my set and dejectedly made my way to the changing rooms. My first session with the club will be next week once I’m back from the UK. Let’s see if I can persuade my very weak upper body to ‘just keep swimming… butterfly.’.

by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

The importance of being earnest…

Yes, I know, typical teacher bringing a play in to my blog, but this phrase really came into its own this weekend during our training ride in the Hajar Mountains.

We all know that mental strength plays a huge part in endurance sport, but up until this weekend´s training session, I really hadn´t realized quite how much this would come in to play in my Ironman training. The challenge began with the four o’clock alarm to make the hour drive to the mountains in the North East of the UAE. The aim was to have wheels rolling at 6am and hit the smooth, unused tarmac of the UAE for 120km of hilly fun. Needless to say, things didn’t go to plan.

The first issue arose when, around 2km in to the ride and about halfway up the first incline, a deafening crunch, a screech and the blast of a horn heralded the writing off of a motorbike in the central reservation five meters behind us. I broke all rules of group riding and dived sideways onto the gravelly hard shoulder to avoid whatever it was that I could hear flying up the hill towards us. Thankfully for all involved, the gradient of the hill was steep enough to have slowed the biker down, although I’m sure being dragged along the central reservation helped too. I swiftly dispatched my ex-army training partner to deal with any injuries, stipulating that if I had to deal with blood and gore, he’d have two casualties on his hands. Having said that, the ordering of an ambulance was an ordeal in itself; the emergency number was not actually the number for emergencies and the paramedics had never heard of the road I was on, so I had to share my location via Whatsapp. Thank goodness for 4G.

Unusually for this part of the world, once they had my location, the ambulance turned up within thirty minutes and after a cheery wave to our mercifully not so injured biker, we were on our way. However, if you have ever cycled anywhere near the equator, even in November, you will know how much of a difference thirty minutes can make to your suffering at the hands of the weather. At 6:45am, we already knew that in four hours’ time we would have been out in the sun for thirty minutes longer than planned. That knowledge in itself was enough to terrify, but my mental challenges only continued as the ride went on…

I sensibly span up all the hills on the way to Hatta, knowing that 120km of incline/decline would present their own challenges without any unnecessary heroics from me. I know 80km of the route very well and was careful to hydrate and refuel in the right places to get me up the worst inclines. The village of Huweylat brought me in to entirely new territory as we turned right towards the Omani border as opposed to our usual left for home. I now knew that I was on my way to Generator Hill, a name which inspires dread in most UAE based triathletes and cyclists. I could feel my mind sending slug-like signals to the rest of my body, as if my brain was physically trying to pull me in the opposite direction to that of travel.

“I feel sick. I’m too hot. I have a headache. My shoes are hurting. My triceps are hurting. My electrolyte tabs are too sweet. My water has gone warm. It would be better for me to give up now, and try Generator Hill next time. My sportive next weekend isn’t this hilly, I don’t even need to be doing this. Oh crap, I have to cycle 200km next weekend. I can’t do it. I’m too unfit. KILL ME NOW”. This was my silent howl of a monologue as I ground my pedals towards the base of Generator Hill. Then, I saw the hill itself and almost broke down in tears of utter despair.

 It’s steep. Really steep. 2.7km of 10% gradient, to be precise. Despite being in my lowest gear, spinning was no longer an option. I pushed and hauled my way up towards the summit, stopping three times. At one point, my training partner offered to give me a push, to which I yelled “Don’t you bloody DARE push me up this effing hill!”. When I finally, finally reached the tunnel, I collapsed in a broken heap on the pavement, not caring that every car driving past thought I needed medical assistance. I still had 35km to go.

As I headed back towards familiar ground, my determination really started to wobble. The dreaded climb over the final ridge on the Hatta rides is always a dreaded challenge, but never more so than after my crawl up Generator Hill. Three times I resolved to stop, give my car keys to my training partner and collapse, weeping, on the side of the road. But actually, once you’ve climbed Generator Hill in 42°C, the 13.3km of ascent before dropping back to Showka is a piece of sugar and electrolyte fueled, shaky cake.

120km complete with more ascent than I’ve seen since leaving the UK, I spent the afternoon curled in an exhausted ball on the sofa refueling on McDonald’s and Nando’s. Not the best nutrition strategy admittedly, but all I could face. I now have no idea how the sportive next weekend will go, but all I can do is take from it what I learned this weekend: that Coca Cola is the nectar of the gods and that someone suggesting you might need help is the best way to snap you out of the negative hole you have invariably dug yourself.

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by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

And so it begins…

Well, I’m back from Japan. The running target was hit (kind of), and the steps target was doubled almost daily; my count was over 30,000 steps most days. We watched lots of rugby, visited lots if shrines (inundated with thousands of Japanese and foreign visitors; ruined the insta-worthiness), and drank a LOT of beer. Now, half term is over, school has recommenced and Ironman training really does need to start.

Japan showed me just how unfit I really am. I wrongly assumed that by moving from the desert to a cool, rainy, North Western Pacific island, my running would be MILES better than it is in Dubai. NOT the case. Whether as a result of tiredness from the flight (I refuse to call it jet-lag unless I’m pacing the room at 3am), the humidity or the sheer number of Heinekens I drank, my running was dreadful. My asthma had me doubled over next to the Kamogawa River in Kyoto, wheezing. Apparently all those electric cars zipping around haven’t actually done that much for the pollution levels…

I wrote last week about holding myself accountable for my training, and how I really want this blog to do that, but this week I’ve also been really inspired by some interviews on Sarah Williams’ Tough Girl Challenge podcast. The idea that really hit me was my need to have races booked in to actually make me do my training; otherwise, I am often quite happy to revert to my natural ‘bookworm on the sofa’ state. Two or three races a year used to be enough for me, but I’ve recently noticed that this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I used to be able to rock up to a 10km or even a half marathon and race comfortably, even if I hadn’t specifically targeted that race…those days are well and truly over for me. Dubai has broken my fitness.

So I’ve landed, binned the booze, started actually taking my preventative inhaler and have been getting in to bed by half nine every night. So far, my Training Peaks is all green, although it is admittedly only Wednesday. Over the next few months, I have entered myself for half marathons, sportives, 10k races and two Half Ironman Distances.

With all this taking up space in my overwhelmed little brain, the main challenge I face will be organization. I know so many people out here in Dubai who say they have far more time for a work-life balance here than they did in the UK. Whilst I do agree with that I feel like I have a better work life balance, I genuinely think that’s because I now know when to say no, and not because I have a quieter life. Between work, triathlon, gym, golf, cooking and friends and family visiting, my husband and I are regularly like ships passing in the night… and this is before I start training for the biggest race I have ever taken on!

Next on the hit list is the Coast to Coast ride from Sharjah to Fujairah on the 15th of November. I’ve joined in the back group in the hope that I can maintain 27.5km/h for the duration. I know that riding in a group is supposed to be easier, drafting saves energy etc.. but at the end of the day it’s still 200km across an entire country. The flat will be fine (totally used to that riding in the desert), but my poor legs haven’t seen a hill since racing in Ibiza in October 2018, so it could be a very interesting (see: disastrous) race. I have a couple of weeks of good quality training to put in, and fingers crossed my current state of non-fitness will get me to that pint of non-alcoholic beer on the Fujairah coast…

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by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon

Excuses, excuses…

So, I’ve paid my race entry, ordered my bag, entered a couple of half distance races and persuaded my CEO to let me fly back to the UK to race next September. I now actually have to start training and the honest truth is I have no idea of how to go about it. I’ve got that feeling at the moment when your to-do list is so unimaginably long that you don’t know where to start, and end up in that panicked fugue state of not actually doing anything productive at all. The enormity of my to-train list is terrifying me, to the extent that I have stubbornly done absolutely nothing all week.


The thing is; I know what I need to do. I know that with my current state of fitness I need three swims, two strength sessions, three runs and two rides a week. That’s ten sessions. I just can’t get my head around starting.


Training for me has always been something I love and something I look forward to, but since moving to Dubai it has become a real chore. The reason is simple: I’m unfit. My fitness took a proverbial leap off a cliff when I moved to the desert and somehow, over two years later, I still haven’t scrambled back up. Of course, the heat has a huge part to play but there are other factors too. Last week, my school had so many events on in the evenings that I rarely left before 7pm, and by the time I had driven halfway across Dubai to our apartment, my only thoughts were food; shower; bed. My guilty glances at my Training Peaks reminder had no effect on me last week: I didn’t care!


Living away from family and friends brings its own challenges in the form of visitors. People come to stay and they come for a holiday… so then it becomes your holiday too. You drink more, you go out for more meals, you go to brunch, and you go to bed late. That doesn’t even take in to account the fact that when you have your nearest and dearest visiting you don’t want to lose that valuable time with them. I mean, picture it. Crashing through the door at 4pm; racing out to squeeze in a badly planned, poorly executed 5km on the broken treadmill downstairs; tumbling, red-faced and sweaty, back in to the apartment to then yell at them that you are STARVING because you’ve been working all day, you HAVE AN IRONMAN TO TRAIN FOR and to GET A BLOODY MOVE ON! Been there.


Over the past three weeks, I have had my mum here for ten days and a close friend here over the weekend. My training is non-existent, my Training Peaks full of accusatory red boxes. Tomorrow we fly to Japan for the Rugby World Cup Quarter Finals, a holiday with two other couples who are sure to lead me astray (not that I’ll put up much of a fight). The most positive move so far I have made is find out where Tokyo’s Parkrun is and bully my best friend in to believing that the only way to get over jet-lag is to get up at 6am on her first day in Japan to go and run 5km.


I think this week’s post is really to hold myself accountable for my training. I have a lot of races booked in for the autumn, for which I basically need to pull my finger out and get training. I plan to run most days in Japan; it’s autumn, the weather is so much cooler than Dubai and I’ll be reunited with one of my best friends who a) also runs and b) categorically does not get hangovers. I plan not to wake up every morning with a saké-induced headache, and I plan to make sure I walk at least 15,000 steps a day. We’ll see.

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by : notatriathlete All Things Triathlon, Blogs

Definitely, not a triathlete.

I’m not a triathlete. I’m a teacher. I’m a teacher who loves to compete in triathlons, but I am by no means a triathlete.

At least, this is what I tell people on a regular basis. I think I have an issue with the semantics. That awkward “Oh wow, you do triathlon? That’s amazing, triathletes are so impressive” conversation is something I always try to avoid. I hate the initial awe that strikes when you mention your passion. So I don’t talk about it. I actively avoid these conversations. I haven’t always been this way but over time, as I have become more comfortable with the idea of being a relatively decent competitor, I seem to talk about my sport less and less. A friend of mine remembers meeting me for the first time at an induction day for our jobs out in the UAE, where the Principal introduced me to the entire cohort as ‘a triathlete’. So, so embarrassing. My now friend approached me later that day, at which point I immediately rushed to ascertain that “I’m not a triathlete, I’m not good enough to be called one of those!”. This was her very first impression of me, something she regularly reminds me of when I wake up at 3:45am to ride in the dark and avoid the Emirati sun, or I throw up on my own trainers after intervals in 43°C.

Let me fill in the gaps. I am a 28 year old Spanish teacher from Wales, living in the UAE. I have a husband, a cat, and family all over the world. I was never a typical ‘athlete’ as a child or teenager. In fact, I was a bit of an emo. Through school I did the odd cross-country race when the school was desperate, and dabbled in high jump and javelin. I swam for a while but was never particularly dedicated nor impressive. For a long time I rode relatively competitively, but the riding culture was ironically unconducive being particularly athletic. Everyone drank, smoked, and stopped for fish and chips on the way home from showjumping lessons every single week.

 I went through a period of having a very negative relationship with food (and people) when I was around 17, and sport really wasn’t on the cards. University brought a much more positive outlook on life in general, but I still smoked, drank and ate fish and chips! I moved to Madrid and started thinking maybe I should start moving a bit more, then entered my first half marathon when I moved back to Cardiff the following year. I got sucked in to triathlon in 2015 after running the Edinburgh Marathon with an ITB injury, when I raced in a local Go-Tri event on a mountain bike. I think I came last. From there, I went on to Olympic distance and then to middle distance, and by some crazy fluke qualified for the GB Age-Group team in 2018 (where I really did come last!). I am now training for my first Ironman in Tenby, Wales in 2020. The rest, as they say, is history.

This blog is not going to be about advice, training tips, periodization or nutrition. I mean, I’m sure they’ll come up, but as we have established, I’m not a triathlete (nor a coach, nutritionist or even a sports scientist). What it will be about it essentially my wobbly approach to training for an Ironman whilst dealing with a high pressure promotion at school, trying to visit family thousands of miles away and being a wife to my ever-suffering husband.

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