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Saturday August 28th 2010

Hey guys,

Weekly update time. Well, after my vague moan and whinge last week I wanted to see what I’ve got left in the old legs...because let’s face it, my last few results haven’t exactly proved much. I asked Glenn to set me a big old track session (3x2km, 3x1km, 2x400m, 1x200m) that I could dig my teeth into and see if there was still some fitness kicking around. Well if you can remember last Sunday then you will understand when I say that the weather was pretty ridiculous. After the first rep I actually had to take off my top because it was SO drenched that it was weighing me down. I think that the rugby players who were on the infield of the track thought that I envisioned myself as some kind of SAS-meets-Baywatch hero (I DO see myself as that but that’s a different point entirely). Anyway, I can’t pretender it didn’t hurt, and I can’t pretend that I didn’t have to dig deep, but I nailed the session, and was pleased, especially as the track was more or less underwater by the end.

Meanwhile, poor Todd (aka ‘Poor Man’s Jago’ – Jago being his younger brother- or even ‘Fat Leckie’, a hopefully soul-destroying nickname that James and I are trying, and failing, to circulate...thoroughly undeserved of course but he is a medical student with a gorgeous girlfriend so we are trying to protect our egos) the unlucky lad who smashed up both of his wrists in a nasty bike crash a few months back was doing a turbo-run session while preparing for his first race in 2 years (a European Cup in Holland this weekend...go Todders! And go James!). Anyway, the only place near the track where Todd could put the back wheel of his bike so that it wasn’t getting wet (imagine a slippery back wheel on a turbo...not good), left him precariously poking out from under said cover so that the insufficient guttering was overspilling right onto his neck. Honestly, I can’t imagine anything worse that a maximal turbo-run session while being subjected to mild Chinese Water Torture. Poor lad can’t get any luck at the moment...apart from the girlfriend...oh and the future glittering medical career...and the Heath Ledger good looks, at least so I’m told...by Todd...so maybe we can ignore that one!

On the Monday, the most interesting session was definitely the sea swim. This was mostly because the bad weather had still not abated, and we did our swim at low tide, so we were literally swimming through, with, and parallel to constant breakers. We did reps where we were swimming around a buoy, which was made rather difficult in that the waves were so extreme that you could only see the buoy when you were less than 20 metres away, so there was always a very distinct possibility that your trajectory (based on pure guesswork) would never take you within 20 metres of the buoy, and you would end up at Beachy Head before you realised how far the current had taken you. This added an interesting dynamic to the session, where James and I would take part in some kind of Mexican stand-off while we swam the first half of the rep into a big head-current, with wakes crashing over us, both trying to spot the buoy while keeping an eye on each other, and then the one who spotted it first would try to get the jump on the other one by sprinting off at an opportune moment. We would then invariably fight like malcoordinated flamingos while going 180 degrees around the buoy, both vying for the inside line, because the return leg from the buoy to the start/finish was so ridiculously fast with waves and a massive current pushing us that you barely needed to swim.

So anyway, since then I have been basically been doing pretty low level stuff, I think those two big sessions may have wiped me a bit, especially because they were done in conditions that can only be explained by the fact that Poseidon was throwing a tantrum because X-Factor is back clogging up Saturday night TV.

My next update should be from Spain, where I will be back in the cocoon of the GB squad environment. I will be sure to update you on whether Alistair has had a hair cut or Helen’s new favourite jam flavour is raspberry...gossip worthy of reporting!

Ooh it’s sunny outside. Smile.

Olly

Sunday August 22nd 2010

Hi All,

Another week goes by, and the nights are definitely starting to draw in. Has anyone else noticed that? It’s always weird at this time of year, when the final couple of races of the season are looming large, and all the focus is on them, but the end of the season is so close that you can’t help but think about what the cold months ahead may hold in store.

Last winter for me was a tough one. I was coming back from 4 months of nothing, and it took such a long time to get myself back to a respectable level of fitness. During this time I had a couple of training camps with the British squad that weren’t exactly my greatest ever triathlon memories...a mixture of some (slightly unlucky) bad weather, the odd spill on the bike, a rampaging stomach bug and my epic unfitness amounted in a visit or two to Spain that I would rather forget. But not to worry, because hopefully this winter will be different...that’s what we say every year, hey?! 5:30am starts in sub-zero temperatures look like a breeze when the sun is still shining...kind of! No seriously, I have high hopes for this winter, because for me, a bit of warm weather makes all the pain go away, so hopefully I can get away somewhere with some good training partners where I can put in some winter miles without having to surgically attach thermal baselayers and rainjackets to myself for the entire 3 months of winter.

Anyway, between now and then I had 3 weeks until the final important race of the year in Budapest, with the last 2 weeks of that likely spent with the British team in Spain. It’s a shame that we are not returning to Portugal as most people had hoped, but I’m sure that the location in Spain will have nice weather and good facilites. I have struggled in the second half of this season after a few races that seemed to be crescendoing towards an awesome peak. I think that maybe I’ve driven myself a bit hard to get from such a low level of fitness to being right on the edge of the breakthrough, and maybe now it’s catching up on me. Either way I’m going to try to give it whatever I have left in the build up to Budapest, and if I can squeeze a good performance out of myself on the day then, with the fitness I have shown in training...anything could happen! (but if not then at least I did what I could).

My younger sister had the joy of A-level results (well, technically AS level) on Thursday. In case you are wondering she did sickeningly well...does 100% in French count as fluent...native even? This reminded me of the good old days of slogging over endless Maths textbooks when I was a slightly more babyfaced 17 and 18 year old (despite being 24 I do still get ID-ed at every shop I go, even if I’m only buying some Haribo and a packet of football stickers), and it strikes me as slightly ironic that the only subjects at school that would have stood me in good stead for my current career as a triathlete (languages for races in foreign countries, English for blogs and columns) were the very ones that I gave up like a bad smell as soon as I finished my GCSEs. After reminiscing about this with a school friend, he reminded me of why I maybe struggled in my exams for English, by showing me a copy of his GCSE set text, which was a collection of short stories by William Hardy called ‘The Withered Arm and Other Wessex Tales’, which represented the way that I used to pass the time while I was supposed to be learning. On his pristine exam copy, which would be scrutinised by our teacher and examiners to ensure that it was a valid texted that hadn’t been unfairly annotated, I had crossed out the word ‘Arm’ and written ‘Willy’, and then underlined the last 3 letters of the word ‘Wessex’. The things you should realise are:

· I spent a lot of time planning and executing this defilement of Ed’s books;

· This was not an isolated incident;

· I thought the whole things was witty and hilarious;

· I still think it’s witty and hilarious;

I hope this explains why my blogs aren’t exactly works of literary genius.

À bientôt

Monday August 16th 2010

Well the wedding was amazing. Actually that sounded a bit too Gok Wan, but you know what I mean. It was so nice to see all of Henny’s (and my) family and friends, and get a proper excuse to dress up like a proper English gentleman and strut around the Cambridge University with an umbrella (as a decent cane substitute) frivolously throwing around words like Quad and Gyp like I was a real student and not a unqualified serf.

If any of you are already drumming your fingers while waiting to hear how I did in the two races that I have competed in since I last wrote then you are CLEARLY not getting my blogging habits...but I will have a go now, and please be mindful that I will be setting a new PB if I manage to not get sidetracked again within the next paragraph...(also they make quite grisly reading)...

The day after my sister’s wedding I raced the London Triathlon at Excel. I must admit that I wasn’t in the greatest physical or mental state to race, as a long day of ushering, along with munching on wedding food (plus all the trimmings) and champagne, had left me feeling more than a little f(l)at, and I had only barely dragged myself away from the disco and free bar on the Saturday evening, as at the time the rare family reunion was tempting me more than whatever lurks at the bottom of the London Docks. Anyway, I raced it, was 2^nd out of the swim, HURT on the bike and shuffled the run, though still salvaged a 7^th place, which I was satisfied with all things considered. To be honest I think it was a minor miracle that I even reached the finishing line, as a mixture of a new course and missing the briefing (and also my incompetence) resulted in a few mishaps:

· I missed the official swim warm up;

· I almost got out of the wrong swim exit (along with some others, until I noticed multiple bibbed men waving frantically);

· On the bike I took my feet out of my shoes 14km too early (no, seriously!)

· I almost took out a marshal, 3 cones and myself (and probably some athletes behind me) by being blissfully unaware of a chicane near T2);

So that was London! After a photo shoot in Tooting all day Monday, I arrived home from that very long weekend knackered, and realised that I had a mere 4 and a half days to unpack, recover, repack, freshen up, get to the Austrian mountains and race again.

To be honest, the less said about Kitzbuhel, the better (and I don’t think I’m the only Brit who would echo those sentiments, except Stu and Helen...massive congrats!). Well, maybe not Kitzbuhel itself, which is an amazingly gorgeous little secluded Austrian mountain town, which seemed to have been lifted straight from the ‘Sound of Music’ (authentically dressed frauleins included as standard). But in terms of the race, I was never really there, though had to give it a go as it was a World Champs Series race, but decided to call it a day early on in the bike (despite being in the lead group) to keep myself from needlessly increasing the hole I’ve been in since the Europeans....hopefully my decision will pay off come Budapest....4 weeks and counting...

Ahh, that was a good effort, but all that talk of racing has tired me out, especially as I only arrived back from the airport 20 minutes ago and all that travel has probably left me smelling worse than the inside of Shrek’s weird jockstrap-type-thing. I should go shower.

Olly

Friday August 6th 2010

No no stop filling up my glass with Champagne…honestly no I’m racing tomorrow…well…well if you insist then you might as well fill it ALL the way, in for a penny and all that…

I’m writing this from Wedding HQ at my sister’s house. I have been pre-briefed and intinerized (if that’s not a real word, it should be), fitted and cravatte-tutored, goose-stepped, rehearsed, versed and prehearsed in everything I need to know for this weekend’s nuptials:

The token baby has to go at the back of the chapel in case it starts gurgling…and if the gurgling exceeds 10 decibels, then I’ll slip it Emergency Pill A: Valium;
The elderly members of the congregation need escorting via the secret shortcut route to the drinks garden, and if they start flagging/telling me war stories, I need to slip them Emergency Pill B: Amphetamines;
And finally, I’ve got Emergency Pill C in case the groom starts acting up…I mean, it won’t matter how cold his feet are if he’s got a few thousand milligrams of Ketamine shoved down his gullet - I’ll just prop him up against the alter and nod his head at the appropriate points. No drama.

In fact, the one thing that I haven’t had timetabled is my trip down to the Docks for a local race that’s going on at Excel this weekend. Apparently some mates are going to turn up (the odd World Champion), and a few (12,000?) age groupers are going to be there too…all in all a very suitable crowd to try to take on with a mild hangover and fatty wedding food coursing through my unwilling veins. To be honest, I’m really looking forward to just turning up and enjoying the race, giving it whatever I have on the day and remembering what it was like to race before every Olympic distance race on my calendar was prefaced with ‘World Championship Series’!

So otherwise I’ve had a pretty busy week. I finally got round to watching Toy Story 3, which I can describe in one word: fantasicallybrilliantlyawesomecanthoseguysatPixardonowrong? In fact, outside of being a triathlete, the only other job that I could envisage myself doing would be putting my epic geeky Computer Science studies to very very hard work to get a job at Pixar Animation Studios…though I’m sure that I’m massively lacking in the departments of qualifications, intellect, experience, wit, creativity and all round legendaryness, and I am prone to doing the odd training session that reminds me that I’m actually quite useful at this triathlon lark when I put my mind to it, so maybe I’ll stick with what I know!

I also went for celebration drinks with Bodyworks’ resident Ironman UK Pro Champion Yvette Grice along with all the other hanger-oners (I include myself very much in that category, we were just enjoying basking in her reflected glory…I needed SPF 30 just to cope!), though chief coach Glenn was sorely missed. He was haggling with hoteliers called Stavros in Kos with Sarah and their 4 girls…a relaxing holiday if ever I heard one. His absence has been noticeable, but not enough to stop me and James hammering a 15km tempo build run in record time…so fitness isn’t a worry.

Adios.

Monday August 2nd 2010

Well that didn’t go to plan! Unfortunately, as any of you who caught the London WCS on TV may have seen, my race was less than ideal...indeed it was by far my worst ITU race ever...by a good 15 places or so...

To be honest there is not much to say. As my last blog explained, my preparation was less than ideal, and on the day I just didn’t have the legs. Maybe I was far too tired, maybe I was far too rested (as a result of massively backing off because of the fatigue), but either way the magic wasn’t there and I had a shocker.

I must admit that the next couple of days weren’t the most fun. Picking yourself up after a big disappointment isn’t always easy, especially as I had an Open University assignment to get finished by the end of the week (that’s why this blog is a few days later than usual...apologies!). It also made me try to evaluate what was missing in my London performance, and indeed all of my performances this year, which have in general been improving towards a decent level (top 10 at Europeans), but still not doing justice to the kind of fitness and form that I have been showing in training, and the potential that I have shown in the last few years. Having chatted it through with some friends, family and colleagues, I’m tending towards the conclusion that I’m trying too hard...

This ‘conclusion’ may sound a bit ridiculous, and I’m certainly not implying that I’m training too hard (well maybe occasionally, but everyone does occasionally), but I mean in a wider sense. As a triathlete you have to dedicate so much of your time to the pursuit of high performance, and it can sometimes become all consuming. 25-30 hours of training per week, along with correct nutrition, hydration, stretching, sleeping, physio, massage, you get my point. However, without balance, without the ability to switch off and get away from it and look outside the confines of the next session or next race can result in a pressure cooker of emotions and intensity that do far more harm than good...or at least that is what I have often found. Hence why I think I’ve been trying too hard...

Well enough about my shortcomings, as I have a very exciting few weeks ahead of me. Firstly, I have something to celebrate...in that me and my dojo Wii parter Emma finally fulfilled our life ambition of decimating Waluigi and Dry Bones in a best of 3 fight to the death in Mario Party 8. The champagne flowed. Possibly (!) more importantly, later this week one of my sisters is getting married . I’m so happy for her, and can’t wait to see all of my family there, and Henny and Jon having a lovely day. After (hopefully) not too much Champagne, I’m going to head down to Excel to have a crack at London Tri the next day. It’s such a great event that I’m really just looking forward to going out there and enjoying having a good ding-dong with whoever of the big hitters is there. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to make the start line on time, as Henny has been very honest with me and told me I have little to no chance with ANY of her bridesmaids...and the next week I’m off to Kitzbuhel for the next round of the WCS.

Before I leave for another week, I’d like to send a particularly massive congratulations to Bodyworks XTC’s own Yvette Grice who DOMINATED at the UK Ironman this weekend. Yvette is literally the loveliest person you will ever meet, and I can’t think of anyone who more deserved a breakthrough race. She trains incredibly hard, and works a desk job as well, and I hope that the UK and International IM scene recognises that she is a star in the making, and well worthy of some 2010 (and beyond) investment to help her turn full-time so she can take her performance to the next level. Also, 25-29 winner Sarah Lovelock smashed up her age-group...I hope Kona is prepared for an Eastbourne invasion!

Right all, I’ve just realised that my hip wound has fused to my shorts (what, I didn’t tell you that I managed to round off my week by stacking it on a corner on my bike?! Good times!), so I’d better go peel it off. Icky.

Saturday July 24th 2010

Hi all.

So last time I logged in (a couple of weeks ago, sorry!) I was scraping myself off the track after an emotional track session. A couple of days later I was back there, the sun was shining (bare chest, any excuse!), and I had one of the best sessions of my life. I was really helped by having Ben Warren there (current Sussex Cross-Country Champ), and was so pleased how I was able to sit so comfortably at race pace and kick off it towards the end. Later that day I got in the sea with a load of other Bodyworks athletes. We did a brilliant group session, where at times I was pacing off a kayak, at others I was hammering round a buoy trying not to smack Todd (recent broken wrist...on the comeback!) on his arm, but generally just working hard and spending all of the recoveries laid out flat on the beach.

Over the next couple of days this fatigue (along with some carried over from Portugal and Ireland) started to catch up with me, and I had to miss a couple of harder sessions over the next few days and really let my body recover. I certainly had no mercy showed by JP (um...14 years old?!), as he seemed more than happy to capitalise and show me a clean pair of heels in a swim session. To be honest I’m just making excuses, because he now regularly swims sprints faster than my PBs so maybe that’s just going to be the status quo from now on...or an equal possibility is that he is indeed Harry Potter incarnate (as I have long suspected...the glasses and fuzzy hair are the obvious giveaways - the flying car, lightning bolt scar and pet Hippogriff the more subtle ones), so maybe he has been using some sort of heathen wizardry to make him unfeasibly quick in the pool.

So to be honest a lot of my time since 2 weeks ago has been hardcore recovery since my fatigue-fest, trying to wait patiently for the legs to come around. In some ways it hasn’t been ideal preparation for the race this weekend, but to be an elite athlete you have to try to constantly push your boundaries, and the occasional overstep is to be expected. I have felt like my legs have been coming round in the last few days, so fingers crossed the magic is there at 16:06 on Sunday, which is of course (shame on you if you don’t already know) the start time for the Elite Men’s race at the Dextro Energy World Champs Series race in Hyde Park, London this weekend (live on BBC 2).

The field for this race looks to be the strongest I have ever competed in...possibly the strongest we have seen for a long time, so I don’t think anything is guaranteed for anyone. It’s going to be on like Donkey Kong from the gun, but I’ll be ready, and it will be a great opportunity to try to capitalise on my steadily improving form to see how far up the pecking order I can place myself on my 4^th Olympic distance race back since my epic 12 month break!

So at this exact moment in time, with the Hyde Park finishing line less than 36hrs away (hopefully!), I’m typing away in my room at the student accommodation at Imperial College. I’m considering indulging a dirty fantasy (solo visit to the Science Museum – just across the road) later today, though have been putting it off as I’m not sure I would elicit fear in my competitors if they saw me skipping out of the Museum, grin on my face, wearing a commemorative t-shirt saying ‘I calculate my taxes on the Difference Engine’s babies’ (I wish that existed) and proudly holding a photo of myself pretending to do a handstand next to a full-size replica of Neil Armstrong’s Eagle lander.

Well on that note I think I’ll go, and good luck to anyone racing in the age-group races in Hyde Park over the weekend!

Saturday July 10th 2010

European Champs 2010: my first Championship race in over 2 years (since Worlds 2008), first top 10 in an ITU race in nearly 2 years (since Lorient World Cup 2008). Overall, not a bad weekend, though I could (and maybe should?) have come away with a medal, which is a bit frustrating.
Despite feeling not wholly recovered from the training in Portugal, I felt ready to rock on the pontoon. I had a good start, and got to the first buoy in the top 5, despite starting on the opposite side to super-swimmer Varga. Somewhere in the fist-fight around the sausage boys, my wetsuit zip became undone, which meant that I spent the rest of the swim trying to not sink whilst evacuating all the women and children from my top-deck. I still managed to get out towards the front of the main group, but had missed the break of the day, which was 5 guys included Gomez and the Brownlee boys. The bike was relatively non-eventful, though the gap to the front guys was such that Gold and Silver would be taken by Ali and Gomez. On the run I went out hard with the pace set by Will, and after about 1500m I hit the front and set the pace through ‘til about 6km, at which point I was sitting in 3rd place. I then suffered a lot for the next couple of km and fell back to about 8th or 9th, but was able to hold on for a top 10 by pulling myself together for the last mile or so. My run split was actually quicker than Gomez who was 2nd (though of course he had a harder bike than me), but the position I was in before my wetsuit opened up would have put me in a good position to have grabbed the bronze. Frustrating but encouraging.

Since then I’ve been a bit battered and bruised. I managed to come away from the race with polka dot feet (the dots being big nasty blisters), as well as a sizable shard of glass in my heel (from walking around bare foot after the race because of the epic blisters). I wasn’t able to run for a couple of days, but am now back on it, and had a track session on Thursday (only 4.8km worth) that had me collapsed on my back for well over 5 minutes afterwards, and it wasn’t from the blisters.

I had a great day on Tuesday in Hyde Park, for a photoshoot and press call to announce Maxifuel’s sponsorship of myself and British Triathlon. We had some photos by the Serpentine, and it was great to meet all the Maxifuel guys. I’m really excited to have them on board for the next couple of years, and hopefully you’ll be seeing my ugly mug popping up in the odd mag representing Maxifuel over the next few months.

Since then it’s been back in the training groove, with the aforementioned track session being the high point. The low point was probably last night, walking on the seafront with an old school friend, fish and chips in hand, at which point a peckish seagull decided to dive bomb me and relieve me of my tasty meal. I then had to complete the walk of shame back to the fish and chip shop to get a second helping. The guy at the counter laughed at me L

Anyway, it’s now just over 2 weeks until the London World Champs Series race at Hyde Park, so I should probably get out and do a run.

Laters.

Saturday July 3rd 2010

Another week, another hotel. I’m currently in the very swanky Sheraton Hotel in Athlone, Ireland, resting up for the European Champs that are taking place here this weekend.

As per usual, I’m in a room with Will, and as per usual, we had the beds pushed together within seconds of checking in...I feel should probably tell you the official (media friendly) reason that we do it is to optimise the DVD-on-laptop viewing experience. Apart from that, all is good in the GB camp. There have been no inter/intra-squad affairs causing ructions, no paparazzi trying to scale the gates, no safari visits to stop us from running riot and no vuvuzelas waking us up at 3am. All in all we seem to have avoided most of the pitfalls of our footballing brothers in arms, however I’m starting to get concerned as I was rummaging through the kit bag and saw a trisuit with ‘HESKEY’ printed on the bum yesterday...

The last few days of training in Portugal went really well. We had a couple more hard run sessions, some paddles in the lake and the odd effort on the bike, but have been mostly winding down since the beginning of the week in preparation for the race this weekend. The team spirit has been good, despite the lack of things to do between training. However, by the end of the camp it had become almost a nightly tradition that someone got lost on a run in the Portuguese wilderness, so what initially provoked concern and mild panic for our fellow teammates moved through apathy to furious bet-placing as to when (and indeed whether) the current victim would return. It passed the time.

The journey over to Ireland was smooth sailing (well, flying actually), and on arriving we received some additions to the team in the form of a certain Mr Brownlee senior as well as support staff Laura Macey (manager), Glenn Coltman (mechanic), Patrick Wheeler (doctor), Helen Goreman (media). It’s good to have such a great support team around us, knowing that no other team will be as well prepared as we are. We also definitely have the freshest kit, with a crisp new batch arriving with smartly embroidered GE logos to remind all the other teams that we, the Brits, are backed by one of the biggest companies in the world. Go team!

Me, Will and Jonnie have found a brilliant new TV series to while away some of the hours in the lead up to this race. It’s called Californication, all about an author who’s lost his desire to write in the aftermath of the breakdown of his marriage. Even though it has good acting and script, I think that the main reason we like it is that the main character is achingly cool, in that he drinks, smokes and takes recreational drugs. OKOK fine all those things are bad and I would never do them, but when a rugged male lead who doesn’t play by the rules uses these vices to attract incongruously attractive women into his web of seduction, and then you stack that up against your own squeaky clean résumé that is footnoted by rather fewer bosomed beauties, then 2 and 2 stops equalling four.

Anyway, Europeans is imminent, being my first Championships in over 2 years, so maybe I should stop chatting my usual rubbish and start getting my head in the game.

So as ever, I’ll love you and leave you for another week.

Train happy!

Saturday June 26th 2010

Signing in...

Greetings from Portugal. I’m currently here in Rio Maior with the GB team, on a prep camp for the Europeans. All is well out here, nice weather, nice company (ish!! Joking), good facilities...main complaint is the non-existent internet connection, but what can you do?

I’m not sure what this place IS exactly. It seems to be some kind of Portuguese Institute of Sport, and I’d be very surprised if it isn’t subsidised by the government (there are a fair few full time staff here)...yet on the other hand it’s available to foreign teams such as ourselves...something doesn’t add up. Either way, I’m not complaining, as it has enabled me to get some really good training in. I feel like I arrived here with some really good raw fitness, but the opportunity to apply that to some more race specific sessions with all the other top athletes here is helping hone my fitness to what I need to dominate come race day.

On reviewing the camp so far in my head, I have disturbingly concluded that most of the highlights have included a close proximity to sweaty men: post-track set group photo, copious post-run ice/heat baths (communal, woop!), and a massage where I was flung around like a rag-doll by a thick set hairy Portuguese man with peach chewing gum breath and safe arms. Dreamy.

It’s been great to spend more time with Will (before we lose him to joint pensions, day trips to IKEA and Mothercare catalogues...he’s getting married in October), we are sharing a room as per usual ( if you didn’t know already: will-clarke.com). In the other boys’ room is Jonny Brownlee (Sartrouville team mate and all round nice guy...and before you ask, yes there is two of them Brownlee boys!), Phil ‘the Quads’ Graves (the Kona bike guy, you’ve heard of him, though maybe not by his new name, “The Cougar Tamer”...he’s going to kill me for saying that), and also an ex-Commonwealth 3km Steeplechaser called Adam Bowden, who defected to the dark-side when seduced by Tri-Gold scheme being peddled by the Sith Lords at BTF towers. I should probably clear up that I’m not implying that British Triathlon are evil, it’s just got carried away by that Star Wars reference. Geek-power.

There are also some girls here as well. In fact, we are being pretty much outnumbered two to one, which isn’t actually as pleasant as it sounds: in the open water swim the other day I did a rep without my wetsuit while the others were in their wetsuits, which put me firmly in the main pack, and OMG (cool-kid text-speak for ‘Oh My God’), those girls are vicious! Holly Avil was clawing the feet, Ness Raw smashing the goggles and Helen Jenkins was working the elbow to the head. It was like a Lynx advert gone horribly wrong: brilliant, I’m surrounded by loads of girls in swimming costumes...but wait, they are all zombie harpies trying to gauge my eyes out and feast on my flesh. Not ideal. Where is my hairy massage man to save me? This is of course not to say that the girls themselves are nasty, they just know how to take care of themselves in a swim. Fair play.

I’ve been trying to keep up with the World Cup, though the Portuguese commentary isn’t helping. Is it just me or does Portuguese sound like the unwanted love-child of Spanish and Russian? It’s not a pretty language. Wimbledon is off the cards unfortunately, there is clearly no love for grass-tennis here on Europe’s westernmost peninsula. As the internet situation here is less than ideal, we have had limited connectivity to the world outside of this camp bubble. Instead we have been having to content ourselves with crowding round a single laptop to watch some old episodes of Peep Show, and infrequent games of ‘Who can hold the gaze of one of the Portuguese Womens’ Basketball team the longest before crumbling into a shameful, gibbering heap of embarrassment, fear and self-loathing’? We shortened it to “Wchg1PWBlbcsghefsl?” No we didn’t. That never happened. We’ve never even played that game.

Need internet.

Need contact to outside world.

Signing out.

Friday June 18th 2010

Heya guys,

Well I had a fairly innocuous race for Satrouville over the weekend. Certainly not vintage, but not a disaster either. I definitely coped with the whole ‘training through a race’ thing a lot better than I did in Dunkerque, but still would have liked to have put together a stronger performance overall. Two 13^th place finishes in back to back weeks has to be some kind of nightmare for those of superstitious disposition...good thing I’m not (apart from avoiding 3 drains...and the whole ‘touch wood’ thing...hmm!)

There was also a very impressive performance by GB’s own Tim Don over in the States at the big money race in Des Moines. Nice one Tim, guess you won’t need to be worrying about the price of groceries for a while...!

With World Cup fever taking over the nation (and indeed the world), it is amazing to see how a sporting occasion can bring a population to a standstill. Despite the large investment and high-def coverage that the World Champs Series (along with some other races) are now displaying, triathlon is obviously still a long way from reaching the kind of exposure that some more mainstream sports like football achieve. The reasons for this difference are many, some bleeding obvious and others not so, but I feel that the key for triathlon breaking into the mainstream is someone cracking the TV-coverage formula.

It’s fair to say that triathlon is less than easy to televise. For a football match you essentially have one static camera for 90%+ of the action, along with a few other static cameras for replays and close ups. Seeing as the ‘action’ of the match is almost exclusively happening within a few metres of where the white round thing is, it’s not exactly rocket science to decide where to point the camera.

Triathlon, on the other hand, requires as many static cameras as you can afford (for the swim, transition, bike, run and finish), along with at least one helicopter to get a shot that provides ‘perspective’ on the race, and then cameras on boats for the swim and motorbikes for the bike and run.

And let’s be honest, with triathlon, it’s not as easy as just pointing the camera at the leader, as the tactics of draft-legal triathlon mean that the eventual contenders are often not ‘at the front’ for the whole race, be that intentionally or otherwise, and if they are, then chances are there are other contenders busting their asses just behind to bridge up. (By the way, to those who aren’t fans of draft-legal racing, remember that draft-legal racing was born out of a need to take the sport to TV audiences for the Olympics, and imagine the number of cameras you would need to televise non-drafting races in a way that your average punter could understand...and the point still stands regardless, how many international races feature the winner leading from the gun...PUT YOUR HAND DOWN CHRISSIE, stop spoiling my argument!). Broadcasters do seem to be using technological innovations to help make bike racing more TV-friendly, but triathlon broadcasters have the difficulty of conveying this information along with the added complexities of a swim and run on either end, and the sometimes counter-intuitive race situations that transpire (why is that guy 1 minute back despite going faster than the leaders?...Well he’s a weak swimmer but a strong biker etc etc).

Some broadcasters have managed to show that it’s very easy to make triathlon look very boring, very slow and very complicated. I think the boring bit comes from editors and commentators not understanding the sport enough, how fast (and therefore exciting/impressive) it appears is due to the quality of the camerawork, and complicated is often born from having to condense a men’s and women’s 2hr race into a 45-60mins highlight program, again with editors and commentators not fully understanding the tactics. This condensing used to be avoided by a series that used to be held in Australia which had all the races at Super-Sprint distance, and made athletes wear trisuits in their nations colours at all races (something the ITU is at pains to implement with us), and had commentators who were ex-pros who knew the athletes very well...

This whole blog entry probably shows why I was never any good at English or History at school...I mean, I’ve waffled on for however many hundred words without actually making any statements or coming up with any solutions! I really wanted to put a few of the issues out there to see if anyone has any thoughts on how the sport could reach a wider audience? Let me know on the forum!

Anyway, I’ll check back in next week.

Keep safe.

Olly

Saturday June 12th 2010

Another week, another race. OK fine it’s been two weeks, I’m sorry, it’s all been a bit crazy and I lost track of time.

So last week was the third race in the 2010 World Champs Series (my 2^nd), in Madrid. Madrid has hosted World Cups and World Champs Series races for as long as I have been on the circuit, and it’s always one of the hottest and toughest races on the calendar. Along with the gruelling hill straight out of transition, I was reminded that the temperature would probably be a factor when we went out for dinner at 7pm on Friday and the digital thermometer on the bus stop flashed up 34°C!

After having run pretty badly in my first two races, I was relatively anxious to step my run up a notch or two in this race. This adversely affected my mental preparation and strategy, and I ended up backing off a lot more than I should have on the swim, and suffering the consequences by becoming the filling in a Russian sandwich at the first buoy. Those boys are bred on vodka and harsh winters, and I spent the rest of the swim feeling like I’d endured a month in 1940s Stalingrad. Anyway, so bad swim, my own fault, but it didn’t matter as we all came together after ~10km of the bike. Most of the rest of the bike was relatively tactical, though still every lap was taking its toll in 35 degree heat. With 2 laps to go a break got away, which I should have put myself in, and by T2 they had about a minute on us. I put myself on the line on the run, and managed to haul myself near the top 10 by picking off stragglers in the front group, but slightly faded in the last lap and finished 13^th. Overall I was slightly disappointed with the result, but pleased with the progress I showed on the run, which will give me confidence that from now on I can put myself on the line and aim for podium finishes again.

Apart from that I have mostly been wasting my time by revising (or pretending to revise) for an Open University exam (for my Computer Science degree) that I have on Tuesday. I’m now completely saturated with Java bloody f-ing Java, so have been looking for any excuse to get away from it, and have therefore got so many odd jobs done in the last week that I’m starting to think that I’m at my most productive when I have something to avoid...but it’s got to the ridiculous stage now where I’ve filled out and filed my tax return about 7 months early purely to avoid revising File Transfer Protocols, which in reality I would have probably enjoyed more than telling the tax man how much of my non-existent winnings from last year he can relieve me of.

This weekend I am heading back to France to race for Satrouville again, hopefully I will be able to squeeze out a better run than in Dunkerque, though if I do it will be no thanks to Glenn...I need to remind him that shorter sessions aren’t easier sessions when every rep has to be done basically flat out! Oh well, it’s all good fun.

Hopefully I will have some slightly more interesting things to report on in the next couple of weeks when I have got these exams out of the way! In the meantime, enjoy the tennis (Queen’s, Eastbourne and Wimbledon), cycling (Dauphine and Tour) and football (erm...World Cup?!), because let’s face it, my ramblings can’t compete with them!

Olly

Saturday May 29th 2010

“My legs hurt!” That’s what I started my last blog with, and it came back to bite me on my back bottom.

The day after my previous blog, I headed over to Dunkerque with family Clarke, and then met up with the EC Satrouville boys. I was sharing a room with the gold and silver medallists from the 2009 Junior World Champs (Mario Mola and Jonny Brownlee), and also met up with teammates Courtney Atkinson (2^nd at Seoul WCS) and our captain Aurelien Lescure. I did a bit of a ride and run, and my legs still felt in bits after that epic run on Thursday, but went to bed hoping they would come round in time for 14:30 the next day.

But to no avail. The next day my legs were pretty similar, but I prepared as normal and was really excited to get stuck in to my first FGP. My start was not exactly ideal (Jonny and I were under the impression that there was going to be a ‘take your marks’ before the gun went, and were mid-conversation as the starter set us off!) I was able to get myself out of the chaos and to the front of the race pretty quickly, and maintained a high pace past the tight first buoy to try to string it out. I tried to keep the pace on throughout the swim, and came out of the water 1^st with the group relatively strung out behind. As soon we were out of T1, Jonny and I and 4 very well drilled boys from Beauvais pushed on, and within 8km we had a lead of over a minute over the chasing pack, which unfortunately included our other teammates. Through the rest of the bike it was mostly team Beauvais who drove us forward and we entered T2 with a big gap. My run was atrocious, though because of the big lead we had built up I still came away with a respectable 7^th place. It was also nice to get on the podium (for the first time in...a while!) with the other Satrouville boys to pick up our 2^nd place. Also mad props to Jonny for his awesome run, Brownlee-power!

So off the back of my less-than-stellar course à pied, Glenn has put me on a strict diet of easy, low volume training. It does sound like the obvious solution, but it is the type of call that I have seen some individuals and/or coaches are sometimes loathe to make. Fortunately, Glenn wasn’t in the mood to be argued with, and I am confident that I am good form (off the back of some of the run sets I have put together) so didn’t feel the need to chase fitness, so I think we came to the correct decision without too much drama! All in all it has made this week very laid back, with some easy training on very tired legs, a load of Open Uni revision (exams coming up, eek), and planning 21^st birthday presents with the boys for a couple of our mates: Sam got some insane top-of-the-range ‘Grado’ headphones, and James...well he’ll find out tomorrow (you never know, he may read this blog before tomorrow and we don’t want to spoil the surprise!).

Well I’d better love you and leave you. I need to go and spruce up, which involves a quick shower and possibly a token spray of deodorant, because it’s the wedding of Dan my Strength and Conditioning coach to his offensively gorgeous fiancée Steph, who I am hoping has some lonely bridesmaids who go for shaven-legged, bleach-haired men who enjoy running around fields...chances are slim but a boy can dream!

Olly

Friday May 23rd 2010

My legs hurt!

One of the overriding revelations I had in Seoul was that I’d forgotten how much racing hurts. It sounds stupid, but it’s really a sensation and mindset that is hard to replicate in training. In the lead up to the triathlon season, I usually do some cross-country races and maybe the odd road race, which breaks me back into that race-feel, but this year I went in completely cold, as I just wasn’t in the position to be doing running races this winter/spring, as I was too busy exploring the Venn diagram intersection between ‘elite athlete’ and ‘hopelessly undertrained’.

So it transpired that on Sunday I found myself quivering on the side of the main path through Friston Forest, having done some best effort reps on the ‘Colosseum’, and realising that one of the reasons that Seoul was such a shock to the system was that I usually start that type of session in January (as prep for the Country Cross-Country Champs), and that this was the first time I had subjected my legs to anything approaching best pace in training for a long...long time!

Tangent alert...for any smart-aleck (or historically informed) readers out there, I appreciate that by calling that loop the Collosseum we are actually making a bit of a faux-pas, as in terms of Roman stadia it was actually the Circus Maximus that was shaped thus, but the name stuck before we realised our mistake, so the Collosseum it is!

Anyway, so Sunday was pain central. Tuesday was a similar story on the bike, and then Thursday (yesterday) I was back at it again on the run, and I was helpfully informed by Gary Brickley (sport scientist with his blood lactate probe thingy) that by the end my blood lactate levels were ‘off the scale’...which is slightly concerning (more of that in a second), but at least Glenn can’t accuse me of not working hard.

The reason it’s slightly concerning is that on Sunday, as in 48hrs time, I am racing. And although the race is relatively local (Dunkerque), and although it’s only a Sprint distance race, and although Glenn has told me that is a ‘training session’ more than a race...I am still going to be racing against some of the very best athletes in the world, which isn’t easy when your legs are literally dissolving in so much lactic acid that the sports scientist (Gary) said he was ‘surprised I could even run the last 3 reps’!

But despite this, I am really looking forward to the race. It will be my first experience racing in the French Grand Prix Series. I’ll be racing for Satrouville (who won last year), with team-mates including the 2008 World Champion (Gomez), 2009 World Champion (Ali Brownlee) and the 2008 Olympic Champion (Frodeno). I’m just pleased I even got a bloody place in the team! I’m going to catch a lift over the pond with Will Clarke (even though I shouldn’t fraternise with him too much; in FGP terms he is the enemy! Scab!), and try to flex my impressive franglish skills while I’m over there (“Bonjour mister, may I avoir une baguette with jambon et une pamplemousse).

The highlight of the week was going up to London to see Florence and the Machine playing at the Hammersmith Apollo. James and I were literally giddy with excitement, which we had to contain in front of the clearly too-cool-for-school urbanite musos in the queue, who definitely would have laughed at me if they had realised that I was wearing compression tights underneath my jeans. Not a strong look...

Apart from that I actually had a pretty packed week. A had an extended deadline for an Open Uni assignment that I almost missed the second time through, Sam had his 21^st birthday, which made me feel old, and I went to the launch of the Uni of Brighton’s Scanning for Gold exhibition, where there were photos of me looking sporty, unexplainably topless and probably airbrushed which was great for the ego!

Right, enough of this rambling, I need to pack.

See you later, alligators.

Olly

Wed May 12th 2010

Argh, sorry this is late, the internet in Korea was useless and then I had a race and a horrific journey home and I’ve been feeling a bit grim since I got back and...um...is that enough excuses?

So since my last blog there’s been all sorts of excitement. I had my last few days of training before I travelled, which included an improvised turbo-run brick session. We had to hide our turbos under this tiny archway as it was hammering down and the rain was making our tyres slip on our turbos, so the four of us who did the session (me, Barney, Twiggy and Patrick) were literally shoulder to shoulder on our turbos, which made dismounting and putting our running shoes on difficult to say the least, but we just about managed. The session went well, I felt smooth and comfortable on the bike reps and was running quick times.

A couple of days later I was on my way to Seoul. The journey wasn’t too bad, and I managed to reach the hotel on Wednesday feeling relatively fresh after managing a decent 6 hrs sleep on the plane. It wasn’t until that evening that the jetlag caught up with me in a rather bizarre way. Will and I managed to keep ourselves awake until 11pm before finally letting ourselves drift off. Next thing we knew, we were awake, feeling like we had slept amazingly, and were ready for the day ahead... but it was only half-past midnight! After finally getting myself back to sleep, I woke up again 45mins later and managed to walk into Will on the way to the toilet...so far not so good. I finally managed to get myself off into a lengthy slumber, but the combined effect of time zone changes, strong sleeping pills and the hallucinatory effect of prolonged exposure to Will’s bright blue tracksuit bottoms seemed to affect me more than anticipated...below is an unabridged account of a disturbingly vivid dream that I had...not a word of a lie. I would appreciate if anyone could tell me the significance of it (if any) and gently assure me that years of training haven’t sent me completely insane...

The dream started with me walking down a country lane. (OK in the interests of keeping this account 100% vérité, I should mention that I was with a lady who only remains memorable because of her disarmingly ample chest measurements...I wasn’t going to mention this unnecessary and potentially misogynistic detail but unfortunately I recounted this detail to Will so the truth is out there and I don’t want to get busted!) Anyway, so having climbed over a gate I notice a load of what can only be described as bedraggled, dirty and seemingly homeless Sesame Street characters, along with some similarly unkempt stray dogs. The dogs then attacked me, and for some reason I only had some soggy cardboard to defend myself with, so had to resort to barking fiercely to fend off the aggressive mutts. At this point the owner of the dogs turned up, he was riding a horse, had no teeth, and had a bag of gunpower in a pouch round his neck. As he twirled the pouch in preparation to assail me, I pushed him, which caused the gunpowder to ignite a tree. I then pushed him into the inferno, at which point he exploded into a load of giant bouncing strawberries and raspberries. This made me realise that I had to open the gate at the bottom of the lane to let the giant fruits escape, lest they stay trapped and turn into the forlorn Sesame Street characters that I had seen earlier.

Hmm...what probably upset me most about that dream was not the palpable loss of my sanity but that fact that the buxom babe didn’t make any further appearances. What a shame.

Annnnnnnyway, the rest of my race prep was slightly less surreal, and I arrived on the start line excited at the prospect of getting myself back into it after my ridiculously long break. The swim went well, I felt really controlled throughout, and came out in 3^rd place. Onto the bike, I felt relatively strong, but was suffering for a fair amount of it, as the course was so ridiculously technical that the front group of 50+ athletes was almost constantly strung out with the guys at the front keeping the pace on. The run was, as ever, very fast straight out of T2. I started to work through the pack and settled in around 16^th place from half way in, which I managed to hold on to until the end. All in all I was pleased, it was such a high quality field to reintroduce myself to racing after so long off the circuit, and really gives me confidence about what I can do later in the season.

The next round of the World Championship Series will be in Madrid in early June. Madrid has been somewhere that has a lot of unpleasant memories for me and a couple of slightly embarrassing ones (that I always seem to get reminded of), so hopefully this year I can make some good ol’ pleasant memories.

Annyeonghi gyeseyo.

Olly

Ps. The race highlights video can be found at the link below...but you only really need to watch the first 25 seconds to see me grabbing some unashamed TV-time!

http://www.triathlon.org/news/article/frodeno_sprints_to_victory_in_seoul/

Friday April 30th 2010

So it looks like ‘Ashgate’ / ‘The Ashpocalypse’ has disappeared as quickly as it erupted into our lives, which is a good thing as my planned trip to Korea would have been made slightly more difficult without air travel...I’m pretty sure you can’t catch a ferry from Dover to Seoul. Actually, maybe I should retract that statement, as I’m so happy to have got myself so close to actually competing for the first time in 11 months that I don’t want to jinx it by taunting Thor or Odin or whichever one of those pesky Norse gods was messing about with Eyjafjallajokull a couple of weeks back.

So, additional unexpected tectonic movement notwithstanding, my preparations for Seoul are pretty much complete. I think it’s safe to say that on Sunday my ‘winter’ will officially end. WAHOO! I will rev myself for one final foray into self-flagellation before what will be essentially a 6 day taper into the race, and after that I will be in race season, and that’s a whole different animal, where I will spend a lot of my time recovering and resting up for races, so the chronic grind of winter miles will be over.

One of the questions that I am asked most regularly by newcomers to the sport is how best to taper for races. This is a difficult question to answer, because it is something that is very individual, and there are many different facets to a taper, including physiological, nutritional and psychological. I think a core idea that is universally helpful is that the fitness that you have a week before the race is the fitness you will race with, but the job of the taper is to maximise how well you can use that fitness, so you want to be:

1. Rested, but not stale;

2. “Carbo-loaded”, but not full and stodgy;

3. Nervous and excited, but not so much that you are an exhausted, gibbering wreck;

Within these guidelines it is best to find what works for you. As with everything, a useful dollop of common sense will help you negotiate most of the potential pitfalls, but to give an idea of how I approach races:

1. I will never do a hard session within the 4 or 5 days prior to racing, but equally will not have a day off within 2 days prior to the race. A few short efforts (i.e. 5x20s with 60s recovery) as part of an easy (20-30mins) swim, bike and run in the last couple of days can be enough to keep me ticking over but not fatiguing myself. It can also help dissipate a little nervous energy.

2. In the last few days before I race I will do less training than normal, but that doesn’t mean my eating patterns will change that much. I will be ingesting more calories than I’m burning at this point to fill up my glycogen stores, but not so much that I feel heavy and stodgy. Also, I don’t leave the “carbo-loading” until race morning, or I run the risk of seeing my breakfast again halfway through the run. A light breakfast will often suffice on race day;

3. The whole atmosphere around racing is sufficient to allow me to get excited enough to be ready to go when the gun sounds, so I find little need to gee myself up outside of this.

Anyway, enough about tapering. I have something that you can all laugh at. It’s me. Well, more specifically, it’s my hair. It’s kind of ridiculous, and it’s what happens when you leave me and a box of bleach in a room together for 5 minutes. Go to the British Triathlon homepage and read about the amazing new partnership that has just been announced with GE (General Electric). By the time you have realized that I have shamelessly used the blog to plug the new deal, you will have already been distracted by the accompanying photos that include my orange barnet, and thus replaced your anger with unceasing mirth and ridicule aimed squarely at me. Blimey, the sacrifices I make for the BTF!

Right guys and gals, all being well my next blog will be from Korea...assuming that the hotel is hooked up to the interweb of course. If not, I’ll get online when I return.

Have a good week.

Olly

Friday April 23rd 2010

Another week, more excitement...well not in a James Bond type way, more in a “I went to the pool and did a swim session and it was so funny when I had a kick set and I realised I didn’t have my float...how we all laughed” type way...but you get what you pay for and you are reading this for free so stop complaining.

On Saturday I did a 2-up time trial with my main man Todd (Medical Student, 4th at 2008 U23 World Champs). We were both absolutely smashed by the end of the time trial, and I was convinced that Todd had completely carried me through it, though Todd said the same of me, so who knows how we managed to set a massive PB! The next day I had a big run set in Friston Forest, where I managed to fulfil Glenn’s slightly daunting session of “3 lap build: 1st lap quick, 2nd lap quicker and 3rd lap very quick”. These two big sessions back-to-back (along with other sessions on those two days of course) left me in a bit of a hole that took me most of the week to get out of, so a lot of the week revolved around eating, sleeping, and taking the sessions as easy as possible. Happy days.

On a very serious note, on Tuesday I was out on a bike ride with Todd and a bike coach (ex-pro biker, he knows his stuff). As a result of some staggeringly incompetent road maintenance by the local council, just after a downhill there was a pothole that had been filled in so badly that there was a 2.5 inch lip at the end, which threw the bike coach over his handlebars, which caused Todd to come off as well. Both of them ended up in hospital with multiple fractures and required surgery, and both of them will be unable to ride their bikes for months. Everyone, please be aware of the potholes that were made by the cold weather this winter, and please be aware that some road workmen do not always adhere to the highest standards, and also please, everyone, wear your helmets, as without them I might have been wasting my time by even calling 999 on Tuesday morning. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the students and headmaster from Eastbourne College, as well as some passersby all of whom helped while we waited for the emergency services.

On a lighter note, I managed to get myself out of my pain hole and psyched up for Thursday morning swim because of the exciting arrival of some new kit: some DCPs! For the uninitiated of you (which is 6 billion people worldwide minus me and about 3 other losers who I swim with), DCPs stand for “Daniel Craig Prappers”. I’m sure some of you have seen the 1st of the ‘new’ James Bond films, which includes a scene where the incredibly hench Daniel Craig (James Bond) emerges from the sea in a very fetching piece of swimwear which manages to avoid being as Euro-porn as speedos but not as “I’ve got something to hide” as swim shorts. My new swimwear is the same cut as Bond’s. Anyway...so that explains the “Daniel Craig” bit, but why the “prappers”. Well as you may be able to tell I am painfully white and middle class so I try to validate my coolness by listening to Dizzee Rascal and his peers, who often punctuate their songs/raps/tracks (?!) with onomatopoeic “PRAPPPS” (to signify gunfire), that we (in our very uncool way) have bastardised into the aforementioned word ...very very sad, but that’s me. Anyway, my DCPs are bright green, make me look like a stripper and seem to have made me swim faster than I knew was possible. Win win.

Final note: I’ve got my new racing kit for this year, representing Nike and allyouneedtotri.com big time stylee. I hope you like. I like. Is nice.

Train safe.

Olly

Friday April17th 2010

Hello again.

I hope you have all made good use of the continued good weather, and shame on you if the sun hasn’t inspired you to sign up for at least 3 more races. It’s getting to that time of year when the sea starts to look more inviting, and the racing flats trade places with the wellington boots in the shoe cupboard. Very exciting!

Over in Australia the 2010 World Championship Series has kicked off, with an impressive win for 2 time Olympic medallist Bevan Docherty and a surprise win for Chile’s Barbara Riveros Dias.

But it’s a long, long time until the World Champs Series Grand Final in Budapest in September, so I have been busy training hard...but my week started on an awesome yet tainted note.

As I told you last week, the allyouneedtotri.com crew surprised me with tickets to watch the mighty, mighty Aston Villa take on some lower league minnows called Chelsea. I had an awesome day out with angry James (my housemate) at Wembley, and took part in some extremely unnecessary and badly rhymed chants aimed squarely in the general direction of England’s-answer-to-Tiger-Woods: John Terry. To be fair, he had the last laugh, as Chelsea ripped Villa to shreds in the final 20 minutes, but it’s all part of the ride.

On the way back to the tube station, I got in a delightful conversation with a colourful character who proceeded to tell me (in his very best slurred Brummie) that he was going to hit the next Londoner that he encountered. I responded with a nervous laugh (partly because I wasn’t even sure if he was talking to me at this point as his gaze seemed to be more fixed to his half empty beer bottle, and partly because my accent would have given away that I was almost a local). Long-story short, about 3 seconds later an unsuspecting Chelsea fan was greeted with a mouthful of fist as he tried to get in a taxi, at which point I was expected to tag in as back up and do my best Rocky impression. Safe to say James and I have never powerwalked away from somewhere so inconspicuously...a difficult skill to master. I’m definitely not man enough for hooliganism.

“So Olly, how did you respond to Villa’s crushing defeat?” I hear you collectively cry at the top of your voices. Well I will tell you. I made history. Because that’s what I do. I dragged myself up off the floor of despair, and I clambered onto my bike of hope, and I held my head high and I won my first race of the season in withering fashion reminiscent of Muhammad Ali at his prime...sort of. I mean...to be fair it was a relatively local race, and it wasn’t really against the top guys, and it was actually not a triathlon but a bike race, but THEY ALL COUNT! Don’t take this one away from me! In all honesty I was really pleased with how it went. I got some good figures on the PowerTap, applied some semi-competent tactics and even managed a sub-9 minute 3km run straight afterwards to top it off

On Monday I got a visit from some of the British Triathlon crew, namely Kevin Currell our nutritionist and Joce Brooks the psychologist. The main thing I needed to find out from our meetings were pretty simple:
• Kevin was going to tell me how many sandwiches I need in my picnic basket;
• Joce was going to tell me how many sandwiches short of said picnic basket I was;
It turns out that the answer to both questions was “Lots”, which is slightly concerning to say the least!

The rest of the week was usual fare. A lot of hard swimming, where I managed to continue my run of squeezing out PBs on sprint sets, some decent riding, including a turbo session where I tried to use my handlebars as a pillow on the warm down (the prospect of having to pack up, go home, eat and get into my bed seemed like too much effort at that point), and more solid man-miles on the run.

Right, I’d better leave you for another week, and find something else to distract myself from the mounting pile of Open University work on my desk. Suggestions?

Olly

Friday April 16th 2010

Hello again.

I hope you have all made good use of the continued good weather, and shame on you if the sun hasn’t inspired you to sign up for at least 3 more races. It’s getting to that time of year when the sea starts to look more inviting, and the racing flats trade places with the wellington boots in the shoe cupboard. Very exciting!

Over in Australia the 2010 World Championship Series has kicked off, with an impressive win for 2 time Olympic medallist Bevan Docherty and a surprise win for Chile’s Barbara Riveros Dias.

But it’s a long, long time until the World Champs Series Grand Final in Budapest in September, so I have been busy training hard...but my week started on an awesome yet tainted note.

As I told you last week, the allyouneedtotri.com crew surprised me with tickets to watch the mighty, mighty Aston Villa take on some lower league minnows called Chelsea. I had an awesome day out with angry James (my housemate) at Wembley, and took part in some extremely unnecessary and badly rhymed chants aimed squarely in the general direction of England’s-answer-to-Tiger-Woods: John Terry. To be fair, he had the last laugh, as Chelsea ripped Villa to shreds in the final 20 minutes, but it’s all part of the ride.

On the way back to the tube station, I got in a delightful conversation with a colourful character who proceeded to tell me (in his very best slurred Brummie) that he was going to hit the next Londoner that he encountered. I responded with a nervous laugh (partly because I wasn’t even sure if he was talking to me at this point as his gaze seemed to be more fixed to his half empty beer bottle, and partly because my accent would have given away that I was almost a local). Long-story short, about 3 seconds later an unsuspecting Chelsea fan was greeted with a mouthful of fist as he tried to get in a taxi, at which point I was expected to tag in as back up and do my best Rocky impression. Safe to say James and I have never powerwalked away from somewhere so inconspicuously...a difficult skill to master. I’m definitely not man enough for hooliganism.

· Kevin was going to tell me how many sandwiches I need in my picnic basket;

· Joce was going to tell me how many sandwiches short of said picnic basket I was;

It turns out that the answer to both questions was “Lots”, which is slightly concerning to say the least!

Right, I’d better leave you for another week, and find something else to distract myself from the mounting pile of Open University work on my desk. Suggestions?

Olly

Friday April 9th 2010

Hello all.

I am writing this week’s blog while sitting out on my patio, with the sun on my back, a glass of cold juice in hand and the sound of seagulls in my ears. Hasn’t the weather been marvellous?

Actually that is a lie. The bloody glare off my laptop screen is too bright and I’m scared of a seagull pooing on my head so I decided to take it inside, but my point still stands - everything is better when the sun is out.

I have had a great week of training. Off the back of the bike block last week, Glenn decided to give me a week of relatively steady training punctuated with a few very hard sessions. These included a 60 minute tempo run in Friston Forest on Sunday , a very hard turbo session on Tuesday and 20x100m (on 1:40 swim rest) in the pool followed by a 10km track session (first rep: 5km straight!) on Thursday. All of which, I’m slightly surprised and certainly happy to say...went well!

All of this has helped affirm that I’m in good enough shape to blow out those cobwebs and have a stab at the Seoul World Championship Series race next month that I mentioned last week. I have been entered, so barring anything untoward and unforeseen, I’ll be shaving down and wetsuiting up in 4 weeks and counting!

So what’s on the agenda between now and then? Well, the race is of course in Asia, so I will need to book up flights first and foremost. The World Series organisers always provide transfers from the airports to the race hotels, so that’s one thing I can relax about. The next step is the hotel, which looks like it may be a shared room with his royal highness Sir William Roger Clarke of Cambridgeshire, who you may know as last year’s winner of the London Triathlon. He’s getting very excited about the new SLR camera he has bought (of which I am very jealous), so I’m hoping to steal a few minutes with it to see if it’s worthy of the hype!

Outside of that I just need to get all my kit ready. This will involve confirming which racing flats I want to use this year (current frontrunners...pun intended...are Nike Lunar Racer 2s), getting my Cervelo S3 built-up and ready to ROCK (status update: the TriStore dungeon elves, aka Simon Underwood and his box of tools, are currently doing their thing and enchanting it with a potion brewed from gazelle hoof and leopard tooth, I will report on it once I have saddled it up and taken it for a gallop), get my tri-suit printed up (with ‘allyouneedtotri.com’ heavily represented of course!) and all the other stuff that you forget about during the winter.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Seoul is very much a prep-race, and the meat of the season isn’t for a few months yet, so there is a lot of grindstone/nose contact to be endured before things get really juicy.

As promised a couple of weeks ago, I will now subject you all to a brief but mandatory gush of unbridled geekdom as a result of the release of The Lord of the Rings on Blu-Ray. The big question is...did it live up to my stratospheric expectations? The answer is simple: it’s the same old Lord of the Rings, but now you can see every single one of Gandalf’s nose hairs, so yes, it did live up to my stratospheric expectations.

My final sign off must be a massive shout-out/big-up/whatever-the-newest-hippest-phrase-is to the boys at allyouneedtotri.com, who hooked-me-up/sorted-me-out/whatever-the-newest-hippest-phrase-is with tickets to see my beloved Aston Villa most likely get a hiding from the Russian behemoth that is Chelsea FC in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final. Thank you !.

See y’all next week, and as my long-suffering mother says, “If you don’t spend enough time in the sun you’ll get rickets” (which is slightly at odds with “Don’t spend too much time in the sun or you’ll get skin cancer” but there you go). Get out there, crack open a pair of too-short running shorts and enjoy the sun before it disappears in...a few days time I’m sure.

Olly

Friday April 2nd 2010

Hello hello,

Good week?

It’s that time again where I get to chat a load of rubbish and give it the grand name of an official blog for allyouneedtotri.com.

Actually this week I am going to aim for less of the rubbish and tell you about my plans for the season...which are unfortunately still at the ‘vague’ stage, but I’ll tell you what I know!

The first race of the World Championship Series is this weekend in Sydney, which none of the GB boys are doing. The second race is in Seoul, which I was also going to pass on, to leave myself time to actually get some proper fitness before I launched myself into international competition. Unfortunately, a race in Madeira that I was going to use as preparation for my first World Series outing of 2010 has been cancelled, and there are no other international standard races in Europe before June...so I am considering racing Seoul as a ‘brush-out-the-cobwebs’ scenario...though I’m mostly worried that I won’t fit in my trisuit!

So Seoul or no Seoul (May 8th), my season proper will start with the Madrid World Series race (June 6th). This is where the race plan starts to get...well...vague! My two key races for the season are the London World Champs Series race (July 25th), and the World Champs Series final in Budapest (Sept 12th), so I will fit everything else around that, including more Series races, and possibly some races for my French Grand Prix team Satroville. I would love to race the London Tri as well, though I think my older sister may pull rank on that one...it’s her wedding the night before!

So now you know as much as anyone! Not exactly insightful I know, but I’ll let you know as soon as I can be more specific.

I’ve had a pretty good week of training. Glenn gave me a bike block to do, so I’ve bagged a few hundred miles of riding and now feel like a bit more of a man than I did before. The block started off with a bike race at Goodwood race circuit, where I played my usual part of the ‘triathlete-with-a-point-to-prove’ by putting in a few brave solo attacks, staying away for about 7 miles on one of them, but ultimately getting outfoxed on the final sprint by smarter riders who probably spent the previous 40 miles shaking their heads and tutting at me! I had one minor mishap during an 80 mile ride on Tuesday where I was stranded at one of the highest points in Sussex as a rainstorm broke out because I snapped my rear hanger (so powerful I can snap metal?! Probably not!) but apart from that it has all gone surprisingly smoothly! Smiles all round.

Oh, and seeing as I KNOW you all love hearing my views on films, I saw one of the most entertaining films that I have seen in ages on Friday. It’s called Kick-Ass, it is kick-ass, and it’s directed by our boy Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake and...you remember...whisper it...Stardust!). Watch it...unless you are easily offended, in which case, um, don’t.

I’ve also had something to grumble about, my team Aston Villa. Apologies to any football fans (or football haters) out there who don’t have the delight of being shackled to a team of eternal mediocrity, but with Villa that’s what you get. Now my beloved Villa have been flying this year, and got to within sniffing distance of a top-4 finish, and in the last couple of weeks they have finally had a couple of weak teams to pick up easy points against and in a conclusion about as unexpected as Jordan divorcing Peter Andre, they failed to win both...and then lost 7-1 (yea, you heard me right!) to Chelsea. I swear, it’s like getting to the church doors on your wedding day to Claudia Schiffer, but instead ducking behind the bike sheds for a slap and a tickle with Ann Widdecombe (no offense to any Ann Widdecombe admirers, or indeed to Ann herself if she is a closet triathlon fan!).

Oh, and speaking of marrying Claudia Schiffer, guess which immense specimen of awesome masculinity she has actually said “I do” to? That’s right. Matthew Vaughn. That has SO validated my Stardust episode. Case closed.

I hope you all have had a good week, and enjoyed the odd wink of sun. I celebrated by putting on a pair of shorts, though the excitement was slightly dulled by the emasculating ‘15-16 years’ embroidered into the label!

Olly

 

Friday March 26th 2010

You came back!

Why? Last week I tried to give a break-down of my training week and all I ended up doing was talking about some chick-flick!

Anyway...this week has been a bit of a lonely one. My housemate James (the ‘angry’ one from my first blog) has been away. This may not sound like much of an issue, but in my house we have a simple system...he cooks, I clean. This is partly because he is good at cooking and I don’t like mess, but also partly because my culinary skills are what you would call ‘functional’, ‘utilitarian’, or maybe ‘military’, in that I can stay alive by gnawing on a burnt chicken carcass but it won’t necessarily taste nice.

I think my issue is that I have neither the patience (nor skill) to prepare anything that takes longer than about 5 minutes. I will pick up a cook book, but promptly put it down when I notice that every recipe involves some combination of the words ‘pre-heat’, ‘marinade’, ‘simmer’, ‘leave to cool’, and others that imply some kind of down-time in the whole cooking process. When I get back from a swim/bike/run I’m so hungry that I preferably need calories injected intravenously into my bloodstream, but I usually revert to the next quickest method...the trusty stir-fry. Always the stir fry. Quick, easy, ticks the boxes nutritionally, but there’s only so many times you can eat the same thing for dinner before you start dreaming of Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver chasing after you with egg beaters trying to force you and a confused coriander sprig into a food blender. Very odd.

So apart from my interesting sleeping habits (3hrs on Monday night, 10hrs on Tuesday night), the week has gone well. I had a really good run session in Friston Forest on Sunday, scaling ‘Heartbreak Hill’ in record time at the end of a 90minute fartlek session. I’ve also hit a couple of PBs in the pool, for 25m and 50m, though both of them came about as a result of my fragile ego being threatened by a 14 year-old Harry Potter look alike (come on J.P. you know it’s true! “ACCIO GOGGLES!”) who was getting within sniffing distance of me on the respective swims. So much to Glenn’s (my coach) amusement and dismay, I suddenly found an extra 0.7secs per 25m. Pathetic isn’t it! I’m just saying it how it is!

Recently I’ve been giddly like a triathlete who is about to ride a Cervelo S3 with the impeding excitement of...riding a Cervelo S3! To explain, for the last couple of years I have been bombarded with recommendations to “sort my life out and get a proper bike” by anyone who has touched any of the range of these Canadian creations, and having had few goes on James’ S1, I finally understood why the Hawaii Ironman transition area is filled with more Canadian carbon than your average NHL convention (hmm...that simile only works if ice-hockey sticks are made of carbon-fibre...I’m going to run with it anyway!). The guys at The TriStore (my local triathlon shop) have pulled out all the stops and sorted me out with an S1 to train on and an S3 to race on. I’m absolutely loving the stiff and responsive S1 frame, and I haven’t even revved it up fast enough to appreciate its main selling point: the aerodynamics. In fact, I think my head is going to explode with excitement: April 6th = S3 build day, April 7th = Lord of the Rings is released on Blu-Ray! No prizes for guessing what that week’s blog is going to be about!

My week concluded with something that is actually relatively interesting (no really!) The University of Brighton are organising a travelling exhibition of photographs and MRI scans of 6 athletes who are affiliated with the university who are aiming for the 2012 Olympics. I went over to the BSMS campus this morning to be scanned, and I was told that they wanted to capture images of my heart (triathletes have strong cardiovascular systems) and abdomen (to highlight the high muscle to fat ratio of a triathlete). I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished images, though slightly relived to hear that the zip on my shorts distorted the images that they tried to take of my ‘pelvis’ (“Yeah Olly we are interested in your glute muscles etc!”). I’m not sure how excited I would have been to have an MRI image of my man-bits on display for the world to see!

And with that horrific mental image, I will leave you for another week.

Happy training!

Olly

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Friday March 19th 2010

Hello again! Welcome (back) to my blog for allyouneedtotri.com.

Since my last post, I have had a week of downs and ups...in that order!

Firstly I should explain that when I say ‘week’ I am talking about a training week, which for me starts on Saturday and ends on Thursday, with Friday as a very easy day or even a day off (if I’ve earned it!).

Saturday as always was a steady day, with a long(ish) steady ride followed by a relatively easy run for an hour off the bike. On days like this you can never really read too much in to how you feel as the intensity is too low to find out anything deep and meaningful about yourself, but the signs were there that I wasn’t firing on all cylinders...little did I realise...

Now we find ourselves on Sunday...Sunday 14th...Sunday 14th March 2010. That was not a good day. To be honest the pain of it is still too close, so I don’t really want to talk about it, but I will, because I’m just that kind of guy (you know: kind, giving, informative and incredibly handsome). Ok. Here goes:

Sunday 8:30am. Tempo run. 1hr. First 30mins OK but heart rate too high. After 30mins I start tying up. 40mins: KABOOM! Run last lap in 18mins, at least 90secs slower than expected. Not fun. Not cool.
Sunday 10:30am. Swim 90mins. Blagged it until we got to a best effort 300m. After 125m KABOOM! Legs fall off (metaphorically of course), Niall almost swims into the back of me without realising, pace drops off to something unmentionable.

As I said, not good.

Now I’m not the kind of guy who takes that kind of thing very well, so after extricating myself from the pool, I stumbled home and adopted the Bridget Jones approach to coping with difficult situations. I put on some power ballads, devoured a huge tub of ice-cream and smoked a packet of cigarettes...well almost, I can’t remember what I ate but I’m sure it wasn’t steamed fish and veg and an artichoke smoothie (or whatever athletes are supposed to eat), and I replaced the cigarettes and power ballads with something even more sinister and even more shameful...ladies and gentleladies of allyouneedtotri.com, I snuggled down on the sofa and put on a movie called ‘Stardust’, and you know what, it “put a massive smile on my face”.

At this point in proceedings, I would like to ask a favour of you. Like one of those adventure stories that you read in primary school (or maybe it was just me), I want you to proceed to the appropriate part of this blog depending on whether or not you have seen or know of the aforementioned film. If you have, proceed to point 1 and DON’T READ point 2, and vice versa. (NOTE: you all know about internet fraudsters and CCTV and what not and let me tell you now, it’s all true, so if you read the wrong paragraph I WILL find out and I will identity-fraud you into oblivion...you have been warned):

OK, so you’ve seen/heard of the movie. Let me make this clear, it was a moment of weakness, yes I enjoyed it but I regret it, I think it would best for all involved to just forget it ever happened and let’s not talk about it again OK? Don’t forget that I have a macho reputation to maintain. OK good, you may proceed to the paragraph AFTER point 2;
You haven’t seen the movie? Great. Well all I need say about it is it was directed by the same guy who directed Layer Cake (gritty London gangster movie with a drug-dealing Daniel Craig and Sienna Miller in her delicates), which means that Stardust (a film that “put a massive smile on my face”) is definitely a man’s film about violence and boobs and stuff, and definitely not a fairytale with 3 wicked witches and a fallen star and a quest for true love...ahem.

I get sidetracked easily.

So after Sunday and “the-DVD-that-won’t-be-named” incident, my week improved. I found out that my less-than-stellar performances on Sunday were caused by a low-grade virus, and Monday (solid 400s in the pool, 60mins run and gym) was an improvement. A hard swim and turbo, along with a long run on Tuesday took the spark out of my legs for a steady Wednesday, though I was just about able to muster together enough to hit Thursday hard.

Thursday is always a decent day, coming at the end of the training week and with two important sessions. The swim was hard 50s on a quite a long rest, and I was getting down and dirty with some 28s. The run session in the afternoon was the first time I’ve been on the track in months, so Glenn set me up with some race-pace (20kmph) 1km efforts, which I tackled with more ease than expected, despite Gary Brickley (physiologist) pricking my thumb after every other rep to get my blood lactate levels! I also had Joel Filiol (head coach the GB team), and Clare and Dan (physio and S&C coach) coming down to see us cracking out the pain faces and heavy breathing! Gooooo team!

Things seem to be moving in the right direction, so hopefully “the-DVD-that-won’t-be-named” can gather some dust for a few months. If not you guys will be first to hear about it!

Happy training!

Olly

Friday March 12th 2010

Wow, check out the new site huh?

Did you know there is a Coaching Service registered on the road that my parents live on? My parents don’t. I don’t. My two training partners who also live on that road don’t...but allyouneedtotri.com does.

I’m impressed.

Anyway, enough of the shameless plugging! Who am I and why I am taking up space on this brand new sparkly site?

Who am I?: For those of you who know of me, hello again, and yes it is me with the silly eyebrows and big nose and constipated ‘race face’ who seemed to be doing quite well and then suddenly disappeared for 2009 for no apparent reason. If you don’t know me, I’m a 24 year old elite athlete who won some stuff as a junior and was just getting used to a bit of success as an elite before a rather bizarre 2009 which amounted to not a lot of racing....more useless information at my website ollyfreeman.com.

Why am I writing: What’s that thing about infinite monkeys and Shakepeare? I think that’s the approach here...

So what have I been up to? Well as I said, my 2009 was a bit of a non-starter. It started off with a lot of excitement and positivity after a 2008 season which (apart from the Olympics) went almost as well as I could have hoped. As the winter progressed, and I pushed myself harder and dug deeper, my body just kept on giving and following a 6 week training camp in the States I was in the shape of my life. However, soon after returning I went to Korea for a World Championship Series race and got a stomach bug which resulted in a disappointing 12th.

The day after I returned I was out on my bike and a friendly motorist decided the best way to communicate to me that he didn’t think cyclists should be allowed on the road was to knock my lights out (I think that’s the expression...I mean he punched me so I was unconscious!). Apart from the fact that my face smarted a bit for a few days, I got injuries in my shoulder, rib and hip from this incident, along with trying to move house, take my Open University exams and race World Championship Series races, it meant that I was fighting a losing battle to try to get back fit. Unfortunately other personal circumstances then came along that meant that the decision was made to call it a day for 2009 and try to re-set for 2010...so here I am, after 4 months out of the pool and off the bike, trying to whip myself into respectable shape for 2010 as a springboard for 2012!

So far this winter has been...interesting! It has certainly been more bumpy than last year, as a 4 month break lets the body completely forget what the stresses and strains of training full-time are like, but I’m getting there. Hopefully this blog will help keep you guys informed of how it’s going, and give some insight into the trials and tribulations of an elite triathlete...a profession/lifestyle/career (or whatever you want to call it) which can be filled with the most magnificent joys, but one which also requires 6am swim sets...enough said!

I will introduce you to my enigmatic coach Glenn (multiple British and European Champion, he knows his stuff), who has guided me through my myriad (mostly self-inflicted) dramas since I was a pre-pimply 14 year old. Also you’ll find out about my training group, who include a trainee doctor, an artist, a man who has had a brand of washboards names after his stomach, a wannabe DJ, a guy who races tractors (he denies it but he SO does) and the angriest man in Britain...fact. Some of them are quite good at triathlon as well.

Also, if you’re lucky, you may find out about me. I feel I should warn you that I am the kind of guy who gets irritated when people mis-quote Lord of the Rings (it’s “You SHALL not pass” not “You CAN not pass” you idiots), so don’t say I didn’t warn you when Avatar 2 is announced and I dedicate 3 consecutive blogs to discussing whether the characters’ skin is blue, azure or aqua-marine. I’ll try to stay on topic though.

Anyway, until next week, enjoy the site, enjoy your training, and be back soon.

Olly

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