<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Richard Stannard - Tri247</title><link>http://www.tri247.com/index.html</link><description>Latest articles submitted by Richard Stannard on Tri247</description><item><title><![CDATA[A tough start!]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_3154.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[It is always a tough way to start the season. Mooloolaba is one of the hardest courses on the World Cup circuit with its infamous hill on the bike and the run; 22 climbs in total. The swim is also a little different, with the lottery of a beach start and only a single lap instead of the normal two.

This year&rsquo;s installment of round one of the World Cup did not disappoint; it was as tough as ever. I had my usual good swim and ran up on to the sand with the lead group out on to the bike it was clear after a lap that the major part of the field was together in one large group. The course has a very narrow twisty section through transition and out onto the start of each lap. With the whole of the group trying to push to the front through this section a crash or two was inevitable. At the end of the first lap Shane Reed and Javier Gomez came together and behind them another athlete&rsquo;s gears failed and a pile up followed. I managed to weave around these accidents and chase back up to the leaders fairly quickly. From then on it was a case of staying as close to the front of the pack as possible to avoid any more incidents. 

The rest of the bike ride passed without any more accidents but there were a few frantic near misses. As the group of sixty athletes arrived at T2 together position was everything. I managed to get near the front but was not right up there where I needed to be. I had a fairly fast T2 and went out onto the run with hopes of solid performance and the aim of running considerably quicker than I had done the previous year. Everyone flew out of transition and as we all approached the hill for the first of eight ascents one spectator described it as looking like a cavalry charge into battle! With the standard of World Cup racing improving each year and the athlete&rsquo;s all running at very similar speeds this scene will be repeated in many races through out this Olympic year. 

I had run a 34:28 in 2007 for 17th place and knew I was in much better shape, I could feel I had good form running up and down the first hill and aimed to hold this for the remainder of the run. As I went out onto the second lap I stared to pick off a few athletes and found that my speed on the down hills was really helping my rhythm.

As the run progressed I found I could not catch the two small groups ahead and it was only over the last hill that I managed to pass a few more athletes and close in on the top twenty. In a surge for the line I ended up seconds off the back of these groups of athletes and in 23rd place. My run split was a 32.23 over two minutes faster than last year, a time with which I would have placed 3rd in 2007! However, with this being an Olympic year and selections at stake it seems that I may need to find another minute on the run to reach the podium in 2008. 

On another note; It is my pleasure to announce that Autoglass are continuing their support for the coming season. Autoglass has been my main sponsor for the last three seasons and they have agreed to continue the sponsorship throughout my Olympic campaign and beyond. 

Autoglass has very strong links with triathlon. In fact they have their own wave at the London Triathlon, &lsquo;The Autoglass Wave&rsquo;. Via this venture they raise hundreds of thousands of pounds each year for the MaAfrika Tikkun Charity see www.belrontri.com for more details.

It is my privilege to help as many of those involved as I can, with training advice and guidance and several hard swim, bike and run sessions. I look forward to seeing all those involved again this season for some more triathlon training. However, I cannot be sure that they will all be pleased to see me! Keep fit guys and see you in the summer.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Under a week to go!]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_3099.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[With under a week to go to the start of the ITU World Cup season the Gold Coast is filling up with triathletes. The rest of the British Team arrived a couple of days ago and are staying about 20 minutes drive down the coast. Emma, Stu, Michelle and I may or may not see the guys before we all head up to Mooloolaba next week. 

The last few weeks training has been extremely tough. We have all coped well and are looking forward to a taper into the first two races. Mooloolaba is one of the tougher courses on the World Cup circuit with a hard sea swim followed by a windy and hilly eight-lap bike, and finally a four lap hilly run. Each bike and run lap goes up and over the same hill so you end up doing sixteen reps on the bike and eight on the run! This will be a perfect race to see how the training has gone.

The following week we all head over to New Zealand and New Plymouth. I have fond memories of New Zealand as it was in Queenstown in 2003 that I won my first World Title in the Aquathlon. The temperature there will be significantly cooler than the Gold Coast and both Emma and I have packed arm warmers, leg warmers and jackets as we venture back to cooler weather. From New Zealand we travel back to Australia as the season gets well and truly under way.

I will aim to keep everyone posted on events in Mooloolaba and New Plymouth. Whilst in Australia I have taken the time away from training to learn and understand a bit more about my website: www.richardstannard.com. I have started updating it myself and adding a few cool new tricks. Check out my Gold Coast photos which I have animated into a short movie on my multimedia page. I hope to keep these montages running for each event and training camp throughout the season.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Training and racing on the Gold Coast]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_3019.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Double World Aquathlon Champion, Richard Stannard, is back! We hadn&#039;t heard from him for a while, but as he finalises his preparation for May&#039;s Olympic qualification race down under, he took time out from his hectic training schedule to bring us this report!



With only a few months to go to Olympic trials, and only a few weeks till the World Cup season opener, it was with excitement and a sense of d&eacute;j&agrave; vu that I boarded the British Airways flight to Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

This time round, I have been five or maybe six times before, it felt a little different, I had company in the form of Irish international triathlete and Olympic hopeful, Emma Davis, my training partner. She is one very dedicated athlete and a real inspiration. Despite her nerves about going to a triathlon-crazy country like Australia, where even the local barber can talk shop with any pro, I tried to calm her nerves with endless stories of Saturday morning crit rides that may as well be a World Cup with the number of ranked athletes showing for a burn up around the Luke Harrop memorial track. I continued with tails of lightning-fast transitions and Australia&rsquo;s East Coast being the proving ground of many of today&rsquo;s top athletes, at all distances. I think I made things worse!

I had a trick up my sleeve though, I told her to pack a spare set of underwear in her hand luggage and not to ask any questions. Thinking I was being a little kinky she obliged, but with an odd look on her face. My plan was simple, the flight to Brisbane stops over in Singapore for a couple of hours and I have learned on previous trips that for &pound;3 you can have a shower and cold drink in the Rain Forest Lounge. So courtesy of nameonkit.com (the company paid!) we both had a relaxing shower and a cold drink, which made the second flight into Brisbane that much easier to bear.

The jet lag to Oz can be a nightmare, but we both seemed to cope well! Despite falling asleep at 1630 on the first afternoon, we both made the 0530 swim set the next morning, and did a full days training! 

On day three we met up with Stu Hayes and Michelle Dillon, who have both been out here since November. They are both in great shape and should prove excellent training partners. Add into the mix Natalie Barnard, Loughborough student, out here for a month of intense training and Neil Brooks (aka Brooksie) Olympic Gold Medallist swimmer, who are both serious age group triathletes, and you have the makings of a focused squad.

By the end of the first week both Emma and I decided to throw ourselves in at the deep end and race the Saturday morning crit, followed directly by kilometre reps on the treadmill. Stu informed me that the day&#039;s race would be a tough one as we were only one week away from the ITU Oceania Cup race, which forms part of the Luke Harrop Memorial Triathlon weekend held each March, and a lot of Europeans had just arrived on the Gold Coast. He was right, from the gun the race exploded with guys missing packs, some getting punctures and others just not ready, being straight out of a European winter. Michelle and Emma were fantastic, they both were able to mix it up with the men and Michelle even pulled a turn in the A grade race! With the race just finished, Courtney Atkinson (who has already qualified for the Australian Beijing Olympic team) dropped his bike on the finish line and one super-quick transition later he was straight into a 5km run off the bike! We cycled straight off to the gym at the Sports Super Centre, in Runaway Bay (where both Emma and I are staying) which is right next door to the track and hit the treadmills. Stu cranked the gauge up to 20km/hour and jumped on for the first rep. Emma and Natalie were swapping turns and I had a treadmill of my own. Not only had the crit been the hardest of the year so far according to Stu, but it was also the hottest day of the Australian summer as well. In the end we had cleared all the treadmills of the regular users, who were giving us some very strange looks as our squad of World Cup triathletes hammered out a very hard brick session. 

To end the first week we hit the mountains inland from the coast for a long Sunday ride. With the first week over the focus turned to the following weekend and the first race of 2008 for the squad. 



Since Richard sent us this update, the squad has raced the ITU Oceania Cup points race and a full report can be read here.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Up and Down start to the season]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_2038.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[It has been an interesting start to the season. I have just finished my third World Cup of the year. I started in Australia in Mooloolaba during March and have raced in Portugal and South Africa since. My opener in Australia was amongst a lot of Southern Hemisphere athletes fresh off their racing season and raring to go. I had a creditable performance, finishing 17th and top British athlete. My second race in Lisbon, Portugal was amongst a stacked field of Europeans, Australians and Americans all trying to gain valuable Olympic qualifying points in order to gain places for their respective countries in Beijing. 

Qualification as with most Olympic sports is a complicated process. In triathlon, World Cup races allow you to attain Olympic points for your country which count towards gaining places for your team. (ie if Great Britain can maintain enough athletes inside the top 40 athletes we will comfortably secure the maximum three places in Beijing. These points can be accumulated up to June of 2008 in the Madrid World Cup.) In the meantime, National Teams will in addition have selection races for all athletes eligible to race the Olympics (ie those ranked in the World&rsquo;s top 125). For Great Britain this will be the World Championships in Hamburg in September this year, the Beijing World Cup two weeks later and the last selection race will be the Madrid World Cup in June 2008.

Lisbon was a good race despite finishing 18th (second British Athlete). I had hoped for a top ten but had to pleased as I beat many quality athletes and the race was very close with the top twenty athletes all within two minutes of the winner. My winter&rsquo;s training has been my best ever with personal best times in training and races. I have been racing regularly at the Saturday morning Bushy Park 5km time trial and run a lifetime best twice. So it was unfortunate to catch a cold on plane flight home form Lisbon two days before flying long haul to South Africa. With the races only a week apart it was a very quick turn around, getting ill in between the two definitely affected my performance in Richard&rsquo;s Bay where I finished a lowly 32nd. I was very disappointed but have tried to reason that you cannot expect to perform if you have traveled and been ill. 

The season now continues with the domestic calendar. My next race on the 27th May is the first race of three in new Corus Triathlon Series for Channel 4; it will be held in Glasgow and raced over the sprint distance of 750m swim, 20km bike and 5km run so it will be fast and furious. However, my main aim will be for a week later in the Madrid World Cup where I must go for a top ten finish and continue on the road to qualifying for Beijing. ]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Stannard's Blog]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1539.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[This is my first installment of what should be a regular blog on TRI247, I have been given free reign to write about anything (Ed: well, almost anything...). So over the coming months I will try to give you something of an insight in to the life of a full time triathlete, some gossip from the World Cup circuit and any other facts, figures and features from the triathlon world that cross my path. A key year for us all  2007 has arrived and for me anyway that is another year closer to Olympics. In fact, qualifying for the Great Britain Team for Beijing will start and finish for a lucky few this year. The selection policy for the 2008 Games is out and the first two qualifying races will be the World Championships in Hamburg followed a fortnight later by the test event the BG World Cup in Beijing, China. So it is feasible that as the British pros sit down for their Christmas dinner this year four out of the potential six team members going to the Games could have already booked their places on the plane to Asia. It&#039;s a hard life...  So a fairly important season ahead then! I will start the season in the lion&amp;rsquo;s den Down Under -- home of cricketing humiliation for England and all things sporting mad. The first World Cup of the season is at Moloolaba, on the Sunshine Coast, and this will be my first port of call. I will venture south in early March and, Lorretta permiting, meet up with the family Harrop for a few weeks of preparation before the main event. Lorretta (Olympic Silver medalist, World Champion and World Cup winner) has recently given birth to a baby boy called Hayden Luke Jones and I know she was doing some light training right up to giving birth so it will be interesting to see if she is back at it now she has a family. I hope so because if she gets the bug back you would not be a fool to bet on seeing her in Beijing trying to go one better than last time. All change at the top  It has been all change at the BTA or BTF as it is now called. Will it make a difference? Only time will tell, but from my experience of working with the outgoing Board I can safely say that everyone of them worked and continues to work very hard for the benefit of our sport. This is not always thought to be the case by everyone, but then that&amp;rsquo;s politics. I have decided to step down as athlete representative for British Triathlon to concentrate on my aim of getting into the Olympic Team but I will be continuing with my role as athelete representative for the ITU and ETU albeit with help from Jessica Harrison and Kiwi Kris Gemmell. I think it is vital that Executive Boards have an athlete&amp;rsquo;s opinion on certain topics, after all the athletes have to be the most important people or sport does not work.  Showing off at Sandown  Next month at Sandown is the TCR Show. I have been going to this for several years now and love it. The show grows year on year and I think it is a must for all multi-sport athletes. With so much on offer, everyone in attendance cannot help but learn something from this superb weekend. The 220 awards dinner on the Saturday evening is always fun and with Graeme Obree as guest speaker this year it should prove an interesting evening.  I write this blog from a training camp in Spain a group of the British Team has come out to the mountains in the south to get in some quality riding. It has been a good camp and set most of the athletes up for a good February and spring in the UK. See you at TCR.]]></description></item></channel></rss>