<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Columns - Tri247</title><link>http://www.tri247.com/index.html</link><description>Latest columns on Tri247</description><item><title><![CDATA[David McNamee: 2012 awaits]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9500.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[World Under-23 silver medal winner David McNamee checks in for the first time in 2012.



So I hear there is a big race happening in August this year in  London... I would love to be part of it, but getting an entry is a difficult  task.  It is very much a VIP event of triathlon and when you are part of team  GB with the two Brownlee brothers ranked one and two in the world, that elusive invite just gets a lot harder.

Even without an invite to the big show, 2012 is shaping up to be my biggest year in the sport - it being my first year as a full time athlete  and my first year racing senior at World Championships. The season kicks off in Oz and then from there on out who knows what; each step will be dictated by how the previous one landed.

Now that it&#039;s January the season seems a much nearer  prospect. In October through to December you could tell yourself you have until next year for the races to begin, now it&#039;s January you know to the exact week how long it is till you next hear that starting pistol whilst standing on  that blue pontoon with a mixture of nerves, excitement and fear.

With that in mind I best go and slip on a pair of sneakers and hit the trails.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Joanna Carritt: Going really long]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9473.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Never one to shirk a challenge or the hard work needed in order to achieve it, Joanna Carritt has set herself a new target. Not content with Ironman, in early January she will be taking on the double iron-distance at the second Enduroman Lanzarote Festival of Triathlon (www.enduromanlanzarote.es).

The interesting additional challenge? Training for it while getting over a recent case of overtraining... Here is how she plans to do it.



Going really long...
Despite the fact that my partner Steven, the other half of EverydayTraining, coaches the reigning Enduroman Champion, preparations for my first double Ironman race is very much a voyage into the unknown. Even though I do have access to the secrets of Paul Thompson&#039;s ultra-distance triathlon success, the differences in our age, size, gender, athletic history and lifestyle &amp;ndash; not to mention specific personal strengths and attributes &amp;ndash; make the information as potentially harmful as it is useful. Embarking on my first real &amp;ldquo;very long&amp;rdquo; distance race&amp;hellip; off the back of three hard seasons of racing Ironman and recently an undeniable fall into the hole of overtraining&amp;hellip; has been described by not just a few as &amp;ldquo;madness&amp;rdquo;. Well, who can argue? Whilst it certainly presents a challenge it&#039;s also an opportunity to implement some new training ideas that I have been discussing with my coach.

Firstly, given the short time that I left myself to prepare, and my relatively recent &amp;lsquo;burnout&amp;rsquo; I am placing a fair amount of faith in the high volume of training that I have banked since signing up for my first Ironman in 2006, and our ability to monitor my response as I focus on BIG sessions over the next six weeks - without overdoing it and slipping back into the danger zone.

No matter how many Ironman races I&#039;ve trained for, there&#039;s no escaping the fact that the Double is a whole different level of endurance &amp;ndash; both physical and mental &amp;ndash; and the need to do some very big training days, during which one gets very tired. Without this challenge how can one be mentally prepared and learn to anticipate the needs that might arise on race day? What food works best? What clothing? How can I minimize discomfort on the bike/wetsuit/run shoes? What can I focus on to get me through this bad patch?

It&#039;s fortunate for me that from the very start of my &amp;lsquo;serious&amp;rsquo; racing career my training has been geared towards steady volume. I&#039;ve clocked a lot more hours than the average age-grouper between 2006 and 2010, and maintained an equivalently high training load through the two years since as a professional. 16 Ironman races, several halves and constant summertime/season have taken its toll, and this was manifest in my racing through the back half of 2011. It took long enough (and a DNF at Ironman Florida) for us to realize what was going on and really take steps to address the problem with three weeks off training and time spent re-assessing my training behaviours and beliefs. A somewhat frightening prospect with the biggest challenge yet looming just a couple of months over the horizon but I believe that I have the resources to meet this challenge and that situation has forced me to be smarter than my old ways of simply cranking out the hours to get there.

The starting point was to evaluate what I think I can handle at this point. Historically I have an average training week of 25 hours, with about 50-60% of that consisting of weeks with over 30 hours. Periods with very high volume interspersed with races over a 3-4 month period has proven detrimental &amp;ndash; however, my history has shown that I can sustain the 25-30 hour week for a long block and race well afterwards if allowed sufficient recovery time or taper. In this instance, a long taper is not an option &amp;ndash; so it&#039;s a question of taking that 25-30hr week and being smart with it. Historically I have been negligent of the need for recovery, until I get to a point where I&#039;m so bombed I have no option. Here, the plan for Feb 4th-5th is to have recovery periods interspersed in my week.

I do have the flexibility with my coaching work to include a big day in the middle of the week &amp;ndash; this enables me to structure my week around two high-volume blocks: Saturdays will be my longest ride (because I don&#039;t swim on Saturday mornings) followed by a short pace-oriented run. Sundays will be a short ride followed by a long run. At peak this should amount to 12 hours riding and 3.5 hours running over the weekend. I anticipate that Sunday&#039;s run at the end of this big weekend will be very, very challenging for me and as such the focus of that session will be how to get through it rather than pace or distance run. Mid-week will be a continuous swim-bike-run day, and as the race approaches and I become more familiar and confident with the long sessions, I&#039;ll look to include some Ironman intensity into this session. The other four days of the week will be very short training days with workouts focused on stability, flexibility and keeping my &amp;lsquo;top end&amp;rsquo; active in the pool. I will also include one full day off each week which is something that I have never done previously.

From 3rd January I will be based at La Santa in Lanzarote, which will enable me to get these long days (and nights!) done without fear of freezing or iced roads, or too many other distractions.

That&#039;s another advantage that I have over Enduro-Champ Paul T :-) ]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Iwan Thomas: Motorola's MOTOACTV]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9420.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Iwan was at the launch of the Motorola MOTOACTV hybrid GPS/music player device and he recorded some thoughts for our cameras. We&#039;re not too sure about his preferred music choices though - you&#039;ll have to listen closely to catch the reference!


]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Vicky Graves: doing the 'Dirty']]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9387.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Well, what a month, or more like what a weekend! I decided to do my long run on Saturday instead of riding and ride on Sunday, so all the lads went out as normal. 9.30am and the phone rings, I instantly knew that something had happened on the ride, and I was right, turned out my boyfriend&#039;s dad had clipped Phil&rsquo;s rear wheel while they were going at 30mph and come off, using his face as a brake along the road, knocking himself out and scaring everyone. Luckily Disco Dave, who&rsquo;s a doctor, was out with them and an ambulance was there in minutes. From what I hear it wasn&rsquo;t a pretty sight.

I jumped in the car and drove out to them to pick Ewan up along with his sister&#039;s and dad&rsquo;s bikes as they&rsquo;d gone in the ambulance, then spent the morning in A&amp;amp;E waiting for news. After a day in hospital and nearly two hours in surgery getting his face stitched up with too many stitches to count he was out, looking a bit sorry for himself! And to top it off, and what every cyclist worries about in a crash, is the fact that they cut his Assos jacket off him - never to be worn again! Hopefully he&rsquo;ll make a good recovery with some nice battle scars! So then Sunday came and with it the winds&hellip; All I&rsquo;ll say is that that was one hard ride!

So, on to happier things! Toward the beginning of November I did the &lsquo;Dirty Double&rsquo; up at Glenridding alongside Ullswater in the Lake District. The first day was a 15km trail race up and around Helvellyn and the second day was 14km back along the undulating lakeside path after a boat ride to the start. I enjoyed them both; the weather was great with sunshine both days and not a cloud to be seen on Sunday! My times were slower than those of 2008 but it was better than I&rsquo;ve felt in a while. Back in 2008 my time for both days were similar and I managed to do the same again this time: means I must still have some endurance, just not much speed left! It was a great weekend so a big thanks to Lakeland Trails for putting it on.

The rest of November seems to have flown by, just quietly training away, slowly getting fitter! Christmas will be here soon, and I hope we get some snow even though I know it will play havoc with training. It&rsquo;s good to do some different types of training; mountain biking and some good hard snow running! Not forgetting the hill reps and sledging!]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[David McNamee: Liverpool XC]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9376.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[For the first time in nine months I laced up a pair of spikes ready for a cross country race. I dived in at the deep end and lined up at the Liverpool XC which was a selection race for European Championships. It was nice being able to just drive to a race for once but I felt that something was missing with no bike bag in tow.

Despite having never raced in Liverpool, or in a cross country this big, there are a few things each race has in common no matter where they take place:  overbearing parents barking orders to their kids as if they were army recruits and then telling them exactly what they think of them as they race past trying their best. I think the most alarming comment heard was, &ldquo;I told you that you weren&rsquo;t going to win&rdquo;. Other delights include the general participant:portaloo ratio being in the region of 150:1 leading to massive queues of nervous athletes and all sorts of bargaining going on with the few smug people who have brought their own toilet rolls; that and the calls of &ldquo;you&#039;re catching them&rdquo; even though you have clearly just been dropped by them.

My race was rather average, I spent the first 400 metres watching people whizz past and away from me as if they were going for the mile record, by the end of the first lap of three I had passed at least six boys who had gone out a hero, died a death and were now lying by the wayside in the foetal position asking themselves where it had all gone wrong. I soldiered on picking up some places and even had a nice sprint finish just to ensure I crossed the line completely spent.

So, that was my first cross country race in nine months...
]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[David McNamee: November in England]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9337.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[A Scot spending his first November in England equals the first time in his triathlon career that he has taken to the bike at this time of the year with only bibshorts, a summer jersey and toe covers on. For me it&rsquo;s slightly surreal especially as the locals are there dressed as if it&#039;s winter and upset about the terrible wind which I refer to as a breeze - Scotland makes you tough.

Apart from becoming accustomed to the extra few degrees I have now discovered the skill of slowing down my speech so as to allow people to understand my Scottish accent and for me to stop using hand signals all the time.

Training wise there is nothing better than having new trails to run around/get lost on and for some bike routes to explore. The latest adventure involved running some of the famous &#039;3 Peaks&#039; route which ended up with all of us demonstrating our sheer lack of downhill running ability and waking up with various cuts and bruises the next morning.

There is one thing that Yorkshire has that reminds me of Scotland - the hills. Now if only I could find some snow somewhere.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[South of the Humber it's all foreign!]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9326.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[This year&rsquo;s GB Cross Tri Championships were held near Camberley, at Gibraltar Barracks, Surrey. Once I get south of the Humber I&rsquo;m in foreign territory but I&rsquo;ve finally mastered using my TomTom and it got me there without any major hiccups. The event was incorporated into the XT Festival organised by All About Triathlons so there was plenty going on, including guns going off, which added to the excitement, as the course is situated on an army training base. Usually I bump into a few mates who are racing the circuit so it&rsquo;s great to say Hi and catch up on the gossip.

The swim was 1.5km split into two laps. The last time I&rsquo;d raced that far was actually a year ago at the 2010 Champs but I survived plus the rocky lake bottom gave me added impetus to get smartly out! It was a nice sunny day which always makes the bike and run splits more fun. I&rsquo;d noticed after my ETU race in Hungary that I&rsquo;d picked up some small tears in both my tyres which meant they needed replacing. Freetown Sports in Hull are MTB specialists plus owner Rod is an active competitor himself which is a bonus, so I went in to see him cap in hand to enquire about some possible sponsorship. I was more than delighted when he gave me a pair of Panaracer Fire XC Pro tyres plus threw in a pair of Serfas Pro gloves for good measure! My Bell helmet courtesy of Danisco Agiculture fits fine, helped by the adjustable internal head band.

So I was well set up for the race and had a pretty uneventful ride, apart from having a flashgun go off in my face as I was trying to negotiate a nasty steep hillock. Being a photographer myself it was a great place for shots (see pic) and fortunately I wasn&rsquo;t unseated. I was also treated to some quite classy (!) swim shots and I have to congratulate the snapper on his detective skills, although:

	coming out last, and
	having my trade mark &#039;soup strainer&#039; does make identification somewhat easier!


I enjoy hilly bike splits and would have liked a few more climbs &ndash; anyway I managed to gain a few places on the bike but as usual lost them again on the run. Still, I plodded on and for once wasn&rsquo;t the Lanterne Rouge &ndash; just by one place. I was a bit embarrassed as Pete Norman who can give me quite a few years beat me by 22 minutes plus deservedly won his AG. I&rsquo;d have done a bit better if I&rsquo;d not had my mech lock up twice and it transpires I need a new granny ring so that&rsquo;s something Freetown Sports will be fixing  shortly.

I got back into T2 just in time for the medal presentation and was delighted to win gold, with Sarah Springman and Zara Hyde-Peters both on hand to proffer their congratulations and act as stabilisers as the podium was a series of chunks of timber of varying heights and not that easy to balance on &ndash; in my case anyway.  Both ladies are great guys &ndash; loads of fun, plus of course Sarah is ITU Vice &ndash; President, no bad thing at all for British Triathlon. There were 179 finishers which was an excellent turn out for this GB Championship cross tri event, much more than the 2010 one, so a good sign for this demanding form of triathlon.

After that it was a case of swilling off myself and my Giant Anthem, loading up my car and heading back up north &ndash; to God&rsquo;s County.

Well, the clocks are back and the dull dark days are with us. Black gear may be cool at a disco but why bikers and runners insist on wearing it for winter training is beyond me.It&rsquo;s just crazy. I wear a Hi-Viz jacket most of the time.

It may not be cool - but I&rsquo;m not ready to die just yet.



Photos courtesy of SussexSportsPhotography.com]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[I've had better pasta in Hull...]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9274.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[We triathletes are well catered for in terms of events to compete in as we age (hopefully gracefully) but I don&rsquo;t think this applies to all sports. The World Masters Games is an organisation which puts on a bewildering array of sports ranging from tiddlewinks to weightlifting. Anyone over 35 can take part and the venues are all over the globe, plus there&rsquo;s a very good website and once on the mailing list you get regular updates. This year the European Master&rsquo;s was held in Italy at Lignano Sabbiadoro, about 80 minutes drive north of Venice on the Italian Riviera. I saw that triathlon was a featured sport so decided to have a bash. Given the topography was pretty flat it wasn&rsquo;t going to be an ideal course for JSSV plus it was just supersprint distance, again not really my thing but there&rsquo;s worse places to race...

The organisation was good &ndash; a list of hotels was provided plus the organisers laid on a shuttle bus service from the airport to the hotel, something the ETU cross tri event in Hungary could have benefitted from!

I&rsquo;d been attending a conference at the Nottingham University School of Agriculture which is just a stone&rsquo;s throw from East Midlands Airport and very handily was my point of departure. The flight went well and I duly arrived in Venice, was collected and got to my hotel by around 11pm along with some of the Danish handball team so I had chance to practice my Danish. As it happened my hotel was ten minutes bike ride from the event HQ, which was where registration took place, although the actual race venue was 15 minutes north of my hotel and situated in a large seaside sports facility. This sports facility housed a lot of the athletes and was linked to the race HQ by a very frequent free shuttle bus service, a useful facility given the games ran from 10th-20th Sept and had over 4,000 competitors taking part in 20 different sports. In addition to sport, an extensive cultural programme was also laid on. Incidentally, a 90-year old Italian track and field athlete and 1948 Olympian was due to compete but sadly had to withdraw through illness.

I had allowed myself a couple of days to acclimatise as the daytime temperature was pushing 30&amp;deg;C. The Masters concept is very popular with Eastern Europeans judging by the different languages I could hear being spoken as I sat eating my dinner in various local restaurants. I have to say though that the pasta disappointed me &ndash; I have eaten far better in Hull!!

It transpired that only closed tribars were allowed &ndash; fortunately I have removable bars on my trusty Giant Composite 1 so off they came. Given that ruling, time trial/triathlon bikes with bar-end shifters would be illegal &ndash; this is something future competitors need to be mindful of. 



Race day dawned, sunny and warm  and I packed my backpack and headed off for the 10.00am start. There were only 74 entrants, 90% being men and most of them Italian. That number for an international event is very disappointing, maybe due to lack of promotion as presumably it&rsquo;s not an ETU event. Despite the temperature wetsuits were allowed which suited me down to the ground, although we were kept waiting for quite a while in the start pen and hence things started to get a bit sticky. My swim went OK and as I &#039;charged&#039; into T1 one of the marshalls willed me on with those immortal words, &ldquo;last but not least!&rdquo;.  Nothing new for JSSV &ndash; I&rsquo;ve broad shoulders!

The bike split was a number of laps up and down the &#039;prom&#039; &ndash; dead flat and franky far too boring for me. The run &ndash; also 95% dead flat - was within the sports complex. My heel was OK but I didn&rsquo;t go mad as I was mindful that the GB off-road championships were not far off and I wanted to do well in that event. The results were duly posted and I was fourth in my AG - the worst place to finish and the same as in Visegrad at the ETU Cross Tri. Still, I finished injury free so I was relieved about that, plus I got a nice commemorative logoed backpack, in a nice shade of royal blue.

For those interested, the next World Master&rsquo;s Games will be held in Turin, Italy in August 2013. Let&rsquo;s hope the pasta&rsquo;s better there...
]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[David McNamee: Winter training- two weeks in!]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9234.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[I don&rsquo;t think you can ever get use to trying to wake your body back up after your post season break.  In a matter of weeks it has went from being at its peak of physical abilities to forcing you to sit with your head between your knees, wondering how the hell did I get into this state all after a 20 minute steady run - the same run that you probably wouldn&rsquo;t even bother tying up your shoe laces for a few weeks earlier it would be that easy to do.

After the initial few days things settle down, you know you aren&rsquo;t the same athlete you were the previous month and won&rsquo;t be again for a while but after you accept this things become a lot easier.  The plus side though is that doing all steady training is acceptable and even encouraged and as of yet there has been no run track in sight. 

So here I am now two weeks back in, thankfully a 20 minute jog is no longer an issue however anything above steady is still a very dangerous game to play, small steps.  I know very soon I will get to a session where the word &#039;fast&#039; or &#039;hard&#039; will appear- my only hope is that I&rsquo;m not the only person suffering, bent over, gasping for breath wondering where did  the athlete from just a month ago suddenly disappear to.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[One year on: life with baby Charlie]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_9209.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[This time last year I was training, as best I could with the legs I had for my second last race of the year, Ibiza ITU 2010 long course triathlon. I hobbled round that race and somehow managed to win! I hadn&#039;t really thought that it would be my last race for more than a year!!

I was also meant to race Ironman Cozumel at the beginning of November 2010 but finding out I was pregnant two days before the race, for me was a simple decision not to start.

In 2011 I watched many, many races instead! I enjoyed watching them. It was so different as I had never watched races before! Many people thought I would find it hard to watch but actually I found it totally fine, I was happy to be growing our little baby and giving my body the rest it needed. My belief that I would come back to race once the baby was out and I got back to fitness also kept me happy.

At 70.3 UK I actually helped Whit Raymond and Emma Jenkinson commentate but this is me waiting at the finish line to see if it was going to be Stephen to make it a British win, or if it was going to be a Spanish win. Unfortunately for Stephen, it was a Spanish win.

Now, baby Charlie is 10 weeks old! We think he is the most gorgeous little baby we have ever seen!! He is a smiley and happy little boy and getting so strong! He might be handsome like Stephen but he doesn&#039;t seem to have inherited Stephen&rsquo;s addiction to TV! Charlie likes to be really busy, like me! He likes to see as much as possible, he loves to watch the squad swim in the mornings and he loves to keep moving. He hates it when we stop moving. Charlie is learning about the travelling lives we lead, he has already used his passport three times!

Although giving birth was no fun and quite traumatising, I have really forgotten most of the gory details! Now, life for me is even busier than before as I began training again about five weeks ago. My journey back to fitness has begun! I can&#039;t just walk out the door and train when I want, Charlie dictates my day, but within my day I am able to train with the help of Stephen. Stephen is a great dad! He loves his little boy and loves looking after him when I go out.

I had only been out the water for five weeks but the swimming I was doing during my pregnancy was very soft so I am only just beginning to get some strength back now. Riding seemed easier to get back into, although of course I have some way to go till I am strong for racing!

Running felt the most strange. I suppose six months of no running would do that! I was so excited to get back running but on my first run I felt like my body had been filled with sand, it is getting easier now though.

I really beleive that I will be back racing in 2012. My role model, Sonja Tajsich is continuing to prove that having a baby and getting back to racing at the top is possible with her seventh place at Hawaii last week, alongside her three Ironman titles since having her baby. I will be working hard at my fitness these next months, seeing my pregnant tummy dissappear and getting a fit strong body back all while enjoying life with our lovely baby Charlie.

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