The London Marathon has been ticked off – and what a debut it was as he finished 14th against arguably the best men’s field ever assembled – but how will it all feed into Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee‘s return to swim, bike and run?
Plans for the rest of 2025 are yet to be announced but what is clear is full commitment to the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
Chatting to TRI247 in the aftermath of London, while his legs were still a little sore after the 26.2 miles, Alex feels the long-term gains will prove to be significant – both physically and mentally.
All about self-improvement
He told us: “I think it’s important that you’re curious at the start of a cycle to be able to improve.
“I’m not seeing it just as a journey for the next four years, but a journey to LA and making sure that it’s fresh and exciting, because I’m definitely of the thinking that I can’t do the same thing for the next four years and expect the same result.
“The sport will have evolved by then. People get better. Hopefully I get a little bit better as well.
“But how I do that I think is unique to each person and I think the important thing for me was that I have an opportunity now to work on my run, when for the last five years it’s been all about swimming and biking – with running about maintenance more than anything.
“So to be able to do that and to have the opportunity also to do some running races, particularly the London Marathon, has been pretty incredible.”
Learning process
We spoke to Alex in more detail about the whole experience here on our sister site RUN247 – and he revealed he’d never been more emotional on a start line, with his heart rate at 135bpm at that point!
When asked what else made it so different to triathlon, he explained: “You think the physiological effect of swim, bike and run over an hour and 45 will be very similar to racing a marathon over two hours, 10 minutes or so.
“But it wasn’t at all. In the first 100 metres of a triathlon race, those first few strokes of the swim you absolutely max out and you are really dipping over and under your VO2 efforts. So for me to stay at a steady state in the marathon was definitely something which I probably didn’t appreciate initially.
“It’s all been a learning curve. And I definitely think that if I had another chance to do a marathon block, I’d be able to apply it so much better than I have in this one, which is exciting.
“The whole point of this block was to make mistakes in a way, to learn from them, to be excited about that and to be quite critical as well. So to have those kind of moments where you have a little bit of a knockback or a little bit of a setback, I think they were opportunities that we encouraged because we didn’t want to kind of go through this and it be really smooth.
“So I think that was the exciting thing and definitely interesting.
‘Comfortable with the unknown’
“In triathlon I’ll be standing on the start line having trained very specifically for the demands of an individual course and as a result would be feeling really confident as in I’ve experienced this part of the race, this kind of effort before. So I know what I can do and what I’m capable of.
“So it was very different to then to stand on a start line probably a little bit more compromised – and you also never know what the marathon gods are going to provide for you. That was definitely something which I had to get used to and had to be comfortable with and at peace with.
“And that’s something which may happen to me in the future within triathlon and I’ve got to be comfortable with that as well.”
The whole marathon project has been done under the watchful eye of Alex’s long-term and award-winning coach Adam Elliott, with Yee adding: “I think as much as this is a growing journey for me, I believe it was for him as well. And he’s definitely been very curious, very open to learning from different people.
“He’s done that within the swimming and the bike and it was now an opportunity to do that within the run. He’s somebody who opens his doors when he doesn’t know the answer to something. He’ll ask for help, he’ll ask for advice to make sense of me and my physiology and how that relates to marathon running instead of triathlon.
“I’ve definitely seen him grow as a coach as well throughout this journey, which I think is really good. And yeah, I think we’re both on a similar journey and hopefully that can lead us and a few other athletes within Loughborough to good things in the next few years.”
One step at a time towards LA
Elliott will be instrumental with whatever comes next for the Olympic champion, with Yee adding: “I’m going to be sitting down soon with Adam and kind of map out the year a little bit more. I very much feel like a person who needs purpose and drive to be able to keep going and keep motivated.
“And hopefully that will give me that kind of structure. The one thing I will say is there’ll definitely be more swimming and bike over the next few weeks – I imagine we’ll ramp up back to a fairly normal volume, which I think is going to be great. It’s obviously been a challenge losing a little bit of fitness throughout the swim and the bike, but you know you’re making good progress within your run.
“And for me, LA is like every other Olympic Games. It’s about, first of all, getting to the start line. And like every start line I’ve stood on at the Olympics, it’s about optimising what I have on the day and leaving no stone unturned when I get to that point.
“And if I’m able to do that, cross the finish line and say I’ve given 100% with everything I’ve done, then I can lay my head on my pillow and be proud. I’d love to emulate Paris and I’d love to be in the talking to be competitive but four years is a long time, so I’m just going to work as best I can to get to that point.”
And while he’s looking forward to returning to that swim, bike, run balance, he is also proud to have been one of a number of triathletes who this year have shown they can excel at the elite end of a single sport too.
He said: “You’ve seen all those times at IRONMAN Texas recently [Kat Matthews and Cam Wurf among those setting new records] and all of those times are pretty incredible to have as an individual athlete, let alone a multi disciplined one.
“So I think it’s been great to show that to a wider world. Not just me with London either – Hayden [Wilde] has done that over 10 miles and 10K this year, Cassandre [Beaugrand] with that French 5K record on the road and even my girlfriend Liv racing to a pretty good level at cross country over the winter.
“I think people are excited about showing how good a sport we actually are.
“Triathlon is also a great family. We all appreciate each other and how hard we work even though we race each other. So I’m looking forward to that reintegration into the training group and sharing start lines again with everyone.”
