This season has certainly had it’s ups and downs starting off in March where in my first race of the season I had an absolute nightmare when the day before the race my bike decided to break and I had to ride with only two gears the 54/11 or 42/11 before borrowing a spectators bike and finishing the bike off.
Then in April I felt like I was getting into some good form but disaster hit again and I had a big crash in a time trial. This was absolute hell for about 3 weeks, if there’s one thing it taught me it was don’t be such a tw*t in crap conditions.
After this I had a pretty decent run of results:
• 6th Tri Star Cannes
• 1st Marshman Middle Distance Triathlon (fastest bike and run)
• 5th National Sprint Championships
• 5th IMUK 70.3 (2nd fastest bike split)
• 12th European 5150 championships Liverpool 1h50.39
• 15th Antwerp 70.3 (12th Pro 3 hours 58)
• 15th Ironman 70.3 Wiesbaden European Championships
• 1st Ely Monster middle distance triathlon (3 hours 59)
• 8th Ironman Galway 70.3 (7th Pro)
• 5th Challenge Barcelona 8 hours 23 minutes 57 (11th fastest ever time by a Brit)
During this time I felt I was able to train consistently between races, recover well and it just went on from there really. Out of all the races above Antwerp 70.3 is definitely one race where I don’t feel as though I performed very well. I don’t know why but it was just one of them days where you feel like your operating at 95%. However saying that I still managed t do my fastest run where I averaged 5.57mpm for the run so every cloud and all!
The biggest achievement was definitely my last race of the season in Barcelona, it was a great experience and one which I really enjoyed. I also think I took a lot away from this race specifically in the tactics area such as patience which I think is a key aspect of doing well in Ironman racing.
So what’s next?
Over the winter I am going out to http://www.kineticpb.com/# to train. There is going to be a group of us over there including Paul Hawkins, Rob Brundish (he did 9.05 in Barcelona) and a few others plus who ever else I can rope into coming out. It’s going to be a sh*ts and giggles one big bootcamp. It should be an awesome experience where I fully intend on making the most out of it. If you are looking at going on a training camp next year I would definitely recommend it I went out there twice last year.
You will all laugh at this, well anybody that knows me will because there is going to be a group of us out at Kinetic we have made a few little rules to keep us organized and on time otherwise the plans going to go to shit so we have come up with the idea that in a 10 day cycle you can be late 2 times and then if you’re late a 3rd you do everyone’s washing up. This should make us all on time, well I’ll certainly soon learn not to be late. And if you are late to swimming you miss the lift to get there. Although this may sound ridiculous there is reason behind it and if were training as pros we have to make sure we act like it I mean you wouldn’t turn up to your job repeatedly late. I may be eating my words here in 3 weeks time but as Lou Holtz says “Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.”
A view looking at kinetic and the trails around the facility!
If you really want to see what Kinetic is like check the video out below it’s only about 3 minutes and you get to see what the local roads are like for cycling, the trails for running and the swimming pool.
On another note and I know this is a bit Cheeky but if anyone would be interested in sponsoring me to help out with expenses and costs please get in contact with via joeskipper@hotmail.co.uk it would be a massive help.
Thank you all for reading my blogs this year and I hope you enjoyed them. There were certainly some ups and downs and I’m sure next year will be pretty similar although I hope the ups will be much higher. But keep coming back for more updates from Kinetic where we will be letting you know what were up to and who’s being a little mincer and cracking!
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