Triathlon book reviews!

As I told you a few weeks ago - come on, pay attention! - I ordered a few triathlon, running and cycling related books from Amazon. These arrived, quick and cheap, last week, and so I hungrily devoured the rest of the book I was reading in order to get on with these. Which I’m flying through. So. I thought I’d share my thoughts on the first: I'm Here To Win, by Chris McCormack.

For those who don’t know, Chris McCormack - known to everyone in triathlon as Macca - is a bold, brash Aussie who’s one of the most successful triathletes of all time. As well as lots of wins at short course stuff, he stepped up and won loads of Ironman races, including the World Championship in Kona in 2007 and 2010. 

This book is part memoir, part training aid and the majority is based on what Macca calls his ‘masterpiece’ - winning Kona in 2010 when nobody gave him a snowball’s chance in a Hawaiian lava field of winning. In I’m Here To Win, he explains how.

Now, I love triathlon and Ironman, so I enjoyed reading this book, but I’m not sure who else would. The other problem is I love triathlon and Ironman, so I already knew a lot of this stuff. There are some great tips in here for beginner triathletes, weekend warriors and those reaching the top of the sport, but nothing you’d not find in more detail in a decent training book.

Macca is famous for his mind games and trash talk and he explains why he does this, thow he does it and the effects it has. This part is interesting but only really applicable if you’re right at the top of the tree and need to out-psyche another athlete who’s on a similar level. For 99.9% of triathletes, this isn’t the case. I’ve a couple of friends who are starting to get into triathlon - it doesn’t matter what mind games they employ in their first season, I’ll thrash them because I’ve a couple of years more experience and training than them. Equally, I could do an amazing job getting into the minds of those who win races locally, but they’ll still beat me because they’re significantly better! So, that’s why I’m not sure who the audience for this book is meant to be.

For what it’s worth tho, I did enjoy it and have been inspired to think a bit more critically and analytically about my strengths and weaknesses and how to race.

Anyway, enough book corner. Time to catch you up on my training. The weekend was supposed to be the end of the really tough stuff - ha, little did I know. Sunday was an easy day with a spot of stretching in the morning and a swim session in the evening - 3,150 metres in total most of which were pretty steady.

Monday morning, I devised an awesome fun sprint workout. I’d noticed an empty parking area next to a brand new building just around the corner from my apartment. It’s shaded and the buildings around it give it great shelter meaning you can get away with a cheeky swig of water here and there without being seen (still Ramadan here, remember!). The parking lot has five parking bays marked length ways so i did some shuttle runs starting with jogging to first line, sprinting back, jogging to second line, sprinting back...etc etc...Mixed that in with some timed shuttles: live 5, back, 4, back, 3 back...trying to beat my time each go. The car park also has an underground section with a steep slope each side so I did some jogs down the slopes and sprints back up the other side.

I covered around 5km in 45 minutes in total - not bad for sprint work with some good rests in there. More importantly, had a lot of fun doing it. These sessions, what I have termed ‘quality’ sessions will become more and more frequent now as I trust in the endurance I’ve built up and try to add some power, technique and speed. I love being creative with these session too - a lot of fun.

In the evening, it was to the gym for 70 minutes of hill simulations on the ergo static bike. How do you simulate a hill? Well, effectively, all a hill is is extra resistance meaning you have to push harder on the pedals to lift your weight up the hill - cycling into a wind or trying to push a big gear is much the same. Therefore, I did some easy spins mixed with 3, 5, 8 and 10 minute long efforts with the resistance cranked right up to full. Looking forward to riding 140k back in North Wales on Thursday to test this hill riding theory out on some real rollers!

And today’s training? Ah, that’s for tomorrow’s blog!

So, 26 days and counting. Nervous but confident (at least was confident until earlier today when an experienced IM racer who trained on the IM wales course named it the hardest IM race out there!).