Training Articles

From making over your mountain bike to creating an isotonic drink from things you already had in your fridge, Tom Fordyce explains how to race without breaking the bank

Tom Fordyce

Former Team GB coach Bill Black on why you should start stepping up the intensity - and how to do it.

Bill Black
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 7 February 2009

Bill Black
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 3 January 2009

Former Team GB coach Bill Black on training for your first triathlon and setting goals for the new year

Bill Black
guardian.co.uk
Sunday December 7 2008

Bill Black
Sunday 9 November 2008
The Guardian

Nothing improves running more than … running. This is the training principle of ‘specificity’ and it’s something that we have mentioned more than a few times in articles about training on Tri247. However, this being the case, the run is the third sport in a triathlon and you will be far from fresh when you start. We now have to mention specificity again, as running off a bike is something that is very specific to the sport.

With the start of the triathlon season proper only a couple of weeks away, most of you will have been working hard during the winter months and have your physical preparation well under way, but have you thought about your mental preparation? This article is the first in a series on the ‘mental’ aspects of triathlon competition from Jeremy Lazarus, High-Performance Sports Coach, and a Certified Master Trainer and Master Practitioner of NLP.

The start of a new sporting career means it's also time to start learning some new skills.

In the UK the majority of triathlons involve a pool swim and most of these are sprint distance or shorter, so the swim distance is usually between 400m and 750m. Apart from the obvious, the overriding difference between pool and open water triathlons is the fact that in a pool triathlon it is more than likely you won’t know where you finished until the results are published. In effect, you are racing yourself, rather than anyone else who might happen to be in the pool with you.

Bill Black, the former GB triathlon coach, explains how to best prepare for your first triathlon.

Bill Black
Thursday March 13 2008
guardian.co.uk

So, you've signed up for your first triathlon. It might be a huge event like London in August, or it might be a smaller event that's only three months away. Either way, there are several things you can do to improve your enjoyment of the race - and your time.

Set yourself a realistic objective

Probably one of the few areas in triathlon that strikes fear (and it’s actually a fear of the unknown) into newcomers and novices is open water swimming. I even know of elite triathletes who are scared at racing in open water. As a coach whose home town is Liverpool, Bill Black thinks that the well known Scouser phrase is the key – “Hey, hey, calm down, calm down!” But, how do you “calm down”?