We met Natalie last week, where she introduced us to her life within triathlon and personal goal to break into elite competition. Follow the ins and outs of her training regime as we join her on her journey...

I have many ideas of what I want to say in this month’s blog but was struggling to think of how to write it down.  

After a swim set I have just done, it seems easier. To sum this session up into three words it would be Awesome, Tough, Fun.  I do a lot of my training on my own as I am coached online through Training Peaks and emails with my coach. I am not going to lie, it's sometimes tough to go out on those hard interval sessions or just to push yourself that little bit harder without having others around you (usually who you are chasing or want to beat) and a coach telling you what you are doing wrong.

However sessions like the swim I just mentioned make you realise it is doable and you can push hard even if alone - you just have to be determined to chase the clock instead! That is exactly what I was doing swimming my fastest ever 50's in training and maintaining them, the 60 seconds rest interval (which I thought was quite a lot) soon felt like it was only 10 seconds,  but I maintained the time and loved the pain and burn of a great session which was pushing me hard.  

Now I feel on top of the world, I love the high you get from a great session but you have to also take this with the low of a bad session and recently, I have been finding swimming tough.  Hard to maintain the times which before I found easy and unable to put right was I was doing wrong. I changed some aspects of my stroke last year so sometimes I slip back to old habits.  It's the great sessions though that seem to make you forget about the bad and give you the confidence to know that you can do it and you can push further than what you thought you could.  I guess its true the saying that the mind gives in long before your body!

Along with the swimming, my cycling and running have been going very well, obviously with some days where my body doesn't want to move but I seem to be mastering the art of doing the easy sessions EASY and the hard sessions HARD, meaning that when I am going hard I seem to be doing so much better because I am more recovered.  So many people, myself included, go too hard on the easy sessions which means your body is not getting the active recovery it needs. 

I find I am learning all the time about every aspect of the sport, there is so much involved not just going out and blasting sessions.  There are the techniques, the planning and goal setting (everyone should have goals, even if that may be to compete in your first triathlon), doing the training that suits you, nutrition and much more that I can’t think of right now.

This brings me on to the next area I have recently been working on - my nutrition. I am not on a particular diet but sometimes find it hard to eat enough to fuel my training!  I have struggled with this in the past, particularly before Christmas where I was losing weight which I didn't want to be losing.  Now my plan is to not only eat three wholesome meals a day (which I was doing before anyway) but to make sure I am snaking every couple of hours and having something high in protein immediately after training as protein is important for recovery.  I eat lots of meat, fruit, veg and healthy stuff but I also eat biscuits, chocolate, cake and generally anything I fancy to get the calories in as I have learnt your body can only cope with so much if you're in a constant calorie deficit.

Another thing I have been doing recently is chatting with my coach about my race plan which I have now pretty much finalised. I have realised that I need to focus on the important races.  There are so many great and fun sounding races out there that it makes you want to do everything, which could involve racing every weekend!  I did quite a lot last year racing most weekends between June-August and have decided this year I am going to focus more on important ones.  The British Elite Super Series of Blenheim, London and Liverpool are a big focus, the British Elite Duathlon, the European and World Standard distance age group Triathlons, the European and World Aquathlons, the British Age group Sprint champs and the Dambuster (if there are any places left). There may also be a possibility of racing in 1-2 Continental cup races, I just need to apply and see if I get a start.  This is the bulk of my season and I am doing some local cycling events too.  

It feels good to know it is all sorted and I am even looking forward to a late warm weather training camp in May - it’s always nice to get away and train somewhere different with no other stresses. 10 days of eat, sleep, train, repeat -  I love that cycle!

I hope you've enjoyed finding out what I've been doing and how I am preparing for the season. In my next blog you will have some more about how my training is going and a little bit on racing too...

Natalie's next blog post will be on Wednesday 8th April. Read her previous post here.