WhittleFit Blog

The 3 Secrets Of Successful Endurance Athletes

If I asked you the three things which make a successful endurance athlete, what would you say? For me, it's less about talent, genetics and fitness, and much more about these three surprising characteristics…

Success means different things to different people, and success stories come in all shapes and sizes. Over the years, I've been privileged to work with many very successful endurance athletes.

My successful clients range from elite triathletes qualifying for World Championship races and racing in GB kit, to first-timers getting fit for the first time and completing distances they once thought utterly impossible. A lifetime PB is as much of a success as overcoming illness or inspiring your family to be more active.

#Operation PB: Ironman Regensburg Race Report 2010

I'm currently coming to the end of a particularly hard training week in the run up to #OperationPB (aka Ironman Frankfurt in 8 weeks time). To keep my motivation up I dug into the archives to find the race report for my 2nd Ironman race, Ironman Regensburg, where I set my current personal best time. Here it is, I hope you enjoy it!

Ironman Regensburg was my ‘A’ race of the 2010 season, I did a few other smaller races this year but this one was always going to be my focus. In the months running up to the race, training was going well, I had some good results in the triathlons I had entered and everything was looking good for a decent Ironman race. Something had to go wrong!

We decided to drive over to Germany, the “we” being myself, my wife Sarah, Jamie and his wife Lauren. We took the ferry to Dunkerque, then drove down to Koblenz in northern Germany for an overnight stopover. The following day we drove down to Bavaria, to the lovely picturesque city of Regensburg, our hotel was 5-10 minutes outside of the city but perfectly adequate for our needs.

We had a few days chilling out, going to the pasta party (slightly disappointing), checking out the expo, doing a recce of the swim, and finally racking our bikes and putting our bags into transition. And that was that, all done, all that was left was to get our heads down and mentally prepare for the race.

Coaching feedback from 1-2-1 swim coached session

I received some great feedback this evening from a 1-2-1 swim coached session that I did this morning. It was so positive, I just had to share it with you!

Evening Mark,

Just a quick email to say thanks for the session today. Genuinely felt huge improvements in that small amount of time. Worth every penny (that I have not yet spent!).

But really appreciated the way you approached the session and my rather lack of fitness and technique. I have had a session a couple of years ago with another coach and left the session completely despondent and disheartened, but today I left thoroughly inspired and motivated so thank you.

Kind regards,

Tom

It's always nice to receive unexpected emails like this, many thanks Tom! Here's to improving your swim even more and getting you more efficient and ultimately faster in the water!

Do You Need To Learn More, Or Do More To Improve Endurance?

When you were new to this sport, what did you think you needed to do before you could get going? Read, ask, listen, learn and gain knowledge?

What if I told you that knowledge is great, but actually getting out there and putting the practice in is even more valuable?

You might be surprised to hear me - a coach - say such a thing. After all, I'm in the business of imparting knowledge about training, racing, recovering and nutrition for endurance sport.

#Operation PB: Ironman Austria Race Report 2009

I'm currently training hard for #OperationPB aka Ironman Frankfurt in July. With that in mind I thought I would revisit the race report for my 1st Ironman for inspiration. For those of your interested, here goes!

So where do I start? Let’s try at the beginning. Why did I decide to do an Ironman? Well, last year the plan was to do the run part of an Ironman as a relay with a couple of club mates, but when push came to shove I decided I didn’t want to go all the way across Europe just to do a marathon when in fact I could possibly do the whole thing. What was I thinking?

So, long story short, my mate (Chris Tasker) and I decided to sign up for Ironman Austria 2009, Chris had already done Ironman Lanzarote twice (dubbed the hardest Ironman of the all) so I felt good knowing I could rely on his previous Ironman experience. After signing up we had 12 months to train, it seemed like an age away, needless to say the time flew by, interspersed with a few trials and tribulations along the way to test us (more on that later).

It was now December 2008 and I decided I needed a coach to help me on my Ironman journey so contacted Neill Gowans (a coach from our club) for some help. He’d already done Ironman Austria and was a respected coach in our club so seemed the perfect candidate (and he was free!). Many questions and emails later Neill took me on and so started 6 months of Ironman training. Ironman Top tip number one, get yourself a coach, they do the thinking for you, so you can just concentrate on the training and the race.

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