I recently attended the latest of three GE Great Britain Paratriathlon Performance Squad training weekends held at Loughborough University.

These weekends are intended for athletes selected onto the Podium and Affiliate squads to come together as one big team. It is also used as an opportuniry for potential new athletes to join us from time-to-time so they can find out more about Paratriathlon.

So what do we get up to on these weekends? There are obviously a good mixture of training sessions delivered by some of the top coaches in the country. There are also usually some informative lectures/discussions on things like nutrition, sports psychology, aclimatisation etc. It can also be a good chance to try out new things, swap ideas with other athletes or try and solve any minor issues.

On this occassion, Liam joined Jill and myself in Loughborough, a pleasure previously shared with other guides such as Matt and Luke. This was a chance to spend some qaulity time with Liam ahead of the World Triathlon championships on September 9th in Beijing.

On Saturday we got in some great training starting with some (fairly rough!) open water swim practise at Watermead country park. This was followed up with a track running session later in the day comprising of 5 X 1km at race pace, although it might have been a little quicker…

We also had a feedback session to complete. This involved some self analysis looking at what we think we are good at currently and where we might need to improve in the future, especially for anyone serious about getting to the Rio Paralympics in 2016! I have a fairly clear idea about what I need to do better, it’s just doing it that is the issue! We also had the chance to give some, hopefully contructive, feedback about the way in which the squad runs and the support recieved from British Triathlon.

Sunday saw us took a short ride to a nearby moter racing circuit where we completed several brisk laps interspersed with some bike to run transition practise. This all went pretty well although the legs felt a bit sore from the previous afternoon’s track session. A nice gentle ride back to Link hotel for a spot of lunch to refuel the body and a bit of down time followed. To finish with we had another swim session but this time in the 50m university pool. An hour or so later we had covered a couple of kilometres with a main set of 200m efforts with only limited rest. Nice.

Usually we complete at least one strength and conditioning session, sometimes a long bike ride or other sessions so this was fairly easy weekend in terms of training volume.

Probably the most important part of the weekend for me was spending time with Liam. He is a busy chap, always on the go. If he isn’t working he is racing or doing something else! Having the time to actually practise the little things, tweek bike positions and try out a few new ideas is so important in trying to develop a partnership between athlete and guide…each of the three disiplines are pretty technical but more on this another time.

So there you have it, another good weekends training completed as part of the GB Paratriathlon Team.

Iain