Aspirations; What's your pot of gold?

Quick recap: This blog aims to connect my day job working for Teach First with my life as a Triathlete. The teachers I work with create 3 goals; Access, Aspiration and Achievement and create a backward plan to achieve these goals. This post takes a closer look at “Aspiration” and the plan to achieve these.

I will specifically look at my aspirations in relation to last year, the 2012 season, rather than larger life aspirations etc. (save that for a rainy day!) and 2013 season as I think it will be better to be reflective, looking at what I have done rather than what I am going to do. I will then explain how I planned backwards from the main races.

This was last year’s calendar. 

On it were four main races

1) World Duathlon Championships, Nance, France (Sept 2012)

2) World Triathlon Championships, Auckland New Zealand (Oct 2012)

3) Dambuster Duathlon, qualification race for World Duathlon  (March 2012)

4) Dambuster Triathlon, qualification for World Triathlon Championships (June 2012)

I put this calendar on my bedroom wall in October 2011, it provided a real focus for the year. All the other races and the training were planned around these 4 races, in an effort to achieve the best results at these races.

Being new to triathlon, having switched from being purely a runner (and having moved from London to Leeds in Sept 2011) I needed some expert help. My philosophy on this was and still is to seek out expertise from a wide range of sources. At Teach First we have 5 values, one of which is collaboration, which really rings true here, there is no way I could create and carry out my plan leading up to the 4 main races without the wide range of help I received.

So I had my main races: 2 qualification races in the early part of the season (March and June) and 2 championships at the end of the season (Sept and Oct). I worked backwards from these key dates with the main considerations being:

-What are the key skills/demands of these races?
How much time do I have for training?
What are my main weaknesses?

From this I worked out a training schedule. The key components being:

- Consistency; finding the quantity and quality of training I could repeat day after day, week after week.

- Progress; building the training up in a cycle of 2 weeks hard, 1 week easier and  repeat so it looks a bit like this:

Fun; without which my schedule could become a drag and a bit dull. So I kept finding ways to mix it up, this normally involved replacing a hard training session with a race or changing locations of training, meaning i visited different beautiful locations around Yorkshire and further afield.

    
   It is great that lots of you out there are planning your races for 2013, I too am deciding what to enter, so many tempting options! Though best piece of advice i got was "You can get distracted and do lots of races and be average or concentrate on a few and do well". 

A special mention to my friend, Susannah who has entered her first triathlon in Gloucester. I am no expert at all but when people ask me “I have entered race x, what should I do? My advice would be;   

1)    Put it in the diary and work backwards

2)   How many weeks do you have?

3)   What can you do currently (how far/fast can you run/bike/swim?)

4)   Work out a plan from current fitness/skill level to where you need to be on race day.

5)   Seek out help from experts-find a club/group of friends

This week has been snowy, which makes for fun, exciting training/racing (& lots of thermals!)

Good luck with planning your races and training!

Analysing the Good the Bad and the Ugly!

“If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.”

ACCESS:  What barriers do you need to break down in order to achieve success now and in the future?   What is holding me back from running, biking and swimming faster?  Technique?  Speed? Strength?   The answer to the question above “What is a barrier to running, swimming and cycling faster” seems endless. I will use Simon’s 3 categories (see here for Simon’s blog and some great articles) Training -          Is my technique in all 3 disciplines allowing me to be the most efficient?               -           Do I have access to the right equipment/environment?      -    Do I have access to appropriate training groups/buddies      -    Is my training sustainable without getting injured/burnt out? Recovery -Do I get enough sleep?                                                                                          Do I have enough time between training sessions?                                                     Do I feel energised by the next training session or am I still feeling tired for the last session? Nutrition - Do I eat the right foods at the right times? So a lot to think about! I freely admit I can improve on all of the above, which feels great as it means I know if have lots of room for improvement. The potential gains are huge! After the World Triathlon Championships in Auckland, I started thinking about 2013 and how I was going to improve and I knew whilst working full time increasing the amount of training I do is restricted. Also, knowing my body and how much training I can handle I realised that there was a limited amount of growth in training quantity.  So the focus needed to be on Quality. Charlie Spedding outlines this brilliantly in his book “From last to First” (Charlie was the last British man to achieve a marathon Olympic medal, bronze in LA). Chapter 6 “The beer drinkers guide to sports psychology” includes some gems…  “For years I assumed that my failure to run better was down to a combination of injuries and not training hard enough; but I started to wonder if it was my own self-image that was holding me back…. I picked up my pen and wrote ‘change my mind’….i had an attitude that made me diligent in my training; it wasn’t the same thing as having an attitude that would make me successful in my running. I needed to do, say and think things in a better and different way… I picked up my pen and under the heading of ‘what do I want’ I wrote ‘I want to feel absolutely fantastic’…how? I realised I had to change my vocabulary, if I changed my vocabulary, I could change the thoughts in my head. When I changed my thoughts in my head, I would change my actions. When I changed my actions I would get different results. So I wrote ‘think differently’ and underneath ‘improve my vocabulary= run faster’. A key quote from Charlie that stands out for me is “I needed to do, say and think things in a better and different way”. I have realised better and different doesn’t mean “more” but an emphasis on SMART training. For me this means improving my technique (You would think that in 21 years of playing sport I would have grasped this sooner. Some of us are just slow learners!) Therefore for all 3 disciplines; bike, swim and run I needed to find out      1.     What my technique was currently like (I found this out through video) 2.    Analyse the videos with help of coaches to see how efficient the technique was and how it could be improved. 3.    Create a program designed to improve the technique. I did this with all 3 disciplines but I will take swimming as the example: The main issue: I am not using my arms to best effect, the photo shows my elbow being far too low so the power I am getting isn’t optimal. How to get better: I could write a huge paragraph here! Essentially I am doing lots and lots of drills in an effort to use my arms in a more effective manner. Swimming drills exaggerate one aspect of the technique so you become more conscious of the right motion and it becomes part of your natural stroke. Practice, practice, practice is key. This process has taught me that the only way to improve is to really stop and look at what is actually happening and create a schedule based on your own specific needs. Video analysis of my swim technique has allowed me to know where I am at and what I need to improve on (lots to be done!) Also well done LBT (Leeds Bradford Triathlon club) for a great Cross country outing last weekend in the West Yorkshire league. First XC race of 2013 for me, great to start with a victory (Thanks Clare for the picture). Find of the week: There has been real momentum building within the community of sportswomen, to increase the profile of Women’s sport. Women’s sports trust has writing some great articles this week, this one interviewing Ex-EnglandRugby Captain Catherine Spencer on role models, media coverage and the importance of women's sport is brilliant. Happy Swimming, Cycling and Running everyone!

1) What the heck is this blog about?

A mother took her son to see Gandhi. She requested Gandhi speak to her son.       

    Mother “Can you tell my son to stop eating sugar as it will rot his teeth”         

     Gandhi “Return in one month and I will speak to your son”.

The mother returned in one month and presented her son to Gandhi.                  

   Gandhi “You must stop eating sugar, it is bad for your teeth”                           

    Mother “Why could you not have told my son that when I came last month?”    

    Gandhi “It took me a month to stop eating sugar myself”

What the heck is this blog about?
By day I work for the Education charity Teach First and my job involves coaching Teach First teachers to make the biggest impact possible in their classrooms.

The other day I asked a teacher to write a blog for the Teach First community website. I had broken my own rule, as exemplified by Gandhi “Lead by example” as I had yet to write a contribution, so firstly this aims to remedy my shortfall in this regard (This blog will also appear on the Teach First community website).

Secondly I work through a yearlong program with the teachers; setting bold visions and goals, creating backward plans, reflecting honestly, analysing data and challenge themselves.  So if I truly believe in leading by example, surely I would be undertaking the same process, I am proud to say I am, albeit in a slightly different context, as a triathlete.

Through this blog I will share my experiences/reflections on the process of vision and goal setting, creating a backward plan, tracking my progress using data and looking at outcomes, causes and solution in the context of a triathlete (swim, bike run).

Phase 1: Vision and Goal setting:
The below diagram comes from the book “Happier” by Tal Ben-Shahar, one of my favourite books.  This diagram has become my main tool for creating my vision and goals as a triathlete.

GOALS
Within Teach First we create goals in three interconnected categories; Access, Aspiration,Attainment.

For each category I have tried to create specific measurable goals.

ACCESS: To improve my technique in swimming, cycling and running.

ASPIRATION:  To achieve entry into all the British super series races and to be competitive within them.

ATTAINMENT: To improve my 1500m swim time, 40km bike time and 10km run time significantly so I have an overall Olympic distance triathlon time of at least sub 2.08.

HANG ON A MINUTE!

What the heck does “Improve my swim, bike and run technique” actually mean?                                                                                                                         Next week's blog will discuss how, over the last few months I have been analysing my swim and run technique using video analysis and going about the process of becoming more efficiently. Not an easy task!

A few pictures from the last few weeks of training (mostly in the rain!) Courtesy of Timmy Pinder and Tim Pulleyn.

My find of the week:

I love twitter as it opens up a world of interesting articles/blogs/videos, my favourite this week is by Manisha Tailor a Teacher and Football coach in London who's article Teacher and Football coach: Different or the Same?  is extremely insightful.

Happy swimming, biking and running whatever the weather!