About me

Out on a training ride

Foremark Triathlon

This is my first attempt at blogging so if your willing to persevere with my ramblings I'll try and tell you about how I'm getting on with swimming, cycling and running. Whether it's triathlons or marathons, training or competing I'll try and find something interesting to say about my multisport journey.

Read around, interact anywhere you can and comment as much as possible, all feedback is welcome. Hopefully my blog will continue to improve so keep checking in from time to time and look out for any updates.

So first off here's a bit about me...

I'm a student from Derby, living in Chester that's mad about sports. My new sport this year is triathlon and in July I completed my first one, the Foremark Hall Sprint Triathlon. Despite being sick on the bike leg and being disgusted with my overall time, I loved every minute of it and now I'm hooked on improving my time and having a go at longer distances.

This year I've completed two sprint triathlons and a marathon. Next year I'm aiming to step up the distance to olympic triathlons, improve my sprint triathlon time and enter as many competitions as possible. I'd love to be able to do all the events I enter in aid of charity, hopefully next year I'll be doing plenty of fundraising.

So why the blog?

Well two reasons, one selfish, one not. For myself I wanted to use the blog as a way to keep motivated and train regulalry. I thought if I told everyone about what I'm doing I couldn't just back down from doing it. The other reason is, when I first decided I wanted to become a triathlete, I didn't realise how expensive it could be. This made me want to share any costcutting tips I pick up along the way with others.

The motivation part...

Since starting the blog I've been more motivated to train. I often find that I'll train hard one week then not do a lot the next. This blog has helped me keep myself motivated regulalry and as a result I managed to shave over 8 minutes off my triathlon pb and kept myself motivated enough to drag myself round the Chester marathon. I want to keep this motivation going to force myself out in the cold winter and come out next year ready to smash my PB and reach new goals.

The money part...

One thing I've noticed in triathlon is the focus of magazines and websites on buying new equipment to improve times. As a student heavily reliant on an overdraft, almost all these items are out of my price range. Thats why I want to share with any other budget triathletes about the purchases I've made and which ones were worth the couple of quid I've painstakingly dished out.

If you look around the internet it's easy to find advice about how to get around a triathlon for virtually free. But I didn't just want to finish. I'm not a pro that's winning races but I want to improve my times for my own satisfaction. So, if you want to keep doing triathlons but not on a borrowed mountain bike, I'll share my experiences with the others like me that completed their first triathlon and caught the bug but don't have shedloads of money to throw around. 

That's why I'm using this blog to let you know which purchases I've made were worthwhile and hopefully spread some motivation because better training is always going to lead to better times than any expensive gadget can give you.

All good sprint triathlons need a sprint finish

Looking as good as I feel after the Derby Triathlon