Ripon Triathlon - Race Report

Ripon Standard Triathlon is held in the middle of Ripon Triathlon Weekend, a festival of racing with open water swims, standard and sprint distance tris, and finishing up with Tristars (juniors) on the Sunday. It’s a relaxed event, where you pull up your car or camper on the Friday, pitch... [Read More]
Categories: Triathlon

Deva Triathlon - Race Report

Deva was my first race at middle distance. It’s been a long journey getting here - in preparation I’ve been steadily building up training and the distance. I’ve done this race previously at olympic distance and enjoyed it immensely. For my money, it may be the best organised race on... [Read More]
Categories: Triathlon

Southport Triathlon - Race Report

Southport serves as a bit of nexus. It’s early in the season, and yet acts as Triathlon England Standard distance championships, ETU qualifiers, and the BUCS Standard championships. As such, it is a bloody fast race. It’s also it’s been going for quite a while a while, here’s some Grandstand... [Read More]
Categories: Triathlon

Clitheroe Triathlon - Race Report

First Tri of the season, this is an odd distance. A bit of a Sprint+, 400m pool swim, 30k ride, 8k run. Results were: Leg Distance Time Swim 400m 00:09:46 T1   00:01:49 Bike 30k 01:09:31 T2   00:01:56 Run 8k 00:43:51 Swim was indoors, in a salinated pool. This... [Read More]
Categories: Triathlon

2017-2018 Triathlon Season Review

For my first season I worked with the excellent ATP template in Joe Friel’s Triathlon Bible. My goal setting was a bit wooly - it was a first season, I had very little idea on what I was doing and it was a very steep learning curve. This second season... [Read More]
Tags: Triathlon
Categories: Triathlon

Resources

Books

These are books I reference on a daily/weekly/monthly basis as the season progresses. If someone asks me for “good books” for building training plans, I start here.

  • The Triathlete’s Training Bible - Joe Friel - This has been my go to resource for the past two years. How to plan, how to train for endurance, good all round resource. Bible is accurate.
  • Fast Track Triathlete - Matt Dixon - Specific resource on long course triathlon for time-crunched athletes. Very good, gives details on how to design focused training plans, how to fit work/life balance and example training plans for middle and full distance triathlon.
  • Strength and Conditioning for Triathlon - An excellent all-round S&C book looking at pre-hab, strength and plyometric workouts and how to build S&C programmes.

These are books that helped to either get me started, or rebuild a particular skill. They’re still on the shelf, and occasionally they’ll be leant to friends, but they’re not daily drivers any more. If you’re just getting started, they may be of use to you.

  • Total Immersion - When I started a few years ago, I could not swim. TI got me from 25m to 2k. I’ve a long way to go, but if you’re struggling to get started, this can help you start.
  • Chi Running - In 2016 I suffered a big hamstring injury and found running became a problem, my previous “brute force” style was no longer going to cut it. So I needed to get to grips with running mechanics and start again. Chi Running is a terrible name for a reasonable system. Similar to TI in approach, it will “get you moving”.

Podcasts

I’ve struggled to find many podcasts that fit within my own requirements - I like 30-60 minute podcasts, on focused topics, ideally with little rambling. I’ve been through a few, and they usually fall by the wayside.

I'm Kian Ryan

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