- What's up, Trainiacs?
On this week's Triathlon Newsday Tuesday,
we are back from Boulder, and there are big things going on.
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey
does his own little triathlon transformation.
The hardest race in the world happened over the weekend,
and Daniela Ryf continued to do what Daniela Ryf does.
Holy smokes!
This is a good one.
(energetic dance music)
Welcome, triathletes,
to this week's Triathlon Newsday Tuesday
where every single Tuesday,
we talk about all the news going on
around the world in triathlon.
As always, make sure you stick around 'til the end
where we are going to share everyone's favorite part
of Triathlon Newsday Tuesday.
That is a story from the Trainiac community,
and as always, full links to everything we talk about
will be in the description below.
Let's start off with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey
competing in the AJ Bell Triathlon in London
for charity over the weekend with his son and daughter.
On the course of training for this race,
Gordon Ramsey lost 56 pounds and raised money
for the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital,
and we actually, I think we have some footage here
of Chef Ramsey after pushing himself really hard,
kinda getting to that, you know, that painful place
at the end of the finish.
(coughing)
(spitting)
(beeping)
He pushed hard.
A really unique race that I didn't even know existed
as of this morning happened,
and this is a race in France
that was won by Frederik Van Lierde and Emma Bilham,
which ends at the top of Alpe d'Huez,
probably the most famous finish in the Tour de France.
Now, the race consists of a 2.2 kilometer swim,
then a 118K bike and then a 20 kilometer run
going up the entire climb of the Alpe d'Huez.
Now, Van Lierde won in 5:59:51,
just getting under that six hour cutoff,
and Bilham won in 6:51:21.
And if you wanna see me suffering on Zwift's version
of the Alpe d'Huez, stick around 'til the end of the video
and we will put a little card over on the side
where on the day that it came out on Zwift,
I just turned myself inside out.
I nearly would've looked like Chef Ramsey there.
(coughing)
(spitting)
(beeping)
Now, it is commonly looked at as the hardest
Ironman distance triathlon in the world,
the Isklar Norseman Xtreme Triathlon happened.
Now, typically the conditions
for this are absolutely brutal, but this year,
the conditions were fairly mild,
leading to some really fast times.
The waters are typically very frigid
where people have to wear gloves,
a head cap, even booties, and then warm up
drinking cider coming out of the water.
Then they hop onto the bike and the run
where there is a grand total of over 17,000 feet
of elevation, and the marathon ends
with the final 17K being a billy goat climb
all the way up to the top of a mountain.
It is absolutely brutal!
Love that, don't we?
The men's side was won by three time winner,
Allan Hovd in 10:05:48.
The women's race set an absolute smashing course record,
beating the previous year's record by 48 minutes.
Mette Petterson won in 11 hours, 16 minutes, 10 seconds.
These are world records here in the Norseman.
That's how difficult it is.
On the Ironman circuit, there were seven races,
so we are going to cover just the big topics,
and we'll skip over Half Ironman Boulder
because ya boy was there and covered it very comprehensively
and we'll link to that at the end of the video.
But the big news this weekend was what happened
at Half Ironman Gdynia where Tim O'Donnell won in 3:47.
However, Daniela Ryf, whoa, whoa, whoa, Daniela Ryf.
She set a new women's Half Ironman
distance world record in 3:57:55.
Not only did she do that, but she beat down
on Mirinda Carfrae, one of the best in the sport
by 22 minutes.
She is setting an absolutely new standard
for women's female racing,
well, most men's female racing.
She finished several overall.
The Ironman 70.3 Asia Pacific Regional Championships
happened in Cebu in the Philippines.
The men's side was won by Mauricio Mendez
in a time of 3:46:45.
The women's side, I believe she's won three races this year,
Radka Vodickova won in an absolutely stacked women's field,
going 4:12:13.
We're talking stacked here.
Caroline Steffen, Mel Hauschildt, Beth Mckenzie,
Lauren Goss, like it was a big, elite field,
and Radka Vodickova came out with it.
Congrats, Radka.
Now, it's not all just Ironman.
There is the new Major League Triathlon series,
and fun fact, Brandon Copeland, fellow Scody athlete,
ended up winning the Major League Triathlon series race
in Vale, and just days before,
he was running next to me on the track
while we were in Boulder.
Now, I don't wanna go ahead and say
that I was the reason that he won,
but osmosis is a real thing.
It's science.
Like it's hard to deny.
So congratulations, and you're welcome, Brandon.
Take my cut anytime soon.
In podcast land, we did not do a Newsday last week
while I was in Boulder, so we have two new podcasts
that went up.
It is a very swimming focused couple of weeks.
We did a revisit with Tower 26's Gerry Rodrigues
a couple a weeks ago,
and then just the other day,
we released another swim focused podcast
with Michael Collins who is another coach
that has actually worked with Gerry over the years
and has very similar sorts of methods
for how he coaches age group triathletes,
but with little tweaks that might also work for ya.
Very smart guy, and he tells one of the funniest stories
that made Kim laugh out loud
as she was editing the podcast.
Also, while we were in Boulder,
we recorded four podcasts.
We talked about strength training with Aaron Carson
from Raleigh Sport and ECFit Boulder.
We talked with Mat Steinmetz from 51 Speedshop
about bike fitting.
We talked with Ben Hoffman about being an amazing athlete,
and we talked with Talbot Cox
about how his camera gear is bigger than mine.
Now, let's get into this week's Trainiac Story,
which comes from Eric Chandack
who says, "Hi, Taren.
"I'm 32 years old, and I'm from Panama.
"My story is not your classic Trainiac
"I used to be overweight and now I'm slim story.
"However, mine is a more typical, average
"I just hit the gym a few times a week
"and played in a beer softball league on weekends
"kind of story.
"I was 184 pounds, but I was never an endurance person,
"never tried to run more than just a few kilometers.
"It just wasn't for me.
"Then I got bored of this kind of life
"without having any sort of personal goals
"as I was always a competitive kid in sports.
"I needed that.
"In December 2017, I bumped into one of your videos
"as a casual thing searching on YouTube.
"I started to look at all of them,
"and then I decided to say to myself,
"hey, why not?
"I had some extra money so I went and bought a bike
"at the very nice low price to get me started training.
"And it was hard at the beginning,
"but I forced myself until I started loving it.
"After six months of training,
"I was able to complete my first Olympic distance triathlon
"in June, finishing in without hours, 50 minutes
"and 43 seconds, coming fourth out of eight
"in my age group and 20th out of 53 over all.
"It felt so awesome.
"I'm now down to 164 pounds.
"I feel amazing, and there's now something
"in my mind that tells me there is no impossible goal.
"Now I'm looking to shave at least 10 minutes off
"for my next race in October,
"and I'm going to be doing a few Half Ironmans next year.
"I hope we can meet some day at an Ironman,
"and, again, thank you very much."
Thank you very much, Eric,
and I wanted to share your story
because even though you say that this is,
you know, not your typical Trainiac story
with a huge life change,
I think it's important to know
that it doesn't have to be that.
It doesn't have to be this amazing transformation
of getting over drugs or depression or massive problems
with your health.
Just the fact that people do something like triathlon
that they didn't think they can do before
is enough to change that mindset that you said that you had,
and you see that, that even just small little changes
of doing your first race
is allowing you to probably become a better person
and be more daring and more risk taking and more fulfilled.
And you used the word awesome there a few times,
and that is awesome.
So thank you very much for sharing your story,
and if anyone else wants to get their story shared here
on Triathlon Newsday Tuesday,
email me at taren@triathlontaren.com.
And as always, if you aren't yet subscribed
and you like these Triathlon Newsdays,
hit the subscribe button below.
If you are subscribed, you are like seeing your bed
for the first time in nine days
since you've been gone to Boulder.
Thank you.