- This is the GTN Show and with
me moving into my 30s last week,
it's got me thinking about the ages in triathlon.
So today, we're gonna be discussing
the optimum age for triathlon.
- Wow, I think that's gonna be an interesting topic.
Well, as well as that, we've got plenty
of race news, quite a few announcements.
Including, the new Zwift Tri Team.
(upbeat energetic music)
- Okay, it took me a little by surprise
at Xterra Milton when I was put into the 30 to 34 category
and leaving my twenties behind.
- Awe.
- But it has got me thinking about
the optimum age for triathlon.
Now we often regard 30s as the optimum age
but there's so many incredible athletes
racing into their 40s.
You've got, like, Tim Don, the Ironman record holder,
Craig Alexander, Chris McCormack, Tim DeBoom raced
up into his 40s, and Bevan Docherty.
- And we've got a few women who are creeping
into their 40s, I mean there's Meredith Kessler,
I think she's 39, she's just coming back now.
Yvonne van Vlerken won on the weekend,
she's 39, so she's gonna be 40 this year.
And I think maybe for the women it's
not quite as old as the men,
but still, it's quite an impressive age.
- It's really impressive, and actually outside
of triathlon, as well, with some
of the other professional sports
and in running got Bernard Lagat from the U.S.,
actually qualified for his fifth Olympic games.
One of the best distance runners in the world
beat Galen Rupp in the U.S. trials.
- Well, staying with running, Jo Pavey,
Great Britain's Jo Pavey, she's been to five Olympics
and she's not ruling out going to a sixth.
She won, I think it was Commonwealth Bronze
and European Gold in her 40s, over 10K.
So, and then if we go outside of running
where maybe you've got a slightly
larger, I guess, lifespan.
Nick Skelton, again amazing example,
at 58 years old he won a gold medal
at the Rio Olympics in showjumping.
I mean, that's crazy!
He retired at the age of 59 from professional sport.
- Wow! And even away from professional sport,
we've got some incredible stuff happening.
So, Sister Madonna Buder, that many of our viewers
will know, at 87 years old, she is the oldest female
competitor to go under 17 hours for an Ironman.
And then we have Lew Hollander, who's also around
87 years old, the oldest male Ironman competitor,
and with a staggering 25 Kona finishes.
- Wow, I can't imagine that. One's definitely enough for me.
But it's got us thinking and we've done a little bit
of research ourselves and found that Ironman
actually did some research at the World Championships
and they've discovered that the age of 35 is
kind of your peak physically,
when you then start to drop off.
But, on the plus side the drop off's only gradual
until you're about 50 or 60,
so we've got some time left Mark.
But then that drop off is actually increased,
it gets much faster when you get to that age.
And noticeably, it's the bike that has less an effect,
but the run and the swim more so.
And the main reason for the performance drop off
is the fact that your VO2 decreases.
But there's quite a few different reasons for that,
one of which being that your maximum
heart rate is going to decrease
and there's not really much we can do about that.
But then it's also maybe, you know,
your lifestyle and do you accept,
do you think that you're older, are you less motivated?
- I guess maybe as we get older...
- [Heather] Do you drink more beer Mark, I don't know.
- Not at all, not at all.
I guess, yeah as we get older we have
more social obligations, we're limited for time,
I have a very busy life, you know.
- He's making his excuses.
- And these get in the way of your training
and that then hampers our fitness, our VO2.
But what the research is saying is
it doesn't have to be quite so, you know,
such a big drop off, you can actually maintain it
albeit with a slight decrease
but you can maintain it quite well.
- Yeah, I mean, I remember sitting at university,
I think I was in my final year, so I was 20 to 21,
the lecturer telling us that at the age of 25
your muscles start to basically decrease.
And I was like, I've got four years left
before my muscles are all just gonna disappear.
And I remember this being like really quite concerning.
But, you know, I've managed to continue
improving definitely more in endurance.
And we see endurance athletes,
like we've talked about earlier, getting stronger.
So there's so much behind that,
like you say, about the training for it.
- Well yeah, that's another thing with the research.
It shows that as you get older
you lose your fast twitch fibres.
But obviously muscle does decrease
but you've got more slow twitch muscle fibres
which is why we're more suited towards
the longer distance as we get older.
- So are we just basically talking about things to
make us feel good and you feel better about being 30?
- Yes.
(upbeat music)
- Well that leads us nicely on to this week's poll
and we want to ask you what you think
is the optimum age to race at.
Now, I can imagine most of you guys being pretty biassed
and probably being the age you're at
or the age you're about to become.
So the options are: in your 20's, in your 30's,
in your 40's, or other.
And I think I know what Mark might go for.
(laughs)
- Well you can enter that poll by clicking just up here.
But we have the results for last week's poll:
"for cold and wet triathlons what would you wear?"
In last place it was 'other' with 3%,
in fourth place it was a 'body warmer' with 15%,
in third place, 'waterproof' with 21%,
second, 'arm warmers' with 24%, and then the winners,
some hard people out there, 'just a Tri Suit' 34%.
Now I would have said that previously,
but I raced some very cold races
the year before last in Mallorca and Norway,
and I regretted just wearing a Tri Suit.
So I would actually opt for a body warmer.
- Have you ever worn more in a race?
- I've worn arm warmers before
but definitely for Norway, I would have opted for,
and I know quite a few pros did,
opted for a proper rain jacket or waterproof.
And I thought I was being smart
and going for the quick option and I really suffered.
(upbeat music)
Now for the caption competition.
Now last week we had a photo from a recent race
of a chap jumping, diving, into the water.
- Falling?
- Yeah, it was quite funny and quite a few of you
referred to the GCN video we did early on in the channel
where we did a little diving challenge with them.
(laughs)
If you haven't seen that video,
(techno music)
(changes to awkward music)
- Well that was a funny dive by Matt.
- It certainly was, and you guys definitely picked up
on those similarities between those GCN dives
and what you saw there in that caption.
So the runner-up this week goes to
'Caffeine and Carbs' saying, "we finally convinced
the GCN presenters to enter a triathlon".
If only we did!
- The winner goes to 'bazzaclark05', he said
"Matt makes his trademark diving entrance
into the field of triathlon!".
'bazzaclark05' you are the winner
of this week's GTN cap.
But this week's photo...
(laughter)
- I didn't choose this one, surprisingly.
Yeah, I mean it's me.
- [Mark] Bit of an explanation here Heather?
- I'd just had enough of filming for the day,
we were out in Malta, it was sunny and...
- So whilst I was off filming all
my videos this is what was going on.
- Do you know what you can't see in this photo? is
that is not flat and that's a really, really steep hill.
And the cameraman kept making me run
up and down it numerous times.
(awkward music)
- Well please send in your captions
in the comments section below.
(upbeat music)
Well recently we spoke about the Zwift Tri Academy,
where Zwift and Specialise are gonna be teaming
together to support some of the top age-groupers.
And they've just announced their winners.
- [Heather] They have.
They've got Golo Philippe Rohrken from Germany,
they've got Bex Rimmington from the UK.
- [Mark] And from the US they've got Rachael Norfleet
and from Belgium they've got Geert Janssens.
- Well those four lucky athletes are going to be supported
obviously by Specialised and Zwift.
They're gonna have a full bike set-up,
including wind-tunnel testing over in California, I think.
They're getting coaching from Tim Don.
Race support, it said, and guidance from Lucy Charles.
And then, the fact that they're supported,
they get to choose one qualifying race,
which I think they have up to 1,500 US Dollars
to pay for them to go, to then qualify
in the hope that they obviously get to Kona,
this is the main aim, that they get on the podium
and potentially win their age-groups at Kona.
- And of course with all the lovely Zwift gear.
So very lucky athletes and best of luck to them this year.
- Well in less positive news, the IOC have
announced their concern over the water quality
over in Tokyo ahead of the 2020 games.
Apparently the E. coli levels are about
20 times the recommended at the moment.
- That doesn't sound good.
Well this isn't the first time we've had scares like this.
For Rio, obviously we had scares with the water quality
and even in Delhi for the Commonwealth Games,
Triathlon was cancelled but we are obviously
on this well ahead of time and they are doing
thorough testing and they have procedures in place.
So, fingers crossed it's all sorted in time.
Right, next bit of news; Challenge have
just announced their new Tri Slam.
So if you race Challenge Venice, Challenge Almere,
and Challenge Madrid, you get the opportunity
to enter Challenge Roth the following year.
- And then if you complete Challenge Roth,
you get a special prize and an award for the Tri Slam,
even though you have done four, but still.
I think it's pretty cool, it's very much European-based
but quite an accomplishment to manage
all four of those within a year.
- Super League Triathlon have just announced
their 2018/2019 season schedule,
with five championship rounds
and two qualifier rounds in Canada and Poland.
- Well the championship rounds are gonna be
in Jersey, like we had last year,
then they have one in Mallorca,
followed by Malta and then into the new year in 2019
they go to Singapore and then finishing off in Australia.
Now it's already attracted some big names
as we've seen, the likes of the Brownlees racing.
But last year was missing Flora Duffy
and she has, as she announced in a statement,
that she's gonna be racing the first championship race
in Jersey and she's really excited by the different format.
And I think, from a spectator's point of view,
it's gonna be really fun, not only to have racing going
on throughout the winter, but also the fact it attracts
different types of athletes as well.
- Yeah, well Super League Triathlon is a very
unique race format, as you've mentioned.
But attracts 50 of the top triathletes in the world,
25 men, 25 women racing for a very big prize purse
so, you can expect some very exciting racing.
(techno music)
Now for the race news, and this week
we've got a lot, a heck of a lot.
First up we've got Xterra Danao, and in the women's race
it was Jacqui Slack that led the swim out,
with a minute gap over Carina Wasel and Penny Slater.
Then onto the bike, Carina Wasel posted
the fastest bike split of the day
and then ran away for the victory.
In second it was Penny Slater,
but in third it was Myriam Guillot-Boisset.
Unfortunately Jacqui Slack crashed out
and couldn't finish the race.
- On the men's side, it was Ben Allen who lead Sam Osborne,
shortly followed by Bradley Weiss
and then Kieran McPherson was about a minute back on there.
And it was Weiss who soon caught Allen
but Osborne had already gone up the road
until he suffered a puncture
when him and Weiss ended up coming into T2 together
and it was a bit of a running battle there.
Bradley Weiss went on to take the win,
Sam Osborne second, and Kieran McPherson third.
- Woo!
- And then it was, what happened to Ben Allen in the end?
It was...no he wasn't. Oh he didn't, oh for goodness sake.
Followed closely by...for goodness sake!
- Bradley Weiss and then a minute back
again it was Kieran McPherson.
- This is so painful. Sam Osborne went on to take the win.
- Bradley Weiss did, I'm afraid.
- Osborne, who...oh for goodness sake. But Osborne
- Yeah Osborne won.
(laughter)
- How did I imagine...sorry.
- Next results come from the
Surf City Escape Triathlon in Huntington Beach
and it was super close racing on the men's side.
We had Jason West with the 1 minute 26 deficit
over Cam Dye out of the swim,
then lost a further 55 seconds on the bike.
Then he had a blistering run split to take the win
by just 8 seconds over Cam Dye, who took second,
and in third it was Eric Lagerstrom.
- While on the women's side the swim was led
out by Sophie Chase, the 24 year old,
who had a lead on Sarah Haskins
but that soon got whittled down on the bike.
And then it came down to the running race
and it was Sophie Chase, who ran a 36 minute 10k
to take the win over Erica Ackerlund who finished third.
- Now for Ironman 70.3 Peru, and in the women's race,
it was Kirsty Withrow that led the swim out
with a sizeable gap over Sarah Piampiano.
But eventually managed to whittle that deficit down
to just 53 seconds by the 48km mark
and then eventually managed to lead
off the bike with Kirsty Yan.
Piampiano ran away to take the win,
whilst Withrow faded and actually Kirsty Yan
crossed the line in second but was later disqualified
so Withrow took second place,
and in third it was Romina Plaisir.
- On the men's side it was Andy Potts who led out the swim
but on the bike he was soon caught by a group
including Cyril Viennot and Mario De Elias
but then it came down to the run
and it was Cyril Viennot who started to open up a lead
and ended up winning by 30 seconds
ahead of Andy Potts in second
and that meant Mario De Elias finished third.
- And for Ironman 70.3 at Florianopolis
and in the men's race it was just 30 seconds
separating some of the key players out of the swim,
including the likes of Tim O'Donnell and Igor Amorelli.
And after the bike it was Igor Amorelli
that had a 5 minute advantage over his chasers.
He went on to take the win, Tim O'Donnell in second
and then in third it was Iuri Vinuto.
- Well at the end of the swim in the
women's race it was much more spread out.
Pamella Oliveira had almost a minute and a half
ahead of Lauren Goss and the chasing group.
By the end of the bike she had about a 2 minute lead
and then it came down to a running race
as the others were chasing her down.
But Pamella Oliveira went on to get the win
just by 11 seconds ahead of Bruna Mahn, also from Brazil
and the podium was made up of Brazilians
because it was Beatriz Neres in third.
- Now for the exciting Challenge Mogan
in Gran Canaria and it was exciting
because we had a stacked field on the men's side
including the Ironman World Champion Patrick Lange.
But it was actually Pablo Dapena Gonzalez
that spoilt the party with his 1:09 half marathon run split
to take the win over Andi Boecherer in second,
and then Patrick Lange in third.
And just to show you how competitive this race was,
in fourth we had Bart Aernouts
and in fifth Sven Riederer.
- That was a deep field.
The women's field wasn't quite so deep
but Yvonne van Vlerken, we've already mentioned,
had another win this weekend.
She did have quite a deficit after the swim,
over three minutes, but then with
a consistent performance she got second fastest
bike of the day and second fastest run
and ended up winning over Ewa Komander in second
and Anna Noguera Raja in third.
- And finally, Challenge Melbourne.
Now, we said there was a lot of race news this week.
In the women's race it was Annabel Luxford
that combined a women's best swim split,
second best bike split, and second best run split
to take the win over Laura Siddall in second
and Radka Kahlefeldt in third.
- While on the men's side, Mike Phillips
was very much in touch, came out with the lead pack.
But he lost his lead throughout the bike
but due to his race best run split of a 1:10 half marathon,
he went on to take the win ahead of Levi Maxwell in second
and it was Max Newman who finished third.
It's now time for this week's "Hot or Not"
and starting us off we have a hydration biosensor.
This has been designed by Nix
and it's a sweat based biometric sensor
that monitors the hydration levels of athletes.
- Yeah, I believe this is a patch that goes on your skin,
on your arm or wherever, and it records it
in real time so you can see how
your hydration levels change during an activity.
It's a one use patch per activity.
Hot or not, Heather?
- Sounds pretty cool, give it a hot.
- Now we have the Wildflower Elite Entry Announce.
Now, Wildflower Triathlon is one of the most historic
and iconic triathlons out there.
They're celebrating their 35th anniversary this year.
And they've got a stacked field,
they've got the six time past race winner Jesse Thomas,
alongside Ben Hoffman, alongside a number
of other very fast male competitors.
And in the women's race, they've got Heather Jackson.
- Yeah, she's won it three times I think
so it's gonna be a stacked field.
Now, I can probably guess which way you're going,
what is is Mark?
- Well after their cancellation in 2017
due to the drought, this has gotta be hot.
The next one is the AeroPod that
we've come across on Kickstarter.
Now this is another pitot tube design
that basically records your CDA, your coefficient of drag,
your aero position and also your power.
Similar to the Swiss Side one and the Notio Konect
that we've also featured on the channel before.
Heather, hot or not?
- Well, they had a crowdfunding target of $40,000
and they've almost doubled that already,
so I don't think I'm gonna be alone in saying it's hot.
- The next one's from our partners at Quarq,
and it is the tyre whizz, tyre pressure sensor.
So basically this connects to the valves on your wheels
and it gives you realtime feedback on the pressures
of your tyres whilst you're riding and also just
to get really precise values on those pressures.
- I guess it means the end to, like,
having a ride when you're feeling really sluggish
and you keep looking at your tyres going,
they must be flat. Why is this hill feeling so hard?
- No excuses now, you can look at your computer.
- Exactly, and it could be quite interesting
to do some experiments with so
hopefully we'll get our hands on one of those soon.
Well anyway Mark, hot or not?
- It's a hot.
- Right well we really enjoy doing this
hot or not feature but thought it's probably
time that we opened it up to you.
Now if you've got anything that you
want us to give clarification on,
as to whether it's hot of not, whether that's a story
or something that might have happened to you.
Maybe it's a piece of kit you wear
or you see someone else wear and you want us
to give you that clarification.
- I think this could be quite good fun really.
So if there's something you're wearing
to you club session for instance
and you've had a few comments and you'd like us
to let you know whether it's hot or not.
And we're very qualified in that obviously.
- Of course.
- Do send that in with the hashtag "GTNHOTORNOT".
(Techno music)
- It's now time for the GTN Tribe
and this week we're heading back to Thailand.
And interestingly, the title of this club
might slightly throw you off the scent
cause it is "Turtle Running Club" in Chiang Mai.
- So they started out obviously as a running club
and then they started doing a bit of swimming,
a bit of cycling and funny enough, started doing triathlon.
And they've now got over 200 members in their club
and, I have to be honest, this sounds like a great club.
They do all sorts of fun stuff, and they really look after,
kind of, the friendship in the group.
And they do stuff like running to the top
of the mountain and picking up garbage.
- They sound very saintly.
And they've made a running event that's to help children,
it says animals as well, so I'm not sure if it's
for the children to run that helps the animals,
but we'd love to know more about that.
- Yeah, or lost in translation. I'm not sure,
but either way it sounds fantastic
and we've got loads of great photos
from them doing lots of running events and all sorts.
So, fantastic! Please do keep sending in your GTN Tribes
using the hashtag "GTNTRIBE".
Well that's it for the GTN Show this week
and we have loads of great videos coming for you this week
particularly on Sunday where we have an exciting challenge
between Heather and myself, and to make sure you don't
miss that make sure you subscribe
to GTN by clicking on the globe.
- And if you want to see a video we recently did
for our Triathlon Training Explain series,
we looked at the effects of drafting
but not on the person who's drafting
but the actual athlete in front.
So check that out just here.
- And if you'd like to see my Xterra vlog,
you can see that by clicking downhere.