Mark Threlfall: Welcome back to the GTN show this week, I may be surprising a few of you out there
with some of the things that I'm going to be doing during the offseason this year. In fact, I've
actually done them throughout my entire triathlon career along with many other pro athletes. Stay
tuned for that. I'm also going to be talking about some of the exciting athlete sponsorship
announcements along with some notable pro athletes moving on from some notable big brands. I'm also
going to be delving into some GPS data issues that some of you have been experiencing over
the past week, whether you knew it or not. We’ll look into that, and I'll explain all very
shortly, as well as some Zwift news and update for their Zwift pace partners within Zwift Run.
Right, then, it's January, and we are still a long way from the start of the race season, at least
hopefully. We are in the offseason, and I thought I'd share some of the things that I'm doing this
offseason that will perhaps surprise some of you out there. Now, I thought I'd share these things
with you because I know that a lot of you look up to pro triathletes, and understandably so,
but you think that they do everything perfectly. They treat their bodies a temple, they never miss
workouts, they don't have treats, and so on and so forth. Perhaps you think that you need to be doing
the same if you want to better yourself and to achieve your goals. Well, I've got news for you.
They don't all do things absolutely perfectly, at least most of them don't. If there's one thing my
years of racing professionally taught me it was that you need to find balance. Your training,
your life, your habits, they all need to be sustainable. Of course,
you do need to make sacrifices if you want to achieve your goals. But if you're overly
strict and you make too many sacrifices and too early on, you can make things
very unenjoyable and lose all the fun from the process.
In fact, if you do end up being too strict to yourself and making too many sacrifices early on,
by time you get to the race season, you may already be cracking and have fallen off the wagon
and at the crucial point. My first confession to you-- and I will be doing over the offseason;
have been doing already-- is missing workouts. Yes, there, I said it. I miss workouts. Now,
I will admit this was a hard one for me. I used to struggle with it a lot. I used to love that
green training peaks diary where I've hit every single day, but I am okay with the occasional
red day and having missed the odd workout. Yes, if there's a toss-up between me spending
time with my loved one, with some friends on the odd occasion then, yes, that is absolutely fine.
Of course, as we get closer to race season, you are going to want to be more strict, so make sure
you find this balance early on; it's absolutely fine. Maybe choosing the workouts correctly,
maybe the easy run or the easy bike rather than the key workouts. Another thing that I do during
the offseason is put a bit of weight on. I know it's hard to see but I generally do try and I
do put a bit on. Because it's not really advised to be at a kind of race weight all year round.
It's actually very healthy to put a bit of extra weight on and it also helps for making you
stronger. Also, here in the UK, with it being a bit colder, it also just keeps you warm having the
extra weight on you when you’re out on cold runs and cold rides. Now, if you are already relatively
slim then don't beat yourself up about an extra couple of kilos at this time of year compared
to your race week, because you can easily trim it off when it comes to race season. I’ve also found
that actually having a bit of extra weight on you during training this time of year can actually
help with your strength and your power. Kind of a follow on from that is that I
like to have the old treat. Yes, I like to have the old beer. I like to have
probably a bit too much chocolate, but I'm cool with that. Now, if you enjoy a super clean diet,
you don't have that urge for treats, that's fine, carry on. But for many out there, you do
enjoy the old treats-- let's be honest-- and to completely cut them out all year round is quite a
big ask. Why not allow yourself the opportunities to have the odd one here and there throughout
the week. Then, when it comes closer to the race season then you can cut them out if you want to.
Finally, I ride my mountain bike more than my road bike at this time of year. Now, you don't have to
necessarily take it that far, but don't feel like you have to ride your road bike or triathlon bike
all the time. You have to ride on the road or the turbo and cover distance, and so on and so forth.
A mountain bike or a gravel bike or a cyclocross bike that you can take off-road
is a great change from the norm. It's an escape mentally, also, it's great for working
on technical skills, something that we don't get the opportunity to do during the race season.
I personally love planning an adventure on my mountain bike off-road at this time of the year.
Again, something you just can't do during the race season when you’re focusing on sessions all the
time. There's also the benefit of just a natural training session within off-road riding because of
the continual changing terrain and also the surface, you can end up having stints of hard
work. You're almost getting this natural [unintelligible 00:05:16] like training
within an off-road ride. There we go; there's some of the things that
I'm doing during the offseason, this year. I'm not suggesting that you go and do all of
these, you may not enjoy some of those things. That is actually important. Find things that
excite you personally and get stuck into them, because now is the time that you can do that
before we do get into the serious part, the race season. Because you want to make sure that it's
sustainable and you're enjoying the entire process throughout the year. Let us know how you get on in
the comment section down below. If you've got any advice any other things that you get up to during
the offseason, please drop them down there. [music]
Now, for the Tri- news and to kick-start 2021, we have some exciting sponsorship changes. The
most notable coming from Specialized. They have parted ways with Lucy Charles-Barkley
and Braden Currie. Lucy's been with them since around 2017, but Braden since around 2011 and
2012. A very long-standing partnership there but taking their place, we have two fierce athletes.
We've got Emma Pallant and Josh Amberger, both known for being aggressive racers in their own
right. Emma Pallant, a very impressive runner, but Josh Amberger is known for attacking off the front
in the swim and long into the bike and beyond. In fact, Josh has actually put out a hilarious
video to announce his partnership with Specialized, called The Works that you
can find over on YouTube, that he's produced alongside Glenn Murray from
Korupt Visions. Definitely go and check that one out. There may, of course, be more big
announcements to come. Surely, someone's got to be snapping up Paula Findlay pretty soon. Also,
where are Lucy Charles-Barkley and Braden going to end up? Is it going to be Canyon?
They've got a lot of the other big athletes. Obviously, at the time of filming this video,
we don't know, so hopefully it doesn't get announced in the next couple of days.
Let us know where you think they are going to end up in the comment section down below. It's fun to
speculate. Also, we can't miss off the big announcement from Mirinda Carfrae. She says,
“A decade of racing aboard Felt comes to an end, today, and what a ride it's been.
Two Iron Man world titles and numerous other wonderful victories, and amazing memories
to last a lifetime.” Perhaps that is one of the longest standing athlete-bike partnerships out
there. That's been a long, long time. Again, be interesting to see where she ends up. Also,
talking of long-standing partnerships, Caroline Steffen has just parted ways with On-Running
having been with them from basically the start. Moving on, did anyone notice some odd
GPS data from the weekend just gone? Now, it's likely all fixed by now, but what a lot of people
were noticing or reporting is that the pattern of their route was absolutely fine, but the placement
on the map was way off. In some cases, people seem to be running in the middle of the sea. Now,
I'm not going to delve into the technical details too much because, if I'm going to be honest, it is
far beyond my intellect. Essentially, it's due to a data file that's delivered to our devices
on a regular basis, normally, every few days. That data file then allows our devices then to
locate and find satellites nearby. Apparently, the data in that file that's delivered to devices was
wrong, and it seems that in most cases, people's routes were realigned by the end of a run but
initially, they were way off whack. It simply just needed to be used a couple of times,
or just left finding signal for a long period of time. Now, I know this isn't groundbreaking
news and for a lot of people, this isn't relevant, but if you are someone out there that's wondering,
“What was going on?” when you're looking on your Strava profile and
looking at your activities, well, now, you know. Now, on to some Zwift news and the start of 2020,
Zwift rolled out an update on their cycling platform that allowed you to activate a pace
partner. Which is essentially a brightly-colored bot that you could use to pace off that was set to
a certain watts per kilo. But they've just rolled out the same thing within running, too, so now,
when you go through the main menu, you go into selecting a world. You have to select Watopia,
because it’s currently only activated for that and then, under the Join a friend section,
you'll be able to select these pacemakers. You've got four to choose from within the running
world. We've got Alton Able who's in the cat A running and he is running at 4:07 per kilometer.
We've got Billie Benoit who's a cat B runner at 5:03 per kilometer. We've got Cara Cadence,
cat C runner at 6:40 per kilometer and then Dax Diesel, cat D runner at 8:20 per kilometer. Now,
I've got to admit, I haven't yet tried this, but I'm very excited to do so. It sounds like these
pacers are continually running around these routes within Watopia, so when you select to run with
them, you essentially just join them wherever they are, and other people will do the same.
At times, you could have numerous other people running along with you and then leaving as
and when they like, so, yes, pretty cool. I'm excited to give that one a go. In other news,
the Zwift Triathlon Academy has come to a close just before Christmas. Now,
they're into the team selection phase, which they'll be announcing in early March. Also,
stay tuned for some more pro racing, or pro triathlon racing on Zwift coming very shortly,
but also some XTERRA workouts that you can get involved into. These should be running from the
11th of Jan through to the 28th of February. We've got five weeks of mountain bike and trail
running specific workouts that will culminate in a week of XTERRA-inspired multi-sport racing. Now,
moving on to some giveaways, and first of all, to announce some giveaway winners, and that was for
the Kask Utopia helmets. We have three to give away, and those lucky winners are Albert Sanso,
Ryan Phillips, and Bruno Freire, hopefully I've said that right. Congratulations to
the three of you, and we'll be in touch to send them out to you very shortly. Also,
don't forget that we have the Nuzest giveaway still running, it's just for another week.
We're announcing the winners in next week's show. We're giving you the chance to get your hands
on a year's supply of Nuzest nutritional recovery product for the price of £1,450,
which is pretty huge. The same products that I actually used in my recent video where I
ran a half marathon every day for a week. If you've not already seen that then please do
head on over and check that out. The link for that is in the description just down below,
where I basically document my highs, my lows-- and there were a lot of lows. Me cramming my training
in, how I ate, well, badly, so on and so forth. You get to see all of that in this video,
and that was all made possible thanks to Nuzest who provided me with these
nutrition and recovery products to help me literally through the week. Yes,
I might add actually I continue to use them now in my training because they are just really very,
very tasty and very nice. If you're interested in this giveaway, then do get involved; the link
for it is in the description just down below. You just need to follow that, answer a quick question
and you're entered in, and we'll be giving the winner for that giveaway in next week's show.
Now, let's take a look through some of the photos and videos that you guys have been sending into
us and see what you have been getting up to. I do apologize the first one here today
is rather festive. It's a little bit late, but it did come in whilst we were off on our holiday,
and it's really quite good, actually. It's from Troy from Newport Beach in California; he said,
"Fearless Triathlon Club's annual Jingle Bell swim this weekend around the floating lights
at Newport Dunes Resort." He said, “Brr, the water was cold,” but check this out, how cool is that.
Then, we've had a photo sent in from Paul, and this is his kind of upgraded Felt DA2.
He said it was his lockdown DIY project. He completely stripped, sanded down and resprayed
his TT bike after successful rides in lovely Lanzarote. “I'm ready for the 2021 season,” and
he has custom-built SRAM RED eTap, he's got a cold KMC chain on there to match the new paintwork and
Parcours wheel. You've done a fantastic job; it really does look very, very nice.
Then, we have this photo from Lana, she's coming from Moscow in Russia. She said it's the winter
here. She's using her Fuji fat bike and then in the summer, she'll use her speedy Felt AI 10.
She says she loves to throw in some fun and vibes in the winter train to keep the motivation high,
and replaces one of our weekly bike sessions with a forest ride on the fat bike. There's loads of
fun loads of fresh air, not to mention the fat biking through fresh snow is great for balance
and a strength workout. I've yet to try a fat bike, but I'd love to, and that looks
awesome. Then, finally from Mark from Angus, he again had a little project COVID lockdown. He said
he was tired of working out in a dusty garage, so decided to build a garden room and move the gym
to the garden, and upgrade some of the equipment at the same time.
2021 season just around the corner, and this should help to get them in good shape. You've
done a fantastic job there. You've got a ton of equipment, a couple of-- what bike is that-- a
Wahoo bike, flip-- you've got a good setup there. You're definitely ready for 2021,
so, yes, fantastic stuff there. Please do send in your photos and videos using the
photo uploader link on screen right now. You can find that in the description just
down below. [music]
Well, to finish the show this week, we just have the caption comp to come. Obviously, we
didn't have a caption comp last week with the New Year's show. This is the first photo of 2021,
it is a of Yan Ferdeno at Frankfurt Iron Man. Looking like he wants them to stop
throwing water on, maybe he wasn't expecting it. Drop your captions in the comments section
just down below, and I look forward to reading them out next week, but that is it for the show,
this week. We have tons coming up on the channel, so make sure you're subscribed to
GTN already, so you don't miss any of those. We have a winter run series coming, the first of
which we’ll be looking at trail running shoes, the ins and outs of them. What to look for,
what's good in certain conditions, and so on and so forth. We also have can cycling make
you a better runner, which is quite an interesting topic. Also, don't forget, you can head on over to
our GTN shop, check out some of the products in there, such as this T-shirt I'm wearing,
today. Also, why not head on over and look at some of our previous videos; my half marathon everyday
video that I just mentioned. Also, if you're newer to running and maybe the half marathon distance,
we have half marathon training for beginners. Of course, don't forget to give this video a like.