Speaker 1: Hello everyone out there, we hope you're all keeping safe and well during these
unprecedented times with COVID-19. Now with that being so much uncertainty. I imagine
many of you have a lot of questions out there. Now, within triathlon that maybe should I
be training? How do I train? What am I training for? Is there even going to be a 2020 triathlon
season, and so on? Now obviously, nobody can answer all those
questions for you at the moment and I do appreciate that you all have very different circumstances
and current situations that you're dealing with. We, however or should I say and this
is actually the pros may be able to help you out. We have called around to a number of
the pros ask them how they're dealing in this current time.
[music] What's the current situation for you in your
country? Andy Potts: These are certainly interesting
times that we live in. I live in the United States in the state of Colorado. Our governor
has a shelter in place for our state, and what that means for us is we have to keep
social distancing. That's just under two meters of space when we do go out and about. We're
allowed to ride outside and I'm allowed to run outside. We do have local businesses that
are still open and still operating, but they have modified hours. Restaurants are takeout
only, shopping for groceries, that kind of stuff is -- and critical infrastructure is
still open. It's definitely interesting. The schools are
closed through the month of April, throughout the state of Colorado and I've got two kids.
That means I've turned into a teacher, as well as a professional triathlete.
Michelle Vesterby: Yes. It's a weird time for every one of us in this Corona crisis.
Here in Denmark, I'm still allowed outside to run and to bike, not in big groups, of
course, but on my own. I enjoy that very much still because we've been having sunshine and
it's wonderful to just get out, get some fresh air, it also gives you energy. It's a little
bit of a change here in the household because Carl is also working from home and Marcus
is at home because of course the daycare is closed down. We've been isolated from my mom
and dad which is normally the babysitters. In that way, we have to combine the training,
taking care of Marcus, Carl is working, me working and everything. I actually enjoyed
it a lot. It's really been nice to have my little family all together.
David McNamee: Today is day 20 of the Spanish lockdown and here it's very strict, and that
all I do [unintelligible 00:02:58], and obviously the swimming pools are shot.
Emma Pallant: As at the moment, I'm here in South Africa and it's total lockdown. We're
week one of three weeks, and literally you can't go outside. You can drive to the shops
and the supermarket and soldiers' out in the street patrolling and yes, it’s a total
lockdown. Speaker 1: What are your thoughts for the
year ahead? Mirinda Carfrae: We haven't really put too
much thought into the race schedule. Tim was planning to do Roth in July, and that has
been canceled. We don't really want to set our hearts on anything. Obviously, there's
a lot of races that are looking like they'll go off in September, but I think for the next
couple of months or at least through April. We'll probably just maintain a base level
of fitness. Nothing too crazy and hopefully things will become more clear then and we'll
be able to plan out the rest of the year but we’re just staying positive.
Daniela Bleymehl: Actually, my season would have started last weekend at [unintelligible
00:03:56]. Right now, there are no races in cite. I am still hoping that there will be
some races in the second half of the season. I think, the optimistic way of thinking helps
to stay positive and to somehow stay focused on the little things you can control such
as training. One day, there will be races again and, of course, I want to be ready.
To be honest, I am, I guess like everyone else, I am very worried where all of this
is leading us to the whole world. It's about change and no one knows when it's going to
be over. Claire Cashmore: Has to try and adapt, a little
bit of training, and as I'm sure for all of you athletes out there, it can be quite disconcerting.
We’re used to routine we’re used to plans, we’re used to goals and unfortunately, there's
so much uncertainty right now and can't really have any of those. I'm trying to look at the
positive side of it and thinking it's buying me more time, it's buying me more time for
Tokyo being a year later. I've got that time to try and improve, get fitter, get faster,
get stronger. Speaker 1: How are you training?
Emma: The hardest thing is not being able to swim at all. We're just doing a lot of
overload kind of upper body strength work and visualizing technique, and just going
through the motions in the swim, training hard on the indoors on the treadmill and on
the turbo. My recommendations at the moment to train are to have some kind of competition
in there, whether you're racing an old session that you did like months ago or you're meeting
someone online to race with or something just make it ballsy, make it competitive and just
have a race type thing once a week. Mirinda: Mostly, I'm just training either
by myself or at home or with my husband, who obviously is living with us. Our day to day
hasn't changed at a whole, whole lot. We have a pretty good setup here with the master spa.
We actually got that the end of January so it was perfect timing, actually. With all
the public pools being closed, we can still get in and swim. That being said, we have
backed off our training. Probably before this all happened I was getting ready for I'm in
St George which was early May, and actually also Texas 70.3.
With both of those being postponed, we have backed that training off from 25 to 30 hours
a week down to 15 hours a week, kind of more off-season mode, maintaining a bit of the
fitness that we built up, but not really pushing it all for two reasons. One, we don't know
when the next race will be so we don't want to be taxing our bodies and really pushing
the envelope at this point in the season. The other reason, we just want to make sure
our immune systems are healthy. With this scary virus going around, we want to be as
healthy as possible to either avoid getting it or if we do get it being able to beat it.
George Goodwin: I've been using the rowing machine almost every day to try and keep some
sort of swim fitness up. As you see, it's like a whole-body workout. Mainly, I've been
using it to get the upper body, keep some of those muscles working. It also is really
good for your breath control. Similar to swimming, because you can only breathe at the top and
bottom of the strokes. Speaker 1: Anything you'd like to say to us,
and maybe help our motivation? Andy: It's going to be interesting to see
how things transpire, how much of this global pandemic we're going to be on lockdown. I
don't know the answer, and I think that's where control really becomes an illusion.
Where we thought we had control and now we don't. It's sometimes with that object of
control, where you think you had control and now you don't. It can invoke fear, and a little
bit of panic. For me, I'm trying to look at it as an opportunity.
One, the first opportunity I'm looking at is how do I practice patience. I'm trying
to practice my patience, I’m not a very patient guy. The other one is, oftentimes
in my racing at the professional level, you don't have things go your way, and you have
to adapt and overcome and you see this on a daily basis, in a racing basis. What I'm
using this opportunity for is the situation for training has changed. How can I adapt
and overcome to become a better athlete, and a better person through this, the situation
we’re in. Emma: Yes, if you've got any questions, just
ask people, and share ideas, share variations. Because at the moment, variation is the spice
of life and we all need a little bit of spice in our indoor training, so keep motivating
other people, keep meeting up, keep sharing ideas, and just have fun with it. This is
the time, no pressure get fit and just have fun.
Michelle: Yes, everything is good. I hope for you guys out there that you can stay motivated.
There's a lot of videos going around on social media, take some of it, use it, put a smile
on your face because remember keep smiling is always the best way to get through tough
times, and we will get through this, all of us together.
Radka Kahlefeldt: Stay active. I'm hanging in there too, hoping that there will be races
at the end of the year. Best of luck to everyone and stay safe.
Speaker 1: Well, there we go. It's fantastic to see so many pros keeping their moods high,
remaining positive and motivated with their training, and particularly given and it's
important to point out it is their livelihood. Now, I hope that has been interesting to all
of you out there, not only hopefully motivated you, but also may be given you some ideas
of your own home training. We're all in this together, so stay strong
and stay safe everyone out there. If you've enjoyed today's video, give it a like and
if you're not doing so already, remember to follow GTN on our social media channels.
[00:10:23] [END OF AUDIO]