- A couple of months ago, I got the opportunity
to catch up with, fellow countryman, Alistair Brownlee,
ahead of the championship race in Slovakia.
Now we all know Alistair for his strengths
on the short distance racing,
but this year he's been trying his hand
at the longer distances, too,
and he's certainly impressed the triathlon world
in his first couple of races.
So I'm really interested to see
how he's gone about that change,
and his plans for the season ahead.
(upbeat music)
Hi Alistair, and thanks for joining us today,
it'll be great to pick your brain, really on,
you stepping up, from Olympic distance, to middle distance.
Obviously, quite a big change, there's a lot to think about,
maybe training tactics, what you're taking on during a race,
how have you found the whole transition?
- So far, I've done a couple of races
and obviously trained for it for a few months,
and I guess there's a few big differences.
The first one is training for more of a constant
individual effort, rather than being dictated
by what's going on around you.
So, especially on the bike,
you know, that's a kind of a time and trial effort.
And so I spent a bit of time training for that
and quite enjoyed, that different kind of aspect to that.
And found it OK.
And, then I suppose the second big thing
is just the length of it, and that obviously brings in,
quite a lot of fatigue towards the back end of the race.
But also, nutrition, so getting the nutrition right,
and that's definitely something that I'm still learning
and playing around with
and hopefully getting a bit better at.
- Are you training quite smart, using power
and watching your numbers during training and racing?
- Yeah, so, one of the big differences
is for Olympic distance, you're basically training
a lot of the time to go really hard,
and then back off, and that, power for me,
was not necessarily that valuable for that,
but then for this kind of training, it's very valuable,
and for racing.
So, yeah from all the efforts
that I've been doing on the bike,
to the effort that I'm kind of putting out on the race,
yeah, I've got a pretty good idea
of where I kinda should be, the ball park
and that's what I've been training for,
and that's what I've been looking at in the race.
- Cool, and obviously, a completely different bike now,
come from a road bike to a TT bike,
it's an aggressive position.
How do you find that whole aero tuck,
and you get used to it,
have you tried out lots of different things?
Maybe been in the tunnel at all?
- Yes, I've tried that a bit,
and had a, obviously, done a bit of bike fit,
it's always a trade off, I guess with TT
between the more aggressive you can be, and the comfort,
and playing around with that,
and I think that, I've refined my position quite a bit,
over the last few months,
and I think I'll continue to do so.
I've done one, kind of,
a very brief, kind of bit of aero testing,
on the track at Derby velodrome, where I'm testing,
a few different positions, a bit different kit,
some clothing and stuff, so, as I'm kind of going on,
I'm hoping to refine that more and more,
but I kind of made a start to it
and made some little improvements,
but, like I said, as the kind of project,
of trying to be better at long distance goes,
I'm gonna try and refine it a bit.
- If there was like one tip you could pull from the whole
refine that aero process, what would be the one,
one thing you pull away and say,
"that's the thing I need to dial."
Or as someone's watching this video
should look at dialling in the most.
- I think for me, it's head position.
I got quite an aggressive low position.
I mean, on the whole, people argue a bit,
but the lower you can get, the more aero you're gonna be,
then your head needs to be kind of line with that,
so head position on top of that.
- Cool.
I see you've got a couple of races under your belt,
at this longer distance.
You've just fixed your middle distance at the moment.
Do you have any sort of screw-ups in these races?
Or anything you've sort of, you've changed as a result
of those last experiences?
- Well, of course, neither of them have gone 100% perfect,
so there's always things you can do a bit better.
The two races I've done have been very different
to the one that's coming the weekend,
where this is a really flat, kind of very constant course.
So, I've obviously trained a bit more for that,
More constant effort, make sure the position's good,
and I feel comfortable in it.
But also, nutrition is a big one I think.
That's always gonna be a learning curve.
How I get those calories in,
and how much fluid and salt I'm taking in,
I've kind of progressed on that,
and I'm using a slightly different strategy, this weekend,
than I've used before.
- And, obviously, two time Olympic champion,
there's another Olympic cycle coming around,
do you think you'll be talked into Tokyo?
- At the very minute, I'm not sure.
It's kind of really refreshing not to think about it.
I've spent the last, well, I've been looking
at three Olympics, but for the last two Olympics,
I've gone through the Olympic cycle
knowing that it's an Olympics that,
I could stand there and be favoured for a win,
so that carries with it, quite a lot of pressure.
So it's nice not to think about it too much,
and enjoy other forms of triathlon at the moment.
That's definitely not to say that I won't be there.
I may be there, I may not be.
And we'll see how much I enjoy
some of the longer stuff first.
- Cool, so Kona is definitely on the radar then?
- Kona is definitely on the radar, yeah.
I think every triathlete wants to have a crack
at Kona at some point and I'm no different.
- If you could pick one sport, out of the three,
and just focus on it the rest of your life,
what would it be?
- It changes week to week.
I think running has always been my first love,
in lots of ways,
just the simplicity of being able to throw on my shoes
and get out the door.
But, that saying, I love, riding my bike, as well.
I can't really imagine a day when I don't get on my bike
and ride, and I think when I retire,
I think a lot more time is gonna be around riding the bike,
you know, to the cafe somewhere
with some of my friends.
I can't see myself doing that.
As for swimming, I can't see myself going down the local leisure centre
just to do 5K, when I'm retired.
- Following the black line.
- Yeah, exactly.
I think when I'm on holiday, or I can swim in an open air
pool, like this morning, or I can get out and swim outdoors,
yeah, for sure, I'll be swimming.
I love swimming outside and exploring,
but I can't see myself going down to the local leisure centre
just to do a few K.
- Now you're going this longer distance,
you're, in a way you sort of fend for yourself,
you're not with the British Triathlon Team.
How have you found that, in terms of the support?
And looking after yourself at races?
We were just watching you, sorting your bike.
How do you find that?
- Yeah, obviously, it's different.
I've been a bit more self-sufficient.
I guess I'm fortunate to have, the support of the
Bahrain Team, which is good.
And the races, one of the great things about Challenge
is that their really friendly.
There's a lot of support actually from the racers,
and stuff.
So that's good, but, yeah,
I think it's gonna be a bit different.
And so far I've been lucky to travel with people like,
with training partner Mark Buckingham,
and do stuff, at least, with someone else,
and get a bit of help that way.
I think it'd be very lonely to do it on your own.
But I think that's one thing, as I go forward,
and especially as the racing gets a bit more demanding,
in terms of abroad, and needing training camps
to prepare for it,
I think, like Cologne, I probably would take,
I think I need to look into building a bit more of a team
around it, really.
- Is there anything you've like really changed
about your training, for long distance racing now?
- I haven't changed a massive amount.
The one thing I've changes is a lot of my efforts being
based around individual time trial efforts, basically.
- So, spending a lot more time on time trial, on the bike.
- Yeah, spending time doing efforts on the TT bike.
But apart from that, I'm still doing mostly TT training.
- You've announced having quite a high volume
in the training so I guess not too much change there.
- Yeah, you kind of need more volume, necessarily,
just to focus on the time trialling.
- Who would you say is better, or more hardcore,
triathletes or cyclists?
- It's impossible to say because,
within each sport there's a big range.
You know, there's some very hardcore cyclists
and some guys that aren't so hardcore.
In terms of like, actual, engine ability,
you know we look at everything for engine ability,
the guys at the top end of cycling, you know Chris Froome,
it's just absolutely mind-boggling.
- Did you train with Froome?
- No, not actually with Froome,
but I did spend a bit of time with Sky.
But, yeah, I mean and those guys do
some mega hard training, I think.
And really, really, very focused and hard.
But yeah, I mean everything is hard in it's own way,
it's own challenges.
- Did you pull any snippets of advice from that
when you were training with the guys,
and brought that into your own training?
- A bit of, yeah, how you train.
I mean, there's a big difference between how you can train
for, I think, load bearing and non-load bearing sports.
In terms of cycling, we can train really, really hard
for short periods.
You can't really do that for running.
It has to be a kind of consistent build-up
because otherwise you just can't literally, take the load.
So, it is quite different.
Yeah, it's interesting to learn.
And the whole set-up, I think in cycling, is amazing.
There's definitely stuff I can take ongoing from that.
- Thanks very much, Alistair, for your time.
Some really valuable stuff there.
It was great to catch up with Alistair in Slovakia,
and, a he's shown, it's not uncommon to jump around
in distances from one season to the next,
or even within the same season.
So there's some great advice, from one of the best.
And you can subscribe to Global Triathlon Network,
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