What's up?
Motivators taryn here with Joanne courtney, world champion curler olympian,
who just raced her first triathlon yesterday here at PTO canadian open.
And it being 26 hours since to your first
race finish, we are going to have eight tips specifically for beginner triathletes
from a beginner triathlete who just killed her race yesterday.
We're going to have some training tips and racing tips.
My name is Terry Gazelle.
In my twenty s, I was overweight.
Unfulfilled, and couldn't even run to the end of the block.
Over the following years, I found endurance sports, lost £65,
won age groups, race world championships, broke records, and trained and learned
from some of the best athletes and coaches in the world.
You too can use endurance sports to change
your life and accomplish your fitness goals.
You just need a system.
A system that's meant for us amateurs
who want to be our best while feeling our strongest and healthiest.
My company, Motive, offers that system,
and I want to share some of the tips from it today.
All right, joanne first tip is be.
Disciplined with your efforts.
The easy efforts have to be super easy.
It's really boring because those easy efforts are often really long,
but you need to stay disciplined with the zone two stuff.
When I say being disciplined
with the efforts, I also need to be disciplined when it's intense.
Those tough, shorter workouts need to be really hard.
I had a lot of workouts where I came very
close to almost throwing up, and I think it helped me out a lot on race day.
So why is it so important to have that big difference?
What did you find helped?
Well, the research says when you go almost to your body's limits at nine or ten out
of ten, that's how your body is going to improve.
And I saw, like, in two months only, particularly my run.
I've never really biked a lot or swam, but I've done some running,
I've done some half marathons, and I can't believe what happened to my pace.
I've never ran as fast as I did yesterday, like in a race ever.
I've done a couple of halves, and I know kind of where I was in those
half, and I was way faster than that yesterday after doing a swim on a bike.
And I would add that the low intensity
work allows you to hit those high intensity efforts really hard.
It's not just about doing low intensity
work for the sake of it to set you up for those high intensity efforts.
Yeah.
And that's kind of just trusting the science.
I haven't done a lot of biking,
and a lot of the long bikes are really easy, and part of me just has to put
my faith in that and say, you know what, this is what the science is saying,
and I'm not going to go kill it for a two and a half hour bike ride today.
I'm just going to take it easy. Tip number two.
Number two is find the positives in your training.
There's going to be a million things
to work on at all times, especially as a beginner.
I know for myself with the swim,
I always am going to be super hard on myself because I'm very new to it.
So getting out of the pool every day
instead of just feeling bummed every time I didn't finish a workout or I needed
to put fins on or it just was ugly out there, I really needed to focus
on the fact that progress is being made and trying to celebrate those small wins.
I remember the first day that I swam for 300 meters.
I was like self high diving as I was leaving the pool because I felt so proud.
Meanwhile, there's, like, real teenagers who competitively swim
who are next to me and just slip turning and everything.
But trying to keep that out of my periphery and enjoying the process
and enjoying those positives is really big for me.
Tip number three.
Okay, when it gets tough in your training, find a keyword that you can lean on.
So this is something I picked up in my curling career for the big games.
When the pressure was on, I always had one or two words that I could
kind of go to that would set my mind and help me refocus.
So in those intense efforts,
in the tough parts of training, if you can come up with something that you
can play in your brain, is a phrase or a word or a thought or
something to visualize, I find that that really helped me push
through in my training efforts and not just kind of stop and give up.
And it can be different for every discipline.
Like for the run,
we did an intense workout when I came out to train with you, and you said, strong.
As smooth, and smooth is fast.
And then it's funny because I'll be in my run and I'll be saying it I know I'm
saying it wrong, but it's those three words strong, smooth, and fast.
And it cues my body in, and it just would get me to the end of the workout.
Meanwhile, the swim, those are not my words.
What are some of the other words that you used?
In my swim, it was always calm and slow.
The bike was more stay alive, don't fall off.
Don't fall off. Tip number four.
Listen to your body.
If you need a rest day, don't feel guilty about taking it so into that.
So I'm an age group triathlete.
I don't do this professionally.
There are a lot of hours that you spend
training, but I'm also a nurse that works shift work.
I'm a mom, I'm a wife.
I like to have friends sometimes, see my family, enjoy the summer, have a beer.
So I found, particularly after about six
weeks of really staying dedicated to every single work and taking it off those boxes.
I was just hitting a point where I felt like I couldn't fit everything in.
I didn't want to get up at five
in the morning before work, three or four days of the week,
and I took the foot off the gas a little bit, and I skipped a couple of workouts
a week for a few weeks, and it didn't feel that okay.
I didn't feel great, though, at the time,
but I had to kind of reset my mind and realize I'm not a professional at this.
I'm an age group triathlete.
I'm doing this for fun because I want to,
and if this is what I need right now, that's okay.
Rounding it out with tip number five.
Find the joy in your training.
For me, the joy in swimming is when it's over.
I have a great skincare regimen.
The hair care is fantastic,
and I always feel refreshed coming out of the pool, so that's the best part there.
I love going fast on my bike when I can.
That feeling is exhilarating.
And then the run,
I love being outside and having the sun and the fresher on my face.
So finding those little keys that make you enjoy it, because if you're going to spend
every single day training, it's got to be fun.
If it's a grind, you're doing something wrong.
This is coming from somebody who is known as one of the hardest workers in curling.
Still taking that winning mindset
to another sport and having balance as a world champion.
I love hearing that because you know how to win.
You know how to succeed at something.
You succeeded very well yesterday.
And doing that omits balance and a few beers and some wines, that's great.
More people need to do that.
Okay, so now let's get into the racing tips.
Tip number six. The first racing tip would be what?
So I started every leg slower than I wanted to.
My biggest goal for the race was to complete it.
And I had points in every part,
every discipline, and every workout where I had to quit because I went too hard.
So I really wanted to pace myself and make sure that I completed.
I prefer to know that maybe I could have tried or gone a little harder,
but I finished versus I went too hard and I had to stop.
So in the swim, for example, I wasn't bolting into the water.
I'm a really new swimmer, so I actually let everyone go,
and I just started on my own once everyone has kind of gone ahead of me.
And I thought the first half of swim went really well.
I ran into trouble once we turned around
that buoy, and all of a sudden I was around people.
But we made it through. Yeah.
And every single discipline, what we wanted to do was really ease
into the race so you could start judging how much is too much?
Because the places that you can go really wrong in your first race are when you go
too hard and your heart rate gets too high and you start freaking out.
So it's that easing into it so you can get
close to your limit and then maybe back off a little bit.
Yeah. Actually, it was a great thing
that happened to me two weeks before this race, I totally blew up on my brick run.
I got off my bike, and it said, run at race pace for 30 minutes.
And I was like, sweet. Let's see how fast I am.
I've had all these awesome, intense intervals.
Like, maybe I'm just a sprinter now.
And I got off my bike and I took off, and I completely blew up.
After about 15 minutes, I was able to hang on for five more, but I had to stop.
I had no choice.
But that's part of the training to get there and know, okay, this is too much.
Yeah. So I was super, super disciplined on race
day because I did not want to have to walk it in.
Tip number seven.
So, Delirious, we're leaving that in brain work.
Tip number seven is to plan out your rate.
So one of the reasons I got into triathlon
is because I think transition is the coolest thing.
Like, I've done some running where you just start the race.
You run, you end the race.
I love watching triathletes come out of the water.
They're all wet, and they get to their bike, and off they go.
But I wanted to have a really good plan as
to how to do that, because the faster you do that, the cooler you feel.
So I had a really good plan for exactly
what had to happen from the water to the bike.
Once I got to my bike, once I got out of the gate,
and I felt like that plan actually kept me really grounded in the race.
Like, the swim was nerve wracking.
I was middle to back of the pack,
getting out of the water, but instead of being like, oh, I'm tired.
Middle be better at confidence.
Joanne middle.
But instead of thinking, oh, I'm tired, this, my brain immediately went to kay.
What's next? What's my next step?
And I stayed really grounded in that, and I felt like it helped me feel a lot
more comfortable on race day, given that I'd never done it before.
Yeah, you had great transitions, and I. Felt like a boss.
It felt so cool. I'm like, I'm doing it.
I'm doing triathlon right now. It's happening.
Tip number eight enjoy race day.
So I talk about enjoying training, finding the joy.
This is what we train for.
This is what we play for.
So it should be fun.
So finding a way to work through the nerves, to work through the tough
stuff, maybe you're not having the best rates.
Maybe you're struggling with something.
It doesn't matter.
This is why we're here.
And it's so fun to be able to take a step
back and just celebrate all your progress and the success.
And if there are learning points, cool.
But this is why we do it.
It's for Easter, so have some fun.
And we didn't plan this, but we matched today.
So if you want to get the training
that Joanne used, she actually used our Motive Training app.
She isn't just wearing the gear.
She used that exclusively.
And there's a link in the description
below to where you can check that out for a free trial.
And then if you like it, stick around and go follow Joanne.
There's a link to her instagram in the description below.
Good job. So proud of you.
Thank you so much.
You're great coach.
Really great coach stuff.