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CITY RUNS
"Pete and Harry are both international triathletes who are currently focusing on their running, get an insight into their training exploits which sees them both running in excess of 100 miles per week!"
Latest Post: 15th April 2009
10k's and Toe's
The past 8 weeks seems to have passed by very quickly and in 6 weeks time we'll be off to France for the first races of the season. As a result, March was supposed to be spent focusing more on speed work before bashing out what we hoped would be a very fast 10k at Eastleigh. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to make it to the start of March as late February I felt a niggle in one of my toes which seemed to keep constantly dislocating. I haven't really been injured for a couple of years but after a week of being in pain every time I walked I realised this was a bit more serious than I first though! Ironically, my 2nd smallest toe meant I couldn't run for nearly 4 weeks which meant any hope of a fast time at Eastleigh was down the drain. I was even forced to miss the last Westward league which resulted in Cornwall AC pipping us to the senior men's title.
I managed to start running again 5 days prior to Eastleigh and decided to head up with Harry and give it a go. To cut a long story short my race lasted approximately 4k before deciding to call it a day and not risk aggravating the injury any further. Harry faired slightly better and did record a PB but still not what he was hoping for.
Pulling out did give me chance to watch some of the race and it really did open my eyes to a few things. Firstly, considering this is one of the fastest 10k's in the country the standard of running was very poor. Only 3 guys under 31 minutes and only 10 under 32 is not a great advertisement for British running. The one thing that did amaze me was how content athletes were to sit in a group and not work. I'm sure most people go to races like this to record a good time, whether than be 32 minutes or 42 minutes, it's all about achieving personal goals. However, numerous athletes were happy to be dragged round and then try to out sprint the other runners in their group instead of working together and helping everyone, including them run a faster time!
Anyway, enough of a rant, time to attempt running again!
Pete
Pete Freedman
D.O.B: 12/07/1984
Club/County/Country: Driventotri.com (UK) and ESMGO (France). Race athletics for Tavistock AC.
Occupation: Triathlete/Triathlon Coach
Personal Profile:
Background: I grew up as a swimmer and competed at National level until I was 18. I went to Bath Uni which was a triathlon High Performance Centre at the time and pretty soon I got hooked. On finishing Uni I took the decision to spend two years focusing solely on triathlon with the aim of representing GBR at senior level. I race semi professionally in the French league and spend much of my time travelling to Obscure European countries
Ambitions/Future aspirations:
I would like to represent my country at senior level within the next couple of years with the ulitmate ambition of represnting GBR at a major games.
Best Race:
London Triathlon 2007: London is the biggest tri in the world and attracts a top quality field including Olympic Medallists and World Champions. Having a former French swim champion in the race meant the swim was on from the start and I just missed the front pack. However I ran really strongly and came home 12th (6th Brit) in a stacked field and was 2nd U23 athlete home.
Worst Race:
Virtuvian Half Ironman 2006: Led out of the swim, spent 90k riding on my own only to bonk at 16k on the run, fall into the arms of a marshal and spend 10 minutes on the floor being force fed Jaffa Cakes. I managed to walk/crawl the last 5k and finished in a very dazed and confused state. My saving grace was the 2 litre bottle of coke waiting at the finish.
Harry Wiltshire
D.O.B: 21/03/1983
Club: Driventotri.com (UK) ESMGO (France) and Tavistock AC.
Occupation: Athlete/Coach and talent Identification Officer
Background: Ambitions/Future aspirations:
I grew up in Dorset where I swam for my local club "Wareham Water Rats" my first multisport race was a beach Duathlon in Bournemouth when I was 14. I took up Triathlon when I went to the national high performance centre at Bath University where I studied for a degree in Business Administration. I graduated in 2006 after spending time training in Switzerland, Brazil and Thailand. I am now living and training in Tavistock Devon running my sports coaching company www.driventotri.com and getting in the run miles so I can shave some time off my 10k run over the winter. My aim is to make the Olympic Triathlon start line in london 2012.
Results 2007
- 4th London Triathlon
- 7th British National Championships
- 4th Royal Windsor Triathlon
- 1st Exeter Tri
- 1st Perranporth Triathlon
- 1st Normandy Championships
- 1st Bala Triathlon
International Honors:
- Junior World Championships Cancun Mexico 2002
- European U23 Luxembourg 2003 (selected)
- European U23 Hungry 2004
- European Seniors Valencia Spain 2004
- World Student Games Palma Majorca 2004
- England Home Nations Scotland 2004
- Salford World Cup England 2005
- European U23 Championships Reijika Croatia 2006
- World Student Games and World Aquathlon Championships Lausanne Switzerland 2006
Personal Best
They never measure the courses right, so I have completed an Olympic Distance Triathlon 1500m swim 40km bike 10km run in between 1hr 40 and 2 hrs 5 minutes.
Best Race:
World Student Games Lausanne Switzerland 2006. I know it is students, but I won a World Championships that day and i am really pround of that.
Worst Race:
European U23 Champs Tiszaujvaros, Hungary 2004. I had been doing too much traveling before the race, It took me a full day to get to the race from Switzerland Via London. It was baking hot and I was tired, I ended up having a nap under a tree half way around the run course, I made it to the finish line then went back to sleep under the drinks table. I had some pretty nasty tan lines after that race.
Funniest Moment:
I raced the French Iron tour last year five races in five days in different locations across France. I spoke no French. After the first race they wanted to take the fastest swimmer, biker and runner to do some publicity with Eurosport. I was the fastest swimmer, so was bundled into a car and driven off. No one spoke any English and I had no idea what was going on. We arrived at a building in the town where the camera crew started filming. We were handed a dressing gown and told to strip to our underwear. I was very afraid and had no clue what was happening! I was then pushed into a small room with a massage bench in the middle and a very butch lady in nurses uniform waiting with a large bucket of mud in her hand. She patted the bench and motioned for me to lye down. The camera crew got a great shot of the fear in my eyes and my frantic searching for an escape route before I realised we had been taken to a mud baths. When I finally got back to the race site my team had left without me and I had to ride 80km to meet up with them for the following days race.
Favorite quote
Fear not for fear itself is fed by fear,
And all fears pass. Did no one tell you so?
Come take my hand, my friend, and we will peer
Into this fears abyss. And Jump! And Know.
Personal Website www.triharry.co.uk
Latest Post: 19th Feb 2009
Forrest Gump, Sloths, Ponies and Sheep
I watched Forrest Gump the other day, he just kept on running which is a lot like what we've been doing for the last two years, it seemed to work for him which must mean it's going to work for us! Harry even emulated Forrest by running to the sea the other day during the Hoe 10, not sure he ran quite as quick as Forrest but I'm sure he ran back just as fast - just look at the photo, you've gotta be moving quick to sweep your hair back like that. Just imagine how fast Forrest would have run if he'd have had long socks to help him.........
The other picture is me crossing the line at the last Westward league cross country. Now I definitely didn't have the speed of Forrest over the last 200m, in fact my leg turnover resembled that of a sloth during my pathetic sprint for the line which saw me go from 1st to 4th rather too quickly, Jim (team-mate) even had time to curl up and sleep by the time I'd finished........
On an even more exciting note (yes I know that's hard to believe) it hasn't rained in Tavistock for FOUR days in a row. This might not sound like much but people round these parts don't know what to do when it doesn't rain. The only happy 'people' are the Dartmoor ponies (donkey's if you're Flora) who have finally come out from hibernating in the gorse bushes.
On the subject of ponies, they're not very good at dodging snowballs. Sheep on the other hand are an entirely different prospect! We took aim at two ponies on our run last week and scored a direct hit with both - could we hit a sheep... no chance! Evolution has obviously been a lot kinder to them than the pony with regards to snowball dodging!
Bye for now!
15th January 2009
Just Keep Running, Just Keep Running...
First things first, yes we are still alive, we've just been cr*p at updating this recently! A couple of heavy crashes at the end of the Triathlon season dampened our enthusiasm for blogging for a while but we've been back in working order for a while now and have just been plain lazy since then. Just to bring you up to speed, here is our last 5 months in 186 words:
Return from Hamburg World Cup via night in Hamburg Airport, receive new team kit, crash bikes at 30mph in new team kit, write off new kit, Fly to French Grand Prix - Pete Crashes, Harry limps round run, get abused by French team manager, endure 30 hour trip back with road rash (Pete) and a (near) broken leg (Harry), sulk! Train once before London Tri, swim well, bike well, run rubbish, sulk! Go to last FGP needing to win to get promoted, win race but think we still didn't get promoted, sulk for 5 minutes, realise we got promoted, celebrate! Return home, train lots, Win Peter Tavy Plod (Harry), finish 9th team in the Coupe De France, get drunk, do nothing for 2 weeks, return to training by racing Westward league, blow my (Pete) doors off badly and get overtaken by everyone, train lots, win Tavy 7 (Harry), run 31.12 at Brighton (Pete), train even more, run 30.37 at Telford (Pete), Eat lots over Christmas, run 32.15 at Poole (Harry), go running at 7am on New Years Day, Get told to chop chop and do a blog!!!!
All in all a busy and quite eventful few months. The highlights being getting promoted and running fast at Telford, the lows mainly revolve around crashing and not being able to perform to our ability at London after focusing on the race.
Winter training has been back in full swing for nearly 3 months now with the focus again being mainly on running. A couple of years ago running 30 minutes for 10k seemed along way off but it's surprising what consistent, hard training can do. Now that goal seems very realistic. Obviously as your times come down it gets harder and harder to improve and you often go long periods of time without recording a PB. It's important not to panic and believe that you are doing the right training, keep doing it and eventually the times will drop off again.
January has so far been a relatively big month in terms of miles averaging about 80 miles per week with 4-5 swims and a couple of bikes added in there. We've also spent a lot of time focusing on our core strength nothing complicated, just one circuits session and two med ball sessions a week to make sure we can hold it together for the last 3-4k in a race. The only race planned in January was the Westward league at Bideford which Pete managed to win relatively easily while Harry was on his Sick bed. Nothing coming up now until the 3k in February where hopefully we'll be running Fast!!
Pete and Harry
14th July 2008
Wacky, Wacky Races!
Triathlon World Cups... Those are the things we normally watch on triathlon.org like all the other tri geeks to see how all the big boys are going in the lead up to the Olympics. So... we're packing for the French Divvy 2 race, ready to leave when we check e-mails for the last time to see we can both have a start at Hamburg World Cup! An hour later and already late for our flight to France, we’ve booked flights from Paris to Hamburg and we're off. Accommodation will have to wait (we'll come back to that).
The French Divvy 2 race finally worked out for us, we managed to stay away in a working group of 12 on the bike and come off with 20s on the main pack. At 35 degrees the run was HOT! I'd packed my legs and ran for 1st which was very pleasing. Harry, who pretty much had gimped for me on the bike decided to leave his legs 'dans le velo' and ended up 13th. We ended up 3rd in the team standings which left the team manager a bit pissed off! So pissed off in fact that we got dropped at Charles De Gaulle airport that night to sleep on the floor without any dinner. All for the love of sport of course!
After a 'great' nights sleep we jumped on the plane to Hamburg, got the bus to the city centre and set about the task of finding a hotel for the week. 1 hour later and we've found a 41 Euro a night hotel bang slap in the centre, bargain! It came with free cigarettes (half smoked of course) and a 6 light chandelier, 1 of the lights even worked! Easy access to the city centre and the race and even easier access to the girls who were standing on the corners outside!!
We survived 5 nights and by race day were ready to go! Well, Harry was ready to go, I started racing after about 20 minutes by which time I'd missed the front two packs in the swim, not the ideal start. Harry performed his usual magic tricks with 'the claw' to appear at the front of the field after the swim. Deciding to give the big boys a chance he waited patiently on the bike and sat in the front group until the run.
Now, when you watch on the little screen on triathlon.org they don't seem to be running that fast! They're a little bit quicker in real life, or so Harry assures me. I was still somewhere out the bike course when they started running! Although not being spectacularly fast, Harry put in a solid run to finish 13th which was still a good result in only his 2nd World Cup. I managed to run ok but ended up 24th, minutes down on the winner and never really in the race. Still, great experience all the same.
Saturday night saw another sleep in an airport before a 1 hour BA flight, 1 hour underground, 2 hour South West train and a 2 hour car journey back to Tavi just in time to be tri geeks again and watch the girls race on triathlon.org. They didn't look to be running that fast. But I'll never know, I'm too scared to check if they out ran me or not!
19th June 2008
Looking back at previous blogs it's quite a while since we updated on our trials and tribulations! With the season starting the last 6 weeks have been pretty hectic. We raced the 1st French Grand Prix in the Ardennes. The French triathlon scene is unbelievably strong, we're racing division 2 this year yet there's still 100 elite athletes lining up to race with the top 25 normally finishing within a minute of each other.
After screwing up pretty badly last year we were under a bit of pressure to perform. Being the 1st race of the season you never really know what form you're going to be in but we both had solid races. Coming into the last 400m three of our team were together in 3rd-5th. Harry put his sprinting ability to good use to out kick us both and finish 3rd. My poor excuse for a sprint saw me come in 5th. Not a bad start to the season and most importantly a 1st place finish overall for the team.
We then headed down to Southern France for 3 and a half weeks altitude training in Font Romeu. Harry's put some great stories of our travels on his website. They really are worth reading so check out www.triharry.co.uk if you want a chuckle.
The plan was always to head back to race at Windsor on the 15th of June. It's always a great atmosphere with most Age Groupers staying on after their racing to watch us race. Somehow Windsor also always seems to have great weather and this year was no exception! Being one of the high profile drafting races in the country there was a decent elite line up with Rich Stannard back to defend his title. Harry had his usual great swim and by the time the bike started there were a group of 3 up the road with myself and a couple of others 45s down.
It's the 1st time we've come down from altitude to race and you certainly notice it, for the 1st 15 minutes on the bike I hardly had to take a breath and I was riding as hard as I could! Myself and one of the other lads in our group rode hard for 25k and caught Harry's group with about 15k remaining leaving 7 of us in the front group. From then on in it was a case of waiting for the run and hoping our legs were there!
As soon as we hit the run Rich set off hard and neither of us were able to go with him. The course at Windsor is three laps and by the end of lap 1 he had a 15s gap to myself with Harry a further 5s back. Rich maintained his lead and by lap three Harry had closed the gap to myself, it was like Tuesday nights a Tavi athletics club all over again with each of us trying to drop the other! With about 1k to go Harry ran back up to me again, the boys got a sprint on him so I decided to give it a go from 800m out and had enough left in the tank to just pull away and finish 2nd. Harry milked the applause and trotted home 3rd. All in all a really good day's work that sets us up for the rest of the season. There should be some coverage on Channel 4, provisionally scheduled for June 29th at 7.30am if you want to see us in action!
We're back to France in just over a week for the 2nd stage of the FGP so we'll update after that.
Pete
28th April 2008
Last weekend we thought that we should put the winter miles to the test with a bit of multisport racing, we both made our Duathlon Debuts at the National Elite Championships over the 10km run 40km bike 5km run distance. The race was in one of the Welsh valleys and the weather was a bit Bleak!!
Pete trotted around the first 10km in just over 32 minutes to put him in the front group of 4 getting onto the bike just behind Phil Wylie of Bristol and West and David Mitchinson. I had obviously left my legs in Devon and joined the boys on the bike a little later on.
Out on the 10 lap bike course people were getting a little chilly in their tri suits, and the field of 26 athletes dwindelled to 12 as each lap riders headed straight on for a warm shower rather than turning for another loop. Descending at 30 m.p.h in the rain and wind isn't the best idea when you have spent the winter trying to get skinny and on lap 8 Pete pretty much rode into the ambulance where an over enthusiastic member of the St Johns ambulance had great joy in quoting his internal temperature as 33.7.
I made it out onto the run, where the very small crowd were most impressed by what they thought were my dance moves, I would have told them that I was just shaking uncontrollably but unfortunately couldn't speak. After 1km I stopped and begged a Jumper coat and pair of gloves from one of the supporters and went on to just about complete the course thankful that I wasn't DQ'd for outside assistance, I think I was so far down they didn't care.
Well done to Phil who won His first national Elite title, Phil has been plugging away for years and really deserved his win.
As my mum would say there is no such thing as bad weather just the wrong clothes. Not quite sure what the next outing is yet, but we will make sure we are wearing the right clothes, or Brooks might actually kill us.
Pete and Harry
25th Mar 2008
Eastleigh 10k
As planned we headed off to Hampshire last weekend for Eastleigh 10k. We picked the race as it was a fast, flat course that fitted in well with our training cycles. The aim was to get as close to 30 minutes as possible. From the sessions Id (Pete) been doing I knew 30.30 was a realistic aim so hoped to run around this. That was until we turned up and felt the wind!
Anyway, conditions were the same for everyone so it was still going to be a good race with some quality runners lining up. From the start Dan Robinson, Toby Lambert and Gareth Price hit the front and by 500m had a 10 second gap on our group of 10-15. We ran through 1k in 3.10 which wasnt exactly what Id hoped for so I hit the front into the headwind and pretty soon there were just two of us chasing the front three. By 5k I was on my own in 3rd with Dan and Toby still up the road. Harry began to get his legs going after 3-4K and with a tailwind between Ks 4 and 8 things were looking up.
However, the final 1500 metres were pretty much straight into a bugger of a headwind which put paid to a sub 31 minute run. I got caught with 400m to go and passed so ended up in 4th in 31.19. I guess at first I was disappointed, but all the times were slow and Dan Robinson "only" ran 30.17 so Id like to think theres definitely a 30.30 in the legs if I find the right race. Harry pulled through after a couple of weeks of interrupted training with a sore ankle and finished with a 32.30 - not where he wants to be but an improvement on the earlier 10k we had done so still some positives to take away.
Since then we have had a great weeks cycling, racking up 20 hours in 4 days and also paid a visit to Planet X in Sunny Doncaster to pick up our shiny new bikes for the season. Its always great to pick up new kit and helps with the motivation but after the 6 hour drive there and the return journey the following day I dont want to see a car seat for a while!
Plan now is to get back to the running and keep the swimming and cycling ticking over. If the weather looks good I may head to Totton 10k on the 6th of April for a bit of a training run and maybe even a fast time!
Pete and Harry
6th Mar 2008
Big Miles Done! (Well for now anyway)
Its a couple of weeks since we wrote so lots of updating to do. The weekend saw the end of our big block of running for a couple of weeks we both had a really good block of work and in a strangely sadistic way are already missing the big sessions. Average for myself (Pete) over the last 8 weeks has been about 90 miles with an easier week in the middle while Harrys been going for the - If you cant go fast, go long approach and hit 110 for the last three weeks. Its only been 4 days since the big miles finished but some very strange things have happened since then!
1) I can actually feel my legs
2) Ive been seen out on my bike on two consecutive days
3) The profits of Morrisons Garage in Tavistock have halved since we stopped running home on a Tuesday and Thursday. All those at Tavi AC should understand this but it relates to our addiction to 39p bags of sweets (3 for a quid!) and Coca Cola after a long, hard session with a 6 mile run home to follow.
Morrisons will be pleased to know weve only called a temporary halt to big mileage in the lead up to Eastleigh 10k on March 16th. The start list came through yesterday and its pretty stacked with 30-32 minute runners which is ideal for fast times and a great race. In the lead up to that it will be a couple of short fast sessions mixed in with some easy, shorter runs to keep the mileage reasonable. We had 8x4 min (1 min rec) at Tavi AC on Tuesday which was a great race pace session and set us up nicely.
Away from the training Harrys been setting up the South West Triathlon Talent Academy and is currently drowning in a sea of application forms. Ive ordered him not to select anyone who might potentially beat us ever!! There are certainly some talented youngsters out there; fortunately they mainly seem to be girls.
I also picked up a new pair of Trainers from Brooks called "Ghosts" how cool is that! Hopefully Ill be so fast no one will see me! Look out for them in shops soon.
Pete and Harry
18th Feb 2008
Firstly,
Hello to everyone reading this. Sorry its taken us so long to write our first blog, life as full time athletes isnt always as cushty as it seems! We will be aiming to update this every couple of weeks and hopefully give you an insight into our training, racing, eating and other random goings on in the world of triathlon!
A little bit of background before I get going! We are both full time triathletes based mainly in Devon during the winter. Neither of us is funded so the bills are paid by racing and our coaching company (driventotri.com). Ultimately, wed both love to go to the Olympics but thats along way away and there are a lot of steps in the process!
Anyway, onto more important things and training and racing! This winter has been spent focusing on our running and trying to reduce our 10k time. Realistically, to make a living from the sport you need to be running 30.30 off the bike and equivalent to a flat 10k of around 30 minutes and the difficult thing is how to get there! We are self coached but having spoken to a couple of decent runners/run coaches and knowing how both our bodys work big mileage was the chosen option. Most of the last couple of months have been around 85-95 miles a week, made up of 6-7 easy runs, 2-3 quality interval sessions which are incorporated into longer runs and one accelerated long run of around 15-20 miles. Basically the easy runs are very easy and the hard runs very hard!! No heart rate monitors, no funky gismos just balls out all the way!
We have added a couple of races into this to see where were at and the effects of these miles with some interesting results that seem to throw sports science out the window. Harry ran a Half Marathon in 1.19 the other week, His review of that race was unprintable unfortunately! He followed it up 2 days later with an 8.50 on the track which I am sure goes against all logic and science.
Personally my running is come on leaps and bounds over the winter. I managed an 8.40 on the track for 3k which at least shows I am heading in the right direction, however, theres still loads of room for improvement! We are heading to Eastleigh 10k in a month with the aim of running fast, so until then its just over 2 weeks of big miles to go and then a 10 day taper before judgment day!
We will keep you updated!
Pete and Harry
