I’m starting to feel a bit rock and roll recently after my new found skills in Hamburg!  I’ve picked up my new BMW 5 Series GT from ELMS Cambridge.  The locals call us the mainies now because we’ve been spending our evenings driving up and down the main street in town beeping the horn!  It’s an awesome car and I feel very lucky to have it…thanks to my sponsor Elms for freshening me up.

I’ve recently been asked to write a blog for a blogging site called realbuzz.  I’ll be contributing weekly so make sure that you ‘favourite’ realbuzz.com and tune in for more stories of the crazy life of a professional Triathlete! First blog is here…

Lanzarote was a good trip in the end.  I came straight from Hamburg and got stuck straight into hard training.  As I said earlier, I was still buzzing from Hamburg so that carried me through the first week….then I cracked and had a day off. All in all though I couldn’t have asked for more and Conor Murphy was a brilliant training partner.  He’s an Irish athlete who trained with me while we were at Loughborough University.  He then left and became an accountant for 3 years, failed his exams! Then decided to have a crack at making the Irish Olympic team.  He’s doing bloody well and I think he can do it! Exciting athlete and just shows what you can do if you really want it.

So this week for me it’s all about resting up, doing the last minute training preparations, relaxing the body and getting ready for a big race in London.  I can’t wait, it’s going to be such and exciting event.  Get ready to see all of the Worlds best Triathletes, all in their best form fighting it out over the Olympic Course for Olympic Selection.  If you are gutted that you didn’t get any Olympic tickets come and see this show.  Women Saturday @ 08:36, Men Sunday @ 13:06. And if you can’t get to London then watch LIVE on the BBC

I also had the best bit of fish I’ve ever had in Lanzarote.  Check it out in El Gulfo…Out of this world.

I ended up 11th and a bit frustrated but optimistic about the big one in Sydney.  To be honest I thought I’d go a bit better then that but unfortunately didn’t have great legs on the day for whatever reason.

The swim was based in the sea, it was nice and warm but very choppy which suited me to the ground as i’m a very fit swimmer just not a very smooth swimmer so I just got in there after a great start and threw my arms over for 18mins.  I was stoked to exit the swim in joint 3rd place which for me is a massive improvement considering in the pool I’d be one of the worst in the race! haha!

Onto the bike I knew straight away that my legs were not 100% used to this feeling but I rolled with it and just sat in and hid waiting for the run.  I didn’t find the bike difficult at all this weekend but at the same time, I didn’t want to sacrifice anything from my run by making jumps up the road every 2mins!  I wanted to see where my running was at today as i’ve been doing some good sessions.  After quite a few attempts at establishing a gap 3 guys eventually got away including Stu Hayes!  They got 1:20 which is very dangerous for anyone looking to win the race!

At the start of the run I felt pretty awesome to be honest.  I felt very smooth and like I was running within myself but unfortunately after 5k I had to let the leaders go as I started to run out of gas.  I was on track for a top 8 finish till the last lap but I couldn’t raise my game anymore and rocked in 11th.

I’m analysing the race in my head at the moment but all in all it was a good start to the season which could have been better had I eaten more the day before and also not got very ill last year.  Sydney will be better!  Speaking to one of my friends last night as well, he said that when you put together heaps of hard weeks back to back it could take me up to a month to really come good and adapt.

Congrats to my neighbour over here, Brad Kahlefeldt who took his 3rd win and also everyone else in the race.  I think it was top 30 over the line within 2 mins…that’s really impressive as it’s a bloody hard course!

W

Chasing on the bike

Had an interesting weekend in Geelong for the race.

I decided to drop in about 5 days out from the race.  I twisted my wrist while I was out running with Brad Kahlefeldt and Emma Moffatt. I thought that as my training is going to be disturbed I may as well turn it into a positive and go for a hit out. I predicted that my wrist would be better by the race.

It was ok…but was still sore! My main concern was that I would struggle to sprint on my bike and also if anyone gave me any hassle in the swim I would struggle to fight anyone off!

After having our race postponed from the Saturday to Sunday due to high winds…(soft Aussies) we were ready to go on.

The swim went well…I felt really good in the water after all the work I have been doing on my swim. I couldn’t man handle any athletes around me so rather then getting to the front I could only sit where I was and not move up. So I missed the very front and had 2k of chasing to do before i got on to the pack.

It sure was a shock to my system but I closed the 100m gap…I couldn’t really get out of my saddle and sprint so I just sat down and grinded up there feet still out of the shoes so was happy with how I rode.  The pace was reasonably quick on the bike. Overall I was impressed with the ‘other Aussie guys’…there were some really good swimmers in there and also some very strong bike riders who were happy to have a crack! There were quite a few who had the capacity to run under 15:45 as well off a hard bike.

The run was pretty sharp.  It was always going to be! Brad Kahlefeldt, Laurent Vidal and Brendan Sexton pushed the pace pretty hard and I managed 3k before Brad put the hammer down.

I’m satisfied enough with my first race.  It’s been a long time since I’ve put in a good performance…since June last year in Des Moines in fact! I think my performance this weekend was rusty but within striking distance of great shape! Not bad for a first race, the next one will EASILY be better.

I also want to shout out about…

My competitors at the weekend.  1st Brad Kahlefeldt 2nd Laurent Vidal and 3rd Brendan Sexton who for me had the race of the day.  As well as the girls.

My team mates who raced the Runaway Bay 5k.  Especially Kathy Tremblay who went 16:35 + course record

Vicky Holland who won her first race of the year in Takapuna! Looking good for the year Vix:)

Meet the team!

As you know Will is out here training with Team Dillon which includes Stu Hayes, Jodie Stimpson, Chris, Kathy Tremblay and coach Michelle Dillon. I took this shot at the pool today before they started, and trust me – they looked a lot different when they finished!!

They are all doing a fantastic job out here in extremely tough conditions but are warrior-ing through feeling numb and lifeless on their journey to becoming the champions of the future, and as Stu always says: “feeling numb is good, it means you’re improving”. All I know is that Will is looking forward to my home made salmon en croute later with veggies and toasting yet another tough week in the Team Dillon office – and our rest day together tomorrow whoop!

My computer has been getting fixed by the ‘Genius’s’ in the Apple store! They can’t be that great, it took them long enough to realise whats wrong with it…

Everything is going well, I am back training for 3 weeks now.  I’m really enjoying training under Team Dillon.  Michelle is a great coach and Stu Hayes is a GREAT training partner.  It’s really cool doing exactly the same training as someone who is equally as motivated and at a similar level to you.  When you are tired you know they are as well.  When you are flying they are up there with you.  He’s annoying to train with on the run…he sticks to you the whole way round and is really hard to drop! I will be doing the same on the swim to him though.  I’m learning a lot from these two who have a good 6-10 years more experience then me!

I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised that it’s not taken me long at all to get fit.  I have struggled with the swim but thats kind of standard! My biking and running has been fine though and i’ve been able to jump straight back in the deep end.  In future I wont be scared to take a long break at the end of the year if 10 weeks did no harm!  Other then that, not much to report, business as usual in Loughborough however when I get to Oz i’ll post some more interesting pictures up!

My leg is healing up…very slowly though! Now I am on big training weeks it over granulates most days so slows down the healing process.

I can’t wait to get to Australia, it’s tough getting out the door sometimes here and that’s not what you need when your trying to train hard! I had no real problems doing the work here in the past.  People who go away over the winter always comment, “don’t know how you do it”! I am aware that when I get back from Oz I’m going to be saying the same thing.  I’m already soft and i’ve not even got there yet.

One question though…The people who say on a rainy, cold ride “It makes you tough”, does it really make you tough? Or are they trying to make themselves feel better? I personally think that getting into a motivating environment with nice weather that enables you to do your job more effectively therefore being able to back up more sessions at a faster pace makes you tough!

It’s been a decent week…I’ve actually turned the DVD played off finally and I’ve been getting the blood flowing with some yogging…or it might be Jogging?!  It feels so nice to be out there amongst the clouds and mud.  I’m not feeling too bad so far which is crazy!  I’m even envisaging winning again and I’m finding myself high-fiving the trees and occasionally a cow/sheep on my training runs!  So far I’ve been mixing it up with max 1hr rides, 30-50min runs and gym work.  I cant do too much though because that makes my healing process go backwards  It’s almost there, I just want to ease the transfer back into professional triathlon training!

I have to say…I really started to crave training again and now I’m re-focused and know what I want again in life!  Going from doing basically nothing to a good 1-2hrs a day feels so good.  It’s not the usual 30hrs a week (which by the way does start to do your head in after a while!) It’s just comfortable and obviously manageable as its my usual volume minus 70%!  The endorphines released make me feel much happier and positive…it does make you want to preach about exercise to people who don’t do it! Honestly what is a 30 minute run out of your day and how much better does it make you feel!?

I don’t want to shout from the rooftop as I’ve already mentioned it but it has become official the other day that I’ll be coached by Capt. Michelle Dillon and Stu Hayes (tendons) and Jodie Stimpson as well as other good friends will be my main training partners!

I’m really looking forward to it but it’s a new experience…it’s not going to be handed to me on a plate like it is in the dream world Loughborough.  Now I’m a lone ranger I have to fend for Clare and myself and it’s taking a lot of organisation truth be told! We have to scrape together enough cash to rent an apartment, buy a car, take flights here there and everywhere + any training camps we may do within the training camp! It’ll be interesting and I want to thank my faithful sponsors who allow me to do this…the rest of my living is raceforprizemoney.com!

2011 aims are solely to qualify for the Olympics…I had a meeting with Heather our performance director the other day and I tell you now.  It’s bloody hard to make our Olympic Team!  Were talking top 3 in the World just to make the team! If you make the team you are basically a freak!  We do have a lot of freaks at the moment running about in the GB team though so I’m sure the spots will get filled up.  I’ll have this firmly on my mind all winter and will be doing everything I can to qualify!

I have also signed up for a German League Team as well as Lagardere Paris Racing again.  To give myself the best chance of qualification I won’t be racing too much but also hope to stick in a few domestic race in there as well.  My fun racing will come after Olympics Qualification races where I hope to race abroad in USA and the last World Cups but to be honest I’ve never made it past September and not been in dire need of a holiday.

I hope your all back into your training and enjoying the last bits warmth and sunshine you’ll see for a while!

Love WiLl

p.s. Have you seen Lance is getting his miles in in the pool!?

It’s been a boring week but it’s given me a lot of time to think…

It hit me once I got out of hospital that…”shit, I should be on honeymoon now driving through Nevada!” instead I am spending the day mincing around my parents house in Cambridge with Clare not really doing anything with our lives!

I finished the season suitably pissed off. The crash made an easy decision for me to stop racing as it was virtually impossible for me to continue anyway.  We had got it totally wrong this year, we were flying in December/January and to be honest once I hit my first race in Seoul I was already on the way down for the year.  I think because I was in such good shape in January, I was able to hold on till Des Moines getting good results but after that I was cooked.

Taking this much time off training and watching the Budapest World Champs/Hawaii makes me realise how much I miss it though.  I’d love to be training now and I’m getting more and more desperate everyday! I am definitely refreshed thats for sure!  This is just the break I needed before I make the push on for 2011 however…hope it ends soon!

When you are racing well life is great but once you string together a few bad races naturally people start to lose belief and the whole world comes down on you at once! One good race again and you completely forget about the past.  Anyway, I lost my funding this year from the World Class Programme which is the programme that has supported me since I was 16. I still have the benefits on being on funding available to me which include free coach, travel, hotels and access to all the support services you can imagine. I just don’t get the athlete award.  This made me start asking questions, if I am not even getting the athlete award then is it worth me sticking about in Loughborough in the same routine or should I go and do something totally new and exciting where I am operating for myself and myself only.  I think I have got a bit too settled in my ways in Loughborough, the lifestyle became too comfortable and I think that we forgot triathlon is all about getting your hands dirty with heaps of hard work.

It definitely opened up new opportunity for me.  I am now essentially a lone ranger. I can do what I like, race where I like, get coached by who I like, where I like, with the people I want to train with. I have an opportunity to go to the Gold Coast all winter and get coached by Michelle Dillon (from the school of hard work!) and also train daily with one of my best buds Stu Hayes and whoever else happens to be there as it is a bit of a triathlon mecca!  When we worked together in 2007 we were very compatible training partners and I finished 5th and Stu finished 8th in the World Champs, this is what I want more of and going away somewhere completely different is looking to be my best option at the moment but I’m still working things out.

My wound is slowly getting better…it still sickens me to look at! However I am a lot more mobile now and I can see that it might not be too long till I am training properly. I’ve been getting stuck into a bit of tennis and golf recently! One word of advice…don’t let a triathlete near any sports that involve a ball!

Thanks for peoples well wishes;)

Will

p.s. As the past week has been dead! I have no relevant pictures apart from ones that’ll freak you out! Here are a couple of holiday snaps from Thailand for you though.

It’s been a while since my last blog post! I’m not going to lie…other then a few days its been a rough few months.

As there is so much for me to catch back up on how about I do a timeline for us.

14^th August Kitzbuhel World Champs Series…the last time I felt normal.

20^th Bike Crash.  9 stitches in elbow and a nasty road rash…

I tried to do a bit of training in-between.  Ended up riding 6hrs once, Ran twice and no swimming.  Wound not healing…think I’m on wrong antibiotics.  Realise wound is infected and I start a different course of antibiotics.

10th – 14th Sept watched Budapest World Champs.  Looked like a great race, was gutted not to be racing.  Road rash is now a hole in my leg due to the infection but has started to really heal nicely now.

15^th Reciveved a call from Lagardere Paris Racing….They are 3^rd in the league and 11 points clear of 4^th place. They have 1 athlete going and they need 3 to count…surely I can secure a top 40…?

16^th I get chopped from British Triathlon funding after a bad year.  I’m presented with some problems and also some new exciting opportunities.  Have they done me a favour?

19^th We have 4 athletes on the start line for La Baule French Grand Prix. David Hauss, Vikus Webber flies in from South Africa for one race and we have one of the club members for our 4^th man.

I was happy to be back in La Baule…I knew I was unfit but massively underestimated how much antibiotics screw you up.  I can’t begin to describe how bad I felt in this race…never imagined I could be this far down.  I just couldn’t swim, I had no power at all. I felt weak on the bike and once I realised I wasn’t even going to score at all…I pulled out during the run.  I felt like a completely different athlete. Never the less…we still finished 3rd…No thanks to me, we just scraped together enough points!

20^th Fly to Thailand.  Had a great first 4 days relaxing on the beach with some old friends.  Great food, awesome weather a lot of fun.

24^th Everyone on the trip got ill…

25^th Relaxed on the beach, caught up on sleep and got massage for recovery in time for my wedding.

28^th Fly back to England

2^nd Oct OUR WEDDING…best day of my life and it couldn’t have been more perfect. VERY happy!

3^rd relax with the family…big hangover.  Discover I have a lump developing above my road rash, which is now almost healed.  I get it checked out by a GP and he prescribes me some antibotics.  I had never had Antibiotics before this month but this is my 4^th Course!

4^th – Drive to Heathrow to go on Honeymoon in the USA.   It takes us 3hr to get to the airport because of the tube strikes and the heavy traffic. We arrive 57mins before and miss out flight. Next flight in 24hrs time….gutted but the worst day ever doesn’t end here!

Get an airport hotel and start thinking about my lump that is now really ballooning up…I went to the nearest NHS walk in centre and sat in a queue for 1hr to get told to go to A&E.

We caught a bus to A&E in Hillingdon.  Not a nice hospital…very busy.  In my 6hrs there I got and x-ray, bloods taken and admitted to the wrong ward. The doctor said that I needed operating on which they can do the next day, if not the day after and I’d be staying over in a ward.  My parents came down and saw the state of the hospital and transferred me to Addenbrookes Cambridge. At 2am in Cambridge we see a Dr. who told me to come back early in the morning.

No honeymoon for us…

5^th We arrive at hospital at 8am and by 10am I am in a ward waiting for an operation.  It’s good to be back home…2pm I went under anaesthetic in the surgery and they lacerate the abscess and take it out! Family bought me around a Subway to perk me up. Watched 5 episodes of 24 and slept in the ward.

6^th Spent the day in the ward, felt sore when I first woke up but felt good during the day even though it was a real struggle to walk properly. 5 Episodes of 24…

In the evening the nurse ‘re-packed my wound’ which is basically stuffing the HOLE with a ribbon gauze to allow it to heal upwards rather then inwards. This is what I took from it anyway. It absolutely cained! I made the mistake of taking a look half way through the re-packing and I saw a huge hole in my leg.  Couldn’t believe the size of it.

Today I am at home recovering…I don’t know how long I will be out for! Maybe a month! It’s frustrating but I have had so many years of conditioning behind me I’m sure it will not make a difference to my performances in 2011.

Well…things haven’t got better since my last post.  Just been trying to relax and enjoy some time off.

It’s been a rough few weeks, I’m not usually a guy who gets problems like this however if I do they blow over within a day.  However this is dragging on like anything.

Eventually my wounds got infected (both of the bad ones).  Because of this I caught a fever and was sunbathing on Newquay beach with a Puffa Jacket on!  Right now I feel so run down its untrue.  I seem to be a lot more tired then normal and I can just tell my general well being is rock bottom!  13 days on I’m back on Antibiotics to try to get on top of things!  I think they are the wrong antibiotics though because they are not really working!

I went to Cornwall while this was happening to visit some family which was nice.  It’s a place us Brits can be proud of Cornwall. One of my fathers passions is sailing, he owns a small boat in Suffolk so was good to see it and help him sail it back on a mammoth journey that ran through part of the night!

I haven’t really trained for 2 weeks and haven’t trained full on for over 3 weeks.  I have a French Grand Prix to attend, as long as I can do a weeks training before hand  I’ll be going there.  I will obviously not be lighting it up out there though  Imagine nascar, I’ll be competing against those guys in a Nissan Micra.… It’ll be a new experience and I can’t picture myself finishing top 30. My team Lagardere is now in 3^rd place with a large buffer on 4^th place so they need me to turn up and tick the box so we can maintain our position.  I won’t have swum for almost 3 weeks so I’ll certainly be struggling in the sea swim!  To be honest the other reason I am racing is I don’t think it’s a good idea to be taking 8 weeks off from training.  I want to go on holiday/get married and honeymoon feeling fresh and ready for a real break!

Good luck to any readers racing Budapest.  I’ll be there as well for a more casual trip.

Will

I stacked it a treat on my bike yesterday….Thanks guys for the support.

It almost happened…I got a hole in my cycling shorts and 1cm more to the left would have left me being done for indecent exposure!

Clark Ellice and I were out riding and he put in a sprint…I responded, but my gears were not smooth and my chain came off.  I was going too fast to hold on and I hit the deck at full speed.  It’s my fault…

I got up straight away and went to the grassy bank on the side of the road.  I looked up and my bike was on both wheels still going along on its own!

I tried to get up a few times but kept fainting.  I could see there was no bones broken but my wounds were nasty…loads of gashes as you can imagine.  The worst being a deep one on the elbow down to the tendons/bone.

Some lovely people stopped straight away (thanks so much guys) and took Clark and I to a random A&E and Rick met me out there.  They gave me 9 stitches to my elbow.  I wanted to do it myself as I saw Jack Bauer from 24 do it a few days earlier!

5hrs later I was up on my feet and buzzing from pain killers!  I walked out feeling sorry for myself but then I heard…”DOCTOR DOCTOR! CLEAR!!! BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPP” so I consider myself lucky because the crash was fast and I came off well…

No swimming for 10 days, No running for ? No Cycling for ? I’m taking a good 3 days + off.  I will pick up some exercise where I feel like I can/want to.  As far as I’m concerned Budapest is finished for me.  2 weeks no swimming means coming out too far down out the swim.  I’m burnt out anyway running! Blessing in disguise? Is my bad luck telling me something? I haven’t had more then 3 weeks off in my career.  I’ve never had an injury…I’m going to take 5 weeks off at the end of the year anyway, This may make it 8 weeks now.  I think it will do me some good having a long rest…It’ll deffo make me fresh in the head.

I’m not making any decisions regarding Budapest/La Baule and Nationals.  See how it heals up. I plan to pick up a lot of running If I feel I can.