Givaudan Ashford 10k running with a different experience

As some of you may be aware I am currently nursing an Achilles injury.  I had signed up a few months ago to the Givaudan Ashford 10k on Sunday 9^th October as it was my running club (Canterbury Harriers) Club Championships and I was sorting this out for the club. Due to my minor problem I was advised by my phsyio not to race Sunday and run round with my wife. At first I was a bit disappointed but I knew that was best for me as I have only been doing easy training. My wife liked the idea of me running with her and pace her to a PB.  We never run together so I thought it would be nice.

It was the 30 year anniversary of this race with record numbers; this is the biggest 10k in Kent and attracts around one thousand runners. I do recommend this race as it is all on closed roads and you get a nice finish inside the Julia Rose Stadium.

The day came for the race and I was very tempted to race because I had a chance to place highly in the club championships. Despite the wet conditions there was a record turnout of 48  Harriers – the biggest number of Harriers in any race since the club`s formation in 1993. That felt good as I really tried to get a lot of Harriers to do it. I decided to wear my GB tracksuit to the race and make use of it. I did feel a little uncomfortable when I first got there as quite a few people were staring and pointing at me. I also found it weird turning up to a race at the Julia Rose Stadium because that is where I train on a weekly basis after work.

So I warmed up on with a couple of Harriers and I knew that it would be a different experience running a race at a much slower pace. It was chucking it down, so I stood at the start line with my wife and when it was time to start I let my wife go in front and I tucked in just behind her as I didn’t want to put her off.  Due to where I was running I heard lots of people talking to themselves. For example one lady stressed she had gone out too fast to herself. I suddenly found myself in the way of other runners so I moved to the right to allow people to pass me. I let my wife run the first mile without any advice and after one mile I started to tell her what to do and what pace to stick to.  It was nice to see lots of runners I knew and this time I was able to cheer them on.

The rain kept coming down and I was freezing; I thanked some of the marshals on the route. I was still tempted to run fast and it was just a weird feeling to be where I was but it was also fun. At certain parts of the course I was helping my wife by encouraging and telling her what to do; when we came up to inclines I would say to her attack the hill you can recover in the down hill section. When we came down to the last 400m I said to her its up to you what you want to do and she sprinted for 200m then eased off then sprinted again the last 100m, overtaking people at the end. I know she likes a sprint!  Well she left me behind in the sprint and she finished in 47:22, taking a huge chunk off her last PB in May 2016. I was very proud and happy for her, I really enjoyed running a race with a different point of view.

As featured on Triradar.com Yiannis Christodoulou Represents Team GB After Olympic Inspiration

This year has been an amazing journey; my first year competing at a national and international level in Aquathlons. It all started back in June at the National Aquathlon Championships where I took home a bronze medal and two weeks later at the European Aquathlon Championships I came home with another bronze medal, this time during my debut competing for Great Britain. This led me to compete in the ITU World Aquathlon Championship in Mexico.

What inspired me to do this? Well it started four years ago, just after the 2012 London Olympic Games. I started swimming to keep fit and was a very slow swimmer with poor technique; I hadn’t run since my school days and just wanted to keep fit. Inspired by the Olympic Games, I joined my local running club, the Canterbury Harriers.

I slowly improved but started to get a lot of injuries.  The following summer, inspired by the Brownlee brothers, I entered a local Triathlon. Unfortunately this didn’t end well as I sustained a bad calf strain and had to jog back to the finish. I was out of action for 7 months on and off and nearly gave up running. By the time the following summer however, I had regained fitness and competed my 2nd triathlon. Sadly a few weeks later I had an Achilles injury and was out for another 3 months.

I remained positive and watched a lot of triathlon on the TV. Feeling inspired by this, I decided I wouldn’t quit and I kept trying to be the best I could be. The following year I decided to try Aquathlons and I finished 5th in my first race with 3 GB athletes in the top 5. That spurred me on and three months later I had taken minutes off my time which meant I had qualified to represent Great Britain. My greatest memory is the sprint home, 800m from the finish to pass two athletes and take home the bronze medal from the European race.

This spurred me on this season and I have achieved success I didn’t think was possible as I approach my mid-thirties. Looking back over the last four years, I am proud of what I have achieved with hard work and dedication. Of course, I wish I had taken up swimming and running much earlier, but it is never too late!

To read the article click here

V02 Testing – Is it worth it and can you benefit from it?

In March 2015 I was approached by Phil Anthony from Christ Church University sports lab to be part of his research and test subject.  I jumped at the chance as Phil is an amazing runner and ran London in 02:16 a few years ago and was a national Ultra champion. I wasn’t sure if it would work and benefit me so I decided to try.

What is V02? Research shows that successful performance in endurance running is closely related to the level of aerobic metabolism that a runner is able to sustain throughout a race. This directly impacts on the runner’s ability to maintain their speed throughout the duration of a race. Aerobic metabolism refers to the body’s ability to convert oxygen, delivered to the working muscles, to usable energy. The maximal point at which each athlete is able to achieve this is referred to as their maximal oxygen uptake or their O2max.

The test consisted of a ramp test where you run on a treadmill in stages of four minutes with each stage going up a level in speed until you need to stop. The second test was a 5k time trial on the treadmill after running at 16kmph for 10 minutes.  The third test was that I had to run my long run on another day which was 1 hour and 30 minutes at 70% heart rate.

After this I was sent away for 6 weeks where I had to increase one long run by 6 minutes for 3 weeks and the other long run by 9 minutes for 3 weeks and then maintain it for a further 6 weeks.  I then went back into the lab and preformed the 3 tests like before. I was given my results and this showed my V02 max had gone down so could struggle a bit in my runs but my running economy had improved hugely and something I needed to work on more. So what is Running Economy?

A common method for assessing an athlete’s running economy is to look at the volume of oxygen ( O2) they are able to consume at a speed of 16km h-1. The average O2 in well trained runners at this speed is~52ml•kg-1•min-1. However, as an individual athlete’s running economy can differ according to their speed, and 16km•h-1 can be too fast for many athletes, it can be better to assess RE in terms of distance covered ml•kg-1•km-1. The average RE for well-trained runners, when expressed in this form, would be ~200ml•kg-1•km-1.

So mine had improved but was still poor so I was told to work on easy long runs at 70% heart rate through the winter. This was to purely make me more efficient and burn fat instead of carbs. I found I enjoyed the winter months as the training was easy and in a space of a year I had managed 15 PB in all different types of disciplines.

So I was asked to go back in August this year for another test but this time a test for the difference between running indoors and outdoors. This test consisted of a Ramp test on the treadmill, 5K time trial after running 15kmph for 10 minutes on treadmill then I had to do this on the track.

So what did I learn this time? That running on a treadmill is quicker as I was 20 seconds quicker on the treadmill. Does that help me? Probably not but the data I got from it does. I was told my V02 max was a lot higher than last year because I was purely training for 5k’s, however my running economy was still poor but much better than last year. So looking at the data the short running reps help for 5k’s but the longer distances help for the longer races. As I have decided not to do a marathon next year I will be focusing on speed in the winter but also targeting my running economy.

Did I find the data useful and did I improve? Well I did, at first I didn’t think this would work but now I have the science behind me I can move my training forward. The first test last year did work hugely and now it’s time to put the August test in practice.

The next journey begins now. Goals for the cold winter months!

After a very successful Aquathlon year and being able to represent GB twice which was a huge honour, I have not been able to PB much in running and improve my running since the winter months. Therefore while the Aquathlon season is over until next spring, I will be focusing on improving my running on a whole ready for next season; of course I will still be swimming and improving so I have included all my targets from now to start building for another successful year.

Please keep an eye out on my website for my current race schedule as it will be updated regularly and my Twitter account for my results.  My goals are:

• One area is my 5k time, to officially record a sub 18 minute 5k; I have run aquathlons quicker than my official 5k PB, so I want this to now show in PB times.
• To improve on my 10k time of 36:50 set in May 2016. I hope to do this by the end of next year. Ideally I would like a sub 36 minute 10k.
• To improve my 10 mile race time of 1:02:46. I would like to take off a big chunk. I aim to do this in either a race in December 2016 (Alan Green 10 mile race) or January 2017 (Parkers Steel Canterbury 10 miler). With the main aim of running a 10 miler under an hour in the future.
• For a half marathon, I aim to PB this year to beat my time of 1:23:32 set nearly two years ago. I don’t do many half marathons so next year is a focus to do a couple and improve on my time. With the main goal of dipping under 1:20.
• Build on my swimming and to improve my swimming times over the winter.
• To have a successful cross country season with Canterbury Harriers.
• Work and prepare with Gobinder (My confidence coach) ready for next season.
• Strength training through the winter.

These are my goals for the quiet winter season which will keep me ticking over until spring. I have in mind my goals for next year in Aquathlons but will set these out in the New Year.

So I have treated myself to a new pair of Adidas cross country spikes and a pair of Adidas Ultra Boost. So what’s next for me? Why have I chosen these targets?

Well because of all the aquathlons this season I was unable to record PB’s in my road running races, so this is the target for the winter months. The good thing about the winter is that there is not many road running races so I can focus on a good winter of training ready for the spring. Being a running coach I have sorted my plan out for the next 6 weeks, so I will be doing 6 week loading plans with the 7^th week easy running and then start again. I will revaluated myself every 6 weeks and target what area is needed in my running from this. I am looking at targeting quicker times in half marathons so will be doing a few of them and building up the endurance for this. I will also be competing in some of the Kent Fitness League cross country races because this is important to strengthen me up ready for the summer.

I have decided that swimming is an area I need to improve on a lot for next season and I will be working with Matt my swimming coach in December. This is much earlier than the previous season as I only started working with him in April and only had a few months to get stronger and faster.

I am a regular gym user and like to do weights in the gym twice a week depending on training. I figured that I needed help in this area so shortly I will be working with a strength and endurance coach. This is going to be very important to build strength up to make me stronger and faster and keep those injuries at bay. I am looking forward to this and it is going to be a new experience for me. I will keep you posted about this in the future.

Another aspect to improve is my confidence; I have just recently worked with Gobinder who has already helped a lot and we have implemented aspects ready for next season. I look forward to this journey as we have just started and look forward to the end outcome.

So what’s next?  Well keep looking at my current schedule as I will update it regularly. I have had two weeks off from training since the World Championships and to allow my body to fully recover. Unfortunately after the race I picked up an Achilles injury which I am trying to manage. I have slowly got back into running and swimming but only easy sessions and I enjoy the free time I have now.  I have entered the Givaudan Ashford 10k on the 9^th of October as I organise the Canterbury Harriers Club Championships there, so wanted to run it. I am not fit for the race due to having a rest and I am yet to decide whether to run with my wife or to just race it and see where my current fitness levels are at the moment. I have also entered the Trispirit Events Chilham Castle 5k the following week which will be the first week of proper training. I have entered this because I won it last year and hold the current course record and it’s only a few minutes away from where I live so I wanted to do it. Ater this the hard training really begins with a target race being the Brooks Brighton 10k on the 20^th of November. This is the race I hope to be fully fit for and hopefully knock on the door of a PB.

The World Championships experience

The 14^th of September came round very quickly and it felt not so long ago when it was June and I took home 2 Bronze Medals. Could I do it again?

I was in tapering mode, however preparations didn’t go to plan. After the Whitstable Surf and Turf I decided to rest my leg as I was getting a problem when racing and doing speed work which was making it worse. For some reason jogging was fine so I decided to take 9 days rest from running and I still had 6 weeks left until the World Championships. So I decided to do more swimming sessions and realised my running fitness wasn’t going to be affected too much. After the 9 days of not running I was back to normal and running fine.

Just before I headed off to Mexico I had five days in Greece for my cousin’s wedding, where I ran on a treadmill those days in the hotel. But I decided to shut the windows in the gym there so I could acclimatise for Mexico. It was tough and very hot but good training.

So I raced at the Ocean Tri Aquathlon on Wednesday a week before the World Championships and finished 3^rd. I tried a few things different on the day like listening to music as Gobinder my confidence coach recommended. I found it helped and got me ready for the race. At the race itself, I didn’t push too hard and found my 5k time was where I wanted it to be; my swim time was around 1 minute slower but I knew that would happen as I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit. I finished 3^rd and only 50 seconds off the winner, so I was happy as I took it easy and was the only non-wetsuit swimmer. I didn’t use a wetsuit as I wanted to get used to swimming without one for the World Championships.

The time came and I was off to Mexico, I was raring to go but I had a slight concern at the back of my mind as I had an Achilles niggle. I arrived in Mexico safely and the first thing I done was check the beach out for training. It was amazing, I have never seen such clear water and white sand; this was paradise. It was even better when swimming in the sea as I could see loads of fish. I had one easy one hour run a few days before the race and it was hot and tough because of the heat.

The day before the race we headed down to the ferry port to Cozumel and found out that there were no early ferries for Wednesday that would get me to the race on time. This sent me into panic mode and I was stressing about it, which didn’t help. I then went back to our hotel in Playacar and grabbed my stuff in a rush – my mind was all over the place. I headed to Cozumel and went to the Expo first to register, then I went walking round with my wife looking for a hotel for the night. We managed to find a hotel. The hotel wasn’t great but it would do for a night. After we checked into the hotel, I was more relaxed and then it was time to go to the team GB race briefing, have dinner and then sleep.

I woke up on the race day at 5am with the race at 8:50am, I wanted to be wide awake and ready to go. I always race better and train better in the evenings so it was important to be up early. I started to hydrate as it was very hot, roughly 32 degrees.  By the time I got to the race I had drunk over 5 litres of water which I found out later was probably not enough.

I then went and put my stuff in transition and I soon found Alastair Brownlee walk past me; he was racing too. It was a huge honour to be in the same race and transition with him.

The race then started and I started off hard because of the different format of a 2.5k run followed by a 1000 metre swim and 2.5k run again. I was going strong and in 5^th place after a mile, however all of a sudden my pace dropped and I started to struggle. I got into transition and felt dazed. My wife usually tells me where I am in transition and I chat back but something wasn’t right as I was feeling awful. I proceeded into the sea and found it a struggle to swim the first 500 metres with my shoulders feeling dead. Afterwards I started to feel fine and started to push the swim. I came out into transition and sprinted out onto the run; I then started to find I was struggling and my pace started to slow down. I saw a person collapse near me but the last part of the race was a bit of a blur. I remember the last 100m sprinting and taking a while to move away from the finish.

 

 

Overall I finished 28^th; I am happy with my performance and the heat did affect me and therefore was not able to perform to my best. This has now given me a new experience and learning curve that I can use to build on next year at the Europeans and World Championships. It seems all the European Athletes suffered as the heat was awful, however I enjoyed the experience and hope to come back even stronger next year.

On the evening of the race it was the parade of nations, which was a great experience  to be part of it.

I have set new goals and targets and you can read this soon on my blog.

I am Team GB

I was asked a few weeks ago if I would kindly turn up to the Whitstable parkrun for their 309th run for the I AM TEAM GB day. This was a day nationally celebrated for the Olympians on 27^th of August.

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

As it was a local event and only down the road, I was over the moon to be asked and was quite shy about it. So I turned up very early on the day, with my wife who was running the parkrun. Everyone was very friendly and chatting to me. The run director introduced me and said “This is what a real athlete looks like” I liked that however found it slightly embarrassing! This parkrun is special to me as it was where I started running my first 5k’s and won the Whitstable Surf N Turf recently, so it was nice to come and support them. I also used to train down there a lot when I lived nearby.

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

The Whitstable parkrun had record numbers of 259 runners. Well done to Jacky, the race organiser, for getting this started.

I had a lot of runners coming up to me after the run and families asking for photos with me, that was a nice touch. I really enjoyed the day and was very happy to be asked. Thank you.

I would always recommend a parkrun, because its very good training and you get to meet other people that share the same hobby as you. It was nice to see lots of Canterbury Harriers supporting the run, a few of them are below.

You can read the full report from their run director here.

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/whitstable/news/

 

 

Having fun with Jason!

All photos in this Blog are by Jason Dodd Photography

I contacted Jason Dodd from Jason Dodd Photography back in April 2016, stating I had qualified for the European Aquathlon Championships for June and wished to enquire about a photo shoot to show off my new GB kit and for him to become a sponsor. This was to help me out, attract new sponsors for the future and raise my profile.  I am very proud to have Jason as a sponsor and extremely happy with the pictures he has produced for me.

We met early in the year before my race and Jason produced some great pictures for me to use with my GB kit and race kit. You can see two of the first pictures from the original photo shoot above and more on my website.

The first photo shoot was taken at Jason’s office in Canterbury at the University of Kent. These were taken opposite the woodlands which provided a good location for some running photos, and at the back of the Innovation Centre is a tired car park; with me standing on the top set of steps this gave Jason a low down viewpoint in which to cut out the background and just concentrate on the thundered sky.

Jason was due to come to one of my races and get some action shots but sadly a minor niggle resulted in me pulling out of the race. So we decided to meet up again on the 15^th of August at Whitstable Harbour with permission from Canterbury City Council and he came down with the new Land Rover Equipe convertible car. A very nice car and very expensive, I am pretty sure it would pay peoples mortgages off. The car got a lot of attention and Jason took photos with me and the car around the harbour. It was nice for me to show off my Bronze medals too and take photos that we haven’t done before and to get some more photos. The photo shoot was fun with me probably annoying Jason asking him if he wanted a serious or happy pose (I think I need to work on my poses more…).

Below are some photos from the photo shoot, what do you guys think? My favourite below is the photo with the boat in the background.

I am happy to announce that Jason will continue our partnership for next year, which I am grateful. Please check-out his website out.

http://www.jasondoddphotography.com

 

 

 

 

 

Top 5 triathlon running drills to improve form

Yiannis Christodoulou, Level 2 running coach & GB athlete

Hi All this is my top 5 drills I give to my athletes when training for triathlon. Any questions feel free to contact me.

90 degrees arm drive

Arm drive is something that is very much neglected in athletes, as they think they have perfect running technique. A better arm drive will make you more efficient and quicker.

Looking at the picture below your arms should be at 90 degrees angle and when you run, your arm should come back next to your hip and the forward part of your elbow should be to your hip as you move your arm forward. You should check your arms when warming up and perform this on the warm up.

 

 

Lift your knees high

The importance of this drill is to improve running form and teaches your body to have a better technique.

You start by having a 90 degrees arm drive like when you are running, but walking with your knees up high.  The high knees will help with the loading phase and the importance of getting this right is that it allows you to focus on driving the foot and springing back off the ground. See picture below.

I would say that you should do this before some of your runs for around 1 minute. You could put it into reps and repeat 3 times then go on to your session.

Running with Bike

We know you can run but the most difficult problem for triathletes is when they come off the bike into running; their legs don’t move and are like jelly. Your body needs to get used to this and one aspect of training the legs is to practice coming off the bike and into the run.

There are two ways I always recommend even if you are not doing a run session after the bike session. The first one is to get off the bike and to run with the bike for half a mile, just like you would in transition, then leave the bike at your place and jog for half a mile.

The second way is to come off the bike, leave it at home and run at 60% of your race pace for a mile. These two techniques are quite popular with triathletes in getting their legs used to running after the bike.

Running backwards

When running you are always moving forwards, so people think why run backwards. By running backwards you are using different muscles that you wouldn’t normally use and will help improve your stride length by moving quicker and being more efficient and also help in stopping shin splints. This also makes your glutes and hamstrings stronger.

So what should you do before you start your run? Stand tall with your core straight, push off with your forefoot to run backwards. The hamstrings and glutes will be working hard and lead the way. Do this for around 30 seconds, then take a recovery and repeat twice more.

Lunges while walking

Why lunges? Well lunges are important for balancing while running and provides flexibility. This should be done by lunging one leg forward like the picture below. I always recommend that runners do 20 of these before they start their main session.