Sprint and Ironman Training - Don't limit yourself.

Pulling on the Green and Gold

As a coach of the Worlds / Development squads at Fluid Movements I am in the thick of race season with my Worlds rep athletes.



2014 World Sprint / Standard Champion
Ken Murley 

Last week we had the Edmonton ITU World Champs where we had 3-4athletes race in the sprint and standard events. We were lucky enough to have Ken Murley come away with a gold medal and World title in each event, our other athlete’s equipped themselves very well in their first overseas competitions.
Now this week we have 5athletes competing at the 70.3 Worlds in Mt Tremblant Canada. I am very excited about their chances for a high finish as they are all in excellent shape. It can be an eerie feeling as my work with them is complete, nothing more I can do other than fine tuning a race strategy by online correspondence.

Once Mt Tremblant is complete I look towards our final big event, the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. We have a number of athletes competing in Kona and they will be leaving our shores soon to heat acclimatise.

So as a team you can see we have been very busy with athletes representing their country in all distances of Triathlon

Pride in Diversity

As you can see from above, at Fluid we take a lot of pride in our ability to develop successful athletes in all distances, not just sprint or not just Ironman. As a team, we never want to be pigeonholed as one or the other, and feel we have been pretty successful over a long period of time over all distances.


Jenny and Anna at 70.3 Worlds
Mt Tremblant, Canada

In my Triathlon career, I started late in the piece, pretty green as a reasonable swimmer with no bike experience and some school running. Did a few years of sprint where I finally won the local Sports Plus series (now Gatorade). Then I went on to represent Australia at ITU Age Worlds in the Olympic Distance race in Lausanne.  Then I stepped up to a half ironman to qualify (yes you used to have to) for Ironman Australia in my first full distance.  I was lucky enough to eventually race professionally at that distance for 4years and enjoy good success.

You learn a lot from your own experiences, and under the tutelage of my coach and having being exposed to long periods of high level training and racing over all distances, I came to realise that each discipline can learn a lot from how the other trains.

There should be none of that ‘Oh you do sprint so you therefore must train high intensity workouts, or you do Ironman so it should be all about long slow distance.’ High quality workouts well above Ironman race intensity have their place in any successful IM program, and long slow distance also has its place in quality sprint programs.

KK, Joey and myself with legend Mark Allen
when we competed in Hawaii

The key point to remember is, ‘you are how you train’ so don't limit yourself to one methodology. Have some diversity in your training program that compliments your individual abilities and goals. It is all about what and when to include different training methods within a preparation phase, and how far out from race day.

With that in mind, I can’t wait to see how our team goes at Canada this Sunday and at Kona Hawaii in just over 5weeks.

Stay tuned, and happy training

Coach Foz