A message from Georgie Rutherford
The first open water training session took place for the academy last Saturday at Hetton Lyons Country Park. It was the first ever open water training session the academy triathletes had taken part in and they all managed fantastically. There were 17 triathletes and the training session was led by British Triathlon Talent ID coach Barry Jameson and assisted by Phil Jameson and Steve Robertson. The academy was also attended by the BTF’s new Performance Development Manager, Simon Mills, who travelled up from Loughborough to meet the regional aspiring triathletes and outline their future opportunities to become the next Tim Don or Hollie Avil. The academy was also supported by Phil Senior from Aqua Sphere who ensured each triathlete had the correct fitting wetsuit for comfort and support prior to the start of the training.
After an introductory talk about open water training and safety the triathletes headed to the lake for their first ever open water swim experience. The session was lead by Barry on land with water safety cover provided in the form of a qualified kayaker and Phil and Steve accompanying the group in to the water as additional safety support. After the initial shock of entering the 14 degree water the group all managed extremely well and completed a mixture of group swimming and individual efforts around swim buoys. Swimming session complete it was a quick charge out of the lake to attempt the difficult task of removing the wetsuit as fast as they could without falling over, kindly demonstrated by Phil!
Surprisingly every member of the academy seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed the open water swim and were busy sharing tales of their new swimming environment with sightings of fish and the different taste to a chlorine swimming pool!
After a quick bite to eat and drink it was all change and out on to their road bikes for a coached session around the tarmac paths around the park. The purpose of this session was to learn about group riding, hill climb technique and drafting.
Hetton Lyons is a fantastic training venue not only for the juniors but for all the clubs in the region due to its clean lake, closed road cycle paths and trail runs. The park is going to be used as the academy training venue for the next three months and they will be joined at the next session in June by the new triathletes on the development squad. On July 12th the park will be used to host the new event, the open water junior triathlon which is open to all T2, T3 and Youth triathletes from around the country and will be the NE selection race for the IRC’s which take place in Wales in September.
Georgie Rutherford
Regional Programme Manager
Triathlon England
