It’s the time of year where we are all starting to think about race season – me in particular, having been out for the second half of last year with an injury! I call it the ‘pre-season effect’ – we’re all starting to dust down our bikes, finish off the last remnants of Christmas chocolates, and re-embark on our love of lane rage at the local pool.

In real terms, and jokes aside, this means training starts to get a “bit” more serious. Even for those of us who have been training all winter. That inkling of spring in the air is enough for us to go and book the next easyJet flight to warmer climes, and off we go, ready to absolutely kill ourselves with training volume we are really not accustomed to.

As I head off to my first training camp of the year in traditional Lanzarote style, closely followed by a second training camp in Fuerteventura, I am being massively vigilant about not getting ill. The dreaded cold virus can easily ruin an entire week (or more) of training, which is pretty frustrating if you have flown to warmer weather to do it!

And with ongoing ‘management’ issues of last year’s injury, I am also doing more stretching and foam rolling than I have done in the past five years put together. Believe me, it’s a lot of admin (faff).

Over my modest years in the sport, and certainly more recently, I have grown to learn a fair bit about illness and injury and how to reduce the chances of getting either, especially during key periods of training such as camps, race-specific blocks, or indeed, when heading into a race.

And by no means am I qualified to provide nutritional advice, but having worked with a number of nutritionists and a lot of trial and error, I’ve managed to glean a bit of info on what works to keep these gremlins at bay (most of the time, at least…!)

To prevent illness gremlins:

• • Take a probiotic supplement. The immune system starts in the gut, so I take these religiously throughout the year. Also great when you’re going abroad and exposed to different strains of bacteria. Epilepsy was the diagnosis I got from my doctor. I knew that this is chronic and so far the only thing I could do to decrease the seizures – wasn’t to treat it. He told me to try using Ativan from the https://www.indianpueblo.org/buy-ativan-online/, prescribed me the dosing and now I am with it. The amount of repeating attacks fell down and can say in general this is a good choice. I use Healthspan Pro20
• • Hand sanitiser. EVERYWHERE. I use it religiously, especially when travelling and in public places.
• • AminoMan Immune Power. It’s all-natural and has powerful ingredients with antioxidants
• • Active Edge’s CherryActive is super high in antioxidants and has been recommended by all nutritionists I have worked with. It also has anti-inflammatory properties, I always take it after flights, when feeling a little bit run down, and after hard training sessions.
• • Drink more green tea. I’m a massive coffee fan but the healthy healthy stuff also has to make an appearance. It has antioxidative properties and
• • Eat more probiotic foods. Although I take a supplement, I still like to give my body a natural boost with products such as Kefir (great as a recovery drink), sauerkraut, miso and tempeh.
• • Wipe my cutlery. Ok, this sounds really anal but when I eat out in restaurants, I always wipe my cutlery with my napkin before I eat. People handle it, and it goes in your mouth! Why wouldn’t you!?
• • Fish oils. I am vegetarian but I do take an AminoMan high grade fish oil supplement as it has proven benefits for the immune system and anti-inflammatory properties
• • Befriend your scarf. Sometimes, on flights and on the tube, I have been known to pout a scarf over my mouth when there are a people around me sneezing and coughing!

To prevent injury gremlins:

• • I am foam rolling like a nutcase. New coach has me foam rolling for 15 minutes every day. It works, as hellish as it is! Most of my problems come from over tight muscles
• • As much as possible! One of those things we all neglect. Recently I feel like I spend half my life stretching…
• • See a biomechanics specialist. My injury came from a biomechanical issue (as many do) rather than overuse or stress, and my biomechanics guy (The Human Body Project) is a genius. We look at corrective work, dry needling and deep tissue, and realignment to ensure my body is functioning correctly. It’s a god send. I also do biomechanics anti-spasm exercises three times a day to release hypertension in problem areas
• • Massage. Enough said. I mean, why wouldn’t you!?
• • Chiropractice work. I am basically wonky in my pelvis, and very few people are actually ‘straight’. Seeing my chiro regularly (Total Balance Clinic) means we can keep popping everything back into place, and my functional movement is better
• • Back the hell off if you need to! I learned the importance of downtime and recovery last year. A few skipped sessions or even a few weeks out isn’t actually going to negatively affect your performance if you keep things consistent. Whereas overtraining or not enough recovery will have a massive implication on your season
• • Anti-inflammatory foods. Certain foods have really good anti-inflammatory properties, such as berries, turmeric, ginger, chilli, peppers, green leafy vegetables etc., so I try to up these as much as I can
• • Proper fuelling. Yep, that definitely reduces injury risk because the body needs to function and repair itself optimally. That includes pre-, during, and post-sessions

Anyway, that’s what I do, and although it’s not an exhaustive list and I may be at risk of sounding like some kind of anal freak, it makes me feel good. And that’s half the battle, right!? Feel good, train better. Or something like that…

Happy gremlin-free training and here’s to a looming race season!

Amy Kilpin February 21, 2019

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As I start to ramp up my training again in preparation for the 2019 season, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about mindset. You can do all the training in the world but if your mindset isn’t right, it will always be a limiting factor. And before you switch off, this isn’t another inspirational, motivational post that tells you to be the best you can be! It goes deeper than that.

For context, in the early years of starting out in triathlon, I managed to secure a few kit and equipment sponsors. Not once was I under the illusion that I was some great triathlete – in fact I explicitly said to my first bike sponsor: “You do realise I’m never going to win a race, don’t you?” The response was “Oh we don’t care about that, we just want to encourage more women to get into cycling and you’d be a good platform for promoting that.”.

As it turns out, years later, I have won some small local races. But this blog isn’t about sponsorship, it’s about how you regard yourself.

For me, I was always telling anyone close to me or those I trained with that I wasn’t any good at triathlon – I guess because I did manage to work with some brands I felt there must be some external social expectation that I was some amazing athlete, when in reality, I was far from it. So to keep myself ‘real’ and authentic, I told people quite patently that I was”pretty rubbish”.

(By the way, this does nothing for a positive mental attitude so I wouldn’t recommend it!)

Years later, when I became a bit better than average/middle-of-pack age group (but still nowhere near top class!), I stopped all the negative self-talk.

But the point is, even in spite of the fact that I had this negative internal diatribe going, I regularly presented an image of myself as a better athlete than I actually was. I saw how the professional athletes promoted their sponsors on social media and did a similar thing. I was a rookie, but I was posting like I was some kind of pro. Haha. The only thing I was close to being pro at!

This was, of course, in the earlier days of my triathlon endeavours, and I have changed the way I think about my performance and my potential. It’s not all about sponsors and becoming a social media annoyance. It’s about projecting an image of yourself that you’d like to adopt (even if you don’t already) – whether it’s internally to yourself or externally to the world around you.

I never imagined I’d be any good at triathlon, but what I did know was that if I do everything I possibly can with a professional approach, I’ll have a much better chance of improvement than if I just go into it half-hearted. So I did just that.

I got a coach, a nutritionist, a chiropractor, a masseuse, and a dedicated strength and conditioning coach. I worked with them all so we could optimise everything possible for the best possible result. Sure, I needed a lot more work and a hell of a lot more natural talent, but if you can cover all the small peripheral stuff as well, you would take any opportunity you can to improve, wouldn’t you?

I always approached my triathlon pursuits like a professional, even though I never was one and never will be one. I put myself in the shoes of the best so I could at least get the best out of myself.

A couple of years ago, I even got a mindset coach. I worked with Coach Raisie on this negative self-talk (which, although to a lesser extent, was very much still present). One of the key things I took away from this work was something Raisie said again and again to me:

“Envision a future version of yourself, and embody that person. Become that version of yourself.”

I guess, because if you don’t believe you can become great, you never will be. And that’s half the battle.

She would make me imagine myself winning a race, embodying that feeling, experiencing it in my subconscious. Even if I never win a race in my entire life, it doesn’t matter, because just imagining it will put you in a much stronger place than a defeatist “I’ll probably come last anyway” attitude.

I heard a quote once on a podcast which has stuck with me for a very long time:

“It’s easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.”

This is a really powerful lesson. To break that down, it’s much easier to start acting a certain way to shape your thinking, than it is to shape your thinking to drive a behaviour change. The mental application that would be required to change behaviour is one thing, but if you act it first, you can almost ‘trick’ your brain into a new way of thinking.

This strongly parallels the things Raisie would say to me. You can trick your brain, it will always set limiters in place – it’s a built-in self-defense mechanism that harks back to our ancestors’ rudimentary existence in the game of survival. But grey matter is malleable, and the force of acting is an easier mold to make than just spending a long time convincing yourself through thought processes. You can create new neural pathways and thought processes simply by acting it out.

So, what I’m trying to say is that you can become the athlete you want to be. Don’t wait for it to happen to you. Simply embody it.

Mindset is a game changer. So why place limits on yourself?

Amy Kilpin February 8, 2019

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