How often do you find yourself amazed at how quickly time passes? My time in Lanzarote has finally come to a close and I have to say, it's scary how quickly the months have flown by. I think honestly it has to be one of the best things I have ever done. 

Apart from enabling me to complete a very substantial block of training averaging around 18 hours per week, which would definitely prove challenging in the UK at this time of year, I have also created memories and experiences that I will never forget, and that's really what life is all about, after all.

I have spent time with some amazing people which has not only enriched the experience but has also been invaluable in terms of pushing me harder to achieve my goals. It's not every day you get to train alongside some of the most talented professional triathletes in the world, and also be coached in the pool twice a week by an eminent world champion and winner of 16 ironmans.

I have been extremely lucky to train at the fantastic Sands Beach resort, thrashing out massive 4k+ swim sets with the sun shining down on me, and having Bella Bayliss critique my swim stroke and keep a watchful eye over my progression has knocked big chunks of seconds off my pace. I have seen vast improvements, and why wouldn't you, with 6 days a week in the pool and an average of 15,000 – 20,000 metres of swimming per week!? Pros in abundance in the adjacent lanes; you can really learn a lot from training close to the people who will do anything to be successful in this sport. And wow, they really are. I'd like to thank John Beckley and Juan Carlos Albuixech for providing me with one of the best opportunities I have ever had in my life.

I can't write a blog primarily around Lanzarote and not talk about the hills and the wind. That godforsaken wind. I have to admit I probably won't miss the wind too much! It can render some rides absolutely soul-shattering. On the flip side, cruising along at 55kph on the flat is also pretty damn rewarding! Let's just say I have been to some pretty dark places on some of those rides, but everything comes with its highs and lows and this is what sport is made of (among many other things). Riding for 8-12 hours per week (have I mentioned the hours I have put in much!?) would definitely not be pleasant (in my world, not really possible #fairweathercyclist) and I am bound to have built strength and endurance from this decent stint of training. 

It's the biggest, most prolonged training block I have ever done in my life, and I just really hope that it pays off as I've certainly put the work in. At the risk of launching into a gushy soliloquy (I will try to refrain), I do feel immense gratitude for my fortunate position in being able to do this, and being around people who have also helped make it happen.

Outside of training, I have had a lot of thinking time in Lanzarote and I am coming more to terms with what I am doing with triathlon. I have always maintained that I am doing it as a sport for the enjoyment and the experience, after all, I will never be a world champion. This sentiment hasn't changed as I definitely don't possess any special talent and in all honesty probably entered the sport too late. But I am enjoying seeing where it will take me. In the meantime, I want to have a life.

There are many things outside of triathlon which shape who you are, who you become, and how much you get out of life and the biggest thing I think I have realised recently is that I don't want to sacrifice anything. This doesn't mean to say I will relax on my training, my commitment or my dedication. It just means that I think I have things in perspective. I can't argue that triathlon does kinda dominate my life but I like it, I am very happy with this arrangement, otherwise I wouldn't do it. But to the detriment of other things? Depends what it is I guess but I want things in balance.

Spending a LOT of time with my good friends Hollie and Nathan has made me realise that while one day we might be out burying ourselves on a big 4 hour ride followed by 4k in the pool, and the next we might be enjoying dinner and cocktails while watching the sun set over the mountains, or lying on the beach with a cold beer. As my coach stresses to me on a regular basis, recovery is important! But what's also important is spending time with friends and enjoying the downtime, because this makes it all worth it.

Taking training completely out of the equation, I had one of the best times of my life out in Lanzarote and I owe it largely to the friends I have made along the way. I have laughed every day, and laughter can never be underrated. We are all in this together and we are all on our own individual missions, but if you take triathlon away, you still have a damn solid friendship which doesn't revolve exclusively around training, racing, and energy gel chat.

How 2.5 months has gone so rapidly I do not know, but what I do know is that as I leave this beautiful, rugged and majestic island, I feel sad that this era has come to an end (for now). 

The next phase of my exciting year is about to begin as, after a few days settling back in the UK, I am off to Thailand to figure out just how much extreme heat and humidity affects race-day performance! It's going to be a learning curve, but you know what, I think I am fully prepared for it, because hard work doesn't come without some kind of pay-off.

Robert Twells March 17, 2015

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Probably one of the things I think about most in terms of my training is whether what I am doing is working. Otherwise there’s no point, right? We all have goals and objectives and we want to see them come to fruition as a result of our hard work. Usually, this translates in my head as “am I doing enough?”

I have never ever had a problem with motivation (apart from the odd day or two) – on the whole I have this in abundance. The only reason I first got a coach was to make sure I wasn’t overtraining, because if I was going to go either way, it would definitely be by doing too much. I never gave myself rest days because I felt like I didn’t need them. However much I did I always felt like I could do more.

Having spent a few years in the sport now, I am older and wiser. But, my mentality hasn’t changed that much. I still get THE GUILT. We know how this feels, when you skip a training session because of some other commitment or time issues, and it eats away at you like some parasitic worm. Until you get to the point where you can no longer ignore it, you MUST add that session back in the next day or you will FAIL AT EVERYTHING. 

Yes, it’s stupid, and yes, any coach will tell you that once you have missed a session just leave it, it won’t make any difference if it’s just the one anyway, and that by adding it back in you might be compromising the rest of your training on those days. And we know all this. But somehow, it is SO hard to take the advice and shut up.

I am very guilt of this scenario. Some people may find it easier and think it’s sad to be a slave to training, but it’s not that, I am so motivated and I feel like every training session counts. 

My coach knows what I am like and recently wrote to me about adaptation. I struggle with rest days sometimes (althopugh other times they are very welcome!) and when I had an easy recovery week scheduled in, I panicked after looking at the programme thinking, “I cannot cope with that little amount of training”. Mad, I know.

He refused to add in any extra training and stressed the importance of adaptation. “It’s not during training that you generate performance gains, it is during recovery.” As it happened, I flew back home to the UK for a week to recuperate and quickly engendered all the signs of overtraining – no motivation and very little desire to train. I was tired all the time, headaches every day, and knew this was my body telling me to chill the bloody hell out for a change. So I did just that.

I am back now for a final two week stint in Lanzarote with some big volume training before my first race in four weeks time, and that recovery week will be key to my performance at that race. Yes I know my coach knows best but sometimes I struggle with my inherent motivation to train ALL the time and the completely wrong philosophy of ‘more is better’!

I’ve spent some time thinking about it over the past week, about adaptation and how the body adapts to the workload by recovering and restoring its muscles, imprinting muscle memory (the old 1,000 hours theory) and how this is such a crucial part of athletic performance.

If you think about it on a far more macro scale, adaptation is the key to survival. It is the absolute essence of evolution and longevity of any species. So it makes perfect sense that by allowing the body to sufficiently adapt to its environment (large training volume without wearing the body out), then it will ensure longevity and ability to perform when challenged.

I have had coaches where big training volume underpinned the entire plan – it was all about masses of training, without factoring in much rest and recovery. It works initially. It’s quite simple – increase an athlete’s training and they improve. Until they stop improving. And then see a performance decline. Because it’s simply not sustainable to train hard and long all the time without recovery.

Not only is it wearing the body down until you begin to feel ‘a bit tired’ ALL THE TIME, but it’s also mentally tough. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it’s not sustainable to be motivated every single day all the time, so that rest day, or recovery week, enables you to not only let your muscles and your body adapt and restore itself, but also for you to mentally switch off.

In an endurance sport like triathlon, I think this is really important and I have realised how critical it is to not only sustaining mental motivation but also physical load. I have experienced it myself and seen others do the same – overtraining eventually leads to burnout, mentally and physically. 

If this was a species, it would probably fizzle out and die. Sounds dramatic, I appreciate, but fundamentally, we are going through a mini process of evolution. 

We challenge ourselves mentally and physically, we adapt, and we evolve…

Robert Twells March 10, 2015

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