Emma's Try-a-Tri diary, week 3

Breathing: it's not as straight-forward as you might think

The Try-a-Tri programme has now reached its half-way mark and the athletes are starting to feel a change in the intensity of the sessions. As well as just drills, they are now building in some speed work, guaranteed to get their heart rates pumping.

The running sessions are focusing not just on physical form, but also correct breathing techniques as Emma explains. “Running sounds like it should just be one foot in front of the other and one breath in, one breath out, but as we've been finding over the last couple of weeks, there's more to it than meets the eyes. In this week's session, our coaches explained how you would alter your breathing for different paces – you need to breathe very differently during a 10km run vs an 800m sprint. It's been a really useful session for me this week as it's made me realise maybe by making small adjustments to my breathing – I didn't think I breathe fast enough – I could see big difference sin my performance”.

The bike sessions are also progressing well, with the athletes being encouraged to push themselves harder than before. “In order to gauge how different efforts feel, we cycled Fartlek sessions both on the flat and up hills”, explains Emma. “Even though the 90% effort makes your legs burn, it's still great fun and I know it will help me improve my bike speed”.

Practice doesn't finish at the end of the coached sessions, though, and Emma has been building what she has learnt into her everyday training. “I'm definitely glad I enrolled on the course – I'm incorporating some of the learning into my own training and hopefully I'll start seeing a difference over the next couple of months. It's good to be taken out of your comfort zone every now and then, and I really think it's going to help me when racing this year. With Blenheim only a month away, I certainly hope so!”