health and fitness: Why runners should think about giving triathlon a go

mardi 28 juillet 2015

Why runners should think about giving triathlon a go

If you’re constantly getting injured – or you just need to shake things up a bit – adding in cycling and swimming might just be the answer. Here’s what one runner learned from the transition

I’d been running for a bit. Then I tried triathlon. I was no longer pure. But it was worth it. I’m not one of those hardcore types who start doing swimming and cycling on top of their weekly running miles. Andy Bullock, a BTF triathlon coach, says: “Some people from a running background do a lot of training, but they start having problems with the injuries associated with a high volume of running. So if they start triathlon, they find they can do even more training ... whether that’s suitable for them or not. But it hits that urge.”

So, for them, it’s a way of staying super-fast without crashing and burning. That wasn’t me. Inexperienced, tubby, 40+. So taking up triathlon training meant doing swimming and cycling instead of some runs – saying a partial goodbye to running before I’d properly got into it. Still, I’m glad I did. There are some running lessons I would have got the hang of eventually, but triathlon speeded the process up. Here are four I’ve learned so far.