Monday 30 November 2015

How I got into Triathlons

Hi my name is Iain McLaughlin and I am going to use this blog to detail my experiences of triathlons from a complete beginner to someone who is competing for podium places.  Hopefully I can inspire more to try the sport that I have come to love.
I have just finished my third season of Triathlons.  I have always ran and as a kid ran for a club until I discovered beer and running dropped off my radar.  I picked it up again in my early 20s and at the age of 22 completed the London Marathon.  I also started to Mountain bike at this time and for about 7 years this along with 5 a side football was the extent of my exercising.
This all changed at when I decided to enter my first Triathlon.  Initially it was so that I could tick it off the list as I had done with the London marathon.  However that changed as soon as I crossed the finish line.  Triathlons provided me with something no running race I had entered had ever done before, the added complexity of transitions and combination of 3 events made for an exciting experience that made me want to compete again.
I had 2 main action points after my first triathlon, the first was to get a road bike having completed my first triathlon on my mountain bike and the second, which is still ongoing, was to improve my swimming as I felt this was the area for the biggest improvement in terms of my ability.
This year I saw a big improvement in my results which culminated in a second place finish at the Warwickshire Triathlon in September.  Incidentally this was run on the same course as my first ever triathlon back in May 2013, in the two and a half years that had passed since then I went from a total time of 1 hour 28 minutes to 1 hour 8 minutes with improvements across all aspects of the race.
Future blogs will look at what I have done to see this vast improvement and also in regards to what I am aiming for in the future.  Feel free to ask any questions and hopefully I can pass on any knowledge I have gained or feel free to provide any tips you may have for me.  

No comments:

Post a Comment