Whose idea was it to ride around London in a wet lycra?

…...Well that would be mine! This is what I was saying to myself halfway around the bike course at the weekend whilst trying my dam hardest to keep my bike upright. But in the same breath it was so exciting and inspiring to race in my first ever World series final on home soil with such amazing support.

For the past two years I have watched this race in the grandstands with envy and always thought how cool it would be to race a world series race on home soil. And that it was! The support was amazing, it was great to have so many people cheering us on so thankyou!

16 degrees water temperature in the serpentine and air temperature of 12 degrees on race day, combined with drizzly rain didn't make it the most ideal of conditions for us chicks in the elite women's race.

Being a northerner you would have thought this would be no bother to me, and I have never suffered too badly from the cold before but there is a first for everything!! Having chased the sun around the world for most of the year and being at my leanest race weight, I didn't prepare myself well enough for these conditions by simply not putting enough layers on!

I felt great going into the race and in good shape, but by lap 3 of the bike my legs had stopped working. Everyone was in the same boat, and I only really have myself to blame for getting so cold. I stupidly didn't take any toe covers for my bike shoes and think my feet are only just starting to come back to life now!! I also should have worn a top or some arm warmers under my trisuit to try and add an extra layer, but hey another lesson learnt! My right hand is still a lovely shade of blue from where I was gripping the bike so hard causing a nice big bruise.

To me this is strangely what makes triathlon exciting. Trying to get swimming, biking and running to all peak at the same time, coping with different tactical scenarios, weather conditions, different race courses, staying injury free and healthy just makes it one great big challenge and keeps me going back for more.

Overall my race wasn't all bad, I finished in 29th which considering my body had shut down and legs stopped working after the 2nd lap of the bike it could have been much worse. I was especially pleased with my swim, being only 20seconds down on the leaders after the first lap, so that was a relief to see some progress.

I managed to sneak inside the top 20 in the overall world series rankings, finishing in 19th place, which was a nice bonus. Sunday evening saw the famous end of season after party. The club Tiger Tiger in London had been hired out for us along with a free bar which meant that was a pretty dangerous combination! It was a good laugh and made a nice to change to get dolled up, us Brit girls scrubbed up well!

I'm back home in the Uk training for a few weeks as my season is not over yet, I have one more race to go, this being a World cup in Alicante. I will then be taking a well earned rest to get myself refreshed in preparation for next year, which I am already looking forward too!

Katie

Life out of a bag

A fair bit has happened since I last wrote my blog, and an update is definitely overdue now.

Firstly I am very proud to announce I have become an auntie, the first baby of the family!! A huge congratulations to Stacy and Jimmy West on Lily Jane West, I cannot wait to meet her in a few weeks time!

Secondly I am now on the countdown run in until my husband returns from Afghanistan with just over a month to go. It’s been tough for us this year with what will be 9 months apart, but I’m so incredibly proud of him and what he does, he has a tough job but never ever complains about what he does, he really is a huge inspiration to me and can’t wait for our honeymoon which is now two years delayed due to our crazy lives!

Back to the triathlon related news!

I have done quite a bit of travelling and racing as of late and have to say I am now pretty efficient at travelling light with just my bike bag and a rucksack which for those who know me is a revelation as I wouldn’t go anywhere without my hairdryer!! So the latest stop to update on is Hamburg World Series.

This wasn't a great race for me in that the chaos of the swim caused me to miss the chase pack by 10 seconds which then in turn cost me the race. There was a canoe wrongly positioned at the first buoy and it caused a huge pile up of women literally fighting to get through. Someone even ended up with a broken rib!! Dealing with contact in the swim is something I have struggled with this year so needless to say this was not an ideal situation for me, but have since been working hard on how to handle this through a few lessons in the pool with some of my squad mates beating me up, thanks Mitch and Aileen!!!

The next race was a World cup in Tiszaujvaros. Another brutal swim, with only 100m to the first buoy which resulted in me getting a chipped tooth, nice one, I now need to get this fixed in time for my sister’s wedding in October!! The race had a lot of very speedy swim bikers, which resulted in the front pack staying away and so I had to be content with making up the chase pack and ran through for 9th at the end.

Before my next race in Stockholm we moved further up the mountain for four weeks to the higher altitude in the pretty place of Avoriaz. This was my first full block of altitude training at 1800m and so I was entering the unknown if it would work for me or not. We managed to get some great work done, and had a few nice meals out including my birthday!! However the timing of coming down was possibly a little out as it left me feeling quite flat in the next round of the World Series in Stockholm and pretty run down.

The race itself was incredibly tough with very cold water temperatures of 14 degrees, and one of the most technical bike courses on the circuit, with a hill and cobblestones to contend with on each lap. Despite not having amazing legs I was really pleased to come home in 12th place knowing there is much more to still to come and also putting the demons to rest from a spectacular crash I had last year on that course in the relay! It was a great weekend and fantastic to see so much British domination from not just the men but now also the women!

I am now back in Morzine preparing for my first World Series grand final in London which I am delighted to have made the team for and also very excited to be back on British soil after 9months away. It’s an early start of 8am on Saturday 14th September for the women but it will be a great race to watch if you can make it, the cheers will be much appreciated! Hope to see you there!

Katie

The Only Way is Up.... Literally

Kitzbuhel 2013, consisted of a 750m lake swim, a 12k bike but not just a normal 12k bike, it was all uphill as we had to climb up the Kitzbuhel horn which had gradients as high as 22% in parts, followed by a 2.5 run up and down hill.

To most I guess this sounds like their idea of hell, to me I couldn't wait!! Having a background in mountain and fell running, this was right up my street, even though its been a good few years since I did any form of fell running. However we have been out training in Morzine in the mountains for 4 weeks now and I felt the most prepared I have felt all season after finally having some good consistent work under my belt.

So race day everything all went to plan, despite a bad swim. I cant actually call my last few races swims really, as from about 25m in it has been a matter of survival. In this particular race I had someone pulling on my legs all the way to the first buoy. Not just an occasional tap of the toes, but full on arm half way up my leg, pushing my legs down. I think I was just swimming with my arms only at one point, and was pretty vertical several times!

Obviously this didn't really help to coming out in a good position, but I stuck to my own plan and that was to pace the bike at my own pace and not get carried away with the pack being ahead at this stage. I felt really strong as the climb got going and got into a really good rhythm, which resulted in working my way through from 35th to 7th by the end of the climb. I had to settle for 7th overall as I just ran out of road on the run to pull back any more places. Having achieved my first top 10 in a World series race was really pleasing and a good breakthrough.

I rode on my F4 felt road bike which was great, with a compact 50/34 and 28 on the back. I have to thank Adrian Timmis my bike sponsor of Cadence Sport for sorting this out, along with Mavic Cosmic race wheels which were super light. Amusement point of the day was the journey back home from the mountain. I got a puncture descending back down the hill and had to flag down a car for a lift back to the hotel. If you ever wondered if you could fit 3 people, a bike and several cameras into a smart car, the answer is yes as one of the camera men sat in the boot with the door wide open, hanging out with my bike across his lap. Thankyou this would have been a long walk home and it did cause quite a few beeps and smiles as we drove through town!

I have to give a special mention to my fellow British team mate, training partner and roomie Jodie Stimpson who totally smashed the race. So pleased for her, she is one incredibly focused, hard working lady and what a well deserved win, very inspiring.

After a nice chilled day with my family after the race it is now back to business as next on the calendar is Hamburg WTS on 20th July which I am really looking forward to having heard great things about this race.

Highlights of the kitzbuhl race will be shown on BBC2 at 10.30AM on Saturday 13th July.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

So from starting my first season this year in the ITU world champs series races I would summarise each race with a pinch of everything as my title suggests. Auckland was clearly ugly as I got sick and couldn’t even start the race. San Diego was somewhat better in that I ticked a few boxes in the swim and bike department. Yokohama was moving in the right direction, and my most recent outing in Madrid being just ugly, full stop.

But nobody said it would be easy, and this is all part of the challenge and part of the reason we put ourselves through the daily grind, overcoming challenges, learning and moving forwards, which makes it so much sweeter when things do go right!

So although Madrid was a race I would rather forget I will give a small explanation as to why it went so ugly.

Having travelled pretty much around the world from January, which is no excuse at all as many others went extremely well still (which I have to also say, so proud to be British after Non, Jodie and Jonny stunning performances and also my team mate Annie Haug on 2nd!), I returned home to the UK and had to contend with moving to a new home in Hereford, alongside my husband leaving for a tour of Afghanistan.

Training went ok really, nothing special but nothing amazing. However I think the smaller stresses of outside my triathlon life took it out of me. I just felt really flat on race day, and had nothing to give. So that was that. I hate to DNF and gave myself a fair bit of grief over it afterwards, but ultimately I tried to think rationally in that I have the rest of the season to think about and digging myself in a big hole wouldn’t have helped much and would have took a fair bit of time to recover from.

So straight from Madrid I flew out to our European camp base in Morzine, France and met up with the rest of my squad. This place is truly beautiful, surrounded by mountains, a stream running outside our lodge its perfect and reminds me of when I used to come out to these type of places for the world mountain running championships.

I am in a good routine already and it’s exactly what I need now, a good solid block of training ahead of the next big races. These include the World Series in Kitzbuhl and world sprint championships in Hamburg and I can’t wait to get back in there and start putting what I have learnt this year together.

So although things have been perhaps a little rocky to start with it has certainly given me plenty opportunity to learn and grow as a professional triathlete and person that I plan to use in the rest of the series now. I have a fantastic support team around me who I cant thank enough for believing in me and helping me on my journey,

Bye for now

Katie

Yokohama WCS

So my recent shenanigans have involved traveling from America to Japan for the 3rd round of the World champs series in Yokohama.

This was my first visit to Japan and what a great place, very clean, friendly and well organized. The welcome party involved a bit of dressing up as myself and Jodie Stimpson were asked to try on a traditional komodo.

Down to the real reason I was here, the race!

I finished 14th, which after a terrible swim, or what felt more like a fight with some Russian swimmers I exited the water a good minute down on the leaders which was pretty disappointing as had been swimming much better than this leading into the race.

However my philosophy is the race isn’t over until you cross the finish line and its all to play for, so I got my head down and got to work to catch on the bike. I saw the times coming slowly down, and once the rain came down by lap 9 of 9 we were back on! I had some help from a few of the other girls in the pack, but had to do the majority of the work myself which despite being frustrating is just the way it is in draft legal racing sometimes. So the best thing to do is just get on with it.

I am pleased with the progress from San Diego in the bike and run department, with my run fitness coming back and now have a bit of time back in the Uk to see family and friends and then get ready for Madrid WCS.

Follow my progress on twitter @katie_hewison or facebook page Katie Hewison

Sedona Camp

I love this place, its by far the best location I have trained in and both times here I have had great blocks of training, and left sedona feeling much fitter along with a little bit browner courtesy of the beautiful open air pool

To summarise the last few weeks here a few things that spring to mind

Sam joining me :)

Our tune / radio one sad song

mumford and sons – I will wait (only knowing one line)

picassos pizza

iron man 3

red rocks

dodgy sun tan lines

jigsaw puzzles

scrabble

blowing up

road tripping to San Diego

Awesome

Food channel

how many people can we squeeze into a car

frozen yoghurt

Douche bag

Java love café

laughing

smiling

learning

improving

Sam leaving me :(

And now onto Yokohama for round three of the ITU World Champs Series followed by a short visit back to the UK, cannot wait to see my family and Meg the dog aka minion, its been a while!

Stay tuned

Katie

x

Auckland and San Diego WCS

Since leaving my training base in Canberra I have done a fair bit of travelling with the first stop being Auckland. This was supposed to be my first World Champs Series race and I was really excited and looking forward to the challenge.

However it wasn’t meant to be, because as soon as I stepped off the plane in Auckland I started to feel unwell, and then it went downhill from there. I was feverish, nauseas and couldn’t keep anything down, I had picked up some sort of gastric bug at the worst possible time. Having not kept any food down for 3 days we had to make the decision to withdraw. I was so frustrated and watching all the girls race was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, but at the same time was really happy for all my training pals racing especially Annie Haug on the win. So fair to say I was pretty pleased to leave Auckland, I had seen enough of the four walls in my bedroom.

The next stop was Sedona, USA for a short bit of training to try and put myself together again in time for San Diego.

I had a huge pick me up as my husband flew out to meet me, having not seen him for three and a half months as he is preparing to deploy to Afghanistan has been tough. However we have both big ambitions and support each other with what we want to achieve.

I managed to fit in a few good sessions before leaving Sedona and so felt confident that I was ready to race and had prepared the best I could.

So next stop San Diego, round 2 of the WCS and finally I was able to make my debut. I felt very proud to put on the GB kit and be given the opportunity to race against the best world. I have been working very hard on the technical aspects of my swimming over the winter and the main goal of the race was to see where I was and hopefully be in a pack. So instead of being annoyed that people were pulling my feet and I was being hit around the head I was actually delighted as it meant I wasn’t last, and I popped out within the big pack.

Onto the bike and although it was not my finest hour being a bit race rusty in the bunch, but the main positive was I exited T2 within the mix of everyone.

The run was always going to be painful, and was probably more of a mental challenge knowing that I wasn’t in my usual run form. I spent most of the winter struggling with a calf injury and have had really limited run training. However at this stage of the year we were really not concerned with how I ran as this hasn’t been the focus. I have come back from running injuries very well before and so several months of good running and I know this will be back on form. In a way it has probably been a blessing in disguise as its given me valuable time to work on the swim. That’s the beauty of triathlon sport there is always something you can work on.

So overall I am leaving San Diego a happy lady, lots to work on but now have a great stepping stone to build on for the rest of the season. Im back in Sedona putting in a good few weeks ahead of the next ITU WCS In Yokohama.

We finished the trip off with a cheeky little visit to the cheesecake factory, thought would be rude not too!

Go hard or go home

So hands up who has used this quote before? Me, that’s for sure. I think from being a junior I have had the 'work hard' mantra instilled into my brain. Being able to hurt and dig deep is pretty important as there are many races where your body can be screaming at you stop but finding that bit extra can be vital. Yet there is also a time and a place to go hard, as I am now realising after the past few months in Canberra.

I coach many athletes and the interesting thing is I am actually very sensible and don't employ the same go hard or go home approach, but when it comes to my own training the sensible parrot can often disappear for a vacation. I think the main problem is that I am so competitive, I love racing more than anything and it is a huge motivator for me in training. In fact the worst type of training session for me is a long steady 4hour ride, I would much rather be doing fast hard intervals.

This is where having Darren as a coach has been brilliant. I have had my world completely turned upside down as I have been forced to do things at a much slower rate than I am used to, both in and out of training. My parents in the past have described me as doing things at a million miles an hour, rushing here there and everywhere, that’s me to a T. So I have had to learn to relax and put my feet up more when I should be resting, and had some very frustrating sessions where I have barely been allowed to swim more than 1k as it has been stop, start, correct my stroke, or tied up against the wall in the pool. I may have given Darren a few grey hairs in this process as things didn’t click straight away, but we are getting there now and cant wait to see how much improvements have been made.

And then there is my running. I only really know one way when it comes to running which is to go hard, despite my grumbling we have really had to pull things back to work on some technical changes for my lower limbs to help make me more robust and in turn make me quicker in the years to come. We have also had to really prioritise the swim this winter as in order to becone of the best triathletes in the world you need to give yourself the best chance by being in the mix.

My time here has passed ridiculously quick, I have been looked after by a fantastic family, 2 doctors who have 2 children; Duncan who is a triathlete and Kaitlin is a rower. I couldn’t have asked for a better home-stay, they have made me feel extremely welcome and I have even been able to adopt their family dog strider for a short while, which has helped as a temporary replacement for my pup back home!

Other eventful news was my dad turning up in Australia without telling me! He just walked through the door whilst I was eating tea and my jaw hit the floor. It was a fantastic surprise and makes me feel very lucky to have such a supportive family, I cant wait to see Sam and the rest of the family soon.

And then I had a lovely little detour to Sydney to meet my good friends and sponsor Barrie Wells with his wife Heather and son, Matthew. We had a great time catching up over in Manly, and Sydney harbour.

So all in all it has been a great camp and I am super excited to be heading onto Auckland for round one of the 2013 World Champs series, and my first ever World Champs series race!! We have some specific goals to achieve here which may have to involve a little bit of 'go hard or go home,' but mostly I will have my sensible head on ;)

Stay tuned

Katie

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind

OK so maybe my ramblings here are not quite as significant as Neil Armstrong quoted regarding landing on the moon; however in my little life I feel some similarities in that I have finally taken a huge leap forward in my triathlon career. As this is my first blog I should probably go back a few stages to give a little bit more insight into what has been going on!

I think it’s fair to say that since starting triathlon I had a huge feeling of uncertainty. I felt very lost, as if I didn’t belong in the sport, unsure about what I was doing, leaving a good job and my family to jump into the unknown. I constantly questioned if I made the right decision, questioning if I was ever going to be good enough. Believe me, if you want to be good at this game or in fact any job, this is not the right headspace to be in and certainly didn’t help me in the early stages as it was a constant battle of one step forward, 2 steps backwards for various different reasons which I wont bore you with the details now.

So I let my head win for a short while and decided to quit triathlon at the start of 2011 reasoning that is wasn’t for me. However I then felt defeated, even more miserable and incredibly unsatisfied. I felt I hadn’t given myself the chance to really prove what I could do, and didn’t want to live with a big 'what if' cloud over my head. So I started to build slowly back into the sport with the attitude of 'see what happens,' targeting the World duathlon championships as my first race back in 2011, and totally blew my previous expectations away by taking the World title.

2012 began with another injury this time a stress fracture to the foot, however my goals had been set and with a change in mindset, change in training and some actual consistency I was able to have a great year and win my first ever ITU triathlon world cup. This was with thanks to bike coach Adrian Timmis and run coach Mick Woods for helping me get back on track, but then at the back end of 2012 another incredible opportunity then arose.

I had signed up to one of Tri Dynamics master class sessions with world class triathlon coach Darren Smith at St Marys and I had the opportunity to see if the incredible things I had heard of Darren were true. Turns out they are...! He has such a wealth of experience coaching some of the sports best athletes and is known for his immense precision and eye for technical detail. So after meeting him for what I thought would just be a few tips to take away I couldn’t believe it when he then invited me out to Arizona to train with his ‘D’ squad, I was over the moon!!

So fast track a few more months and I am now currently training in Australia with the rest of the fantastic squad and support team, learning how to train smarter, faster and more consistently each day in order to help me reach the highest level of triathlon racing. Its a great opportunity and I am now getting ready for the next giant leap as I prepare for my first ever start in the ITU World Championship series in Auckland in April!

For now I will leave you with another moon related quote I quite liked! (by the way I’m not really that into space or the moon just found this quite appropriate!)

"I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream." Neil Armstrong

Kt