Alistair is back!

Any fears that Alistair Brownlee might not be fully fit for London 2012 can be well and truly laid to rest as he won the latest round of the ITU WCS in Kitzbuhel Austria. Jonny Brownlee was second with Javier Gomez taking third. The Browlees made a break on the bike along with Denis Vasiliev (RUS) but they were chased down by the pack. Stuart Hayes (GB) came to the front, performing his role as domestique and drove the pace on the bike. Did the team tactics make a difference? Who knows, the Brownlees certainly had a comfortable gap on the rest of the field.

Nicola Spirig (Sui) sprinted away from Lisa Norden (SWE) in the final 400m of the the women's elite race. Andrea Hewitt (NZ) was third. If the women's triathlon comes down to sprint finish, at this point if Nicola Spirig is one of those athletes going for gold, she might just be the favourite. No team tactics in the women's race. Just good hard racing. Unfortunately we didn't get to see Emma Snowsill race in the end and we will have to wait to see what kind of form Paula Findlay (Can) will bring to London 2012.

This weekend, on Saturday,  is the Zone3 demo session. We would like everyone to either bring their own wetsuit to the session or use one provided by Zone3. The focus of the session will be on open water skills as well as putting on your wetsuit properly to ensure comfort and efficiency and getting it off quickly to minimise time in transition.


It's not just the LFTC club members racing well this year. Proof that great athletes can make great coaches, coach Mick Cairns won his age group at the Forestman Triathlon on June 24th. This is a tough ironman distance event in the New Forest. Nice work Mick! Why weren't you running Tuesday night though?


If you are keen to watch some fast and furious live triathlon check out the GE Canary Wharf Triathlon Thursday night. Races will run from 6.15pm until 9.30pm and will feature Tim Don and Liz Blatchford as well as other international elite athletes.

Have a good week and see you in the weekend sometime. Tim(LFTC Coach)

LFTC raising the bar!

Another huge weekend for LFTC athletes last weekend. The results below show place in category. Pretty impressive reading huh?


UK 70.3 Wimbleball
5:21:59 17th Gabriel Sayer
5:35:04 24th Nathan Dytor
5:47:01 7th Gail Wilkinson
6:33:23 10th Shiz Gerami


Lakeside Triathlon
1:09:04 2nd Felipe Almeida
1:28:51 1st Hannah Moora


Dambuster Triathlon
There were some impressive results in very testing conditions. This was a world championship qualifier and if you have not raced in a race like this it is a whole new ball game. You can check out the results here.


Fritton Lake Triathlon
Stuart Hitchcock and Ellen Greaves both won their categories at the Fritton Lake Triathlon. Stuart set a new PB and Ellen came within seconds of running a sub 40min 10km!


This weekend is the WCS race from Kitzbuhel. It's a beautiful race in the Tirol region of Austria with a tough bike leg. Both the Brownlee bros will be back in action along with Stuart Hayes. It will be interesting to see if GBs 'domestique' tactics may be tested here. It will be intriguing to watch just the same as the field is stacked with talent.


Last time I checked there was no Helen Jenkins on the start list. However, Olympic champion Emma Snowsill (Aus) has a chance to show the Aussie selectors they were wrong to leave her off the team. She may find herself having to chase down the likes of Nicola Spirig (Sui) and Andrea Hewitt (NZ) among others who might be able to breakaway on the bike. Both races are live on the BBC red button on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.


If you don't already know your CSS pace, at some stage during the week it would be good for you to establish it. Have a look at an earlier post to see how. We will be using CSS to pace our swim sets in upcoming weeks. There are alternative ways of pace setting such as using a 'rating of perceived exertion' (RPE) but CSS is more accurate and I know how much you all love checking your watches at the Lido!


On June 30th Zone3 are paying us a visit for a wetsuit demo session. We would like to see everyone in wetsuits. You can bring your own or use a demo suit from Zone3. We will go through getting a wetsuit on and off properly, discuss modifying your stroke when swimming in a wetsuit and hopefully we'll get a chance to test how much faster you are (if you are indeed faster) when swimming in a wetsuit. So remember June 30th for the Zone3 wetsuit demo.


Have a good one! See you in the weekend I hope. Tim (LFTC Coach)