Time. There is never enough time. If you want to become good at something you need time, experience, mileage. There is the well known 10.000 hours rule, 10.000 hours performing a certain
task before you can call yourself a specialist at it. This means you have to be doing that task for 20 hours/week for 10 years to become a specialist at it.
I started the sport late in life. I was in my early thirties
when I teamed up with a coach for the first time. When
I started triathlon properly in 2009 my body had no mileage. There are articles from
athletes and coaches who say you can perform well with less mileage and higher
intensity programs but when you look a
bit deeper into the athletes they use as examples you will soon realise that
these people have been doing some sort of sport at high level from their early
teens. When I started chasing
the elite athlete dream, I tried to cheat time because being in my thirties, time was the one thing I did not have left. I fooled
myself into thinking if I just trained that little bit harder, better and longer
than everyone else I would make up for my lack of experience and mileage and beat the 10.000 hrs rule.
An organicoach training camp is much more than clocking up mileage
When I first started training I was living in Singapore and
Alister Russel was my coach. He taught me how to swim, ride and run. He taught
me how to do this repeatedly, week in, week out. He taught me what I was capable
off. Every race was a time trial. “If your legs are not burning you are not
racing” are words I still repeat in my head in his voice during a race. I moved
to Sydney and signed up with Olympian cyclist Matt Randall. Matt taught me how
to be a competitor, how to dig deep, suffer and win. Matt taught me how to
believe. When I moved back to Europe to pursue my athletic career, I started working together with Nicolas Lebrun, a multiple world champion in Duathlon, winter triathlon and XTERRA.
He got to glue back the broken pieces after life got in the way of my big
athletic master plan.
Pushing myself out of my comfort zone
Coaching is very personal to me. Every single one of those 3
coaches know me better than anyone, they know what makes me tick. It is all in
the head after all. I don’t believe in a magic recipe in relation to a training
program, I belief in a connection between a coach and an athlete. I personally also enjoy it much more when my achievements are shared with someone who has worked hard at getting there together with me. And Nico with his coaching company Organicoach offered me exactly that and so much more. With a similar look on life he became a close friend as well as my coach. When things turned ugly we made a pact that we would stick by each other until I would cry from happiness after a race rather than frustration.
It was a joy to train in the sunshine
Nico always stressed it was important for me to spend some
time with him and his wife Alex in Digne so he could see me running, riding my bike, and watch me
in the pool. When the opportunity arose I left the dark cold day's in Scotland behind and travelled to France.
This trip for me was not about clocking up mileage like most
triathlon camps in winter. It was about connecting with my coach, to learn from his experiences and understand what he wanted from me when he asked for a certain specific task. I also learned about nutrition, stretching, recovery and anything to do with maintaining a healthy body and soul in the organicoach style.The decision to come to Digne was probably the best decision I had made in my whole sporting career.
Nico and Alex did not leave one stone unturned.
5min vertical speed test on 30% incline hurts
Learning from the master
The mountain bike was a big focus and I rode a top of the
range Enduro bike with big suspension to really learn how to balance and ride
steep drops, rocky steps and climb up things I never thought possible. It was
not about how much power I had in my legs, it was about skills, control and a
big smile at the end of the ride. Nico pushed me to try hard and use every muscle in my body to ride things I would usually walk. “Mountain biking is like dancing" he said "you always
move your body to find the rhythm”
To improve my running
we did a few tests including a vertical speed test to be able to work on my
hill reps more specifically and get a bench mark of where I was at.
We worked on downhill and technical running, something I had a huge area of improvement left. In the pool we worked on my stroke with the help of video
footage. Everything we did was about improving our communication, understanding each other, understanding what was asked of me and understanding where my weaknesses lay and how to work on them. I had always felt that we spoke
the same language, even if his native language was French and mine was Dutch and
we communicated in English! This connection only got reinforced by spending
time with him and his lovely wife Alex. I realised he had been able to help me
so much in the last two difficult years because of the same way our brains
worked.
Living the dream in sunny Digne Les Baines
I spend 7 days living the dream, eating, sleeping and
breathing all aspects of the sport. It
was the perfect way to reconnect with my passion for this part of my life
again. The fulfilling feeling you can get from little improvements on the bike,
on the run and in the water. Working on myself as a person in relation to where
I was, what I wanted to achieve and the
underlying reasons why.
Big bikes give big smiles
Organicoach and its philosophy is a great platform for like minded people who
have a passion for the outdoors, for sports and who want to live a healthy
balanced lifestyle. I would highly recommend Nico and his wife Alex to anyone who
would like to improve and learn on the MTB, trail running, in the pool or
attempt an off road triathlon for the first time. They accommodate for all
levels and abilities. With Nico’s extensive experience racing at top level and
Alex’s knowledge of nutrition and health their world of knowledge is second to
none. On top of that they are wonderful people to be around with a great sense
of humour and the day always finishes with a smile! 
Great group of people who share the same philosophy
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