Saturday’s Open Water Swim Workshop was a great success! Seven ladies showed up at Hampstead Mixed Ponds for good weather and an educational couple of hours. Everyone had positive feedback and really learned a lot.
This workshop helped prepare for future races and was the foundation for proper technique and race strategies. It is still very important to continue to practice and we urge competitors to do so in open water.
Although we do not have any more Trigirl workshops planned, please feel free to contact us and another workshop or lessons can be arranged.
For more information, email info@trigirl.co.uk.
Calling all female novice triathletes. Please join us for our 2 hour open water session in the scenic Hampstead Heath Ponds in London.
This workshop aims to build your confidence when swimming in open water and prepare you for your first race.
When: Saturday 18 June 2011 • 11am-1pm
Where: London • Hampstead Mixed Ponds
Cost: £25
Topics covered will include:
- Technique to put on and remove wetsuits quickly
- Swimming techniques
- Tips on sighting and open water turns
- Race strategies
This workshop will be divided into an hour in the water and one hour of theory and Q&A. It will be coached by Terence Collins, of Tri For Fitness, a highly experienced coach for both swim and triathlon discipline.
We will also have a range of Zone3 wetsuits on site for you to try on and test swim.
Places are limited, please book in advance.
The critical tri specialists of 220 Magazine give Trigirl’s ‘Heroine’ trisuit a remarkable 84% verdict.
The 220 experts conclude that this trisuit is “An impressive, quick-drying women-specific suit“. The Test Centre review further comments “…Instead of having a built-in bra like most suits, it comes with a separate crop-top, giving extra bust support and allowing you to wiggle in and out of the suit with ease…There’s great news for ladies of smaller stature, too, because Heroine is also available in petite, with a shorter body-length specifically for women of 5ft4in and under.”
We couldn’t agree more. To read the full Test Centre feature, get your copy now.
220Triathlon Magazine Issue 261, July 2011.
Trigirl are delighted to see our Radiance Tri Tank and Champion Tri Shorts recommended in the latest Triathlon Plus magazine as “well -fitting women’s kit that’s good for long distance racing”.
Triathlon Plus particularly liked the light weight and soft fabric and the built-in Powermesh bra of this popular tri top. Worth mentioning is also that our Radiance top is the only triathlon tank top in the market that comes in two cup sizes A/B or C/D.
Read the full test report in Triathlon Plus Summer 2011, Issue 29, out now.
A week on from the Trigirl Novice Triathlon Workshop I’m having loads of fun starting out as a triathlete. It’s been a manic week at work with two business trips scheduled in and early starts for my train journeys.
I spent Tuesday totally engrossed on the train in some Triathlete specific magazines only to find Kim featuring in one of them with some tips for novices! I’ve managed to squeeze in a run with a friend, plus I cycled to work on the days I was in the office.
Trigirl is thrilled to announce professional triathlete Corinne Abraham as our new brand ambassador.
We are looking forward to following her first season as a professional triathlete in our lovely Trigirl kit. We wish Corinne all the best and good luck for her first big race this weekend, the Ironman in Texas on 21st of May!
Here is what Corinne has to say about our kit: “…The stylish kit has colour, cut, and the fabric technology has research and science behind it. Honestly? I put my Triumph Tankini on and I feel glamorous – not red carpet stuff of course but I don’t feel like I’m in my perpetual uniform of “training wear”…”
To read the full article and to learn more about Corinne, please visit her website at www.corinneabraham.com
I was thrilled when I found out that I’d won the Trigirl competition. I’d wanted to get into triathlon training for a while and didn’t really know where to start, so I was delighted to get the chance to go on the Trigirl Workshop as part of my competition prize. I felt a little bit daunted being a complete novice as to what to expect, but the workshop day was pitched just right for someone like me.
The group consisted of 6 ladies of varying ability, some were runners, we had an experienced swimmer, a couple of ladies that did duathlons and one lady that had completed a couple of sprint tri’s – a really good mixture. Our coach for the day was Kim Ingleby who really knew her stuff being a current competitor herself.
We covered all three of the disciplines starting with cycling. I hadn’t even considered certain aspects such as dismounting and mounting your bike, and how to change your tyre at the side of the road. Kim gave some great advice on choosing the right gear, I don’t have a tri bike just yet so it was reassuring to hear that there are people that compete without them to start with, and that I won’t look daft on a mountain bike! It was great fun to practice this with the other ladies. We went over the details around transition and had a practice at getting our gear ready with tips on how to lay it all out ready for action.
Roughly every 4th week of my training plan is a test and recovery week. The training volume drops, but I have a series of benchmark session to do so the coach and me can see whether things are moving in the right direction.
So there I was one Wednesday evening in my basement on my trusted turbo trainer churning out my monthly 80k time trial. By now I have a fairly high boredom threshold when it comes to turbo sessions. When I first started I would barely last 20 minutes! But for sessions like that I load up my mp3 player with podcasts, and tune out the world with those beautiful Sennheiser headphones that drown out most outside noise. That particular evening it was IMTalk I was listening to, and they were talking about the mental tricks you can engage to get through those tough sessions. That in turn made me think of what I do (which admittedly is fairly similar).
So here are my top 5 in no particular order:
-
Counting and numbers, and by that I mean anything. Just keep your mind busy. During hard interval run sessions I find myself counting my foot strikes, forcing myself to get to 100 before I will look at my watch again. During swim sessions I often work out the percentages of the total I’ve already swum. I count pedal revelutions too. It all helps.
-
Breaking things up: 2000 m swim test sounds tough? You lose count easily. How about thinking of it as 5×400
The British universities and colleges sport (BUCS) cycling time trial championships were held over two weekends, with the 10 mile event first, and the 25 mile even the weekend after. As usual Oxford and Cambridge university’s cycling clubs organised one event each.
For me the 10 mile event fell on the end of a week 3 of my training cycle (4 is the recovery & test week), so my legs had 3 weeks of accumulated fatigue in them.
Unfortunately you cannot peak for every single race, and Ironman France, scarily enough only a mere 7 weeks away now, definitely takes priority. Said Saturday was however a beautiful sunny day, and I was quite happy about being there. I didn’t ride badly, but the legs didn’t quite respond, and my time reflects that. I was only beaten by Corrine Hall, who is a pretty decent cyclist, so I was pleased that she was only 40 seconds ahead of me. So one silver medal for Sussex uni!
We are delighted to see our gorgeous Trigirl Heroine trisuit featured in the most recent issue of 220 Triathlon magazine.
We are grateful for the continued support we receive from the most established magazine in the UK tri community. It’s a great read, make sure you pick up a copy of this June issue !
We had an overwhelmingly large amount of applicants to our competition and it has been very difficult to make a decision as all applications were of such a high standard.
Congratulations to Debbie Loughran from Swindon, the lucky winner of our Trigirl Triathlete competition. To start her journey in becoming a triathlete, Debbie will be attending our Novice Training Day in Bristol on the 8th of May. Debbie’s goal is to complete the Cotswold Sprint Triathlon on 4th of September and Trigirl will support her in her training and race preparation.
We are looking forward to following Debbie on her journey and we will be reporting about her progress in our blog.
Last chance to book onto our women’s only novice triathlon training days! Spaces are filling up fast so get booking at www.trigirl.co.uk/training
Trigirl training days are on the 8th and 22nd of May in London, Manchester and Bristol with expert coaches to build up your confidence and teach the skills you need to complete a triathlon. This is a great opportunity so make sure you don’t miss out!
Book now at: www.trigirl.co.uk/training
The weekend has been and gone, and last week’s anxiousness is a thing of the past. There were no fireworks at the time trials, but after two good and solid performances I can estimate realistically what the state of things is.
I rode well enough to take a decent amount of confidence from these, and last but not least if I had any niggling doubts about the coach, they’ve now been put to rest. I’d like to think that I’m quite a logically minded person, after all I’m a physicist! But that doesn’t stop me from questioning the wisdom of what the coach prescribes me occasionally. Especially after doing my own thing for so many years, and being fairly successful with this approach.
One of the other reasons I love time trialling is that I actually made a profit. 2 entries = £16, winning both the ESCA 10 & 25 and therefore the combined weekend = £32. But what about petrol, you ask? Well, I’m Ironman training. I can’t afford to give up a whole weekend’s worth of training for two rather short races.
Become a Triathlete with Help from Trigirl!
Trigirl is looking to support one motivated sportswoman towards completing a triathlon for the first time – a great opportunity if you are apprehensive about your first race.
Trigirl will help you to develop the confidence and skills required to achieve this exciting goal. We will provide you with:
- free admission to one of our Trigirl Novice Training Days (worth £65)
- an extensive 12 week training plan
- a gorgeous Trigirl race outfit (worth £85)
- expert advice throughout the training period
- race day support
You will need to be dedicated and determined, and have previous experience in at least one of the three sports.
So if you feel you have what it takes, or know someone who does, then send us your application now!
Visit our ‘Competitions’ page for more information. Application deadline 21st April 2011.
GOOD LUCK!
Our Dutch brand ambassador Maryvonne van den Berg is planning to compete in many triathlons this year and is already doing a fantastic job blogging away.
Lizzy Brama has just been appointed UK brand ambassador (see previous blog) and will soon be blogging her progress.
We are now on the lookout for ambassadors in other countries so get in touch if you are interested!