Yorkshire Tea * Simon Ward and Alistair Brownlee

It’s not often you get to interview a double Olympic Gold medalist.  It helps that I have known today’s guest, Alistair Brownlee, since the time when he started his triathlon journey way back in 2004. He joined a British Triathlon talent ID programme of which myself and Jack Maitland were coaches for the North Region. It’s been exciting to follow the progress of this young man right through from a talented youth to repeat Olympic Gold medals and now to this stage of his career where he is about to make his debut at the Ironman World Championships in Kailua Kona in just a few weeks time. Alistair lives a few miles away from me so I travelled over to his new house to do this interview and he made me feel very welcome. As you’d expect from someone who is sponsored by Taylors Yorkshire Tea, Al made me a brew and we sat down to chat about:

• Fulfilling a lifelong ambition to race the Hawaii Ironman
• His first thought as they announced the cancellation of the swim at his debut Ironman in Cork
• 70.3 World’s or Ironman - which was his big focus for 2019?
• With an FTP of 400 watts, what he expects to ride at in Kona
• Why he would happily have stopped at 5k into the run in Nice
• Learning to be more conservative when racing long distance
• Why Gustav Iden’s race result was no surprise
• Why the results of his Kona rivals in Nice don’t really tell you much about their current form
• Swimming 3.8km and why Kona will be the first time Al has ever tried this distance outside of the pool

I hope you enjoy this conversation and have a few laughs. It will certainly give you an insight into Alistair’s mindset before his next big challenge.

To find out more about Simon’s coaching please visit his website here.

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For more information please go to www.SimonWardTriathlonCoach.com, or www.TheTriathlonCoach.com, or email Beth@TheTriathlonCoach.com.