Why I’m training to race faster in 2025

After years of focussing on endurance races it’s time to try something new, which is why I’m training to race faster in 2025. Here’s why…

Happy new year everybody! I hope that Santa brought you lots of carbon loveliness in his sack, and that all your presents weighed less than 0.25kg.

As all triathletes know, the lighter the gift, the better.

We are now in that happy time of year when all your golden dreams for the season ahead are still intact and have yet to meet the cold, hard tarmac of reality. (Unless you’ve missed any training sessions since the start of the year in which case, in your head, your season is over already.)

You’ve spurned the Christmas puds and mulled wine, resisted the urge to sit with your feet up watching festive tat on the telly. You’ve managed to keep your heart rate down by not getting involved in unsatisfactory, snippy arguments with your family.

You’ve probably been out on a training run or ride almost every day. You’ve maybe even done a sneaky race or two in order to steal a march on your main rivals (aka your club mates).

Well done, you are a true triathlete and you’re ready to face the season ahead.

Planning the year ahead

Traditionally this is the time of year when we plan our race diary for the year. For those of you feeling organised, here’s a hub of free training plans for all abilities.

In my case this is a hitherto unknown definition of the word ‘plan’ because in reality I enter races on a whim/when drunk/when I see someone I know boasting about a race on their socials.

Plus I have the unerring ability to make them coincide with my birthday/my wife’s birthday/the summer holidays we have already booked. What would life be without a bit of domestic jeopardy….

For me it’s also the time of year I decide what the ‘next big thing’ I’m going to do is. In recent years I have got into the habit of doing at least one event that makes people go “You’re doing WHAT?!” to the extent that it is now expected of me.

This is bad enough but in order to maintain my carefully crafted mystique of being a complete nutter, each annual challenge has to be bigger than the last.

In recent years this has seen me doing things like swimming a million metres in a year, doing 100 mile ultras along cliff edges, running seven marathons in seven days, and in 2024 swimming both ways along the full length of Lake Windermere. 

This year however I’ve decided to focus on something even more terrifying – sprint triathlons!

Time to race short ‘n’ fast

Yes, after 15 Ironmans, 125 marathons, countless marathon swims and God knows what other endurance races I’ve forgotten about I’m going to do the thing I fear most – trying.

For a mid-50s endurance athlete there is nothing more frightening than the prospect of trying to go fast. It involves doing all the things we dread most, like lifting our knees while running, getting out of breath and trying to get wetsuits off without sitting down.

Then there’s bending over enough to make tri bars worth using, mounting and dismounting while still moving, running through transitions instead of having a sneaky walk, and not taking 2000m in the swim just to unlock your shoulders.

In order to prepare myself for the horrors ahead I have begun asking my body to do things it hasn’t done in years, like pedal at more than 60 rpm, climb out of swimming pools without using the steps (to be honest the chairlift was starting to look attractive) or running in a way that involves my feet leaving the ground at some point.

I’ve even started going to the gym and doing tortuous things like mountain climbers, burpees, lunges, squat jumps, and tripping over boxes while trying to leap over them, all while wondering whether the next movement I make is going to leave me in a knotted spasm on the floor.

The die is cast though, no plodding mile after mile for me in 2025. It’s going to be short, sharp and sweaty from here on in, and with sprint tris being done and dusted in under an hour (ahem..) at least I should be at the café/pub/hospital before closing.

I’ve already entered my first two early season races with the aim of building up to hitting peak speed by mid-summer, and I’m not going to let anything get in my sprinty way – apart from the 24 one mile swims in 24 hours event in June I signed up for while scunnered on mulled cider at Christmas.

There is that, I suppose…

Main pic credit: Getty Images