Water difference a day makes
By Hollie Avil
This blog is fresh off the back of a chilly open water swim session. I’m sat here with a piping-hot coffee and my standard bowl of porridge with berries! My squad here at Loughborough headed to Market Bosworth Lake for an hour open-water swim. Now the weather is picking up here in the UK, it means we can do more open water training, which is great! It’s important to practise open-water swimming as it is very different from pool swimming. It’s good to get confident at swimming around others and to practise sighting for the buoys!
Training over the past few weeks has been a bit up and down for me. I competed in Seoul at the start of May in one of the triathlon World Championship Series races. Unfortunately I fell pretty ill out there, having to be rushed to hospital with gastroenteritis. The illness knocked me for three weeks and it’s only now that I’ve been able to start training again properly. Sport is like a roller coaster, full of ups and downs. Three weeks ago, I was on a fast downward drop, but now I feel like I’m slowly on the way back up.
My next race will be on the 13th June, in Beauvais, France. It is a French Grand Prix race. I will be racing for my French team, Beauvais (so it’s a home race for us!). The French Grand Prix races are always sprint distance, so the shorter race will be better for me after my illness. I’m really looking forward to racing again!
The next big goal for me is the Senior European Championships at the start of July. The race is in Athlone, Ireland. I raced the Europeans last year in Holland and loved it. I love competing for GB and I love the team atmosphere! My mum’s side of the family are all from Dublin, so I will have a big home crowd coming to cheer me on too!
It’s a misty day today, but the weatherman tells me that the sun is due to come out. Hopefully it will be out in three hours just in time for my bike ride. I just have a steady 90-minute ride to do with a 30 minute steady run off. We did a great route a couple of weeks ago, so I think I’ll have a look back on my Garmin Edge 705 and find the route to repeat again!
See one of Hollie's regular fartlek sessions of tempo and steady intervals logged by her Garmin Forerunner 310XT multisport watch at Garmin Connect. This "Moneghetti Set" is named after Australian long-distance runner Steve Moneghetti.
Garmin kit-sponsored Hollie Avil is the current World U23 Triathlon champion and uses Garmin sports GPS to help her train on the bike, in the pool and on the run. Avil now has her eye trained on the senior title as well as London 2012.
