Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Michael Rice is founder and CEO of Trixter, the maker of X-Dream, the most sophisticated training bicycle we’ve ever seen.

Many a weekend warrior will know how discouraging it is to jump on your bike on a Saturday having been chained to a desk for 50-60 hours over the previous five days only to find their legs don’t want to push the pedals.

Before Michael Rice set up Trixter he worked as a Chartered Accountant in the City and then as the MD of struggling, £80m/year turnover company. He spent three years successfully turning the company back to profitability, but at the cost of his fitness and waist line. Consequently, he found himself repeatedly being wiped out by his fitter friends on their weekend rides.

He desperately wanted a means to keep in shape during the week that fitted with his office-bound lifestyle, but he couldn’t cope with the tedium of the standard exercise bikes on the market at the time. Nor, as a mountain biker, did he want to work his arms and legs separately. It took too long.

Edgar Ette, along with Steve Haywood, runs Enduroman Ltd, the organiser of ultra endurance triathlons and other extreme events including the Arch to Arch challenge. He tells T-zero what inspired him, and what it takes to become an ultra athlete.

It all started in the mid 1980s, when Edgar was part of the Royal Navy triathlon team. As a self-confessed Mr Average he didn’t make (nor did he have any expectations of making) the squad for a London to Paris relay event. But the event planted a seed in his mind: could he ever complete such a challenge alone?

Edgar is not so interested in winning, but seeks his competitive challenges by attempting things that no one else has ever done. “I’m motivated by my own goals and by things I can do to improve and educate myself,” he says. Arch-to-Arch fitted the bill.

He was always pretty confident he could run the 84 miles from London to the Dover and cycle 184 miles from Calais to Paris. But what about the bit in the middle?

“I’m a skinny guy so cold water is a real challenge for me. I basically trained for five years before attempting the crossing.”

Liz Tucker

We spoke to Liz Tucker, stress counsellor, co-founder of ‘Be Happy Be Healthy’ and regular health and well-being contributor to radio and television about stress management and performance. This is what she said:

Stress can burn huge amounts of our energy. If we don’t manage it, we won’t perform at our best. Whether stress comes from emotional problems or overload at work, it will compete for the ‘energy’ we might rather use for training and racing. If you have unresolved problems, your mind and body will treat those as a priority and leave you depleted before you even start swimming, cycling or running.

Unfortunately we can’t simply remove stress from our lives, although many people mistakenly think we can. However, we can manage it.

One technique is to use time spent doing sport to mull over problems – for example, during a long, slow run in the park. This is fine, as long as you’re not looking for peak performance during the exercise. But if we want to fully focus for a race or an intense training session, we need a different approach: compartmentalisation.

Last year, Charlotte Roach won selection to the highly competitive TriGold programme, British Triathlon’s fast track initiative to encourage internationally competitive runners to switch to triathlon and hopefully become Olympic medal contenders in 2012.

A few months later, a collision with a Land Rover while out cycling derailed Charlotte’s Olympic dreams and almost killed her. Her injuries included two punctured lungs, broken ribs, a broken collar bone and multiple fractures in her spine. However, she has made a remarkable recovery, is back on her feet running again and hopes to do her first triathlon soon.

She took some time out of her recovery and training to talk to Tzero.

How are you coping mentally? You sound very positive.

My perspective on life changed overnight. The day before the accident I was very fit, training hard and focused on securing a place in the 2012 Olympic triathlon squad. Then, suddenly, I was asking myself, ‘can I breathe?’ and ‘can I move?’.

Some people believe mankind evolved to run long distances daily, but modern living has all but extinguished our ability to lope effortlessly across the landscape.

Hugh Williams-Preece is about to find out whether evolution or industrialisation has the upper hand. On 3 March 2010 he intends to start running in Lisbon and run a marathon every day until he reaches London, 50 days later. That’s a total distance of 1310 miles.

It’s crazy, of course, but Hugh has his reasons:

“I like the idea of pushing myself to extremes and seeing what the limit is”

“it’s good to do something that really inspires other people, perhaps to start running or to take up their own challenge.”

“it seemed like a good idea when I thought of it while on holiday in Lisbon last year”

Hugh is also raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care. He hopes to raise enough to fund 1,000 hours of care by two Marie Curie nurses.

Hugh training with his operations manager, Matt Pain

While Sara Butler had done a little swimming as a child, and generally considered herself to be reasonably active, she had no inkling of her potential as a triathlete.

In fact, she hadn’t touched a bicycle for years.

All that changed in 2008 when she signed up to Project Viper – an initiative to remove barriers for visually impaired athletes – and was dragged along to the London Triathlon.

“After that I was completely hooked,” says Sara. “I joined Birmingham Running and Triathlon Club – otherwise known as BRAT – and everyone there has been very positive and supportive.”

After only a year of hard training under the guidance of coach Geoff Moyes, Sara decided to enter the Corus British Disabled Triathlon Championships and ran off with the gold medal. She followed this up with silver at the European Championships in Holten, Holland.

“As a child I didn’t understand there was a competitive world I could be part of. Triathlon is great. It’s not only a fantastic sport, it’s incredibly accessible for visually impaired athletes.”

Jimmy Goddard on the road

Jimmy Goddard won the 2009 British Paratriathlon Championships in the Tri 3 category for wheelchair athletes with full use of their arms. Here he talks about his love of triathlon, rigorous training regime and future ambitions.

 

Jimmy Goddard has always loved sport. He played rugby at school and did his first triathlon around 10 years ago. His attraction to physical challenges and an outdoor life led him through Sandhurst to the Royal Artillery and a promising military career.

But all that changed in 2004 following a climbing accident, which left him paralysed from the chest down.

“One of the first things I did on leaving hospital in 2005 was to enter the London Triathlon. I was just determined to carry on,” he says.

Jimmy completed the event in his day wheelchair rather than the sleek racing chair he uses today but he still rates it as his best ever race. “Preparing for London was a huge motivating factor during my recovery.”

Since then Jimmy has raced hand cycles in Europe, become a member of Kingston Velocity wheelchair racing club, cycle toured in New Zealand and scaled Mount Kilimanjaro. But he keeps returning to triathlon.