Hawaii 5-0 and Saturday Swimming

IMPORTANT NOTE: Saturday Swim Sessions - change of time to 12pm for 6 dates - please note!

On the following Saturdays in September through November, it has been necessary to bring the Saturday afternoon squad swim session forward by 1 hour due to water-polo fixtures at the pool. I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and hope you are still able to attend. These are the dates (I shall email out on the Wednesday prior to each one as a reminder, but please make a note for your diaries):

1.                   19/09

2.                   26/09

3.                   17/10

4.                   31/10

5.                   07/11

6.                   28/11

Dear Athletes

We have some very special news for you today...Rob Newman who trains with the group in the 9.30am Monday, Wednesday and Friday swim sessions has successfully qualified for the Hawaii Ironman on the 10th October 2009. Rob has had his fair share of ups and downs in the lead-up to this event, starting off with a long string of niggling injuries which look set to prevent him from even competing at the qualifying event over in Penticton, Canada this last weekend. 

Showing an amazing degree of consistency and perseverance in his training regime, Rob got himself to the start line at the weekend. Rob competed in the very competitive 45-49 yr category with 313 athletes in his age group all fighting for just a few places to go to Kona. Exiting the water after 3.8km in 90th place Rob knew he had some work today, but rather than lose his head, worked steadily through the field to finish the 180km in 36th place and then ran a brilliant 3:37 marathon in very tough conditions to work his way up to 9th place. A tremendous result! Rob actually finished 142nd out of 2595 athletes who had qualified just to race Ironman Canada and finished in a very commendable 10:25. Rob said of the race:

"I have qualified, which is awesome.  I am very excited.  Thanks for all of your support - you got me there.

 

My big lesson out of yesterday is "never give up".  I thought I had blown the race after my swim, which was quite slow.  I also thought I had really blown when I was 36th off the bike and I felt like crap at the start of the run.  But I hung in there and came good for most of the run.  Once I started passing people, I knew I had a chance.  But 9th was a real surprise when I finished. 

 

I have celebrated with pizza and beer :-)"

Well done Rob - we're all very impressed with your effort! Coincidentally this will be Rob's first ever assault on the Kona World Championships and also the first athlete I have personally coached in entirety right the way through to the event...so we're both chuffed to bits at the moment!

Cheers

Paul

A reminder and Saturday's Ride

Dear Athletes

In case you didn't see it on Thursday, please be advised of the confirmed summer squad list at: http://theteamcore.blogspot.com/2009/08/confirmed-squad-list-for-summer.html

Please let me know if I have any of your details wrong or choices incorrect.

Also, as Sunday is the big day for many of you doing the City to Surf, on Saturday we shall meet at 6.30am at the Bell Tower for a nice, cruisey and enjoyable ride around the river with a stop at Daisies if you're lucky! Hope you can make it.

Cheers

Paul

Swim Smooth is Website of the Week!

Dear Athletes

Thought you might be keen to know that this week our
www.swimsmooth.com website was named "Website of the Week" by the
Ironman Talk podcast. You can listen to their discussion of our site
here:

http://www.ironmantalk.com/Podcast.html

...its Episode 174 and the discussion starts at about 29'00" - if its
not there when you first click this link, it will be in the next few
hours.

...Website of the Week is a vote by all the independent Ironman
athletes around the world and as you'll hear John and Bevan saying,
they were inundated with votes for our site which is really great
considering how much work we put (and continue to put) into it. We
were thrilled with this award.

Also, we did an interview with USA's leading fitness and nutrition
health expert Ben Greenfield. You can listen to that interview at:

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2009/08/episode-56-a-swimming-super-special-much-more/
(starting at about 50'00")

We were also featured on the following two Blogs in the last week as
well:

http://blog.trainingpeaks.com/2009/08/improve-your-swimming-technique-with-mr-smooth.html

...this one entitled, "Move Over Michael Phelps, hello Mr Smooth!"

http://www.trilifeadventure.com/?p=531

Just to keep you posted!

Cheers

Paul

Confirmed Squad List for Summer 2009/2010

Dear Swimmers

Hope you are all enjoying the lovely sunshine! As promised, please click on the link below to access the Confirmed Squad List for Summer 2009 / 2010 with The TEAM CORE down at the Claremont Swimming Pool:

http://theteamcore.com/images/Confirmed_Squad_List.pdf

Please check the list and if you have any questions or queries please email them over to me direct.

What is the "Buffer List"?

It has been a bit of a long-winded process compiling the list and I hope that I have got you all down for the sessions that you wish to attend. As mentioned in previous emails we have set-up a Buffer List for each session. If your name is on the Buffer List you can attend the session, no worries there! The idea of the Buffer List is to simply recognize that not everyone will turn up to every session they have nominated for. Rather than restrict you to having to pay all your fees upfront (and in doing so effectively pay for sessions that you do not attend) the Buffer List provides us with the assurance that we will have a good stream of numbers attending the sessions and that we aren't turning anyone away unnecessarily, and equally for you to have the flexibility to use your PAYG cards exactly as they were intended - to Pay As You Go!

We have also set up a Reserve List for those who have not made it onto the Buffer List. Please, please, please though let me know if you are on the Confirmed or Buffer List for any session incorrectly or if you have changed your mind so that I can jiggle things around and offer someone a place in the squad. Your help here is much appreciated and equally (going forward) please let me know if you no longer plan to attend any of these sessions.

For the bike and run sessions and also the Saturday morning swim sessions, there are no real restrictions on attendance to these sessions as they are currently free. Please do let me know though if your name is not down and if you'd like to attend so that I can monitor interest.

Payments / Costings:

There have been a few of you whom have requested paying upfront for your session fees and sacrificing missed sessions if you do so. Your reasoning has been either to a) save a few pennies with a bulk purchase and / or b) to save the "hassle" of a card. What we have decided to do to address this is two-fold:

1) raise your awareness of our bulk discount PAYG cards, i.e. 10 sessions = $100, 25 sessions = $225, 50 sessions = $400. This then works out at $10, $9 and $8 per session which can add up to a big saving in the long run. You can order these cards online at http://www.theteamcore.com/shop.html

2) offer a package deal for those of you keen on registering for our Rottnest Channel Swim and Busselton Half Ironman Programs. These start on the 7th September 2009 and 18th January 2010 respectively. These will allow you access to the sessions that you have nominated for and to the overview of the session detail. Cost for these will be $660 for the 24 week Rottnest Channel Swim Program (based on 4 weekly paid squad swim sessions at a discounted rate of $7.50 per session; there will be a period of 2 weeks over Christmas when no sessions will run, so that would be 22 weeks x $30 per week = $660) and $595 for the 15 week Busselton Half Ironman Program (based on 2 weekly squad swims, 1 bike, 1 run and 1 coached brick session: there will be other sessions available for you to attend, but these will be the full coached ones).

GST Registration:

Just on that note about monies etc...in an effort to keep the squad sessions that you attend as cost effective as possible for you to attend on a regular basis, you may be interested to know that we have recently had to register as a GST collecting entity and as such our accountant has suggested that we need to ADD GST to all our services and products. However, we have decided to take the bold move to actually "swallow" this cost ourselves in an effort to thank you for your support over the last 12 months which has in no small way contributed to the GST situation which we are now faced with. Hopefully the busy sessions that we have lined up will help to offset this cost for us somewhat. We do hope that this is agreeable for yourselves!!

Cheers

Paul

A message of thanks from Jackson (& Mum & Dad!)

Dad also promises to get the confirmed squad list out this week, so please watch this space!

Cheers!

The Newsomes

Squad List Update

Dear Swimmers

Many thanks for completing the Squad Registration List at http://www.theteamcore.com/registration.html 

We have had an overwhelming response with over 110 of you submitting this form. This is an amazing response and we really thank you for your support! Its just so great to see what started off as such a small group a little over 12 months ago become such a strong TEAM and a fun environment within which to train. Thanks guys, its great to be coaching all of you!

I shall be publishing the Confirmed List tomorrow with any luck. Suffice to say I have just about managed to get everyone who has been regular over the winter period into the sessions that they want. For those of you who we haven't seen for a while, I've also managed to get you in, but will confirm all these details tomorrow and by all means email me with any queries.

There are a couple of sessions:

• Tuesday 7.30am
• Thursday 3.30pm
• Friday 7.30am

...which don't yet have the numbers to proceed, but I will keep the applications to these sessions open and keep you posted in due course. Let me know if any of these appeal.

We have also hand a really great response from 5 or 6 coaches around WA who would like to be part of the program and coach alongside us. As mentioned before, each coach will be thoroughly screened and tutored by myself during our Training Day (date TBC) and on an ongoing basis so that we can assure the highest level of coaching can continue. The idea and thought behind this scheme is two-fold: 

1. To aid the development of the program and the development of coaches under our "banner".
2. To provide you with a bit of variety in coaching styles, albeit with the same ethos and program to hand.

All these coaches will attend our Training Day and also "work shadow" with us on pool deck over the next few months to ensure continuity of practice. During the odd times when myself and Adam might be away (we need holidays too!), the new coaches will assist us with the smooth running of the program, ensuring you get the very best coaching that you deserve and on a consistent basis.

Interestingly enough, when I posed the question back in November "would you benefit from having an additional coach on pool deck with Paul?" the response was typically "no, don't think we need it"; however, I know that you all have now grown to greatly appreciate the benefit of having Adam poolside with me and can hopefully see the advantages of having additional coaches to help build and improve the program further.

If you're interested to read a little more about how we're doing this on an international scale through Swim Smooth, please check out http://www.swimsmooth.com/coachesnetwork.html - we've had over 300 coaches worldwide sign up already with us on our list plus over 40 as part of the full Network.

Anyway, Confirmation List to follow tomorrow - watch this space!

Cheers

Paul

Making it as a F.O.P Ironman Athlete

Dear Athletes

As you know I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to web-surfing etc and am often on the scout-around for interesting tidbits of information that some of you might find useful and valuable. Well today's tidbit is probably only going to be of serious interest to a very small percentage of you, but I'm sure you'd all enjoy reading the following article if you've ever thought:

"Wow! That guy / girl at work has done an Ironman, works 60hrs per week, has a family and two small children and still seems to fit it all in. How do they do it, year-in, year-out?! WHY do they do it, year-in, year-out?!"

Now this article could just as easily be about endurance swimming events or marathon runs etc, but at what is typically at least 3 times the required training volume to complete an Ironman event the ramifications that this has on your daily routine can be quite a bit more profound.

Personally I'm all about "balance" in my approach to training, family, work and social life and would hope that those that I inspire and help with my coaching would hold those same values as well. I'm not anti-Ironman by any stretch of the imagination - I'm currently helping 6 really great athletes with their programs for various IM events around the world and am enjoying every minute of this process and hopefully they are too. Equally though, I have seen over the years good people become too engrossed in ultra-distance events to the point at which this balance can often fall apart. If you recognise this fact and can make appropriate adjustments, then OK, that's great. 

What the article talks about though is just what it takes in terms of a number value to go from doing your first Ironman event to trying to qualify for the so-called pinnacle of the sport, the Hawaiian Ironman in Kona. This goal can often escape people for many, many (many) years and is becoming harder and harder each year to qualify for. I think the point of the article is not to rubbish the idea or say that it is a futile exercise but to say "hey, this thing is going to take time, patience, persistence and commitment to that goal - if you recognise that, great, let's go along for the ride!"

Anyway, I thought it was a really great article and one which struck a chord on many levels. It also made me think that within the world of triathlon there is often the belief that unless you've done an Ironman and done it well and maybe even qualified for Kona that you haven't really succeeded. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do that myself (one day) but I would encourage those of you new to the sport to look at getting good at the shorter distances first rather than feeling you have to jump up to Ironman immediately. We have the World Olympic Distance Triathlon Championships in Queensland in September and then the World Long Course Triathlon Championships here in Perth in October - both awesome events to be part of or aim to qualify for in the future which might not "break the camel's back" so to speak. 

You could obviously read what I and the author Alan Couzen have written as saying "mediocrity is OK" and that this is hardly the true Aussie Spirit of the "underdog done good", however I am hoping that by posting this link this will touch you in one of three ways 1) to recognise the time commitment that such a goal takes and plan accordingly if this is what you want to do; 2) to see value in events that might not be the whole Ironman distance; 3) to realise that the critical component in succeeding in your goals is consistency and in no small part of that enjoyment must play a huge factor - if there's no love there, don't do it.

Oh yeah - enough waffle, here's the post: http://www.endurancecorner.com/what_it_takes

Cheers

Paul