WTC Club Coaches

I continued to coach the kids, support that first coach to sprint tri cohort and achieved my Level 2 BTF Coach qualification. I took over as Head Junior Coach when Colin retired in 2019 and in 2020 we started the second C2ST cohort before a certain virus got in the way of a lot of things for a while. 

As we all emerged from the pandemic, and inspired by others in the club, I committed to doing the Cascais Ironman in Portugal in 2022. One thing taking on such a huge goal as that is it forces you to take your own training seriously and I learnt a lot about the benefits of a structured training and nutrition plan. I completed my Ironman and relished every second of it. And the next month stepped into Chris’s huge shoes when he retired from the head coach role in November 2022.

As I look forward as Head Coach, I am so excited for our club. We have a great committee, burgeoning Junior and Adult sections, and I have taken over a fantastic team of coaches, with many talents. Angela stepped up to take over from me as Head Junior Coach, and also completed her own BTF Level 2 qualification. We still have Chris as a super experienced Level 2 to coach to call on and are also supported by 5 talented and enthusiastic Level 1 coaches – Fed, Jill, Jo, Andy and Dave.

Since I’ve taken over, I’ve tried to place emphasis on a couple of areas:

• Periodization – Having a common framework of coaching across the year helps us support the committee’s and our triathlete’s ambitions in the target key events. We’re in the BASE phase from January to March, focusing on endurance training at low intensities, in April we switch to BUILD Phase, increasing intensity with near threshold sessions. From June to September we’re in PEAK phase to support all the key events like London Junior Series, Banana Tri, London Triathlon, Hever Castle and Westcroft Junior Aquathlon.
• Best practice sharing between the coaches – I’ve kicked of a series of “Coach the Coaches” sessions where we all share our specialist skills with the other coaches with the aim of giving all our triathletes the best support at every session. I’ve just run a running session, Jill will bring Strength and Conditioning, having just got her BTF qualification, Fed and Angela will share their knowledge on cycling and Jo for swimming.
• Progression – Since the pandemic we’ve used Club Spark to book a week at a time but this year you will see a number of Coaching Block sessions that you can sign up for to develop over a period of weeks. Angela and Fed have just delivered a 6 week a Juniors run improvement course and have just started a cycling improvement course. We’ve got the first ever WTC Adult Aquathlon coming up on April 2^nd so during March we are running a Thursday 9pm Swim Progression course at Cheam Pool and a Sunday 5pm Run Progression session at David Weir – sign ups here. We’re planning further blocks to build Road Cycling skills from Cleat use to Group riding in the run up to Ride 100, and will be doing Open Water Swimming sessions too. 

The club is now fantastic at supporting beginners and developing serious amateurs up to GB qualification. We have participants in races from Super Sprint Tris to Ironman and all the London Classics (London Marathon, Swim Serpentine and Ride 100). And so, my coaching team will work to support the needs of all club members in achieving their goals for 2023 and beyond. As a growing club, we’re always on the look out for new coaches, so if you are interested in volunteering and starting your coaching journey, please get in touch. There is scope to develop with us and gain qualifications as you go. The club will pick up the costs of coaching courses as long as you commit to supporting delivery of training sessions in return by becoming part of our great coaching team in support of this fabulous Westcroft Triathlon Club.

WTC Coaching Team