Blackzone Coaching

Well done to Dan Cutler on winning the Scottish Madison Championship.
Along with his partner Sam Barbour they managed to see off a stacked field and win this prestigious championship. A big block of training in Spain and then some specific work for a few weeks leading on clinched the victory

A great way to see out the season with a massive PB for Ella Sibley, finishing Ironman Greece 70.3 in a time of 5 hrs and 23 mins. Next season is going to be massive for Ella with Ironman New Zealand in Match and a place at Celtman! Extreme Scottish Triathlon. We are well into winter training in preparation for the challenging races ahead.

With the Sahara Desert 2 Day Ultra coming up Chris wanted to test himself out. Luckily the William Wallace 50k ultra was on his door step so this was logistically a good choice of event to dip his toe into Ultra running.
This culminated with second in his age group which is pretty impressive on his first Ultra and off the back of a stella performance in Ironman Copenhagen.
Roll on The Sahara

Hard work pays off. Great end to the season for Wendy Davies winning her age group at Challenge Vieux (70.3)
Wendy is a respected triathlon coach herself and puts a lot of time into coaching promising athletes and really helps develop the sport from the grassroots up

Last week brought the curtain down on an impressive road season for Matti Dobbins!

Winning the Scottish Alba series, victory in the Mennock stages race, and impressive top performances in UCI events like the Tour of Kosovo and the Irish Road Race Champs. Most remarkable is that Matti competed in the UK events and achieved the results without a team as a private member riding solo. So, no help from teammates! Now the focus turns to the track season with plenty to aim for. We will also be implementing corrective strength and conditioning work over the winter to try and bring more balance into his propulsion.

Above all this, Matti is a lovely guy and deserves his success.

Great to see Jonny compete at the Ironman World Championships innNice last week. A bucket list event for him. A tough run into this event with not being able to run for 4 weeks and a chest infection leading into the event. But it was going to take a lot more than that to prevent this warrior smashing his day.

Well done to Sam completing The Dragon Back The Hatching. A 6 day Ultra stage race in the Welsh Mountains. Now for a bit of recovery time before her next challenge.

Well done Angela on taking second female overall at The Lough Key Triathlon in Ireland yesterday. Those guys know how to put on a great event!

Ella had quite the week a few weeks ago.
4 months after breaking her collarbone she produced the performance of her life at Ironman Copenhagen with a 1hr 27min PB and snatching a time of 11hrs 11min on a road bike.
This was down to a great years training and not letting the broken collarbone stop her from reaching her goals. Many others would have thrown in the towel and put up the white flag!
With the injury she basically did all her training indoors and could not swim for a period. So to produce this time was special. To top it all, in the same week she graduated from Edinburgh University Business School with her Masters which she also had work on and submit her dissertation when she had the broken collarbone. This is an example of dealing with daily adversities and obstacles and not letting it prevent you from reaching your goals.
Now Ella is targeting her future events as she does not believe on resting on her laurels.

Rachel came to me in January to help her prepare for Ironman Copenhagen. After being out the sport for 8.5 years to start a family she wanted to give her first Ironman a bash. From the outset I could see this girl had talent. A strong running background and sold swimmer and biker. She had never trained with a powermeter and she got quickly set up with a PM for indoors and outdoors. This was a game changer as she could control the power output very easily even in challenging terrain. Last Sunday Rachel smashed out a 10 hr 32 min Ironman debut on a road bike. 4th in age group in a well stacked top European field is impressive. Again there is a similar pattern to the others who were successful last Sunday. She doesn’t miss training sessions.