February Newsletter - Season Opener!
Greetings from Portugal!
Welcome to my Newsletter! 2020 marks a big year, my conquest for a first Olympic berth in the July Tokyo Olympic Games. Via this newsletter - you’ll be able to follow along, in a more personal way, with my preparations for what will be the most exciting year of my sporting career!
Since January 5th, Carl and I have been based in Monte Gordo, a coastal town east in the Algarve, bordering Spain. In the summer, Monte Gordo is a popular vacation spot, with a beautiful beach and impressive boardwalk filled with restaurants. In the winter, it’s a perfect location for training: it’s quiet, has mild weather, good access to running trails, cheap groceries, daily access to a 50 meter pool, and endless cycling route options. Let’s not forget the pastel de natas!
This is my second year training under Paulo Sousa, with my training group - The Triathlon Squad. This year we have an impressive group of women, 11 in total representing 8 different nations (Belgium, USA, Australia, South Africa, Poland, Spain, Estonia, Japan). All of us have the Olympics in mind, which creates a high performance environment difficult to replicate outside of the group. I’m happy to report that this winter I’ve been able to handle a normal training load across all three sports, something that due to various injuries, eluded me in 2019. With such a high quality group (several who finished ranked in the top 10 of the world last year), the daily work keeps me honest, challenged, and humbled.
We train every day doing two, three and occasionally 4 sessions a day. In one of our bigger weeks recently, I swam 5 days (~5km per swim), biked 16 hours (350km), and ran 55km, totaling close to 30 hours of training. Needless to say, when you factor meals (4 per day), naps, rest, and massage, the days go by fast, and weeks fly by as well.
That being said - I’m really looking forward to race next weekend! I’ll be debuting my season at WTS Abu Dhabi, my first time at this iconic race, hosted on a Formula 1 race track. It promises to be technical, fast, and exciting! It will be the perfect early season test to see where the fitness is at. You can follow along via the information below.
Click the link below to see some more photos from the past few weeks.
Thanks for your support! Looking forward to a great year together!
Valerie Barthelemy