On The Water

My coach says: "The longer the season, the longer the recovery phase" At a first thought, it sounds reasonable. Most of us, when we hear the word "recovery", we think immediately about resting our bodies, not working out much, lying on the couch or socializing, eating lots and gathering energy for the next training phase. Although resting muscles and joints is paramount for the hard training athlete - especially the long distance athlete - resting the brain and the neurological canals that feed body and soul is far more critical for a healthy, new season. I have never actually experienced the neurological post-season fatigue as much as this past season. 2017 was a truly great season for me: I built up the volume right, I had no major injuries and setbacks and I had a three month transition (break) between jobs that I utilized to max out my training and recovery. I bettered my race time at the same distance by a whole 1 hour and 10 min compared to last years resu...

I put a lot of hours and a lot of energy leading into the ITU LD World Championships this year. I was essentially getting up at 4:30 am every morning, training, eating, going to work, training again, eating and sleeping, for 45 weeks straight. The pure training volume (excluding walking and stretching) was set at a base of around 12-15hrs a week and topped to 21hrs leading to the big race. I did not face any injuries or other setbacks and was feeling good throughout. I did my first marathon in March at the beginning of the season, won a couple of local races (half and olympic distances), swam 15 ocean mile swims and I was feeling confident. On the actual race day, many things did not go right. I do not like to make excuses but the truth is that on race day, my planets just did not align right. I was down with fever during my tapering week but did not make a big deal out of it nor complained. On race week, I started feeling better but I was not at my very best on race day. That morn...

Some of us learn faster by listening, others by writing and others by doing. The majority of us however, learn more effectively by some sort of combination of all the above. Interestingly though, if you learn a theory, and even if you apply it successfully a handful of times, it still takes time to really sink in. In sports, things are not that different: the coach is the instructor and the athlete is the student. I value myself as a good student and a good athlete. I listen, I take notes, I try my best to follow directions and apply the theory at practice and training sessions. This year, I finally thought I got it. And I actually did but, as with every piece of knowledge, it took time to sink in. This year, I have been injury free. This year has been the only year in my entire triathlon career that I have managed to put in 48 weeks of solid, consistent training, without interruption. So, this was the plan layout and this was what I had to do, what I did and what I have learned so...

I come from a stereotypical, Mediterranean family that values education, family bonding, cultural traditions and heart-healthy food! I grew up spending most of my energy in school, learning the Greek language, literature, history and religion in a painstaking way, practicing science every day, learning good English from elementary to senior high and playing classical music on the piano for over 10 years. My parents spent most of their time at work, struggling to make ends meet, saving and investing on properties for our future and providing us with the resources for an expensive education. With virtually no parents at home, I was mainly brought up by my grandmother who spent the majority of her days in our apartment cleaning it and tiding it up and cooking our daily meals. She was also my occasional shelter and support - both emotional and financial - during the crazy days of parental disagreement against my teenagehood decisions. This was a sweet, sheltered and well-rounded litt...

Professional athletes race to make a living. The sport of triathlon for professionals is brutal. Unless you are in the world top 10 rankings, making a living from race-award money is a tough pursuit. At the professional level, sponsors will provide endorsements of many sorts but the single most important thing to pay the bills is winning. And although there are many races out there that give options to the athletes, the level of competition just seems to get faster every year. At the amateur level, elite athletes usually race with a different motivation. Since amateur races do not provide cash rewards, why so many amateur athletes line every year to the start of hundreds of local, national and world races? One may categorize the amateur athletes in three groups. Athletes within each group have a completely different motivation for racing: 1. The "enthusiastic starter" type of athlete : this is probably the majority of the amateur athletes. They start with great desir...

I am definitely not the fastest swimmer in the field but I work hard, smart and persistently to improve my weakest discipline: swimming. Since I started triathlons, I had one and only one motivation line: "If you want to get better in a sport you have to be an athlete of the sport". Do you want to be a better swimmer? Then, you need to do what swimmers do.  Simple and straightforward. I understand that there is a lifelong debate whether triathletes gain benefits from learning how to flip turn or not. I am not a high-performance coach nor a high-performance triathlete to make definitive claims here but this is what I have gained over the years of practicing and doing flip turns consistently and constantly. Practicing flip turns will make you incredibly faster on race day! 1. You maintain the continuity, the momentum and the rhythm of your swim. To give you an example: comparing flip turns with open turns or with stopping at the end of each lane is lik...

Age group and amateur athletes share more characteristics with professional athletes than you may think. At the same time, amateur athletes lack features that professional athletes have mastered to perfection. In actuality, these features may play a much more significant role in success than plain physical parameters such as VO2 max, economy, lean muscle mass, metabolic efficiency and mental toughness. First, let's just try to see how success happens. Being successful as an athlete, amateur or professional alike, has nothing to do with the number of podium wins achieved. Podium wins are irrelevant. Whether you are an amateur athlete that has just started the sport or you have been doing it for a few or multiple years, whether you are a tier 2/3 (newbie) or a tier 1 (top 10 in the world) professional athlete, the podium does not define you. You can always find a relevant race somewhere in the world that you can probably earn a podium spot, regardless of your experience, level o...