Fitness Freaks Ben Bridges / Sam Begg / George Steele

Ben, George and Sam chat about the season, their biggest nuggets they took away, the guests that they had and where they want to take the show in the future. Season 1 is just the start....

Mat Dowle is a passionate and experienced triathlete. And after an experience he'd never forget in Tenby, he vowed with his friend Dale to create a race for other passionate triathletes to provide that same type of high end experience you get when you race in the big boy races like Challenge and Ironman. And so, Ironbourne Long Distance Triathlon was born. A race created by triathletes, for triathletes, with experience at the heart rather than money.

This week we were delighted to have Chris Bird on to chat us through his own journey in running and also how he applies Canova training to himself and his athletes. Renato Canova is a hugely successful Italian running coach with a methodology that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. But as we've learnt time and time again, convention doesn't mean correct! With Canova training it's all about specificity. Training at around your chosen race pace and building up your tolerance over time. As Chris says, it's about feeding the baby! (in that you can't feed a baby a huge meal on day one!!). Thankfully Chris has agreed to come back on the show in a few weeks to put some meat on the bones! But for now, let's be happy we may have found a different way... that clearly works!

Have you ever thought about your purpose? Why you do the things you do? And how, if you can think it through, you can tie exercise in to your purpose? It's an extremely powerful motivator, especially when the chips are down. And factor habit in to that too. Can you create positive, easy habits that allow you to train and stay training for the long term?

This week the 3 of us talked about why we think we'll be exercising for the rest of our lives, whether we've given any thought to our purpose (or if we even believe we need to have a purpose), some of the habits we believe help us stay training and also some of the mistakes we see people new to exercise make regularly? All in all it was a mixture of factual answers to training questions and existential questions to push ours and your thinking!

This week we chatted with all round good human Eloise du Luart. Eloise is a professional triathlete who has suffered injury and illness in the pursuit of doing what she loves. But in a positive turn, it took some of the setbacks for Eloise to truly focus why she does what she does. And as Eloise put it herself "a happy athlete is faster than a perfect one". So now Eloise is not only training hard as a pro triathlete but she's on Instagram and YouTube sharing her journey and making sure it's real. Sharing her highs and lows, ups and downs in the hope that people are able to cut through the BS or "perfect days and lives" that pervade spcial media. She's just a good human, doing what she loves and sharing the reality of that with everyone. 

This week we chat with the legend that is 4 time Paralympian; Claire Cashmore. Claire started at Athens 2004 and hasn't looked back since, winning medals in Athens, Beijing, London and Rio (where she won gold!!). After Rio it was time for swimming to take a back seat and triathlon take centre stage as Claire pivoted in to the wonderful world of triathlon for a crack at Tokyo 2020 (subsequently 2021). We talked through Claire's journey in to this new sport for her, what drivces her, how lockdown has been, her training schedule and so much more. She really is a lovely human! We hope you enjoy this informal chat as much as we did.

To find Claire on social media her Instagram is @clairecashmore1 and her website is https://clairecashmore.com/

To pre-order a copy of her exciting children's book "Splash" then click this link https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/splash-claire-cashmore?variant=32836557144142