A Day in the Life of High Performance
After winning our age group in the Triathlon New Zealand Age Grouper of the year competition, Aaron Wood and I accepted their offer to experience 'A day in the Life of High Performance'. The day was with the Triathlon NZ High Performance (HP) team at their base in Cambridge on Tuesday, 24 May, 2016.
At 4 am Aaron & I left New Plymouth and arrived at Cambridge at 7.15 am meeting Jen Gregory, Triathlon NZ Age Group Experience Manager, Graeme Maw, High Performance Director, Tim Brazier, High Performance Development Coach, the HP squad, and 14 other winning Age Groupers.
The day started with a 4.9 km swim from 7.30 am to 9 am which Aaron completed keeping up with a HP squad member. I managed 3.8 km and received some swimming tips from Graeme Maw which I worked on and got the thumbs up from him.
We then had a tour of the Avantidrome. What a fantastic set up. In the middle, down one end, of the Avantidrome was set up for the HP team ie their bikes and rollers. Eddie Dawkins was spinning at the time. At the other end, the spin bikes and gym facilities were for the public to use. They had people from retirement homes walking around the top of the Avantidrome and people using the 3 wheeler trikes on the flat track. We were shown the gym facilities for the HP team and watched Elise Salt being tested on a spin bike in the Lab room. Sophie Colridge gave us a inside view of her life as a HP athletic. She had 3 months off after being totally run down and is now getting back into training. A Nutritionist spoke on the food for the HP team with age groupers asking questions on their own personal food intake.
After lunch we were on our bikes for a local bike ride of an hour and half with the HP team. During the ride we all did several 15 second sprints and then the HP team left us to do Hill climbs and with Aaron in the lead we had a quick sprint back to the Avantidrome. Aaron and I left for New Plymouth at 3.15 pm while the others had an hour's track session.
Overall a very exciting day. A great experience.
Joy Baker
