At 52, can I go sub-9 for Ironman? with Matt Spooner

Simon Ward, The High Performance Human Triathlon Podcast

You may have wondered about my choice of the phrase High Performance Human. It doesn’t relate to athletes who perform at the top of their age group.

The concept of high performance can be described as a measurable state where an individual consistently performs at a higher level of operational success compared with most of their peers within the same environment at a particular time. High performance is not absolute, but relative. Thus, a high performance human is someone who optimises their performance in many areas of their life - career, relationships, health, fitness etc. Many of you reading this will fall into that category even if you haven’t realised it. Today's podcast guest is Matt Spooner and he definitely is a High Performance Human. At 51 he is still getting faster as a long distance triathlete. If you are a regular on some of the triathlon pages on Facebook I’m sure you have come across Matt’s posts as he shares his experiences of training and racing with the aim of helping other athletes. In this conversation we chat about:

• living in Switzerland and finding the perfect environment to live and train
• making a conscious decision to prioritise training and not get sucked into the corporate work trap of long working hours
• building consistency into his training
• learning from elite athletes
• the challenge of completing IM Wales 3 weeks after completing the 4000km Transcontinental Bike race.
• How to balance training around business travel

Buckle up and get your note books ready because there’s a lot of great stuff in this conversation! To find out more about Matt, please visit the following social media channels Instagram - matt_still_tri_ing Facebook - matthew.spooner.927 LinkedIn If you haven’t yet seen the documentary about the Transcontinental Race, I can highly recommend it: Onboard the Transcontinental Race Some links to topics covered in the podcast Diet Efficacy of Popular Diets Applied by Endurance Athletes on Sports Performance: Beneficial or Detrimental? A Narrative Review "I recently read this paper, it's a nicely balanced review of multiple different research papers into different diets. It's a good resource for people who are interested in the best diet.” Books "My first book I read about Triathlon was A Life Without Limits by Chrissie Wellington. My current book is The Rise of the Ultra Runners by Adharanand Finn - I identify myself very strongly in this book."

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Visit Simon's website for more information about his coaching programmes. Links to all of Simon's social media channels can be found here. For any questions please email [e-mail].