Overcoming adversity: the RPG Cairns edition
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” (Winston Churchill – a well known Ironman fan)
10 years in the making; on Sunday Penny Slater took her first Ironman title.
In Coach Liz Blatchford’s words…
“Pen and I began our coaching relationship a mere 18 months ago. She was already a world class athlete having placed 7th at the IMWC in 2024, so I knew what I was taking on and that finding improvement in an athlete of her calibre wouldn’t be an easy feat.
One of our main goals was to keep Pen injury free. What neither of us expected was the severe GI issues that have affected every race she has done since then. The journey figuring out what the issues were and how to fix them was frustrating for me, but utterly devastating for Penny.
There were plenty of times after yet another race was derailed, that she questioned her ability to ever be truly competitive again. To her credit, she left no stone unturned, sought help in every direction and “touch wood”, now has a good handle on her GI issues. Meaning that on Sunday, she was finally able to put down a result that represented the incredible training she puts out every week without fail.
For Penny, the recipe that gets the most out of her is a constant work in progress, but one of the overarching themes is making training fit around a life she thoroughly enjoys.
Some key takeaways:
She trains her biggest hours in the week to free up weekends so she can spend time with her wife and friends on weekends.
We are finely attuned to exactly how much run volume and intensity her body can handle and together are strict on this. Injuries can be somewhat inevitable as an endurance athlete but our biggest error is not learning and instigating change from them. Pen’s own research on REDS has taught me plenty and she’s on a mission to spread this important knowledge.
There are no egos here and our approach is collaborative. Clint and Reedy have played a significant part in Pen’s journey since joining RPG and we have brought over some key sessions from her former coach Jacqui Allan. I will regularly make program adaptations based on Pen’s feedback. I’ve now learned a telltale sign that she is in peak form - her decision to combine a massive simulation set like 3 x 30k TTs into a single 90k effort 🤯 Pen beast mode activated.
We DO run off the bike in training 😉 Call us old school but there’s no better way to physically and mentally prepare for those race day dead legs than replicate it in training.
Congrats Pen-dawg! May it be the first of many 🥳”
Photo by Korupt Vision
