Breakthrü Performance

17/11/2025

Looked like she was so close to getting it on! No way to know how long she'd been trying without seeing the full clip though - cracking run to the line regardless 👏👏

15/11/2025

Absolutely flabbergasted watching the T100 Dubai descend into complete farce. Wilde, Van Riel, and Margirier - three of the sharpest minds in triathlon - all rode straight past T2 and completed an extra 8km lap. Then Morgan Pearson did the same thing on the run. This wasn't racing, it was amateur hour.
Let's be clear about what happened physiologically here. At threshold intensity, cognitive function can drop by a decent amount. Blood glucose prioritises working muscles over the prefrontal cortex. Decision-making becomes compromised. But counting to eight? That's not complex cognition - that's basic pattern recognition that should be hardwired after years of racing.
The real failure? Race organization. Athletes shouldn't need to count laps when they're redlining at 400 watts. Clear signage, marshal positioning, lap boards - this is fundamental race management. When GPS data shows some athletes ran 15km instead of 18km, while others ran extra, you've created chaos that makes the sport look ridiculous.
But here's what's truly mad - PTO were amplifying this disaster on social media in real-time. "This is insane?!" they posted, with shock emojis, turning athletic careers into clickbait. Is this some "all publicity is good publicity" strategy? Generate viral chaos, trend on Twitter, who cares if you destroy athlete credibility? That's not sports governance, that's reality TV production.
Mika Noodt wins by default, Wilde loses his perfect season, Pearson's devastated, and PTO gets their viral moment. Congrats on making triathlon look like a circus.
Who's actually taking responsibility for this disaster?

* CORRECTION - While at the time it appeared Pearson had run an extra lap he was actually ahead of those who had only ran 15km

Triathlon Today: Your News, Our Passion. Fastest and most accurate independent news outlet for triathlon news, duathlon news and multisport news, offering a great mix of race reports of triathlon events, actual industry news, gear, human interest stories, pro- and age-group profiles, long course and...

15/11/2025

Personally think this needed saying, and I'll take the heat for agreeing with it. In the past I have witnessed a "no-drop, all-welcome" ride turn into absolute carnage on the A6 near Leicester. Twenty+ riders, zero communication, three near-misses and 1 crash within 40km.
The physiology of group riding isn't just tradition - it's physics and reaction time. When you're drafting at 35kph, you have 0.3 seconds to react if the wheel in front touches yours. That's faster than human reflexes can process without trained responses. Those "stuffy" hand signals? They buy you an extra 1-2 seconds of reaction time. That's the difference between staying upright and eating tarmac.
Here's what kills me: we test athletes' lactate thresholds down to the watt, obsess over marginal gains, spend thousands on aero testing - then throw them into group rides with zero safety education. Would you let someone deadlift 150kg without teaching proper form first? Course not. But we'll let them ride 40kph in a pack without teaching basic etiquette.
The clubs getting it right aren't choosing between inclusion and standards. They're running skills sessions (or at least actively enforcing and reminding riders of them), teaching paceline basics, explaining WHY we call out "car back" or signal before standing. That's not gatekeeping - that's coaching.
Want to be truly inclusive? Teach newcomers the fundamentals that took us years (and skin) to learn. Because nothing excludes people faster than sending them home in an ambulance with a £5k carbon paperweight.
Who's actually running proper skills sessions before their "all-welcome" rides?

The new “inclusive” cycling clubs are going to kill someone.

And I’ll be the one who gets called a gatekeeper for saying it.

I watched a group ride last week. 30 riders. Zero hand signals.

Overlapping wheels everywhere.

One guy braking mid-corner in the bunch.

It was the most “welcoming” ride I’ve ever seen.
No intimidating rules. No stuffy customs. Just “show up and ride.”

It was also a ticking time bomb.

I LOVE that cycling is becoming more accessible.

The traditional club model, with its unwritten rules and insider knowledge, has kept too many people out for too long.

But the pendulum has swung too far.

These “rules” we’re abandoning? They’re not there to exclude people.

They’re cycling’s version of Darwin.

Holding your line through corners. Signaling when you stand. Never overlapping wheels. Calling out road hazards. Knowing how to ride a crosswind in formation.

These customs weren’t invented by stuffy club elites to make newcomers feel small. They were developed over 100+ years of trial and error.

They exist because the alternative was crashing, injury, and chaos.

Every mature industry has “unwritten rules” that seem like gatekeeping but are actually compressed wisdom.

In surgery, there’s a protocol for everything.

In aviation, there’s a checklist culture.

In cycling, there are bunch riding customs.

Calling these “barriers to entry” misses the point entirely.

I rode with a new club last month that throws out all the “old school” rules.

They’re growing fast.

Everyone’s having fun.

Until someone hit a pothole and went down.

Then three more riders went down because they were overlapping wheels and couldn’t react.

The organizer said: “Crashes happen, it’s part of cycling.”

No.

Preventable crashes happen when you ignore 100 years of hard-earned knowledge.

I want to mix up the status quo

I want new clubs that challenge stuffy customs

I want fresh energy and perspectives

I want lower barriers to entry

But

I also want these clubs teaching the fundamentals that keep people safe

I want them respecting why the rules exist before breaking them

You can be inclusive AND have standards.

The most welcoming thing you can do for a new rider isn’t to eliminate all the rules—it’s to teach them why those rules exist and give them the skills to ride confidently in a group.

We don’t need to choose between tradition and inclusion.

We need to teach the newcomers what took us decades to learn.

Because the group ride is more fun when everyone knows what they’re doing.

And the rules aren’t there to exclude you, they’re there to bring you home safely.

14/11/2025

Personally think this new age-graded qualification system is both brilliant and completely bonkers. They're essentially turning Kona qualifying into a giant handicap race where your 10:30 finish at age 55 might beat someone's 9:15 at age 35.

The maths behind it? They're using the top 20% of finishers from five years of world championship data to create multipliers for each age group. Your actual finish time gets adjusted by these coefficients, then everyone's ranked together. No more counting how many middle-aged men signed up in your age group to calculate your odds. That's genuinely progressive.

But here's what Ironman won't tell you: this fundamentally changes course selection strategy. Flat, fast courses like Florida or Arizona? Older athletes will clean up because the performance deltas are smaller. Brutal climbing courses? Younger, stronger riders will dominate despite the age-grading. The system assumes Kona performance translates universally, which is nonsense - a 50-year-old crushing Kona's heat doesn't mean they'll handle Lake Placid's mountains the same way.

From a coaching perspective, this rewards consistent performance over tactical racing. Athletes targeting 2026 Kona need to forget about "winning their age group" and focus on raw speed. Sub-9:30 for men under 45? That's your baseline now.

Anyone got Kona on their bucket list?

https://www.triathlete.com/culture/news/ironman-updates-kona-qualification-rules/

Ironman has revised its new qualifying system for Kona world championship, introducing gender-specific slot roll downs and separate performance pools based on participation to address the gender imbalance that had been favoring male athletes.

14/11/2025

Weekend forecast: sideways rain. So… who’s secretly planning a treadmill long run?

13/11/2025

Exciting to see mainstream coverage of lactate testing, but let's be honest - most athletes are still getting this completely wrong. They'll drop £150 on a test, get their zones, then continue training by feel anyway.
The real value isn't knowing your LT1 sits at 165bpm or LT2 at 178bpm. It's understanding what those numbers mean for your physiology. Your LT1 (around 2mmol/L) is where fat oxidation starts declining significantly - that's your all-day pace, your Zone 2 ceiling. Spending 80% of your volume just below this builds mitochondrial density without accumulating fatigue. LT2 (4mmol/L) is your one-hour race pace - the knife edge between sustainable and catastrophic.
Here's what most coaches won't tell you: lactate curves change every 6-8 weeks with proper training. That static zone sheet from January? Useless by March. We retest our athletes every 8-12 weeks and track how their curve shifts right (improved efficiency) or flattens (better clearance) and offer significant discounts on follow-up tests to encourage this practice. A 10-watt improvement at 2mmol/L might not sound sexy, but that's massive for Ironman performance.
The athletes crushing it aren't the ones with the best numbers - they're the ones who actually train to their physiology, not their ego.
What do you mean you're still using zones from 2019's test?
https://www.triathlete.com/training/how-to-turn-your-lactate-threshold-into-smarter-training/
Book a test today - we can come to you if you're in our East Midlands service area.
https://breakthru-performance.com/performance-tests

Lactate threshold testing is just the beginning. Learn what to do with your data to enhance your training and take it to the next level.

12/11/2025

8 Things we pretend to hate but secretly 😍 Tag a mate who's guilty

10/11/2025

⚡Power-to-weight ratio: improved by 25% (with dog assist).
Hill reps are hill reps — whether you’ve got four legs helping or not 🏃‍♂️🐾
Keep it playful this off-season, but keep the consistency.

**Hashtags:**

09/11/2025

Amazing results from Jelle Geens defending his 70.3 world title in what might be the gutsiest performance we've seen all year. The Belgian becomes the first man to successfully defend since Jan Frodeno, and he did it against a field that should've buried him.
Let's talk about what Geens has been through this year - became a father, moved from Girona to Gold Coast, ditched the squad environment and Joel Filliol for remote coaching with Ben Reszel. That's massive life upheaval for any athlete. His Singapore T100 DNF in April? Completely cooked by heat after leading the swim. Yet here he is, holding off Kristian Blummenfelt in a sprint finish on a course with 1,700m of climbing.
The tactical masterclass started early. Alessio Crociani blazed the swim to create a 30-second gap, but the real race began when KB unveiled that ridiculous 62T chainring setup. That's not equipment choice - that's psychological warfare. Watching him demolish the descents and flats, separating wheat from chaff? Pure Norwegian method at work.
But here's what impressed me most - Geens never panicked. 60 seconds down out of the water, watching KB and eight other all-stars hammer the opening 20km climbs, he stayed within himself. By 30km they'd established that lead group of 10, and Geens was right there. When nine athletes sprinted into T2 together, you knew this was coming down to pure running ability.
The opening 3:10/km pace through the first third? That's 1:06:30 half marathon pace at sea level. On tired legs, after that bike course, in Marbella heat? Madness. KB shadowing Geens stride for stride, Stornes and Schomburg lurking 20-30 seconds back at 8km. At these speeds, 30 seconds might as well be three minutes - you'd need sub-3:00/km to close that gap, risking complete implosion.
Stornes attacking Schomburg at 14km showed intent, but the physics didn't add up. Making up 20 seconds over 7km when the leaders are running 3:10s? That requires 3:00 pace or faster. Even with his Kona-winning turn of speed, he ran out of road.
The final 2km shoulder-to-shoulder battle between Geens and KB was proper racing. Through that technical narrow finish, Geens found another gear in the last 100m to gap KB by a few meters. His splits - 23:19 swim (1 minute deficit), 2:09:38 bike on that brutal course, 1:07:35 run - slower than predicted but faster than anyone else when it mattered.
KB graciously patting Geens on the shoulder before collapsing himself? Class. Stornes easing home 25 seconds back for third? The Norwegians might not have swept this one, but they're still operating on another level.
Who's questioning whether Geens' Taupo victory was a fluke now?

08/11/2025

Absolutely incredible to watch LCB turn heartbreak into triumph in just four weeks. From collapsing in Kona's heat to dominating in Marbella - this is what mental resilience looks like at the highest level.
The raw numbers tell one story: 25:05 swim to gap the field by 47 seconds, a power PB on a brutal 1,785m climbing bike course (2:29:41), then a masterclass 1:17:14 half marathon. But the real story? She lost a family member between Kona and this race. When she talks about having "angel wings" out there, that's not just emotion - that's finding another gear when your body should be empty.
From a physiological perspective, bouncing back from heat exhaustion in four weeks shouldn't be possible. Kona depletes plasma volume, disrupts thermoregulation, causes mitochondrial damage that typically takes 6-8 weeks to recover from. Yet here she is, hitting power PBs on the bike and running Knibb off her feet by 7km.
The tactical ex*****on was flawless. Unlike Kona where she surged past Knibb early then blew up, she stayed patient, let Knibb lead early on the run, then made her move when she knew she had the legs. That's learning from failure in real-time.
Devastating for Kat Matthews pulling up with calf issues while running into third - but she still takes home $200k for winning the Pro Series. Four Brits in the top 10 shows our depth right now. Georgia Taylor-Brown in fourth on her 70.3 Worlds debut? Watch this space.
Sometimes sport transcends watts and threshold paces. LCB racing through grief, turning pain into performance? That's why we do this.



Photo credit: Getty Images

08/11/2025

Your winter training checklist ✅
💤 Rest strategically
🔧 Identify + Fix your limiters
🔄 Mix things up
🎯 Set honest goals
That's it. Which one are you prioritizing this off-season? 👇

07/11/2025

❄️ Winter training: Box vs Base – what’s actually going to make you faster?

Winter’s when next season’s results are built — but how you train matters more than how much you train.

In this post, I look at how to get the best out of winter training, whether you’re rebuilding fitness or carrying race form into next season.

👇 Read the full guide here:
breakthru-performance.com/blog/winter-training-box-vs-base-what-s-actually-going-to-make-you-faster

Drop your 2025 race goals in the comments — I’ll happily suggest a winter structure that fits.