Nicola Spirig’s Blog

Hi all, me already again:-)

Well today we had the Swiss national championships over the Olympic distance. You can imagine that the motivation just two weeks after the Olympics wasn’t very high… Not to talk about the preparation, first enjoying the end of the Olympics and then coming home after a long time away and having a few things to organise, training wasn’t always first priority:-) but at least it was a very hot, sunny day and Lausanne, the place where the race was held, is one of the nicest Swiss cities.
The field was small, the quality of the field not great either, Magali di Marco Messmer and me were the clear favorites. Normally I have to go flat out in the swim to stay close to the leading group, but today it was pretty easy, and I really enjoyed to feel in control and sit comfortably in third place for the whole swim. There was only a cramp in the left calf that caused some problems 200m before the exit, but somehow I managed to get rid of it and get on the bike with the first four.
It only took until the first hill on the bike and it was just Magali and me. The rest of the 40km we were working well together. The special thing about it: None of us spoke a single word for the whole 40km…:-) Mostly we didn’t even look behind to sign to the other one that she should take a turn. We just worked quietly, taking turns always at the same places every lap, knowing which one of us was stronger in the downhill and which one in the uphill. Two rivals working together, was quite interesting:-)
So, after the ride we had a big gap and it was just between her and me. Magali started the run with a fast pace and I just tried to stay behind her. After 1km she slowed down a bit, so I took the oportunity to try how tired she was and went on in the same pace she started. Soon I had a little gap, and it got slowly a bit bigger and bigger. In the end I won with about 45 seconds and was glad there wasn’t a sprint finish, as the last few kms were quite tough…
Of course it is hard to see Swiss Champs as a big thing after the Olympics, but I am still happy that I could get the title. With this I am double Swiss champion (duathlon and triathlon, hihi) and won every Swiss duel this year:-)
Nevertheless I felt that I lost some of my good shape in the last two weeks, so the goal is clear: eat healthy again to get rid of cramps and stuff and get fit again! Next race will be the 70.3 in Monaco next Sonday, hope I can get back some certainly needed fitness until then….

Hi everyone, it took a bit longer to write this blog as I thought… simply because I was hardly ever in the internet as I had such an amazing, great time in Beijing and there was always something to do or to watch!!
But first a few coments to the race: the swim was average, not as good as I thought after the fast training times, but I swam as fast as I could and tried to keep the gap to the first pack, in which I should have swam, as small as possible. It was pretty clear what I had to do when I got out of the water about 30 seconds behind the first pack: hop on the bike and ride flat out… After the first lap I followed my instinct and let one or two others of my group lead for a moment, so that I could catch my breath. On the following hill I made a big effort again to close the gap to the first ones, and all except a little Japanese dropped off my wheel and never made it to the first pack while I could get on the back of the pack on the top of the hill, very good move.
After a recovery lap I tried to attack and get away from the first pack several times, but they didn’t let me go. Then suddenly, towards the end of the bike, I got slight cramps! I still don’t know why as I felt good and took enough liquid and electrolites and stuff before and during the race. I tried to losen up a bit before the run, went into transition among the first three as always and was very motivated. But after a few meters I felt the cramps again, couldn’t go flat out but had to control the pace to not let them get very bad and having to stop! So I had to let the first ones go. But I tried my best and after half of the run it got a bit better and I gave everything again. In the end I crossed the finish line in sixth place. I did my best on that day and I am happy with sixth. Thanks a lot once again to the team that allowed me to train in such a great environment and to doc who was so patient and trained the stubborn Swiss Miss:-)
After the mens race the next day we went straight into the Olympic village (we did the race preparation outside to not get disturbed by all the impressions). And the five days we spent there were absolutely great! The “village” was more a town, with 7 storey buildings for the athletes to stay in. Every building with the according country flags so that you knew who lived there. In between streets with busses, a polyclinic, game room, hair dresser, gym, 50m pool (which I only discovered on the third day because the village was so big -or because I wasn’t looking for it?:-)) 4min tartan loop through a little forest passing by tennis and basketball courts, laundry, and of course the huge food tent -shortly everything you need. And, the best thing, everything for free!! At the Olympic Games, the athlete is the king. Not just in the village, you can ride subway or bus in the city for free as well, you get into partys for free (with free food and drinks…), and you get free tickets to the Olympic events. So for once, you feel even more priviledged as an athlete than normally, not just you think that it is the best life, all the other people think it as well.
The most interesting place is the food tent. It is huge. You can get any food you want, 24 hours a day. International, mediterranean, asian food, fruit bar, salad bar, desert, and of course McDonald’s:-) the best advertation ever for McDonald’s would be to instal a camera in the food tent and just record who is standing in line for getting something to eat there, hihi. People would be surprised how many famous sports people are standing there getting their big mac. I just loved sitting in the tent and watch all the different people from all the different countries. It’s amazing to see the unbeliavably huge volleyballers and basketballers! The small gymnastic girls, the wrestling guys with their big neck and the weird ears… Everywhere in the village we watched the shape of the athletes and tried to guess what sports they did:-)
the pool was another funny place. It looked like in a bad hollywood film: the border of the pool crowded with girls with very nice, trained bodies in their bikinis, in the water hanging on the edge the tanned, muscly boys… Of course you also met all the triathletes there, but the averege session was between 200m and 1km, hihi:-)
I also loved to go into the big athletics stadium. As an athlete, we didn’t need tickets and could go and watch whenever we wanted. I grew up with athletics, but I was still extremely impressed from the atmosphere and the performances the athletes showed. There were a lot of very emotional moments for me, seeing the long jump girl win by 1cm and not able to believe that she won, watching the coach of the winning pole vault athlete cross all the security fences and jump up on his athlete, seeing the emotions on the faces of the athletes standing on the podium hearing their national hymn. Even the kenians had tears in their eyes. I think I have never seen in so many different ways and so emotional what sports can give and how deep and different the feelings are.
There were a lot of little, very cool moments. The huge basket baller who liftet his food tray about 3cm so that I could walk trough underneath. Grant Hacket, the australian flag between his teeth at 6am crashing into a bush because he was maybe a little bit drunk (:-)) and couldn’t control his way too small bike anymore. The kenians in their way too big training pants, the little athletic girls loading their tray with Snickers. The huge trading market in front of our house on the last day when all the athletes were sick of their own clothes and wanted the ones from the other nations. Just little moments that make the Olympic Games what the are, unique!!
I hope I could give you a little inside of what I saw and experienced. I had an absolutely amazing time and will take a lot of good memories with me. Thanks a lot to everyone who helped me coming that far and spend a few days together with the best athletes from all over the world.

Well I am sitting here and I have to say, I can’t find any better words than Mariana in her two last blogs:-)! She said exactely as it is in her amazing funny way, so I think I won’t write much and tell you to read her blogs instead if you haven’t done it yet and if you want to know something about the time here in Jeju.
Doc left us today and we are going into the final week before our olympic race. It’s a bit weird to have worked and trained so long for a race and now just having a few days left until we will stay on the pontoon! But I feel really good and fit, I don’t think I could be prepared much better, so maybe it’s good not to have much time left as that means not much time anymore to do anything wrong either…:-)
However the race at the Olympics will go, one thing is sure: I had an absolutely great time training for it, I extremely enjoyed it and felt as good as never before doing what I love. So it was already worth it!!! Big thanks to doc and my great training partners!

Just a short blog as I am off to Korea for the final olympic preparation in a few hours.
I had a great race at the World Cup in Kitzbühel, very happy to win the last race before the Olympics and to get some confidence and a good feeling out of it! I was once again glad to be Swiss during the race:-) Kitzbühel in Austria is only 4 hours from my home Zürich, so the travelling there by car was easy. That was the reason Reto and me also had a lot of support from our families (including uncles and aunts and godchildren…) and friends (several ancient athletes who were starting in the World Cup with us came to Kitzbühel with their families to cheer for us). Kitzbühel also looks like the Swiss mountains, so after two months in Leysin I felt like home in the misty, green hills:-) It was still pretty cool when we had to start at 9:30am, so as a typical Swiss I know how cold it can get in the mountains in the drizzling rain. So after my great swim getting out of the water as 6th, I was the only one who put on arm warmers on the bike, wise decision, all the others were very jealous and freezing:-) On to the run, I had a lot of support from the Austrian crowd as well, as the first Austrian was dropping off a bit, so they decided that the Swiss are next to support, as the nice neighbours that we are:-) after half of the run I just had the french Carol Peon being able to follow me, and I was very glad again to be Swiss and not only understand German and English but also French. So the nice French coach who told Carol where she is good at and where she should attack gave me exactely the information I needed to make sure she would not get away on the downhill where her coach wanted her to move away from me:-) and last but not least, as a Swiss I also knew how much the “Dirndl”, the traditional dressing of the Austrians that I got as a present, means to the Austrians and that I had to respect it even if it is not really my taste…
Great race in a great place with great support, thanks to everyone!

After two more very good training weeks in the Swiss mountains with almost perfect weather and my usual great squad-training partners, most athletes of the squad are leaving Leysin for the weekend and racing an important race, either at IM Zurich, Roth or Frankfurt or at the World Cup in Hungary!

I first wanted to race an olympic distance race in Zurich this Saturday as well, but then we decided that it might be better just to train and enjoy a quiet weekend at home instead of racing again. The preparation for the Olympics goes really well, and with a 3km track race last Saturday and the World Cup in Austria on Sunday in a week I think I have enough race practice without racing this weekend too.

So I will have lots of time to think of my squad memebers racing all over Europe and cheer for them!!

It is a bit sad to see everyone leave here, because even if most of them will come back next week, Reto and I won’t see them again for a while: we will be travelling to the race in Austria by the time they are back here and then fly to Korea for the final preparation for Beijing.

I didn’t even have the time to say good bye properly to everyone who left, so I would like to do it now: a huge THANK YOU VERY MUCH to all the squad members!!

It was once again absolutely fantastic to train with you, to suffer and enjoy together with you, sometimes to just chat and forget about training and sometimes to really focus on training and get pushed by you!

It is such a big motivation and makes it so much easier for me to train in the squad together with you guys!

Even if I have to do a different session on the track, it is still good to have the other athletes around, seeing them work on the track as well.

Even if I sometimes swear behind AJ on the bike because he is too fast, it is still great to have someone helping to get through the session…:-) to train with so many great training partners is a big privilege which I really appreciate.

So I just wanted to thank you all for the many good sessions and the time in Leysin which I extremely enjoyed. You are certainly a reason why I feel good and why I am very motivated for the last few weeks before the Olympics!

I wish you all an absolutely great racing week end and will cheer for you guys on the internet!

Have a great time and I will certainly keep in touch!!

nicola

Just got home from a longer warm down ride with my father after the race in Sempach. It was a non drafting Olympic distance race which started early in the morning, pro men and women starting together. The men were swimming too fast in the beginning, so that I couldn’t get on their feet, but at least I had them as a point in front of me to focus on and so had a motivation and an easier target to orientate on. I dropped all the girls very soon and swam alone, but still only lost a little more than a minute to the fastest boys, which is pretty good. I felt good on the bike, too. Some of the slower male swimmers passed me after a few kms, looking very surprised when we got into the hills and I overtook them from behind again, hihi… Only in the uphill of course (training in the hills of Leysin does miracles:-)), they passed and dropped me in the downhill and on the flat again. But it made the ride more interesting than riding by myself without seeing someone the whole way, as the women didn’t show:-). On to the run I tried to follow docs orders and still go hard, even if I already had about a four minute lead on the second woman, Sibylle Matter (second IM Switzerland last year). The lead grew to 8 minutes untill the finish, where I was happy to celebrate the little double victory together with Reto!
I was happy with my race and enjoyed another hot and sunny week end in beautiful Switzerland:-)

Main goal of this week end was to somehow avoid Hillarys birthday session -which apparently was no use as doc seems determined to give me the session anyway when I am back in Leysin… Anyway, I went down on Friday evening to my home in Zürich to do a little race on Saturday close by. It’s one of my favourite races, because it is very short:-) 300m swim, 8km bike and 2km run, the whole thing two times through. Of course it’s very fast and intensive, and you constantly have to think about transitions and tactics, but that’s what makes the race very interesting, for us athletes as well as for the spectators.
The rules for those sort of races in Switzerland are that the athletes are not allowed to wear a wetsuit or speedsuit if the water is above 18 degrees. You can imagine the faces of the athletes when the organizer informed us that the water temperature is 18,2°C… But staying in Leysin I am used to slightely chilly conditions, so no problem, just a bit worried that I could break a toe while running out of the water and not even realize it because the feet were so frozen, hihi… I jumped on the bike and straight away down again on the other side of my Cervélo, but I managed to stay in the saddle in the second attempt and felt surprisingly good on the bike, so that I caught the first three girls quickly again and the riding felt pretty slow afterwards. As doc had ordered, I stayed behind Magali di Marco-Messmer in the first run and tried to save some energy for the second swim. As always, I felt like the little squirrel in “Ice Age” when I jumped in the water again, frozen in the middle of the movement and not able to move at all anymore… but somehow I turned my arms around and managed to get out of the water with Magali and a Czech girl. This time, it was the Czech who had some problems to get on her bike and was steering into the direction of the safety fence…:-) I took the oportunity to drop her, so it was just Magali and me, working well together on the bike but still in a comfortable pace. With a fast transition I went on to the last little run, having already gained a few metres on Magali in the transition and working on enlargening this gap from the beginning. This went better than I thought and in the end I had a comfortable lead of 30 seconds and could enjoy my little victory:-)
Now I will head back to Leysin and to the heard training…

Like last year, my coach succeeded again to convince me that a half Ironman would be the perfect preparation for the Olympics, even if I still don’t clearly see why… So I went to Rapperswil to do my 70.3 home race.
They didn’t shorten the swim like last year as it was 15.7°C warm not just 15°C, so I had the joy to do my first real, not shortened 70.3:-)
I went on the bike in second place behind Julie Dibens after the swim and felt quite good. I like the hilly course in Rapperswil, and the training in Leysin certainly helped me to climb the “witches hill” and the “beast”, as they call the steepest parts of the course. But I was still surprised when I caught Julie who is known as quite a good rider (she mentioned after the race that she is definitely not used to not get off the bike as first….) and could pass her.
Of course I as a typical short distance athlete who thinks in 1,5km/40km/10km had been riding a bit too fast in the beginning, so that I got some little cramps in my legs and had to take it a bit easier on the second bike lap. But I think I still did a good ride and started the run in first position with about a 1:30min lead, very happy to finally get off the bike and move on to the next discipline… I could get rid of the cramps on the first run kms, but now I was struggling with some bad stitches which only let me run a pretty slow pace and which got really bad as soon as I tried to run a bit faster. After about 5km Julie could catch and overtake me again without me being able to do much against it. I tried to be patient and drink some water and coke (not easy for a short distance girl -I was spilling half of it over my face and coughing trying to swallow some of the other half…). After a few more kms the stitches finally started to go away and I found a good rhythm. It was too late to catch Julie again, but I had a good feeling running the last 10km and could enjoy the great atmosphere and the many people who were cheering and supporting me. Always good to race in Switzerland:-)
I finished second behind Julie and am very pleased with the result. Maybe doing one 70.3 per year isn’t that bad, and if it is just to have even more respect again for my teammates who do Ironman, to be glad I normally only have to do Olympic distance and to be aware of what I would still need to optimize if I would want to seriously compete against the good 70.3 girls once (in a lot of years);-)

Hi everyone, since yesterday I can call myself Swiss Duathlon ChampionJ
I liked the race, first because for once I didn’t have to get into the cold water but could just concentrate on running and biking and second because the many transitions and the short distances of 4km run / 16km bike / 4km run /16km bike / 4km run through the middle of a little Swiss city made the race interesting.
Even if the doc of course didn’t let me rest for such an unimportant race, I felt quite good and could leave the other girls behind already in the first run, having a gap of 2,5 minutes to the second athlete after the first bike. So I battled a bit with all the Age Group men who had started 2mins in front of me afterwards and could enjoy the race without going flat out until the end. It was really nice to start in my homeland Switzerland, having a lot of people cheering and supporting me!
Now I am back in the TeamTBB Swiss camp in Leysin again, happy to see all the athletes from the squad again and very motivated to get a very good training block in!

I just lost a sprint today and missed my second bronze medal after last year by one or two tenth of a second… Never very nice:-(
But I am still pretty happy with the race today and with my performance. The swim was ok, just had about 20 seconds to catch up, not too difficult with two other good riders helping me. Then it just was about concentrating to not have a crash as the course was really technical and dangerous, and not getting hurt was goal number one today. So I was glad when I arrived unharmed in transition two and ran out with the first girls. The feeling in the run was really good, Fernandes was too fast as always but I could hold the pace of the four next athletes running in a good rhythm. After half way the Italian Cortassa got away as well, too fast to follow. So there were three of us running together for the third place in the end. I still felt not too bad, but there was a little downhill in the end, and I haven’t been running downhill since three months because of my knee injury! So I lost both athletes on that downhill, with only about 300m to go to the finish. I still tried and sprinted, could overtake one of them and if the finish line would have been 5 meters further, I would have beaten the other one as well! So I guess I have to estimate and plan better next time and start my sprint 5 meteres earlier, hihi. Or train better and simply be faster! So I am looking forward to go up to Leysin next week and do some good training with my favourite training squad:-)