Episode 123 - Triathlon Triumphs: The year that was 2023

Triathlon Triumphs: The year that was 2023

2023 - What a year! 

From Kona course records, comeback seasons, worlds qualifications, first Ironmans, and massive PB’s, it’s been an action packed 12 months.

I love me a good year in review to stop and reflect on all the awesome things that have happened before we get smacked in the face by the quickly approaching year ahead.

So let’s rewind the clock on 2023 for a hot minute. Stop and celebrate our epic achievements - before we look ahead to 2024.

What have you achieved in the last 12 months that’s worth celebrating?

Triathlon Nutrition Academy DOORS OPEN JANUARY 15th 2024!

It’s the best triathlon nutrition education program in the world! Where science meets stamina. 

If you’re a triathlete looking  to level up your performance - head to:  dietitianapproved.com/academy

Links:

Check how well you’re doing when it comes to your nutrition with our 50 step checklist to Triathlon Nutrition Mastery: dietitianapproved.com/checklist

Start working on your nutrition now with my Triathlon Nutrition Kickstart course: dietitianapproved.com/kickstart

It’s for you if you’re a triathlete and you feel like you’ve got your training under control and you’re ready to layer in your nutrition. It's your warmup on the path to becoming a SUPERCHARGED triathlete – woohoo!

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Episode Transcription

Episode 123: Triathlon Triumphs: The year that was 2023

Taryn Richardson  00:00

Welcome to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. The show designed to serve you up evidence-based sports nutrition advice from the experts. Hi, I'm your host Taryn, Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Advanced Sports Dietitian and founder of Dietitian Approved. Listen as I break down the latest evidence to give you practical, easy-to-digest strategies to train hard, recover faster and perform at your best. You have so much potential, and I want to help you unlock that with the power of nutrition. Let's get into it.

Taryn Richardson  00:41

Welcome to the final official episode of 2023! Man, what a year it's been. I love to kind of go back and reflect on the last 12 months of the year that was and I always love looking ahead and planning for 2024. There is so much awesomeness that happened and I find, so I could particularly my personality and probably yours as well, but I'm very much guilty of hitting a goal or reaching a target and going, yep, tick, done, moving on and not actually celebrating the things that we've achieved and reflecting on all of those awesome things that we've done. So I wanted to do that a little bit in this episode. 

Taryn Richardson  01:22

And in the triathlon world, there's been some pretty cool things that have happened. More recently we saw at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Lucy Charles Barkley take the win but lead from the very beginning to the very end of the race. Absolutely epic performance. And it was so amazing to watch her set a new course record of 8:24:31. And splitting the males versus the females and kind of what that did for the sport, whether you loved it or you hated it. But it was new, it was interesting, it was different and it definitely didn't do anything negative in terms of her performance on the day.

Taryn Richardson  02:00

We had one of our Academy athletes, Leanne raced over in Kona and that's something that she's been working on for many, many years. You know, the addition of three little people is a bit of a handbrake in your old triathlon journey but I think she's done 17 Ironmans in her quest to eventually reach Kona and I was so excited to see her race. Yes, she didn't have the best lead in, she had pneumonia, she had some niggly injuries and things like that. So she didn't go to win, she went to go and have a great time and make sure that she crossed the finish line with a smile on her face which tick, she achieved so congrats Leanne!

Taryn Richardson  02:39

Also in the triathlon world, I've been quietly watching Gwen Jorgensen. I don't know if you've been watching her comeback as well but she retired back in 2017 from the elite space. She's now a mum of two and she focused just solely on running for a little while. But her goal is to qualify for Paris 2024, so she's making a bit of a come back tour. She came 3rd in the Oceana's in Taupo, New Zealand earlier in the year and she's been sitting on the podium ever since. She came first in the World Cup in Valencia, Spain in September, 1st In Karlovy Vary, 1st in Korea in October and secured her World Cup title there, and she more recently came 2nd in the Miyazaki World Cup. She's definitely one to watch. She was an epic athlete in her time. And I for one, I'm really excited to see how she goes in the lead up to Paris 2024. 

Taryn Richardson  03:35

In the age group space, we've had so many awesome results in the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program. There are far too many PBs and achievements for me to list. It would take an entire multiple hour episode to go through everything. But a couple of honourable mentions. Earlier in the year, we saw Jody Walker race Ultra355 and she came 1st out of the females and 7th overall but also smashed a bunch of course records in the process. Special mentioned to Erin Byrge who has had a huge year of racing. Constantly on the podium for more shorter course and aqua-bike distance events, but in particular, she had a really good race at Eagleman 70.3 in 5:44 with an 11 minute PB. Now, Erin has been in the sport for 11 years now and recently got to race for Team USA, which is an amazing achievement. But 2023 was a year that she worked on her nutrition and you could really see the leaps and bounds she made with her results as a result of that.

Taryn Richardson  04:39

Also shout out to Kathleen Gilton who returned to the sport after a fairly lengthy hiatus. You know, kids and a career will do that to you. But she returned to raise her first Olympic distance at Spudman and landed herself a 4th medal in 2:48 which is pretty good going for your first Olympic distance race back, so well done Kathleen. Also a special shout out to Kelly Estes who 2 years ago wasn't even doing triathlon and he recently did his first ever Ironman at Ironman California in 13:33 and again, had a great day out on course. I'm excited to see where Kelly takes his career after going from not a lot of exercise, and particularly triathlon, straight into full distance Ironman in a short space of time.

Taryn Richardson  05:30

Shout out to Lynn Humphris, our resident Adelaidean, who came 1st in the South Australian State Duathlon Champs despite having some niggly injuries heading in. And has managed to qualify for the World Duathlon Champs in 2024, so well done Lyn. We have a quiet achiever, Cheryl Cohn who raced Ironman 70.3 in Arizona and came 4th in her age group in a time of 5:55. Cheryl is definitely one to watch. She is very much a quiet achiever. But now that she's got some nutrition knowledge under her belt, I think we'll be seeing a lot more from her in the future.

Taryn Richardson  06:09

On the other side of the world, we have Ciaran Kyne who raced his first Ironman in Ireland and came 7th in a time of 11:07:02. Now, he's very new to the sport as well. Like recently, he was just playing football, Gaelic football, and now he's dabbled in the sport of triathlon and smacked out a pretty impressive Ironman. And last but not least, we can't move on without mentioning our little pocket rocket Krystal Pearson who came 14th in her age group in the Sydney Marathon in a speedy Gonzales time of 3:19:46. What a weapon! Now there are honestly so many other achievements. I can't go through everyone but I just wanted to mention those few as a special shout out. But congratulations to all of our athletes who had such a good year in 2023. We always do a bit of a shout out on our socials on Medal Monday. So if you do want to see what they're all up to, that's a great place to check out what everyone is achieving over the weekends.

Taryn Richardson  07:10

Now Dietitian Approved has also had a massive year. I feel like 2023 was bonza. So I want to give you a little bit of a peek behind the curtains around what we've been up to. Looking all the way back to January 2023, we had a huge record breaking Academy open week, the biggest one yet. And I was so excited to help a record number of triathletes with their nutrition at the beginning of the year and work with them for the next 9 months as the year went on. They've all finished and they're Alumni of the program now. Some have moved on to our Supercharged Squad, which is our Alumni only program. But we started off the year with a bang.

Taryn Richardson  07:52

And then quickly after that, I actually won the Lord Mayor's Women in Business Grant which is really cool. I was one of only a handful of women out of hundreds of applications that successfully secured a $5,000 grant plus, their whole business mentoring process throughout this year. And it's been really cool to be a part of it. And I've met some amazing women in business in Brisbane through this year and been invited to a few events that have been good professional development for me in the business space. I used that money to professionally film our Triathlon Nutrition Kickstart course. I've actually filmed that twice now. I filmed it once, the first one was out of focus, the wrong color, all sorts of bad. And being the perfectionist that I am, I knew that I wasn't happy with it. So I actually use that grant money to invest in a bigger company to make it super slick. And it's looking beautiful now. And that is a great place to get a kickstart with your nutrition, if that's something that you're looking to do over the Christmas holidays, it is a really nice stepping stone into the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program and it's going to set you up with some really good foundations so that when you're ready for that, you can hit the ground running. 

Taryn Richardson  09:08

The other massive achievement that we had in 2023 was we hit 100 episodes of this podcast! Woohoo! And we did that in June. You can go back and listen to that episode that I did with Stef Hanson to celebrate hitting that milestone. It's a bit of a cracker to be honest, but I'm not sure you quite understand just how much work goes into the podcast. Honestly, for a, you know, 15 to 30 minute episode, there's up to 10 hours or more of work that goes into each one which is just insane. So it might sound you know, quite simple and seamless and over quickly, but there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes to produce it, to edit it, to get it on the socials, and YouTube and all those sorts of things. So thank you to my team for helping me do that. There is no way I have capacity in my life to do all the things that we do with it. And I'm really looking forward to getting to 200. So I'm not going anywhere. You can't get rid of me that easily but It's still a long way off. We're only up to Episode 123 today so we're a long way off, but we will get there.

Taryn Richardson  10:21

We also hit the milestone of 100 Triathlon Nutrition Academy athletes that have been through the program one way or another which I'm so excited about. My mission is to get evidence based sports nutrition advice into as many triathletes hands as possible. The best way that I can do that is working with them through the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program. So you know, one athlete at a time, I'm going to teach you to understand the fact from the fiction and help you level up your performance with the fourth leg which is often the missing link for so many triathletes. 

Taryn Richardson  10:55

I've basically worked my butt off this year, probably bit off way more than I can chew and just chewed really, really hard. So I'm looking forward to slowing down a little bit actually in 2024. I feel like we've got a really good program, we've got a great group of athletes inside. So I'm going to really focus my time and attention on helping them eat to perform to the best of their ability in the simplest, fastest way possible. Because that's my happy place is fast tracking people through the very noisy space that's online plus, also cooking and eating and shopping and getting organised in the food front because you need to do that if you want to put the high performance fuel in your engine.

Taryn Richardson  11:36

So I want you to stop for a second and think about what you've achieved in 2023. Like, what are your triumphs? What are your wins? What were your goals if you set any? And did you achieve them or not? But actually take a hot second to reflect on that because we are so fast paced that you probably haven't actually stopped to think about everything that you've achieved, you're already on to the next thing. And personally, that's something I've had to get better at as well. I never used to celebrate my wins, my successes, I was just like, yep, done, next. And so over the last 12 to 24 months, I've really tried to stop and celebrate the things that I've achieved, whether that's going out for lunch, or taking a Friday afternoon off, or something like that to actually stop and celebrate for a change. So if like me, just go go go and keep progressing forwards without reflecting, take a minute to physically write some of these things down in a book that you can keep for years to come. And then go back to that in like five years time and go wow, look what I was doing back in 2023.

Taryn Richardson  12:41

Now looking ahead to 2024. Like I said I would love to slow down a little bit but we are hitting the ground running because we do open doors to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program on the 15th of January. So if 2024 is the year that you want to get sorted with your nutrition, make sure you have your name on the waitlist. I am sending out an early bird offer but only to those people on the waitlist. So if you go to dietitianapproved.com/academy, you will see buttons all over that page to get your name on the waitlist. It's not going out to our wider database. It's only going out to those people on the waitlist. 

Taryn Richardson  13:22

Now, the best time to work on your nutrition was 12 months ago back in January 2023. But the second best time is going to be January 2024. After that, I'll open doors to the Academy program in July. There may be something in between in April but it's definitely not going to be a big open week like we will do in January and July. There might be something a bit more quiet for our email subscribers only. But if nutrition is something that you want to work on, January's honestly the perfect time to do it. It's when we're starting to think about our whole year and setting it up for success and making sure we're putting those right foundations in place early, rather than reflecting back at the end of 2024 and going, crap, I should have done it. So I'll open doors from the 15th of Jan to the 22nd of Jan. That's in Brisbane, Australia time so that will be the 14th to the 21st if you are not in the future like me and you live on the other side of the world. 

Taryn Richardson  14:21

The other thing that I'm running to celebrate our Academy open week is a new Triathlon Fuel School. It's something that I've cooked up, you can go to www.fuel.school. Yep, fuel.school. It's a weird one. It doesn't have a .com or a .com.au or anything at the end. It is literally f-u-e-l.s-c-h-o-o-l. Yep. It's not gas school, it's fuel school because I'm Australian. And it's a FREE 3 day live and online triathlon nutrition training week. I've designed it to give you a bit of a nutritional edge and lay some of the foundations of your day to day fuelling and race nutrition. We are going to cover day to day fuelling, race nutrition 101, and some hydration and electrolytes, and some hydration. It's running from the 14th to the 16th of January at 9am Brisbane time each day. So if you're overseas, that's 3pm PST, 5pm CST and 6pm EST on the 13th to the 15th of January.

Taryn Richardson  15:25

So whether you're a seasoned triathlete or just starting your journey, this FREE event is your opportunity to learn from one of Australia's best sports dietitians and transform your approach to nutrition, aka me. Did I just call myself one of Australia's best sports dietitians? Maybe. Can I do that? Sure, it's my podcast. I can do whatever I want. So come and join me it is literally free - fuel.school. I'm really excited about it. And it's the first time I've ever run it. So I'm looking forward to meeting triathletes from all over the world to set them up for success in 2024. So we're going to start January with a bang, we're going to hit the ground running hard so get amongst it if nutrition is something that you want to work on.

Taryn Richardson  16:08

The other thing that I'm really excited about for 2024 that we've got planned on the calendar is our Triathlon Nutrition Academy athletes are taking on Sunny Coast 70.3 on September the 8th. So you don't have to be part of the Academy to do that race obviously. You are more than welcome to come and join us if you would like to attend. We have athletes coming from America and Canada and obviously Australia to do that event. It is a beautiful race, it's a great course like, you will love it. So if you do want to come and get amongst our vibes, then definitely have a look at that one and add it to your calendar. It's an ocean swim. It's a relatively flat and fast bike course. There are some little undulating hills in the beginning but the main bike course is out on a highway out and back and they resurfaced the road a couple of years ago so it's really smooth and very, very quick.

Taryn Richardson  17:03

There is a headwind one direction and a tailwind the other direction so just a heads up. One way will seem super fast compared to the other. And then the run runs all along the coast as well so it's on paths and ashphalt on the roads. And it's a relatively quick run as well, nothing too gnarly in it. And Queensland in September is just beautiful. Like the ocean temperature's about 21-22. The air temperature's not too hot, not too cold. Like it's a beautiful time of year if you do want to do a sneaky trip to Queensland.

Taryn Richardson  17:34

We have lots of other things mapped out for 2024 but that's the main things at the moment. And I think that's enough for now. So I just wanted to wrap up by saying thank you for listening. It still blows my mind that I have a podcast. I'm sitting in my cupboard sweating recording this for you. But I absolutely love doing it and I love spreading the evidence based message. So if there's anything that you do want me to cover next year in 2024, any topics, any people you would like me to get on, I will try my hardest. Send me a DM on Instagram @dietitian.approved or you can email us, [email protected] with any suggestions that you've got. Like I'm open to all things and I try and get the best experts in the space to talk to you about the things that matter.

Taryn Richardson  18:25

Now while this is the last official episode for the year, I'm not leaving you high and dry. I've got three listener fave, absolute crowd favourite episodes to leave you with over the next three weeks to get you through the Christmas break. If you're somebody that continues to listen or maybe even listens more over this time of year because you've got more time, we have a huge bank of podcast archive episodes now, 123 in fact, so use the break as a good opportunity to go back and listen to some of those if you haven't yet. Couple of things to highlight, Episode 114, I did on a new research update with caffeine and sleep. That's a goodie if you haven't listened to that one yet. Way back in the archives, you can go and listen to Episode 47 with Andy King. And that was all about what a hydrogel is and if that enhances our endurance performance as a triathlete or not. Definitely worth understanding the science behind hydrogels because if you're going to spend $6 plus on a gel, you want to make sure it's actually doing something for us.

Taryn Richardson  19:32

Episode 31 is a good one for this time of year why you're not losing weight and some of the details around that which could be good just to set you up for success now so you don't do anything weird and wonderful come you know, New Year's Day when you're feeling sad and sorry for yourself. And another cracker is Episode 79 with basically the grandmother of sports nutrition Louise Burke. She's been a sports dietitian for more than 40 years now. And she dove into the research with me on the low carb high fat diet. She would be the most prolific researcher and practitioner when it comes to this style of eating. So definitely go and listen to that one, Episode 79 if you haven't listened to that one yet.

Taryn Richardson  20:14

Alright, that is it for me for 2023. That is crazy to say that. But we are honestly going to hit the ground running in 2024 when we return in early Jan. So I just wanted to say Merry Christmas if you celebrate and Happy New Year! And I will see you in the future in 2024.

Taryn Richardson  20:36

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or want to share with me what you've learned, email me at [email protected]. You can also spread the word by leaving me a review and taking a screenshot of you listening to the show. Don't forget to tag me on social media, @dietitian.approved, so I can give you a shout out, too. If you want to learn more about what we do, head to dietitianapproved.com. And if you want to learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to helping you smashed in the fourth leg - nutrition!