After the Olympic triathlete moved into second place in the UK’s all-time marathon rankings, what can the running world learn from his success?
Alex Yee 2:06:38 marathon In Valencia, Sunday was a triumph of triathlon and the huge aerobic benefits of swim-bike-run training. It’s not the first time that an athlete who spends as much, if not more, time cycling and swimming as he does running has excelled.
Back in 2013, Alistair Brownlee finished 3rd in the UK over 10,000m behind Mo Farah and Chris Thomson. Since then, we’ve seen triathletes like Beth Potter and Hugo Milner find success in trail running. Yee is now 2nd in the UK all-time marathon rankings, behind only Farah’s national record of 2:05:11.
How can these “part-time runners” beat the “full-time runners”?
Back in 2018, I asked Brownlee Brothers trainer Malcolm Brown, who put it simply.
In the same conversation, he prophetically added: “As we know, Yi has a special talent for running.”
This is certainly true. After a marathon debut of 2:11:08 in London in April, Yi was four and a half minutes off her best in Valencia.
Former English schools champion Yee outpaced Chris Thompson and Andy Vernon with memorable speed to win British 10,000m title at Highgate 2018. The overall race was won that night, by the way, by Richard Ringer, a German long-distance runner who significantly augments his training with several hours of cycling a week, often incorporating it into his warm-ups and cool-downs.
To give you an idea of how hard triathletes work, I saw first-hand the “day in the life” of the Brownlee brothers about 10 months before the London Olympics. We were visiting the Barcelona triathlon and Alastair and Jonny were there on behalf of one of their sponsors.
On the day of the trip, they had an early morning swim before catching an 8.30am flight from Leeds-Bradford Airport. Then, upon arriving at their hotel in Barcelona, they immediately set out for a bike ride, followed by a 40-50 minute run. Apparently it was also their graduation season.
Perhaps some of the best runners in the world get a glimpse. 1,500m Olympian and 5,000m world champion Cole Hawker supplements his running by cycling a few miles each week. He told AW: Last year, he cycled for about two to four hours every week, he added. “Cross training is a big part of our training.”
However, Jakob Ingebrigtsen is among those who remain skeptical. When we asked the Norwegian about Hawker’s cross-training habit, he said: “If anyone thinks he’s a good runner because he swims a lot, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Ingebrigtsen added that cross-training when you’re fit to run is “very weird,” adding that he only does cross-training (usually water runs) when he can’t run, which ironically has been quite a lot lately.
So if you’re a beginner endurance runner or aspiring long distance runner coach, are you ready to spend a few hours a week on the bike chasing a PB? As Yi and others have shown us, it can give you an aerobic boost that you’re unlikely to get from running alone.
