| Heart of Steel |
| Written by Claire Young |
|
Conquering Ironman 70.3
Photography by Arnold Lim
There are three stages to becoming a professional athlete: learning to train, learning to race and learning to win. And Tisseyre's coach, Lance Watson of LifeSport Coaching, says she has entered that final stage. Learning to win, he says, is about racing smart, keeping headspace and fine-tuning the details. "She's finding ways to have success in different circumstances, which means she's thinking on her feet better and has the confidence to back it up and go when there are opportunities," says Watson, Ironman champion and Olympic medal coach. Even without full-time training, Tisseyre was posting pretty impressive results, placing 18th in 2008 at the Ironman World Championship 70.3 in Clearwater, Fla. She was a student at the time, putting in about 12 hours a week of training. In January 2009, she decided to get more serious about her training, discovered Watson and LifeSport Coaching online while looking for a distance coach, and really began to train like a professional athlete. The final commitment came a year later, after she had graduated with a master's degree in kinesiology on the biomechanics of running at McGill University in Montreal. She moved to Victoria, to train full-time and immerse herself in the milieu of high-performance athletes. "(Watson) has worked with (Olympic medallist) Simon Whitfield and (Ironman champion) Lisa Bentley. I liked the team and the concept. He invited me to a camp in January, and I found it extraordinary," Tisseyre says during a recent telephone interview from her home in St. Sauveur, Que., where she was spending a little downtime with her family this summer. "Lance is putting the three sports together, which is different than a combination of three coaches in three sports. Lance has the perspective of the sport of triathlon." Tisseyre now trains 30 hours a week, running at Elk Lake, riding hill repeats on Observatory Hill and swimming at Thetis Lake when the weather's warm, focusing on the half-Ironman distance (1.9 km swim, 90 km ride, 21.1 km run).
TRAINING SMARTER With Watson, Tisseyre is training smarter and learning how to use technology to her advantage. She is a passionate competitor, a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve, but she is benefiting from beginning to balance that powerful inner emotional drive with some cool calculations, Watson says. A lot can change in long races such as these, he notes. It's important to keep the right headspace when things aren't going according to plan to capitalize on the good stretches. Watson points to Tisseyre's performance at Ironman 70.3 Buffalo Springs in Texas this summer. "Magali tends to be one of the better riders, but this other woman from B.C., Angela Naeth, went by her and outrode her pretty well. Magali had to start the run five minutes down," Watson recounts. "The old Magali might have been disappointed by that and had a hard time rallying back. In this case, she had a real champion's mentality and refocused on just running her best half-marathon off the bike that she possibly could, and ended up catching (Naeth) late in the game and winning by about a minute. It's a pretty awesome win and a neat way to win, and a testament to learning." Under Watson, Tisseyre has taken a whole new direction with nutrition and hydration strategies. In the year before she met him, she was often in a podium position until near the end, when she would crash or cramp up. In the 2007 World Championship, she had leg cramps because she hadn't taken any salt. Last year, Tisseyre won Ironman 70.3 Boise, but the year before was heartbreaking. "I was third until four kilometres before the end and ended up sixth, just because I crashed," she says. Sweat testing (drinking a sweet concentrate, then working out hard with various monitors to evaluate salt loss and temperature regulation) is now part of her annual routine. "I need to figure out a lot of things for running economy," Tisseyre says. Her bike sponsor, Blue Competition Cycles, brought her to A2 Wind Tunnel in North Carolina to fine-tune her riding position. "The wind tunnel is the one that Lance Armstrong was tested at, and the same technician I worked with (Mike Giraud) is the one who has positioned some of the great champions," Tisseyre says. By lowering her position in the front and bringing her feet forward, she is 10 to 15 watts more efficient at race pace. Tisseyre has worked on improving her swim stroke and building endurance going from the bike to the run. While training for the Avia Wildflower Triathlon in California, the first race of her 2010 season, she specifically chose road routes that followed Wildflower's course profile, then jumped off her bike and burned around hilly trails, to mimic the experience. Training as a professional athlete also meant she went out to California ahead of time for a three-day camp to really learn the course. And she has begun to pay attention to the information gathered by her heart rate monitor and power meter. Despite a steel pin in her leg, the legacy of a fall when she competed in boardercross (a style of competitive snowboarding), Tisseyre has managed to avoid significant injury challenges. "She has a very resilient body," Watson notes. Then there are the tricks professional athletes learn to use to their advantage - create a schedule for equipment preparation, research a race and train specifically for it, set travel routines, and get enough rest.
Tisseyre has 10 races on her schedule for this season. Next up are Ironman 70.3 Racine, in Wisconsin, then a cooker of a race at Ironman 70.3 Philippines. She is back in cooler Alberta (last year, she placed second at the Ironman 70.3 Calgary) in September to compete at the Subaru Banff International Triathlon. This is her only Olympic distance in the 10 races she has planned for the 2010 season - the rest are Ironman 70.3. "I'm really excited," says Tisseyre of competing in the race Sept. 11. "It's very exotic going to Banff. It's a very natural environment, with no aid stations." The Olympic distance will help her work on her speed leading up to the Ironman 70.3 Championship at Clearwater in November. The last time she did an Olympic distance was in 2004, when she nailed the Canadian University Champion title in her first year of competition. The Banff triathlon is new this year, the fifth in the Subaru Western Triathlon Series that began in 2007 with races at Shawnigan Lake, Vancouver and Sooke. In 2008, the popular New Balance Half Iron Triathlon in Victoria was added. When the organizers were thinking about adding a fifth race to the series, they immediately thought of Banff, says Marion Owens, Banff race director. "They wanted to have the event be an attraction, but also having a destination attached to the event," she says. The swim is set for Two Jack Lake, the ride goes around the Lake Minnewanka Loop Road and into the town of Banff, with the run including Banff Avenue and Central Park. The course may be demanding from the point of view of elevation and cold water. The average water temperature for Two Jack Lake in September is between 14 and 16 C. Owens points out that at the first race of the season, Shawnigan Lake on May 30, the water was 14.2 C. "It felt like a dry run for Banff. It's definitely a wetsuit event," says Owens.
Tisseyre is working on gaining as much speed as she can at the 70.3 distance before taking on her overall goal to compete in the full Ironman distance. "I would like to win the Hawaii Ironman. That's my ultimate dream," Tisseyre says with conviction, but also with happiness in her voice. Watson predicts she's fully capable of achieving this. "I think she could win Hawaii Ironman, the full meal deal. I think she can be among the best in the world, if not the best. She's got that kind of talent," he says. Tisseyre by Numbers
2010
2009
Earlier seasons
|
Canadian triathlete Magali Tisseyre is taking the Ironman 70.3 race world by storm. The petite 28-year-old, who now calls Victoria, B.C., home, is posting podium finishes in most of her races. She's the sort of triathlete who eats hills for breakfast, competes with fierce intensity and has big dreams for the future.
The full-time training is paying dividends. Her 2009 season was tremendous. She not only won, but set course records at the Boise Ironman 70.3 and Subaru Vancouver International Triathlon. At the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Clearwater, Fla., she shaved 22 minutes off her finishing time from the previous year, placing third.
2010 SEASON
Tisseyre plans to wind up her season with Ironman 70.3 Georgia, and then the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Clearwater.