From a background of running and swimming, it seems inevitable these days that a switch to all three is on the cards for anyone who dips their toes into two of them.
And Freya Seymour is no different, excelling at both in the pool and on the track, she says she’s wanted to give it a go for a while now.
“I’ve always had a running and swimming background my whole life. I wanted to enter into a triathlon. But then COVID hit, so I couldn’t do it, and then life just annoyingly got in the way.
“I really wanted to get back into swimming and running, and I just thought, why not enter into a triathlon?”
It was quite the baptism of fire, signing up to Bolton Ironman 70.3(1.2 mile swim, 56 mile cycle, 13.1 mile run for her first taste), something she admits isn’t quite what most people do.
“I actually did enjoy it. I was regretting entering thinking why the hell did I do this? On the start line, I was like, this is not normal, why am I getting into a lake at 6 a.m.”
“But in the end, it was actually a lot of fun, and it was so much better than just running a marathon.”
“But it’s great actually, to be the one to do it, I enjoy triathlon so much more than the individual sports together.”
The Bristol-based triathlete went on to smash her triathlon debut, completing the 70 miles in an impressive time of just over five hours and 42 minutes.
But on her return to a shorter distance event, she found out the training was not what she expected.
“The training had paid off by doing a half Ironman a month beforehand kind of makes the training for an Olympic. Well people would say easier, and it did feel easy, but that it was a lot harder compared to the Ironman.”
The goals keep coming for the University student as well, with ambitions to cut times in shorter events and move on to the full Ironman triathlon.
“So next year I want to try and hit sub five from a half Ironman. And then I want to progress to the Ironman distance.
“I think you can look at it two ways, do you want to try and get it out of the way, or do you want to do it at the right time, I think it’s wise to wait for the right time.
“I do really enjoy it that I have a goal to aim for, even though it is quite a big race it is I want to be kind of under no real pressure to do it as soon as possible.
