Alejandro, you are a Spanish athlete living in London. In 2019 you
qualified for the World championships in Kona, Hawaii and finished in a
nice time of 9h16′. In your qualifying race you became 2nd overall
agegrouper in South Africa. A huge step, and opening windows for next
season.
In 2020 u wanted to chase a new ticket and pick up racing experience in
Kona to do even better. How did you experience the lockdown and training
during this lockdown?

Lockdown happened just 2 weeks before Ironman South Africa with all the hard work already done. When the race was cancelled I got quite upset but that feeling vanished quickly when I just realised how bad things were out there.During the rest of the first lockdown I just tried to disconnect from races and social media as there was lots of negativity around. First days were quite a challenge living here in the UK just with my wife and son but with all my family and most of my friends in Spain. In terms of training I really never stopped and here we were “lucky” to be able to exercise for an hour everyday that I’d use for taking a walk with my wife and son. Most of my training is indoors so did not affect my daily routine much. Swimming was another story. Fortunately I had an old second hand vasa trainer that I’d use almost everyday.

 Living in UK it was very difficult, you had a severe lockdown and
pools currently still are closed. During past year you have been
training a lot on the VASA trainer, how did you experience this as a
change for a regular swim?

I started using a non erg vasa trainer that was quite nice for swim specific strength but not very good for swimming freestyle. In june I sold it and bought a Vasa ergometer and started using it straight away. In terms of comparing it to swimming in the water I’d say using the Vasa ergometer is comparable to doing pull and paddles intervals but harder! Although you don’t use your core as much as when swimming in water you can still engage it and rotate a little bit on the bench to use your back and core muscles and avoid pulling with a flat body position.I’ve used it a lot since then and actually haven’t had a chance yet to swim in a pool (it’s going to be 1 year since the last time I swam in a pool). I could go for a swim on a lake near home last August and it just confirmed that not only I had not lost my swim fitness but I felt stronger in the water.Still I need to go back to the pool (hopefully they will reopen in March) to test how my swim is after almost 1 year just doing Vasa. But I’m certain it’s not gonna be that bad. 

You have always been used to quite some indoortraining on the bike
and treadmill, but of course you alternate with outdoor sessions. In a
normal year you also spend quite some training/working time in Spain. I
suppose that’s something to look forward too in the near future also in
preparation of Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz and the Spanish triathlon
championships?

I’ve been training outdoors more often lately especially on the bike but still love training indoors and watching movies or listening to audiobooks while running or cycling. But I have realised how important it is to go outside and ride your TT bike before races. Keeping a good aero position outdoors riding on rough roads with wind gusts and so on has nothing to do with riding on the trainer.Regarding Vitoria I will hopefully travel there 1 month before the race and do some riding there. I’ve heard it is quite a fast course!

Onwards to IM Vitoria – (Kona!)

Jesse