the national long-distance triathlon championships, and decided to take three months unpaid leave from work so that I could train full-time. I ended up finishing tenth. I had a terrible race, and was exhausted from beginning to end. I had overdone my training

trainer and author of The Marathon and Half Marathon: A Training Guide, believes many athletes, especially beginners, make mistakes with race-day hydration. "Lots of athletes unwittingly drink too much water during a race. This flushes salt from the body

these points - the difficult one is swimming. In a race we cannot keep looking at our heart-rate monitor or stopwatch," says Bill Black, who coached the GB Men's Triathlon Team at the Sydney Olympics. "But if we train at a certain pace in the pool we can keep

and perhaps even take your running to a new level.One answer, and a possible way to improve your running time at the next triathlon, may be cross-training. Substituting some of your running with other cross-training enables you to complete extra endurance

3 triathlon coach (www.theendurancecoach.com). "But just a bit of playing around on a mountain bike can help you acquire the skills that will save five minutes in a race." It's not necessary to do a killer session every time you leave the house