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INITIAL PROFILEWhen Sarah approached me in 2010 she wasworking 95-plus hours a week and travellingtwo weeks out of every month for HSBCSecurities in New York City, while squeezingin training around her hectic work scheduleand life. She had a moderate résumé ofresults that showed promise, but I wouldn’tsay sparkled of pro-material. As age grouperher highlights included a fifth place atIronman Providence 70.3, second atSteelhead 70.3 and (remember this one!) fifthplace at Ironman 70.3 New Orleans. Her NewOrleans performance included a 2:39 bikesplit (22.9 mph) and a 1:48 minute run split.As I say, not professional level.

Within her results it was obvious that herweak link was the swim portion of the race,with a stronger bike leg and running abilitythat was not yet displaying itself in the races.She was certainly doing well as a busyamateur but Sarah wanted more thanamateur results. Upon approaching me forassistance, my initial reaction was that Ididn’t have capacity to take her on, anddidn’t feel her results showed the path tobeing a successful professional.

Sarah wasn’t satisfied with that, so flew tomeet me in San Francisco to have a coffee. Assoon as we sat down I was aware immediatelythat Sarah had that ‘special ingredient’ thatso many great athletes have. It is somethingbeyond the results. It’s a special way theycarry themselves, talk and think. It isimpossible to put a finger on it but manysuccessful coaches have told me the samething, sometimes you can ‘sense quality’ in anathlete. I left that coffee knowing I wanted tocoach her, to see how she would progress,and while I knew it might be a long journey, itwas sure to be a fun challenge.

Perhaps the most interesting part of theconversation, in fact, I would call it thecrossroads of it, was the question as towhether Sarah should turn professionalimmediately. My initial reaction was that sheshould absolutely not make the move to takeher pro card in 2011, and that if she was trulyserious about making it as a professionalathlete, she should stay amateur and learnhow to train, how to race and how to winraces. What I didn’t realise at the time wasthat every other coach she was interviewinghad pushed her to take the pro cardimmediately. This is, in my opinion, a classicmistake of so many athletes with potential toevolve into a top-flight competitor.

The ego boost and excitement of racing inthe pro ranks clouds the need for true athleticand emotional development, and so often thestalls a career before it has even begun. It certainly happened to me in my pro career! Iwas strong enough in expressing my opinionthat I refused to coach Sarah if she decided toturn pro. Sarah chose to work with me, inpart, due to the fact that I told her not to turnpro. While she was tempted by the desire toturn pro immediately, Sarah also wanted tocorrectly progress as an athlete and truly giveherself the best chance for long term successin the pro ranks. She already showed wisdombeyond what her racing resume wouldsuggest. Now came the tough part, planningthe career progression and development.

THE 2011 SEASON: AMATEURBefore I launch into a review of her season itis worth noting what the goals and needs ofthis season, and beyond, were. As mentionedpreviously, I felt strongly that Sarah neededat least one season of racing as an amateurbefore taking the step up. This season would

act as a foundation to gain trainingexperience (both emotionally and physically),develop emotional resilience, create a visionfor proper career development and to beginlearning how to truly race and win races.

With this backbone the simple mission of2011 was to increase the focus and specificityof her training, while needing to balance herwork commitments, and choose aprogression of races that were some of thelarger races available in the amateur ranks.In addition, Sarah is aiming to develop into along course athlete, yet had not completedan Ironman, so we certainly knew at leastone Ironman race needed to be included onthe calendar.

From a pure training and performancestandpoint I felt the needs were pretty simple.We needed to begin a two to three yearprogression of swimming, which would takea massive amount of commitment andsacrifice, while also truly developing abilitiesin the cycling and running portions. Theswim, as is the norm for ‘non-swimmers’,represented the greatest challenge, and it isusual for complete development to take atleast a couple of years, if not more. For theriding Sarah needed to develop her muscularstrength, sustainable power, pacing andposition in the time-trial position.

Sarah’s running biomechanics werealready good. She is one of the rare truenatural runners, but she still needed todevelop into being a strong triathlon runnerwho could run well off the bike. Underlyingall this was a need for improvements inmobility, functional strength and sports-specific strength, including a significant focuson glute and hamstring firing that wouldenable her to make the biomechanicalimprovements. Obviously this was a large

Following the article I wrote a couple ofmonths ago outlining the journey andprogression of Rasmus Henning, this monthwe shift to a very different story; the journeyof Sarah Piampiano. Unlike Rasmus, whohas a long and established resume and is aseasoned professional athlete, Sarah’sprofessional journey is short (so far), but it is

still worthy of reflection as the lessons are strong. Over the last two and a half yearsSarah has progressed from a non-active busy executive, to newbie amateur, to seriousamateur triathlete to full-time professional triathlete. She is right in the middle of one ofthe hardest parts of building a successful career, and within her story are lessons forother serious athletes looking to progress their careers, as well as anyone looking forprogressive performance development at their own level of competition.

MATT DIXON:

SARAH PIAMPIANO THE JOURNEY FROM AMATEUR TO PROFESSIONAL

MATT DIXON

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project to undertake. I say this as it is alwaysa large project, and a classic mistake is to tryand fix everything at once with a shotgunapproach to training that often leads toquick burnout and fatigue. A systematicapproach is needed to develop an athlete.

When applying these thoughts into a plan,Sarah did what she possibly could on her end.With the support of HSBC Sarah was able toreduce her work schedule to 30 hours per weekand eliminated extraneous travel. This allowedher to channel more energy and focus into thetriathlon performance side of life. Her reducedwork schedule allowed for a significantincrease in recovery time and sleep, and focuson other key aspects such as nutrition.

With the swimming portion being the areaof greatest need the early months includedalmost 50 per cent of training hours appliedto swimming. Living in Manhattan plenty oftime was accumulated on the bike trainer, sowe focused on specific interval work andstrength-endurance instead of simple lowintensity volume. The goal was to lay afoundation of strong swim fitness, and makegreat gains in muscular strength andendurance in both riding and running. Wealso set aside three complete sessions eachweek for functional strength, but alwayssupported these with running sessionsimmediately before or after to maximiseefficiency and maintain specificity. Therecruitment and firing in the functionalstrength workouts certainly transferred toimproved running biomechanics and form.

The results over the season were exactly ashoped, which doesn’t always happen of

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course, with overall amateur wins at Ironman70.3 Texas, New Orleans, Calgary andIronman Coeur d’Alene - Sarah’s Ironmandebut. She went on to become the fifthamateur at the Ironman WorldChampionships. These experiences, alongwith her overall development, led her to aplace to be physically and emotionallysuitable for racing professionally.

THE 2012 SEASON: FIRST YEAR PRO No matter how well you have performed as anamateur, the step up to racing professionally isgreat. There are increased internal

expectations, the higher level of performanceand the emergence of external expectations.The game changes. It is not an easy journeyand for all the successful professionals outthere, the scrap heap of those who have triedbut failed to make a real impact, is muchgreater. As this is our second season in a four-year plan we knew that Sarah couldn’t simplystick to what was successful the year before. Itwas time to evolve.

Sarah took major life decisions tofacilitate the next step in the journey. Atthe end of 2011 Sarah quit the financialsafety net of her Wall Street employment,

gave up her New York apartment andmoved to a location and setting that wouldbe optimal for her development. She madeSanta Monica her base with GerryRodrigues of Tower 26 (Tower26.com).Gerry is, in my opinion, the best open waterswimming coach in the world with aunique understanding of triathlon trainingand open water skills. We also share acommon vision of general training andcoaching philosophy, and his programmewould allow daily on-deck swimmingcoaching for the many thousands ofmetres Sarah would have to accumulate,with all those metres being specific to thedevelopment as an open water swimmerversus simply a swimmer.

Luckily, the swim programme issurrounded with a fantastic trainingenvironment for biking and running, hence agreat place for development. With the swimbeing the area of development, it had to bethe focus of location and setting. Six monthsof dedication to swim development andimprovement began as we started thesecond step on the ladder toward ‘front-group’. None of us have expectations toachieve front group performance in 2012,but the foundational and journey has tobegin now.

Swimming, more than any other sport,requires a massive training load andconsistency to truly evolve into a solidperformer. There is no easy way. Mostathletes do not have the capacity, courage orvision to be willing to dilute the focus on theirstrengths to truly focus on a weakness. It iswhy so many weak swimmers simply stayweak swimmers. Sarah showed us onceagain the ability to see the long-term viewand looked at her training with that magicalwide-angle lens I so often call for. In afrustrating and challenging journey we havesucceeded in greatly improving her poolswimming and now Gerry is tasked withevolving her into a true open water swimmer.

With the added training and recovery timewe were given from taking away the life-stress of work and a Manhattan environment,

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Sarah also had the ability to accumulategreater riding and running kilometres. It isworth noting these added kilometres werenot randomly applied. Continued muscularstrength, endurance and power were sought,and a higher than normal focus on intensityand power was given to the riding sessions. I wanted to turn ‘Lil Poo’ into a powerful riderrelative to weight.

Our expectations for the year are to gainexperience at this level, improve swimperformances steadily throughout theseason and begin to ride and run close to thetop competitors in the sport. We have zerofocus on winning races, or even gainingpodiums, but instead building the seasonaround personal performance anddevelopment. The races then become fun andvaluable experiences, as well as a chance totruly race without pressure of outcomes. Thatwill surely come in the following seasons!

We are just a few races into the 2012season and it has already been quiteeventful. A debut sixth place at the stackedTexas 70.3 was followed up by a somewhatsurprising and breakthrough overall victoryat New Orleans 70.3. On an adjusted course,due to a cancelled swim, Sarah ran, rode andran her way to victory over a field of multipletop-10 Kona finishers including the greatMirinda Carfrae. A truly outstandingperformance that left many, including me,with jaws dropped.

It was certainly a result that was worthcelebrating, but also worth putting inperspective. Sarah is quick to note there wasno swim in the event, and while she showedthat she has the ability to ride and run withthe best, one performance doesn’t make aseason. In fact, the exact reason thatprovides Sarah with the best opportunity tosucceed long-term included the reaction tothis race. She celebrated, embraced it andthen moved back onto the journey ofdevelopment. Ironically, a massive win canoften be as debilitating as a performancefailure, often promoting a sense ofsatisfaction and a tendency to relax. Sarahdid not fall into this trap, instead came

straight back to the all-important roadmapof progression and isolated this as a veryenjoyable outlier.

Just a few weeks later Sarah recorded asixth place at Ironman Texas, a solid result,but certainly a lower than expected level ofperformance relative to her progression. Itwas an outlier at the other end of the scale.No harm. Just like New Orleans, we learnedwhat we could from the race (as there areplenty of lessons to gain from everyIronman), and moved on to ready ourselvesfor the next part of the journey and the restof this very busy season.

THE FUTUREIt is yet to be seen how the rest of the seasongoes for Sarah, but we will be busy judging iton her own performance variables, as well asa growth in racing experience andperformance. From there she will be ready tobuild towards 2013 and this will certainlyinclude another massive swim focus over thewinter and spring months. I expect hercapacity for positively absorbing training tobe evolved, which means she may be able toaccumulate more overall training hours andwe will make a large push on the runperformance (off the bike).

Setting up the second season of aprofessional’s career is different than thefirst taste. We will become more tactical witha greater focus on specific events, as well asa shift to truly chasing the challenge ofracing against the top competitors asfrequently as possible. The goal isperformance, not just podiums, so it isessential that Sarah races the largest races,with the largest fields and evolves to trulycompete within these fields. This is thechallenge. She still has a long way to gowith a lot of barriers and challenges in theway, but she only has the opportunity to facethese challenges because of the smartdecisions, appropriate focus and massiveamount of hard work completed so far. Shehas developed to have the opportunity tobecome top class, but this is not a given,otherwise everyone would be doing it.

LESSONS TO TAKEAWAYThis is not a review or story that has anending, but rather an outline of a progressionand evolution from amateur to professional.The end of this story is still to be written, andstill to be determined. Sarah’s success so far,and opportunity to now go further, can besummed up with:

• The development in a long-termvision and roadmap of careerdevelopment: Not only building thevision, by continually revisiting the plan,adapting parts of it and basing trainingand performance success against it.

• Patience in the plan: Sarah didn’t jumpinto a level she was unprepared for, andwas willing to take a chance on her self inthe short term, for the opportunity forlong-term success. Choosing to take thepro card a year earlier surely would haveproduced a less favourable evolution.

• Utilising resources: Sarah surroundsherself with positive and stronginfluencers, and keeps that circle of trustsmall and tight. My strongest role haslikely been the continuing reminder tohave patience in the process, and despiteher inclination to want results ‘now’,Sarah has evolved to accept and embracethe process and journey to performance.

• Setting up an environment: Not all of uscan do this, but to truly excel you need to bein an optimal situation. I see many keenamateurs talk about racing at the highestlevel but unable to move beyond thecomfort of their safe and easy environment.

• Blood, sweat and tears: Applied in asmart, specific and progressive manner,but the backbone of this journey has beenconsistent hard work in all aspects ofperformance; training, nutrition,recovery, functional strength andemotional learning.

I hope we can report back in a year or twoand discuss the success and process of parttwo. It is all there in front of her now. May thehard work and commitment continue.

MATT DIXON

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SARAH PIAMPIANO THE JOURNEY FROM AMATEUR TO PROFESSIONAL

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