From Croatia to Valras

It has been a long journey since the Envol Swimrun & Lucile Woodward Camp in Croatia. After a couple of months of training, Anne, Mélodie, Salomé, Mathilde F, Mathilde H, Marine, Louise, Pauline, Leonie & Sophie did it! They finished their first Swimrun race!

Some of them, before the camp in November 2023 (see my previous blog), had never swam in open water or had never tried to swim crawl at all… When they came to the Envol camp in Croatia with Lucile, Nicolas & me, they were scared and not very confident in their swimming capabilities. They spent a memorable week on a boat with other super women where they pushed passed their limits, running against their fears, showing that women can do anything! During this camp they fell in love with Swimrun and decided to sign in up for a race: the Envol Swimrun race in Valras organised in June 2024.

To be ready, they also decided to increase their training and to push themselves to train more and improve to reach their goal of finishing the 14km race.

I was helping in some of them in their training. It was an honor for me to help them and to show them that they are able to improve and to reach new personal goals in sport.

It was so nice to see their motivation and consistency in following my sessions and to not giving up when it was hard and when family business, injury or sickness came out to disturb their plans. They pushed hard as they really wanted to reach this goal !

During the last couple of months, they participated in running races to push themselves to improve in running, some even improved there PR on 5 or 10km races. This was something very helpful for their confidence as they could see the improvement !

Lucile Woodward said something during the camp in November that made me think a lot: "Taking a person from level 0 to 1 in sport or physical activity is much more complicated than helping someone who is already starting from a higher level". That is really important to consider when we coach. Adapting sessions is the key to making sure that what you propose is not something that could push them to stop the activity because it is too hard, too long or too complicate to organise. At the beginning, it is hard to explain that even if they don't complete the sessions at 100% it is not the end of world, the most important is that they TRY! Even if it's hard, even if is not their day, they have to TRY and do the best they can in those moments!

Sunday 1st of June they were on the start line of VALRAS SWIMRUN by Envol. They were of course worried (maybe more for the cold water than for the distance of the race) but really happy and motivated to reach this dreamed of objective!

I’m so impressed by them. They improved so much in not so many months and starting from Level 0, without any knowledge in running skills and swimming. They showed that if we believe in ourselves and try to go conquer our fear and our limits with all our motivation and strength, we always reach our dreams!

They finished the race without any problem and this is the best thing to say: they reached their goal to finish and now they can aim to do even better in the next adventure they will sign in up for... the best is yet to come!!

Next stop for them is Hydra in October, a small island in Greece where Envol swimrun will organise a training camp for them, with the aim to participate in the big swimrun race "Hydra swimrun" at the end of the week. Can't wait!