This pro triathlete gets out of the water faster with Endless Pools
She was first out of the water! After training all year in her Endless Pools® High Performance model, professional triathlete Lucy Charles-Barclay exited Kailua Bay right alongside Lauren Brandon. Together, they led the women's field by 5 minutes at this Saturday's IRONMAN World Championship.
Lucy credits her Endless Pools triathlon training with having "improved our techniques" (she co-owns the pool with her husband, the triathlete Reece Charles-Barclay). Endless Pools' underwater mirrors give her "access to seeing what's going on underwater," she says; "We still make errors that we can self-correct." Her strong swim helped Lucy land on the podium Saturday; it was her third consecutive second-place finish at the premier event in long-distance triathlon.
When Being Fastest Isn't Good Enough
Lucy – currently ranked #2 in the world among long-distance female triathletes – holds the women's record for the fastest swim time at the prestigious event, which is held annually in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. When your swim is that strong, you need world-class training tools; so when Lucy and Reece wanted a home training pool, they opted for the Endless Pools® High Performance model.
They first discovered the pool at Kona when they were both still amateurs. They considered the pool "an investment in ourselves." Alongside their stationary bicycles and treadmills, they now have "everything in one place. We can now do a swim, bike, run all in one go. … It's made it so much more time-efficient for us to get all our training done.
"From a swimming standpoint," Lucy states, she and Reece rank their pool "a 10 out of 10." However, they also use the Endless Pools Underwater Treadmill to train for the run. "Coming from a swim background," she finds, "I've been really injury-prone to the running side of things." She now turns to the Underwater Treadmill to "build up my run mileage in a safe way."
The High Performance pool has a current that's almost 30 percent bigger than that of the Original Endless Pool; it's noticeably smoother too. And with a 7.5-horsepower motor, the High Performance current maxes out at a challenging 0:57/100-yard pace, and that's strong enough to challenge even the best IRONMAN swimmers.
Our congratulations to Lucy on another stellar podium finish!