UBC Okanagan researchers want to train you for a triathlon—as long as you’re between 18 and 39 and you’ve never trained seriously before.
If you’re between the ages of 18 and 39, and you’ve never engaged in serious exercise training but you’re looking for a challenge that may change your life, UBC Okanagan researchers want to meet you.
Researchers from the School of Health and Exercise Sciences at UBCO want to understand how the body adapts and responds to endurance exercise training.
Although researchers know that competitive athletes have more highly developed hearts, lungs, and blood vessels, making them “fitter and healthier” than the average person, they know surprisingly little about how the body responds to exercise training over time.
That’s why Drs. Rob Shave and Neil Eves want to track the physiological response of an average participant to a prolonged triathlon training program.
“The novelty of the project will be the individuals being examined, the intensity and duration of the training program and ultimately the exercise challenge that individuals will complete,” says Dr. Eves. “Instead of your average couch-to-5K event, this will be couch-to-long-distance-triathlon.”
For one full year—August 2024 to August 2025—a team of researchers will train and support a group of relatively exercise-naïve men and women so that they are able to complete a long-distance triathlon—a 3.9-km swim followed by a 180-km cycle and 42.2-km marathon all in one day.
Along the way, participants will take part in a range of studies that will enable the researchers to fully understand the changing physiology of individuals as they transform from beginners to active to extremely well-trained. Each individual will receive a tailored training program, regular physiological assessments and ongoing training advice and monitoring.
“We know that we will be asking a lot from the participants; this is a huge commitment and a huge effort, but in return, we are going to provide an elite-level service,” says Dr. Shave. “Our research team has decades of combined experience in endurance training and has worked with everyone from complete beginners to Olympic athletes.”
While the specific details of this exciting project are being finalized, you can register your interest at ultra-project.com.
