Whilst the vast majority of athletes will choose to move away from home to a training centre and staying at home and training locally is not a common choice it can work well.

Case Study

Helen Jenkins

Helen is a 2 time World Champion who has been home based in Bridgend (South Wales) for her entire career. In her early career (2002-2008) she travelled to Swansea (in those days a National Triathlon Training Centre) 2-3 days a week to train. Since then she has been entirely home based. In order to be successful Helen and her husband/coach Marc have needed to build a training environment around her. Marc, himself, was a world class triathlete who was also home based (in Bridgend) throughout his entire career, his experiences of this clearly helped Helen in setting up a home based daily training environment that worked for her. This includes;

• Access to a high performance Coach who understands the demands of the sport: initially for Helen this was Chris Jones at the Swansea Centre and then it became Marc Jenkins
• Access to high performance swim sessions: Helen has a local club with a strong distance programme that allows her to swim the necessary sessions for world class triathlon success
• Access to a good bike/run training environment: Helen has access to plenty of quiet hilly (Welsh valleys) and flat (South Wales coast) riding, as well as some great on/off road running along the South Wales coastline.
• Access to appropriate training partners/training groups for bike and run: Helen has this mainly through husband/coach/training partner Marc and one or two other key individuals. Early in her career Helen was part of a strong distance running group also in Bridgend. 
• Access to good Sport Science/Sports Medicine: As a Welsh athlete living close to Cardiff Helen is able to access the Welsh Institute of Sport (WIS) for all her Sports Science/Sports Medicine support, the WIS being fully integrated into the British World Class Triathlon Programme.

If you are seriously considering staying at home you should consider the above factors and any others that you believe will be important for you.

A real point of note is that it is probably easier for a female triathlete rather than a male triathlete to access appropriate training groups and find training partners, if they are happy training with male company. Good single discipline club level men are often quick enough to train with national and international level female triathletes and are great training partners; the same is not the case for international male triathletes, who will need much higher quality training partners, who are fewer and far between.

For more insight into Helen and her experiences please watch her interview below...

Finding a Coach

If staying at home is the best fit for your needs and do not have a current Triathlon Coach you can try the British Triathlon Coach Finder.