A Cwmbran couple who came first and second in the last Cardiff Sprint Triathlon have started a coaching business to help athletes in the sport.
Jordan Clarke, 30, won the event held last June and Abbie Sims, 27, was the second female to cross the line, finishing 11th overall.
They started PACE Coaching to help newcomers and more experienced sportspeople improve their performance.
Jordan used to play football for Cwmbran Celtic FC. Training stopped during the first lockdown in 2020 so he looked around for a new sport. He said: “I’m a very active person and can’t sit still. First it was cycling because of Abbi’s dad. He’s a cyclist so I was watching him on this indoor bike and was like ‘this looks fun’ so I had a go.
“And then Abbi had a go. We ended up getting pretty fit on the bike and was like ‘ok, we’re getting good at this stuff, let’s give running a go. We got good at running and thought ‘we’re only one sport away from doing a triathlon’.
IronMan Wales
He jumped in at the deep end and competed in Ironman Wales.
Abbie said: “Jordan started doing triathlons about a year before me. I never learned to swim as a child. He then did Ironman [Wales) and I though ‘aw no. I’m feeling a bit left out here so I’m going to have to give it a go.
“So he helped to teach me to swim and we got other coaches involved and through consistency, I was like ‘right, I’ll do a triathlon but not going to do an Ironman. And then here we are, I just did my first Ironman in September [2024] and booked again a day later for this year.”
Jordan said: “Both of us have been on a right journey from randomly doing it because of lockdown, learning the sport through failure and having fun and getting quite good at it. That’s when PACE started to come into our minds because I was getting a lot of questions about coaching.”
Abbie said: “When we were getting questions from people around here we thought this is our opportunity. We can make a bit of a community and it’s just grown.”
Triathlon coaching
Jordan is a certified British Triathlon Coach. After sharing the success of their first three clients (including a beginner who completed the first Ironman in 14 hours) more messages started arriving from people interested.
Jordan said: “It’s snowballed. We’ve got 13 athletes on the roster now in the space of two months.”
Abbie said: “It’s grown and grown. We’re looking at getting my coaching qualification done now in the New Year.”
The couple also launched a PACE Coaching clothing range through Brav Endurance.
And as well as coaching triathletes they help people who want to improve their cycling, running or swimming as individual sports.
Jordan said: “Health and fitness is growing as a whole. There’s more of a trend to try bigger challenges.
“A lot of people who I coach have not been swimmers before. You teach them how to swim but it’s also about nutrition, you teach them about strength and conditioning, injury prevention. You learn so much.”
Abbie said they understand how to help people train but keep a work/ life balance.
She said: “It is a hobby, it’s not everything and you need to be able to adapt and still get on with your life. People have got families and things like that. We move things around and make things work to work it around their life
“It’s about trusting the process, trusting us and results do come. It all pieces together.”
PACE stands for “Preparation, Adaptation, Consistency and Excel”.
This week they’ve organised an online seminar for their athletes to hear from and quiz a British Triathlon Coach who has worked with Olympic-level sportspeople.
Jordan said: “The seminar is on the importance of ‘strength and conditioning’. It’s just to help educate the athletes about not just why we do it for performance, but why we do it for health, for longevity, for injury prevention. So that’s another thing that we’re offering that’s different to other coaches.”