Morning endurance sports fans.

The new season is warming up very nicely indeed, and winter already seems like a distant nightmare of icy runs and windy bike rides, as endurance sport finally finds its rhythm…. with the promise of so much more to come!!!

So grab a coffee, loosen the legs and settle in — here’s everything you need to know from the wonderfully relentless world of endurance sport. 🏊‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️

🤤 MOUTHWATERING: Kiwi superstar Hayden Wilde will make his long-awaited return to IRONMAN when he joins the Geelong 70.3 field in what promises to be an epic battle with Kristian Blummenfelt and Jelle Geens. Read HERE.

❌ INJURED: World No1 and reigning T100 champion Kate Waugh has been forced out of the 2026 season’s opening race on the Gold Coast after revealing she is struggling to recover from a niggling calf injury. Read HERE.

📺 FREEVIEW: The Professional Triathletes Organisation and World Triathlon have announced that this season’s T100 Triathlon World Tour will be available to watch free of charge globally on TriathlonLive.tv. Read HERE.

🎽 PLOT TWIST: The incredible scenes at last Sunday’s LA Marathon, which saw Nathan Martin burst past Michael Kamau on the finish line, came after the Kenyan went the wrong way just 300 yards earlier. Read HERE.

🐐 WORLD TOUR: The GOAT of marathon running, Eliud Kipchoge, has revealed the second race on his ‘World Tour’ will take him back to Brazil, the country where he won his first Olympic gold medal. Read HERE.

World Cups may be ranked a tier below the World Triathlon Championship Series, but this weekend’s opening race in Lanzarote is stacked with star names.

The races – over the sprint distance (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run) – will take place today and are available to watch for free on TriathlonLive.tv, outside the paywall and accessible to anyone with a free account.

First to race will be the professional women, with the gun firing at 16:00 local time. This corresponds to 16:00 in the UK, 17:00 in Central Europe, 12:00 on the East Coast of the US, and 09:00 on the West Coast. The men’s race takes place two hours later.

Wearing bib #1 is Jeanne Lehair (LUX), who ran away with the Supertri title last season and is currently ranked number three in the world. She is joined by British duo Sophie Evans – formerly Coldwell – who is making her triathlon return following the birth of her first child, and Georgia Taylor-Brown, the most decorated female Olympian triathlete of all time.

The men’s field looks just as strong, with Spain’s David Cantero up against the likes of Dorian Coninx (FRA), Tim Hellwig (GER), and Ben Dijkstra, who will be racing as a neutral as he moves towards representing the Netherlands.

Everyone’s favourite Canadian, Lionel Sanders, makes his return to competitive triathlon this weekend, as he lines up for the inaugural IRONMAN Dallas Little-Elm 70.3.

Having missed pretty much an entire season with injury issues – he only raced three 70.3s in 2025 – the 38-year-old is finally fit and raring to go, announcing on his Instagram page this week that despite having ‘peak insecurity’, he is ‘excited to get back out there and crush one this weekend’.

Among the pro stars joining him are Sam Appleton (AUS), Ben Kanute (USA), and Trevor Foley (USA), who arrives in Texas fresh from his win at the IRONMAN New Zealand last weekend.

The women’s race is headed up by Jackie Hering (USA), along with Vittoria Lopes (BRA) and Minttu Hukka (FIN).

The races take place on Sunday, with the pro men kicking things off at 07:30am local time –  12:30 in the UK, 13:30 in Central Europe, 08:30 on the East Coast of the US, and 05:30 on the West Coast – and you can follow its progress on the IRONMAN Athlete Tracker app HERE.

The biggest-ever Barcelona Marathon will take place this weekend as a 32,000-strong field of runners negotiate the stunning streets of the Catalan capital. Increased from its usual 30,000 capacity, Sunday’s race was sold out by Christmas.

Among the pro names to look out for is triathlete Sam Laidlow, who will be kicking off his 2026 season with a brief sojourn into the world of marathoning as he looks to build up his pace for the coming challenges in IRONMAN and at Challenge Roth.

The race starts at 08:30am local time – 07:30 in the UK, 03:30 on the East Coast of the US, 02:30 in Central US and 00:30 on the West Coast –

For information on how to watch the Barcelona Marathon, read HERE.

For a preview of Sam Laidlow’s Barcelona Marathon race, read HERE.

🇫🇷 Paris-Nice: Jonas Vingegaard goes into the final weekend of the Paris-Nice wearing the yellow jersey and with a 3:22 lead after six days of dramatic racing across France.

The Dane secured wins on stages four and five to take the overall lead, but that only tells half the story after Wednesday’s stage four saw crashes, crosswinds and cold carnage as a depleted field made their way into Uchon on the 195km trek from Bourges.

Vingegaard took the hill-top win ahead of the rain-battered pack behind him on a day which also saw overnight leader Juan Ayuso (SPA) crash out. The 206.3km stage five from Cormoranche-sur-Saône to Colombier-le-Vieux was also won by Vingegaard, while yesterday’s 179.3km ride between Barbentane and Apt was won by Harold Tejada.

Today’s penultimate 138.7km seventh stage provides a summit finish in Auron, before the final 129.2km ride through the streets of Nice on Sunday, when the winner will be crowned.

For more on the Paris-Nice, read the Cycling Weekly website, HERE.

🚵‍♂️ Absa Cape Epic: The gruelling mountain bike stage race starts in South Africa on Sunday and will play out over eight days across 700km of racing and 16,000 metres of elevation gain through the rugged terrain of the Western Cape.

An unrelenting test of endurance, this pairs-format race means that two riders must remain within two minutes of each other for the entire time they are on the course.

Read a full preview of the race on Cycling News, HERE.

The very fact that one of triathlon’s leading athletes felt there was a need to delay her pregnancy announcement until after she had raced at IRONMAN New Zealand last weekend speaks volumes about the way childbirth and maternity are still treated throughout professional sport.

Jocelyn McCauley’s Instagram post last weekend not only announced that she was expecting her third child, but, timed as it was on International Women’s Day, it also served as a reminder that making such declarations can still be a scary business.

At the heart of her post was an impassioned plea for everyone connected with the sport of triathlon to accept that women should never have to ‘choose between being an athlete and having children’.

Her message was loud, and it was clear: “Pregnancy should never feel risky to announce as a professional athlete. But for a long time, it has been and still is, and that’s one reason I didn’t announce it till after IMNZ.”

She went on to say how lucky she felt that all her sponsors were ‘genuinely happy’ for her and that she was grateful to them for having maternity clauses inserted into their contracts, adding that ‘women in sport should never have to wonder if they’ll be supported in one of the most important chapters of their lives’.

It is through athletes like McCauley that major improvements have been made to the way in which triathlon’s organising bodies treat those taking time out to have children.

Huge strides have been made since the Professional Triathlon Organisation first introduced its Maternity Leave Policy in 2020 ‘to help support women wanting to both start a family and continue their professional triathlon careers following pregnancy’.

It was updated in 2022 to include a maternity pay process, which is linked to the athlete’s PTO ranking and enables annual bonus payments to be issued on a monthly basis throughout their 15-month period of leave.

It proved to be a game-changer for female athletes, as Chelsea Sodaro said at the time: “What’s been so challenging in the past, when women get married, when they get pregnant, it’s considered the kiss of death to your athletic career, and what the PTO is doing is saying ‘no’. We value you. You are incredible athletes. We want you here. You matter. We want to support you so that you can find out how good you can be.”

IRONMAN, World Triathlon and the T100 all now have provisions where athletes can freeze their careers for two years and know that they can return without damage being done. Sponsors, too, have woken up to the fact that female athletes must be supported, or in years to come, we simply won’t have any willing to compete.

But… and there is always a but.

McCauley knows all this. She has benefited and has seen the benefits right across her sport, and she is still concerned that the first thought when an athlete announces she is pregnant is not ‘WHEN will they come back’, but ‘WILL they come back’. And such questions can be damaging in so many ways.

When sports lawyer and advocate for women in sport, Victoria Evans, helped IRONMAN to rewrite their Pregnancy and Parenthood Policy in 2024, she said ‘driving equity is an ongoing process’, while the M-Dot brand CEO, Scott DeRue accepted, ‘We know there is more work to be done and look forward to crafting that future path with the collaboration and support of our community’.

It is athletes like McCauley, Chelsea Sodaro, Holly Lawrence, Mirinda Carfrae, Jess Learmonth, and Gwen Jorgensen who must ensure that such promises are never forgotten, and that the future path is indeed one of equality for all.

Pregnancy should never feel risky to announce as a professional athlete… But for a long time, it has been and still is. Women have shown again and again that pregnancy isn’t the end of performance. Professional triathlete Jocelyn McCauley

The headline says it all… ‘Long course and short course finally link up’ as Matt Hauser and Kristian Blummenfelt met this week… and went skipping!!! 🤣

Their meeting was part of a publicity stunt for Plasmaide, but the footage of the duo – both legends of their own distance – first high-fiving and then doing a merry jig before linking arms to knock back a supplement drink, will live rent-free in the mind.

After the videos were taken and posted to Instagram, the duo took part in a ‘relaxed’ 6km run through beautiful Currumbin in Queensland, before sitting down with fans for an enlightening Q&A session.

What a pair of absolute legends. 🙌🙌

There are two types of runners in the world. Those who have no qualms with jumping on the treadmill and getting the miles ticked off. And those who’d rather risk losing a toe in arctic conditions than run indoors.

If you’re the latter, you’ve likely written off treadmill running already. However, doing some of your run training on the so-called ‘dreadmill’ can play a valuable part in helping you become a stronger, faster and more efficient runner.

Here are our top tips on making it both fun and worthwhile…

⌚️ Maintain a structured workout: If you’re simply jumping on the treadmill, running without purpose and eyeballing the timer, then it’s time to switch things up. Structured sessions and workouts will give you something specific to focus on while you’re running on the treadmill, which will make the time (and the miles) fly by. If you’re not sure where to start, platforms such as Zwift and Wahoo have substantial workout libraries to pick from. Goodbye treadmill boredom, hello running fitness gains.

📈 Upgrade your treadmill: Look for treadmills with a durable, continuous belt and a deck that offers a good level of energy return to better mimic the feel (and muscle engagement) of running outdoors. Self-powered options can help eliminate the issue of waiting for your treadmill to get up to speed (or slow down) quickly enough during interval work. Or new entries to the treadmill scene like Wahoo’s KICKR RUN smart treadmill essentially give you the best of both worlds, with its Run Free mode.

🤝 Get connected: If you’ve got access to a smart treadmill or an after-market treadmill speed sensor, you can use indoor training apps like Zwift and Wahoo to make your treadmill run sessions more fun and engaging. Take part in challenges and group runs, explore a virtual world and tick off workouts.

❤️ Run to heart rate, not just pace: Consider running to heart rate and using pace as a secondary metric, to ensure you’re at the correct intensity for the intended impact of the session. Pace is arbitrary. But heart rate is an objective measure of how hard your body is working. A pace that is ‘easy’ one day might be ‘hard’ on another.

🧹 Optimise the environment: Be comfortable. You don’t have to convert your living room into a pro-level home gym, but even if it’s just taking a bit of time to carve out a clean, tidy corner of your garage, it’ll make treadmill running far more enjoyable.

🎧 Ramp up the entertainment: If you’re really struggling to get the treadmill sessions done, don’t be afraid to bring in a little extra entertainment. Some of the best treadmills have a space for your laptop or tablet. Use your treadmill runs as an excuse to binge-watch your favourite TV shows or finally stream that movie you haven’t seen. And if you’re running on a treadmill at your local gym, get good, noise-cancelling headphones. It’ll be far easier to get into a rhythm and focus on your session if you can block out the noise of weights being clattered around you.

We like to find something a little different for the ‘Outside edge’ section of the Daily Split, and boy, have we managed to fulfil that task today, with the story of how one endurance enthusiast has decided to make butter while they run.

A video of Libby Cope, a 30-year-old running content creator from Oregon, USA, and her boyfriend Jacob Arnold has gone viral with more than two million views as she asks the question, ‘When was the last time you ran and made butter simultaneously?’

We’d imagine the answer for most of us is… never. However, Libby has had so much joy out of the process – which includes bagging up cream and placing it in her running vest before setting off on a five-mile trail – that she is now even making different types of spreads, ranging from honey-flavoured to garlic and herb.

As she describes it… This is the very definition of churn🧈 and burn🔥.

Do let us know if you have tried this; we’d love to see your results. Send any pictures to us here at the Daily Split by emailing them to 247endurance.com.

World of Triathlon LIVE, powered by TriDot is just 2 weeks away, so now’s the time to finalise your plans and get ready for Excel London from 28 to 29 March 2026. Lucy Charles-Barclay will be taking to the stage at World of Triathlon LIVE, joined by her coach and husband Reece Barclay.

Together, we go the distance. — @247_endurance 🏃‍♂️🚴‍♀️🏊‍♂️