Alex Yee ‘energised' by London Marathon experience before triathlon return
The Olympic and world champion took time out of his main sport in the spring to fulfil a lifelong ambition by racing around the streets of the capital, and his time of two hours, 11 minutes and eight seconds made him the second fastest British runner.
The effort he put into the project left him with peroneal tendinopathy, which causes pain and inflammation of tendons in the foot and ankle, in three places but he is now fully recovered and ready to dip his toe back into triathlon at Saturday's Supertri League race in Toronto.
Yee told the PA news agency: 'I feel energised, I feel in a really good place.
'I don't think that necessarily means I'm going to come back in and smash the scene up and be at the front, I'm well aware of that, but I think I've just come back with a really good frame of mind about the sport and about where I want to be and how I want to go about it and improve.'
Supertri races feature three fast-paced stages in a team environment, providing Yee with a fun reintroduction to the sport before the more serious business of a first World Triathlon Championship Series race of the year on the French Riviera at the end of August.
The injury was a small setback but Yee has no regrets about testing himself in a different sport, and believes it can help take his triathlon racing to a new level.
'There were things which I could probably get away with in triathlon that I couldn't get away with in a marathon, which I can now apply to triathlon and hopefully that will make me a better athlete as a result,' he said.
'It was really interesting to take that small step back. You get so used to training in a certain way so, when you take yourself out of a comfort zone and train a little bit differently and you're a little bit worse at it, it's an exciting thing for me.'
Whatever the 27-year-old goes on to achieve, it will be hard for him to top the drama of his Olympic gold last summer, when his hopes appeared over only for him to sensationally reel in rival Hayden Wilde over the final few hundred metres.
Yee's victory was one of the standout moments of the Games, and it is one he is continually reminded about.
'One moment that really sticks with me is a guy stopped me in Lewisham when I was running for a warm-up to run on – pretty surreal – the track that's now renamed after me,' said Yee.
'He was deleting a load of stuff off his phone to make memory to take a picture and just before he left me he said, 'I really appreciate everything you're doing for Lewisham, watching you was the last memory I have of my dad'.
'It really hit home that that can be such an important moment for somebody in their life.
'I feel like every time I speak to somebody or they stop me on the street, it's such an authentic moment that they're able to talk to me about, a moment of hope or of not giving up, or their children running round the living room or asking for a bike for Christmas because they watched me.
'We live in a tough world at the moment where opportunities are few and far between and our world's becoming a lot more digital so for people to be excited to be outside, to be excited about sport, I think is such a good thing.'
Yee, who is already the most successful Olympic triathlete ever, has a third Games in Los Angeles in 2028 very much in his sights – and hopefully another gold in less nail-biting circumstances.
'It was an amazing moment and I would never change the finish but I still feel like I had something within me that could have made that race better,' he said of his Paris triumph.
'I'm not finishing that race thinking, 'I'm done, I've completed it', I'm thinking, 'What can I do to be better'?
'I still feel like I have that energy towards the sport and what's exciting me right now is that internal drive to be the best I can be. I know that each year success is rented and you've got to earn that right to be back at the top.'
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