About Jennie
From complete beginner to endurance athlete to coach — and still learning what comes next.
I’m Jennie Jones, a triathlon coach based in Reading, Berkshire, coaching age-group athletes online across the UK.
I didn’t grow up doing triathlon. In fact, I came to endurance sport knowing very little about it.
For years, my world was the gym.
I loved strength training, trained consistently and had worked in fitness for years. I was comfortable there. I knew what I was doing.
Then I decided to try something completely different.
Triathlon.
There was just one slight problem.
I couldn’t really swim. I hadn’t ridden a bike for years. And the occasional short run on a treadmill hadn’t exactly prepared me for running outside.
So I started where a lot of the athletes I now coach start.
As a beginner.
I had to learn how to swim properly. Get back on a bike — including the mildly terrifying experience of clipping my feet to it. Learn how to run. Learn how to put three sports together. And eventually learn that endurance sport involves rather more than simply being fit enough to keep going.
But somewhere along the way, triathlon stopped being something I was trying.
It became part of who I was.
From beginner to Ironman — and quite a lot in between
Over the years, the challenges got bigger.
Sprint and Olympic triathlons became longer-distance races. There were half Ironmans, Ironman Austria, Challenge Roth, cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats and plenty of other adventures along the way.
I loved finding out what I could do.
Not because I was the fastest athlete out there — I wasn’t.
But because every new challenge required me to learn something about myself.
How to keep going when something was difficult. How to deal with nerves and uncertainty. How to solve problems when things didn’t go to plan. And sometimes how to accept that determination alone can’t make your body do something it isn’t currently capable of doing.
That last lesson became particularly important.
When the plan changes
Hip problems eventually stopped me racing.
For someone whose life had become so entwined with endurance sport, that could have been the point where I walked away from it.
Instead, it changed my direction.
I was already qualified and experienced in fitness and strength training, and coaching gave me a way to remain part of a sport I loved while helping other people discover what I’d discovered through it.
So I started coaching.
And what began as a way of staying involved became something much bigger.
Because I quickly realised that the interesting part of coaching wasn’t simply writing sessions.
It was understanding the person doing them.
That’s why I coach the person, not just the plan
Two athletes can be training for exactly the same race and need completely different coaching.
One might need help learning to slow down. Another needs confidence to push harder.
One needs reassurance that missing a session won’t ruin everything. Another needs somebody to ask why they’re repeatedly missing it.
Sometimes the numbers tell us something useful. Sometimes the conversation underneath the numbers tells us far more.
That’s why my coaching has evolved to look beyond swim, bike and run.
We talk about sleep, recovery, nutrition, stress, strength, confidence and what’s happening outside training. We look at patterns. We ask questions. We reflect on what happened rather than immediately labelling a session good or bad.
And I’ll explain why we’re doing something rather than expecting you to blindly follow instructions.
Because I don’t want athletes who need me to make every decision forever.
I want to help you become confident enough, knowledgeable enough and self-aware enough to make better decisions for yourself.
Fifteen years later, I’m still learning too
My own story with sport hasn’t followed the neat trajectory I might once have imagined.
Years after hip problems changed my racing, I eventually had a hip replacement.
What comes next for me as an athlete?
I genuinely don’t know yet.
Maybe there will be races and big challenges again. Maybe what I want from sport will turn out to be completely different.
And I’m actually okay with that.
Because one of the biggest things endurance sport has taught me is that we don’t have to know the ending before we start the next chapter.
Our bodies change. Our lives change. Our goals change.
That doesn’t mean the journey is over.
It just means we work out what matters now.
The qualifications bit
Yes, there is some paperwork behind all this too. 😂
I’m a British Triathlon Level 3 High Performance Coach, also qualified in Biomechanics Screening, Sports Therapy, Strength and Conditioning, and a TrainingPeaks Level 2 Certified Coach, with more than 30 years’ experience in the fitness industry.
I’ve also been the athlete who had no bloody idea what she was doing.
And I think both matter.
Qualifications give me knowledge and tools. Years of coaching give me experience.
But being on the other side of it has given me something else: an understanding of how vulnerable it can feel to try something you’re not yet very good at, how much confidence can change what you’re capable of, and how frustrating it is when your body or your life refuses to follow the plan.
That’s the coach I try to bring to every athlete I work with.
You don’t have to be a certain kind of athlete to belong here
You don’t need to be fast.
You don’t need to have done an Ironman.
You don’t even need to feel particularly confident calling yourself an athlete yet.
You can arrive with your first triathlon entry wondering what on earth you’ve done, or with years of racing behind you and a completely new challenge ahead.
What matters to me is that you’re curious, willing to learn and prepared to be part of the process.
Because the finish line matters.
But the person you become on the way there can matter even more.