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As part of our new interview series, we are shedding light on some amazing women who are seemingly ‘normal’ but lead super impressive, big lives!
Amy Bezant lives in the beautiful French alpine town of Morzine. Morzine is perhaps known first and foremost as a snowboarder’s mecca. Close to Geneva, Morzine is in the huge ski area of the Portes du Soleil which boasts slopes to keep you skiing for miles across the French/ Swiss border.
Lesser known is that Morzine is also incredible in the Summer, it is home to some amazingly green hikes, famous road cycles, beautiful lakes, and some of Europe’s best mountain biking, Morzine is a sports addicts dream! Amy is a Triathlete and Morzine offers some of Europe's most scenic training grounds.
So I work just a normal admin job, operations and admin for a transfer company in the office called Ski Lifts!
So there is a local triathlon group in Morzine called Buzz Performance and they decided to put on a local sprint distance triathlon in the area. I was already really into cycling and running anyway and so I just thought I would give it a go and absolutely loved it and just went full force into everything triathlon from there!
So when I was in my late teens I was really into rowing to the point where I would train numerous times a week, so I have always done that through my teenage years and then partying and life and everything else took over in my twenties. I gradually started getting back into it when I was living in Queenstown and I signed up for a half marathon again and started getting into running again and then through the years through my mid to late twenties I started to pick back up into those sports. I think now because it was embedded in me from when I was younger, I think that is what made me want to get back into that training regime because I actually really love the training aspect of it.
Yes, definitely I like a training program where I am more than happy to exercise 6/7 days a week and especially when there is a race at the end of it! I am really driven towards an event and I think that 100% comes from my rowing days of being really strict and having a good group of people to train with!
We are so lucky here to have Amelia from Buzz who has got such amazing credibility in the triathlon world! She is amazing! Amelia and her husband Joe, run Buzz Performance and Buzz Triathlon is one of their events. All year round there is a group of triathletes in Morzine varying of all ages and abilities to train with as Buzz put on all sorts of fitness classes and spin sessions in the Winter, and then in the Summer that becomes a triathlon-specific club where we go and do lake swims and rides together. Running, I tend to do on my own but there are obviously a lot of really keen runners in Morzine so I would say that the triathlon scene here in Morzine is awesome, we are so fortunate to have such a great group of humans who do it all together!
It is just amazing! It's such a great playground! You can run, cycle, mountain bike, swim, hike. We have the lakes, the trails the mountain bike tracks and famous road cycling cols. There is always something to do! It’s such a great holiday destination but to be able to live here especially as it does function all year round, not just for its winter sports it makes it even more appealing!
I love it all as one but I would say my strongest is running. I love the fact that with running you can walk out your front door with just a pair of trainers and just go do it! swimming for me I have enjoyed more and more because I was such a weak swimmer and so I get a lot from the swimming side of it because I have seen such a big improvement since I started training with Buzz and Amelia - she is such a great swimming coach! Yeah, so running is the one I consistently do most! Road biking I do love but there is always mountain biking which for me always plays the trump card!
The IronMan I have signed up for is in Nice which is actually really hilly so where I have to do 2000m worth of climbing within the 180km, here in Morzine I could go and do 4000m in a day if I really wanted to, so it's such a good spot to be in for training on the bike. Then for the running, because we are at a slight altitude when I go down to Nice at sea level just 1000m it does help, so if I am training on slight hills here that should hopefully only help my training for down on the flats by the sea!
I think just go for it! You don't need to have the best bit of kit. When I did my first triathlon I was there on a cold wet day trying to pull on my tight top and I didn’t have any of the kit and there were all these people in the water with their wetsuits and I was just there in my little shorts and a sports bra so it really doesn’t matter - just get involved! Borrow a bike, you have trainers to go running and you can swim in your local pool. If you are thinking about it just go for it and you can always learn so much from other people! If you can, something that helped me was finding a crew like Buzz and a support system. I was really lucky to have a friend Beth who is an insane swimmer and who was also living out here in Morzine who was amazing at helping me get out into the open water as open water swimming can be really intimidating and it’s quite scary when you can’t see what's underneath you! So yeah, just train with other people who are like-minded regardless of how fast they are, etc because you will always have that common ground!
Well, I guess my wetsuit, my bike, and my trainers! Having a wetsuit for me as a weaker swimmer is really great as it adds buoyancy in the water which really helps! So if you are getting into it and you want to start adding in some kit it is definitely a good investment as they really do give you more confidence in the water.
Liv is a really great brand. I have a Liv road bike and I really like everything they promote about their female ambassadors and what they advertise and promote for women’s sport is awesome. Their road cycling kit is really good and they have got a lot of really amazing brand ambassadors that you can relate to! Kandesent is also an amazing brand for women’s specific road cycling kit! I feel like there is a lot of stuff out there for men/ it seems quite a male-dominated industry so it’s great to have those female-only brands in the market. Their kit is super nice and really well made!
For triathlon Lucy Charles is amazing! She is one of the top British female triathletes and she actually hadn’t been in the sport that long and is just phenomenal. She used to be a swimmer and was going for the Olympics where there were only two spots and she didn’t get the spot so she then started to get into triathlon and now she is on the top! She is unreal! Sophie Radcliffe from Challenge Sophie is also a great person to follow. I feel like there are a lot of social media influencers that perhaps don’t send out the best message to girls or women, whereas I feel that Sophie is really channeled. She has done some amazing projects like TrailBlazers -getting young people into sport and she has an awesome bag of endurance events behind her, she is super inspiring! When I did the cycle to Paris on the London to Paris 24 with Sophie she was super lovely and you can just tell she is super stoked on getting other people into it!
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