Preparing for the Transat Café L’Or: An interview with Conrad Colman
The iconic Transat Café L’Or (formerly the Transat Jacques Vabre) is renowned as one of the most demanding double-handed transatlantic races on the calendar, testing crews from Le Havre, France, to Martinique, the Caribbean.
This year seasoned offshore skipper Conrad Colman is tackling the challenge with a truly unconventional co-skipper: Mathieu, one of the world’s elite ultra-trail runners and a complete novice sailor.
Their partnership is built on the radical philosophy of “equity of discomfort.” Mathieu faces the sailing challenge of converting his endurance into IMOCA strength, while Colman must transition after the race to run a gruelling Trans Martinique trail with an injured knee.
We sat down with Conrad to discuss the inspiration for this unique duo, the specific training plan for his novice partner, and the strategy they’ll use to push their collective physical fitness to the limit across the Atlantic.
What inspired the decision to team up with Mathieu for this race, and how do you think your different backgrounds will complement each other?
The opportunity came from the fact that we’re starting a new four-year cycle. The year following the Vendée Globe allows for a little bit more flexibility than two years ago, when I last did this double-handed race in my lead-up to the Globe. Because the big objective has already been achieved, the year following the Vendée means that we can have a little bit more fun and bring in some unconventional inspiration, like that of Mathieu.
He was at the start of the Vendée Globe as a guest of the project and was talking with other guests of the team who had done some sailing on their race boat. He discovered that there have been several examples of other notable sports people, most notably Thomas Pesquet, the French astronaut who was in the ISS for a while, who did a transat delivery on the boat. Mathieu was talking to these guys and said, “Oh, well, if there’s ever an occasion to join the boat for some kind of adventure, then I would certainly be keen.” A member of my commercial team was standing next to him when he said that. Even during the Vendée Globe, we then put together a video call with Mathieu and his team to sound it out. Pretty quickly, we decided to get together and try this unconventional collaboration.
How will our different backgrounds complement each other? The big challenge is that our project has been put together in such a way that each one of us will be outside of our comfort zones in the coming months. Mathieu has said that he is sensitive to seasickness, and so that’s going to be a big challenge for him, as well as literally learning the ropes and getting used to sailing on such a big and powerful boat offshore. This is completely new for him.
Then for me, once we get to Martinique, I will have to join him in his area of expertise, and we will run across Martinique once we get there. So, I will learn from him in terms of his skills in physical preparation, and he will learn everything related to sailing from me.
What are the key challenges you anticipate, especially with a co-skipper who is new to offshore racing?
Well, plenty actually. Mathieu has never been offshore and only sailed very briefly on IMOCA, where he was quite seasick. I see the preparation in three different levels.
First, he has had to learn about himself and life at sea, to the point that he feels comfortable sort of in his sea boots instead of in his running shoes, so that he can survive and feel comfortable at sea.
Step two is learning about the boat itself, so that he can contribute to our collective security. This means getting to the point where he can stand watch, avoid collisions with other vessels, and identify which clouds are going to be challenging.
Step three is contribution to performance. My job as a coach and as a facilitator in this world is to not put the cart in front of the horse and really slow things down for him. This way, we have been able to work our way up that ladder of developing his sea legs, ensuring security, and then finally achieving performance. So, it’s life at sea first, and then we start racing.
What specific skills from Mathieu’s ultra-trail experience do you believe will be most valuable?
The key challenge is that he is a lower-body athlete with a huge cardiovascular engine. He’s one of the top talents in his discipline in the world, which was recently justified by his second-place finish in the Hardrock 100-mile ultra-marathon in America. The big challenge is that he is not used to working in such a way with his arms.
I’ve also evolved over the course of my career; I used to be a runner and a cyclist. I have gone through this metamorphosis already, transitioning from a lower-body athlete into an upper-body one. Sailing requires a shorter, much more intense, explosive nature than endurance sports.
Therefore, a big challenge has been teaching him how to learn to put the power down in the coffee grinder and contribute to the manoeuvres.
However, I have no doubts about his ability to be fleet-footed and able-bodied on board the boat. He has superior proprioception and a great sense of himself, so the ability to work on the sloping deck shouldn’t be a problem.
You’ve described this adventure as a new type of challenge where you’re showing Mathieu the ropes on pretty much everything. What aspects of mentoring an athlete have you found most rewarding and most challenging?
What is exciting is to engage with somebody who is at the very top of their sport and then try to benefit from that experience – to learn about physical preparation and recovery from him to the degree that I can.
I was previously not only a racing coach but also a sailing coach, teaching the RYA syllabus at UKSA and a number of other sailing schools on the south coast of England. For me, it’s always incredibly satisfying to bring people from a novice level up to a higher performing version of themselves. I want to share the love of the ocean waves and make people feel at ease in a discipline that I clearly find passionate.
So, I look forward to easing his entry into the sport. He is somebody who’s a native of the seas, even if he’s not a sailor, as he has long experience as a scuba diver and free diver. My goal is to help him discover what’s on top of the waves instead of just underneath it.
What has been your approach for teaching an elite athlete from a non-sailing background, and what key skills for him to learn?
First, getting him to the point where he feels comfortable.
Secondly, contributing to our security, because him doing so will allow me to rest. I’m not under any illusions that I can get him to the point where he’s an elite ocean racer in just a couple of weeks of training; that is not realistic. However, by upskilling him to the point that I can rest, that allows me to be more lucid and give more of myself. That will be the key difference between solo sailing and double-handed sailing.
More concretely, he has had learn how to deal with a heavily loaded sheet – with a couple of tons of load in the J-2 sheet, for example, and how to conduct himself safely on board. Learning how to contribute effectively in the manoeuvres. If we are able to work together in the manoeuvres and drop and hoist the sails more efficiently and effectively than I can do by myself in solo mode, then we’ll be truly exploiting the potential of the boat and of our partnership together.
Beyond the Transat, you will be taking on a trail run when you arrive in Martinique. How do you prepare for such a rapid transition from an ocean race to a demanding run?
Beyond the Café L’Or, we’re taking on a long trail run in Martinique. Running a similar route to the gruelling Trans Martinique race (which can be over 100km). At the moment, I’m still navigating whether we do the event itself or whether we run across the island in a more casual sense, without the structure of the official event.
The goal, which Mathieu and I both agree on, is that the running component has to be as significant a challenge for me as the sailing part is for him. The idea is that we go into this with an equity of discomfort and learning opportunities. The final details of this still remain to be seen.
The added challenge is that I hurt the meniscus of my right knee during the Vendée Globe and have not yet, been able to fully recover and running training has been slower. So, in many ways, I have started from zero as a runner, much in the same way that Mathieu is starting from zero as a sailor.
The preparation has been challenging because I lost a lot of muscle mass in my legs during the Vendée Globe. Even though we’re looking at a race that’s going to be 11 to 14 days rather than the 85 days of the Globe, our physical form will still diminish significantly during this time at sea.
We’re going to try and do some squats and some lower leg exercises during the race, but obviously the balance there is that we’re there to race the boat as effectively and efficiently as possible. We don’t want to tire ourselves out by doing “CrossFit across the Atlantic” when our job is to be pulling on sheets and hoisting spinnakers. That will remain a challenge. The ultimate goal is to arrive in Martinique without having lost lower body muscle mass and hopefully be ready to run again as soon as we’re fully recovered from our fatigue.
What part of the TransMartinique challenge are you most looking forward to, and what will be the biggest challenge after weeks at sea?
The biggest challenge will be re-activating the body after being cooped up on a small boat.
The part of the Martinique challenge that I’m most looking forward to is running in the mountains. I lived in Colorado for four years and really enjoyed having significant—not just hills—but mountains. I miss that in my current home in Brittany, so that part is really exciting to me.
However, it’s also quite terrifying, to be fair, because Mathieu has said that the racecourse is one of the most challenging that he’s ever done, and clearly, he’s an expert in this discipline. He said he’s been confronted with mud up to his knees and rocky mountains that are like walls. This is far from your standard ultramarathon.
Do you have a strategy for the races, when it comes to managing energy, sleep, and performance?
One of the unique challenges of the Café, is that it’s sort of front-loaded in terms of its difficulty. You need to come out of Le Havre and work your way down the Channel. That first night – punching tide and ducking out of the rocks – is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the race, because we will still be getting into our stride and working together. He will potentially be presented with seasickness, and the end of October in the English Channel is a challenging place to sail.
Once you finally make it across Biscay, around the corner of Finistère, and start heading down the Portuguese coast, the pressure comes off to some degree. You still need to be incredibly attentive in surveillance and making sure that we don’t have any risks of collision, but at least the dangers of the race and the challenges of the Channel and the shipping traffic are significantly reduced.
At that point, it becomes a lot more of a strategic race: who is willing to outwork the others? You have to be willing to gybe on every shift. I think that is one of the advantages that Mathieu and I will have: we’re both incredibly physically fit and really motivated, and we’re there to push each other and derive as much potential as we possibly can out of our duo.
I’m going to be working with Mathieu to gybe on every shift and really work ourselves hard to overcome any of the potential negatives of sailing with a novice on this kind of challenge. I will, in many ways, be the brains trust to figure out where and what we do, and then Mathieu will be there to provide the horsepower and the motivation to help drive us along. I look forward to developing this partnership as the weeks of training come together, and we’ll keep you posted on how it all comes together. Thanks.