Before Anna Turvey decided to train for an amateur triathlon five years ago she didn’t even think she was all that sporty.
Fast forward to July 2014, and the very same person is being cheered on by thousands in a packed-out Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome as she represents Scotland at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
It was quite a transformation for the Sunderland-born optometrist and cyclist, who rides for Scotland by virtue of her Glasgow-born mother. She studied optometry at City University before completing her pre-reg at Dollond and Atchison, working in an independent and moving into roles at Specsavers and Tesco Opticians in the North East.
Turvey has since been appointed clinical services manager at Boots Opticians, while still making her mark on the international road race circuit. She competes for the Pearl Izumi Sports Tours International team alongside household names in women’s cycling including Katie Archibald and Dame Sarah Storey.
Indeed, Turvey is fast building a reputation of her own within two very different professions.
She tells Optician: ‘I’m not a professional cyclist even though I’ve competed at a very high level. I’m a professional optometrist so it’s never really changed whereby I’d have to compromise my work. I never tell people but everyone knows [about her cycling achievements]. I go to meetings with people I have never met and they ask how my cycling is going.’
As mentioned, Turvey initially dipped her toe into the water of endurance sport through triathlon events. ‘At that point I wasn’t really doing anything sporty,’ she says. ‘I just got this idea in my head I was going to do it. It wasn’t something I necessarily thought I’d continue to do, just more of a challenge.’
She started training that Christmas, five months ahead of the race in May, by swimming at the gym and joining a local running club. It soon became clear that while Turvey certainly wasn’t ‘in the wrong job’ as an optometrist, she was also capable of fulfilling another more athletic one.
‘The first triathlon I did was a swimming pool leg because it’s a bit less intimidating than swimming in open water. I really enjoyed it and ended up coming second in my first one,’ Turvey says. Evidently, she was a fast learner and before too long was entering more elite level triathlon events. Having competed in the British National Championships, Turvey qualified for team GB for the World Championships in Australia, describing it as ‘an unexpected opportunity’. Although she ‘finished nowhere’ this whetted her appetite to compete at the highest level.
Turvey found her first coach through a Northumbria University study appeal looking for women who could run 10km in under 40 minutes, and soon realised she was going to have to put more hours in.
‘The first thing he said to me was that I hadn’t really been training much at all and it wasn’t really enough, so I gradually started doing more. He helped me structure my training and do a bit more,’ she says.
‘I think even my own coaches underestimated what I’d be able to do. You get a lot of amateur sports people who have done quite a lot for a long time and I don’t know if people realised how little I’d done, how little I was doing or the potential I had.’
Getting in the zone
[CaptionComponent="1408"]What Turvey went onto achieve is partly attributed to having the right frame of mind.
She says: ‘No matter what level I reached I thought just do as well as you can for you. You have to do your best and you can’t control other people’s perceptions of you. When you’re talking about winning certain races or titles or medals that’s what it comes down to. All you can do is your best and if I feel like I’ve had a really great race for me then that feels champion. Similarly if I win a race but the performance feels awful I’ll be a bit disappointed.’
Despite Turvey’s achievements on the bike, to begin with her main strength was the running leg of the triathlon.
She says: ‘My running was very good but swimming is very difficult to get better at if you haven’t swam as a child, which I didn’t. I knew even if I trained 30 hours a week I’d never be a success so started to think maybe cycling was the easiest gain, and up to that point I was riding around on my bike. I thought I wonder if there’s something there.
‘I then looked into getting some cycling coaching specifically, because Bill [her coach] helped me with a bit of instruction on the training side but it wasn’t specific detail it was more just on how much you need to do with a bit of detail round the running session. But it wasn’t really what I would now call proper training – it was more like a recreational activity to go for a little bike ride. So I wondered whether I could close that gap between myself and the medals by working on the bike.’
Indeed, more focused cycle training led Turvey to victories in the national duathlon championships and before long cycling became her main focus.
‘There was a really big improvement and it started to become obvious I was really, really good at the bike, especially when you think of how little I had done,’ she says.
Turvey’s focus on cycling took her to the British National Time Trial Championships, where she finished second in the 25- and 50-mile distances. When the British Elite National Championships came around in 2013, Turvey was competing against famous cyclists and Olympic champions including Joanna Rowsell, Laura Trott, Dani King and Lizzie Armitstead.
‘All the big names were there,’ she says. ‘I came eighth behind all these people and I thought this is interesting. I don’t suppose normal people ever get the chance to race against Olympic champions but you never know – and these people are not just the best in Britain they’re the best in the world. So I started to think maybe I did have some potential.’
This was also the moment Turvey realised she’d technically made the selection criteria for the Scotland’s Commonwealth Games team.
Incredibly, prior to this and less than a year before the Games began, she had never even tried riding at a velodrome.
‘I went in [to the velodrome] and had a go and remember thinking it was much steeper than it looked on the TV. It was scary and I’d never rode a fixed wheel bike either. So I had a little go and was completely terrified but overall it was fun.’
Despite the initial trepidation, Turvey soon took to the cut and thrust of the velodrome and eventually finished 12th in the Women’s 3,000m Individual Pursuit during the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. She also competed in the Women’s Individual Time Trial, finishing ninth.
Work hard, train hard
Reaching elite standards on the road and track while still working as an optometrist was no easy task for Turvey. In order to fit more time in for training she decided to work as a locum.
‘I would drive up to Glasgow from Newcastle on a Thursday morning and train at the velodrome on the Thursday afternoon, stay at a hotel, then train again on the Friday before driving home,’ she says. ‘In women’s cycling it’s almost impossible to have it as a job unless you’re lottery funded.’
Nevertheless, finding a head office role with Boots seems to have provided the balance Turvey needs to develop both careers.
She says: ‘I absolutely love working here [at Boots]. The people are so lovely. My boss is great and they’re really interested in what I do. I absolutely love it so far. I don’t allow my cycling training to impact on my job but I’m sure if something did come up then they would support me, but I wouldn’t have that expectation.’
Turvey trains around 12 hours per week, and can be found on her ‘Turbotrainer’ in the garage during winter months as she looks to keep up with rivals on the global circuit, who often have the luxury of heading out to warm weather training camps.
‘When the summer comes it’s easier because you can go for a ride after work and do things at the weekend,’ she says. ‘It’s not freezing and you’re not being battered by the wind and the rain.’
Combining work within optics and training for cycle events does not leave much spare time. ‘I never watch television, let’s put it like that,’ adds Turvey. Nevertheless, she is getting a fair return for the investment of time.
‘The highlight of my optometry career so far is my current job, because I love the people and I love my boss and I’m getting to do new things. I like a challenge and so if I get asked to do a certain project I learn how to do it. That’s part of my current role,’ she says.
Moreover, the combination of cycling and optometry fits well in a profession widely enthused by the sport, with many in optics setting their own personal challenges on the saddle – often for charity.
‘Cycling has really grown in popularity,’ adds Turvey. ‘Three years ago I went to my local cycling club and there was no one in there at all and it was really old fashioned. But in the past few years I’ve noticed more women getting on bikes and cycling in general growing in popularity. This is probably because Britain is really good at it.
‘Even before London as a nation we’ve been pretty good at getting results in cycling competitions. I think it’s just generally grown in popularity. The way somebody said it to me was in the same way people were doing them on the golf course, now they are doing them on a bike.’
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