Welcome to the blog!

Hello everyone, and a warm welcome to Planting Performance. I’m Dan Soltys: vegan cyclist and runner on a journey to see what I can achieve in endurance sports with nothing more than hard work and conscious eating.

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A bit of background…

Brought up in Penarth, just outside Cardiff, I am the first to admit that I was never really top of the class in sports whilst I was at school. Despite this, I did love sports. And I tried a bit of everything – Rugby, Football, Tennis, even Ice Hockey – but the fire inside me for endurance sports was (unfortunately) never lit.

This all changed when I went off to Uni, and started working as a Deliveroo rider in my spare time to make some beer money. I very (very) quickly fell in love with cycling. And that beer money was getting spent on, not beer, but new cycling kit or faster tyres! Such was my take to the sport, I truly felt like I had filled a hole inside of me for a sporting passion. Even at the age of 20, I remember feeling at the time “If only I had discovered this earlier!”. To this day I still have some regret for that!

I went on to join a club, trained with some structure, and started racing bikes.

After finishing up at Uni, I joined the Royal Navy and started at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. With no access to my bike, or even a stationary bike to train on, I turned to running to try and maintain the fitness that I had built over the past couple of years in the saddle. More than that though, with time I started to enjoy running… and accidentally got quite good at it.

A year on from that, and now through officer training and onto a slightly more relaxed lifestyle training as a pilot, my job has become an asset to my sporting ambitions. The military has a rich history of achievement in sports, and I am fortunate enough to be able to commit some time from my working week towards training and racing.

Racing?

Once I had developed a passion for cycling, and started training properly, racing felt like a natural progression. Through the 2017 season I was a regular fixture on the start list at local road races and criteriums, and managed some solid results without any standout performances. In 2018, perhaps frustrated by my lack of an elusive win, I took more of a ‘just ride’ approach, while remaining fitter than ever and still competitive with my riding buddies on the local climbs. All good fun, but I am a crazy competitive 23 year old that, deep down, needs to race!

With the Navy perhaps realising my running talent before I had, I was taken along to the local cross-country series races within weeks of joining. And to my surprise, I was competitive in these races (even with minimal running training…). I ended up winning the series and later the 2019 Royal Navy championships in the u23 category.

This summer (2019), I decided to try and fuse my love for cycling and my newfound running ability by racing Triathlons. I gave it a good go, and raced fairly strongly at Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire and the Welsh half-distance championships. Triathlons are a lot of fun. There is no doubt about that. But, and I have mentioned it before, I am an immensely competitive 23 year old. And there was one thing stopping me being truly competitive in Triathlon: Swimming. For whatever reason, I neither enjoy swimming nor am I any good at it – or perhaps the two go hand in hand.

So what next? The direction to take my 2020 season has been the focus of much debate for me this Autumn. Cycling, Running or Tri’s..? Surely Duathlon?

More than anything, I love the process of training. And I love turning up on race day ready to race, and able to do so competitively. My logical thinking brain (I studied physics after all) seems to have rejected the idea that you can turn up to a bike race 100% fit and ready, yet still have luck against you on the day. As for Triathlon, I think it’s a real struggle to put the hours in training in a discipline that you simply don’t get on with. With that in mind, the plan for 2020 is to go as all-in as possible on running, while still fulfilling my appetite for cycling and training on the bike.

I have a few goals for the year, but more on that soon.

Why Vegan?

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I get this question asked more than any other question when people find out that I am vegan. I usually have a similar response. Something like this:

“I adopted a plant-based diet for health and to seek optimum performance in sport – but the environment and the animals reassured me that I had made the right call.”

But also, simply because I like it. My life has changed massively for the better since adopting a vegan diet. It’s my belief that much of this is down to making the connection between what we put in our mouths and the impact we can have on the world.

Since adopting a whole food plant-based diet, I have become a bit of a nutrition geek and have found myself getting increasingly passionate about the subject. Swatting up on the latest studies has become a pastime – anything that can help me not only live a healthier life, but also get that competitive edge in sport.

So that’s why. 3 years eating plants and I will never be going back!

So…

That’s me! I suggest you follow along the Planting Performance blog for much more in the way of tips, advice and learnings – as well as my own journey – to help grow a community of like-minded athletes!