So, I went for a swim in the Fastlane.  Main set as follows:

• Ladder: 4 min, 3 min, 2 min, 1 min (:30 RI) — moderately easy
• 4 x 1 min (:30 RI) – mod hard
• 4 x 30 sec (:30 RI) -  hard

I was not aware of this until the show, but in 2009, the United Nations designated Stevie as a Messenger of Peace.  (According to Wikipedia, “United Nations Messenger of Peace is a title bestowed by the United Nations to “distinguished individuals, carefully selected from the fields of art, music, literature and sports, who have agreed to help focus worldwide attention on the work of the United Nations.’”)  Although he bordered on being downright preachy, Stevie did his job in delivering the message of peace.

Stevie Wonder advised the audience as follows:

Every day when you wake up, make this your mantra:  Today, I will put my best love forward.

I think there is a nugget here for all those athletes striving to be placid.  Of course, it goes without saying that the world would be a better, more peaceful and placid place if everyone awoke each morning and put his or her “best love” forward.   So let’s all do that and make the world a better place, okay?

And now let’s apply this concept to something more trivial in life:  your training.   For every workout, what would happen if you were to commit to putting your best foot forward?  By this I mean putting 100% of focus and effort on that single workout, like there is nothing else of any importance for that 20 min or 2 hours or however long that workout will last.

If you put your best love forward, and your best foot forward, then I have no doubt you will be both Placid and an Athlete. 

So how about something way simpler, costing only pennies to implement?  Literally.  Gather up a handful of pennies and use those as counters.  Start with a pile of unused pennies, and every time you complete a round, move a penny to the “completed round” stack.  Now, granted, this is not as useful when you need to complete a lot of swim laps without stopping, but most swim workouts involve some sort of interval, so you can count by intervals, whether that’s a penny for every 50 yards or 200 yards or whatever.  For longer intervals (e.g., 500 yards or more), you may have to resort to an additional mechanism to count laps within the interval, but hopefully the penny trick will help keeping track of rounds overall.

If anyone out there has any other tips like this one, please leave a comment!

Any of you who knows me or has followed my blog for awhile knows that I am a big proponent of strength training, in addition to swim/bike/run, but not everyone shares this same passion for cross-training. A lot of athletes and coaches are in this camp:  “to get better at swim/bike/run, you need to train swim/bike/run, and any time spent doing any other cross-training takes away from that specialized training.”  I think that is true, to a point.  However, my own experience is that strength training builds a better foundation for sport specific training, preventing injuries and allowing for better performance overall.   Additionally, most of the folks I coach are interested primarily in overall fitness, which puts them in a different situation than a professional triathlete, for example.  (And perhaps I need to clarify what I mean by “strength training.”  I do not simply mean training for strength, but rather training for balance, strength, power, and flexibility.)

Gaining popularity is CrossFit (CF), which takes the model of “just train in your sport and nothing else” and turns it on its head.  As they state in the CrossFit Training Guide, “CrossFit is not a specialized fitness program but a deliberate attempt to optimize physical competence in each of ten recognized fitness domains.” (See CrossFit Training Guide, p. 6)  The crossfitters train in short, intense bouts (3 days on, one day off or 5 days on, 2 days off) in these ten fitness domains: cardio-respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordnation, agility, balance and accuracy.  However, the longest run you might see as a CrossFit workout is a 5k run, which for us endurance types, just isn’t that much.  Hence those in Camp 1 (swim/bike/run only) tend to be a bit dismissive of the CrossFit way of training. (CrossFit also does not endear itself to the triathlon community when they scoff at the fact that Outside Magazine called Mark Allen, 6-time Ironman World Champion, the “fittest man on earth.” (See CrossFit Training Guide, p. 16))

The latest flavor of CrossFit, which has been getting quite a bit of attention, is CrossFit Endurance (CFE), which uses CrossFit training principles and modifies them to apply to single sport and multisport endurance athletes.  CrossFit Endurance seems directed specifically at triathletes, seeming to recognize that there is a technical element to triathlon.  In other words, it recognizes that you do actually have to swim, bike, and run to be proficient at triathlon.  As with the main CrossFit website, Crossfitendurance.com specifies Workouts of the Day (“WODs”) which train many of the fitness domains listed above.  For those who need additional strength work, they add a strength workout a few times a week, and then there is also a specified “endurance WOD” to be done in either swim, bike, or run. They put into the mix short intervals, long intervals, and “stamina” workouts (which are more like a “tempo” workout, up to 90 minutes max). There is no “long, slow distance” (LSD) aerobic training.

Disclaimer here:  I am not certified in CrossFit or CrossFit Endurance, although I have 1) studied it, including reading the Training Guide used for Level I Certification, the CrossFit Journal, and the CrossFit Endurance website, and 2) trained at a CrossFit “box” with a CrossFit Level I certified trainer.  Based on my study of the CrossFit Endurance website, it looks to me that a typical week for a triathlete following their program would be something like this:

• Mon: Strength + CF + Swim short intervals
• Tues: Strength+ CF + Run Short Intervals
• Wed: Strength+ CF + Bike Short Intervals
• Thurs: optional CF + swim Long intervals
• Friday: optional CF or complete rest day (no endurance WOD)
• Sat or Sun: Bike or Run Tempo/Time Trial (Stamina WOD) — Do just one tempo/time trial WOD per week on an off day from CF, and take the other weekend day off completely.

I do not really have anything against this program, except that I like to swim/bike/run more than twice a week, and I’m not quite ready to give up completely on aerobic workouts.  I also think that a lot of people who jump into this kind of program without really easing in very (very!) carefully are likely to get injured in a short amount of time because it is very intense. Adequate recovery will be the biggest obstacle to success. Another big problem is the time factor.  Although the workouts are short, relatively speaking, the CFE program nevertheless requires two-a-days on most days, and for a lot of working folks with families, it is just too much to ask.

Still, it’s a program that has some appeal, at least to me. I have been thinking for some time now that there should be some optimal balance between S/B/R and cross-training, and I feel like CFE is a step in that direction, although it may be weighted too much toward the CF side, and perhaps there is still a sweet spot to be reached.   It may be just a matter of where you are coming from. If you are a triathlete first, CFE may have too much of an emphasis on CF, but if you are coming from CF and want to do a triathlon, it may be just the ticket.  In my case, I was a triathlete first, and did strength training second.  First, my strength training was pretty standard stuff.  Then I found Hyperfitness by Sean Burch, which is a great training book — one of my personal favorites.  That program is very similar to CF, but without olympic lifts.  The dynamic strength and power movements (and movement combinations) are frankly way more interesting than just getting on a machine and pumping out 3 sets of 10 reps.  I discovered CF later, but still didn’t follow the CF program the way it was designed. I just did my regular tri training and then threw in 2-3 crossfit-style workouts as a bonus.

Given that I enjoy CF-style workouts as a supplement to my training, I have been interested in designing my own program closer to the CFE model, just to see how it goes.  My next event is a half-marathon, about 2 months away.  Theoretically, I suppose that under the CFE program I should train just for running as my one endurance sport, but I am a triathlete first and foremost, so I am continuing to train in all 3 disciplines plus CF/Strength.  My plan differs from the CFE template in that I still include an LSD workout, and I have an optional technique swim on my “off” day.  Another key difference in my plan versus CFE is that I am using periodization for my long runs, so within my overall plan, I have 4-week macrocycles that include 3 weeks of build with 1 week of recovery.  My weekly plan for the next couple of months looks something like this:

• Mon AM: tempo run ~45 minutes (but “tempo” portion of it is only 15-20 min in the middle of the run)
• Tues AM: swim short intervals
• Tues PM: Strength + CF
• Wed AM: CF
• Wed PM: run short intervals at the track
• Thurs AM: Strength + CF
• Thurs PM: Bike short intervals (on a trainer in the garage)
• Friday:  Off or technique swim (drills plus easy swimming)
• Sat: Strength + Swim Long Intervals
• Sun: Long Bike, Long Run, or Brick (Bike/Run) — I am alternating emphasis on bike versus run each week to help with recovery, avoiding injury

All of the CF/Strength training is done in my garage gym.  I do not necessarily use the WODs on the CrossFit mainsite or the CrossFit Endurance website, although I do use CrossFit WODs and other CF-style workouts.  I am using some of the workouts posted on the CFE website for short and long interval training (although the pool workouts I have to convert to time workouts rather than yardage workouts because I use an endless pool instead of a lap pool).

As of this weekend, I am finishing up week 4 of the plan (the first of 3 macrocycles).  So far, it is going okay, although I have had to shuffle things around a bit with the extreme heat. For example, I simply cannot do track workouts on Wednesday evenings right now when it is >100 degrees.  Just wouldn’t be prudent. So I’ve been moving those to Thurs AM.  I have had some days in which I have felt like I was not recovered enough, and this usually is most evident in a run interval workout, when it becomes difficult to hit my intervals.  In some cases, I have skipped a workout to get some extra recovery, but for the most part I have hit my workouts as programmed.

The ultimate question will be how the half-marathon goes, but I’ll give more updates as the experiment progresses.

We encountered a minor catastrophe after we had already made it to NH (or at least we were close, perhaps still in MA).  (Cue Holiday Road again.) On I-495, at approximately the Mile 78 marker, there was a series of major dips in the road (boom, boom, and boom!) at which point I looked in the rear view mirror to see one of the bikes’ front wheels bounce off of the bike and off to the side of the road. After dropping the requisite F-bomb, I quickly pulled over and looked for it, but it was nowhere to be found and frankly it was too dangerous for me to be looking for it, so I quickly abandoned the attempt. (Luckily we both race 700c wheels and were racing different days, so on race weekend we just took turns using the surviving wheel and figured we would worry about replacement when we got back to Austin.)

Ahhh, New Hampshire.  Of course the weather was heavenly for us Texans escaping the inferno of a summer we’ve been having.  Waterville Valley is a ski resort area in the White Mountain National Forest, and so the temperatures were even a bit cooler up there in the higher elevations (and yet the elevation was not high enough to cause any trouble for us sea-level dwellers, thankfully).  The lows were in the upper 50s (that’s downright chilly for July from my perspective) and the highs were in the 70s.  Like I said: Heaven.  I was actually concerned about it being too cool, so I had packed arm warmers and a long sleeved shirt just in case I needed it on race day.

The triathlon was not just one event, but a whole weekend of activities: the Black Fly Triathlon Festival.  On Friday night, there was a 4-mile cycling time trial.  On Saturday, there was an “international distance” race in the morning, a kids’ tri, and a 5k run.  Finally, on Sunday, there was a sprint tri.  There was an additional category for those who choose to compete in the bike time trial and both triathlons:  the “Lord of the Flies!”  Both of the triathlons had a quarter-mile swim due to the small size of the pond, which was situated at the center of the resort’s Town Square.  Also because of the small venue, the swims were done as time trial starts, at 3-second intervals, rather than having mass wave starts.  The water was about 68 deg, so wetsuit-legal.  The international distance bike route was about 21 miles and the sprint distance was about 15.  Both routes involved bombing down the mountain road toward the nearest town, and then having to climb back up.  The international run course was 5 miles, with the sprint 3 miles; both of these runs were on roads in the ski resort, mostly flat or rolling, but with a couple of steep hills thrown in for good measure.

One of the aspects of this race that I really liked was how family friendly the event was.  I met several families who were taking turns racing, one parent on one day, and then the other on another day, and their child in the kids’ race.  There were also couples in which one was doing Lord of the Flies, and the other was doing his or her very first triathlon.  Additionally, our room  at the Golden Eagle Lodge — which was situated approximately a 1-min walk from the race transition area (awesome!) — was part of a package deal that included pretty much all the resort had to offer without additional fees:  mountain bike rentals, kayak or paddleboat rentals, ski lift tickets, access to the tennis and fitness centers, and of course hiking in the woods, swimming in the pond and playing at the beach!  There was plenty to keep everyone of all ages happy.  There were s’mores by the campfire, an outdoor family movie one evening, and fireworks, too.  There was also a charity “rubber ducky race” in a stream, which was fun for kids and adults alike.  Overall, great venue and a terrific weekend.

As noted earlier, I raced the sprint race on Sunday.  The race itself was really well-organized, which is always a plus in my book. In fact, there is not anything that I would change about the race or its execution.  It gets a perfect score.  Endorfun Sports had put on the Longhorn 70.3 triathlon here in Austin when I raced that one a couple of years ago, so I knew they would put on a good race, and I was not disappointed.

At 68 degrees, the swim water was a perfect temperature for a wetsuit swim, and a pleasant change from the 80-something degree bath water swims we typically get here in central Texas throughout the summer tri season.  Some of the veterans said that a couple of years ago the water was 55 degrees, so I was thankful to not be faced with that kind of cold water! I liked the time trial start, and thought it worked well.  We lined up in the order of our bib numbers, and were sent off in 3-second intervals.

The bike ride, as I mentioned before, involved going down the mountain road that leads up to the resort.  It took me twice as long to get back up the mountain.   It was so beautiful, though, climbing through the White Mountain National Forest. Again, a pleasant change in scenery from the brown Texas plains.

The run was out and back along the resort roads, sunny in parts, and shady in others.  The steep hills came on either side of a pretty brook that the runners crossed over shortly before the turnaround.  I quite enjoyed the run!  Some race volunteers saw my Jack and Adam’s tri top, recognized the logo and gave me a big ol’ Texas-sized holler, which I appreciated at that late point in the run.  We finished up back at the Town Center, where each racer received a cold, wet race towel.  I enjoyed the towel, although throughout the race I can’t say I ever really felt that hot (and I didn’t need those arm warmers, either).  I was so delighted to be racing a triathlon in 70 degree weather!  Did I mention I was in heaven?

Here is a great youtube slide show from the weekend (put together by someone else), showing photos from all of the happenings throughout the Festival:

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the Black Fly weekend, we took about 5 days to get back to Austin, spending a morning at Hershey Chocolate World (where we made our own chocolate bars) and portion of a day at Mammoth Cave, KY.  We did have to haul ass the rest of the time to get back home, as it is indeed a really long way from Waterville Valley, NH, back to Austin, TX, but audiobooks (e.g., Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and Roald Dahl’s The Witches), old recordings of Bill Cosby, and a long music playlist got us through.

However, we encountered another minor catastrophe (…Holiday Road…) as we rolled into Nashville one late afternoon on our way back to Texas.  This time it was a flat tire.  Luckily, not only do I know how to change a flat on my bike, but I am also quite capable when it comes to changing a car tire.  There was a nice guy who worked for the TN state transportation department who showed up to help just as I was pulling the wheel off, and he gave me some key info about there being some tire repair places located not too far away.  We were lucky that we were just minutes from downtown Nashville, and so we only had to drive about 10 min on the sorry excuse for a spare tire (remember when spares were full-sized?) to get to a tire repair place.  This short distance was a blessing because with the heavy load in the trunk and being lower to the ground with the small spare tire, every time I hit the slightest dip, my receiver hitch holding the bike rack would scrape the concrete, which made me worry constantly about the bikes.  We were lucky enough to get to Firestone 20 minutes before closing time.  I got some good customer service (I am pleased to report) from the Firestone guy, who hooked me up with a new rear tire.  (Actually, I ended up having him put a new one on the other side, too, so it was two new rear tires.)  So, in the end, we counted our blessings that the whole tire problem ended up delaying us only about an hour.  We found a Whole Foods to get some dinner, spent the night, and made it back to Texas the next day.  And as much fun as vacation is, as you all know there’s no place like home!

I won’t say the conditions were pleasant, though, but that’s due to the wind.  The swim was the worst part of the race, due to a lot of chop in the water.  A lot of folks were having poor (panic attack) swims, and mine was definitely worse than what I typically do at this race (this was my 3rd time to do the Pflug tri).   The first half of the swim was noticeably more choppy, but coming back in to shore the water seemed to smooth out a bit. In any case, the chop was coming from behind on the second half, which is always better than having waves in the face.

The bike course starts out for a short distance in the north direction, so there was a good tail wind, but as soon as you make the first right turn, BOOM!  Major wind.  Another right turn a few miles in, and it is full on headwind.  The best part of the bike course is later, on a slightly downhill straightaway along the freeway frontage road with a pure tailwind, and speeds >30 mph.  You have to love that!  Then back a couple of miles toward the lake there are more winds to be fought before a final tailwind into transition.  A lot of people were really surprised by the severity of the winds, and I have to say that although we’ve experienced some windy conditions out there, it was at least as bad as — if not worse — than the worst training days we’ve had on the course.

The run is on a crushed granite trail around the lake, so flat and kind of twisty-turny, with (again) multiple changes with respect to direction from which the wind is coming.  Hats were flying off of runners.

Even though I was disappointed in my swim, the bike/run were good, and I felt solid.  Some days the legs just feel good, and this was one of those days!  I don’t have my official time, but it looks like it will come in slower than previous years based on my watch splits.  But that’s okay, it was a solid effort in difficult conditions.

Next on the agenda: post-race massage and ice bath!

I think there are a couple of lessons from this race (and just to be clear, I’m not judging anyone here — I’m simply identifying lessons that can be applied broadly to racing).

1) Athletes are responsible for knowing the course. Andy Potts knew the guy was wrong, and continued on course.  Now, granted, this is not a completely black and white situation, because when someone who seems to be an official associated with the race instructs athletes to go a certain way, most athletes are going to follow the instructions.  But if everyone had been equally certain of the course as Potts, then presumably they all would have followed and there would be no controversy, other than “who was that dude on the jet ski who got in our way?”

2) Athletes need to be able to adapt to whatever gets thrown at them. Sometimes there will be mistakes or unexpected situations, and what matters is how you deal with those obstacles.    Obviously, some things are easier to plan for than others. For example, you can prepare for flat tires by practicing changing flats.  You can prepare for certain weather conditions by checking the weather forecast and bringing different clothing options as appropriate.  It’s hard to plan for crazy-jet-ski-guy trying to lead people off course, but hey, if something like that happens (notwithstanding lesson #1) then you just have to accept that it happened and just move on to focus on the next part of the race.

What are some other lessons that one might take away from the CapTexTri fiasco?  Let me know what you think.

For some Mother’s Day fun, my family and I volunteered at the finish line of the Skeese Greets Women’s Tri this morning down at the Texas Ski Ranch in New Braunfels, TX!  We handed out water bottles, cold & wet towels, and finishers’ necklaces, and other folks gathered up timing chips and straps.

The winner of the race was Natasha Van Der Merwe, a South African who lives and trains in Austin, in a time of 00:53: 13.  One of the photos above is of the winner, flanked by Austin-based pros Terra Castro and Desiree Ficker (both were also volunteering with us at the finish line) and Jen (the finish line volunteer coordinator).  The rest of the athletes started to come soon after, with wave after wave of ladies coming for another 2 hours!  The last woman to finish crossed the line with a lot of whooping from the audience to cheer her on!  You should have seen all of the smiles we saw this morning!  So many ladies were doing their very first tri, and what an exciting time it was for them!

Congratulations to all of the ladies who completed the race, and Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there!

Last weekend Placid Athletes practiced transitions in preparation for the Skeese Greets triathlon which is being held this weekend! We did 3 complete triathlons at Placid Athlete HQ in this format: a 3-minute swim in the Fastlane Pool, a bike loop through the neighborhood, and an out-and-back run.  We discussed the proper way to set up bike and gear in the transition area, discussed USA Triathlon rules for the transition area, and then we practiced our transitions.

Transitions from swim to bike (T1) and bike to run (T2) are an important part of triathlon race preparation that rookies tend to skip practicing.  In fact, many new triathletes do not realize that the transition is part of the race, too!  Your transition time is added into your race time to determine your total time for the race, so transitions matter!

Consider the following:

Let’s say that you are doing your first sprint triathlon, and you expect to complete the half-mile swim in about 20 minutes, a 12-mile bike ride in about an hour, and a 5k run in about 36 minutes.  Not including the transitions, that is a total of 1:56.  Now let’s say that you spend 10 minutes in each transition (which is wayyyyy too long) and your total race time is 2:16.  Perhaps you come in 18th out of 20 in your age group.

Now, what if you practiced those transitions and got down to 2 minutes for T1 and 1 minute for T2?  This reduces the above time to 1:59, a 17 minute difference.  Maybe now you come in 8th place out of 20 in your age group rankings!

Compare this result to what it would take to shave off 17 minutes somewhere else in the race. How many weeks or months of training would it take to shave 10 minutes off your 36 minute run, or 5 minutes off your swim?  How much time can you shave off of that bike split?  If you are spending more than just a couple of minutes in transition, then working on your transitions will be the fastest ticket to a quicker total race time! Now of course, you should keep training to improve your swim, bike, and run splits for faster overall times, but make sure that you are not giving away “free” time by wasting it in transition.