Endurance Nation | Triathlon Coaching, Ironman Training, Half Ironman, Beginner Triathlon

Every OutSeason we spice things up with a schedule of monthly challenges designed to get you motivated and help you connect to your peers. These challenges will be new and improved for 2010, and will allow members and non-members alike to participate. See the full schedule on the camps page and start recruiting!

Comments from Coach Patrick

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We’ve made several changes to our OutSeason plans and will do the same for our Half and Full Ironman training plans, expected to be published this winter. However, are largest improvement is what we call EN 4.0: we have built our own internal training plan hosting platform that allows us to do some very cool, you ain’t gonna get this anywhere else, stuff. Specifically:

• Putting all of our associated content right in/next to your training plan when you need it.
• Endurance Nation training plans have now become a living product: as we (coaches and team) create content, it can be added dynamically to the training plans. The resources associated with the plan then grow and increase over time and, most importantly, rather than buried in a blog or one of 20 podcasts on a page, they are right there inside your plan. No other training plan or training plan platform has this dynamic integration.

Thoughts from Coach Rich

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Membership is closed. Please follow TeamEN on Twitter for future opportunities to join Endurance Nation.

Please go here to create your trial membership

On September 15 we emailed our waiting list of 395 athletes with an invitation to create one of 100 free, two week trial memberships to Endurance Nation. All of those 100 slots were claimed in less than 24hrs and we closed registration on the 16th.

Since then we’ve received dozens of emails from members of the waiting list who were not able to respond in time, friends of members who responded too late, former training plan customers, blog subscribers and Twitter followers, asking about future opportunities to join TeamEN.  As the foundation of our success in 2009 was created in the OutSeason of 2008, we really, really want you on board NOW, if your intention is to train and race with us in 2010. The Endurance Nation OutSeason, inside the Haus, is just a very, very cool place to be…and you’ll get stoopid faster, by the way.

We’ve put our heads together, our new training plan platform allows us to do some very cool stuff, and we’ve decided we can accommodate another 50 trial members, allowing them the opportunity to check us out, FOR FREE, until September 30. This will be the absolute last free trial opportunity we will ever offer, ever. Never again will you be able to check out the inside workings of the Team without laying down some cash upfront. To be 100% clear — If you would like a FREE, no risk opportunity to see what Endurance Nation is all about, this is your last chance.

The Details:

• If you’d like to create a trial membership to Endurance Nation, giving you the opportunity to check out the Team for free until September 30, please go here to create your trial.
• The deadline for you to create your trial membership is Monday, September 21, midnight Eastern time.
• At the end of your trial, if you dig it:
  • No need to do anything, you’re on the Team. You will be billed $99/mo, beginning October 1 and we’ll get you started training with the Team.
  • Don’t dig it? Just cancel before Oct 1 and you won’t be charged. Just look for the big ‘ol cancel button at the top of your login page. Don’t worry if you miss the Oct 1 deadline and are charged. Just email us and we’ll refund your money right away.

Please go here to create your trial membership

Membership is closed. Please follow TeamEN on Twitter for future opportunities to join Endurance Nation.

Rich Strauss and Patrick McCrann
The Endurance Nation Coaches

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The Calm Before The Storm  |  Team EN vs IMWisconsin 2009

We had a total of 13 athletes race on the big day. You can view their full results here. Photos from the weekend are being added to the EN Smugmug Account here, and we’ve even done a Triathlon Race Execution Radio Show on the event. Billy L  fired up some basic YouTube footage of raceday here or you can watch the coaches version here. Even though it was a smaller group than our previous IMs the vibe of having so many members on site to cheer made the day, and the week, just awesome. This is evident in the fact that we had not one, but two “Thank You” Threads in the Forums. In the end it was an Ironman, and no one had it easy, but everyone prevailed…congrats Team!

Race Highlights: There are almost too many to list. From John D’s 40′ personal best despite a broken spoke (read report) to Adam B’s breakthrough race with a 10:16 and 41′ personal best (read report) to Matt Ancona meeting and exceeding all expectations as he won the M25-29 AG in 9:49 — a 2+ hour personal best from 2007! We had a blast hanging out at Mile 18 with everyone….

Race Day:  It turned out to be a gorgeous day. High-60s to Low-70s for the first half of the day, it did warm up to low/mid-80s on the run…and folks were suffering a bit in the heat. Minimal wind on the day meant a gorgeous lake to swim in and decent day for riding. I think overall the times reflected that. But then, of course, there’s that marathon “thing” and anyone en route to crushing the day had to face some serious internal demons (as you can see from Matt’s pic below).

Rich and Patrick gathered the Team at Midtown Hill, which is mile 50-ish and mile 92-ish on the bike. This hill is the third consecutive one on the IMMoo loop. Seeing folks here is a harbinger of things to come. There were more people “crushing it” than suffering up the climb…but all the EN folks looked simply awesome. Nothing like a really hilly course to make quality pacing guidance — and good execution — stand out. Speaking of standing, here’s a suffer pic from the hill, first loop:

Race Week Build-Up: The whole week was awesome from the Team Dinner at the Great Dane to a solid Four Keys talk and more fun with EN folks all week. Wisconsin is a very unique venue in that the college town / setting really makes for a lively space to hang out before, during, and after the race. From bars to great food to lots of young people dressed up and running around town on a pledge mission, there is rarely a quiet moment!

2010 Plans for Tri Domination: It appears that Team EN’s incredible women’s contingent is planning an all-out assault on IM Wisconsin 2010. Something about Coach Rich wearing a speedo and afro at mile 18 should we get 10 women to sign up….and it HAPPENED! Let me be the first to apologize to all the other competitors who, in less than 12 months will truly know what suffering is. Can’t wait until someone fires up the poll on what color speedo / afro Rich gets to wear…Go Team Go!

Congrats again to everyone who raced. If you haven’t already, be sure to visit the EN website to download your free copy of our Ironman Transition Guide. The next stop on the 2009 Four Keys Tour is Ironman Florida in early November (RSVP here)…be there!!!

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Patrick and I go to all of the US Ironman races to support our Team. We like to station ourselves at Mile 18 of the run to deal out encouragement. In our last two races, IMLou and IMWI,  we had a few instances where competitors ran by us and were, from our perspective, receiving either run pacing or outside assistance from a non-competitor. How can you tell? Dude with no timing chip running next to a chipped dude with race number for a long time, or cyclist riding next to and chatting with a competitor for a long time. At IMLou we saw all flavors of outside assistance given to pointy end, MOP, and BOP athletes. Our vantage point was much more limited at IMWI, we were very busy, and we only saw one case.

This being 2009 and the age of iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook, we both whipped out our iPhones and tweeted our observations, the racers number, etc, which was then pushed out, at least on my end, to my Facebook profile, touching off heated debates on my Facebook wall. As a coach, the leader of a squad of 400 athletes, having been deep in the trenches of the IM game for years and years, I feel I owe it to you, our readers, to explain a bit more about my own personal thoughts and opinions about this subject.

This is All Just a Game

Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows that I don’t take Ironman, triathlon, and any other sport for that matter very seriously. It’s all just a game. It’s not a matter of life or death, heaven or hell, good or bad. No one is dying, and we all (should) have much more important things in our lives. Personally, if it’s fun, I do it. If it stops being fun, I don’t do it.

This might be a function of me being a former Marine. I feel I’ve done things far harder, and far more “meaningful,” in a former life so I don’t assign much high level importance to the act of completing what is essentially a long, catered training day in spandex However, I completely understand the need, or desire, of others to create for themselves an experience that defines them in some manner. Or provides a venue for proving lots of things to themselves. Or creates one event towards which many other events flow and after which you are never the same. This is why my first triathlon business was called Crucible Fitness — I recognized that many, many athletes were looking for their own crucible, a grueling test through which they would produce a fundamental change in themselves.

Bottomline, you have your reasons, I have mine, I respect yours and ask you to respect mine. We’re all adults here with bigger things on our plate than a game.

The game, the crucible we have decided to put ourselves through, is an Ironman triathlon. You have likely chosen an Ironman as your test because it means “something” to you. The distance, the title, the bragging around the water cooler rights, whatever. Many people have gone before you and earned the title of Ironman. It’s likely you’ve chosen the distance because that title, earned by others, means something to you and you want to join that very exclusive club.

That club, and the game you gotta play to get there, has rules. To intentionally disregard the rules is to disrespect the title you are trying to earn. More important, you disrespect the accomplishment you have worked so hard to achieve. Three days after your Ironman, do you really want to look yourself in the mirror and KNOW that you didn’t play by the rules to earn that title? Thousands before you have suffered alone in the dark, or have even qualified for Kona or set PR’s, without their BFF next to them patting their belly and telling them it will be ok. It’s one day, a few hours of your life. Suck it up, do it right, and earn the title you’ve worked so hard to achieve…without tarnishing that achievement.

Now, I’m open to discussions of changing the rules, allowing pacers, BFF’s to run with you, whatever. Again, it’s all just a game and the owners of the game have right to change the rules if they want to. If you don’t like you can vote with your wallet and go someplace else. But until then, rules are rules, and we should all play by them. So if you plan to run by me at mile 18 with your BFF helping you conquer Observatory Hill @ IMWisconsin as you lead your age group, well, you’ve got about 30-seconds before it hits the Interwebs and you’re famous. Instead, you could save your race, your conscience, and my cell minutes and just…don’t…do….it.

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