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#1: Nutrition is key. Plan, pack and prepare your foods in advance.
On your grocery days, set aside some time to wash, chop and bag fruits, veggies and prepare basic meals for the week. Chopped up veggies can become salad fixings, a healthy on the go snack or be incorporated with meat for a quick healthy meal. Marinate, grill and keep chicken ready to add to salad or pair with veggies or pasta for a quick fix dinner.

2. Retire your cape.
Outsource daily tasks such as cleaning, meal preparation or laundry when you encounter those high volume training weeks. No price can be put on your peace of mind. The only person who thinks YOU have to do it all is…you.

3. Get your zzzz’s.
Important repair work goes on at the cellular level which only happens during REM sleep. Don’t underestimate the role that adequate rest plays in your success in training. Naps are good!

4. Recovery weeks and easy workout days are there for a purpose.
Too often we “A” types can tend to go too hard, too long, too often, much to the detriment of our overall training. Give your body the rest it requires to perform. The upside is that you’ll be better off at all aspects of your life.

5. Create your own race team.
It takes a nation to get you to race day. Family, friends, training partners, coaches and health care professionals all play valuable roles in delivering you to the starting line healthy, happy and ready. Be sure to recognize and thank those who support and sacrifice for you throughout the season.

6. Schedule as far ahead as possible.
Look at your personal calendar and schedule and take as long as it takes, even up to two weeks! Time spent mulling and pondering where the open windows of time are for you to train is time well spent.

7. Ignore most advice to buy the latest-and-greatest gear.
Only buy something if 1) you truly, truly understand how it can help you be a better/faster/healthier triathlete, and 2) you feel that your training and performance is being harmed by not owning this thing.

8. Don’t be afraid to go to the group rides that might be out of your league.
Go, ride as hard as you can for as long as you can, and you will get so fit. Once you get dropped, you continue to push yourself and just meet up at the next meeting point in the ride. You’ll gain fitness, skills, confidence…a huge win across the board!

9. Be ready to workout at all times.
Sometimes life gets in the way, so be ready with workout gear in your car / at your office to take advantage of any openings. If the family is driving somewhere can you ride to it and then get a ride home with bike in the vehicle? Running a 5k? Bike to it and ride afterwards. Running a half marathon? Warm up beforehand and then run a few miles afterwards for an “easy” mental long run! Why wait for your car to be serviced for one hour?  Go out for a run or ride!  Kid at the orthodontist?  You guessed it, go running!

10. It’s about Camaraderie, not Ability.
Find like minded women and men to train with who are not trying to win the workout but who want to just work hard and build each other up through encouragement and praise.

Bonus Tip
Our women asked us to add this to the list!
You don’t “need” women-specific training tips! The tri-world tends to speak to you slowly, write in crayon, and get you to wear pink stuff! The truth is you don’t need to train and race all that differently from the boys. What you need is to surround yourself with a group of women and men who get it, get you, won’t talk down to you, and will support you regardless of your race goals or knowledge level.

Interested in learning more? Join us for a women-only Open House, March 16-19!
Go here to learn more and to request an invitation.

• Learn the secret to becoming the fastest you have ever been with the shortest (and toughest!) workouts you have ever done.
• You’ll get the secrets behind racing smart and actually running and PASSING others during the marathon.
• Meet some of the coolest, yet still normal, women in triathlon and know that you won’t need to have a knife pulled from your back later.
• See how the mothers of 4 and 5 kids find time to fit iron training into their life and why it is a lifesaver for them.
• Hear about all of the newest gadgets out there to help you train, and get real time feedback about how compatible / accurate / useful they are.
• There are no dumb questions! You will get a polite response every time!

Go here for more Women Only Open House information and to request an invitation.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Question: What are the considerations for a Half Ironman race rehearsal?

Rich Strauss: All of our long course training plans include two race rehearsal workouts, roughly at 6 and 3 weeks out from your race. These are, without a doubt, the most important individual training session in your schedule. You want to get these right, so let’s dig into them a little deeper:

Purpose of a Race Reheasal:

• Dial in/verify nutrition and gear plan: where/eat/kit out your bike just like race day. Does your setup work, anything to tweak, does my nutrition plan work, etc.
• Dial in/verify pacing plan.
• Dial in/verify bike fit. Locking yourself in aerobars for a 56 mile ride is very different from even your most tri-specific weekend ride. This is more critical with Ironman race rehearsals, as I’ve salvaged at least a couple of my races with race rehearsals where the fit I thought was going to work for 112 proved otherwise by about mile 90, locked in the bars. Swimming before a race rehearsal is a good idea, as it will fatigue your neck and shoulders, just like the race will, so you’ll get a more accurate assessment of your bike fit. However…
  • Bike course selection (below) has priority.  Don’t create a ton of artificiality or admin time by limit the bike course route to it’s proximity to a pool. The bike course has priority over swimming and any course with lots of traffic, stops, etc is time where you come off the gas, have to sit up for something…all stuff that won’t happen on race day. This WILL effect the quality of your race rehearsal, specifically your neck and back won’t get the full monty experience due to the artificial rest periods.
  • 1.2mi swim + 56mi bike is just not that big of a deal, if your bike fit is decently dialed in. In other words, I haven’t seen too many people sitting up in the last 10 miles of the HIM bike because their neck, back, shoulders are worked, post swim. This is MUCH more common in IM racing, not so much HIM.

Course Selection:
You want to pick a course that has ZERO or as few stops as possible, that will have you on the bike for almost the exact time as your predicted race time, and has you locked in the bars. This time-on-the-bike is more important than trying to replicate the hills of the course. For example, if the Oceanside bike is going to take you about 2:55 but you pick a stoopid hilly route that takes you 3:20 to get in your 56…that’s a very different bike ride. Also, that hilly route = sitting up in the bars = resting your back = very different from race day. Again, course selection (identical time as race day, locked in the bars, no stops) has priority over swimming first.

Run
45 minutes, regardless of distance, at race pace. If the run course of your race is “special,” ie, very hilly right out of the gate, like Wildflower, it would supergroovy if you could duplicate this for your race rehearsal run, choosing a very hilly run course…but not at the expense of bike course selection.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Doing less, or nothing at all, is most often the RIGHT thing to do.

Question: If the prescribed intensity of a workout is just not happening, should I just go easy?

Rich Strauss: Rather than going easy, don’t be afraid to just pull the plug, take a day off and not do anything, especially on the bike.

We like to see our athletes get in 4-5 runs per week and we’ll _sometimes_ have them go out and “just run easy” in order to maintain that frequency. However, on the bike we like to see our athletes hit it hard on just about every ride. If it’s just not going to happen, I’d rather have that athlete bail on the ride, take a day off, regroup, and move on with the training schedule.

In our experience, there is value in running easy, for the sake of maintaining running frequency, building resilient legs, etc, but there is little value in riding easy. Feel like you need to ride easy to just get through the session? Consider bailing on the session and take a day off.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I spent this past weekend on the Ironman St. George course, training and recon-ing the event with some TeamEN athletes. Well worth the long drive from LA to meet and connect with our athletes in what is, hands down, my favorite part of the country. We covered all of the bike course on Friday and ran the run course on Saturday. Below are my impressions, notes, and observations. I took a TON of video and will work to get that up soon.

Overall

• Very, very cool to have this course added to the US calendar. It’s a classic western course in a very unique area of the country.
• It’s tough! I’ve trained and/or raced on every US Ironman. In my opinion…IMSG will probably be regarded, after the event, as the hardest WTC Ironman on the US calendar.

Swim

• Likely the most scenic, and certainly the most unique, swim venue on the calendar. A calm reservoir surrounded by red rock desert, cliffs, and scenery. Sunrise over T1 and the lake will be magnificent.
• The separate T1 and T2 areas will present their own logistics challenges but I’m sure WTC will have this sorted out.

Bike

• I don’t know any way to describe it, other than “classic western terrain:” big vistas, views, and horizons that go on forever. If you’ve never seen red rock desert, cliffs, and high desert vegetation, you’re in for a serious treat. However, those characteristics come with a price…
• Deceptive grades: for those of you not used to it, your visual perspective of a hill is going to be challenged and, in short, it will be very easy for you to get in over your head because this 8% hill looks nothing like you’re used to. Many times I found myself on long, long climbs. The wide horizon and big views told my eye that it wasn’t that steep. But, toggling over to the % grade on my Ergomo, I saw 4, 5, 8, 9% many times, for a long time. This is not 8% through the trees with an obvious transition at the bottom and top (IMWI), or a series of noticable rollers (IMCDA), or a long flat section next to a river (IMLP). This is a long grind up a long 6-7% hill that doesn’t look it at all because your eye is tricked by the scale of the terrain around you. In particular, there are more than a few deceptively steep and long climbs in the ~20 miles from T1 to the start of the loop. Many athletes will ruin their day in the first hour by working too hard on these “false flats,” which ain’t false at all. They just look it because, welcome to the American West, we gots big horizons.
• Wind: deserts mean wide temperature changes = wind with no terrain to block it, or terrain that funnels the wind. The mostly downhill ride from Veyo? I drove it on my way out of town on Saturday and the net elevation loss was about 1500ft. But when I rode this section on Friday, it was into a strong headwind and there are at least 2 x 1.5 mi @ 6% pitches. In other words, riding from Veyo back to T2 isn’t a relaxing coast. You’re gonna have to work on some hills and into the wind. I predict many people will be sitting upright into the wind = a sail on the second loop.
• Two legit, this-hill-is-no-joke climbs, both on the stretch to Veyo:
  • Eagle Ranch: relatively short but steep pitch, probably 10-11% grade.
  • The Veyo Wall: a sharp right hand switch back into a climb that brings you out of the valley and on top of the plateau where Veyo sits. 1-1.5 miles long at 8-10%, even saw 14-15% kickers a couple times. Good news: ain’t no way you can miss this. Bad news: it’s steep, really steep. It reminds me of Beach Hill on the Wildflower course (cliff on the left, drop on the right), but likely shorter and slightly steeper.

Welcome to Southern Utah!

Run

• Before the race, everyone is going to talk about the bike. After the race…they’ll be talking about the run. The IMSG is, in my opinion, the most challenging run on the US calendar.
• St. George, the town, is relatively flat but surrounded by red rock bluffs to the west and north. The route leaves central downtown, climbs gently to the north to the right on Red Hills Parkway. This pitches up slightly steeper and takes you up to the top of bluff. You run along the bluff (still mostly climbing), with a quick detour loop through Pioneer Park (another hill in here), before a relatively steep drop down to 900 East. Flip it and come back. The net:
  • You’re going up, at a slightly greater and greater grade, for likely the first 3-3.5 miles. There really isn’t any place in here to settle into your stride on flat ground and just relax. Instead, you’re constantly running uphill at near constant grade for a long, long time.
  • The course makes a quick out and back on 1250, twice per run loop. No worries, it’s only about 1/4 mile and 1/4 mile out, on a dead end street with an Elks Lodge at the end. I suspect the Elks will put a huge aid station there. However, it’s a decent climb with a very short, but steep little kicker likely right before the aid station. Think short, steep driveway up to the aid station, but doing this for the last time at about mile 24-25 will be…challenging.
  • Once on top of the bluff…it’s a false flat. Again, nowhere to really relax on a flat, or freewheel down a slight grade, until the kinda steep (but too short) pitch down to 900 East. Flip it, kinda steep climb back up, then false downhill (ie, should be a downhill but it’s not really an “I can coast here” downhill) across the top of the bluff. More importantly, look down on the town and you’ll see just how far above St. George you are. Two reactions: (1) “Holy crap, I just climbed a long way up!” (2) “Holy crap, I gotta do this again!” No other run course so vividly lays out before your eyes what you just did…and what you gotta do again.
  • At some point on the bluff, about mile 9-10 of the first loop, you’ll finally start the lonngg downhill back to the finish. The downhill bit on Red Hills Pkwy will be tough on the quads. Not crushing, but lap two is gonna hurt. Then, once you make the left Hwy 18 and the next left on Diagonal, it just goes and goes and goes. You can see forever where you gotta go, it’s downhill, but only enough to take about 15-20″/mi off your pace, not coast, rest, and take 30-45″/mi off your pace.
  • Right in a traffic circle a nice 1/4 straight roll downhill through town to the finishline. This will be cool, similar to the finish at IMCDA.

TeamEN prepares to assault the IMSG run course

Admin Notes

Gearing:

• Compact (50/34): 26-11 in the back…or 27 or even 28-12. You can’t have enough gears.
• Standard (53/39): 27-12 preferred. 25-12 = borderline stoopid. 23-11 = you’re an idiot and I’ll be there to take pictures.

Point-to-Point: with T1 and T2 separated by over 20 miles, there will be some interesting race week and race day logistics. No worries, WTC will have a plan, but you’ll need to pay attention to the Athlete’s Guide when that comes out.

Food: St George is a real city with real supermarkets so no problem getting any special stuff you might need. Here are some additional resources for you:

• Benja Thai and Sushi: good Thai food, but 5/5 on the spicy-0meter didn’t make my shaved head sweat, which is how I gauge hot
• Iceberg Diner: CRAZY thick milkshakes. Located about 4 blocks from the finish, be sure to stop in after the race.
• Veyo Pies: “If pie is in the name of the restaurant, you have to stop.” — Rich’s Road Rules. Seriously though, excellent pie shop in the town of Veyo, about mile 50 on the course. I talked to the owner, and the owner of the gas station across the street, and they are excited about the increased traffic to their stores. Do your part to spread the economic luv outside of St George to stopping in town when you drive the course. Fill up your gas tank and buy a pie at Veyo Pies. You’ll dig it, I promise!

Popularity: 14% [?]

In Part I we introduced you to the Five Keys, and discussed one through four. In Part II we discussed Key 5, lactate threshold training. Finally, in Part III, we summarize how the “TeamEN Way” is different from how you’ve probably been accustomed to thinking about long course triathlon training.

Let’s start by reviewing perhaps the foundation of all endurance training: Progressive Overload

Your body is lazy, only adapted to the stress that you place upon it. The objective of training is to impart greater and greater stresses on your body, progressive overload, forcing it to adapt and become more fit. Traditional long course triathlon training ignores or obfuscates this fundamental principle. Instead the focus of the discussion is:

• Magical, tasty, aerobic adaptations that happen at Zone 1-2 and do not happen in Zone 3 or 4.  All you need to do is just punch the clock (a lot) in these zones and your body will be ready for the race…which it will, no doubt. But this approach ignores the science of human physiology, which says that increased fitness is the expression of adapted muscle fibers. These fibers are recruited, and forced to adapt, across a range of intensities, such that work in Zone 3 and 4 also accomplishes your Zone 1 and 2 objectives…while also making you significantly faster and decreasing your overall time investment.
• Training volume required for the distance. In our experience, volume has been at the center of long course triathlon discussions, training plans, and lore, becoming deeply anchored within the culture of our sport: “How long does my long bike/run need to be before I’m ready for a successful race…how many total hours do I need to train this, that and the other week…I read/heard that Joe Pro/The Local Fast Guy does 20-30hrs per week!”

The fundamental flaws of these perspectives are:

• The purpose of training is to introduce greater and greater stress on my body, forcing it to adapt. But…
• The only intensity I’m allowed to sit on is Zone 1-2 because that’s only where the good stuff happens. But…
• If my intensity is to remain static, the only tool I have left to manipulate training stress is training volume. But…
• If I’m a real person in the real world with real world time constraints, and volume is my primary training tool…what happens when I run out of volume?

After working with age groupers for so long, we’ve learned age-grouper-specific perspectives and tools:

Divide your training week into Weekday Hours and Weekend Hours:

• Weekday Hours: what is the amount of time each day that life gives me to train while still meeting all of my other (more) important obligations? If the answer is 1hr on Monday, 1.5hrs on Tuesday, 45 minutes on Wednesday, etc, THAT’s the box that life gives you. Fit your training within that box and then focus on the details, particularly the appropriate intensity of each session, to ensure you’re getting the best return from your training time investment.
• Weekend Hours: what amount of training volume is repeatable (physically, mentally, family-ly) week after week after week? Maybe it’s a 2.5hr ride on Saturday and 1.5hrs on Sunday, but anything over this begins to quickly place a lot of stress on your other obligations. That’s fine, it is what it is. We recommend you “Keep the volume as low as you can for as long as you can.” Set the expectation that, about 8-10wks out from your race, you’re going to be asking for a few extra hours of training on the weekends because the race distance requirement a larger volume investment. So, rather than nickle and diming your family for 2+hrs of extra, high life-cost training every weekend for months and months before your race, bank those SAUs (Spousal Approval Units) and ask, months in advance, for permission to cash in those chips on a small handful of very valuable weekends much closer to the race, where the race-specific volume will do you the most good.

Recognize the Variable Cost of Training Hours
Not all hours across your season have the same “life-cost.” Training hours far away from your race, especially in the winter, have a very high motivation, sanity, and family cost. Anyone who has ridden a trainer for four hours at 4am in January, 9 months before their A-race, knows what we’re talking about. Training hours closer to  your race can be a little easier to get (more daylight, better temperatures, a greater sense of urgency), but are extremely valuable. How much money would we have to pay you to skip your long ride four weeks before your Ironman? We thought so!

Our mantra’s of “FAST before FAR,” “keep the volume as low as you can as long as you can,” and the concepts of the Spousal Approval Unit (SAU) and Return on Investment (ROI) are the results of our recognition of the variable time cost of training.

Intensity
Perhaps the most unfortunate misconception in the tri-space is the notion of aerobic and anaerobic training zones. This has created a culture that believes that in Zones 1 and 2, we are developing “these” fitness components. As we move to Zone 3, a switch is flicked, we stop training the Zone 1 and 2 stuff and are now training Zone 3 stuff. At Zone 4, we are no longer training the Zone 1-3 goodness and instead beginning to enter the “anaerobic zones,” the purview of speedy folks looking to race shorter distances. These hard divisions between zones and their associated fitness components are then combined with the notion of race specific fitness. The training conversation goes like this: “On race day I’m going to spend a LOT of time at a Zone 1-2 effort. Therefore, I need to spend all of my time in Zone 1-2 so I/my body gets really, really good at Zone 1-2 work. Further, if I stray outside these zones I’m actually hampering my Zone 1-2 fitness!

Instead, we focus on the science, which says that increased fitness is the expression of the cummulative adaptations of individual muscles fibers. These fibers only adapt when stressed, when they are recruited, and recruitment happens when I go harder, making more and more muscle fibers chip in and contribute to the work.

Training zones are then “Muscle Recruitment Zones” and the conversation with our athletes goes like this:

• Zone 4 = just at/under lactate threshold. You’re recruiting a LOT of your muscle fibers, both slow and fast twitch, making them each better at what they do. This is your “get faster zone,” but you’re also getting lots of tasty Zone 1-2 adaptations because nearly all of your slowtwitch fibers are being recruited. This is a very time efficient zone, since as little as 40 minutes of Zone 4 across your cycling week and 30 minutes across your running week can make you significantly faster.
• Zone 1-2 = your “race-specific” zone for Ironman racing. As we get closer to your race, the volume of your training increases, intensity must therefore decrease, and we spend more time in Zone 1-2 as a consequence. We also want to make you more comfortable, confident, and familiar with all the things you’ll be doing on race day at this intensity (hydration, nutrition, bike position, etc).
• Zone 3 = a very valuable place to spend a lot of time. You’re recruiting lots of slow twitch fibers, many of your fast twitch fibers, and you can sit here a long, long time. The result we seen, through analyzing the power and pace files of our athletes, is that they are able to significantly boost the training stress (see Progress Overload Principle) for each session with the same time investment. This is a REALLY time efficient training zone.

The net is that we view training intensities as tools to be applied to your relatively static Weekday Hours and slightly more flexible Weekend Hours. The application of that intensity is a function of where you are in your season, which we define as OutSeason, General Preparation, or Race Preparation:

• Out-Season: cost of training time is very high = volume goes WAY down, intensity goes WAY up and you get MUCH faster.
• General Prep: volume can go up (more daylight, warmer) = intensity comes down a bit. But volume is limited by what your life says is repeatable. In other words, your Saturday ride is 3hrs because that’s what is repeatable, not because your Ironman says that your Week 6 long ride needs to be 3hrs
• Race Prep: volume goes up again because the distance of the race requires it. Intensity comes down a bit so we can get you better at doing the things you’ll do on race day.

FREE Virtual Seminar: Long Course Training
Interested in learning more? We’ve created a free virtual seminar learning opportunity for you. Participants will receive practical tools for planning and managing their training, as well as opportunities to win free training plans and copies of our Four Keys of Ironman Execution DVD. Go here to learn more and register today!

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