It was a PB Type Weekend

Another fast weekend of racing by A3 athletes. A weekend that brought a first and many, many PB’s. At IM South Africa Nick opened up his pro career with a brand, spanking new IM PR of 8:48. But not only did he break 9:00 for the first time, knocking a measly 22 minutes of his previous IM PB, he also knocked 6 minutes off his IM marathon PB and did that after riding 112 miles faster than he has ever ridden it before. After dropping several spots early in the run, his steady pace brought him up over seven positions to net him 11th. It was a great hit out as a first time professional in a race.

Do you know what else happened in that race? Mark was racing, trying to avenge his 4th place finish from the year before. Mark rode according to the plan, letting a lot of guys ride past him. His plan netted him an IM bike PB ride dipping under 5:00 for the first time. Starting the run, he was down, way down, just over 13 minutes down in his age group. Seven guys in his age group were closer to the finish line then he was. But when it really matters, in his age group, could he do it on the run, could he pull back :30 per mile to win his age group and secure a Kona spot after riding faster than he has ever in an IM? Not just a few seconds here or there, he had to run 7.5 seconds faster per quarter mile for every single quarter mile of the race to take the lead in his age group. And he had to do it over the guy who won the age group in 2012 by 20 minutes. And so the chase began. 7 guys, just over 13 minutes and the 3k of distance already covered by the leader stood between him and the top step. Mile after mile, the splits came down, the guys in his age group fell to the wayside as he charged along the course. He moved into 6th, then 5th, up to 4th, then into the top 3. The course was getting shorter, the finish line closer. Second, after moving into second one guy stood between Mark and the age group win. With only single digit kilometers between Mark and the finish, with his competitor yet closer to the finish line, he was still minutes back. He continued the chase, the gap was coming down. Instead of :30 per mile it was :30 per km. Could he do it? Under 6k to go and no leader in sight. At 5k to go, up ahead, the age group leader came into view. With just under 4k to go Mark glides by and there is no response. It took a PB in the marathon, a 3:13:28, a marathon that was 10:41 faster than anyone else in his age group and a sub 9:20 time to secure the title. He went from 46th overall off the bike to 27th overall at the finish line. What a great race.

Half a world away, Bill and I toed the start line at the Leadman Tempe Triathlon. It’s always tough when you’ve been on the east coast and Mother Nature has slammed you weekend after weekend with bad weather. It’s hard for guys to come west and race a long course race so early in the season. I’m pretty sure Bill was a little nervous about the power plan I sent him at first glance. Add in sun, a trail run that was technical at parts, one of his first really long bike rides outside, he made a pretty good race taking a top 3 spot in his age group. The results have changed daily since the race, the above link may or may not be accurate. My race turned out well. After resorting to a Jedi swim trick to stay with the wave leader in the swim. The first 1.5 laps consisted of a few of us swapping the lead several times. I just listened to my power meter and rode according to plan with a 2 minute negative split over the back half of the race. While my watts and p/wt ratio are on the small side, just like my biceps, I confirmed that I can go faster then most on less watts thanks to a good position on my bike. My watts per lap were 208, 212, 211, 214 for an AP of 211 and NP of 221, which was lower than everyone I talked with after the race by 15-35w on the AP side. I gave up the lead in the M40-44 age group as I stopped to add nitrogen to the soil around a tree so that it grows up big and strong. With one of the slowest runs in the top 20 I strongly suspect that I was going to give up that lead even if I didn’t stop to pee on a tree. All in all a good day for A3 athletes as we got that early season race out of our way.

Bill and I working on our sunburns

IM Melbourne

Every once in a while as a coach something happens that really pisses you off. Slam your fist on the counter and want to punch the offender in the face mad. A few days before this race, this is was where I was at. Janine was having dinner with some of her friends. Her old coach, somewhat of an asshole if you were to ask me, pops into the restaurant and says hello to everyone at the table but Janine. That’s not really enough to set me off. But what he did next was inexcusable. He told Janine “you look to fat to race IM”, no hello, just that you look too fat, then he leaves. She found this very upsetting. This is a coach who over the past few years had her doing weekly weigh in’s, losing her hair, breaking out in acne and having other issues associated with over training. What he did is inexcusable, both as a person and a coach. There are better ways to coach than nearly wrecking your athlete(s).

After learning this, I found out she’s 1 kg heavier then when she raced under him. She’s not losing her hair, not run down and not having other issues associated with over training. Training for an Ironman really wouldn’t be considered a healthy pursuit, but one can do it in a healthy or unhealthy manner. Sometimes lighter isn’t better.

Ultimately, besides being pissed off, I really only wanted Janine to have nothing but a great race, a little FU to her previous coach.

We all know by now that IM Melbourne had horrible swim conditions, big winds on the bike and nearly a headwind for the entire run. Janine exited the water 6th in her age group. She then rode away from the rest of the age group women’s field, throwing down the fastest female age group bike ride. She stayed in front of the age group field until the last few km’s only being overtaken by one age group athlete. She won her age group, ended up 17th overall, crossed the line as the 2nd overall age group female while having enough energy to give someone the finger (I can only hope on that last part). Not only a superb race under difficult conditions but a little vindication to go along with the $200 prime she pocketed for having the fastest female age group bike ride.

Janine 1st place IM Melbourne F35-39

In like a Lion

March is here, charging in with the roar of a lion after some lambs. And roar Chad Chad did. Over the last five miles of the Tuscaloosa Half Marathon he stalked the leader trimming the gap. In the closing miles he struck fast to win the race!

Adu Dhabi once again hosted the Abu Dhabi triathlon. The first major triathlon race of 2013 loaded with a star studded field, is always a look into who’s hot and who’s not. Nick and Daniel made the journey to race this year. This was Daniel’s first long course race and he finished 9th in his age group.

Nick closed out his age group career here. He repeated his results from last year, winning his age group, and placing as the 2nd overall age grouper on the day. This year he moved up 11 spots to finish 11th overall including the pros. Watch for Nick at a pro race near you, as he will be joining the pro ranks and making his pro debut at Ironman South Africa.

Nick Baldwin in Abu Dhabi

Dusty raced one of the season opening races in CA, the Desert Triathlon. Dusty lead his age group off the bike and ended up second. He’s been battling some running injuries over the last 6 months and we expect nothing but faster run times as the season progresses.

Dusty at the Desert Triathlon

I encourage all my athletes to try racing different events in the early season. Like many of my athletes Adam has taken me up on the offer for the second weekend in a row. Last weekend was a time trial, this weekend was a masters swim meet. His first swim meet. He did a wide variety of free style events, from the 50 to the 1650 as well as swimming on some relays. For a rookie he did pretty good, grabbing some top 3 finishes in his age group and cracking 1:00 in the 100 free on his first attempt.

Chronic Training Load & Why It Matters

If you have used WKO+ you’ve seen the Performance Manager Chart (PMC) that shows your Chronic Training Load (CTL). Most people I talk to look at the chart and think “Gee look at the pretty lines and colors.” But when used correctly, the CTL line on that chart gives you an idea of what you’ve done and what you can do. It needs to be looked at along with the other pretty lines in your PMC, but for now I’ll give the down and dirty on CTL.

When you train you stress the body. You adapt and hopefully over repeated weeks, months and years of training you get faster AND you can handle higher workloads. Today’s hard 5×5 minutes of threshold on the bike that makes you hit the couch for a two hour nap, becomes tomorrow’s 8×5 minutes of threshold that leaves you tired but able to grocery shop right after. Today’s training becomes tomorrow’s chronic training load. Different training has different stresses and impacts your CTL differently. Your CTL is measured in Training Stress Score / Day. Think of this as how much stress you give yourself based upon what you do. A hard interval session where you knock out 4k of intervals and run 9k total will give you more TSS then a 10k easy run. A 2.5 hour ride where you flog yourself for 75 minutes of threshold will yield more stress then a 2.5 hour coffee cruise. If easy coffee cruises added a ton of stress, instead of social rides to have a coffee we’d have climbing rides to socialize.

Since TSS makes up part of your CTL the more you do in any one day the higher CTL goes. It also rewards consistency. Remember CTL = Training Stress Score / Day. It’s the cumulative training you’ve averaged per day for how ever long you want to look at it in your PMC. (This is why it’s a good idea to run more than one PMC.) If your PMC is set for 52 weeks, it’s going to take more to increase or more time off to decrease your CTL compared to a PMC that is set at 28 days. The more consistent you are in training daily, the more you can influence up or down your CTL. Big training days typically add to your TSS/D, days off of training subtract from it.

To give you an example of how this works let’s choose 165.5 TSS/D, this means you’ve averaged 165.5 TSS per day every day you’ve trained for however long your PMC is set for. If you only train 50 TSS today it will drop a little. If you train 257.8 TSS it will rise a little. Generally you want this to rise over time and get as high as possible. It’s this long term rise in what you have done that allows you to do more. It;s this long term rise that is the result of training. A U23 rider isn’t going to have the same sort of CTL that a veteran cyclist who has ridden 10 Grand Tours over the last 4 years is going to have. But depending upon how long you set your PMC for and what each of these riders has been doing recently the U23 rider might have a higher ATL (Acute Training Load) then the veteran tour rider.

You have to look at CTL in both the short and long term. If you only look at the long term CTL you might miss the day in day out picture of what you have been doing very recently. Huge ramp ups over short periods of time can leave you tired and performing poorly if not managed proprely. On the other hand, if you only look at your PMC over the short duration, you won’t see what you’ve done long term and might miss clues to what you could be doing or should be doing.

Below I’ve inserted a PMC of one of my athletes from last season. I’ll talk about some of the things that influenced the CTL aka blue line.

Season Long PMC

To look at the season as a whole you’ll start from the left and look right. This will give you an idea of where they started and where they ended up. This was a new to me athlete and I had no historical data from them from previous years. The first four and a half months were spent training. You see the steady saw tooth progression of the CTL line. This represents the pattern that the first four and a half months fell into. A few bigger/harder days and few easy days. The intervals were short, hard and often. There wasn’t a lot of threshold riding, there was a lot of supra threshold riding. This continued right into the first weeks of racing where multiple races where raced. You’ll notice the big dip in the blue line. This is where significantly less training per day was being done. Once we got through this period we started a push towards the first major race of the season. You’ll notice the blue line starts trending up. If you were to look at a short time frame PMC you’d see a significant spike in the acute training load of this athlete. The duration’s and intervals changed to reflect the specificity of the events that were being focused on for the season. This athlete had to do more to maintain and increase their fitness as they acquired more fitness. The next major dip in the blue line represents a mid season break from training. This was a 7-10 day break from training to help manage fatigue loads. The build up that followed was much like the previous ramp up. The ATL was very steep, representing lots of work in a short period of time, but not short workouts. The next major dip was work related that required a couple of weeks of almost around the clock work. This curtailed training and you can see that as the blue line drops. This was followed by two more ramp ups with some drops due to work related stuff. Each of these build ups had an ATL that was much steeper then the long term CTL you are seeing here. This TSS was achieve with some very long rides and runs acquiring large amounts of TSS in a very few workouts and little TSS in the rest of their workouts. Frequency also dropped a little compared to early in the season in some sports. The final ramp up saw this athlete achieve some of their highest ATL numbers of the year and near season high CTL numbers. This huge increase in ATL led into tapering which allowed both short and long term CTL to drop.

Hopefully you can now understand that ATL and CTL influence each other and how both have to be managed for a successful season. By looking at the CTL, short and long term, and the athletes race schedule, you can learn to manipulate training loads to be at optimal fitness for the races that matter. This allows you to do the training that matters so you can get results that matter at the races that matter.

PBx2=IMAZ

Ironman Arizona is a math equation. Really. Take two athletes, Jeff and Greg. Take what they’ve done, what they want to do, where they are at, plug it into a quadratic equation, divide that answer by the square root of both of their previous IM PB’s added together then divided by three and presto the solution.

Both of these athletes had some specific goals, Greg wanted an overall PB as well as a new PB in each segment. Jeff had the goal of wanting to beat my IM PB. Now a few years ago, Jeff had that same goal. But back then he was a 12:30+ IM dude. Could I turn Jeff from a 11:35 IM guy into a sub 10:57 IM guy? Greg was a 13:10+ IM guy. How much faster could he go, he set a huge half IM PB early in the season, could he do that for IM?

Goals in, solutions out, training done and the final exam. Now that the papers are graded and both athletes have their grade, how did they do?

Greg, knocked off 69 minutes from his record, setting a new IM PB of 12:02. I’d have to say that’s an A for the race, and I think there is room for him to knock off another chunk like that. His new self was only 8k or so ahead of his old self by the end of the race.

Jeff, reduced his PB by exactly 60 minutes going 10:35 and accomplishing his goal of smashing someone’s fastest IM. As a coach I couldn’t be happier about that.

All in all I couldn’t be happier with the whole weekend. Saw some old friends, made some new one’s, connected some circles, formed some dots. The racing went well and the beer tasted good.

Pieces of a Puzzle

Another Ironman has come and gone. Ironman Florida is now in the books. Chris did his second race as an Accelerate 3 athlete yesterday. You can read a bit of back story on him here.

Chris on his way to a sub 5:00 bike split.

After a slug fest that saw him exit the water 79th in his age group, well outside the top 20 guys he had to compete against, he put together a solid bike and run to move himself up. Into T2 he had moved up over 60 spots to 17th. Early into the run he dropped a few spots but knew that good things come to those who run smart and run steady. One tenet of IM racing is to slow less then anyone else. It wasn’t until the last 2.1 miles that he dropped off the pace of his first 10k. He still picked up a spot over the last half mile. This pass moved him into 9th in his age group and 85th overall. He finished the day with a hour IM PB going under 9:45. That’s putting the puzzle together, correctly!

The pass into 9th

2012 – Kicking Ass, The Recap

It’s been a great season for Accelerate 3 athletes. Just about everything has gone according to plan. People are faster than they were before, people are winning and when those things happen I’m a very happy coach with very happy athletes. Happy might be an understatement though. It’s been a very, very successful year for a lot of athletes. The adage still holds true. Do the work and the results will follow. I’m fortunate to have a great group of hard working athletes. To you girls and guys I say thank you.

How well has the season gone? Awesome would be a HUGE understatement. It’s actually hard to select the top performance. Could it be a World Championship title, or having three athletes qualify for their elite licenses, or seeing people make 5-15 minute gains over last season, or watching people run faster in a triathlon this season then they were running in open races last season? While there were truly some phenomenal performances, I’m going to let their results speak.

Some of the highlights for WTC events include having the overall amateur woman at three 70.3 events, Augusta, Miami and Muncie spread among two of my athletes. An Age group win and 9th amateur on the day at the 70.3 World Championships, 2nd in the age group, 11th amateur and 40th overall at IM Hawaii, an age group win and 10th amateur on the day at the UK 70.3, 3rd in the age group at Boulder 70.3 and having an athlete post the 10th fastest run time on the day at IMNYC. Out of the seven WTC events, only once has an athlete not finished either overall as the top age group racer or in the top 3 in their age group. That’s some serious ass kicking by Accelerate 3 athletes.

Other results include the fastest female age grouper at St. Anthony’s triathlon…again. 2nd age group male overall and winner of his age group at Abu Dhabi, a course record at the Lowes TT series, AL TT Cat 5 State Champ, SE Regional Cat 5 TT Champ, NC TT Cat 3 Silver medalist, 2nd overall male in the Tucson Triathlon Series and 3rd male overall in the Inside Out Sports NC Triathlon Series. The 1st female overall in that same series is an Accelerate 3 athlete. It’s also the first time in the 11 year history of the series that a female has scored more then 10,000 points in more than one race in a season while going undefeated.

Accelerate 3 athletes have won 16 races this season, have another 15 2nd and 3rd overall finishes. They also recorded 16 top 3 age group podiums excluding overalls. Oddly or thankfully, no one finished either 4th overall or fourth in their age group all season. There has been only one 5th overall and one 5th in their age group. It seems my athletes prefer first through third. Who am I to complain? There have been numerous PB’s across triathlon, cycling and running events by my athletes. Three of my athletes have qualified for their elite license for next year. I’m looking forward to taking these and everyone I coach to the next level next season.

And yes, I’m very, very proud to call these over achievers my athletes.

As I look forward to 2013 there are several big changes on the horizon. I’ll be making the jump to full time coaching, which I am rather excited about. For the first time in ten years, I’ll be able to take on more then 1-2 athletes per year. A lot of times when this happens people have to just expand. I’m reloading while I expand. If you are looking for a coach or are a top age group athlete looking to step up to the elite level, contact me.

There are one or two big things in the works for Accelerate 3. You might see Accelerate 3 morph into something bigger and better then it currently is. I suspect the competitors of the people I coach will be less thrilled about all the changes. But then isn’t that always the case?

Keep checking in to see the changes! Thanks for reading.

Good Things..Cubed!

The good stuff keeps happening for Accelerate 3 athletes. Jenny and James finished in the top 3 overall for the Inside Out Sports NC Triathlon Series. Jenny took the top honors for the females for the second straight year. The last time she lost a race in this series was 2010. Her streak now stands at 10 races spanning two years. I stole this pic from the I.C.E. Racing blog of which she is a team member.

Winning…again!

James finished 3rd Overall in the series for the men. He won three of the races in the series. He also had a couple more podium finishes. With his recent fourth win and his first major elite race out of the way, he is looking towards moving up in the elite ranks.

The top step

Nick and Jenny were interviewed recently. Jenny by the Charlotte Observer while Nick was interviewed by Beyond Going Long.

It’s always nice seeing your athletes get interviewed.

Another BIG Weekend!!!

The Hawaii Ironman has come and gone. What a great race at the front end of both the women and men’s fields! But that wasn’t the only racing going on. Nick was racing, fresh off his recent M18-24 age group win at the 70.3 World Championships. We were looking towards having him climb atop of his second WC podium. He did a ton of work heading into this race, was fitter than he’s ever been and was able to overcome some harsh conditions to go faster than last year, which not many people did.

Last year Nick was 118th overall, a fabulous result for any age grouper at IM Hawaii. This year he crushed it. Nick crossed the line 40th overall, finishing 2nd in the M18-24 age group and as the 11th amateur on the day. He turned in a marathon that was 9 minutes faster than he’s run before. An awesome performance from an athlete with lots of room for improvement.

Nick on the run

Several time zones away Chad was racing at the Rev 3 Anderson Half. he grabbed 5th in his age group on a very hilly, hard half Ironman. This was his first long course attempt this season and it was a good hit out. I suspect he’ll have a few more cracks at this distance next season.

Chad rolling along

In Tucson, Billy finished 2nd in his age group and wrapped up second overall in the Tucson Triathlon series. He was three minutes down after the first race, cut that in half after the second race, but couldn’t quite cut the gap in the third race. This is his best overall series finish in nearly a decade of racing this series. Once again Billy proves getting older doesn’t have to slow you down.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

We’ve all been out when someone wearing a one size fits all article of clothing proves that statement wrong. Most of the time it’s not pretty, even if the person wearing it is.

Meet Chris.

Chris B. exiting the water

He’s one of the newest Accelerate 3 athletes. He was training by an endurance group training plan. Sometimes when you get an athlete and look at their training it’s pretty easy to see where the changes need to be made. In Billy’s case it lots of volume but not race specific work. Once the race specific work started he started PBing his Olympic distance, 70.3’s and IM’s . In Chris’s case he was doing intervals but not at the right intensity levels. His FTP had actually stagnated about 4 months ago and he was doing a lot of hard workouts but not necessarily hard workouts. For him it was a matter of changing how he was doing his intervals, changing the amount of time spent in certain levels, and looking at the data to come up with a power race plan that was actually higher in watts then he would have targeted otherwise.

I’m rather pleased with Chris’s first race as an Accelerate 3 athlete. Some tweaking here, some changing things there and BOOM he is 3rd overall in his first race as an Accelerate 3 athlete!

Chris B – 3rd Overall!