IM NYC – BOOM

IM NYC, one of the high profile IM races of the year. There was a lot of hype surrounding this race. It’s held in one of the highest profile cities in the world. 2500 of your closest friends all getting onto a ferry at 3am. To do an Ironman.

Doug boards the ferry for his first IM. The finish is only eight blocks from his house. This is his home course. His family was there, his friends were there, even his neighbors were there cheering for him.

The gun goes off and it’s soon obvious that the current is helping 2500 triathletes set a PB in the swim. After boarding his bike Doug follows the power plan perfectly, riding within 2 watts of his targeted wattage. This deposits him at T2 in 417th place. But never fear, Doug can run. Only 9 people in the entire race out ran him, pro’s included. He moved up 342 overall places on the run to finish 75th overall. He passed one person on average every 150 meters of the run. He can run faster then you can drive if you’re trying to flee to the Hampton’s on a Friday. From 89th in the M35-39 to 15th at the end of the race with a 9:59:06 while posting the fastest run in his age group by over 7 minutes. Breaking 10 hours, setting a top 10 overall run split and running faster then anyone else in your age group isn’t too shabby for your first crack at the distance. Nicely done Doug.

Doug starting the run

Chad continued his winning ways. He turned on the heat during the bike leg posting the fastest bike split of the day on his way to grabbing 5th overall and winning the M25-29 AG at the Mountain Lakes Triathlon in Al.

Chad Beginning the Run

Across the state line in GA, Rich, in his first race back since IMTX grabbed 4th overall and 1st in the M35-39 AG in the fourth race of the Tri in the Parks Race Series. Not a bad way to start the second half of your season.

Crushing It…a lot.

This past weekend saw some Accelerate 3 athletes kick ass. The first four race results rolled in and the worst anyone did was second overall, By the time the weekend was over, it was top 2 or top 3 in their AG for everyone. It’s hard to figure out which it the best performance on a whole this weekend. Jenny grabbed two overall wins in triathlons this weekend and how can you not start with that?

Jenny pulled the Stumpy Creek Double Double. On Saturday she won the olympic distance race by a rather comfortable margin of 6:20. On Sunday she turned around and won the Amica sprint addition of the race by a few ticks short of 5 minutes. This should give her enough points to vault into the lead of the Inside Out Sports NC Triathlon Series for the women and place a strong claim to the first prize check of $1500.

Jenny Leiser approaching T2

On the men’s side of the race, James bounces back from a disappointing weekend last weekend where he went off course, to posting the fastest bike split of the day to leave T2 in the lead. He came home second across the line grabbing some more points towards taking the overall series win this year.

It’s pretty rare when there are two Accelerate 3 triathletes in the same race, even rarer when they both place in the top 2 overall. Congrats to both Jenny and James for laying some wood to their competitors.

James Haycraft & Jenny Leiser

Heading a little further south Chad qualified for and raced the USA Cycling Southeastern Time Trial Championships. In the Cat 5 men he had already been crowned AL State Champion. This weekend saw him take the top spot in the Men’s Cat 5 Time Trial to be crowned Regional Champion. He averaged over 25 mph to win this closer to 41k then 40k TT by 1:45 over his next competitor.

Chad Williamson taking the top honors

Moving west Nick Baldwin raced the highly competitive Boulder 70.3 race. This is the second 70.3 race he’s done this season and the second where he takes a top 3 spot in his AG. He finished 3rd in the M18-24. This is his third race in four weekends and the third race where he’s claimed a 3rd position. The other two were sprint or olympic distance races in CO. In those races not only was he third overall but he also picked up a cool $100 for each of those finishes. This 70.3 capped off a nice block of racing. Now Nick gets to put his head down put the finishing touches on his training for the 70.3 LV Championships and Kona.

Another race, another $100 for Nick

The Track is NOT the Answer – Part II

My last post began to lay the foundation for running faster. Increasing frequency is the first step for most triathletes. The next step is to increase your volume while maintaining your new, higher frequency.

In the last post, we were increasing your frequency from 3-4 times per week up to five times per week. Before you follow the advice in this post you will need to give yourself 3-4 weeks at your higher frequency. If you have struggled with the increase in frequency or have not been consistent you are not ready to increase the workload. Give yourself at least two additional weeks without struggling and/or without missing a run before stepping up your game. If the previous three weeks have gone well then you should be ready for the next step.

Running fast makes the finish line appear sooner

You once again need to consider your race goals and your current fitness level. Since this is a long term process, it may be best to look forward and consider your long term race goals more heavily then your short term race goals. In endurance sports there is no short term solution. The next step involves making choices. You need to choose two runs based upon your goals.

The runs you choose can be any two runs. If you mainly focus on long course triathlon you might choose two of your new runs. If you race short course you may choose your long run and one other run. The days can be back to back or spread out in the week. The choice is yours. Whichever two runs you choose, do not vary this from week to week. Make the choice and stick with it.

You are going to add another 15-20 minutes to your total weekly running time. Split that time up equally between the two runs you have chosen. Run A gets 10 minutes additional time as does Run B. It’s that easy. You are not running faster during these runs, you are running longer. We are now increasing your volume by increasing the duration of some of your runs. In the first part of this series we increased your volume by increasing your frequency or the number of times you ran. Now your volume will increase by increasing the total amount of time you spend running over the course of your runs.

If you are concerned about which runs would be most beneficial to you, there are no wrong choices at this stage. Just choose two runs and divide the 15-20 minutes up equally between them. You will stick to this new routine for another 3-4 weeks before making any changes to your running.

If we go back to our hypothetical 8:00 minute per mile guy, he originally added in two runs per week for an increase of 30 minutes per week. He is now adding in another 20 minutes of running per week. This increases his workload by another 2.25 miles. Now he is running an extra 10k per week over his starting baseline. In the example I laid out in the first post of this series, our hypothetical runner was running about 17mpw to start. Now 3-4 weeks later he is running about 23mpw. That’s roughly a marathon a month more running all at a very low recovery cost. At the end of a year it’s just under 280 more miles of running or about 16 extra weeks of running in the year. In this example it would have taken you 16 months to do what you will now do in 12.

The next post in this series will take you through the fork in the road choices that you will soon be running into. I’ll try to give you a framework to help you choose a path to run along.

Where did all the time go?

Whew, a lot has happened in the last few weeks. It’s been crazy, lots of travel, lots of seeing friends, family, lots of thinking, lots of work and some possible change in the works.

I went to Iron Gear Sports up in Mesa, AZ to get fitted on the Specialized Transition by Kevin Risenborough. I thought I was 95% there on the fit by wanted a second opinion by an expert fitter. Kevin slid me forward 1 degree to 80degrees and wedged my right shoe.

The next day he, Jeff, Tim and I went out for a little 4 hour bike ride. All systems go and my right glut was feeling awesome versus being tight after a ride that long.

Then a few days later I boarded a plane for Atlanta. We had a meeting to get our new CRM software and computers. All I can say is wtf was up with the 7:30a-9:30pm work day? Seriously? The computers and our CRM rock though. It’s a BIG improvement over what we had.

No way would I want to live in the middle of Atlanta. I thought Tucson had a lot of homeless. My friend and I went running through downtown Atlanta. It was like running the steeple chase. Every 200-300m we were hurdling over a homeless person. There were so many we actually ran in the streets, cars be damned. There is just no where to run in the middle of downtown Atlanta. We ran to the Olympic Park, which everyone said was a great place to run. It seems people there don’t have high expectations for running if that is a primo running spot. We finally said f*ck it, went back to the hotel and hit the treadmills.

Airlines are ridiculous. It was actually less expensive for me to fly from ATL-GSO spend a few days with the parents and grandparents and then fly GSO-ATL-TUS then it would have been for me to fly directly home from the meeting. It seems that if you fly me more miles it should cost more, not less. No wonder the airlines can’t make money. What dumb ass prices tickets so that the more you fly the less total price you pay? No wonder they can’t make a profit. Best of all because the price to GSO and back to TUS was less then my ticket to Atlanta, my company covered the cost of me to fly to see my parents. I get to see my parents, grandparents and a friend, the company gets to save money. It’s a win-win-lose. The loser being Delta.

First thing Friday, I hit the trails for a run. I love running on these trails. The rolling terrain, the zigging and zagging back n forth, the dirt trails oh so soft. It’s running bliss. Through the woods around the lake and nary another person to be seen. Later that weekend I met up with a friend I haven’t seen in ~15 years and we hit the trails at Salem Lake. Nice rolling trail with mile markers. 3 days of running all on trails and close to 30 miles total while I was there.

But back to the change. Met with my boss today and talked more about going into the home office. That would be a radical change. I’ve never really had an office job. I’ve had 2 jobs with offices but I rarely used them. Kind of hard when you are in outside sales to make any money sitting in the office. But during that conversation, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get one of my clients more running volume into his very time limited schedule. Something my boss said about being in a different box if I go into the home office turned on the light bulb for this clients schedule. I figure now is a great time to make that move back across the country if everything is right. Real estate prices are down, I don’t own, there is a relo package. It could be an exciting change. We’ll see how the conversations progress as I start down the path exploring the options that could lay before me. Tune in later to see if I have to move!

Drugs and Sports

It’s everywhere, the talk about drug use in baseball, thanks to Mark McGwire’s recent admission about steroid use. What still stumps me is people actually care about drug use in sports. You have sports, the opportunity to get ahead in life, the opportunity where riding the bench in the NFL guarantees you at least $285,000 per year, where being great at the high school level leads to a free college education, where being faster then everyone can lead to more money in one year then you can make working a real job for five, to become famous, and you are going to have drug use. I can’t think of a modern sport that doesn’t have a drug problem or hasn’t had one recently. Real football aka soccer, rugby, NFL, triathlon, MLB, XC skiing, cycling, T&F – both on the track across all distances from the 100m sprint to the marathon and the field events, NBA, hockey, snowboarding, weight lifting, equestrian and biathlon as well as any other sports that escape me at the moment.

If you are one of those people who think sport is clean, wake the f*ck up. Whatever your sport, the big leagues have one thing in their equipment bag most of us will never have. Drugs. Be it anabolic steroids, EPO, dEPO, HGH, modafinil, insulin, CG, LH, masking agents, aromatase inhibitors or beta blockers. At the pinnacle of sports, there is Mr. or Mrs. Drug Use standing in the wings, waving as their athlete accepts the medal or trophy. At the level below that there is some athlete, who, better then 99% of the world at their sport, needs to be better then 99.4% of the world consistently to make a good living. They are in bed humping the drug use whore like a champ. At the level below that some athlete is blowing the goddess of false promise.

Over the last few days I’ve heard people, from those I interact with to talking bobbleheads on tv, who are shocked by Mr. McGwire’s admission. What a bunch of f*cking morons. Come on? Really? You’re shocked that some record holder used drugs? That some athlete dipped into the milk and honey? That Mrs. I never used drugs suddenly admits to having used drugs. Every time the news breaks, be it Marion Jones, or her ex- husband, or her boyfriend, or Mark, or Jose, or Dave or Jim admits to using drugs you are shocked. When someone goes from being the 80th ranked breastroker in the the world to holding a WR the next year, an off Olympic year, you don’t raise an eyebrow? When an entire team of women runners from China suddenly put world records so far out of reach you don’t think that maybe there was something besides turtle in that soup? When two Olympians miss the Olympics you don’t scratch your head. When someone goes from being a zero to a hero in an unbelievably short span of time you don’t question it. If this is you, you are an IDIOT.

Unfortunately drug use is here, in your favorite sport, done by someone on your favorite team, maybe even your favorite athlete. Don’t be surprised when they get popped or admit years later, then try to downplay it. That drugs weren’t the thing that separated them from the herd. Drug use was the factor that separated them from the herd.