Racing and hosting a World Champ

It’s been awhile since I have blogged, just have been way too busy. I just tried to do Muncie which was shortened and that was probably for the best regardless. It was pretty hot and while I think I could have gotten through the entire race as I have been training pretty hard, I was glad I didn’t have to. I was able to get the AG win which just keeps becoming harder and harder. Great guys out there, all racing really fast.

Racine I was a ghost. My name wasn’t on the registration list, even after we got that sorted out I didn’t seem to show up on the results either??? Probably for the best as I really didn’t have a good day. In fact I haven’t felt that bad in a race in years. No idea why, I think it was just one of those days. I swam best I can tell around 25 min, rode 2:12, and then brought it home with a mind blowing 1:52 run! LOL – I wanted to quit so bad but the support of all the local athletes standing out and cheering for me I thought I owed them the respect of finishing, so I did. I guess lucky for me my name isn’t showing up for an official finish.

One of the reasons I think I wasn’t in the groove was the double taper from Muncie and Racine. I never taper well, and doing two in a row, I think it was just too much. The other reason is I have been fortunate enough to play host to Crowie and Mat Steinmetz. Bot awesome dudes, but they have a busy schedule and I have been trying to help them get to all the things they need to be at. I will say this though, totally worth it. Craig, is fast of course, but more importantly, really is an awesome dude. I feel fortunate to have gotten to become one of his friends. We go to the wind tunnel tomorrow, then train another week before he heads back to Boulder where I may be able to go do a training block with him as well. Very cool.

Treadmill Workout

This is a workout I wrote with Benny for a fast runner (ITU style) athlete to use. I have modified this to 2 x through for some of my athletes but many started with just 1 x through. Its good for economy and foot speed and thought you may enjoy it.

This is a treadmill set. warm up 10 min then at 30 seconds per mile faster than 5k speed and 1% grade perform the following set 1-2 x through with 5 min easy between:

2min  @ 5k - 30 seconds if possible on treadmill (EZ1 min)

increase speed .5mph 4x 45 seconds (EZ 1 min)

increase speed .5mph 4x 30 seconds (EZ 1 min)

 Cool Down 10-15 min

Old Friends

I have done 2 races this year so far and they have been quite fun. The 29^th was actually my birthday as well which caused me to really reflect on a few things on my last ride.

Waiting in line for me registration process for Vegas 70.3 at St. Croix, and getting a chance to talk to as many good friends at American TTT really made me think again about how awesome our sport is. I do not get to see everyone very often but when you do at races it is we never miss a beat. I am able to walk up to people and almost not miss sentences in conversations we had been having at the last race. Combine that with Facebook and twitter it makes it pretty easy to all stay connected.

Waiting in line to register and making plans to meet up at following races, or Kona, or Vegas is so cool and so much fun. I think the younger guys are going to do that too and now that the sport is getting bigger I hope to see even more relationships form, but who knows.

I’ve  been racing now for 20 years which is hard to believe and when I started we were a pretty small community. We all do battle together, and then are usually there right away to help each other out on workouts, or training advice, offer up homestays, etc. There are a few bad apples of course in every area of life but those guys seem to be weeded out pretty quickly and I still see a few of them floating around grouchy and or as arrogant as ever. J

If you are just getting into the sport, you will start to notice after a while you can literally travel the World and start to run into people you consider “Friends”. See you out there this summer!

St. Croix Race Report

I am glad I came and did this race again. I was originally going to try to qualify and since I already have my spot do not need to.  So We made a decision to be in shape for the race and go as fast as I can, btu not to full prepare for it as I had early season previously and it kind of showed up today.

 Weather was raining in the am and it turned out it just kept raining all day long.  For me personally this took a little impetus off my motivation because, well it just did. J That combined with the last time I was here three years ago I got SCHOOLED on the course I decided to play it a bit conservative today.

The swim was pretty uneventful. My speed suit must have been pulled on because I did notice it was open after about 1000K so I rolled over and wrestled that back closed but other than that it was pretty straight forward. Some dude took off at the beginning and was GONE! He outswam Potts by 8 min! I can tell you it was true too because I saw him go and couldn’t believe it.

My transition was slow as I never changed “auto on/off” on my new garmin and I had to mess with that and I didn’t really feel like just running through the mud because I really didn’t think that would matter too much to my overall placing at the end of the day.

I took off somewhat easy and really tried to ease into the bike. Again, I wanted to not have any cramping today and the hills are so far out of what I have been training lately I just needed to feel it out for a bit. Also, there was standing water up to 6 inches deep in several places. I kept thinking how bad crashing would such and with as hard as the course is normally I didn’t see the point in taking risk on descents and corners.

I passed most of the women pro (I was in the 4^th wave I think) and by mile 40 was in 19^th overall place on the road. The feedback I kept getting was that I was doing all the passing, watts were up whenever I felt like pushing and I thought “hey I must be ridding well, lets just play it cool”. I also was afraid the rain would stop, the sun would come out and would just steam cook us all. So was hedging for that.

With 5 miles or so to go I kept looking back and saw literally nobody.  I relaxed all the way into T2 again, thinking the run is hard enough, pushing the last 5-8 miles would probably take more from that then time gained.  

T2 was again slow. I had put all my running stuff in plastic bags and had to unwrap it all, and wanted to put on socks and not with muddy feet, etc. blah blah blah, my transitions were WAY slow! My fault, but I honestly didn’t mind so much because again, I didn’t think it would matter. – It did, as it always does.

2 guys passed me in T2 -I never saw them again.

 I ran steady for the first 7 miles, then just felt a little “out of shape” and had to slow down a touch the last 5. Not a catastrophic reduction, but I was fading.

In the end, I felt like I biked too conservative but that is usually not an issue, and I feel my base is a little light, but that is by design. So it wasn’t a great race, but it wasn’t a bad one either.  I speant WAY TOO MUCH time in transitions, as they were abotu 6 min added to my bike and run combined, but hey, it was raining! :)

I am happy to get in a solid effort today and get the season started.  

Swim with the stars in St. Croix

In St. Croix, and have been managing to dodge most of the rain showers. This place is so humid right now it really doesn’t matter as I seem to be dripping with sweat as soon as I leave the room regardless.

We all got 1 chance to swim the course so we went down to the swim start Friday at 11am and dove in as a group. I found myself at the front as I am sure the better swimmers waited to get in a bit longer but it was pretty short lived. I saw a couple guys swim by me on the right hand side in between some pick up efforts I was doing, and I decided to go with them.

At the Turn buoy one of the guys stopped to show me a spotted ray right under us. That was cool, but even cooler was the fact he was wearing some black and yellow goggles… Lance… NFW. I do not tend to get overly excited to see particular stars, but it was pretty cool to be out there just chatting about sea life with him. I told him if he pulled the rest of the way in on the swim, I would of the work on the bike. J He smiled and we were off again.

I have to admit at that point I wanted to keep up because I thought, damn, people pay like 10K a crack to ride with the dude, why not go for a swim? I hit his feet a few times, but nothing major and I kept thinking it was cool to be right behind the guy that I watched for so many years, win the Tour and seemed to be a figure kind of like MJ (Im from Chicago) who would always just be that guy on the TV, here I was not hitting his feet and I kept thinking about all the victories those feet have pedaled him too.

I couldn’t figure out who was hanging around on my right shoulder, but he wasn’t giving up any groud and to me, it seemed like we were swimming pretty well. When we finished the guy next to us said “Damn, you swim OK for a cyclist- It was Terenzo Bozzone, another guy who is damn fast and was an honor to swim with.

The coolest part of all was to have all the hard swimming I had been doing this year pay off and to see at least that day I could swim with those guys.

When we climbed up the ladder out of the ocean, I went my way, and he went his. He was mobbed, and I was proud of myself for just playing it cool like I was swimming with just anyone else.

I would post pictures, but I told Lance “no pictures please” J

The Swim. (not speaking about technique)

I have been getting a lot of questions lately about how to get better at swimming. Let me say this right up front.

- YES technique IS important.
- Yes I agree swimming on your side helps
- Yes I think you need to maximize stroke length (more on this in a min)
- Yes I think doing drills are important

If you look back at Memphis in May from the earliest results, you will see I was definitely not that great of a swimmer. Trying to get down to a 20 min 1500k took YEARS for me, and was a huge goal. I think I started about 25-27 min, eventually 23, etc.

I wanted to break 20 min, I also wanted to swim with a lead group when possible.

Look, I worked very hard on my “Stroke” but at the end of the day the sets that helped me the most were not Masters Classes, were not the really fancy sets, etc. They were the roll up your sleeves and do the sets nobody else likes to do. You want to do 10 x 100 on the 1:20??? Great, then try to do them. If you only make 3, then add 5 seconds and finish the set. Keep trying them week after week until you get your goal. Not literally, but you get the idea I hope.

It has to be a realistic goal. If you are swimming 2:00/100 now, then make 1:55 the goal. If you do it on 10 seconds rest, and even 5 seconds, it gets to be too long. This is the problem with masters, the interval is made for the group so if you are getting 5+ sec rest on anything shorter than 200 it’s TOO MUCH REST for trying to identify your pacing strategy for your 1500.

Build endurance. Swim a straight 4-5k every week and vary your freestyle stroke. So for example I will do 500 bilat, 500 weakside, 500 bilat, 500 strong side. And just keep rotating through. Boring? Yep! But if you don’t do these types of sets, you are not going to get faster.

PACE! I do a swim where I see how far can I swim at my goal pace without any breaks. I look during a breath cycle each time I come into the wall if I am on pace or not. If I am teetering by a second, FIGHT FOR ANOTHER 100. It may be 700 meters, it maybe 1200. You don’t know. This is one of the reasons why groups do not work all the time. It would have to be way more structured, or you would catch a draft, or swim too hard, too much rest, etc.

Now I think Masters groups are very beneficial, just not for ALL YOUR swims. Use them to push speed and some breakthrough swims, and technique work, but your blue collar sets need to be solo or with one buddy close to your speed.
Keep things very simple too, if you get too fancy, you can get more fit, but not building specificity.

- 40x50 on 2 sec rest.
- 10x200 @ goal pace on an interval with 5 sec rest.
- 500 at goal pace, then 5 x 100 on goal pace interval, then right into 400 @ gp... all the way down.
- Etc.
- If you start to fall off, use paddles for help.

Open water? Sure practice for a lot of swimmers it isn’t going to help as much UNLESS YOU HAVE A GROUP. This would be a time a group will help to keep you honest. By yourself I think you look around too much, the clock is a non-issue, and you just do not get the same work in.

I hope this helps. It isn’t always the sexiest answer but I promise it will be effective.

We will also go over this on our podcast this month. You can look for that on Itunes “training bible coaching” as search.

The Dark Ages

Wow, it must be serious Base season now as my blog has seemed
to go silent. The days are just flying by and it doesn’t help that the sunset
is still before 6pm.

We had an amazing Death Valley camp in the past month and
all the athletes seemed to really enjoy the time we spent climbing, swimming, socializing,and eating. I think we are all looking forward to the trip next year again. It didn’t hurt most of the campers were
upgraded to a 2000sq ft. suite in Vegas!

This time of the year is always the hardest for me. It seems
like the races are getting pretty close so you better take your training
seriously, but the days are still cold, and wet, and like I said earlier SHORT.
So you are still doing all your workouts in snowsuits, rain gear and with
headlights, or in the basement with the same shows you have had on your DVR
since last winter. Not only that but it feels like while fitness is within
reach, you just are not there yet and you start to wonder how the hell you are
going to ever feel like you can cover your distance again, let alone fast. All
I can tell you is we have all been there before and in most cases, it all comes
good. Just be patient and do not doubt yourself or think you are alone in these
feelings. If you can grab any time away in a new training environment it can
help so much.

When I was in high school I used to go to Missouri Military
Academy. We lived at the school and would come home on the major holidays.
There is usually always something to look forward to in the fall between:
Parents day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. After winter break. NOTHING of any
significance until Spring Break. So we used to call this time “The Dark Ages”.
At least now I get to see women during that time.

Train safe!