1 week until my first event

In 6 days, I will have finished my first triathlon of the season. It is amazing to me that I am planning on racing soon, when it has been to cold here in Milwaukee for me to ride outside more than one time. Last year the Bucknell Passionman Triathlon was a very warm spring day and took place in the afternoon. We could not have hoped for better weather. However, this coming Sunday is supposed to be around 60degrees and will be taking place in the morning.

The Bucknell Passionman site: passionman.wordpress.com
- find the course maps and general info here

My final week of preparation will look like most other weeks of training. I will be in the pool Monday - Thursday. I plan to run a 10k today, a 5k tomorrow, and some very light 5ks Wednesday and Thursday. I'm not pushing any of my workouts hard this week. Due to the short length of the Passionman, I don't feel the need to taper into the race. At one point, the bike portion of the race was the least of my concern. However, because of the weather I have been confined to the indoors and not fully tested myself on the bike out on the road. I hope all those spinning classes will carry over well....

My goals for the race are as follows:
Swim: 650m 10 mins
Bike: 13.2miles 35 mins
Run: 3.1miles 21 mins

Last year I had to strategize where I would expend my energy. This year it will be all out for the entire course. A course of this distance requires speed and adrenaline, not endurance and strategy this time around. The real question is what to wear and how to transition. Were it to be another warm beautiful day, I would wear only a tri suit and only change shoes (no socks) at the transition area. At 60degrees and partly cloudy, I might want to look into drying off after the pool and a long sleeve jersey... That will have to be a game time decision.

I am looking forward to this race and hope to beat my goals and possibly bring home the gold metal (for non students) ;)

Integrating Weight exercises into my Training Program

One piece of training that I am still not sure how to integrate into my workout schedule is weight lifting. Often I feel I should treat the lifting program as a separate program running in parallel with the endurance (swim, bike, run) training that I do. However, no matter how hard I try to do this, I always find myself thinking about the next endurance workout and worrying that my lift will negatively affect it. For example, lifting back and biceps the day before a swim routine would certainly affect the swim. Honestly, I don't know what kind of effect this would have in the long run (no pun intended). The result of my uncertainty has resulted in a decreased number of weight lifting sessions.

My current weights program is not well defined; I will admit that. However, I think I am forming a good idea of what to do going forward. I have decided to do what I will call half body workouts (upper body and lower body). The reason I have split it into these two groups has a few reasons. First, it will allow me to merge the workouts into my training schedule based on what endurance event I am training that particular day. Second, they are both very very wide categories and I can rotate in and out a large number of exercises. I'm hoping this will prevent the urge to work the same muscle groups each time.

The Plan moving forward: Exercise with weights two days per week. If I am planning to run or bike that day than I will lift my upper body. If I am planning to swim that day, I'll do a lower body workout. Finally, I will be doing one of each each week. Again, these are just guidlines I am going to try to follow. I am slowly trying to build into following a set plan, but for now I am sticking with the general guideline approach.

Anyone out there have a good weight program integrated into their Triathlon or endurance training programs??

Crash Results and Recovery Week

I am going to be extremely brief. Below is my chart for the week and the recovery week.

Foot OverPronation

In order to fully demonstrate what I am talking about when I discuss my running form, here are some screenshots from the video analysis I took of myself running yesterday.

Good (Midfoot Strike and little pronation):

Bad (Over Pronation):  You can see how the ankle and foot cave inward.

Video Clip (Some Good and Some Bad):

One thing that jumps off the video to me is that my feet appear to be running down the center line of the treadmill.  In my next session I am going to try to focus on landing them on the sides of that imaginary line rather than directly on it.  I think this could be a big reason for the pronation.

The Shoes that won at Kona

It seems like I just keep buying new toys, I assure everyone I do train too.  This post is about running and the Newton shoes.  During the triathlon camp last weekend I reviewed my running form on video and with the coaches.  Everything looked pretty good, with one exception.  In slow motion you can see my heel strike first (and hard) and then my foot pronates inward (and hard).

The proper running form is to land each footstrike on the midfoot and use you hamstrings to pull back.  While the pronation is my biggest concern (as it can lead to both injury and inefficiency), changing to a midfoot footstrike is the first and a major step towards correcting the pronation.  I wish I had the video of my run to post.  Midfoot Strike vs Heel Strike

The shoes I just purchased were worn by Craig Alexander in hiss 2008 win at Kona and are specifically designed to help with making a midfoot strike.  Newton Distance S Shoes.  There is a lot of good information on the Newton site (even if it is geared towards selling their shoes).

MSE Triathlon Camp Day 3

The camp is now over, and just in time to head back to work tomorrow :(.  The final day really pulled everything together for me.  Our schedule was simple:

7-8 Breakfast

8:30-9:45 Swim Drills (more doing today and less learning) + 5 50s on 1min15

9:45-10:30 Open Water swimming

11-12:15 Spinning with Nathan

Lunch, Q&A, Closing

So while it was a simple day, I was really able to get a lot out of the swim.  First, I go a half decent swim workout in.  Second, Dwight was able to work with me a little bit on getting mroe power out of my stroke.  By turning my hip more and stretching out my pull hand, I'll better be able to use my core to snap back and get a more effective pull.  I look forward to working on that in my next few pool workouts.

Spinning was great because it felt terrible.  I have been an All Star on the spin bikes at the gym, but there isn't any substitute for your bike on a trainer.  It was without a doubt more difficult if only because I think it forces you to use slightly different muscles.

That was that.  I dont think I will be enlisting any of the coaches for training plans.  I feel that I was able to get good enough high level advice on training plans that I can work out my own.  Monday and Tuesday will be rest days this coming week and I'm going to be using that time to build the year long plan.  So far three races on the horizon (Passionman Tri Bucknell, High Cliff 1/2 Iron WI, and FL Ironman 140.6).

MSE Winter Tri Camp, Day 2

I'm going to break this post down into a few sections because of the immense amount of things I learned and experienced today. I will warn you now its a long post.

First, I want to comment on the overall skill level of those attending. My initial assumptions were totally off. I assumed that the people who would attend a tri training camp would be experienced. Yes, its billed as an all levels event. But, that was my assumption none the less. This is not the case. The average skill level is low. I had expected to be one of the least in shape and experienced athletes and find myself closer to the top. This in itself would not be a bad thing, however, there hasn't been any group work based on skill level. I don't want to sound snobby here because I really do enjoy everyone at the event, but I quickly tired of catching people in the pool after 10 yards. But thats enough of that. Now on to the excellent stuff thats been going on.

The Morning
The coaches mentioned in my last post continue to prove themselves to be excellent mentors and knowlegable athletes. We started the day with some dynamic stretching where I continue to learn little things I do wrong on a regular basis. After breakfast we headed into the pool, where Dwight ran through an extensive amount of swim drills with us. I would dive underwater to watch his demonstrations and his form was awesome to see. The drills I knew, but I got some excellent on site feedback on ways to tweak my personal stroke during various drills. We also had our swim taped from underwater head on, underwater from the side, and above water. I am very pleased to say that when reviewing my stroke, Dwight didn't have much immediate feedback. He wants to work a bit more with me tomorrow on really harnessing the power of my body rotation during the stroke, so look for a report on that tomorrow.

Next up were some running drills aimed at teaching us how are foot should be striking the ground. I can only describe it by saying that you should land on the middle (ball) of your foot using a hamstring pull. I am sorry but Im still wrapping my head around the details deeper than that. We also video taped the run. Now, I have never claimed to be a good runner. In fact, I hate running (although I'm beginning to like it more, shh). I was still unprepared for what I saw on the running video. I do was called extreme pronation. This is only visible in slow motion from behind, and appears to be mostly on my right foot. In order to work on this, I need to focus first on landing on the balls of my feet in that sweeping hamstring pull motion. Next, I need to look at a shoe change (which is depressing because I just bought these shoes).

Im losing focus on this post so I'll stop it here. We also did some cycling and nutrition which I will try to remember to post about tomorrow, but probably not. Also, on a gear note, I really want the Garmin 405 (might have to settle for the 305 ;), and I still want the Equinox TTX 9.9 SSL. Our coach Nate has the 2008 version. Awesome.

MSE Triathlon Camp, Day 1

Normally I struggle for what to write about here, but this weekend will definitely be an exception. I am participating in the MSE Winter Tri Camp in Green Bay WI.

So far I am happy with the coaches (Nathan Ennis, Brian McWilliams, and Dwight Sandvold). They all bring very different skills to the table. Dwight has experience. Its as simple as that. He has been around the sport longer than I have been alive and been in over 100 events. Brian is what I picture when I think of a really good trainer. For instance, in his Plyos today, he was able to make minor form tweaks that really improve the effect of the core exercise. In addition he has an endless bag of variations. We have yet to hear from Nathan, but we were told a story about he set a goal of 10 hours for his first Ironman, which is my goal. I definitely want to hear more about how he trained for that goal.

I'll repeat my intro to the group here. "My one word to describe myself would be "impulsive." The reason I am starting with that word is because its what got me into the sport in the first place. One summer, about 2 years ago, I was in Boulder CO, walked into a bike store, and left with a $2000 bike. I cycled for a while, but when I recieved an email from my mother about a local 1/2 iron man in 3 weeks, I put together a relay team and we competed about 2 weeks later. The rest is history, but I'm here to continue my transition from impulive to consistancy and get to those big races."

Im looking forward to tomorrow and resting up watching the Tour de California time trial. Lance just took off!