When All Else Fails ......

The year was 2005, and the B2B was a much smaller event. It was still 148 + miles – it just had fewer riders and the aid stations were few and far between. This was by design, and even though we knew what to expect and had packed our food accordingly, bonking is something that eventually happens to all of us who stretch our boundaries, and in 2005, it happened to Shag and I as we were riding the B2B together.

Somewhere around mile 100, Shag and I were about half an hour into the bonk and things were very quiet. Personally, I find silence is the best way to handle the situation since one of the symptoms of bonking is “grouchiness”, and didn’t want my foul mood to affect our friendship. I’m guessing Shag felt the same way.

We knew there was a convenience store along the route and we quietly made way up and down the hills praying for it to come into view. Now. When it did, we picked up the pace slightly, made our way past the groups of cyclists calmly getting their money out of their Bento boxes and dropped our bikes by the door.

We both duck-walked into the convenience store in our bike shoes, and immediately Shag grabbed 2 packs of Twinkies on his way to the back of the store where the cooler was. He stuffed one of the packs into his mouth -barely stopping to get the wrapper off. The guy at the counter stood there, mouth agape, trying to figure out if he should confront this giant man in the bike helmet, spandex and pointy shoes. Shag could see him out of the corner of his eye, and mouth still full of sponge cake and cream he yelled, "I'm gonna pay for all this", as he grabbed a bag of Fritos and opened the cooler door. It was the most basic of instincts and one of my favorite all time memories of riding the B2B.

Recently Shag forwarded an article written by Chris Carmichael, famous for being Lance Armstrong’s coach, who had a similar experience which he writes about very well and neatly ties into the Resurrection and Passover in time for his Easter Blog. Carmichael also explains the science behind the need for fat and protein when the calorie deficit has become too deep.

Last year I wrote an article for the B2B called The Case for Real Food, in which I talked about the difference between racing 140.2 miles, and doing a training ride of 148 miles. The main difference is that at the lower exertion (ie, lower heart rate) of the training ride, adequate fueling is not as much of a limiter. At higher heart rates, as in Ironman racing, digestion and assimilation of fat and protein becomes nearly impossible, and when the stomach, brain and muscles are crying out for fuel immediately, only simple carbs will do.

Fortunately, the B2B is a training ride. It will probably be the longest training ride of your life, but there is no finish line clock at the end. Your goal is to finish strong, and with proper pacing and a dialed in fueling plan which is generous and starts at mile 0, not mile 80, you’ll be surprised how great you feel when you get to Windsor, Vermont. Whether you are training indoors or riding outside, practice your fueling now. Carry as much of it as you can on the bike and in pockets and make sure you have enough fluid, calories and electrolytes to make it through 9-10 hours of riding with rest stops. Practice being self-sufficient starting this weekend. Don’t wait until June 16th and hope for the best. While the resurrection is glorious (especially at the Harpoon cookout!), it’s your responsibility to keep yourself from needing resurrection in the first place!

NAILING THE TRIFECTA

In several of the articles I've written about performance nutrition and race day fueling, I've talked about how months and even years of training can be ruined during training by poor nutrition, and on race day by lack of a fueling plan, or a poorly executed fuel plan.

 

I know the message is hitting home, because I've had a huge surge in requests for fueling plans and lots of questions about nutrition come up during group coaching sessions. People are really starting to understand how important this is! This makes me very happy, because I think anyone who has a coaching business, really wants their athletes to have a great experience.  However, every silver lining has a cloud, and the cloud to this silver lining is that I am finding that some athletes think that if poor fueling = bad race/ride, then a great fueling plan must therefore equal a great race/ride. And while that's true, it's only true if the athlete has also done the proper training.

 

While this seems incredibly obvious, I am starting to hear comments that lead me to believe that it's not so obvious that it isn't worth spelling out.  Because endurance athletes are really learning about the important of electrolytes as part of their training and fueling plan, I find that athletes are attributing ANY cramping they experience to electrolyte imbalance.

 

No amount of electrolyte tabs will take the place of proper training for your event

I recently had an athlete come to me requesting a sweat rate test and fueling plan. This athlete had experienced cramping in his last two endurance events and as he told me, he had learned his lesson about drinking water rather than sports drink. So during his second event, he drank only endurance formula sports drink loaded with sodium. He even took sodium tablets from a fellow athlete, but his cramping persisted. He was desperate to find a solution.  Before asking about the rest of his fueling plan, or his pre-race nutrition, I asked him about his training. I asked him what he ate and drank during his long rides and how long those rides were. It turns out, that the longest training day this athlete had done was 5 hours -- but he was doing an event that would take him almost twice that! Cramps are much more common when you use your muscles beyond their accustomed limit either for a longer than normal duration or at a higher than normal level of activity. High sodium sports drinks are great for preventing cramping …. IF the cause of the cramping is electrolyte depletion. But you won't be able to eat your way to the finish line if the cause of the cramping is muscle fatigue due to under-training. In other words, no amount of electrolyte tabs will take the place of proper training for your event.

 

A second and very common fueling error isn’t really a fueling error, but a pacing error. Scores of very dedicated athletes put the time in the saddle and do a great job of practicing their event-day fueling plan during every long workout. They get very dialed in – for their training pace. However, on race day (or event day), they get caught up in the excitement of the early pace done on fresh legs. If the ride is draft legal, the athlete might be trying to hang on to the paceline. If it’s not, they are trying to stay within the legal draft zone of their competition. Either way, one of two things is likely to happen. The athlete will either get careless about the early fueling, or they will push the heart rate above their aerobic threshold. Or both.

 

Dehydration of 1 to 2 percent of body weight begins to compromise physiologic function and negatively influences performance. Dehydration of greater than 3 percent of body weight further impairs physiologic function and increases the athlete’s risk of developing heat cramps or heat exhaustion. Loss of 5 percent or more body weight can result in heatstroke. In addition, an athlete competing with his heart rate above his aerobic threshold is now relying on easily exhausted supplies of carbohydrate in the form of glycogen, rather than stored fat as a fuel.   To further complicate things, as this athlete tries to ingest the fuel he relied on during his training, he will experience difficulty processing even simple carbohydrates with an elevated heart rate.  This can lead to bloating, cramping, vomiting and diarrhea. As coaches like to say, “nutrition problems are often pacing problems in disguise”.

 

Remember, just as it’s possible to ruin good training or race strategy with poor nutrition, it’s possible to ruin a good fueling plan with poor training and poor race strategy! Nail the training, pacing and fueling trifecta for B2B by keeping the importance of each of these in balance.

Perfect Practice

When I was asked to do the nutrition column for B2B again this year, I eagerly agreed. In over ten years of coaching, I can tell you that some of the best training and athletic plans can be completely derailed due to bad nutrition and bad fueling.

So, given that we are all after the same thing – success in our athletic endeavors and overall health and fitness – I take the nutrition and fueling component very seriously. However, when I starting thinking about what I would write this year, I struggled. My philosophy about proper fueling for the B2B – a 150 mile hilly, point-to-point ride in late June – hasn’t changed. The Harpoon website still has my nutrition articles from last year and they key points are still the same:

·    Have a sweat rate test done to determine how much fluid you need to consume per hour. Thirst is NOT a good indicator.

·    Dial in a fueling plan that includes fluid, calories from high glycemic carbs, and a good electrolyte balance.

·    If you pace this ride correctly – entirely aerobic, never with a high heart rate – you will be able to use whole foods that are high in carbohydrate, low in fat and protein as well as engineered food which are concentrated carbs. (potatoes and corn chips vs. energy gels).

But here’s the thing – and it’s the whole point of this article. You need to do more than dial in the perfect plan. You need to PRACTICE this plan! As Vince Lombardi once said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.”

Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar: you log lots of winter miles on your trainer which is set up next to a folding table that has a couple of water bottles, a cell phone and the channel changer. There may be a Power Bar, a gel, or whatever you munch during your long rides. While you warm up, you flip through the channels to find something to watch. You ride for 90 minutes - or three hours, taking phone calls, watching TV, drinking, only getting up to go to the bathroom. When you’re done, you take a shower and grab lunch.

Or maybe it’s a week day and you are squeezing in a workout before or after work. Your pre and/or post-race nutrition is probably consumed in the car and might or might not have the correct ratios of carbohydrate to protein. And you may or may not have had adequate sports drink or water while you were on the bike.

Or maybe that’s not you! Maybe you get your water bottles, gels and recovery drinks ready the night before your long ride. If it’s a really long ride, you start your carbo-load the morning before your big ride with a pancake breakfast and continue throughout the day with high glycemic carbs, limited fat and protein, and lots of fluid and electrolytes. You eat and drink the same thing every time you ride, only adjusting for the length of the ride. You do this with success and you do this so often it’s habit!

Practice makes permanent whatever you do repeatedly. Eat like an elite athlete repeatedly – including during EVERY training ride, and your practice will become perfectly permanent!

PLANNING THE PERFECT OFF-SEASON

I started coaching triathletes in 2000, and since that time, I have personally coached hundreds of athletes. What follows, is my advice on how to structure your ‘off-season’, in order to have a successful race season.

Before I begin, however, I need to get you thinking about your goals, define the difference between a triathlete and a person who does triathlons, and explain why I put quotes around the phrase ‘off-season’.

To me, the difference between a triathlete and a person who does triathlon has to do with goals and intent. When I take on a new athlete, I send a bio for the athlete to fill out. One of the questions I will ask is, “what are your goals?”  The answers I get more often have to do with placing at a certain percentile in their age division, than they do with overall fitness, meeting a challenge and having fun. It’s not surprising to see such serious responses, since they are at the point where they are hiring a coach.  And while having fun, staying fit and uninjured, having an organized plan, and being part of a coaching program that involves other like-minded athletes are all great reasons for hiring a coach, seeing improvement or having a successful season are universal goals for my athletes, whether they state that or not.

So to me, a ‘triathlete’ is someone who has embraced the sport and lifestyle to the point that their goals include a way to measure improvement and success in the sport. A person who does triathlons (as opposed to a triathlete) is someone who has done a triathlon, but may or may not race this year or ever again, and doesn’t care about how they do in the race or if they see any improvement.

Assuming you fall into the former category, your goals should look something like: getting fitter as an endurance athlete, learning how to pace races of various distances, learning to handle whatever the day and the course deal out, learning the rules of the game, getting better at race strategy, and because athletes who find themselves on the downward slope of the average age in triathlon can’t always expect to get faster, moving up or staying at the top of your age division.

This brings me to the explanation of the quotes around ‘off-season’.  A triathlete – someone who expects to see some sort of improvement in performance and fitness – doesn’t take a season off from training any more than you or I would take a season off from bathing or brushing our teeth. Staying fit is a lifestyle and part of who we are, and not a costume that we put on and take off when we are racing and not racing.

For the athlete who takes two months off at the end of every race season, the first month or two back to training involve catching up to what your competitors have been doing. If they are smart, they have been working in Zone 1 in all 3 disciplines and have included regular lifting and stretching back into their program. At the time that you are just getting back into disciplined training, they are starting to add a little bit of intensity and some benchmark testing to see where they need to do more work.

Athletes who take time off will spend a month or more getting back into the routine, taking off any weight that they’ve gained, and in general, doing what the full-time athletes did during November and December. A quick note here: SO many people think that training at low intensity is the equivalent of NO training. “If I am going to swim/bike/run that slowly I may as well stay home”. WRONG. During your off season, frequent, continuous, aerobic training lasting 30 to 60 minutes (or longer) should be performed at about 70- 75% max HR. These workouts target cellular changes within the running, swimming and cycling muscles, such as increases in the number and size of mitochondria and capillaries. Skipping the workout doesn’t do that at all.

So while I do agree with training (nearly) 12 months a year, athletes should not be working at high intensity or at massive volumes all year long. The volume of training and level of intensity should change dramatically throughout the year and should be well matched to your race season. This is the backbone of the theory of periodization as developed by Arthur Lydiard. What others call the off-season, he calls base-building. And while I don’t love that term either, (don’t I already HAVE a base after 10 years in the sport?!), it at least comes closer to describing how to work these months. So without further ado, here is how my athletes work their base season:

LOSE THE WEIGHT

Really? Lose weight in the OFF season? Isn’t it easier to lose weight when I am training hard? Ask anyone who has tried to lose weight when they are at the peak of their training and they will tell you that it’s not as easy as you would think! If you are not fueling your workouts, your workouts will suffer. When you are doing an easy Zone1 ride or a 60-minute swim where the focus is drills and swimming smoothly, you might be able to get by on water or a light sports drink. Stored fat will get you through the rest of the workout. But if you are riding 90 mins in Zone 3, or have a long or hard workout and you don’t consume calories in the form of simple carbohydrate before and during the workout, as soon as you’ve exhausted the supply of glycogen in your liver and muscles you will ‘bonk’ – i.e., the watts you average will start to drop and your pace will slow down. Because this is directly related to how many calories you burn, you will stop burning calories at a high rate and not only does the workout suffer in that you aren’t improving the energy system that is the focus of today’s workout, you are not meeting your goals of a high caloric burn. (Because fueling and losing weight are complicated for an endurance athlete, I am writing a separate paper on the subject).

The bottom line for losing weight has to do with calories in vs. calories used. In order to lose weight, you need to be in caloric deficit. Appetite and hunger can be distracting, but they are inaccurate measures of the amount of fuel you should be consuming. However, for most people, caloric deficit can lead to feeling weak and tired, so putting yourself in that position when you have a demanding workout is counter-productive. What makes more sense is creating deficits on days when the workout is short and completely aerobic, or on days with no training. Creating a deficit on a day when the most physically demanding thing you will do is walk from your desk to your car means you will consume significantly less food than you would on a day when you also have a run in the morning and a yoga class at night, but being in a 200 calorie deficit on the day off is much easier on the body and is not counter-productive to your athletic goals. 

WORK ON YOUR WEAKNESSES

You always want to work on your weakness and its relative importance to your race, but this is the time to really deconstruct your race results and spend some time breaking bad habits and learning new skills. Triathlon is an endurance sport, and having a huge aerobic engine is critical to your success. Others have written at length about training your aerobic engine, so I am not going to go on about that here. To better understand why you want to run with a low heart rate and spend hours riding at 75% of your threshold watts, read what the experts have to say on the subject. One caveat here: just because someone has a blog doesn’t mean they are an expert. Find out how long they have been in the sport and what kind of successes they personally have had coaching athletes like you. Other than training your relatively weak aerobic engine, what other weaknesses can you work on? 

SWIM

Some coaches actually advocate NO swimming during the off-season. The theory (apparently) is that because swimming tends to be the least “important” part of triathlon, it’s ok to take a few months off.

 I have observed thousands of hours of swimming, watching and coaching everyone from world-class swimmers, to athletes getting their hair wet for the first time. The one common trait among the best swimmers ISN’T their perfect swim stroke, but the confidence and comfort level in the water. Hard to be aggressive in a mass start swim when you still haven’t gotten your breathing rhythm and still have a fear of being under water. In order to be completely comfortable in an environment where inhaling air instead of water has to be figured out, you need to spend a lot of time there. Sure you can work on your technique, but don’t obsess about it. Approach swimming like a swimmer. Swim all 4 strokes and learn to do flip turns. Go off the blocks. Touch the bottom, kick, swim 6 or 7 to a lane. Watch what happens to your speed (and your technique) when you are completely comfortable in the environment.

LIFT, STRETCH, YOGA

I am always asked what I think about lifting for triathletes. I think it’s great – especially as we get older. A well structured weight-lifting program will strengthen opposing muscles, and will work balance, coordination and strengthen the core. However, once the season is in full swing, it can be hard to find time to train in the pool, on the bike and running AND spend a few hours at the gym lifting. By being faithful to a lifting program at least one day a week, you can get a jump start on working your muscles carefully and methodically. In yoga, you will learn some effective stretches and balance moves. If you do have time to continue lifting or doing yoga once the season heats up, you will already have a go-to routine to keep you strong and flexible.

LEARN THE RULES

Imagine taking up any competitive sport and not taking the time to learn the rules! Really? I can’t pick up the ball and run with it in soccer? I’m embarrassed to say that some of my favorite athletes have never taken a look at the USAT rule book. Eventually you will hear about drafting, but can you actually explain it and do you know how long you have to pass another athlete? How far is the ‘draft zone’? How long do you have to wait after being passed before you can ‘re-pass?’. Blocking, littering, outside assistance, use of un-authorized equipment are all penalties that you need to learn about. There are different rules for pros and age-groupers, and the rules change from time to time. Although many local races don’t hire race marshals, it’s unsportsmanlike to cheat, whether you intend to or not, and if you have a goal of doing any championship or any race owned by Ironman, it behooves you to learn the rules and learn them well. It would be a shame to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours training for your race, only to be disqualified for starting in the wrong wave, bringing glass into the transition area, or substituted a relay member without registering them.

PLAN YOUR RACE SEASON

Finally, it’s very important to PLAN your race season, discuss it with your coach, and stick to it! It’s so common to get caught up in the excitement and add race after race into your calendar. There are so many out there – and many are fun, creative and challenging. You might choose an “A” race – one that you’ve wanted to do and will be your primary focus – and add in a few carefully thought out races that will get you ready for the A-race. After you recover from you’re a-race, if you don’t have a championship to train for, you might do a few fun races and call it a season. So many of my athletes start out this way, and then find out their friends are doing this race, or there’s a race to raise money for a cause they support, and the next thing they know, their race season is cluttered and random!

Remember, you don’t have to check everything off your bucket list your first year in the sport. Exercise a little restraint when it comes to racing and not only will you finally have the results you are capable of, you will be around to do it all again next year!

REFERENCES

Boulay, M.R., Simoneau, I-A., Lortie, G., and Bouchard, C. (1997). Monitoring high-intensity endurance exercise with heart rate and thresholds. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.29(1):125-132.
 

Daniels, I.T. (1998). Daniels' Running Formula. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
 

Wenger, H.A. & Bell, G.I. (1986). The interactions of intensity, frequency, and duration of exercise training in altering cardiorespiratory fitness. Sports Medicine, 3:346-356.
 

Wilmore, I.H. & Costill, D.L. (1988). Training for Sport and Activity: The Physiological Basis of the Conditioning Process. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

The Twelve Days of Christmas Swim

Seven paces so there is something for everyone! Enjoy!

Lessons Learned from Maeve Tuffy

It’s dawning on me that whether I am ready or not, Christmas will be here next week.

And as much as I try not to succumb to the pressure inherent in trying to buy and wrap the gifts, mail some of them off, decorate the house and keep up with my already very busy life, I’ll admit that the time crunch was starting to get to me this year.

And then I received a copy of a letter to Santa that my friend and client, Renae Tuffy sent me. Renae has four beautiful kids, each with their own unique personality. Her 6-year old daughter Maeve looks like she is going to be the same feisty endurance athlete that her mother is.

 When Renae was training for an Ironman last year, Maeve would ride up and down the driveway for hours on her bike. One day when her mother called her in for dinner, Maeve told her she needed a few more minutes to complete her workout.

For the last two years, Maeve has run the America’s Hometown Thanksgiving 5k with her mother, and each year she has placed in her age group (10 and under).

So it should come as no surprise that her letter to Santa this year included “do an Ironman (indicated as an M-dot) like Ciate [sic] Snow and win”.  Santa, do you have a couple of those in your bag, because I know a few people who would like that!!

But that’s not the best part of this letter. When you look at the letter as a whole, you realize that, as children often do, Maeve is teaching us all a lesson about what’s important in life including balancing what you value.  Some of Maeve’s other wishes (lessons) are:

·        Find Ainsley’s blanket (altruism)

·       No coal (saving the planet)

·       “Mom and Dad scratch [sic] my back” (human touch from someone you love)

Triathlon can be a very selfish sport. The financial outlay for race fees, travel expenses, equipment and training can consume a large portion of the family’s resources, and time spent training can pull you away from your family for large chunks of time. When it starts to feel that keeping your eyes on the prize is becoming all consuming and affecting your value system, it might be good to take a page from Maeve’s book and remember that getting your back scratched from Mom and Dad should take top billing to winning an Ironman. ©

 

Progressive Cycling Fueling

GREAT class at last night’s PROGRESSIVE CYCLING™. I was asked by one of the riders about fueling – pre, post and during. Here is my response: For something like last night's class, I'll have a banana roughly 30 mins before class, and I had 2 Power Gels during class with water. A bigger person (or someone burning more kj/hr) would want more than 2 gels. I could also have used a sports drink and have gotten the same calories, but some of the sports drinks don't agree well with me. During a race I try to keep as many of my calories as liquid as I can and I'll tweak the plan for that, but during a 2-3 hour workout, I generally go with gels and water. After the workout you want to get in a 4:1 ratio of carbs:protein, and chocolate milk (or in my case chocolate almond or soy milk - I am vegan). How much you drink would depend on how many calories you burn .... 8 - 12 oz is good for most. Then you won't be starving. You could have a pb& j when you get home, or soup, or a bowl of cereal and you should still sleep ok.

IN PURSUIT OF A GOAL

It started out as an ordinary masters swim practice.  At 10:30 in the morning on Mondays and Wednesday we have 4 lanes at the Hanover Y. Today, my usual group of swimmers - people with flexible work schedules or those who work the swing shift, parents who have an hour to themselves while the kids are at school, lifeguards, college students, retirees, etc - read the workout I had posted and went about the business of making the most of their time in the pool, nearly oblivious to those around them.

Meanwhile, in one of the free lap lanes, John Shea, decked out in his size-too-large wetsuit continued up and down the lanes like he always has. For four hours a day, every day of the year. FOR NINE YEARS!

John started his journey 4 years before I even started coaching at the Y, and he finished today, while I was there.  His 'journey', by the way, was across the country and back (metaphorically). He logged 5, 440 miles in the pool.  That's 191, 488 laps!

The masters swimmers got used to seeing John. He swam every day at 5 am until masters got too big and needed the whole pool. John was temporarily displaced, until we opened the pool right next to the lap pool so he could continue his journey. But I think John preferred to swim in the same pool with us, as he recently changed his routine so that he would swim during mid-day masters when we don't need the whole pool.

John used a cribbage board to keep track of his laps, doing freestyle, butterfly and even side-stroke, and although he preferred to have the lane to himself, he often had to tolerate a recreational swimmer jumping in to join him for a small piece of the journey. Probably the equivalent of backing out of the drive-way with him.

I'm glad we were there today to see him finish. Cindy Cavano, a lifeguard and masters swimmer knew that John would be finishing today so she brought in balloons and a cake. We all waited after masters to watch him finish. The executive director of the Y came to the pool along with a media rep. Life guards gathered 'round and when John was nearing his last lap he told us, "One more".  As he took his final strokes and reached for the wall, a loud cheer erupted. One by one we went over and shook the hand of the man we came to call The Walrus - because of his Wilford Brimley-type mustache and his constant presence in the water.  

I am awed not so much by the goal, but by his persistent determination in its pursuit. May we all learn from you, John.

Cait's Photo Shoot with Triathlete Magazine

So Neil has been wonderful and amazing enough to make is SUPER EASY for me to stay in touch with the team via the website. So now I will be filling you in in BACKWARDS order since that's the way my memory works. Let's start with this past weekend...

Damian shot and conferred with Nils and Lisa and Katie touched up Cait's hair and make-up. Cait did a couple of wardrobe changes, more touch-ups and more photos. As the sun moved about the sky, Kamal added and subtracted light by moving props. Shannon Delaney (Cait's fabulous agent) and Julia Pollereno (editor-in-chief of Triathlete) showed up bearing sunglasses and food. They shot until the sun went down (literally) and everyone was in good humor throughout.

What a great experience and what a great group of new friends!