If you haven’t heard, The Woodlands, TX and the World Triathlon Corporation are in discussions about putting a full Ironman in Texas.  Most of the issues have been worked through and it seems that all that’s left is the vote. Click below to listen to the township discussion. The vote comes June 23rd. I will post that as well if I have the audio/video. Keep your fingers crossed.

wdlndsironman

This is the time of year in which athletes and non athletes alike take some time to endulge in all the wonderful things that the holidays have to offer. With that brings a bit of guilt, and that rolls right into New Year’s and the infamous New Year’s Resolution. Year in and year out the number one resolution in this country is to workout more or to get in shape/lose weight. For many (including myself), this means committing yourself to an event such as a marathon (or an Ironman).

Gone are the days that you could decide to enter a major endurance event such as a marathon 30 days before the race. Marathons are filling up 6 months to a year out and Ironman races can sell out in as fast as 25 minutes, a full year in advance.

The drop out rate for the very popular marathon training programs are ridiculusly high. People sign up with great intentions, hit the ground running with some big runs early on and then burn out just as fast. The success rate would be much higher if people just approached it differently. They’re trying to eat an elephant in a few bites and we all know that’s not how  it’s done.  If you want to finish a marathon, you need to do it one mile at a time.

Here in the Houston area, where I live, most of the marathon programs start in early to mid July for the Chevron Houston Marathon that takes place in mid January. For the average recreational runner, 6 months is plenty of time to ramp up for a marathon, but many of those signing up are starting from stratch in July. Not a good idea, because you have to start covering some pretty big distances in a hurry, and that can be quite overwhelming.

I would suggest that if you think you want to run a marathon, start the training now, but start in very small doses. The key to success in any endurance event is consistency in your training, not how early you can go big. So, instead of trying to kill the world right away, spend the first few months just getting into a habit. Telling you to get out 3 times a week and run 1-2 miles each time for the first 4 months sounds a lot more palatable than to tell you that in just a few weeks you must be able to run 8 miles.

Same thing goes for intensity. There is no reason in the world that you need to hit the track and do wind sprints or interval work if you are trying to finish your first marathon. No one out there walking/jogging in the final miles on race day is wishing that they had done more speed work instead of endurance work. Plus, the rate of injury goes through the roof when you add intense workouts to your training program.

The same philosophy holds true with any endurance event, not just a marathon. If you decide you want to do the MS150 or local 100 mile bike ride, an adventure race, or the Ironman, take small bites from very early on. Because if you start too big, you are going to start to hate the training and there’s a good chance you won’t even make it to the starting line. What ever ‘mountain’ you decide to to climb, remember that it’s small steady steps that get you to the top, and that, “Joy is found in not finishing an activity, but doing it”.*

Happy Training.

*Author Greg Anderson

The courses offered are impressive. The Kona bike course is right on the money. The turns and hills are all where they should be and the scenery is accurate as well (you can pan your view and check out the mountains and the ocean on each side of you). I can actually see the hotel I stayed in when was there when I’m riding the course. Same goes for some of the other courses. They have an Alp’d Huez course complete with cheering fans that I’m actually a little scared to ride.

One thing that I have found particulary interesting is that you can connect to the internet and race/train with others. Want to ride the Kona course with your buddy who lives 2000 miles away? Hook up the headset (if you want to talk) and meet him online for a ride up the Queen K. This feature seems to be quite a hit as there are groups online that have regularly scheduled rides in which dozens of people meet up to churn it out. I’ve even seen links to racing leagues.

Having said all that, Netathlon 2.0 is not without it’s flaws. First of all, installing it was more of a challenge than I bargained for. It was a bit buggy, and I needed the folks at NA to reset me and help me a couple of times to get me up and running. It also (initially anyway) was buggy with the upgrades. Running Vista, I downloaded the latest patch and lost the graphics to the courses. After many attempts they got me fixed and it seems they have stablized their product.

The other issue I have with Netathlon 2.0 are the number of courses that are offered. I love the ones that they currently offer, but I haven’t seen a new course in at least 2 years. If the folks at NA were wise, they would create and sell an application that allows us the user to create courses and share them. If they did that you would see virtually every bike event in the world become available overnight. This thing could become a massive hit if they would just let it.

At the end of the day, I would recommend Netathlon 2.0 to anyone who has a trainer and can’t stand riding indoors. I would rather do anything than ride indoors and with NA I’ve had an hour ride just fly by. And who knows, maybe I’ll see you out on a cyber ride one day. I’ll be the guy sitting on your wheel.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, for you loyal Computrainer users, it’s fully compatible.

The fitness center also had a couple of stationary bikes that had a 3d graphic of the course you were riding complete with other riders and your previous best effort. Great application but the bike is very upright and not anything close to my riding position. With these two thoughts in my head I started looking for some kind of spin bike that had the ability to control the resistance and have a graphical interface. Well, long story short, the search took forever, but I found the Kettler Ergo Racer and pulled the trigger.

The bike itself is very sturdy, just like the spin bikes and it has a 40 pound flywheel, so the ride feels very realistic.

Although it looks a little strange in the picture, the Kettler design allows you to set it up just like your actual bike, aerobars and all. This was a concern of mine before I bought it as I wanted to be positioned just like I am on my triathlon bike. The only difference I noticed is that the aerobars are wider that what I have on my bike. Very minor and to me a non issue. The saddle is a standard saddle which I found comfortable, but if you prefer something else like Adamo, it’s an easy switch. It comes with pedals, but I never took them out of the package, opting instead for my Look Keo’s. The Handlebars are made of a heavy duty metal (same size as your bike handlebars, just much sturdier) and can be changed from a road setup to triathlon bull-horn, or upside-down for a cruiser position. I found the bull-horn setup to be too deep, but am very happy in the road set up.

The resistance is controlled magnetically and unlike a spin bike has a freewheel, so you can coast. It’s also whisper quiet. No need to apologize to the neighbors about the noise or even turn up the TV, the only noise you will hear is a quiet hum. Very nice for someone who has two small children that I don’t want to wake.

The Kettler Ergo Racer comes with a computer console in which you can ride some preprogrammed workouts or do your own thing in the manual setting. For a quick workout, I think they work just fine. The console also shows your heart rate (it will pick up your Polar signal) speed, cadence, time, watts, distance, and calories burned. I will say that the speed/distance isn’t all that accurate, but that wasn’t a big issue for me as I had a fix for it.

The only piece of this puzzle that was missing was the 3d simulation of the course you are riding. I really wanted this as it held my attention better than anything else I have tried. In my research I found that there is a product made by Fitcentric called Netathlon2. It allows you to ride courses (some famous) against yourself or others online and will work with dozens of bikes/trainers (I will review this soon). Underneath the console of the Kettler is a port that will allow you to hook into a computer. I got Netathlon2, plugged it into my Kettler and I am riding the Ironman Hawaii Course in 3D. Perfect!

Overall I am very pleased with my purchase. If I were going to complain about anything it would be the console and native technology that seems to be a bit outdated. If Kettler wanted to hit a home run they would stick a better chip, screen and software in the console to give more options out of the box. As I mentioned though, I rarely use the console as I bypass it by plugging it into my computer so as to get all the bells and whistles.

Lance as a Teen

Growing up in Texas, I had the privilege of racing Lance in his early years as a triathlete. Well, I was racing and he was racing, but he wasn’t exactly looking over his shoulder for me (only once did I make it close). As a teen he was absolutely amazing. At 15 this guy was a professional triathlete and was leading top pros like Mark Allen and Mike Pigg into the run. It was just unheard of to do what he did at that age. So when I read that Lance was scrapping the swim and run and joining the world of cycling, do you know what the first words out of my mouth were?

“He’s gonna win the Tour de France.”

There was no doubt in my mind that was going to become an all time cycling great. It was as obvious to me as the sun in the sky. Now I had to wait nearly a decade to be proven right, but man was I right.

The Teenage Pro

Lance has been followed around since his first win under a cloud of suspicion on whether or not he uses performance enhancing drugs to be that good. 7 tour wins and not a single positive test from the most tested man in all of sports and he’s still not in the clear. But the fact that he’s willing to go back into the lion’s den of the french media and race again tells me that he’s not all that concerned with the accusations. Nowadays, if you do great things people are just going to wonder. I’m no different. I saw this guy do amazing things from the start and I still wonder if the rumors are true.

So will Lance win number 8? Well, he’s got a few things on his side. First of course are his genetics.  That might help him overcome some of his age, because he be racing people 10 years younger than him. He also has, at least as I type this, a strong team. Hopefully they’ll get their sponsor problems cleared up in time. Above all else though, he has a crazy work ethic and knows how to win this race.

Will it happen? Not as sure as I used to be about that question. If I had to bet on it, I would put him somewhere on the podium. Can’t wait to see where on that podium he ends up.

I see the base phase of training much different. I think base building is the most important phase for endurance athletes. It is a very focused training period in which you train almost 100% of the time in a very narrow window of aerobic effort. This window doesn’t include easy aerobic training nor does it include anything at anaerobic threshold or above. Basically (outside of warm up and warm down) you keep your effort right at or just below your aerobic threshold(AT). For those who use a heart rate monitor this means constantly keeping your heart rate in a range of 10 bpm where your upper ceiling is your aerobic threshold and you never get to your anaerobic (or lactate) threshold . So lets say your AT is 155bpm, then you want to train between 145-155 for your entire workout. Note: this doesn’t mean that this is your average for the workout, this means that if your heart rate hits 156, you slow down. Likewise, if you heart rate drops to 144 you must pick it up. For those who train without a heart rate monitor, this is roughly your Ironman race pace.

Now some (especially those who love interval training) will disagree, as they don’t want to forego the winter track workouts or swallow their pride and get dropped on rides. Science can probably prove either side of the argument as well, so I usually look to who applies any principal and their results.  If you look at the training of endurance athletes, it’s pretty easy to see that the majority of those who are successful implement a targeted base building phase. Take Mark Allen, the winningest triathlete of all time, who began his career running a mile aerobically at over 7min per mile. Toward the peak of his career he could run a mile at 5:25 without ever going anaerobic. Mike Pigg, another one our sports all time greats, once stayed in his base phase of training until September because of the improvements he was making. Legendary running coach Arthur Lydiard preaches the same, stating that one should train between 70% and 100% of your maximum aerobic effort during this time. Even Chris Carmichael, who coaches Lance Armstrong, talks at great length of the benefits of training just below your lactate threshold to build your aerobic foundation.

Here are just some of the benefits you’ll see by training more specifically during the base phase.

Aerobic economy – 99.9% of our racing is done aerobically which is almost 20 times more efficient at producing energy than anaerobic exercise. Chris Carmichael has said, “Endurance cycling” means any event lasting longer than one minute. Even the kilometer time trial on the track is an endurance event because, although much of the early power is produced anaerobically, the event is won or lost in the last eight seconds as competitors with the best aerobic system slow down less.” Just as the best way to be a better sprinter is to sprint, the best way to improve your aerobic economy/ability is to train aerobically. We as endurance athletes need to increase aerobically produced power. This means burning more fat for our calories and not accumulating lactic acid. The more you train aerobically the greater the recruitment of slowtwitch muscles, the better they become at using fat as a fuel source, the faster you get at the same effort level and the more efficient you become at burning fat for your caloric needs.

Stress acclimation – This applies slightly more to the age-grouper and newer athlete than a seasoned vet, but the base phase is the time to slowly increase the volume and therefore stress levels on the body so that it can adapt and later be able to do high intensity with out becoming overstressed (i.e. injury and or overtraining). Bloodflow really determines the rate of how fast different body parts adapt. Your heart and lungs receive a great deal of blood so the adaptation to stress is relatively quick. Muscles adapt a little slower but still adapt in a timely manner. The limiters are the tendons and ligaments. They receive very little blood flow, so when they are stressed, it can take a while for them to adapt. I that they’re also the most important to get built up for the season because when you overdo it and tendons or ligaments get injured, it takes forever for them to heal. So a long and consistent base phase to build up the tendons/ligaments is important in order to have an injury free season.

Muscle memory – This applies to all sports but more specifically to swimming. Repetition helps the nervous system “remember” specific movements so that those movements require little thought to repeat over time. The base phase offers a time to hone in technique and break bad habits. If you are always adding intensity in your workouts then your body will revert back to previous habits ,or “memories” in order to accomplish a performance goal that you have set for the day. If you remove the high intensity you are able to focus exclusively on the desired technique until it becomes the default habit. This is why stroke drills are never done at a high intensity. Once the season kicks in, you should be able to apply the new and better technique to the high intensity workouts without reverting back when you get fatigued.

Not everyone will agree, but like I stated in the beginning, I look at how the best of the best train, and what themes are recurring among that group. The other side to this coin is enjoyment though. The base phase can be very boring, so if some speed work keeps you interested and motivated, then go out and do it. The need to enjoy the journey can far outweigh the need to follow a strict schedule if you end up losing interest in the sport.