Stengths and Opportunities for Improvement

As the endurance season winds down, now is a great time to evaluate your season and what you consider your opportunities for improvement and what your strengths were the past season.  The off-season is a great time to focus on that weakness while continuing maintenance on your strengths. 

Generally we tend to know our strengths and weaknesses.  From a triathlon perspective, ask a HS swimmer and they'll say the bike and/or run are their weak points or ask a seasoned cyclist and they'll say swim and/or run.  I'm sure you get the idea.  It's pretty easy to be subjective about your weakness, but it's better to look at your race data for the past  year and race courses for which you performed on while keeping in mind your upcoming goals for next  year.

So, let's say an athlete did a Olympic triathlon with a hilly bike course and flat run and had the following results:

12/50 place in age group - swim
45/50 place in age group - bike
9/50 place in age group - run

Based on this data, it's pretty apparent that the weakness here is bike speed, particularly on hills.   The athlete was able to get off the bike and do well on the run so I don't necessarily think it would be an endurance issue.  We'd have to delve into the specifics of the race and the athlete's perspective.  The more data we have, the more specific we can get - i.e. heart rate monitor, powermeter, mile splits, GPS....but that's another topic for another day.  Let's take another example:

same athlete as above but on a half-ironman flat course as above:

10/50 - swim
45/50 - bike
45/50 - swim

Based on the previous race data and the above data, I would say this athlete is lacking endurance and speed on the bike and possible lacking endurance on the run.  Due to the run time being slower compared to the above I would venture to guess the athlete hit a proverbial wall on the bike and it made their run an absolute sufferfest.  In the off-season this athlete would need to build their base on the bike, and work on bike speed and drills.

As always, the data doesn't lie - use it to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses this off-season.  Once you have identified your weakness, spend time working on speed, technique, and base training so you can improve and turn that weakness into a strength.

Prep Phase

As I eluded to in my last post, Getting Back into the Groove, I wanted to walk through each phase of my plan and give a little context as to what they mean.  The first phase that my IM plan takes me through is Prep1 and Prep2.  These phases last 4 weeks each and will probably not have a recovery week built in because generally the volume is low, with a medium frequency, and low intensity.  Essentially these phases are designed to train your body to get ready to train. 

I would compare it to Dead Week in college, or at least what I did during Dead Week.  It's the time where you start to study, but don't do too much of it.  You get your schedule down of when your finals are, plan when you're going to study, and get in the mind frame of cramming all the information into your brain.  Not the best metaphor, but I think you get the idea.

With a family, work, PT and endurance clients, this is the time where I figure out from a scheduling perspective what works and what needs to be re-arranged to find a happy medium.  For me, it's going to be early morning training and later evening training and a heavier dose on the weekends with my 'long' and BT (break through) workouts scheduled at least 2 days apart for efficient recovery. 

Prep time is also the time to get back into the pool, lace up the running shoes, and hop back on the bike.  These training sessions shouldn't be very long or very intense.  Just enough to reacquaint yourself back to each discipline and start to work on building up your base.  This is also an excellent time to work on form.  Spend a lot of time working on swim drills, running form, and biking form so that you can hit the ground running when you begin "official" training.  Prep phase is also a great time to get your nutrition back on track with whole foods, adequate caloric intake, and many smaller meals throughout the day.

Getting Back in the Groove

I unofficially started my Ironman training on Monday, getting re-acclimated to the pool and bike and continuing to build my running volume for the Des Moines Half Marathon in mid October.  My official training won't start until 1 week after the half Mary, but I am getting back into the groove with a routine to make sure it will fit into my family's schedule and so I have some momentum going into training and can handle the training load without being completely wiped out after the first week.  I've already built a skeleton that includes:

Prep1 - 4 weeks
Prep2 - 4 weeks
Base1 - 4 weeks
Base2- 4 weeks
Base3 - 4 weeks
Build1 - 4 weeks
Build2 - 4 weeks
Wildflower 1/2
Recovery - 1 week
Build3 - 4 weeks
Peak - 2 weeks
IM CDA

Each block constitutes 3 weeks on and 1 week recovery with a reduction of volume by 25-35% to allow the body to heal and to rejuvenate yourself for the next block.  As I mentioned above this is a skeleton and will probably change based on how training progresses.  I'll delve into what each of these blocks represent in my next blog.  Thanks for reading

Consistency

When you look at people you admire, whether it be great athletes, inspirational business people, or those at the top of their game, one thing that they have in common is consistency.  They come to work with a proverbial hard hat and lunch pale every day, and in line with their goals, accomplish what they need to get done.  What separates them from the rest of the pack is they consistent every day.

From an athletic perspective, in order to get better you have to be consistent in training.  I'm sure this isn't a shocker that jumps out of the page at you.  Nevertheless, I believe that this is one of the biggest thing that the majority of the novice athletes need to improve.  Understandably, life obligations gets in the way of training due to family, kids, social obligations, and football season :). 

I've got a full plate now with a family, full time job, endurance athletes/personal training clients, and trying to fit in my own training time.  I've prioritized what's important to me and if I want to do well at IM CDA next year, then I'm going to have to be consistent in building up my endurance, improve my weakest link, and maximize my strongest asset.  Ironman training demands consistent training - without it, it's going to make for a long day and a performance that won't leave you satisfied at the end of the day.  In order to be consistent in my training I have get it done early in the morning and late at night.  This works best for me because it doesn't adversely effect family time, work, and my clients.

You need to find what works best for you on a consistent basis.  Here are some tips to get started:

1)  Plan your week ahead of time so you can be proactive in working around things that come up
2)  Create a rough draft of what your average week looks like and find times that make sense for training
3)  Make a schedule for the week and stick to it
4)  If the schedule doesn't work, make adjustements so it makes sense
5)  Prioritize - what is more important, watching 'The Office' or getting your run done for the day
6)  Some train in the morning, others at night - find out what works best for you.

Apply these principles to your goals and you'll get the results you want!

The Value and Importance of Goals

When beginning an new endeavor, project, or training regime it is important to set goals.  Goals are what keep you on track to achieving the desired outcome.  Without goals their in no urgency or external "push" to achieve a milestone.  Often times without goals procrastination takes over, we slip back into old habits, and are reluctant to forge ahead.

When you set goals, it's important to have them visible to you every day, so you know what you have to do that day, and you feel the accomplishment of checking that goal off, and move on to the next one.  If they are hidden in a folder on your computer, then they tend to fall off your radar.

The next step is to actually set goals.  Start BIG - start will your biggest goal - ideally the end goal and work downward.  With your end goal written down, set goals for 6-12 months, goals for the month, goals for each week in that month, and goals for the day.  Each goal should be a step toward reaching the end goal.  As a high-level example:
Daily goals: complete workout prescribed for today
Weekly goals: complete all workouts for the week
Monthly goal: complete workouts and exceed monthly testing by X, Y, Z
6 month goal: achieve X time in X race
12 month goal: PR time from 6 month goal in similar race
End goal:  Qualify for X race

This is obviously very high level and we want to include both qualitative and quantitative goals in order to reach our end goal.  Qualitative are descriptive  - "I want to feel better when I'm running", whereas quantitative goals are measurable - I want to run X miles in Y time.  Again, all of these should be set with the end goal in mind.

Personally I set goals for all areas in my life: family, sport, work, business, financial and personal growth and I look at them every morning and every night,  knowing that if I work every day toward the end goal I will achieve it.  For my daily goals I fill out an index card and keep it in my wallet and check off the goals as I accomplish them.  This keeps me honest and focused on reaching my end goal.

Goals are dreams with deadlines. ~ Diana Scharf Hunt

Body Fat Composition: My Personal Challenge

Last week I had the opportunity to have my fat body percentage taken and it came out to roughly 13% at my current weight of 155lbs.  I was pretty satisfied with it initially, but then I thought to myself, what if I can drop that down to 7% while maintaining the same weight.  Would that improve my performance? 

Current
Present Body Weight: 156.4
Present Lean Body Mass: 134.82
Present Fat Mass: 21.58

Desired
Desired Body Weight: 155
Desired Lean Body Mass: 142.60
Desired Fat Mass: 12.4

So, basically I just need to lose 9 lbs of fat and gain 8 pounds of mucle to accomplish my goal.  In theory this should improve my overall race times and not be detrimental to performance(assuming race specific training is maintained).  I will have enough fat to use as energy in longer distance races (most professionals have body fat between 3-6%) and use the added muscle as a resource.  The key here is to gain that muscle in muscle groups that are utilized in the specific sport (hamstrings, quads, hips, core, lats, and shoulders).

Now, the hard part - accomplishing this goal.  It's really pretty simple on paper, but more difficult to do in reality.  Add in a consistent weight training program(3X a week), maintain endurance training,  add in enough time between weight training and endurance training so the effects of one don't hinder the other, add in more protein to my diet, and limit the 'bad carbs' to a minimum.  I'll report back my findings after the goal is accomplished and next race is complete in early August.

Dam to Dam Advice

With Dam to Dam a few days away I thought I would write up some "words of wisdom".  Well, that may be an overstatement, let's just go with advice that has worked for me and athletes I've trained.

This Week
- you've trained for this race so now it's time to taper, no big runs this week
- cut your training volume down by 50%
- depending on experience, include a few short, high intensity runs
- calorie intake should be lower since training volume is lower

Days Leading Up to the Race
- Thursday should be your last run - make it easy
- If you are going to "carb-load", do it Thursday night, not Friday night
- Friday meals should be on the lighter side
- limit or avoid foods high in fiber and foods high in fat
- begin to carry around a bottle of water and casually sip on water
- keep active on Friday
- the most important night of sleep is Thursday night
- no alcohol leading up to race

Race Day
- eat breakfast 2-3 hours before the race
- don't stray from what you've been doing in training - I can't emphasize this enough
- carry water/sport drink with you on way to race and sip casually
- be sure to go to bathroom before the race

The Race
- race YOUR race, not your competitors
- remember, you trained for this race, now it's time to showcase your training
- be sure to consistently take in water - drink before you're thirsty
- thank the volunteers - they're there for you
- leave it all out on the course, don't hold anything back at the end
- enjoy yourself!