It is best if, when riding your bike to a triathlon at 4:00am, one of your contact lenses does not fall out. If it does, you’ll be forced to stop, dig out your spare, and put a new lens in. This delay may give a guy with a flyswatter in his shorts the opportunity to strike up a conversation with you on the side of the bike path in the dark. He may then give you his card, which doesn’t feature his name but does include the title “Flyswatter Guy”.
This past weekend INFINIT Nutrition had the pleasure of sponsoring and attending the Hincapie Gran Fondo just outside Greenville South Carolina. The event was set in some of the most spectacular riding areas in the country, all highlighted by amazing fall scenery and colors. Add in some pretty special riding partners with the likes of Cadel Evans, George Hincapie, Ted King, the Nation TTT Champions, and the Hincapie Pro Cycling team and it all adds up to a bucket list event.
Karel and I had a dream in 2014 that we would both try to qualify for the 2015 Ironman World Championship at Ironman Wisconsin (2014). We planned out a season of race-cations including St. Croix 70.3 in May, Ironman Austria in June and then Ironman Wisconsin in September and made sure that our training had us peaking with top fitness come IMWI race day.
“Cross Training,” what is it? The simple definition of cross training is, simply put, training in activities that are different than your primary sport. Physiologically speaking, however..... “Physiological adaptations in response to physical training are highly specific to the nature of the training activity. Furthermore, the more specific the training program is to a given sport or activity, the greater the improvement in performance in that sport or activity.” - J.H. Wilmore, D.L. Costill, W.L. Kenney
In writing Novemberʼs article on endurance tips, it was hard to narrow down to just a couple of items that would be the most bang for the buck, so to speak. Therefore, I decided to continue last monthʼs theme and expound upon a few more components for great endurance.
First off I just want to say that my main competition Kelly Magelky turned out to be one of the coolest guys I have ever met! His attitude throughout the race towards my crew and me was really incredible, plus the guy is super strong and he made this hard race even harder.
USAT certified coach Sonni Drer is a long time INFINIT certified partner and 6x USAT All American. He has coached numerous All Americans, National Champions and World Champion.
First of all, I hope that 2014 was a successful year for you – whether it was doing races or just staying fit! What follows is an emphasis on not wasting the experiences you’ve had (and hopefully learned from) and I’ll offer some suggestions on what you can do to get ready for 2013
I know that sounds like an obvious statement, but it is still hard to do in everyday life. Even when things are a bit chaotic, most of us seem to under estimate the effects of stress on the body. As athletes we look at our training, equipment, and nutrition in hopes of a faster race and improving our fitness level. However, the majority of us never consider our stress levels. As an athlete stress can hurt your performance in many ways including an increased heart rate and oxygen consumption. It can also harm your exercise efficiency and cause a workout or race to feel tougher than it actually should. Increased muscle tension and reduced leg turnover are also contributed to stress.
For most endurance athletes, there comes a time each year when they are evaluating what is next on their calendar. Many athletes choose to just continue down the path of race, race, race, race, then the weather gets cold, so they do marathons, half marathons, and more race, race, race. At some point, the body is going to start to reject this mentality and regiment. Overtraining can cause a deep level of fatigue that only rest and time away from the sport can cure. This is where “offseason” comes into play.
