Life Balance

This is a great article by Diane Peters. I was interviewed for portions of it and she did a good job at defining my position on training and life balance when it comes to relationships, family, and training. So many triathletes become defensive when questioned about their training volume. I use to be one of them. My article "Divorce by Triathlon" has been referred to in many articles and on many blogs. Diane did a great job summing up what my intentions were when writing the article. I just wanted athletes to be aware that over training not only has negative physiological and performance results...but also negatively impacts interpersonal relationships. Having the right amount of training stress and then allowing the body to adapt is what it is all about. Having a coach help is ideal but most are equally served by listening to those loved ones close to them....they will let you know too when you are overdoing it. Please check out Diane's article by clicking here.

No Time To Ride

I wanted to post tonight's computrainer ride. Today was a hectic day. I didn't start this workout until about 8:30 pm after putting the kids to bed and then consuming a couple cups of coffee of course. Anyways, this is a 1 hour ride which simulates a pace line type of workout. I completed 15 minutes at ~225 watts and then finished the final 5 minutes ~ 270 watts. I repeated this 2 times for a total workout of 1 hour. This workout really gets the job done and will give you that ability to not get shaken off the pace line in those local group rides. Now all I have to do is lose about 15 lbs and I will be hard to drop for the majority of group rides I find myself in. If you like this type of workout feel free to check out my available plans here. You find these types of short, effective, and to the point workouts throughout my plans.

October 2012 San Carlos Tri awards.

Another fun workout. None of this stuff is rocket science but a coach helps work WITH you to develop workouts that are interesting, functional, and take you to another level within your sport. One thing I love about doing intervals like this on the bike is that I can still push myself to the limit.

4 x 10 minutes

I seem to have a love/hate relationship with this 4 x 10 minute at 80-90% threshold power. However, this workout always tells me where my fitness is at. Around this time of year I can usually only pull about 225 average watts for the 10 minute interval. As you can see from this power file above my pacing was a bit rusty since this was my first 4 x 10 minute effort in about 2-3 months. On the first 10 minute effort I almost blew up at the end of it and had to struggle to maintain my goal power output....then I smartened up gradually as I went along. Most athletes hit the first half of an interval with too much power and then fade out towards the end. What you want is to hold back just a bit during the first half and the gradually build especially in the final half of your goal interval duration. Training with power really helps let the athlete know where they stand when it comes to comparing themselves to previous fitness levels as well as comparing themselves to other athletes. But,,,don't forget the other construct in this equation...which is body weight. Power to weight ratio is king here. Losing weight at the cost of losing muscular strength is self-defeating. You want to find that optimum weight where you have max power and minimum ass drag. For me I never seemed to gain power as I gained weight probably because when I am gaining weight it means I am not biking as much and in turn my power is also going down. I think you just want to be cautious of losing too much weight at the expense of power...which I don't feel has ever happened to me....but is possible if an athlete gets carried away with losing excessive amounts of weight in the belief this will make them even faster. This usually doesn't work over the long run and tends to end a season prematurely due to illness, fatigue, you name it....