 Chances are, if you’re a triathlete, you’ll be racing and/or training somewhere where you’ll need sunscreen, and the SPF number is not all you should be looking at. Race day is not a day to try and get a tan, so find one that works and load it on. Some athletes even carry a small bottle with them on the bike to re-apply half way. Sunburn to the skin hinders sweat gland function by inhibiting the body’s ability to cool itself, it is definitely worth paying attention to if racing in a place with intense sunshine.
What better place to test this stuff out then on the lava fields of Hawaii – so that’s what we’ve done. A few different trials and we’ve found the perfect answer. It’s extremely breathable, extremely water proof, and claims to be anti-aging (which by blocking UV and preventing skin damage is actually reasonable). The key ingredient is 3% Zinc Oxide in a product called Hawaiian Blend Sport Sunblock SPF50. We tried a couple others – Bullfrog works great, but not for long. Similar findings for Coppertone Sport. The worst was made by Banana Boat, even the sport sunscreen was very un-breathable and it makes you sweat from every pore. It also didn’t do much to block the sun after any time in the water.
Continue reading Sunscreen
 As the season starts to wind down, for most, it’s a great time to set some fitness benchmarks. Benchmarks are key to tracking improvement and ensuring that your training is actually doing what it’s supposed to do. They’re also a good way to see how much you slacked off during the winter!! Depending on the type of fitness you seek, you may want to keep track of more than just one of these tests.
Test #1 – A flat out 5km (3mile) run test keeping track of heart rate. For the athlete concerned with speed – Olympic distance, Sprint distance type stuff. As easy as it sounds, warm up really well, then giver!! Keep track of your time and Avg HR. In future tests you’ll be able to compare those two numbers and see where you stand. It doesn’t have to be exactly 5km either. Perhaps you have a favorite run route with no stop lights, doing the test there works just as well.
Continue reading Set your benchmark
 In our opinion compression socks can be beneficial for triathletes. They are great for recovery from hard runs, long days at work, or traveling. They can also be used during hard training runs if you don’t mind getting heckled by 99.9% of the population. Wearing them in a race, however, we’re not sold on. If you can put those things on in under 1 minute, they are most likely not tight enough on your calves to be having any effect anyway. There is a compromise – calf sleeves, that you could tuck under your wetsuit during the swim and not have to waste time in transition putting the full compression sock on.
The people who run the Ironman show (WTC) had recently placed a ban on compression socks – but it does look like they’ve reversed that decision for Kona this year. The issue was that they thought athletes were gaining an unfair advantage by covering up their respective age categories. Sounds like they have eliminated the ritual of putting the athletes age on the back of the calf altogether.
Continue reading Compression Socks
 So, are you better off getting a triathlon specific frame, or better off attaching clip-on aero bars to your road bike frame? This topic has been grilled to death on the internet but we’re going to talk about it regardless. I did my first two Ironmans on a road bike with aero bars and have some points that I think are useful to those weighing this decision.
Things to consider:
-The aerodynamic position on a triathlon bike allows your hips to stay open. If you were to put your back into the same aerodynamic position on a road bike, you will more than likely have a tighter hip angle, pinching off some of the blood flow and comfort you’ll need to perform well. If you have tight back and glute muscles, riding in any semblance of an aero position while on a road bike is going to be extremely uncomfortable. If you have a barrel chest, big gut, large breasts – same thing holds true. Your quads will be hitting your upper body on a road bike with aero bars. Moving the seat forward relative to the bottom bracket (which is basically what a tri-bike does) will open up your hips and give you more room to breath and stay comfortable,while all while being more aerodynamic. In our opinion this is what most people neglect to look at. They think because their body won’t allow them to be aero, they don’t need a triathlon frame with a steeper seat angle. TOTALLY wrong, it will help in a big way for the reasons mentioned above.
Continue reading Tri Bike or Road Bike for long course triathlon
 We’ve learned this lesson for the second time recently, it’s worth paying attention to and one we won’t forget again.
Not all energy gels are created equal. 100 calories of this product, is not the same as 100 calories as that product…at least as far as your body’s ability to absorb and digest those calories is concerned. The carbohydrates are still there, but your body may reject that particular type of sugar so having more than one option could save your day. We have had much better success with carbohydrate products that have multiple types of sugar.
For example, some gels have only Long Chain Maltodextrin. Great if your body wants it, but not too helpful if it doesn’t. Other sugars to look for in gel products are; Ribose, Dextrose, Trehalose, and Fructose. Some types of sugar i.e. fructose have anecdotal evidence showing that they cause digestive upset, but everyone’s stomach seems to respond differently (especially with the stress and intensity of a race situation). We’ve had bad bonks, and bad GI issues with single sugar gels.
Continue reading Pay attention to energy gel sugar types
 If you’re reading this tip – you’re lucky. I would consider it one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned as triathletes.
As promised in the last tip about avoiding orthotics, here’s some great ideas to get you going on strengthening your feet. Having strong feet will help eliminate the need to throw corrective support into your shoes, and help you get rid of those lingering injuries. Essentially, what you’re doing with orthotics, is making up for something that’s missing (or wrongly thought to be missing) in your basic foot structure. Pronation or is not necessarily a bad thing, it is your body’s way of cushioning some of the blow from the impact of a run stride. You simply have to have strong feet and ankles to keep from getting injured. A great way to see this is to walk bare foot. If you’re pronating while walking bare foot – why try to correct it with supportive insoles? If anything, orthotics or supportive insoles are a band-aid. They’ll help the problem for a while, but then that part of your body will get even weaker and further problems will arise. We’ve personally had issues with this. We have high arches and assumed we needed some sort of support underneath. What this did was make them weak from under-use (an arch after all is a structure that gets stronger when pressed on from above), and we both developed some annoying pains in our heels and toes. Thankfully we caught it quickly and didn’t simply upgrade to the next most supportive insole.
If you look back into the 70′s when marathons were taking off and most of North America was running WAAAAAYYYY faster than they are now – then you look at the injury rate and the shoes they were wearing – you’ll bring up some puzzling questions. Plantar Fasciitis: quite possibly non-existent until the advent of the well supported, well cushioned running shoe. NOT TO SAY supportive and cushioned shoes are bad, they have their place. Stress fractures are bad. We’ve simply forgotten how to keep our feet strong in today’s ‘latest and greatest do-dad’ shoe market. The well supportive shoe also brings up issues of poor run stride. I.e. They allow you to run with poor form because you’re no longer concerned about how hard you hit the ground with each stride.
Continue reading Strengthen your feet
Ironmantriathlontips.com has taken up a new look. Bare with us while we make small changes here and there over the next week, this will hopefully provide a more user friendly experience…and allow the comments to work properly which they rarely did on the past layout.
So, we’ll have another tip coming shortly. Hopefully something [...]
 This one will no doubt be controversial, and we welcome your comments if you find otherwise. However, we’re pretty hard headed on this topic and can pretty much guarantee (no guarantees) there’s a better (and much cheaper) way to solve your run pains than to get yourself some orthotics or supportive insoles. This is first hand experience as well as some very convincing proof found in not-so mainstream Ultrarunning literature. As triathletes, we’re obviously not ultrarunners, but the debate on whether or not orthotics are useful is definitely worth talking about.
Our findings: they are most definitely a hindrance and cause for further injury. If anything good, they are simply a temporary band-aid to a problem that could be solved permanently through smarter training practices. Issues like IT band syndrome, Plantar Fasciitis, Stress Fractures, Knee Pains ARE NOT taken care of through the use of orthotics and supportive insoles, the problem will be simply deferred elsewhere…sometimes taking as much as a year to materialize into bigger problems.
Continue reading Avoid orthotics and supportive insoles
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