 For those of you that train and race with a power-meter, you may have thought about holding a specific average power for your given event. There is a lot of talk about trying to eliminate power spikes and hold a steady wattage throughout your race. It makes sense to use your power meter to keep yourself in check if you tend to blow yourself up early on, or are insensitive to how the legs feel when you are pushing too hard. It seems, though, that some folks are taking this to the extreme and really looking to hold the same wattage on a downhill as they are on an uphill, no matter the course. This may work for a flat or slightly rolling type of course (i.e. Kona), but if you’ve got some actual climbing and fast descents to contend with, it’s not the most efficient way of getting the job done.
An example: if your goal is to hold 200 watts you would be far better off riding upwards of 220-240 watts on the uphills and keeping the power output down around 150 watts for the downhills. A 5% increase in output will net you far closer to a 5% increase in speed on a climb than it will on a decent. Say you’re going 60 km/hr on a decent, it would be much harder to go 63 km/hr (5%), than it would be to go from 15 km/hr to 15.75 km/hr (5%) on a climb. At higher speeds you’ve got more forces working against you – friction and wind resistance especially, so the speed gains from higher power output are less.
Continue reading Power Averages
 Here’s a great article on the effects of altitude, it’s well worth reading if you plan on racing or training at a higher elevation. Further into the article you’ll find some power data from cyclists and a few other interesting bits of information.
Full article on: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/06/altitude-arriving-and-adapting.html
Two models: The Smash and Grab vs Patience pays
There is not too much research on this question. That may be surprising, but remember that for most professional athletes, across all sports, the issue of when to arrive at altitude is one that they rarely even contemplate. In Europe, sport is rarely played at even these moderate altitudes. In the USA, it happens so infrequently as to be an inefficient way to investigate physiology. And for individual endurance athletes, like cyclists and runners, altitude training is part of the package, with a majority now spending time at some altitude before racing, even at sea-level.
Continue reading Altitude and your performance over time
The subject line sums up this tip perfectly. Essentially, make your easy days easy so that you can make your hard days very hard. By avoiding the big ring on your easy ride days, keeping power caps, and staying below certain HR’s or paces on your easy run days, you will be able to [...]
 The last week of before a big race can be one of the hardest for a triathlete to bare. You’ve done all the work, your training volume is way down and you may feel lethargic and antsy all at the same time. This is a perfect time to sit down and spend some time writing mental training notes for your big day. Sometimes we are super prepared on every other front, but we forget to have a concrete set of form cues and positive affirmations ingrained in our brains for easy access on race day. Writing things down in a journal before each race can help calm you down and give you concrete focus points. It is also great to go back and look over what you’ve written post race to see where you may have missed something or where you really succeeded mentally/strategically now that your performance is in the books.
Continue reading Pre Race Mental Prep
 Over the past winter and spring we’ve been playing around with a gluten free diet: going completely gluten free for a few weeks then consuming gluten to see if it really makes a difference. The answer: Yes, but more so in some cases than in others. Turns out that Heather is quite sensitive to gluten and instantly notices basic discomfort from increased bloating, gastric distress, and diarrhea. Those symptoms indicate a lack of nutrient absorption as well and she feels more energetic on a gluten free diet. Trevor, however, isn’t that sensitive to gluten but likes to avoid it race week to limit any potential affects that it may have on his digestion.
If you have any un-explained GI issues, or even just find that you have to take bathroom breaks rather frequently during or right after long runs, it can be useful to try going gluten free. Try two weeks without gluten (you’ll be surprised how frequently it crops up), and then re-introduce pastas and breads (basically anything at all to do with wheat) in the third week. Make some notes in a food log about how you feel and see if there are any changes in your digestion when you consume gluten again. If it doesn’t bother you, then great, but if it does, you can take steps to eliminate a dietary stress to your system. Training and racing is hard on your body – the food you eat shouldn’t be!
Continue reading Gluten Free
Here’s a great video put together by Michael Lovato, a 3 x top 10 finisher at the Ironman World Championships and double Ironman Champion. For those of you thinking about nutrition for your first Ironman, or even if you’re more seasoned and need a change, this is a great lesson in hydration and caloric [...]
 Once in awhile you have to leave your devices at home. Forget the GPS, forget the heart rate monitor, forget the power, forget your interval timer and portable lactate measuring kit. Who cares how far you ride, who cares how long it takes you to run your normal route. Heck, don’t even count your laps in the pool.
All this stuff is great, and don’t get us wrong, we use them (maybe not the lactate thing). But, on more than one workout during a week we will forget all the numbers and just go workout. We look at the clock when we leave, and look at it when we come back. Sometimes not even that.
This gets you in tune with your body and allows you to really enjoy the training and realize the purpose of it -simply to make you feel good and improve yourself physically. Do you really need to know that your avg HR was only 140 for that 5 mile stretch? Yes, on some occasions you do, but once in awhile it does not matter. We would even be willing to say that MOST of the time it does not matter.
Continue reading Forget the numbers
And the winner is – Kendall. We used a random number generator on Random.org to pick one of the 20 comments. Kendall’s comment was number 14, and therefore the winner of a jug of Ultragen by First Endurance. We will send you an email directly, but please go have a look at the First Endurance website and pick your favorite flavor of Ultragen Recovery Drink.
Thank you all for sharing your favorite swim workouts. Have a look through if you ever need some new ideas in the water.
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 Want a the chance to win a FREE container of Ultragen by First Endurance? You can enter the draw with two simple steps:
Continue reading Win Ultragen by First Endurance
 When you’ve got a long day of training on tap, one involving all three sports, consider basing yourself out of your car or gym locker for the day. It’s a great way to speed up the switch from one sport to the next, and it eliminates any temptation to sit on the couch for 10 minutes (which can turn into a couple of hours). You’ll also find that it:
- Helps teach you what works well nutritionally on a long day
- Helps your body adapt to the changes from one sport to the next
- Gets your training day over with sooner
- Is easy to co-ordinate a day like that with your training partners, if they do the same
- Helps your race day organizational skills (there’s a lot of equipment and food to deal with)
- Keeps you from skipping the last workout in favor of that comfy couch!!
Continue reading Don’t go home
 Depending on how your winter training schedule is coming along, you may be getting close to some of your early season races and you might want to think about incorporating some speed work (or change up your current speed focus days). Treadmills are very handy for speed work, but there has to be a balance between indoor sessions and outdoor sessions if you truly want to see gains on the open road.
The limitation behind a treadmill is that you are really just trying to keep up instead of propelling your body mass forward. You do work very similar muscles, but it is harder to gain real-world speed. A treadmill is excellent for helping you work on quick leg turnover, and it can be a great tool when you are lacking motivation to push the pace outside, but if you really want to be able to maintain that leg speed during a race you need some outside time on a 400m track, long dirt trails, or smooth open road with no distractions. That said, getting inside for some speed workouts can limit risk of injury. In general, most treadmills offer more shock absorption than the open road (though we’ve been on a couple that feel worse) and you can easily fine tune your pace.
Continue reading Speedwork: treadmill or not?
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