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 [...]
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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. Try it some time. Go out and ride your bike like you’re a kid with a sucker in their mouth. Go run up to the top of that hill you see in the distance – how far is it?? What if I go anaerobic?? Who freaking cares!! Just do it, you’ll get fitter no doubt. 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. #1: Make sure you’re a member of the Ironmantriathlontips email list. 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 [...]
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. One thing, however, is that it almost always seems easier to hold that given pace OUTSIDE, than it does on the treadmill. You would think the opposite would be true, but we’ve always found that we have to work a lot harder to hit the machine’s pace readout, than to hold that same pace on the track. Again, we would bet that comes down your body mass being in motion, helping you maintain some speed. We can all benefit from maintaining good eating habits on our easy, rest- days as well as through the hard training days. Don’t fall into the trap of (too often) rewarding yourself with junk food because you “deserve it”. Your body really deserves high quality nutrients, and those rest [...] Need some motivation to get out and endure the cold and wet weather this winter? An excellent way to loosen up the ol’ bod from the day’s previous activities is to swim in the evening for recovery. Even if you feel wasted from a hard workout, it is amazing how much better you feel after a dip in the pool to revel at the [...]
This post is not about all the factors that affect your race nutrition, just the nutrition itself. Specifically, the concentration and dilution of your carbohydrate intake. Okay, we’ll mention a couple issues first. Adequate training being the number one concern – if you haven’t done the work you will fall apart before the finish line, regardless of what you eat. Issue number 2: Pacing. Simply put, know your limits. 50% of the ‘nutrition’ issues in a race are actually pacing issues. You’ve gone too hard on the bike in order to keep up with stronger cyclists, then blow up half way through the run. There’s a reason why more men fall apart at the end of race than do women…and it’s not because woman are tougher, it’s because most are better at controlling their ego on the bike. With respect to ACTUAL nutrition issues, here’s what we’ve found after talking to many ‘people in the know’. First off, be wary of anything containing complex Fat or Protein (as opposed to nice, easy to digest, amino acids and cabohydrates) making their way into your stomach during the race. Calories from those sources are very hard to breakdown efficiently and can cause some intestinal shut down once the intensity (on the run) picks up. If your race intensity is low enough, you can most likely digest fat/protein properly without adverse affects to your performance. So, if you plan on walking the entire marathon or half marathon, go for it! The other item to consider (as if there were only two!) is how you dilute the carbohydrates you take in. Most drink mixes out there give you a suggested serving like 1 scoop per 12 Oz. TURNS OUT, there’s a reason for that!!! Wow. On our First Endurance EFS drink for example, they say exactly that (1 scoop per 12 Oz), and because they’ve done their research they know that this the optimal dilution for our bodies to process those carbohydrates without leaching water from our cells – therefore keeping you hydrated and fueled properly over an endurance event.
If you live in a cold climate and spend a lot of time indoors on the trainer it is generally easier to keep yourself in check. A note – your HR is likely lower on the trainer than the equivalent perceived effort out side so don’t stress if you can’t get it into your usual outdoor zone. The workout is definitely still worth it. You see some athletes training really hard in January, but hopefully these are the ones that have years and years of solid aerobic base in their systems – not the typical age group athlete that has taken a few months easy/off and needs to gradually build fitness. |
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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.
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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.
Winter training is a good time to build a solid aerobic base, and this means staying within defined heart rate zones. This can be tricky if you do your riding in a group setting or live in a place with lots of cyclists on the roads with whom to get competitive – damn speedy commuters with panniers! This is when it is important to let go of your ego: yes you can likely outride that person, but not if you stay below your heart rate cap of 145 BPM. If you are out there for 5 hrs grinding away with your Ironman goal in mind, don’t let the annoying dude out for an hour ride who hangs on your wheel and then blows past you on descents, force you to abandon your plan!
