 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 useful for those of you that may have nabbed a Kona spot or hope to do so in future years.
Thanks for reading
 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
 One of the most efficient and safest ways to get your race week riding done is to do so on the trainer. Especially those last couple rides before the big day that are simply to keep the blood flowing.
For one thing, you can get a quality ride in with no stopping or worrying about flatting your race tires. You’ll also have access to all the tools you may need to make any minor adjustments to your shifting and number placement.
Understandably they can be hard to pack with you. But if you have room in the car or can borrow one at the race site, you’ll find it to be a great option for spinning the legs on your race set-up.
 We always look forward to the latest edition of our favorite sports magazine. Whether it be Triathlete, VeloNews, or the monthly edition of Guns and Knives. But, with 3 weeks to go until an important race…stay away. Nothing good is going to come of the latest and greatest advice on how to ride fast, swim faster, and outrun your competition. Have confidence in the work you’ve done and avoid the last minute trap of doubting your training by reading how others do it.
Forums are another MAJOR problem for pre-race doubts. If you’d like to confuse yourself and start doubting the work you’ve done, then head on over to a triathlon forum. Otherwise, find some other reading material for the last few weeks til race day. This will help keep your head screwed on straight and your motivation ready to go for the big show.
Continue reading Stay out of the Mags
 Have you ever been lying in bed and had your heart stop briefly? Only to have it resume with a massive one-off catch up beat? Well, we’ve had this checked out recently and apparently it’s nothing to be concerned about (in our case, anyway. You may want to get your own heart checked out for piece of mind). The time to be concerned is when you start getting some heart irregularities WHILE you’re exercising.
The explanation we received: Everyone’s heart skips a beat now and again, but most people don’t notice. It’s when your heart rate rate is low enough and your heart is big enough that one can really feel the missed beat. The missed beat allows your heart to fill up with more blood than normal, and when it’s ready to fire again — KaBaaaammm, you get a pounding that can shake the bed.
Continue reading Heart Palpatations
Here’s a great quote from the best running book I’ve ever found. It’s so great I’m not even going to tell you the name (name is below)…but I will give you the quote. This pertains particularly to the winter months, and is geared at improving your run, though you can certainly tackle your riding with the same mentality.
“Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you’ve practiced that so long that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one – you get those three, and you’ll be fast.”
Continue reading Take it easy
 So the big day is done, you’re feeling sore but satisfied with the way things turned out. Your next step is to get your body recovered and ready to train again. If you’re done for the year, well I guess you could just work your way into the off season and enjoy your free time. But, if you’re looking to race again within a couple months you’d best get going on that recovery. A few things to keep in mind are your need for good calories, your need for fluid, and your need for rest. The good calories are easy, get your fat and salt craving out of the way if you must, but get back on the wholesome food bandwagon as soon as you can. Your body is most likely severly damaged and the only way to bring it around is with good quality nutrients.
Continue reading Ironman Recovery
 An Ironman is a long day, that is for sure. Even the best are out there for at least 8hrs. Most seem to come in around 10-14, then the survival group, out there exercising for 15+ hours. It’s next to impossible to account for everything that’s going to happen on race day when you’re dealing with that amount of time. Even 8 hours is a ridiculously long training day. Here are some things to ponder.
Hunger at mile 90 of the bike, what should I do? Getting hungry at mile 90 of the bike is not a good sign, it generally means you’ve undershot your calorie intake and have some catching up to do. How are you going to do that before getting off your bike and running a marathon? Answer: slow down so your heart rate lowers and you can digest properly, take in a bunch of food and gradually get the pace back up. Ideally you would catch that problem before mile 90 as it can often be hard to eat at that point of a race.
Continue reading Think your way through it
 As triathletes we tend to forget the importance of keeping our core and lateral leg muscles strong. By doing the exercises in the video you engage a range of run- specific stabilizer muscles. This can help prevent injury – namely hip, knee, and ankle injury (provided you don’t over do them when just starting out!) - and give you that much needed structure for finishing strong in the last 10 kilometers of a long distance triathlon.
Staying injury free is key to a successful season, and to progressing year after year as an athlete. Taking care of the little things, and doing core stability exercises will help save you a few painful trips to physio 4 months from now.
Watch the video to take a look at this exercise. You’ll want to start on the ground and move up to the Bosu Ball once you’re comfortable. It is generally best to do this in front of a static object like a wall or tree so you can have something to focus on. It will help your balance in a big way.
#1. Start with both legs, just like a squat.
#2. Move to one leg at a time, same motion as a squat, keeping your hands out in front.
#3. Bring your free leg and your opposing arm up. Just like a run stride. Then go through the motions of a run stride (or semblance thereof).
#4. Repeat on a Bosu Ball. You will definitely want to master a simple double leg squat on a Bosu Ball before trying it one legged. Doing the two legged squat without shaking or wobbling will let you know when you’ve got it – focus on engaging the muscles in your lower abdomen and pelvis if you find that you shake a lot. It will help.
#5. BE CAREFUL. You are putting your knees at risk with this exercise, especially on the Bosu. Best to start within the framework of a squat rack until you know your knees won’t give out on you. Hold on to a rail and master the balance before squatting low.
Continue reading Stabilize yourself
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