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Training Mistakes Masters Athletes Make

6/17/2017

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As we get older, Masters athletes want to hold on to their youth.  To a certain degree, this is done illicitly with PEDs (performance enhancing drugs).  But, I’ll bite my tongue and digress, because this post is not about PEDs.  Largely, Masters athletes make the mistake of training as if they were still in their 20s.  While we can certainly perform, say, an interval workout in our 40s like we did back in our 20s, what we cannot do is naturally recover from that workout in the same manner.  Certain physiological capacities erode over time, no matter how hard we combat that erosion.  So, what is the Masters athlete to do? 

Typically, when younger, athletes can train “hard” almost every day.  As an age group swimmer and even during my collegiate swimming career, turning laps in the pool took on a sado-masochistic nature day in, day out.  No way could I do that today, in my late-40s.  As a professional triathlete, I typically had 2 block interval days during the week – Mondays and Thursdays, and sometimes pushed my shorter long workouts on the weekends.  Again, no way could I do that today.  Recovery came quickly, in part due to my youth, in part due to the fact that I was only focused on training and racing, and in part because I used solid recovery practices between workouts and day-to-day in the forms of post-workout nutrition, massage, chiropractic sessions, acupuncture and kicking my feet up on the couch.  As a father of two and a full-time working stiff, the luxury of endless time is not something I own anymore.
 
The time-crunched athlete panics and feels that to make up for the lack of time spent training, he needs to push all of his workouts harder.  The premise is that due to the lack of volume, workout intensity needs to rise in order to compensate.  For awhile, this might work.  Long-term, this is not a strategy for success but rather for failure; or, at the very least, underperformance. 

Studies show that standing still to recover between intensive track intervals is every bit as effective as jogging super easy.  So, why do we jog easy?  Because we’re working out, man!  We can’t stand still!  Standing still is lazy.  But, the insight the studies provide is great – we need to dial back our recovery workouts and recovery intervals, and make them feel ridiculously easy.  What do I mean by this?  Instead of shooting for a HR in the low-120s as is typically prescribed, shoot for a HR in the 110-115 range.  Rather than thinking of a recovery session as a “workout”, instead think of it as a change to lick your wounds, relax and simply enjoy moving.  This is a rather big shift in mentality, but a necessary one.  If you draw a line across a sheet of paper, recovery workouts need to be a deep trough. 

Next, Masters athletes should limit themselves to one intensive day per week.  If you are a single sport athlete, then that’s one workout per week.  If you’re a multi-sport athlete, then you could do up to 2 sports that day and make both workouts challenging; but the caution would be to spread those workouts out as much as you can.  Do one in the morning and the other in the evening, if possible.  Be focused and effective; make these sessions count!

The weekends are typically saved for the long workouts since the majority of us do not work.  The key to the long workout is to complete it as the proper intensity – or, lack thereof.  Most athletes want to test their mettle in long workouts, really put the bit on the mouth and crack the whip.  After all, if we can bludgeon ourselves in the long workout, we create a heck of a lot of training stress and, thus, post-workout adaptation.  Sounds good as a hypothesis, but hits a brick wall when put into practice.  The purpose of the long workout is to create certain physiological adaptations that only the long workout can produce, such as metabolizing fat as a fuel source as we dip further into our muscle glycogen stores over time.  But, the best way for this to occur is to hold back on the effort.  Long workouts should be fatiguing due to their duration first and due to your effort second.  Most athletes approach this in the opposite manner.  As a rule of thumb, your effort should be L1/L2, with the majority of the workout done in the L2 range.  This is clearly the “go long”, aerobic zone.  In SOME long workouts, it is OK to press into L3 for some structured work mid-workout or late-workout, but this should be done sparingly within the workout as well as how often you inject this slightly higher workload.
 
As a Masters athlete, the rest of your workouts should be steady L2 work.  So, as you draw that line across the paper, there is one trough, one spike and the rest of the line is right in the middle.  The steady L2 work cannot be overdone nor can it be given too much importance.  The interval work makes you faster; the L2 work allows you to be faster in the latter stages of a race and minimizes the negative impact of any match you burn during the race.  If you forego the L2 work and instead complete more interval days, you will accomplish 2 things:  1) you will lower the value of the hard days because you will be carrying more fatigue into them and, thus, perform worse than you otherwise could; and 2) drag out the time it takes for you to recover from your intense days which will negatively impact your ability to perform on your L2 days as well as in your long workouts.  Or, you will have to sacrifice an L2 day for another recovery day.  Smart to do, but it’s a sacrifice of what is arguably the most valuable type of training day for the Masters athlete.
 
Some of you reading this will think I’m crazy or that I don’t challenge myself or those athletes with whom I work nearly enough.  Nothing could be further from the truth, however.  I’ve learned over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes the hard way, sometimes by design, and this is what works most effectively for the Masters athletes with whom I work.  Think of it this way:  You’re a Porsche.  You want to burn rubber off the line and hum along rather effortlessly at a fast clip.  If you try to accomplish this through increased interval work, it’s like putting a lawnmower engine into that Porsche.  The deliberate, consistent L2 work is what fine-tunes the engine, cleans out the valves and pistons, and allows you to flip the switch on the turbo boost when it comes time.
 
When you push too hard too often, or skimp on the recovery workouts (or complete days off), or do not exercise discipline during your long workouts, you are effectively reducing the peaks and valleys of that line you just drew across the piece of paper, and creating much more of a flattened line.  What happens when something flat lines?  
 
If you typically feel muscle fatigue when warming up for your key workouts, you’re training too hard and not recovering enough.  Give this approach a try.  I’ll bet you feel better day to day, perform better in your key workouts and will ultimately race better, too. 
​

Happy Training, 
Coach Nate ​
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Ironman Race Strategies

6/11/2017

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The Boulder, CO Ironman is today, which means triathletes are now heavily into their seasons.  It also means there are plenty of Ironman races left to do, so thousands of athletes will still be towing the line to complete the 140.6 distance.  Some will be wanting to become an Ironman for the first time; others will be looking to set PRs; others will have bones to pick with courses that brought them to their knees; and still others will be competing for the sheer joy they get out of the challenge of the course and its distances.  Regardless of your motivations for toeing the line, there is still plenty you can do right on race day and even more you can get dead wrong.
 
More than any other triathlon distance, the Ironman is all about patience. World-class athletes have been brought to their knees – literally – because their bodies have cried, “No more!” and shut down. Some athletes positive split the bike and run legs, meaning their marathon run was slower than their split for 112 miles of biking. This is another sign of gross overestimation of an athlete's talent and capabilities. If your run split is anywhere near your bike split, then you swam and biked too hard. The best way to think about racing an Ironman is to think of what a realistic run split is if you're having a solid race. Don't even think of your swim or bike splits when contemplating this. Based on your training and the goal of having a solid race, what sort of marathon split would you be happy with? Plain and simple. Once you've answered this question, then your goal should be to race the swim and bike in such a way that sets you up to achieve your marathon goal. If you've set a realistic run goal and you don't achieve it, you raced too hard during the first 2 legs. So, what to do. . . 
 
​The Swim Leg

The swim leg of an Ironman race can be looked at as an extended warm up. After swimming 2.4 miles, you may feel a little stiff, but you should definitely feel fresh, all things considered. The goal should be to draft as much as possible, avoid the washing machine (as this can strip you of much-needed energy) and conserve as much energy as you can for the bike and run. It is better to swim a few minutes slower and get out of the water thinking, “That was easy!” rather than to push yourself to a PR swim split and possible sabotage the remainder of your race. 
 
That being said, your HR should fall well below 78% during the swim. The top Ironman performers always look nice and relaxed during the swim leg, like they are out for an easy splash in the ocean (or lake). They don't care what place they are out of the water, only about what their place is at the finish line. Keep your HR below 70% for the entire swim. If you are swimming on someone's feet and your level of effort is below 70% that is fine too. The goal is to swim reasonably well, not set the world on fire, and conserve as much energy as you can for the rest of the race. It's going to be a long day! 

T1
As you exit the swim and jog to your bike, be sure to drink some fluids on your way. You've been swimming for the better part of 1-2 hours and, aside from any seawater or lake water you inadvertently consumed – you have not taken in any fluids. You have been sweating, however, so you're on your way to dehydration if you're not careful. Drink some fluids, get changed into your bike gear and head on out to the highway. 
 
The Bike Leg
Once on your bike, your body will take awhile to reach stasis. After being in a prone position for 1-2 hours and using primarily your arms to propel your body, you are now in a more vertical position and are using your legs to do the pumping. A lot of blood is getting shifted around in a short period of time. Give yourself time to settle down and settle into a comfortable pace. Hold off drinking and eating anything for the first 15-20 minutes. 

You should settle into a pace that is between 60-78% for the ride, the majority of which should be spent below 70%. I know, I know. . .You're thinking that sounds too easy, that you'll be out for a slow, easy ride and destroy your chances to hit a PR. This is not the case. Mark Allen, whom I consider the best triathlete of all time and the most-feared Ironman athlete, normally kept his HR between 120-140 beats per minute for the entire bike leg. His aerobic zone topped out at 155 beats per minute, so the above-mentioned zone was well below 78% for him. The only time I saw him actually go above this zone was the year that Thomas Hellrigel blew the bike course record away. Mark and other athletes had a tough decision to make – go with Thomas or not. Several of them did while others tried and blew up. On the run, the rest of the athletes blew up too. 
 
When Mark began the run, it looked truly painful! Gone was the fluid, gliding stride. He eventually loosened up, picked up his pace and won the race, but he also told me he was second-guessing his strategy to push the bike extra hard for the first half of the run. That's a long time to second-guess yourself! Best not to put yourself in that position. 

So, back to strategy. You should be spinning at 90-100rpm on flat sections and 85+rpm on any climbing. The pedaling should feel “soft”, like you are not applying much pressure to turn the pedals. You can hold your HR at, say, 70% and grind it out. While your HR is where it should be, the added tension in the legs will kill you for the run. Better to hold your HR at 70% by picking an easier gear and spinning higher RPMs. Your goal should be to negative split your bike leg. If you find yourself having to back off the pace around mile 70-80, you completed the first half too strong. It is best to hit the halfway mark afraid that you have been taking it too easy rather than questioning if you've gone out too hard. 
 
When – not if – you have to relieve yourself, you have two options. First, you can learn to pee on the fly (while still biking), or you can pull off the side of the road and dismount. There is nothing wrong with stopping to pee. Your pride will not be shattered, your race will not be blown. Always remember that the races lasts a minimum of 8 hours for the top pros and as many as 17 hours for the final finishers. There is plenty of room for patience and for getting off your bike to pee a couple of times. 
 
In the last few miles, switch into one easier gear than normal and spin a little higher RPMs. This will help loosen the legs up a little bit and give them a quick break before the most important part of the race – the run. 

T2
​
You have been racing for a long time already.  Fatigue has accumulated and you might well be wondering, "How the heck am I now going to complete a marathon?", seasoned Ironman athlete and beginner alike.  The rubber is about to meet the road, so it is critical you head out on the marathon in the right frame of mind.

​Sounds easier than it is.  In T2, exercise calm.  Grab your change of clothes -- whether it be just shoes or an entire wardrobe -- and find as quiet a place as you can to get your run gear on.  Take slow, deep breaths.  Drink a full cup of water to replenish some much needed fluids.  Shoot a gel for a quick fuel boost.  Invariably, you will feel a bit refreshed when you start running because you will be using your body in a new way compared to the swimming and biking you just completed.  Affirm to yourself that you will feel that rejuvenation and that you are poised to have a great marathon.

Take your time before heading out on the road.  Spending an extra minute or two in T2 so that you're prepared for the next several hours of pounding the pavement can pay big dividends.

 
The Run Leg
The bike-to-run transition should be a time for you to take inventory. How are you feeling? Take in some extra fluids and nutrition if you skimped in the latter stages of the bike leg. Stretch out stiff and tight muscles. Make a final pit stop in the Port-a-John, even if it feels like you don't have to go. Get centered and focused on the marathon before heading out on your feet. 
 
No matter how poorly you might feel at the finish of the bike leg, chances are you will feel somewhat rejuvenated when you begin the run. It's probably equal parts the euphoria of beginning the final leg of the race among the throngs of spectators and the fact that you are using your major muscle groups in an entirely different way than you did during the past two legs of the race. Believe it or not, there still exists the danger of beginning the run too fast. 

Give yourself time to find your rhythm. Your leg muscles will be somewhat tight and will take awhile to loosen up and lengthen out. Keep your HR below 65% the first couple of miles until you know you're good to go. If there are some hills in the first several miles, slow your pace down or even walk up them (depending on their length and steepness) so you don't jack your HR up too high. At this point you have to remember that you still have in excess of 3 hours to race!! And, with many hours of racing already under your belt, any push into the anaerobic arena can prove devastating to the most crucial leg of the race as well as your overall performance. 
 
The goal should be to either even split or negative split the run leg. Your HR should fall within the 65-78% range for the first 20 miles, if not longer. Find a pace that feels almost too easy. If, during the first 13 miles, you keep asking yourself if you're going too easy, if you should speed up, don't! You have chosen the perfect pace for the first half of the run. If at around 13 miles you feel like your tank is still mostly full, then gradually pick your pace up, but keep your HR below 78%. You can bleed a full tank empty in no time this late in the race. 
 
If after picking up the pace you are still feeling strong at around mile 20, then you can safely bump your effort above 78%. Take each mile as it comes, do a quick inventory of how you're feeling. If you're feeling the “finish line surge”, then pick it up some more. If you're wondering whether or not you can hold your pace/effort for the remainder of the race, then hold steady or slightly back off. If you're wondering if you can hold your pace/effort for another mile, then definitely back off for the next mile and reassess how you're feeling at that point. 
 
When you cross the finish line, hopefully you've enjoyed your experience. There will be plenty of peaks and valleys in terms of how you're feeling – no matter how good your overall race goes. The goal should be to ride the peaks as long as you can and to push through the valleys. They will pass! While setting a PR is nice, time is truly inconsequential. Too many factors – temperature, choppy water, wind, flat tires, climate, etc. - affect your overall race time, and the effects are magnified greatly at an ultra-race such as an Ironman. If you've raced hard and smart, then you should be both happy and satisfied with your results. 
 
Summary
How hard you race is dependent on the distance of the race as well as how long you will be out there on the course. If you respect your body, listen to it and take care of it, it will respond quite well to your demands. However, if you ignore its signs, and try to abuse it and push it pasts its limits, it will shut you down and sometimes take you out. 

Best to race smart so you can enjoy a strong, solid performance.

Happy Training,
​Coach Nate
 
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Dealing with Bad Race Experiences

6/4/2017

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Poor race performances are tough as an athlete.  You’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into your training and preparation, and for some reason when it’s Go Time, your get-up-and-go got up and went.  These times can be just as tough on coaches.  After all, our athletes pay us money for our expertise and put their faith in us that we will get them to the start line better prepared than ever before so that they can achieve better results. 

Bad race experiences leave athlete and coach alike confused, and the athlete even feels oscillating emotions ranging from despair to lack of hope to frustration and maybe even anger.  We do our best to “put it behind us” and move on, and eventually we do.  But until we put the bad experience behind us, it eats at us.

The main thing we need to caution against is allowing ourselves to think that a poor race is now the norm, that it is the best for which we can hope.  Nobody is perfect, nobody bats 1,000.  We can only prepare to the best of our collective capabilities and abilities.  If we define ourselves through our race experiences, that’s a slippery slope.  It’s one I get in front of with ORION Training Systems athletes and revisit regularly.  Ultimately, we choose how to respond to any given “input”.  We can take a poor experience and allow it to eat us up, or we can choose to learn from it, apply what we’ve learned and move on.  Positives can come out of negatives.
 
To understand why we react the way we do to positive and negative performances, we need to understand a bit about how we’re hardwired.  Dating back millions of years, our brains were wired to interpret sensations negatively, to promote caution and conduct threat assessments.  This is how humans survived.  Better to mistaken interpret an input as a threat, induce fight-or-flight to some degree and then realize we’re safe than to pass the input off and get eaten by a predator. 

Our brains still work this way, and on race day, our brains induce fight-or-flight responses.  Every race day experience we have gets catalogued and we draw upon that growing archived body of data for every subsequent competition.  Our body and brain tell us how we should expect to feel given the race situation.  During a race, we are constantly assessing how we actual feel against the expectations of how we anticipated we would feel.  If in the middle of a race we expect to feel strong but instead feel overly fatigued, or the converse in that we expect to feel overly fatigued but instead feel fairly fresh and strong, then the brain goes to work to overcome the mismatch between prediction and reality.  If we’re feeling great, we start cracking the whip on our backside and spur ourselves to a PR; we’re elated and there’s even a sense of calm in our heads.  It’s like we’re on auto-pilot.  If we’re feeling worse than expected, our brain kicks into overdrive.  We start to overthink what the hell is going on.  Our fatigue deepens, our legs feel even worse; we’re consumed by a defeatist attitude. 

​Our brain elicits the “right” response. If we’re are in position to achieve a PR or to win a race, the reins get let out and we’re galloping for glory.  If instead we feel like a lead weight, if we know we’re having an off day, the brain reacts accordingly and goes into protection mode.  When you “don’t have it”, our brain kicks into survival mode.  It protects us so we can live to fight another day.  If we try to override this, the brain will shut us down.  Sometimes we can override the brain, but when we do we’re worse off than if we back it down and shut it down.  There’s no shame in a poor performance or a DNF.  Better that than dying because you were too proud to not finish a race.  It occurs more often than you think.

To raise our chances of success in a race, it is critical we go into the races in the right mindset as well.  We can quite literally set ourselves up for success or failure.  When I think of this lesson, I think back to my early-year competitive swimming days.  I was 12 years old and it was at the 3-day Weber Kettle meet in Arlington Heights, so named because if a swimmer won High Point for the weekend – most accumulated points based on placings across all events entered; in other words, the most well-rounded swimmer in his/her age group – then he/she was given a Weber Kettle BBQ.  This particular year, I was set to win High Point for the 11-12 age group.  I had been swimming well and setting some PRs.  On the last day, however, my mindset shifted about halfway through the day.  I had 2 events left, I was tired and I didn’t particularly feel like swimming either of them.  I first asked then pleaded with my coach to skip the first of the 2 events.  Rightly, he said no.  I had committed and it was important to fulfill my commitments – to myself, to him, to my teammates.  This wasn’t about High Point.  I was steaming I was so mad, but I bit my lip and swam the event.  And absolutely SUCKED.  I felt like I was dragging an anchor and felt overly fatigued from the first stroke.  In a roughly 2-minute race, I was 10 seconds off my PR.  My best time would have placed me second.  Instead, I don’t even remember where I finished.  I just remember feeling terrible – not only physically but also mentally and emotionally.  It was a tough lesson to learn, but one I vowed to avoid repeating.

As a coach, I’ve seen the athletes I work with excel and also race poorly.  Sometimes, it is easy to dissect the reason for an underperformance.  Other times, it’s a complete head scratcher for both of us. Sometimes we can pinpoint a root cause.  Sometimes we can point to an ancillary cause.  We can sometimes only shrug our shoulders and make assumptions.  The goal is to pick the athlete up, dust him/her off, and help him/her look forward to the next race positively.  One poor performance does not create a pattern of underperformance.  In the moment, it is challenging to remember this, but remember it we must.  We need some distance between us and the negative input before we can more objectively assess it and move on.  But, move on we do.  Move on we must.

How we react to bad races in turn establishes our status quo reaction to them.  If our habit is to cry and feel like the world is ending and beat ourselves down, then that habit will be extremely hard to break.  And, it puts you in a state of consistent fear – the “flight” in fight-or-flight.  You are prey instead of predator.  This is an underlying premise in why the ORION Training Systems tag line is “Become the hunter.”  Being a hunter needs to be pervasive in your mindset and in your preparation.  If you prepare like a hunter, you will hunt.  If you prepare like prey, you will be hunted down. 

Most often, it is not a lack of fitness that results in a poor performance.  Yet, that is always identified as the culprit.  If we had done more volume or more speedwork, surely the outcome would have been not only different but better.  Instead, I challenge you to look at your mindset.  What sort of mindset do you carry on a daily basis into your training, especially those workouts marked as benchmarks – the challenging ones that are grinders and no fun at all, yet provide us with clear markers of our fitness and preparation.

What kind of environment have you been creating and what kind of experiences are you habitualizing?  Are you consistently creating “fight” or “flight”?  Are you becoming the hunter, or are you becoming the prey?

Happy Training,
Coach Nate

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