Tri Talk Triathlon Podcast

The audio for this podcast can be found here.

How scheduling a duathlon in 2008 will make you a better triathlete, assessing 2007 and setting goals for 2008, and qualities of great athletes. All that, today on Tri Talk.

Welcome to Tri Talk, your podcast source for triathlon tips, training, news and more. I want to wish you a happy new year, and may your 2008 race season be your best ever. A special welcome to new listeners in Texas and Egypt. To listeners in Texas, we couldn’t help but point out the upcoming “Frost yer Fanny” duathlon and hope you do well in that event. And, we just had to say hello to the 1 consistent and loyal listener that keeps popping up on the download stats from Cairo, Egypt. . My goal at Tri Talk is to help you swim, bike, and run faster, to meet your personal triathlon goals. Whether you are an elite or amateur triathlete, we cover sprint distance to Ironman distance. Filling in for David Warden, I’m your host, Eric Schwartz, and this is Tri Talk Episode 56.

My name is Eric Schwartz, and I’m hosting Tri Talk for the second time while David takes a break for the holidays. Today on Tri Talk we’re going to perform a little twist on how to swim, bike, and run faster, and find out how to run, bike, and run faster. Not that swimming isn’t important! But, for those of you who are looking to add some motivation into your cycling and running, I’ll be giving a primer on racing duathlons. Then I’ll tell you how 60 minutes of brain power will make you faster in 2008 as you assess your 2007 season and set goals for 2008. Finally, I’ll discuss qualities of great athletes. Implementing these behaviors will make you faster.

If you missed episode 55, you have no idea who I am. I’m Eric Schwartz. I live in Boulder, Colorado and I raced tris and dus for 15 years. I came from a running background and picked up triathlons and duathlons while I was in college at Indiana University. After two second place finishes at the Duathlon Nationals Championships, I finally won the event in 2004. That same year I finished 8^th at Ironman Wisconsin. Running was my strength and in 3 of my 4 Ironman marathons I ran under 3 hours. I also was a Category 2 cyclist. I’ve been coaching for 8 years as a member of Joe Friel’s Ultrafit and now as a member of TrainingBible Coaching. I also run the website Duathlon.com, which covers daily triathlon and duathlon news and race results. If you have questions for me you can reach me via email at Eric.Boulder@gmail.com or for coaching services you can check out my coaching website at Enduranceone.com.

You can also send in your questions or comments to david@tri-talk.com, Or, for even faster results, and leveraging the vast knowledge of Tri Talk listeners, consider posting your question on the Tri Talk forums. While you are on the forums, unless you have listened to all available episodes of Tri Talk, all the way back to episode 18, the other Tri Talk listeners will all be faster than you. With so many new listeners in the last few months, make sure you get caught up by getting all the available classic episodes from tri-talk.com

Let’s get onto the good stuff!

As someone who raced a lot of duathlons, I’m going to give a short primer on duathlons and how to train for them, which should also help your triathlon racing. Even if you never do a duathlon you’ll like some of these workouts. I would guess that roughly 50% of multisport athletes have done at least one duathlon. Most are of a run/bike/run format. 5k/30k/5k, or similar, is the most common distance. Most people are looking at a 1.5 to 2.5 hour race. The Powerman duathlons, held across the world, are something close to 10k/60k/10k. Powerman Zofingen, in Switzerland, is the most famous duathlon of all. It is a 10k run, 150k bike, and 30k run - 6 miles, 93 mile bike, and 18 mile run. For those of you that like the Ironman distance events you should strongly consider this event. Everyone I know who has done this event has absolutely loved it. It’s hard - probably harder than an Ironman - and the community puts on a great race and it’s a great racing atmosphere. It is one of the premier multisport events in the world. You can find out more about it at www.Powerman.org.

If you have an aversion to racing duathlons I’m going to give you a good reason to do one - the World Championships. It’s easier to qualify for the World Championships as a duathlete. There are 18 spots per age group, and if you qualify and get the chance to go to the World Championships you should jump on the opportunity. Both the Triathlon and Duathlon World Championships are great events, especially when they are held outside of the United States. Nothing against my home country, but as anyone who has raced in Europe knows, races get more community involvement and it’s a racing atmosphere you won’t forget. Other than Ironman Hawaii, my most memorable racing experiences have been outside the United States. In 1997 I did the Duathlon World Championships in Gernica, Spain, and I’ll never forget it. It was a small town outside of Bilboa. Phil Ligget did the race announcing, and it seemed as if everyone in town came out to watch. They thought we were all heroes, and anytime we walked through the town square we got mobbed. They asked for our autographs and wanted to take pictures of us with their kids. They were great people and it was a lot of fun. Just about any race I’ve done in Europe has been great. The 2008 Duathlon World Championships are in Rimini, Italy in September. US athletes can find the complete list of qualifiers at www.usatriathlon.org. For US athletes there are five qualifiers in 2008. The first takes place February 24 in Phoenix, and other races take place in Tulsa, Minnesota, Sarasota, and Orange County, California. If you’d like to race in Italy next September, this is your chance. It’s not as hard to qualify as most people think.

How best to prepare for duathlons? If you’re training for sprint or Olympic distance triathlons then there isn’t much that you need to change as you’ll already be working on your speed. I would suggest adding a few run/bike/run workouts. Most people think duathlons are harder because the first run is tougher to recover from than a swim would be, even if intensity feels the same. Because of this the second run will feel harder. Run/bike/run workouts will help with your second run speed. The workouts can be short or long. I find that most triathletes really like the shorter version of these workouts and I’ll even include them during winter training when weather is bad to help mix things up. Here are two examples:

This one is more of a base period workout:

25 minute run ending with 15 minutes in zone 3 - I’m using Joe Friel heart rate zones as described in the Triathlete’s Training bible

45 minute bike. Start and end with 15 minutes in zone 3 - the final effort can drift into zone 4.

Follow with a 20 minute run with the first 12 minutes at zone 3-4.

The second workout is more intense.

25 minute run with a 10 minute warmup, then 2X5 minutes in zone 5, 2 minute recoveries.

40 minute bike. Start immediately with 2X5 minutes in zone 5, 2 minute recoveries. End with 15 minutes at zone 4.

Follow with a 15 minute run with 3X3 minutes at zone 5+, with 2 minute recoveries.

You can make many variations of these workouts and you could make them as short as 45 minutes and still get in a good workout.

The zone 3 workouts are less intense and can be done more often. Be careful with the higher intensity workouts. Even if it feels easy to recover from them, you can run into long-term trouble if you stack too many high intensity workouts into one week.

How should you pace yourself a duathlon?

If your running a race that is a 5k/30k/5k event, your first run should be 30 to 80 seconds within what you could do an open 5k running race. A very fit athlete would go for the shorter end of that spectrum, and an athlete that lacks running endurance fitness should shoot for the higher end of the range. I would say runners in the 18 to 20 minute 5k range would be about 40-45 seconds off of their 5k racing time. You can run faster and do okay, but the problem is that the 10-15 seconds you gain will cost you more on the bike and the second run. If you’re second run time is within 30-60 seconds of your opening run you’ve done very well. For an event that starts and ends with 10k runs your first 10k should be 1 to 2.5 minutes within what you would do for a open 10k race. If you end with another 10k you’ll probably find it to be one of the most challenging runs you can do. Your fitness, hydration, and caloric intake will have a big impact on how well you hold up. If you can do this second run within 2 minutes of your first run you’ll have done better than 95% of the field. For most athletes a 3-4 minute differential is a reasonable goal.

That’s my crash course guide to training and racing duathlons. If they fit into your schedule strongly consider the Duathlon World Championships or Powerman Zofingen. You won’t regret it.

Before we continue, have you found your performance has reached a roadblock? Is what used to take weeks to see improvement, now taking months, or even longer? Or, are you worried that you’re implanting the wrong technique into your training, cementing inefficient muscle memory and improper form that can take significant time to correct?

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to analyze your swimming or running technique in an objective way, and to be able to record and see your technique progress? TrainingBible Coaching is excited to announce the availability of Quick Scout, the perfect tool for the individual athlete or coach looking to provide visual feedback for those who want to master proper technique. With QuikScout, break down athletic movement frame-by-frame for immediate review and analysis. For the individual athlete, have your form analyzed with lines, planes, angles and compare the performance to perfect form, or compared to your own previous performance to see your progress. For the coach with remote athletes, there is no other way to fill that missing piece of visual feedback into your athlete’s training. Or, cut the coach out of the picture and analyze your own athletic technique frame-by-frame against professional athletes, or against yourself to track progress.

Visit www.tri-talk.com for more information on how you can take advantage of this new technology as an athlete or coach.

Moving on..

Since the New Year is just starting I thought I’d do a little segment on goal setting and self-assessment. I did this in my last couple years of racing and it made a big difference.

Think back to your previous season. If you didn’t reach your goals, what prevented you from doing so? Was it poor planning, overracing, overtraining, or were your goals too lofty? Just as you should complete a written evaluation of each race, you should do a written evaluation of your season to find out what held you back. There’s no sense in making a mistake more than once

Three areas you should include in your self-evaluation are training, racing, and injuries.

Training Plan

This is an obvious topic but very few people get it right. Do you really know how to get fast? Do you follow a plan that allows you to be at your fastest? If the answer to either of those questions is no, then you need to make adjustments right now. Simply logging miles without a plan won’t get you there. Either on your own, or with the help of a coach, develop a training program that works for you and stick to it.

Racing Strategy

One could write a book about racing strategy, but a key aspect that I stress with every athlete I coach is pacing. If you don’t know how to pace yourself in a race then you absolutely will not reach your potential. Note that almost every running world record has been set with even or negative (the second half is faster than the first half) splits, but most athletes don’t race that way.

Treating Injuries

Have injuries affected your success in the last couple years? If so, and if the injuries are related, do your best to figure out why it’s happening and how you can prevent it. If you haven’t been working with an expert, find one. For many injuries a doctor is not going to be the best person to see. Many times injuries are related to inflexibility and strength. If that’s the case then you have to make those areas a priority for 2008.

Those are some things to think about when assessing last year’s performance. I’ll quickly go through an evaluation I did several years ago.

Sample Evaluation

I determined four obstacles that were affecting my performance . The year I did this evaluation, and made adjustments, was a breakthrough season for me.

1 – Injuries - I was prone to lower leg injuries that affected my training, primarily my Achilles and that really hindered my run training. I made it a priority to get regular massages in an attempt to prevent those injuries.

2 – Cycling – Cycling was a weakness for me. I looked back through my training logs at the periods when I was at my best and I realized that my best racing was always setup by several consecutive weeks of five hour rides. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this for short distance racing. After making this discovery I altered my schedule to include long rides and it yielded great results.

3 – Weight - at 5’11” and 158 pounds I was not overweight but I carried a few extra pounds. Losing just five pounds made a considerable difference in my performance, especially running

4 – Diet - I used get two to three illnesses per year that interrupted my training. Improving my diet made me less vulnerable to getting sick, greatly improved my recoveries, and it helped me lose those five pounds. This change made such a big difference for me.

You could probably come up with a similar list in 30 minutes and it would be invaluable to your 2008 racing season.

Once you’ve done this set your goals for 2008. I’d suggest picking just 3 goals. Examples might be qualifying for Ironman Hawaii, doing a 30 minute trial with an average wattage of 220 or better, or running a 20 minute 5k. For each of your goals right down 3 sub-goals that you know you need to accomplish to reach your goals - it could be losing weight, finding faster training partners, running a certain amount of miles, or maybe hiring a coach. Finally, put your gaols in a place where you can see them on a daily basis. I’d be willing to bet, on average, that those of you that accept this challenge have a more successful season than those that don’t.

What are the qualities of a great athlete? I’m not talking about just elite athletes, but athletes of all levels.

I’ll go over some of the qualities that I think most good athletes have. As you’re planning for the new year you might think about which of these characteristics you could apply to your training. This my unscientific list, and they aren’t in any particular order.

1. Good genetics. This is an important one, but it’s not worth spending much time on because you can’t control it.

I know of a top Ironman athlete who started out as a very mediocre athlete. He never wanted to have a V02 max test because he thought if he was tested and had a low number it might limit what he thought was possible. So he never was tested and he went on to become a great Ironman athlete. The point of that story is to not let any test convince you that you can’t be great. If you’ve been tested and have high numbers, use it as motivation. If you’ve been tested and had low numbers, you should absolutely forget about them.

2. Consistency of training. The total number of miles you’ve run and bike, and the number of yards you swam, combined with the number of years you’ve been racing, has a great impact on your success. If your new to racing that means you can look forward to a great improvement. If you’ve been racing a long time then you surely know the benefits of consistency. If you’ve been racing for several years, but you’ve been inconsistent, make every effort to be be consistent in your training from week to week, month to month, and year to year. A lot of great athletes didn’t start out as great athletes. They made small incremental gains over several years and now they make it look easy.

3. Willingness to experiment and push yourself. This involves more risk but it can pay great dividends. Here are a few things I did that made a difference to me - as a collegiate runner, when I was only running, I increased my run volume from 60 miles/week to 80 miles/ week and it a made a big difference. When I was working on my swimming one winter I was in the pool nearly every day for a month and soon after I was swimming faster than ever. If you’re training for an Ironman it could involve doing some very heavy cycling blocks during base training. It could be as simple as getting a power meter to gain more knowledge about your cycling. If you’ve been stagnant for awhile some significant changes could yield better results. I’d only caution that before you do something that will significantly increases your training volume or intensity, talk it over with an expert in the field to make sure it has some validity and you are applying the change correctly.

4. Your peer group. If you train with great athletes, or athletes that are better than you, you’re a lot more likely to improve. There were a few times in my career when I wasn’t around better athletes that pushed me, and I stagnated. Fortunately, most of the time I trained with better athletes that inspired me to get faster. Surround yourself with successful people and you’re more likely to find success yourself. Your peer group also includes your support - family, friends, coaches, medical professionals, and mechanics, just to name a few. These people play a crucial role in your athletic career. Surround yourself with the best.

5. Diet. The older you get the more important it becomes. I’d guess that sometime around 30 years old, give or take a few years, is when our body will stop putting up with poor eating habits. It makes a difference. Of all the national or world caliber athletes I know, almost all of them realized they had to eat well if they were going to be great.

6. Mental outlook - do you believe you are good and that you can get better? If so, you’ve increased your chance of success. Can you focus when necessary? Can you correctly execute your race plan? Do you have other stresses in your life that take energy away from your training? All of these things have a significant impact on your racing

7. Ability to stay healthy. If you can stay healthy you can be consistent with your training.

8. Passion - do you love what you’re doing? It’s hard to be successful if you don’t.

Those are 8 things I think are very important to athletic success. As you’re looking ahead to 2008 think about this list when planning your season.

That’s all for episode 56. It’s been a pleasure being your host for the last 2 episodes and I’d like to thank David for giving me the opportunity. I can tell you that it’s no easy task composing a podcast and now that I’ve done it I’m even more impressed with the work David does. He’ll be back in 2 weeks with episode 57. You can contact me at Eric.Boulder@gmail.com or EnduranceOne.com. Happy new year and all the best in your training and racing in 2008.

The audio for this podcast can be found here.
How to nail your hydration strategy by determining your sweat rate, and how to use Jack Daniels’ running charts to set and achieve your running goals. All that, today on Tri Talk.

Welcome to Tri Talk, your podcast source for triathlon tips, training, news and more. New listeners to Tri Talk hail from Florida and South Africa. In Florida, I hope you had a good race at the Safety Harbor Multisport event. And in South Africa, a reminder that Ironman South Africa is just 4 months away. My goal at Tri Talk is to help you swim, bike, and run faster, to meet your personal triathlon goals. Whether you are an elite or amateur triathlete, we cover sprint distance to Ironman distance. Filling in for David Warden, I’m your host, Eric Schwartz, and this is Tri Talk Episode 55.

My name is Eric Schwartz, and I’ll be hosting the next 2 episodes of Tri Talk while David takes a break for the holidays. Today on Tri Talk we’ll be covering sweat rate and how to incorporate it into your own racing nutrition plan. You can determine your own sweat rate without a lab and I’ll tell you how. I’ll break down this topic in an easy to understand conversation. I’ll also tell you how you can use Jack Daniels’ VDOT formula to develop your own running goals and more specifically I’ll walk through how I’ve incorporated marathon training into an Ironman athlete’s training schedule.

Before we continue, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Eric Schwartz and David has bravely allowed me to guest host his show. I’m 38 and I’ve pretty much been racing all my life, all though I’ve cut back in the last two year. I’m originally from Indiana but I now live in Boulder, Colorado. I was a collegiate runner at Indiana University and took up multisport racing in college. After college I raced while I worked full time as accountant for 5 years. In 1998 I moved to Boulder and started racing full time. In 2004 I reached a long term goal of winning the Duathlon National Championships, and in that same year I finished 8th at Ironman Wisconsin. I’ve been coaching for 8 years as a member of Joe Friel’s Ultrafit and now as a member of TrainingBible Coaching. I also run the website Duathlon.com, which covers daily triathlon and duathlon news and race results. Because I was known as a duathlete, at the end of the last podcast David set a lofty goal for me of being 2/3 of the host he is. Hopefully I can reach that goal. If you have questions for me you can reach me via email at Eric.Boulder@gmail.com or for coaching services you can check out my coaching website at Enduranceone.com.

You can also send in your questions or comments to david@tri-talk.com, Or, for even faster results consider posting your question on the Tri Talk forums, a friendly forum environment for triathletes with discriminating tastes.

Now let’s get onto the good stuff!

The first topic I’m going to tackle is sweat rate. It’s such an component of training but there are a lot of athletes that don’t really understand how it affects their racing. It goes well beyond hydrating for a race or a workout, and by the way, if your nutrition and fluid intake is good on a daily basis then you don’t need to do anything differently to hydrate for a race. You’re already well hydrated. But you better have a good hydration plan for your race.

My first memory of dehydration affecting my performance occurred in college. Our coach made us weigh in and out of practice so I knew my normal pre and post workout weights. On this day we were on the cross-country course and our workout included two 5ks. I felt good on the first one and did it in 16:30. On the second one I fell apart. I ran 17:30 and and it was very difficult. After the workout I was five pounds lighter than normal. Instead of worrying that my training was falling apart, I knew that my bad workout was probably a fluke related to poor hydration, salt intake, or something else unusual going on with my body that day. I really think multisport athletes should weigh themselves before and after a race. I have a feeling that a lot of bad performances could be attributed to dehydration – but without that measurement there’s no way to know.

So let’s get started.

Here’s how you can measure your sweat rate and stay on top of your hydration:

Before a long workout weigh yourself. Do the same thing after your workout. Every pound you’ve lost equals 16 ounces of fluid. To get an accurate measurement of weight loss you must weigh yourself with the exact same clothing before your workout and after your workout. Add in all of the fluids you drank during the ride. Measure your water bottles so you know how much they hold. I’ve found that 80% of the athletes I coach don’t know how much fluid they hold - they usually underestimate. I have athletes do this for workouts longer than 2 hours, but it’s a useful exercise to know how much you sweat on a 30 and 60 minute workout, especially if you focus on short distance races.

Here’s one other thing to consider. During the summer and during heavy training, especially in dry climates, you’ll lose a significant amount of fluid overnight. I’ve lost as much as 3 pounds overnight. If you start a long workout and don’t take into account this extra fluid loss it will affect your performance

Let’s move to a real example.

To use an example let’s do this for an athlete on a 3 hour workout. Beginning weight is 165 and ending weight is 162. By the way, actual weight isn’t important. We’re only concerned with the change in weight. That 3 pound weight loss represents 48 ounces of sweat. Between the pre and post workout weigh-ins, this athlete drank 4 bottles with 26 ounces of fluid and another 7 ounces of fluid out of a fifth bottle. That’s another 111 ounces of fluid intake that was lost through sweat. Over 3 hours this athlete sweated 159 ounces of fluid (48 ounces in weight loss plus 111 ounces of intake). That’s a sweat rate of 53 ounces per hour. That’s a higher than normal sweat rate, but I’ve worked with athletes that have lost even more than that.

Quick recap of the calculation - pounds in weight loss X 16 ounces per pound, plus total ounces of fluid intake, divided by total hours of training.

How do you use that information? Let’s say this athlete was doing a half ironman with an expected finish time of 5 hours. With a sweat rate of 53 ounces/hour this athlete would expect to lose 265 ounces of fluid during the race. That’s about 16 pounds! Studies have shown that losing 2% of body weight has no adverse affect on performance, and I know some athletes can lose a little more than that and still race well. For a 165 pound person a 2% weight loss equals 3.3 pounds. At 16 ounces per pound, that’s 53 ounces of a fluid deficit this person could have and still race well. We said his total sweat loss would be 265 ounces, so subtract 53 ounces from that and we get 212 ounces that he will need to replace over 5 hours. That’s approximately 42 ounces per hour, which is a little less than two big water bottles per hour.

Some athletes can easily take in large amounts of fluid during a workout while others would need to practice to achieve this level. Work on it in training before race day.

Let’s take it one step farther. After I have an athlete determine sweat rate, practice it, then execute the plan during a race, we evaluate the results.

After each race, especially a long race, an athlete should write down, among other things, their fluid intake during the race. If you have a scale at the race, which I highly recommend, (maybe some race directors can start providing them) you can also measure weight loss. From this evaluation you can determine how much the athlete was able to take in and how it correlated to race performance. If hydration was correct then race day is more likely to represent actual fitness.

Once you’ve established your hydration habits you need to monitor them in all workouts. If you don’t stay hydrated in training you won’t get the most out of your workouts and you won’t reach maximum fitness.

Moving on…

Some of the athletes I coach have specific running times they want to hit in the offseason or they want to train for a marathon while continuing to train for triathlons. How would you incorporate that into your training?

First, assuming you live in a cold climate, I think the winter is an excellent time to focus on running, especially if it is a weakness.

The starting point I use for running is Daniels’ Running Formula by Jack Daniels and I highly recommend you get this book.

Daniels uses something he calls the VDOT formula which is based on your current running fitness. Let’s say that right now you can run a 48 minute 10k. According to Daniels’ charts, if you can run a 48 minute 10k, you should be able to run a 5k in 23:09, a half marathon in 1:46, and a marathon in 3:40. In fact, if you know your fitness for one distance it will tell you what you could run for a 1500, mile, 3,000, 5k, 10k, 15k, 1/2 marathon, and marathon. I’ve found these charts to be very accurate. However, at the far ends of the chart - the mile and the marathon, the times won’t be accurate unless you’ve done the training for those distances, and if you’re heavily weighted toward fast twitch or slow twitch muscles, then the times at the opposite ends of the chart might not be realistic. But in the middle of the chart - 5k, 10k, and 1/2 marathon, they work very well. Most of the athletes I coach run 5ks, 10ks, and 1/2 marathons so the chart is really helpful to me as a coach and it’s helpful to an athlete for goal setting. The charts can also be used for determining workout paces for threshold runs, intervals, and repetitions, as defined by Daniels.

I’m going to walk through how I would train an athlete to run a 3:50 marathon while training for an Ironman for an athlete I’m coaching. Her goal is aggressive but a reachable goal. The marathon is in January and her Ironman isn’t until late 2008 so it fits in really well with her training and it gives her a good goal for the winter. She’s made great progress in her running over the last few years and brought her 10k time down to 52:17. According to Daniels’ VDOT charts she needs to be able to run a 50:03 10k and a 24:10 5k to reach that 3:50 marathon goal, and that’s assuming the endurance is there for a full marathon, which of course is the focus of the training. Those charts let me know that her goal is realistic but there’s still work to be done.

I’ve got a good chart of her running results over several years and her 10 mile race time, done on the same course, takes big drops so I know we haven’t reached her peak running fitness. In 2006 she ran a 10 miler in 1:28, which was a 10 minute PR, and 1 year later she cut another 4 minutes off that time.

A 3:50 marathon goal is an 8:46 mile pace so she has to be prepared to do longer efforts at that pace so we know it is realistic for race day. I’m also having her do shorter tempo runs at a pace faster than that - for example a 5 mile tempo run at 8:20 pace. The faster workouts should improve her fitness and make her goal marathon pace seem easier. In total she’s doing 4 runs per week.

She’s still training on the bike and the swim but running is her focus until the marathon is over. I’ve cut back her swimming the most because that’s going to have the smallest impact on her Ironman. A good training week is 8-10 hours total and she’s swimming once or twice a week. She’s on the bike twice a week. My belief is that with cycling, during the offseason when time is limited and the weather is bad, frequency is less important then it would be for running and swimming. But because frequency drops, the quality of those workouts needs to be higher. With two workouts one should be a longer ride on the weekend and the other one is a shorter, more intense effort during the week. If the weekend ride is outside it’s in the 2-3 hour range with the main goal being endurance and maintaining those cycling muscles. If you bike I’m sure you’ve notice your muscles decrease in size and that’s not such a good feeling, at least for a guy, when you know you’ve got to get them back. If the weekend ride is on the trainer I like to do a 1.5 to 2 hour ride, sometimes longer, with a warmup, drills, and some kind of set to mix up the boredom. Here’s a sample set to include on the trainer during base season:

1:45 ride with warmup, drills, 2X1.5 minute fast (optional), 2 minute recoveries, 1X20 minutes in zone 3, 5 minutes easy, 1X10 minutes at 100+ cadence, 5 minutes easy, 5 minutes standing, 5 minutes easy riding, 15 minutes zone 3.

This workout accomplishes a couple things - it works on technique, base building, and endurance, while breaking the monotony. For an athlete with a CompuTrainer, which is a great tool, I like to include climbing. With a CompuTrainer you can set it to climb at a specific grade - it probably goes about 15%. An athlete will get more bang for their buck if they can simulate climbing with their limited time.

So that’s how I’ve Incorporated marathon training into her Ironman training using Daniels’ book, but his VDOT formula will work for any running specific goal and it’s a great book for helping you design some of your own running workouts.

That’s all for episode 55. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with episode 56 of Tri Talk. If you are new to Tri Talk, don’t forget to catch up by getting the complete Tri Talk collection on your mp3 player. Available episodes date all the way back to episode 18, with never duplicated, relevant triathlon training content. Visit tri-talk.com today. I’ll see you next time!

The audio for this podcast can be found here.
The father of modern periodization, training with power without a power meter, and radioactive fat. All that, today on Tri Talk.

Welcome to Tri Talk your podcast source for triathlon tips, training, news and more. To the new listeners in the last 2 weeks from Hong Kong and Israel, welcome to the show. In Israel, congratulations on your recent success in hosting the final ITU World Cup event of 2007. And a special hello to listeners in Hong Kong, including my brother John. I may be the 3-time corporate triathlon champion at my company, but my younger brother John can boast of his recent victory at the Hong Kong Yahoo.com employee games in the 100-meter dash. My goal at Tri Talk is to help you swim, bike, and run faster, to meet your personal triathlon goals. Whether you are an elite or amateur triathlete, we cover sprint distance to Ironman distance. I’m your host, David Warden, and this is Tri Talk episode 54.

As the third part in our series of periodization, I am delighted to able to bring you an interview with Dr. Tudor Bompa, a man who has influenced the training of virtually every triathlete who incorporates any concept of periodization into their training. We’ll get his thoughts on a wide variety of training topics, some that challenged my current perception of periodization. Also, we had a detailed conversation with coach Peter Cummings on how to train with power earlier on Tri Talk, but what if you still can’t afford that power meter? Is there any other alternative to measuring intensity, work, and performance improvement other than heart rate or pure power? There is, and you may already have all the equipment you need to set it up. We’ll look at the limitations and benefits from this alternate system. And, finally, I’ll spend just a minute telling you about the link between weight loss and radioactive fat. Yes, radioactive fat. It’s the kind of quality training information you just can’t get anywhere else.

You can send in your questions or comments to david@tri-talk.com, or post that question or comment at our exclusive Tri Talk community, www.tri-talk.com/forums. It’s like getting free coaching. Speaking of free coaching, I’ll share how the Tri Talk forums really became free coaching for one lucky athlete a little later in the show.

Do you need some last minute stocking stuffers for Christmas? Check out PowerTri.com for all kinds of great, last minute ideas. Grab some GU, a flask and a Bike Mount and you’re ready to ride. Or nab some NUUN Active Hydration tabs for optimal hydration wherever you are. Don’t forget the Yankz! and never worry about tying your laces again! You can get all these and more at PowerTri.com with Free Ground Shipping on orders over $49. Happy Holidays from your friends at PowerTri.com.

Let’s get onto the good stuff! While I would normally save interviews for the end of the show, this week’s guest deserves the coveted spot at the beginning of the podcast. It’s one thing to hear periodization concepts drummed into your head by an average coach, like myself. It’s quite another thing to hear those same concepts reinforced by the man who is regarded worldwide as the leading specialist in the area of theory of training, coaching, and fitness. Settle back, and enjoy this interview with Dr. Tudor Bompa, including his opinion on strength training, peaking for competition, and how endurance training has started to become more like fashion.

When it comes to international endurance coaching credibility and reputation, it’s hard to find someone more influential than Dr. Tudor Bompa. Every time you look at a training plan, and see things like Base period or Build period, Race or Competition periods, you are benefiting from the man who is commonly referred to as the father of modern periodization. Since documenting periodization theory in his native Romania over 4 decades ago, which led in part to Soviet domination in athletics for nearly as long, he has coached athletes to 11 medals, 4 of them gold, in Olympic Games and World Championships. He is also the only coach who has produced Olympic and World champions in two different sports. Not only is he educated and successful, he is also, as I found in just the first few minutes of conversation, instantly likeable. But I asked him if he felt that the title, “father of modern periodization,” was a title he was comfortable with.

(interview transcript not available. To my loyal blog visitors, I apologize for the recent frequent interviews that lack a transcript)
If you are a coach looking to continue your education, and differentiate yourself from other coaches, you can find out more about Dr. Bompa’s Periodization Planning Specialist certification and other coaching services for athletes at tudorbompainstitute.com.

I found Dr. Bompa’s comments on year-round strength training particularly vindicating, as this is often a cause of division between coaches and athletes. While I have seen multiple studies to suggest the importance of year-round strength training to all 3 triathlon sports, I have never seen a study showing that it was detrimental to the performance of any of the sports. Recall that Dr. Bompa’s comments on year-round strength training were not a result of me asking specifically about strength training. But, when I asked what was the biggest mistake coaches or athletes make, it was his first response. Also consider Dara Torres, who is the current fastest female swimmer in America. Her daily workout includes 90 minutes of swimming and 90 minutes of strength training, spending equal amount of time with strength training as she does swimming. I also didn’t get to go into detail, but Dr. Bompa’s technique for determining and predicting whether or not you are truly at a peak for competition is fascinating, but I’ll have to cover that another day.

Before we move onto the next topic, I am excited to let you know about Joe Friel’s new company, TrainingBible Coaching. If you are looking for a coach, and want the same kind of methodical, scientific approach to training that you get from Joe’s long list of publications, this is the coaching organization for you. No matter what your current level or goals, no matter where you live, Training Bible Coaching is equally dedicated to each athlete we work with. Your goal is our mission. You bring the passion, we apply the science.

But did you know that even if you don’t have a TrainingBible coach, you can still take advantage of the incredible expertise of Training Bible Coaching. They are excited to announce a new training camp to endurance athletes of all abilities. This camp will redefine what athletes will come to expect for value in their training camp experience.

This camp will be the first customizable camp for each athlete. Each athlete will be given several training options each day to create a customized camp for themselves. You can choose to focus on your weaknesses, and create your own custom camp, working with some of the best coaches in the industry.

In addition, there will be on-site bike support each day to clean and prep your bikes for every ride, and some meals are included. Coaches may be subject to change but scheduled currently are Joe Friel, Jim Vance, Adam Zucco and Eric Schwartz. Come spend a week in sunny Tuscon, Arizona this March. For more information on this training camp go to active.com and search for “Training Bible”.

Speaking of Training Bible coaching, TrainingBible’s head coach, Adam Zucco, was out responding to questions on the Tri Talk forums, when he came across an athlete looking for help in planning for Ironman Brazil. After answer her questions, he contacted me and said, “you know what, let’s get her taken care of and give her a month of free coaching from TrainingBible coaching”. So, congratulations to Lisa Sandusky from Tampa, Florida for receiving a month of free coaching from TrainingBible.com. See, good things happen when you check out at www.tri-talk.com/forums.

By the way, in the spirit of maintaining the great relationship and trust I have with the Tri Talk community, I should disclose that I am now closely associated with TrainingBible coaching. While I honestly believe that it is the best coaching organization out there for triahtletes, because it is based on Joe’s knowledge and work, it is important for me to let you know of my new relationship with this group. However, I am still committed to making sure that you can always distinguish between when I am advertising for something, and when I am giving you an objective review.

Moving on. How many of us had our desire to participate in triathlon stem from a desire to lose weight? It’s a big motivation, and body composition is one of the key elements in getting to race form. But many of us struggle with the ways we can lose weight. Now, I am always very cautious about talking about weight loss with triathletes, because some of you are already so lean, that you don’t need to do anything else in regards to body composition. But, if you are looking to shed just a couple more pounds in a healthy way, this study might be for you.

Researchers from the University of Missouri-Columbia published in this month’s journal Diabetes a fascinating study on weight loss. More specifically, how standing up or sitting down during the day influences the body’s ability to burn fat. The scientists injected some fat into lab animals, but this fat included a radioactive tracer so that the fat could be tracked. Where did the fat go?

The radioactive tracer revealed that when the animals were sitting down, the fat did not remain in the blood vessels that pass through the muscles, where it could be burned. Instead, it was captured by the adipose [ad-uh-pohs] tissue, a type of connective tissue where globules of fat are stored.

The researchers also took a close look at a fat-splitting enzyme, called lipase, that is critical to the body’s ability to break down fat.

After the animals remained seated for several hours, that enzyme virtually shut off. Based on these results, they also took a look at the same enzyme in humans when they were sitting down or standing up, and found the same results. That fat-splitting enzyme shut down when the humans were sitting rather than standing.

The researchers went onto suggest that what you do between exercising could be as important as the exercise itself, in regards to weight loss. So, if you are looking to lose a few extra pounds after the upcoming holiday season, consider standing up more during the day.

Now, for high volume and intense training, in terms of recovery, standing up more is probably not a good idea. If you are training 12 hours a week already, you need the recovery, and certainly don’t need to be standing up more in-between workouts.

Let’s wrap things up! I received good feedback on episode 52 where we introduced training with power for the first time on Tri Talk. The comments I received on via e-mail and on the forums were virtually unanimous in the fact that the athlete thought it was the right way to train. So what was keeping them from implementing power into their training regimen? I thought the primary reason that an athlete would not have been using power would have been the complexity or intimidation of using the products, which was what I was trying mitigate by talking about it in episode 52. In fact, the main feedback that athletes gave for not using power yet was cost. Even used power meters will still cost several hundred dollars.

So, is there an alternative, or an inexpensive way to train with power? To answer that, let’s define again why power is so important. Training with power allows you to objectively measure workload or intensity. Unlike heart rate or perceived effort, power data is not influenced by external and environmental factors. 250 watts is 250 watts regardless of weather your heart rate is off by 5 beats that day. An athlete or a coach is more likely to get accurate workload data from an athlete using power data rather than heart rate data. From that data they can assign intensities and race-day strategies.

So, what if we could find a way to measure the amount of work that an athlete is doing, that does not user power and an output in watts, but something that is consistent and is not as jumpy as heart rate or perceived effort?

Before I continue, let me make it clear that I am not advocating a replacement for power training. Even the term “alternative” to power training is pushing it. But, I want to talk to triathletes about not only how to be as physiologically efficiently as possible, but as economical as possible as well. I’m sure that some of you power purists are already foaming at the mouth, but hear me out.

The reason we don’t use speed as an indicator for work is because it is too easily influenced by wind, hills, terrain, etc. Our effort may be the same, but our speed will be different almost every minute based on these factors.

However, when we ride on a trainer, these factors are neutralized. There are no hills, wind or terrain variations. Other than environmental conditions like room temperature or humidity (which can be easily controlled), the conditions are almost identical for each ride. Therefore, can you use your base, cheap cyclometer as an alternative power meter? As long as the reading is consistent, does it matter is your computer is giving you your workload in watts or miles per hour? Even if the speed reading isn’t accurate, for use as a monitor for work performed, it doesn’t need to be accurate, just consistent. Power-proponents will be the first to tell you that even with regular power meters, you’ll get different readings from different units while on the same ride. What matters is the individual unit’s consistency.

To support this, consider two facts. First, many bike ergometers at a gym have spin machines or regular bike trainers that give you watts already. I won’t commit to how accurate that watt number is, but note that on those same bikes you can often see your watts and speed at the same time. You’ll notice that while there is not a linear relationship between the two, that they stay fairly consistent. After riding that bike a few times, if you covered the watts display, and just looked at the speed display on that bike, you would be able to know your wattage. On that bike, in that room, going 22 miles per hour would always result in the same wattage. So why do you need to know the wattage if you have the speed on that bike?

Also, consider that Kurt Kinetic, who makes great trainers, recognized this same fact. AS a result, they have a unit that will convert your speed on a trainer to power. They have obtained the power curve data for dozens of different trainers, and they know that at x speed on your specific trainer, your wattage must be y. Because there are no other external factors influencing your speed on a trainer, they can convert your speed to wattage.

My though is, if we can establish that speed is an acceptable indicator of work, based on these two previous examples, why do we even need to convert that speed to watts? I can just begin to graph my results in units of speed rather than in units of watts. Power-purists would argue that is like using weight instead of mass for scientific calculations. That might have disastrous consequences when calculating fuel requirements to get to the moon, but here on earth, in this particular gravity well, weight vs. mass is an acceptable measurement to determine an object’s properties, and I would argue the same applies to watts vs. speed when on an indoor trainer.

I would imagine that in order to maintain consistency, the PSI of the wheels would have to be very regular from ride-to-ride. And, for fluid or mag trainers, the contact tension between the roller and the tire would also have to be consistent, as that friction could effect the speed.

The disadvantages of using this are obvious. It would be useless when applying to racing. It can’t be used on a real outdoor ride. You can no longer compare your output to others to predict or benchmark performance. There is no software written to analyze this, type of data as opposed to the vast and powerful analytical tools available to athletes today to analyze real power. Even the Kurt Kinetic trainer unit that converts power to speed does not have any download abilities. Essentially, in the end you get what you pay for, a real power unit is by far superior, but this certainly seems to have merit as a “poor-man’s” power meter.

Consider the applications to bike fit as well with this system. Ride for 10 minutes and get an average heart rate and speed. Push your saddle an inch forward and ride for 10 more at the same HR, and what if your speed is now 0.2 miles per hour faster for the same average heart rate? You’ve just put yourself in a more powerful position for the same effort. Repeat this for cleat position, handlebar drop, stem length, seat height, and you can dial into your most powerful position using the cheap cyclometer that you already have.

There is actually so much more I wanted to talk about on this issue, but there just isn’t time. Look for more of my comments or other athlete’s thoughts on this subject out on our Tri Talk Forums.

That’s all for this episode! I’m out for the month of December, but I’m leaving you in good hands while I’m gone. Episodes 55 and 56 will be released on their normal schedule, but hosted by Eric Schwartz, a phenomenal triathlete and coach, and proprietor of www.duathlon.com. My only request is that he does not do a better job than me. As a duathlon specialist, I expect that Eric will only be 2/3 the host I am. Just kidding. Tri Talk is back in 2 weeks, but I’ll talk to you again in January.