The perfect warm up

Earlier this spring myself and some of our athletes did the Haystack time trail in Boulder, CO. our warm was perfect. And it got me thinking. What is the perfect warm up?

After an early morning of helping out with the race I got in 30 minutes or so over very easy riding. At which point of began doing 1 minute and 90 seconds  int. at a building intensity up to my goal race wattage. These did not feel good.  Because I felt less than ideal I did not force the issue. I stayed calm and kept my watts low and rest time between these efforts long. About  10  minutes before my start time it was time for my body to wake up! I did my last warm up set which is 1 minute in zone 3 (tempo) 30 seconds in Z5 (vo2 watts) repeated for 5 minutes or longer.  I really like this easy over under interval as it really ramps up all the bodies’ processes without building up to much lactate.  After the first  minute or so the engines light up! I felt great, had a few minutes to relax before the start and had a great race.

So, there you have it the perfect warm up… right? WORNG!

Ever race is different. Are you warming for a 100 mile road racer or a 5 minute time trial?  A triathlon that will take 2:30? On top of this every race day will be different. Cold, hot, windy, you might wake up feeling great and ready to go right away or you might be tired and have some tight muscles.

The key to finding the best warm up is listening to your body and being aware of your environment.
This will give you the information you need to alter your warm up to best suit you and your task at hand.

    An athlete of mine was getting ready for a uphill TT one day that takes less that 20 minutes. A very violent effort! He was tired after working all night and had tight legs from spending lots of time in a car. We decided for a 90 minute warm up. VERY easy with some fluids and his favorite energy drink  45 minutes prior to the start. 15 minutes before the start he did 4-5, 1 minute efforts at his goal race wattage with the last 30 sec. of the last interval at max.
He felt great, set a PR 20 minute power output and place top 10 in the Pro 1-2 field.  I once warmed up on my trainer before a 145 mile road race. Why? It was 50 degrees, raining and the day before I had very bad, tight legs.  I simply HAD to warm up. I had a great race that day making the final selection and placing in the top 30 of a race that saw over half the 140 person field eliminated. 
   Waiting in the cold water at a triathlon start is the worst warm up one can have. I have developed a very efficient way of treading water that mimics a free style stroke (somewhat) keeps the muscles warm and readies them for a mass start swim.  

Every day will be different, every race different.  Be as aware of yourself and your environment as possible.
a few key points for warm ups:

·         Come up with a warm up out line that you can alter depending on race length, and how you feel
·         The shorter your race, the longer and more intense your warm must be.
·         Always build your effort slowly! Take your time warming up. This is hard being wound up and ready to race! Relax, control your thoughts and your body. You’ll race better under control.
·         Make a time sch. for yourself! Make sure you have plenty of time! 
·         Always build up to your race effort and pace/ watts, etc. and do a few short efforts above (harder) this pace.  When you are ready! Not before.
·         Long rests. Give yourself long rest intervals between your warm up efforts.  Remember you are just getting the muscles ready to go. You are NOT training, yet.
·         Warm up your mind. This is very different for folks. I like to be around people, talk a lot joke around. Some might want their head phones and to be alone. Whatever it is give yourself this opportunity.

 Making a time table for your race morning is probably the most important and the one that athletes are the most likely to not do.  It is very easy to get behind.  I have done this many times. Too much time leads to being lazy and things get missed.
     At the Tour of the Gila one year getting ready for the stage 3 TT I slept in and had a nice, slow breakfast.  Start time was at 2:34pm. Plenty of time.  My body was enjoying the recovery time.  The time passed and I got ready. Drove to the start area get ready to warm up. Opps for get the skin suit. Turn around killing 10 more minutes. Warmed up on the road for a bit,  ohh gotta right sign in.  Then I had to get a disc wheel to borrow, change the cassette, find a tool to borrow, back to the warm up, then to the trainer,  the next thing I knew it was time and I was in the start gate. Notice anything I forgot? TO EAT LUNCH!!!   The least busy day of the 5 day stage race and I was behind on calories. This is the day to fuel up!  Not only put in a solid TT performance but gas up for stages 4 and 5. I bonked 10’ into the TT (yes I had never heard of that either) and all hopes of retaining a top ten over all were gone.   A horrible amateur error simply because I did not plan out my morning.

Warming up has a lot more to do with how hard you go, for how long blah blah blah.  You must PLAN. Know what works for you. Some people always warm up on the trainer, some like the open road better.  Know your environment.  Where is the start?  Warming up on your bike at a big triathlon will NOT happen. it is in transition the day before and you will Not get it out so you need an alternate warm up.  will some stretching and wind mills do the trick or do you need 90 minutes of active warm up time?   You might need to warm up more for an early morning race as opposed to an afternoon start?  At the local triathlons a friend and I ride to the race venue. Yet we also meet 30 minutes prior to leaving and do  20 minutes  around the block to warm up even more.   

Know thy self, know your environment.  adapt to the situation and relax. 

Winning Is Hard

No shit! Right!!
  But I am not talking about winning is the literal sense. Winning to achieve your goals. Any goals. Particularly the big ones. "Aim High" is the slogan of the US air force. How many Air force pilots do you know?  likely none. you know why?  it takes the best. the "best of the best".  higher the goal the harder it will be to achieve. there are guys who place on teh podium at IM Hawaii every year. will i ever break teh top ten. No Way.
   Here's the deal.  We get complacent with ourselves and others with the type of results we expect. But when your really aiming high, you get competitive. When your competitive it does not matter if you had a great day, if the course suited your strengths, if you set a new 5 minute power record or a new run pr. You have to beat the other guy. bottom line.
   My friend Steve Johnson just did the Eagleman 70.3. He was trying to qualify for the Hawaii Ironman world championships in October.  for his 5th time or something.  He won his AG like he has at so many other races so many times. He has what I call the Killer Blow in long distance triathlon. a very VERY strong bike and an even strong, faster run. You simply can't win. He executed his normal anonymous swim (very solid but anonymous) thundered his way to 2nd in his AG by T2 ran down the leader by mile 8 and strided in, walking the last 15-20 feet to the line. well done ho humm. right?
   His story is very different.
Its filled with self doubt during the swim, mind blowing fast running (6:15 pace for 13.1 miles. I get nauseous just typing that) a dropped food bottle in the beginning of the bike. short on calories and, I quote, "I was barley able to keep my self up right in the last 3 miles of the run"
Sounds pretty epic. 
 Yet, its like this every time. The end result may be the same but the path we take, the ingredients that go into getting these finial out comes are NEVER easy and vary greatly.
A friend of mine who I lived with for some time loves to tell stories about how I would always make chocolate chip cookies.
 "No matter what normal cookie ingredients we did NOT have Eric would still figure it out. We still had cookies and they were still good. One time there was coffee grounds in them! they were amazing!" 

Many times we forget how hard it was to get to our top steep. We remember feeling great "that" day. crushing those threshold intervals, dropping fast Freddy on the group ride.  Or that road race that just seemed... easy.  Its the hard days that make you better. A better person, a better athlete. And lets be fair, you're not going to be great every day, give your self a break...

stay smart, stay safe, stay tough

Ironman St. George Race Report

  

  IM St. George deepest place of your soul

    

       Half way through BUDS training (the infamous navy SEAL training) while the students of class 226 where on an easy day, two instructors trash there room. I mean destroy it! The students at lunch, thinking they would come back, have room inspection and the rest of the day off. “the whole class will pay for this” one instructor said. The camera man asked why do this? This has nothing to do with training for war, being a SEAL, a sniper, diver, whatever. “This has everything to do with it!. These guys are thinking there day is done, it’s not even close. This is the toughest mental training there is. This is about how many setbacks can you take? How many times can you push to the top of the mountain only to realize you’re not even half way there? How many adversities can you overcome and not stop? Never stop, never EVER give up. That’s what this is about.”


This was passing through my mind as I was being punched on the face for the 80th time while water was being forced into my mouth every time I tried to breath. No I wasn’t in any military training or being tortured in some Middle Eastern prison, I was “racing” Ironman St. George.


Not long after the start a 40 mph wind came up out of nowhere and was creating 4 foot waves, White capping over our heads. Spray everywhere. It looked like I was swimming in the baring sea. I wasn’t even swimming any more. Diving under the waves, doing under water breast stroke. I thought there is no way I’ll make it, or it will take 1:30 at best for me to finish the swim. Chris comes in. “HEY! Focus. Somehow you are swimming straight, Find a buoy, swim to it repeat until I tell you to F’n stop” so away I went. I have swum in the ocean before, in pretty rough surf but not for 45’ nonstop and I wasn’t trying to actually get somewhere. I came out in 1:02. This is a bit insane to me. There is no way I swam that fast. I guess its possible. Swimming in the fastest wet suit know to mankind in my Rocket Science carbon I could be a 52 minute guy. So ad 10’?? still fuzzy to me. Anyway, through T1 dealing with the normally overly aggressive wet suit stripers. I love the volunteers but do we really need this station at all? I asked a helper in the tent how many had been through there “ahh 2 dozen” not bad I thought. Off on the bike. I was 9’ down on the lead. That’s pretty far. Chris, “ if you’re 9 down to the lead think about how far up you are on dudes that would normally be only a couple min. back, huh!!!” good point. I got on the bike and immediately gagged and through up from swallowing ohh… 3 gallons of water during the swim? They pulled almost 400 people from the swim that morning. DNF's

Right hand turn onto the roadd out of the Sand Hollow reservoir area. This road is smooth, slightly down hill and about 4 miles long. A perfect “easy” start to the bike. Well with a 40 MPH head wind I was in the aero’s pushing 260 watts, going ohh 13 MPH. maybe less.

Finial got into the tail wind which lasted a for a bit but after going over the third big hill the wind direction changed and we were back into a head wind. The easiest 20 miles now behind me and I had been riding for 1 hour. This bike was gona take me 6 hours! No way, the canyon climb will be protected and not so bad… Nope. Blasting head wind. “how many setbacks can you take and keep going” this was obviously the key to this race on this day. Chris, “OK Eric lets go find the front f the race.” I plugged my way forward trying to stay aero as much as possible. As I approached the top of the first big climb I was not making an impression on the front of the pack. Yet at the same time I never passed tons of people and the guys around me looked solid. I was farther up in the swim. Farther than ever before. Ok so that’s good but still I should be getting close if not all ready in the lead. Then I got passes. By someone in my Age group. WTF! “he’s gona blow.” This happened again at the start on the sec. climb. I was passed and simply road away from. Wow. “we thought this might happen Ek remember” harder bike course, brings out the good riders, they have over trained the bike and are over riding the bike. Stick to the plan. At mile 52 or so I checked my time again. 3 hour’s yep this was going to take 6 hours. OK adjustment. Can’t do 70% of threshold, gotta aim for 68% and I NEED that special needs back up bottle of infinit. I’ll run out of calories if I don’t get it. The worst part was I was having a real hard time finding a good rhythm. This pissed me off. I’m a good rider, a dynamic rider; wind, bumpy roads and changing grades shouldn’t throw me off. Yet I found myself in the wrong gear and pedaling a lower cadence than I wanted to all the time. 1 minute at a time, one steep hill, one gust of wind, one shift at a time. For 5:51 of riding…

I got a bit of a second wind the second time up the big hill, I pushed steady and focused on recovering as best possible on the decent. We had a tail wind there, thank god! If I did anything well it was T2. I crushed it!! Ok take a minute to laugh. 1:40 ish. Lindsay was right there on my way out. I was 7th in my age group but only 2 minutes down. “fu**, its over i thought, no way can I run them down even being as close as they were.” And I was feeling rough. This could get ugly, like real ugly.

“YO! Ek relax, find a rhythm we got a nice down hill to start here, 1 mile at a time… (all 26 of them) chris said under his breath. This is where being able to lie to your self is the difference between success and failure. “ohh yeah, I feel fine no problem, marathon time.” I said. By mile 2-3 I was feeling better I quick piss and I had nice little pace going at 7:45/ mile or so. However I was also getting passed. “it just aint gona happen this year”, I thought.  It’s ok Hawaii is expensive and for whatever reason my best isn’t good enough today.

The next 18 miles were very internal. Running all on PE. I Barley looked at my watch. Infinit, water, repeat. “I’m not stopping, no fuc*** way.” I have to many people watching, to many following on line, to many clients that look to me for motivation, a bench mark, whatever. I was slowing down but I felt solid, more solid than at Lake Placid last year if a bit slower. But how fast should I be able to run with a swim like that and 6 hours on the bike? All my knowledge, all the hours looking at power files and run files, the 100’s of athletes I have worked with through ironman races… all of it meant shit now.

I was blind, just me, my Perceived Exertion, Grandpa and Chris. I could feel the hand at my back every aid station just giving a little push when my sub conscious would think hey just run through this aid station it’s ok. I could hear Chris fighting in there, it was freaking bar brawl. The person I want to be and the person as was going blow for blow. You know the scene near the end of Fight Club where Edward Norton knows Tyler isn’t real but he can’t get rid of him? It was kinda like that but worse, I need Chris as much as I hate him. Just before I started the last 8 mile lap on an out and back I saw a guy walking. I recognized him. He had passed me earlier in the run. And that guy too. I saw like 5 guys that were either walking or look like they were about to vomit all over place. Still too far back, to many to pass. 6 miles to go. “come on EK your in 5th!” no way he’s wrong. Whoever that was. 5 miles to go and I passed a guy in my AG that had passed me 2 miles into the run. “nice work dude, you’re in 4th keep it up you got your kona spot.” “What? Are you sure?” “yep” at this point I was so F’n gone It didn’t register, I think Chris had been taken down, or he was simply used up. I didn’t think this guy was lying, more likely just wrong. Well I have nothing else in the suitcase of courage so I’ll take it!

Up the steep hill to the last out and back, I was on the edge. My stomach was turning and I was out of infinit. My red bull was a can of 110 degree foam, shit I’m not gona make it. “Hey! Ek”, Chris was back, “don’t drink, you need more salt with it and we have none, just stay cool. You’re hydrated enough, we’ll make it… (I think?)” OK, whatever you say. Ice, water, hoses, sprinklers, I hit every cooling opportunity I could. One more pass with 2 miles to go. Wholly crap this cannot be happening?!!  Maybe the last guy was on his 2nd loop? I’m not sure. I came down the finishing shoot, said a little thank you to gramps and almost fell over. I ended up in 6th place.
   Only 50 Kona spots this year in St George.
   The 35-39 AG got 5.
   A few of the older AG’s had no finishers, we got one more spot. 6 slots.
   I tock mine as everyone else did. Not one roll down spot.

This was a very tough race I am sad to see it go. St. George is a fantastic area. The Training Camp we did in March proved to be key for everyone that did the race. One of our campers Josh Vaughn earned his first trip to Kona in the men’s 30-34 AG. We will be doing the camp again next year as well.  Details to come!  I am very happy to have qualified again. I was disappointed to not have made the podioum (top 5) like last year, but looking at the over all performance I did and the competition I feel I was simply beat by beter guys.  2 of the top 5 in my AG are TOP amateurs. A 9:04 at kona last yr. and one guy ranked top 10 in the USAT ranking, just an extremely strong field here if not a large one.

Bike File
Run File

Ironam St. George race report

Chris is currently writing the race report from this past weekend. So far it's looking pretty... well, you know.

140.7 St. George Training Camp recap

Our camp in St. George started with some concern. There was a strong storm was moving into the southwest and was threatening the one weekend we would be there with snow, rain and hi winds. This pic is the closest we got to any precipitation
Things turned out quite well. I adjusted the itinerary a bit to accommodate the weather.

In the end we rode every day, got in one swim at the very nice St. George aquatics center ran over 3hr’s in the 4 days of training. We rode the entire St George Ironman bike course. Ran the entire run course and rode the critical loop on the bike course 3 times. Not bad for a long weekend.

The goal with this camp as is many training camps was 2 fold.
Volume and course recon/ learning.
The volume starts with consistence. Train every day at camp and you’ll have plenty of volume. The way we went about this was “letting the workload come to us”. We did not set out on day 1 crushing it for 5+ hours. We did an easy ride, reconing the course. Day 2 was less volume still, with a short 1 hr. ride and our long run on the race course. We moved the long run too day 2 to accommodate for colder weather and the rain. Which never really came. So at the start of day 3 everyone was feeling good and highly motivated. A morning swim, 3+ hr ride with some tempo on the big rolling hills and home for a 30’ run on the trails behind out condo. “Alright EK now I’m starting to feeling it.” we all were. However, still in good spirits and not to beat up we set out on day 4 with 100 miles on tap along with a max effort 30’ brick run. Ride was at IM race pace, fuel as you will in race.
This last day was crushing, everyone performed well. “if you had told me I was going to do this much workload at this camp, I would not thought it possible.” “ but here we are” I said…

With the fatigue built up this day put a true stamp of approval on our fueling plan. Every one of the days gave us time on the race course, often at race pace. it gave us all info on how each of us would tackle race day. what sections would be tough? What parts would be not so hard. Where should we fuel, etc. it was an enlightening time for everyone.

The best moments for me as a coach and leader of this trip was on day 2 a client attending the camp who was not planning on racing st. George said in the car on the way home after the long run , “So Eric, we need to adjust my training plan. I’m doing this race.” And again on the morning of the last day another of our campers came up to me and said “I know why you call this the 140.7 training camp. we are going beyond the finish line” and we did. In terms of training, knowledge, experience, and just having a plain old fun time.
Details for next year’s camp will be up May 10th. So far we have a verbal commitment for a 100% return form this year’s campers. We are going to need a bigger house.

Of course I must thank Infinit Nutrition for keeping us fueled. I think we drank almost 10 gallons of mix. There are some new Infinit users for sure now. And Mix 1. These little bottles go a long way. thanks a bunch guys!!