OC Register Article 6/8/09

Triathlete training center opens in Lake Forest

RESISTANCE TRAINING: THE WOE OF ENDURANCE ATHLETES

Triathletes and other endurance sports athletes are notorious for not incorporating some form of resistance training into their training programs.  Some think training with weights and other forms of resistance will make them bulky, clunky, and slow.  Others may think they do not have the time to resistance train on top of their swim, bike, and run schedules.  Some people are scared of weights and some people just plain don’t want to.

This is unfortunate because having an appropriate resistance training program can drastically enhance performance, decrease fatigue, decrease injury, and speed up recovery time.

Lengthy endurance training sessions take a toll on the body, especially long runs.  Performing the same pounding movement in a straight line, day-in and day-out, will weaken muscles not in use during the movement and tighten the muscles and tendons that are being used.

The benefits of resistance training FAR outweigh any excuse not to.

 

 But won’t this type of training make me big and clunky?

No.

The main goal for body builders when they train is muscle hypertrophy (size), not strength and power.  Strength may be a byproduct of the size, but that is not the main goal.  They achieve size by lifting a certain way, eating enough food to sustain their bulk, and little to no cardio.  It takes a lot of work to hold onto size like that, so if you are not intentionally trying to gain bulk, you probably won’t unless you are a genetic muscle freak.

Triathletes should train for strength and power.  Again, this will enable an individual to sustain effort for longer periods of time delaying fatigue, increase “kick” during the race, decrease risk of injury, and increase performance overall.  Proper strength training will get you the power, speed, and strength you need without a substantial gain in body mass.

 

I just don’t have the time to resistance train...

Resistance training can be just as beneficial for race performance as actual swim, bike, and run training.

In terms of a car, if you upgrade the engine without upgrading other parts within the car, it is only a matter of time before something breaks down.  The same goes for your body. Resistance training is like strengthening all moving parts within a vehicle…then putting a supercharger on the engine.  You will see results beyond just driving (running) around for hours.  Plus if something breaks down, it will take up more time just to get back to where you were before.

A triathlete would not quit running because they didn’t have enough time.  When you put resistance training on equal grounds with the other three events, it will be easier to prioritize and schedule your workouts.

Marathon resistance training sessions will not do you any good. 20 – 30 minutes two to three times per week will make a HUGE difference.

 

I’m too weak to resistance train…

Exactly.  All the more reason to do it.

Any resistance training program should be scaled to the capabilities of the individual.  If you can’t do a squat now, there are other things you can do to build up to it.  Fear should never be a factor in stopping you from resistance training.

 

 I don’t even know where to begin…

Not a problem.  There are many books and resources on the Internet out there that can help you, but you should always beware of false information from unverified sources.  Even better, you can get a personal trainer that can help you create a program based on your own abilities and goals and have someone to hold you accountable and teach you proper technique. 

You should always consult a professional before starting a resistance training routine.  Done with improper form, this type of training can do more harm than good.  You wouldn’t run with your body bent over and contorted into a weird position, so don’t resistance train in an improper position either.  

A USAT certified Triathica coach can help you get on the right track with resistance training. Schedule a personal training session here.

TRIATHICA SOFT OPENING 5/2/09

Thank you to all who helped make Triathica’s soft opening a success this past Saturday, May 2^nd. After many months of planning and hard work, we were excited to open our brand new triathlon training center to the public.
We invited everyone on our email list to come in and use our equipment to workout, or just take a peek. Towards the end of the day we also filmed a spin class video on our CycleOps 300PTs coached by our very own Ron Saetermoe, president of Triathica. Thanks to everyone who attended the class and agreed to be in the video, which we will use to create a workout DVD to be available onwww.triathica.com

The great thing about the CycleOps 300PT cycles is that we were able to plug in a specialized USB drive and record the workout data for each rider. The workouts were then uploaded into the computer where they can be analyzed and compared to successive workouts to see progress being made by each rider. You cannot do this on any other indoor cycle in the world.

There were a lot of races and events going on that weekend so we appreciate everyone who came by and we were thrilled at the positive response we received.

Those that missed the soft opening, don’t worry. During the month of May there will be plenty of opportunities to come see and use the facility before our grand opening on May 31st. We are planning a huge celebration so mark the date on your calendars. You won’t want to miss this. We will keep everyone posted with the details.

JARRETT’S 2009 NEWPORT BEACH TRIATHLON RACE REPORT

My pre-race preparation for the Newport Beach Triathlon on Sunday April 19th, 2009 started the day before the race. This was only my second triathlon ever, so at this point I was a little nervous.

On Saturday after I picked up my race packet, I decided to go down and check out the bike course in Newport Back Bay where I would be racing. Once I got there I pulled out my trusty light blue/hot pink, 1980s looking Trek 1100 road bike. It doesn’t look like much, but it gets the job done.

A few days prior I had upgraded from running shoes on flat pedals to actual cycling shoes with clip in pedals and cleats. I messed around with them for a few minutes in my neighborhood and WOW what a difference. I couldn’t wait to try them out on a longer ride, and what better time to practice with them than the day before a race right?

The bike course was FAST and AWESOME! There was only 1 steep hill on the whole course, which is something a 6’1” 185 pound dude likes to see. I wasn’t using much effort and I felt like I was flying. My first triathlon race ever was the Orange County International Triathlon in which I wore my running shoes on the bike. Needless to say my quads were fried after the bike portion, but on the bright side I did have the fastest T2 time.

My fast practice ride through the Newport bike course was abruptly paused when I happened upon a gathering of people on the side of the road standing around 2 women lying on the ground scratched up and grimacing in pain. Apparently a cyclist was coming down the hill and collided into somebody running along the path. Somebody was already on the phone with 911 and nobody seemed seriously injured, so I decided to continue with my ride, hoping this wasn’t a foreshadowing of events to come the next day.

I was almost done with the ride when the unthinkable happened. I was passing by an older couple and for some reason I decided to get out of aero position, just a gut feeling I guess, or maybe God trying to save my skin. Right when I was about to pass them, the lady decided to make a sharp left turn and investigate something on the opposite side of the path that interested her. She did not look both ways. I vice gripped my brakes and the only thing I could think to say was woah woah woah. My woahs must have got her attention because she stopped at the last second and I was able to narrowly avoid her a foot or two at best.

I’m a pretty nice guy so I didn’t bother turning around and yelling anything. Her husband was already doing enough yelling at her anyways. It was like he read my mind.

After my ride, I proceeded down to Corona Del Mar to make sure my open water swim capabilities were still lurking somewhere within. I hadn’t swum in open water since my first triathlon 7 months prior. I swam for about 20 minutes at a moderate pace. The water was freezing, but I felt comfortable with my stroke. I felt less comfortable walking down the crowded beach in a full body wetsuit with a bright yellow swim cap and goggles. Apparently this isn’t the “normal” thing to wear to the beach these days and I got quite a few looks. Oh well, now it was time to go rest for my race the next day.

I have a hard enough time falling asleep at night as it is, trying to sleep the night before a race is a battle I will probably never win.

I planned to be in bed before 9am the night before the race. Seems easy, but difficult for a night owl. To follow through with my plan, I had to decline an invitation to a friend’s barbeque so I could go through my pre-race checklist and make sure I had everything in order.

While I was going through my checklist I decided to pull my bike back out of the truck that I left there from the previous ride. Good thing I did because the front tire was completely FLAT. I had just put a brand new tube in that morning and it held up fine during my ride, so I still have no idea what happened. What I do know is that I am probably the worst tire patcher on the planet. After a few attempts I gave up trying to repair it and luckily found a spare tube lying around the garage, pumped it up, and everything was golden. I did get in bed early, but falling asleep was a different story.

I woke up the next morning with only about 4 or 5 hours of sleep, but felt surprisingly refreshed. For breakfast I had a protein shake with oatmeal, a banana, a little milk, and a tablespoon of peanut butter all chucked in the blender. It was only a Sprint triathlon so I didn’t bother packing any race nutrition. At this point I was actually less nervous than the night before.

I got to the race around 5:45am only to find a line of cars about a half-mile long, scrambling to pay $10 to park in the lot next to the race. I decided to park up the hill a ways and just walk/jog to the transition area for a good warm-up.

Saw a few people I knew while setting up my transition area. I felt relaxed at this point and just wanted the race to start.

After waiting at the waters edge for what seemed like an hour, the gun finally went off. I’m still new to swimming so I decided to go to the far right and stay out of the congestion. I may have to rethink this strategy since I caught up to the main pack quickly and got a few face fulls of feet and many mouth fulls of polluted sea water. About halfway through the swim I could have sworn I swam over a body floating below the water’s surface. It turned out to be some kind of drainage tube in the bay that caused the race officials to move around the buoys after the first wave had gone and make the course a bit shorter from what I hear, LAME. I must have not been the only one to hit it.

Heading around the 3rd buoy back towards the start, I probably had the largest and brightest object to site with known to mankind, the Sun. When I looked up to site and went blind for the next 15 seconds, I knew I was headed in the right direction.

Besides running into rogue pipes and slow swimmer blockades, I had a decent swim. I didn’t realize I was even tired or winded until I got out of the water. The everlasting run to the transition area didn’t help matters. It literally felt like a half mile.

I threw on my fancy new cycling cleats and headed out on the bike portion. What was probably my least favorite event in my first race turned out to be my favorite in this race. I felt great on the first loop of the two-loop course and passed a handful of people. Only about 5-10 people passed me the whole bike portion. By now I’ve grown accustomed to the buzzing whoosh sound of fast approaching disk wheels. Man I need a better bike.

Besides climbing the one steep hill on the course twice, the only time I felt really tired on the bike was on the way back from the final loop. There was a shirtless dude in front of me that I had been swapping position with the whole ride. I set my ego aside and decided to take it easy to save my legs for the run. Good decision.

After getting my foot caught in my shoe and narrowly avoiding a tumble at the dismount line, I ran into the transition area for a fast T2. Thank you Zoot Ultras.

Now its time to run. My legs felt like tree trunks….. Redwood trees…..Two General Shermans strapped to my hips.

I had done quite a few transition workouts, but I don’t remember the pain being this bad. I also thought my toes would need to be amputated from frostbite I had developed on the bike. I’m not sure which pain was worse. Not to be outdone in the pain department, my gut decided to develop a side stitch that would just not go away no matter what I did. I told myself I wasn’t going to walk, but I had to slow down 2 or 3 times from the side pain. The pain in my side didn’t leave until the very steep hill right before the turning point. Yes, running up the hill made my side pain go away, go figure.

After that large hill I was cruising. I guess running on flat ground after a very steep hill tricked my mind into thinking it was cake. I pushed pretty hard for the last mile and a half, not wanting to leave anything on the table. In my first triathlon I felt like I was setting the world record for the 100 meters in my sprint to the finish line. I wanted to make sure I was not going to have that much energy left in this race. I didn’t.

I ended up placing 7th in my age group (20-24) and was very pleased with my results considering the limited training time I put into this race (less than a month) and my ghetto equipment. I had a lot more fun at this race than my first one and I think Sprint triathlons are my new favorite distance.

Overall time: 1:23:19
Overall place: 107/661
Swim time: 13.13
T-1 time: 1:51
Bike time: 43:57
T-2 time: 1:04
Run time: 23.11
Age Group Placing (20-24): 7th

DEALING WITH HEAT

Race season is heating up and so is the great outdoors. Anyone who has raced and trained in heat is aware that how well one can take it. 

Here are some tips to deal with heat.

Hydrate Early and Often

Drink 16 ounces of sports drink an hour before you head out.  Consume about six to 10 ounces of sports drink about every 20 minutes while training or racing.  Sports drinks are better than water because they contain glucose and sodium (sugar and salt), which increase your water-absorption rate, replace the electrolytes you lose in sweat, and taste good, encouraging you to drink. It is very difficult to advise on the exact ratios of electrolytes, glucose, sodium, and protein to mix into your water bottles because it is so individual. Our best advice is to train using different types and ratios to see what works best for you the triathlete.

Determine Your Losses

Weigh yourself pre- and post-workout in each sport and be as specific as you can to the actual racing conditions to determine the exact amount of fluid you lose. There is a big difference between 80 degrees and 20 percent humidity and 80 degrees and 70 percent humidity. You need to know exactly how much fluid you are losing in each sport. Don’t guess!

If, for example, you lose two pounds during a 90 minute bike, it means you sweat about 32 ounces of fluid (remember to add in the fluid you drank during the ride). For future planning you can try to replenish your fluids at a rate of slightly less than 32 ounces per 90 minutes of cycling. It is difficult on the run to replace the entire amount of fluid that you lose during exercising but you do need to replace about 75 percent of what you lose with small drinks. You want to avoid the sloshing and fullness associated with drinking too much. Your body just can’t absorb the fluids as fast as you lose them.

We would also recommend you do the same after some of your longer swims. We do lose water while swimming.

PACIFIC COAST TRIATHLON…NEWPORT BEACH, CA

Triathica attended its first triathlon expo on the 6th of September at the Pacific Coast Triathlon in Newport Beach. Thank you to all who came up to our booth and filled out a survey on Saturday and congrats on your finish if you raced on Sunday. 

These surveys we are giving out are important for us to analyze our market and find out what exactly people need out of a triathlon training and coaching center and how many people would be interested in joining a gym like this. We could definitely make Triathica into something that WE think is cool, but we would rather have our future clients tell us what they think cool is. We exist to serve the triathlon public and we want to cater to as many triathletes and potential triathletes as possible. We say “potential” because we do not want Triathica to be a place solely for die hard triathletes. We want triathletes of all skill levels and even people who have never competed before to be able learn more about the sport and try it out without an intimidating atmosphere. Triathlon is a great sport and we would love to share it with as many people as possible. 

So far our market research has yielded very positive results. As a gift for everyones input with the surveys, we gave out free Triathica water bottles and drawstring backpacks at the expo. We also raffled off 5 $95 gift cards to Fleet Feet Laguna Niguel. If you missed your chance to get a gift or be part of the drawing, we will also be attending the Orange County International Triathlon on the 27th and doing pretty much the same thing. This time we have 3 awesome prizes from TriZone. 
Both Ron and I will be racing the next day so we hope to see you at the booth, on the course, or both!!!