EverymanTri.com

Train Like a Pro

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to train and race like a professional? I certainly have. And now is your chance to find out. Several of us endurance sports Bloggers and Podcasters have worked to form Team raceAthlete.com.

Today our dream has become a reality and we are starting a long journey that will end at Ironman Wisconsin 2007. Best of all, we want to take you along on this journey.

This is your chance to train and race like a professional in 2007. Over the next few months we'll be giving away the complete Team raceAthlete package which includes one of the best race bikes in the sport of triathlon, completely with the fastest wheels and newest power metering technology, as well as training and competition clothing and professional coaching.

A sneak preview of the official Press Release is below.

September 1, 2006

Boulder, Colorado---Imagine being able to train and compete like a professional. Starting now, eight ordinary people will get extraordinary training, equipment and coaching to compete like the professional Triathlete.

raceAthlete.com is proud to announce the formation of Team raceAthlete in conjunction with CycleOps Power, Zipp Speed Weaponry, BMC Bicycles, D3 Multisport and Descente Athletic Apparel. Eight lucky age group athletes will showcase the improvements that can be achieved through world class equipment and training resources. This will give select age groupers the opportunity to compete like seasoned professional triathletes.

The chosen athletes will get state-of-the-art PowerTap SL’s by CycleOps Power to help them train and monitor their progress with ultimate power and efficiency.

Swiss based BMC bicycles will provide them with proven bicycle technology—the same TTO2 Time Machine ridden at the Tour de France.

Zipp Speed Weaponry will provide world class speed and aerodynamic wheels and components. These are the same wheels ridden by champion Triathletes like Peter Reid.

D3 Multisport will provide comprehensive coaching and training plans for the athletes to help them with expert advice and today’s most cutting edge training tools for peak performance.

Descente Athletic apparel will provide state of the art training and racing apparel to help propel the athletes to the winner’s circle.

Members of Team raceAthlete will compete in triathlon events all around the globe. Athletes will chronicle their journey from “ordinary to extraordinary” as they progress towards the ultimate Iron distance race! You can follow their progress on raceAthlete.com, as well as the athlete’s own popular endurance Blogs and Podcasts.

raceAthlete.com is a one-stop source that spotlights top endurance sports writers, bloggers, and podcasters—all in a networked community for aspiring race athletes!

CycleOps Powertaps are provided by the Wisconsin-based Saris Cycling Group. The Saris Cycling Group is Saris Cycle Racks and CycleOps Power.(www.cycleops.com)

Swiss based BMC (www.bmc-cycling.com) builds bikes with style, passion and precision. Innovative design features, rigorous testing, and a long history of working with the World’s best athletes have resulted in truly unique bicycles. BMC sets new standards and continues to push the design and performance envelope year after year.

Zipp (www.zipp.com) produces world class wheels that are tops in speed and aerodynamics. Zipp also provides unsurpassed component technology always on the cutting edge. Zipp builds the fastest wheels in the world as tested in Tour magazine, they were the first company to manufacture carbon cranks and the new vuka Aero bar already has a patent pending.

D3 Multisport (www.d3multisport.com) utilizes the most current research and training techniques and combines them with race proven strategies to create the best possible training programs for any athletes.

Axcent Sports (www.descenteathletic.com) was formed to license and distribute Descente Athletic apparel in the United States for the sports categories of Cycle, Run and Fitness, among others.

SRPO (Self Righteous Prius Owner)

We purchased our blinged-out Prius a few months ago mainly because:

a) My wife started a new job in Denver, which meant a pretty hefty daily commute for her.

b) Gas prices soared above $3.00 a gallon making this commute very expensive in her heavy SUV.

c) In Colorado we get a $6,500 tax credit for purchasing this car (3K federal and 3.5K state)

d) We were informed that a Prius driver can use the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lane with only one driver because of a state law passed over three years ago.

So I spent a few weeks trying to find a car to purchase. The local Toyota dealership had a waiting list of 60 people deep and not a single dealer in Colorado or Wyoming had a car in stock. They all said take a number. So I told them all to call me if somebody who had ordered a car did want to purchase it, and two weeks later the phone rang and we got a silver package eight Prius.

Package eight is the most expensive blinged-out model with all the bells, whistles and electronic toys. We of course paid full sticker for the car, which was just shy of 30K. The base model starts at about 22 thousand, but you’ll never see one of these as most dealers order the most expensive cars so they can make the most profit.

So here’s what I have to report.

I just got back from the Chicago Triathlon in the Prius. I drove the Prius 1000 miles each way between Boulder and Chicago and used about $58.00 in gas for each one way trip. I fit all of mine…and my wife’s race stuff in the car which included two bikes, luggage, two sets of golf clubs, one bottle of homemade wine and a very heavy cement garden gnome.

The car averaged about 50 miles to the gallon on the highway, which meant I could go about 500 miles on a tank full. I must confess to a couple of things here:

1) I ran out of gas just short of Chicago. This is something the dealer said you should never, ever ever ever do. Well I did because the only gas station at the first highway exit I took to gas up was closed, and I had to drive another 20 miles to the next exit. At mile 18.5 on the way to the next exit the car ran out of gas and I though …oh uck. But it was crazy. I was able to drive at about 30 mph on the side of the highway to the exit and gas station, sweating all the way as I watched the battery meter drop.

2) The Prius is really more of a computer or an appliance than a car. Ours has all these electronics that make it fun to play with on long drives including XM radio, iPod jack, voice navigation and command, Bluetooth cell phone integration, energy and consumption display, keyless entry, and a very heavy cement garden gnome smiling at me from the back.

3) I must admit that I began to laugh diabolically every time I gassed up the Prius when the little pump display stopped at $22 dollars while my neighbor’s pump kept jumping by $10 dollar increments as he filled up his Suburban…$50…$60…$70…deep diabolic laugh…$80.

I know that this is sort of self-righteous but I do feel good driving the car around town to run errands. It just feels great knowing that when I have to go to the store to get a gallon of milk and I’m stopped at the stoplight, or stuck in traffic the car is using zero, nada, not a single drop of gas. At the same time it is not polluting or adding much to make this world warmer because quite frankly I suck eggs racing in the heat.

To wrap up here are the things I’ve learned by driving this strange and quirky appliance like car for the last few months.

1) My wife calls it the go-cart and she still prefers her luxurious German SUV to the Prius, but she grudging admits that it is much easier to drive and park.

2) We can’t sell the SUV. I suspect we’ll have to wait for the weather to turn ugly before folks are in the market for the 6000 pound all wheel drive beast.

3) We have yet to file our taxes for 2006, so we’ll have to see what the $6500 tax credit really means to the bottom line.

4) We can’t drive the car in the local HOV lanes. It seems that while the legislation was passed over three years ago the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has yet to implement it. Why? Somebody at CDOT seems to feel they should be making the laws or perhaps they are making some $$$$ on the side.

5) The Prius is really big on the inside. I don’t know how Toyota does it but it is one of those cars that are much bigger on the inside than on the outside. It is in fact a mid-sized car that will swallow five adults in comfort with all of their stuff.

6) The hybrid system is completely invisible to the driver (unless you run out of gas and/or you go to pay at the pump) and probably the biggest advancement in car technology since Henry Ford invented the assembly line back in the day.

7) You can purchase a very nice Garden Gnome in Chicago (which will easily fit into the back of the Prius) and when you look in the rear view mirror, it will happily smile at you all the way home to Colorado.

I did OK

The 2006 Chicago Triathlon is now in the books and I didn't crack like a walnut.

In fact I pretty well. I got a personal best for the Olympic distance of 2:39:26 and 551 of 3708 overall

Best of all I took second in my class which I think means I won some sort of award for being the second fastest Clydesdale in a class of 43-year-old, guys from Boulder, Colorado, racing in blue with green eyes and dark hair, and a slim mustache;-)

My lovely wife also set a PB with a terrific time of 2:51:21.

Now ain't that a corker?

The Combo Conundrum

I have to be brutally honest here and admit that one of the reasons I love to drive across country to a race is that it gives me a guilty free “get out of jail” card to eat fast food. I mean what else are you going to eat in the middle Lower Corn Sucker Iowa?

I’m sure there must be a completely charming and delicious family owned restaurant somewhere along one of the many exits of I-80, but the chances of finding it while zipping by at 80-mph are as likely as me winning this weekend’s Chicago Triathlon.

So with a wry smile on my face I pulled into the nearest Wendy’s parking lot and made a dash for the burger, fries and frosty.

But my timing was wrong and I got stuck in the zigzag line behind a half a dozen other people. So here’s where the Combo Conundrum comes into play.

I’m waiting to order and salivating at the notion of a fast burger and fries when I notice that many of the folks who come to order are completely perplexed by the Wendy’s Combo menu.

They seem to be at a complete loss, or at best mystified by what to order. When you think about it this is pretty amazing as Wendy’s only servers a couple of different types of burgers from their combo menu.

The only significant choice you have is if you want cow or chicken meat between the two buns, and yet these folks are completely bamboozled by this decision.

The guy in front of me finally decides on the cow burger after like a million years of scratching his head, and the counter woman asks him what he wants to drink with that combo.

So get this…he actually says, “What do you have?”

“Well sir we have fizzy bottom burp aid, and purple penguin juice, or a lot of people like butt burn power cola.”

I’m just guessing here but they probably have one of the only two Cola’s in the world (diet and regular) along with some Sprite or Mountain Dew (diet and regular) and some sort of brightly colored kid’s drink.

That would be the exact same thing that they have in every single one of the three billion fast food restaurants along every inch of every interstate in the United States.

Next race I think I’ll fly. At least that way I can sit in comfortably and read my magazine while the guy next to me ponders the great question of the day...whether he indeed wants ice and peanuts with his diet or regular Coke.

Can’t get enough of Everyman Triathlon?

Purchase my new book "My Training Begins Tomorrow: The Everyman's Guide to IRONFIT Swimming, Cycling & Running" by clicking HERE.

How big is your endurance engine?

One hundred years ago they used to compare the human brain to a clock. It was one of the most sophisticated pieces of engineering that man had developed at the time so they naturally compared it to a brain.

Today we compare the human brain most often to a computer. Do you think that people one hundred years from now will look back at this comparison with the same understanding of how ridiculously inadequate it really is?

In the year 3006 they might look upon our understanding of the brain with amusement. “Can you really believe that they consider the PC to be as complex as the human brain,” they may say and shake their heads with astonishment?

So what is a good analogy and or comparison to describe the way our bodies work when we race? I’m going to take a stab at this and if you happen to be reading this in the year 3006 feel free to scratch your head and wonder how stupid they were “back-in-the-day.”

Over the years I’ve come to understand that there are three components that make-up a successful triathlete. I’ll dare to compare a successful triathlete to a high performance car. (Please chuckle away dear reader from circa 3006).

And just like a fast car the winning triathlete is made up of these three critical components. In order of importance they to you they are:

a) Your Endurance Engine
b) Your Chassis
c) Your Software

Your Endurance Engine

When I first started running I had this notion that I had to run as fast as possible every time I stepped out the front door. My runs would consist of about a half-hour of flogging myself up and down the local street or pushing the speed higher and higher on the treadmill.

Now don’t get any crazy notions. I wasn’t running 5-minute miles. It was more like 12-minute miles but to me it seemed very fast. It is after all just a matter of perspective.

I also believed that every time I ran, I should also run a bit further in that same half hour. After all my body should be getting fitter and stronger after each run. I didn’t realize that I was doing zero to build up my endurance engine. I was in fact developing my rather poor dragster (sprint) engine when I should have been using my neglected jet (endurance) engine.

A jet engine tends to run best at high speeds for long periods of time.

A dragster engine builds to a lightening fast top speed that takes a car from zero to two hundred in just seconds. However it cannot maintain or even sustain that speed for the time that it takes you to read this sentence. If you keep your foot on the pedal just a little too long…Kaboom!

So the obvious answer is that you want to be jet powered. You want your endurance engine to be like a powerful jet engine that just goes and goes and goes at the highest possible speed for the longest possible time.

That’s the answer, but what’s the question? It took me a while to learn the question because the question is really the key to getting fast in this sport.

I’ll tell you the question in a second, but first you may want to read your body’s owner’s manual. I took a look through mine a few years ago and it actually said to use only premium gas, (no fast food please) go in for regular check-ups (my doctor is now happy), and don’t over rev the engine if you want it to perform its peak.

It was then that I realized that the key to going fast for long periods of time was to just go slow. In other words, the best way to build up my endurance jet engine was to train slowly for longer and longer periods of time.

It seems pretty simple but it is damn hard to do. For me it meant keeping my heart rate below 140 when I ran. I have to confess that I want to push myself when I train. I want to feel spent, sore and tired after a workout. And running full out for a half-hour certainly made me feel that way. But unfortunately it didn’t make me much faster at the next race.

But something funny happened when I started running longer at a slower pace while keeping the heart rate below 140. Slowly and over a few months of time I notice that I was running faster and faster miles.

At first I was running 13-minute miles with my heart rate at 140. But over time I noticed that I was able to maintain 12-minute miles and 11 and even 10-minute miles all the while keeping my heart rate at 140.

I also noticed that I wasn’t as spent, sore, and tired after my long runs. This became a very good thing when I started to take the sport more seriously, and began having a few double workout days during the week.

It may be great to feel spent when you run just a half-hour a few times a week but it really stinks when you still have to bike or swim that same day. It is after all a triathlon, as my coach likes to say.

So what’s the question that I finally realized I should have been asking myself?

“How do I increase the power of my endurance engine to run at the highest possible speed for the longest possible time?”

That’s the $10,000 dollar question in the sport of triathlon.

Next time we’ll talk about tuning up your chassis for peak performance.

New Tri Rules

As Bill Maher is returning to HBO this week with his Real Time politically incorrect show, I thought I should come up with a few new tri rules of my own:

You can’t call yourself a cutting edge high-tech tri apparel company if you still sew labels into your clothing.

The other I bought this new tri short from a well-known brand that came with a clothing tag the size of a short novel. The tag explained how the short was made from this space age material using the latest in ultra-dry, ultra-cool ultra-expensive nanotechnology.

Except that about two minutes into my first run in the new shorts, the razor-sharp label stabbed itself into my back like Jack the Ripper on a Friday night bender in London.

Do the sports clothing companies actually test their apparel on real athletes, or do they just have the marketing weasels come up with a ultra this and that technology wording?

I’m betting on the marketing weasels as I’ve been spending a lot of time cutting labels out of my “so-called” high performance endurance apparel.

SlowTwitch.com and anybody else who writes a Blog or contributes to a triathlon forum must stop calling their Cervelo Sorrento, Bosso, and so on “Bike Porn”

Boys, boys, boys perhaps you need to Google the term “Porn” and see what a real woman looks like.

While a bike may be somewhat curvy and desirable, I would suggest that you try to take it to dinner, ply it with expensive wine and caviar, and escort it up to bed. Once you have it in bed, try doing those things that would make your mother blush to it, or with it, or on top of it, or however you can manage it, and you’ll soon realize why describing a bike as being pornographic is like French kissing your poodle.

Harvard must educate an entire new crop of running shoe scientist

Do you pronate or supinate or incubate? Clearly the only real science behind today’s running shoes goes into predicting the hottest color for next year.

For the longest time every running shoe company worked to develop the best shoe to pad, control, enhance, regulate, and support our "unnatural" tendency to pronate or suplinate when we run. That is until about a year ago when Nike came out with their new shoe called the "Free" which promises to build up your feet and muscles by providing zero support.

So what is the theory du jour? Complete support or zero support? Why don’t you call me when you actually apply some real science to the problem instead of spending your research budget on sponsering the tallest basketball player with the most gold around his neck!


Male professionals must stop wearing the man bra when they race

The Man Bro: it was very funny on Seinfeld when George’s dad suggest selling it as a wacky business plan. But who would have known that today’s top male professionals would actually wear the damn thing while racing.

I don’t care how fit you are boys, but you should know that the man bra is about as attractive as bike porn.

Women professionals must start wearing a G-String bikini when they race.

Look gals you are so close to wearing it already, why not pull the trigger and go all the way? The bottoms you already wear are just a snip or two away from being a G-String anyway so just go for it. Image how much cooler your butt would be in a ultra-high tech space age G-String race bottom. Now that’s the kind of nanotechnology that we all need to support.

Can’t get enough of Everyman Triathlon?

Purchase my new book "My Training Begins Tomorrow: The Everyman's Guide to IRONFIT Swimming, Cycling & Running" by clicking HERE.

Swimming Sets Correctly

Yesterday I laid down the Everyman Endurance Challenge here on Swim Week. The purpose of this challenge is just to get you to feel comfortable in the water. And by comfortable I mean you should be able to swim 500 yards at the end of the month without stopping, without feeling like you are going to drown, and without getting out of breath.

That’s really the first and I think most important hurdle for Newbie swimmers to overcome. Once you feel like you can just swim without having your heart rate soar, and your breathing skyrocket, you can start to concentrate on all the other important parts of mastering the swim like speed and form.

To help you do that here’s some great advise by Mike Ricci of D3 Multisport to help you start to get fast in the water.

When swimming a particular workout, remember that every swim set has a distinct purpose. Swimming is different then biking or running in that you can hammer every day without tearing up you ligaments and joints. Since you don't feel the same type of soreness as in running and biking, swimming leads many of us to think that we didn't swim hard enough. Beware! Swimming hard hard every day eventually will wear you down and something is going to give; like your shoulder, back, or your motivation. Swim with a plan: Each time you get in the water the swim set should have a set purpose.

Drill Sets: The purpose of a drill session is practice technique and improve your efficiency. It's NOT to see how fast you can swim a 100 yards while doing the finger tip drag drill.

Speed sets: These sets are designed to teach you how to become efficient at going fast and to break the habit of the same old pace that many of us swim day after day. These sets are NOT designed to see you swim 35 seconds for 50 yards and then swim 45 seconds for the rest. Pick a speed you can handle for the duration of the set. Typically, when I have a set of 10x50 yards, I start out at 40 seconds and work my way under 35. Not vice versa. Your fastest swim should be your last swim. Learn to swim fast when you are tired.

Endurance Sets: These sets are designed to create a nice big aerobic engine that will let you swim at race pace for as long as you need to. These sets include 200 yard, 500 yard and up repeats. You may have to swim a set of 3x500 yards. Just as when you are swimming the Speed Sets, swim your fastest repeat last. If you start out at 8:00 for your first 500, and then swim 8:30, and then 9:00 you just blew your whole workout. Remember swim your fastest repeat last.

The goal of any swim set, be it 50 yard sprints or 800 yard repeats, is to swim each repeat faster. The more you start incorporating this into your practices, the faster you will become.

Summary: The point of this writing is to teach you to understand the important of pacing while in the pool. Take it out easy during the first few sets and repeats when you swim. As you warm up increase your pace and finish with your fastest sets being the ones you do toward the end of your workout. Do you ever wonder why people start out so fast in a race or in a workout only to fade in the middle or at the end? Well, proper pacing can help you avoid that! Practice the way you are going to race and it will all become second nature. You want to be the athlete doing the passing at the end of the race, not the one being passed! Start slow, and finish strong!

Michael Ricci is a USAT certified coach. He can be reached for personal coaching by clicking HERE.

Everyman Triathlon Newbie Swim Challenge

This has turned into swim week at Everyman Triathlon so I’ll just go with the flow.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails and comments from Newbies like this great comment from Heather:

“Longtime lurker, first time poster, tri newbie. As someone who's just starting out and did a couple of sprint tri's this summer, the swim is currently my nemesis in terms of etiquette. I can't swim the full half-mile distance freestyle yet without switching to backstroke occasionally for brief recovery times. To this end, I try to start off to the side and stay the heck out of everyone else's way, but in both my open water swims I kept getting swum over/under/through by other newbies as well as running into people during my backstroke sections. I want to be nice to people and not choose a swim spot above my skill levels, but I also want to finish the race without getting clocked in the face repeatedly. I promise to work on my swim over the winter so I will be able to face forward all the time by next season, but I'd sure appreciate any advice you have for newbie swimmers who want to do the right thing and still finish.”

So here’s the Everyman challenge I’ll throw out to anybody who wants to get over the hump of feeling uncomfortable in the water.

Everyman Triathlon Newbie Swim Challenge

Swim three times a week (at least 1000 to 1500 yards) for a month. (That's about an hour or so in the water three times a week...depending on how fast you swim). The most important part of this challenge is to not miss a swim. (Three times a week…you pick the days).

In classic fashion most of us will train our strength and forget about our weakness…especially if that weakness is swimming.

As I’m sure you know by now every workout should have a specific goal. So just going and swimming by yourself for an hour three times a week is a) very boring and b) not all that productive.

I would highly recommend that you find a good masters class to attend at your local swimming hole. But if you can’t find a class, or they don’t work with your schedule here are two good resources that you can use to make that swim a bit more productive.

Click HERE for 50 mostly easy and moderate workouts that you can cut in half for your 1000-yard swim.

Click HERE for a great description of some of the best swim drills by my friend Mat at About.com.

I would highly recommend that you try some of these drills in your three weekly swims as a warm up. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel.

As Mat would say, Good Luck and “Swim On”

Sour Grapes

This is the last comment from Dave Miller from my recent swim rant below:

“Sounds like sour grapes to me. The people swimming over you most likely are not newbies, but faster, more experienced swimmers wishing you would get out of their way,”His comment got me to click on PhotoShop and go at it for a few more illustrative graphics.

You may want to stop reading right about here because my graphic talents are not even equal to that of my young son. As proof I offer up a recent drawing of his. So I would highly suggest that you just scroll down the page to a nice story about my recent Ironman that includes no PhotoShop graphics what so ever.

You’ve been warned!

This is the text of the email I just sent Dave: “Thanks for your comment. Sour Grapes…no not really. Actually I got boxed in by a group of swimmers of similar ability. I should have gone anaerobic and swam ahead of them, but I didn't think about that as I was swimming.

I just kept wondering why they kept slamming into me instead of swimming in clear water.”

To illustrate this point I’ve drawn another terrible graphic. You will notice that I’m red as a lobster because I’m steamed from being boxed in.

You will also notice that the real problem is really not with the Newbies. The problem is the Newbie who’s been swimming a year or two and now decides that they are the next Phelps or Spitz. These are the boys and gals who like to swim under, or over, or through, or on top of, other racers.

I think that true Newbies tend to be a little too intimidate on the swim to really go and mix it up in the “crunch.”

You’ll notice in the next auful graphic that I define the crunch as the area where everybody comes together as they head for the first buoy. It is the narrowest part of the funnel that forces swimmers (who all started pretty far apart) to come together to round the first buoy.

So if you look at the diagram carefully, you’ll also notice that the worst possible place to start the race (if you are a slower Newbie swimmer) is in a direct straight line with the first buoy.

Why?

Because everybody else in the entire race will eventually more into your swim line and you’ll be the person caught in the crunch. That’s why many coaches will advise Newbies to start on the outside to keep out of the crunch zone as long as possible.

But no matter where you start at some point you will end up in your own crunch zone. That is just what happens when you put several hundred, or thousand swimmers into any given body of water and pull ther trigger. In Austria I was drafting a good swimmer when I noticed that we were going to complete miss going around one of the buoys. We were in fact swimming right for a course marshal who was turning folks around to head back around the buoy.

I felt like I owed my drafting partner a heads-up on the situation so I sort of tapped his shoulder. He just kept on swimming. So I grabbed him by the waist (bad idea) to get his attention. He spun around in the water like an angry python and raised his fist to clobber me on the nose. It wasn’t until I pointed to the buoy that he understood and thanked me for stopping him.

Sometimes we all get a little too caught up in the moment and do stupid things in the heat of battle. That’s why I always try to remind before every race that you can’t win a triathlon on the swim.

Oh yea...I promise no more pitiful illustrations.

You can’t win a triathlon on the swim

So I’m going to keep this rant very short and simple.

But I’m still steaming from last week’s Stroke and Stride.

The Stroke and Stride is a 1500-meter swim followed by a 5-Kilometer run. I recently had one of the worst of swims of my short S and S career.

It seems like many Newbie triathletes have wrongly got it in their heads that swimming fast means swimming under, or over, or through, or on top of, other racers.

Listen up folks (and that especially means you three brain surgeons who boxed me in for a full 750 meter first loop last week): You can not win a triathlon on the swim.

Let me repeat that so you really get it: You can not win a triathlon on the swim!

You can lose a triathlon on the swim, but you’ll never win the race by swimming under, or over, or through, or on top of, other racers.

To illustrate my point I’ve drawn a very crude sketch.

You’ll notice how we were swimming last week by looking at the diagram below:

This is obviously not a good way to post a fast time.

Instead the pros will often work together on the swim.

See my crude sketch below (you'll also notice that many of the top pros have long noses as illustrated):

Pros will get on the toes of the leader and draft each other. This way they swim faster and come out of the water together and next to their competitors.

Why do they do this? Because they know that they you can’t win the race on the swim. So for the sake of all of us stop swimming under, or over, or through, or on top of, other racers. You'll only go slower.

Let’s be smart out there and take a page from the pros and work together, instead of turning the swim into the heavy duty wash cycle of your washing machine.

The World’s First Team Relay & Solo 24 Hour Triathlon

It’s being called “The World’s First Team Relay and Solo 24 Hour Triathlon!”

Ian Adamson wants you to be part of sporting history and be one of the first to compete in this hybrid new sports event. Think of it as a cross between adventure racing and triathlon.

You can learn more about this exciting new event by visiting the web site. Just click HERE to check it out.

Ian Adamson is a legend among adventure racers. He’s won about every adventure race that counts. He just recently returned from Utah where his team won the Primal Quest.

So now he’s very busy putting on something that’s completely different for both the worlds of adventure racing and triathlon.

Have I made you curious about the 24 hours of Triathlon? I know Ian answered all of my questions when I sat down with him and discussed his long career and how he came up with the concept for his new race.

This is the 26th Everyman Triathlon Endurance Podcast. There are several ways to subscribe to the show. You can click on the link below and use Yahoo.com.

You can go into iTunes and:

1) Click on the podcast link in the upper left hand corner of iTunes,
2) Click on the Podcast Directory link on the bottom of the page,
3) Now just use the search box located in the bottom left corner of the music store to locate Everymantriathlon and subscribe to my podcast.

The advantage of this is that you'll automatically get every show episode once I add it to iTunes.

Or you can listen (here and now) to the interview by just clicking the play tab below, or click on the link to the MP3 file and download it to your favorite iPod or MP3 player.



MP3 File

Ironman Austria Race Report

Note: To watch the videos included in this race report you may want to download the free flash player (if you don’t have it installed on your computer already) by clicking HERE:

The Bike

It was hot and getting hotter. I was just starting the second loop of the bike course when I made my biggest mistake of the race. I accidentally grabbed two bottles of sport drink instead of my usual one bottle of water and one bottle of PowerBar liquid glue.

The thermometer was now well into the nineties and I was starting to feel the heat waves coming up from the asphalt. I reached down and grabbed my water bottle and squirted some on my hands. About two minutes later I noticed that my hands felt sticky so grabbed the water bottle again and really hosed down my hands and handlebars.

I really wasn’t thinking about what I was doing, because I was doing some painful math in my head.

You don’t have to be Einstein to do the ugly math. If the swim took me just over an hour (1:11 to be exact) and the first loop of the bike took 3:15, I was looking at around 8 to 10-hours of hot and painful racing in my very near future.

Ironman is always like that. You go through some of the biggest physical and emotional hills and valleys. I was now in the deepest valley. The initial exuberance of the start of the race had worn off. My best event (the swim) was just a distant memory and my worst event (the run) loomed ahead like an angry cloud covered Mt. Everest. My legs were starting to feel a bit crappy and crampy, and I was very hot.

So I took my bottle of water and squirted it over my helmet and head and down my back. It was at this exact instance that I hit the very lowest point of my race. I simultaneously realized that I had just squirted PowerBar liquid glue (as I called it) all over myself because I had grabbed two bottles of this stuff at the last aide station instead of my usual bottle of water.

My helmet was now glued to my head, my hands were glued to my handlebars, and the very expensive and finely made Shimano gears in my shifters were glued to themselves.

Worse yet the next the aid station with water was 20 kilometers down the road and the local bees had joined the party.

The good news, at least as far as my race time was concerned, was that I was now well and truly motivated to push very hard to the next aid station. I was like a crazed fox on a hunt determined to out run the chasing pack of hungry bees. I blew past the other competitors as if they were standing still with a cloud of swarming bees in close pursuit. Up the hills I heard their hungry buzzing, down the hills I laughed out load and yelled out to them “Catch me if you can you Austrian Mofo’s!”

Some of the locals Austrians racers gave me an inquisitive look as I passed them as they either didn’t know:

a) that I was being chased by the Austrian vice bee squad or
b) the American definition of “Mofo.”

Lucky the other racers were not the right demographic for American rap vids that featured such colorful terms.

And to think that it was just a few hours earlier that I had one of the best swims of my life.

The Swim

The Ironman Austria swim is probably one of the most beautiful and unusual swims of any of the two dozen or so Ironman around the world. The swim looks like a “P”. The top round part of the “P” is in a warm crystal clear alpine lake surrounded by jagged mountains. The bottom line of the P is down a spectator packed canal. It is sort of hard to describe what it is like swimming down a canal lined with hundreds of crazy cheering and whopping fans on both sides.

But you can see for yourself. Just click on the short video my lovely wife took below to see what this unusual swim looks like.

Download File

The funny thing about this video is that it looked and felt completely different from my point of view. As I watch the video it just looks like a bunch of wetsuit clad folks slowly and gently swimming down a canal as if we are all just out for a group Sunday morning swim.

But when you are in the maelstrom of the canal it feels completely different. You’ve got racers trying to swim over and under and around you all the while you are trying to swim over and under and around them to keep them from constantly kicking you in the face.

You also have tons of the local canal water-weeds that apparently have specifically evolved to wrap themselves around your neck, arms and legs as you try to swim over and under and around the guys ahead of you who are kicking you in the face.

It’s sort of wet and wild version of a Three Stooges show except that you are Curly and everybody else is slapping you around like Mo on a bender.

I was so relived to get into the transition that I didn’t even notice that it was a coed tent. This fact was made abundantly clear to me when I looked up from the bench I was sitting on putting on my bike shoes to behold a wet and extremely furry beaver just inched from my nose.

The owner of this untrimmed furry beast had just bent over to take remove her swimsuit placing her white butt inches from my nose. WOW, now that’s something you don’t see, nor do you want to see, everyday.

Have they not heard of waxing in this part of the world? Perhaps Ironman Austria needs to supply the Ironwoman razor in the 2007 goodie bags.

The Run

Taking my own advice I did not dilly-dally in T2. I sprinted out of the tent to spot my wife and son just outside transition. The next time I would see them would be in the town center where my wife sat watching the race at a local café enjoying a local brew. She would later go on to remark that this was the only and indeed best way to do an Ironman.

The Austrian run course is pretty interesting in that it is basically a giant figure eight with the transition and finish areas being right in the middle of the eight. This means that you get to run around the figure eight twice.

The best part of course is the finish line. You can get a great feel for the finish by watching the video below. If you watch past the point where my son is like bored out of his mind you’ll notice a Mexican racer run in holding a sign above his head as he finishes the race. If you listen and watch carefully you’ll see that he used this very moment to get down on his knees and propose matrimony.

Does his fiancée accept his sweaty proposal? Are the other racers who finish at the same time angry to have their time in the spotlight stolen? Does my son die of boredom? Watch the video and find out.

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I think the hardest thing about running a marathon during an Ironman is starting in the afternoon. For a traditional marathon you train for 4 months, eat a good dinner, go to bed earlier, have a proper breakfast, line up at the cool crack of down and bang you go for it.

If you are like me at an Ironman, you start the marathon dead tired, hungry, sweaty, crampy, and in the middle of the hottest part of the day. You start the run knowing you are looking down a loaded double barrel shotgun of pain. That’s why you never want to dilly-dally in T2...because if you think about the marathon just a little too much...you’ll most likely never leave the tent.

Unlike my previous race I actually felt pretty good the first six miles and last six miles of the race. It was the middle part of the run that was really hard. I suspect that this has to do with what I call the TWC (Time Warp Coefficient). This every man principal states that times passes during a race in an inverse coefficient to distance to the finish.

So for instance the TWC on the bike means that the first 140 Kilometers of the race passed by at pretty even intervals. (They put a signat each ten kilometer mark on the course and keep in mind that the bike part of the Ironman is 180 kilometers long.

But it seemed to take a little longer for the 150 K marker to come up, and a lot longer for the 160 K marker. It seemed like 800-years before I got to the 170 K marker, but the last 10K just flew by.

It was the same way on the run. By the time I got to the last 10 K, or 6 miles point, I was like a horse that smells the hay in the barn. I felt terrific and I just flew home to the finish.

And that is the lesson I learned from doing Ironman Austria. For every painful deep dark valley you swim, bike, or run through there will always be a glorious mountain where you feel like the king of the world. Where every heart beat is filled with the joy of life and your body serges with power and strength.

I had three simple Everyman goals for my race:

1) Finish Strong
2) Finish the bike part before the winners finishes the race
3) Finish before dark

I finished in 13:45 and met and exceed all three of these goals. At times during the race I felt like warmed over death and at other times I felt like the king of the world.

I experienced every emotion from bitter depression to jubilant glee. But most importantly I felt incredibly alive. Every part of my body and soul ached with the knowledge of the pain and joy of life.

I suppose that why I do these races. To feel the worst and the best that being alive has to offer.

I suspect that when I’m fully recovered I’ll forget the pain, go online, pick a new location to race, and close my eyes and click “submit payment” yet again.

The Aussies

What would it be like to have started your triathlon career at the age of 13 in the sun-trenched country of Australia and spent your entire life traveling around the world racing?

Every summer some of the best Australian triathletes come to Boulder to train and race here in the Mecca of triathlon. They come here because the weather is good, the company is better, and there is triathlon in the water.

Recently I had a chance to sit down with two of the best Australian triathletes along with my friend Michael Stone and discuss what’s it’s like to spend you entire life traveling the world and racing on the professional triathlon circuit.

Courtney Ogden most recently won Ironman Malaysia and is in Boulder training and getting reading for his next race the 5430 long course half Iron distance race next week.

Click HERE to visit his web site.

Brad Beven was one of the most successful triathletes in Australia, as well as the world, before a terrible car accident right before the 2000 summer Olympics. He won three consecutive World Cup Series and got well-deserved nickname the Croc. You name the short course race and he’s probably won it.

He's in Boulder training, racing and starting a coaching business.

Click HERE to send him an email.

Michael Stone is training for Kona, and besides kicking my butt in every one of three disciplines of triathlon, he’s also raising money for the Foundation Fight Blindness. Check out his personal story by visiting his web site by clicking HERE or listen to the show.

This is the 25th Everyman Triathlon Endurance Podcast. There are several ways to subscribe to the show. You can click on the link below and use Yahoo.com.

You can go into iTunes and:

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The advantage of this is that you'll automatically get every show episode once I add it to iTunes.

Or you can listen (here and now) to the interview by just clicking the play tab below, or click on the link to the MP3 file and download it to your favorite iPod or MP3 player.


MP3 File

Stau

The sleazy looking blonde bounded up to my car with a glimmer in her eye that suggested she was looking for more than just directions.

It was one in the morning on a busy Friday night and we had just pulled into the city center of Klagenfurt after what can only be described as the journey of the damned. We had been traveling for over 30-hours and I was a bit loopy. My son was asleep in the back of the car, but my wife simply looked up from the map and immediately assessed the situation.

“That’s one eager prostitute,” she said. “You better step on the gas.”

My mind jumped into gear at about the same time as the car and we sped away leaving the blonde in a cloud of diesel smoke with a forlorn look on her face.

“Welcome to Klagenfurt,” I said and wondered what sort of Ironman had come to race.

We had made it but I would never recommend this journey of the damned to anyone contemplating starting an Ironman in just under 30-hours.

I knew we were in for a rough trip when we lost our passports even before the journey began. I just didn’t know how bad it would really get.

I got a good hint sitting in the plane on the runway in Philadelphia waiting to take of to Frankfurt. The captain announced, “Just to let you know we are now 128th for take off, and that means we should have you in the air in about a half hour.”

For my nine-year-old son I always like to break any long trip into sections. So this trip had 4 sections.

1) The drive from home to the airport which was punctuated by the lost passports (Click HERE to read about it)
2) The flight from Denver to Philadelphia which was uneventful
3) The Flight from Philly to Frankfurt which was now stalled on the runway
4) The drive from Frankfurt to Klagenfurt, which I had idiotically estimated, would take about six hours.

I looked out the window of the plane and I saw what looked like rush hour in New York on the tarmac. I’ve never seen so many planes snaking around the airport in a dizzying line of congestion. After another half-hour the captain came back on and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen we are now 123rd for take off, I expect to have you in the air in half hour.

Most of the Indians on my flight smiled and shook their heads approvingly. I suspect that they must be pretty used to waiting in lines in India as they seemed to really appreciate the captain’s optimistic BS.

But after the captain made this same announcement an additional three times even the Indians were getting a bit restless.

We did manage to take off before we ran out of fuel and before the crew had to be changed out, but nobody was happy…especially the crew who seemed ready to throw us our unhappy meals from the back of the plane.

What this delay did mean was that we arrived in Germany in the early afternoon instead of morning. And this would have painful consequences to the last segment of the trip.

But for now I was blissfully unaware that every German in Frankfurt was busy loading up his or her car for the weekend drive down to Austria.

Instead I stood looking into the gapping maw of the oversized baggage carrousel.

Nothing stirred.

All the other bags had come and departed with their owners, but my bike was nowhere to be seen. This was my worst nightmare come true. I pictured myself doing the race on rented and rusty 10-year-old Mountain bike with huge fat knobby tires.

By the way, my fear was indeed pretty real as I happen to overhear a guy the day before the race on his cell phone begging a local bike shop to rent him something other than a mountain bike.

As I filled out the missing luggage forms my stomach sank to a new all time low. The desk clerk informed me that most likely the bike was still in Philadelphia (bad news) but that it would arrive on tomorrow’s flight (good news) and they would put it on the next flight to Klagenfurt (really good news) which would mean I’d have the bike on Sunday morning (really really crap news as that was race day).

My shoulders sank as I thanked him, turned around and began slowly walking out to customs. It was than that the gapping maw of the oversized baggage carrousel open, coughed, and spat out my bike. If I had left 30-seconds earlier, I would have missed my bike. They informed me that they had forgotten it on the plane. I suspect the huge size and cumbersome dimensions of the massive bike box made it really hard to find.

But I was over the moon. Not only did I have my bike, but the rent-a-car guy upgraded me to a really great diesel Peugeot 407 wagon with all the bells and whistles including a navigation system.

The car was from France with French plates, which explained two things:

1) The eagerness of the prostitute to show me her wares.

2) The navigation system only showed the topographical information on the screen. This meant that the arrow representing the car kind of just floated in space over rivers and next to lakes. I eventually checked and the car only had the street CD for France loaded in the system.

How French is that?

I can just see the selling car dealer saying, “Monsieur but why would you want to go anywhere besides France?”

The German word for traffic jam is “Stau”. I know this because for the next 13-hours I saw this sign on every autobahn in the Federal Republic. It seems that Friday afternoon is certainly not the best time to test out the top speed of your new Mercedes on Germany’s legendary speeed-limitless autobahns.

I calculated that it would take us 6 hours to go the 600 kilometers to Klagenfurt. This is after all a very conservative 100 Kilometers, or 60 mph per hour.

In fact it took us 3 hours to just get to Wurtzburg from Frankfurt which is a mere 90 Kilometers away. That meant we had averaged only 20 miles-per-hour on the autobahn the first three hours of the trip.

By the time we arrived in Klagenfurt at one in the morning my right foot hurt so much, from constantly pushing and releasing the accelerator pedal, that I would have been happy to pay the eager lady of the evening for a simple foot massage.

Next Time: IM Austria Race Report

Whatever Remains

The famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was known for his saying that “It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

So why do we find it so hard to believe that Tour de France champion Floyd Landis cheated by using PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)?

This week The New York Times reported that tests on Landis' "A" sample show some of the testosterone in his system was synthetic, putting his defense into question. The report cited a person at the UCI with knowledge of the result.

And what is Landis' defense for the high testosterone levels in his blood? That he had a shot of whisky the night before the test which caused the elevated levels of testosterone.

I have to admit that I find it exceptionally entertaining when the pros get caught with their hand in the PED cookie jar.

They come up with the most creative excuses. It is usually something like they took some new meds or food supplement that without warning recently switched the main ingredient from vitamin C to EPO.

So how will Landis explain the synthetic testosterone in his sample should the reports prove to be true? Perhaps he has a distant cousin who has a testosterone factory in France. And while on a brief factory tour before the next stage of the race he inadvertently managed to sit on a loaded syringe in the factory’s new public testing room.

I’m guessing here but I have a more improbable, but I think more truthful explanation. I think that almost every professional cyclist who shows some promise has the following closed-door come-to-God conversation:

Team Doctor: “So Floyd you are having a really great year and you could be the next tour champ. But both you and I know that you really can’t complete at the highest levels with getting on the program. I like to call it the “Lance” program, but don’t mention it to him as he’ll deny it all the way to the bank.”

Floyd: “I’m listening”

Team Doctor: “Floyd are you aware that the only way the drug testing agencies figured out that Barry Bonds had some…shall we say extra help…in hitting all those homeruns was that somebody anonymously sent them a syringe loaded with a new designer steroid that was virtually unknown and untraceable until they got it in the mail?”

Floyd : “So what’s your point?”

Team Doctor: “My point young man is that we are so far ahead with the newest chemistry that it is all but undetectable unless you actually have a sample.”

Floyd: “I’m still listening”

Team Doctor: “Floyd you and I both know that in this sport unless you get a little modern pharmaceutical help you’ll most likely spend your entire career helping others wear yellow. Or you could get on the Lance program and go from zero to hero. What’s the word Floyd?”

I fear we’ll all soon know that the answer to that question.

So why do we find it so hard to believe that our sports heroes would pop a pill or two for the chance making millions and being held up as the newest superman? Would you cheat given the chance for millions of dollars? Throughout history countless people have done much more for much much less.

On my recent trip to Germany I asked one of my German friends why there was no local coverage of the former T-Mobile team leader Jan Ulrich during the tour. He turned to me and said with a somewhat disgusted look on his face that Ulrich had disgraced the sport and his country. He than slammed down his beer glass as if to suggest with a formal finality …what else is there to say.

What else indeed?

Do we refuse to believe that some pros would cheat because we are naïve, or is it because we have embraced the motto that winning is indeed everything and that fair play does not matter?

To this day Tyler Hamilton, another former team leader of Floyd's Phonak Cycling Team, maintains that he did not cheat. Yet the reason he was banned from professional cycling for two years was because they found somebody else’s DNA in his blood.

When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And the truth in this case can easily be that somebody screwed up big time when they gave him an doping IV of the wrong blood. Or perhaps he injected himself with somebody else’s blood when he accidentally sat on syringe at the new public sampling room while visiting Floyds distant cousins’s new doping and testosterone factory.

The other day a local radio talk show host asked the question; does it really matter if Landis used testosterone to boost his performance? I guess if you have never trained and competed seriously in any sport this is a great question to ask.

But if you have ever put your heart and sole into a sport…

If you have ever spent countless hours training and racing…

If you have ever scraped yourself from the ground and spent weeks in recovery after a seriously accident while training or racing….

If you have ever forgone spending time with your family and friends to ride in the rain and come home soaked just go out again for your evening ride…

If you have ever done any of these things only to see the glory, fame and the money go to the guy who keeps sticking mysterious suppositories up his butt during races you’ll understand why it matters, and why Germany has turned its back on Jan Ulrich.