Evolution – Blog has been moved to www.F9TC.com

When I worked for adidas, the marketing team hated using the word evolution in any product advancement because NIKE previously ran a huge advertising campaign (and successfully) surrounding the word evolution.

Here at F9TC, we are not afraid of NIKE.  Bring it on.  I am evolving the website and blog.  And actually making them one of the same.

I will post all my blogs, articles, tips, race reports and anything else tri-related here:

www.f9tc.com

The evolution to something greater will take some time so please be patient.  AND, feel free to add your own suggestions!

 

 

More races this weekend…

And aside from watching the IM70.3 2007 Clearwater Championsships (that’s a mouthfull), we can also watch IM Arizona and IM South Africa on Ironmanlive.  There will be no Factor 9 athlete’s racing in South Africa 

But, we have 3 in Arizona.  Best of luck to Jen, Garren and Bill!!!  I have a good feeling about this one…

And here is the forecast.  It is going to be hot and dry.  And that is why athlete’s further North do sauna training to get ready for a spring race.  It is tough this time of year to race in the heat when it has not been hot at home.  However, I am sure Bill, Jen and Garren are ready for it since they knew it was a possibility. 

And good luck to all my friends racing including Sara, Chris, Ann and Dave. 

Spring Camp 08 – Day 3 – Ouch

Day 3 – OUCH

Monday, March 17^th

Prior to the ride, I hit the pool for an easy 3000m.  Nothing special, lots of longer sets. 

Today was a “Get R Done” ride.  Camps are a funny thing.  You do considerably more training than you could sustain week in and week out.  As a result, you crash hard at night and barely get yourself out of bed the next morning.  But, once you jump on the bike, it feels pretty good.  It feels good to ride again.  Not every day feels good, but, it amazes me how you can feel so shitty but once you start pedaling, the legs can actually produce some good power.

This day was the coldest of the entire camp.  Within four hours we wanted to hit a lot of hills so we headed to Summerland.  The ride starts out along the massive Lake Okanagan on a fairly busy 4 lane highway that has a big shoulder.  After 25 minutes, you dip down into some quieter residential streets and pass a lot of lakefront or lakeview houses. 

We then headed up towards the center of Summerland (and up it goes), the first hill is pretty steep.  Then out on the highway to Princeton.  This is actually part of the Ultraman Triathlon Marathon course.  I personally think whoever designed that course is very sadistic!  The ultramarathon is very hilly!  I can’t imagine how sore people’s legs get going done hill after hill after hill on that course.  Brutal.

Just outside summerland there is a nice climb that weaves it’s way to the Camp Boyle turn off.  From there, it flattens out and you get a really quiet road that goes by some acreages and farms till you reach Camp Boyle.  Once you turn around, you can take advantage of the gradual and steep downhills all the way back to Summerland.  However, since we wanted to do a 4hr ride, we decided to take a right turn on the Princeton Hwy instead of going left immediately.  This was a great little climb that finally took us out into the wildnerness where there were no more farms or houses.  Unfortunately, by the time you reach the first peak, the road turns to gravel.  I can not wait for the day when the pave that entire highway.

Now, it was all downhill back to Summerland and then we cruised along the lake to Penticton.  My legs were fried when we got back to town.

Some food, a little break and then it was off for a 70min run in the hills.  I felt quite good and was very pleased to run so well on Day 3. 

Here are the spec’s on the ride:

Entire workout (126 watts):

                Duration:             3:37:10 (3:55:54)

                Work:                    1638 kJ

                TSS:       149.6 (intensity factor 0.643)

                Norm Power:     167

                VI:          1.33

                Pw:HR:                 n/a

                Pa:HR:                   n/a

                Distance:             92.947 km

                Elevation Gain:                  1033 m

                Elevation Loss:                  1036 m

                Grade:                  -0.0 %  (-3 m)

  

And here is the route:

Camp Boyle Loop

Spring Camp – Day 2 – Ode to Craig

While I was writing this summary, I just came across this article on xtri:

Craig Walton Retires

Craig was one athlete I always looked up to.  He won his races by swimming and riding HARD and then holding on in the run.  I will miss watching him.  Maybe after Beijing he will come back and do some racing?

 Back to the camp…

Day 2

Sunday, March 16^th

Jenny, looking back, said Day 2 was her toughest day.  No doubt, we just did our longest ride in months just the day before and we were going longer today.  Nothing crazy, but a 5hr ride nonetheless.  Our bodies were used to going for a run on a day like today (you know, the usual routine, bike long on Saturday, run long on Sunday).  So, today definitely took some mind over matter.

Jenny soon realized and we did too, that it was also about EATING!  She simply did not each very much on Day 1’s ride and had trouble making it up that night.  As a result, her tank was a little empty all day today.  You can get away with it for one day, but when you do consecutive days of volume training, one must EAT!  Plus, we are getting used to volume again so our glycogen stores have probably shrunk over the winter months and not where they were last summer.

We all made sure we started taking more food with us.  Here were some of the favourite foods for riding:

Scott

PB and Nutella on Multigrain bread.

Chocolate Bars (Eat-more or O’Henry’s – part of the reason I moved back to Canada).

1 Power bar all week.

PB and Honey on White Bagels.

Iced Tea

Chocolate Milk

Sarah’s Favorite

Homemade micro-waved potato’s with salt.

Jenny’s Favorite

Tortilla’s rolled around nutella and almond spread (I think).

Looks like I am the pig.  I guess i did not take good enough notes on what the girls were eating…next time I will keep a closer eye.  We all supplemented these solids with our infinit drinks (and I took some concentrated bottles of hot chocolate mix which was not hot at all but so-so good).

Without a sag wagon, every morning was a test to see how much stuff we could fit in our jersey pockets.  I always took a couple of sandwiches with me (see above) and 3 bottles (2 infinit, 1 Hot choc concentrate) of which 1 had to go in my jersey pocket and two on the bike.  That usually was not enough for the 4-6 hour rides.  So, I would supplement with the chocolate bars and drinks at a convenience store.

We headed out along a similar route as yesterday but we added more climbing this time.  It was a really solid day.  I think doing a lot of climbing in the second half of the ride took our minds off of the pain.  This route is not particularly steep but it is a long gradual climb from Oliver up to Yellow Lake.  We stopped at twin lakes where the store had been renovated.  Nice work – they have addeda  lot of goodies (deli, pizza etc…) in that store and it just happens to be the store I frequent the most out here.  500ml of Chocolate milk and I was ready to rip!  That did not last too long, I was bagged by the time we got over Green mountain and ready to hit the couch by the time we descended into Penticton.

After some couch moments.  I got up and did the 40minute run.  It actually felt surprisingly good.  Maybe I am not in such bad shape afterall?  There is hope for me!  The girls did really well, never too far behind me on the climbs.   I could tell Jenny was struggling and starting to second guess herself and her ability to do a big week.  Stay tuned…

Here is the route:

Roughrider Mtn Loop
Find more Bike Rides in Penticton, British Columbia

Fatigue is Personal

If you can relate to this then this article is for you:

“There are a lot of guys out there now who know they are not working as hard other people.  I can’t fathom how they think.” Alberto Salazaar

It is great working with people who are committed to what they are doing.  They build up their fitness and can reach a point where I can really push them.  However, as you probably know, the body simply can not push itself more and more each day.  Recovery is needed.  So, it is tricky (actually impossible) to write the perfect plan which leads to the best possible improvements in performance.  As a coach, I do my best to take people to a higher level than what they could achieve on their own.

It becomes a balancing act of inducing training stimuli to improve performance and prescribing recovery to prevent overtraining.  Overtraining is actually a medical condition and is not something we strive for in training.  Sure there are times when over-reaching is planned.  But, that has to be surrounded by recovery training before and afterwards. 

In my experience, undesirable amount of fatigue can manifest itself in two ways:

1)      Loss of muscular force and achy legs.

2)      Loss of energy and body aches (similar to the flu).

You can read many textbooks on the symptoms of overtraining and I recommend you know them.  You do not need all the symptoms to prove you are overtrained.  Sometimes, only a few are present.  But, that is a long story and something to be explored in my blog at a future date.

The point of this article is to help you figure out what your own body’s signals of over-reaching is.  Know that you have to over reach for a period of time before you become over trained.  When you are over trained it takes weeks and sometimes months to recover.  That is the difference between over reaching and over training.

The ultimate metric to look for is:

A decrease in performance! 

And here are some example body signals to think about and see if you can relate:

Starting consecutive bike rides with achy legs.

Having to really push yourself to get your heart rate into your Mod-hard and Hard zones.

Workout performance that keeps getting worse.  No more improvements and the workouts get tougher when they should not.

Legs burning and/or getting out of breath easily in normal day activities (i.e. going up stairs).

Restless sleep.

Lack of appetite.

And there are many more…

Pay attention to your body and see how it reacts to your workouts and the subsequent weeks of training.   This will help you become a better athlete because you are learning how to recover better.  If you are over-reaching for too long, then you will need to back down (shorten hours and lower the intensity).  Listen to your body as you do this.  You should be able to feel better and better as you crawl out of the hole.  Catch it soon enough and it should only last 3-7 days.  Don’t let it go too long.

Getting faster involves getting tired.  There are not two ways about it.  Learn how to handle it.

 

—Scott

Attempt #2 – Family Unit

AJ_TRI 2007Originally uploaded by scottkmcmillan

Here was AJ, hanging out about a week before his dad (Aleck) raced Clearwater World Championship 70.3.  That is as much as I got posted before our power went out.  Last night a wind storm started and kept blowing for most of the day.  Our power went out around 9am and I was unplugged till 4pm.  What stress! AND we lost the lid to our garbage can!!!  It is probably in Okanagan lake along with everything else.

Here is the rest I had to say:

Aleck had a really good season and no doubt it was largely due to having his family’s support.  Many times throughout the year he mentioned how important it was to him to have such great support from his wife and young boy.  This always has to go both ways.  There is always a give and take in a family but when you can find a good balance between your racing, work and family life then all three stand to benefit.  If something is out of whack then you should really step back, be proactive and try to fix the situation.  You will be happier and you will race better as a result.  My parents always felt family was far and away their #1 priority.  As their son, I benefited from that commitment and I hope to stay true to it as well. 

Although Sarah and I do not have kids (yet).  A family of two can be challenging at times, especially in the early years.  I am lucky to have picked a geat match but there are definetly times when we get on each others nerves.  Sometimes we have to step back and lighten our training or we have to make specific efforts outside of training to contribute to our relationship.

For me, I can start to see when I am training too hard.  We start to get on each other’s nerves.  Irritability is big sign that I (and most people) are starting to over train and if I keep going at the same rate for more weeks that I will eventually burn out.  Sarah is the same way (although I never said that).  On the flip side, it is really fun to go mountain biking, trail running, and to do races together.  Sarah really likes racing Ironman’s together.  I am not so crazy about it.  I actually like it better when we do different races.  Then I get to watch, relax and give support.  When it is my turn to race thne I get the support from her which is nice.  When we both race, things are a little carzy since we are so focused on getting ourselves ready, it is hard to give support to the other.  In both situations, we are getting better at it.

You have to read Aleck’s race report, it is quite inspiring.  He was able to push himself very hard on race day and I think a big part of that is because of his family support and balance he has in his life.  A big part of that balance now means that he is going to really back off training for a few months since work gets really busy and he wants to maintain his family life.

Another athlete I coach makes triathlon racing into a team sport.  Although he does the racing, his family happily helps him out.  Similiar to NASCAR, he is the driver and his family is the pit crew.  When he succeeds, the whole team celebrates as it is a team victory.  And at during other times, I am sure he is the pit crew while his family drives.  Give and take.

Did you watch Clearwater?  It was quite the race!  Once again, the guys who focus on shorter distance racing, came through in the end.  Andy Potts put in a very strong swim and held his own on the bike.  He eventually ran down the race leader and they ran side by side until about 400m was left to go.  Potts put  in a surge that went unanswered.  He won by 4 seconds.  It was a super fast course with fast times.  Bjorn Andersson went under 2hrs for the bike section.  He got the bike prime ($2500, enough to pay for his trip) but clearly went to hard on the bike to run well.  Sometimes you have to gamble.

Carfrae ran away with the women’s race.  She hauled ass on the run.  McGlone ran through the field but could not catch Miranda.  2^nd place though, after a stellar 2^nd place in Kona, is not too shabby. 

We will not talk about the drafting.

I have not heard much about Silveman.  We are in the middle of a wind storm here.  Luckily it is not snowing!   It started last night and the power just went off.  I think everything from town is now in the lake. 

–Scott

Moves to make…

This one is circulating on some of the tri blogs I read, thought I would share.  The majority of the race is about putting yourself in the right position to achieve your goals…then you need to race… 

—Scott 

Triathlete Development Part II

Carrying on from the Decisions, Decisions post (part I)…

In my last post I chatted about the benefit of training and racing short course to later improve over the Ironman distance. 

Lance Watson (Lisa Bentley’s long time coach and now Chris Lieto’s coach) wrote on the same topic but in terms of developing youth.  It is an interesting quick read and (I believe) supports the arguements I made in my previous post.  Check it out at triathlete magazine online.

Now, I would like to take a few steps back and discuss my thoughts on training youth/juniors/seniors.  I am talking about 12-18 year olds.   This is a hotly debated topic amongst coaches.  On one side you have coaches who really empahsize interval training, speed training and racing with young athlete’s.  On the other side you have coaches who beleive this is the prime time to develop their aerobic capacity and plumbing with miles and miles of aerobic training but still race.

In the United States, the common model is to do interval training and train hard for shorter distances.  As the athlete ages then they race longer distances until they find a distance they really like which often coincides with a distance they are good at.  This is even carried on in college programs.  There are exceptions, notably, Wetmore at Univ of CO (Boulder) who is known to drive up the miles with his cross country team.  

On the other side you have coaches like Arthur Lidyard.  I actually went to a talk by Arthur Lidyard in Boulder in 2000.  Lidyard is one of the most famous running coaches in the world as he known for coaching multiple gold medal runners in the Olympics.  He definetly believes in the miles approach.  During the talk, he felt that the US was not doing well in running because there high school and college programs were trying to build winners in high schoold and college.  Later on in college and afterwads the runners simply did not have the durability, were burnt out on hard intervals or simply lacked the the proper aerobic development to do well on the international stage. 

I personally believe Lidyard did a lot of things right in developing his runner’s.  Sometimes when you read about Lidyard secondhand you get the belief that all he prescribed was long runs and big volume.  This is far from the truth.  Although his programs foundation lies in longer runs done 3-6X per week, there is still ample intensity and strength training.  Just not to the same extent as your local track coach may suggest.

With my background in exercise science, years of reading about this stuff and subsequently years of pounding the pavement I truly beleive you need both.  I lean more towards the Lidyard approach though.  Some people think he prescribes runs that are too long for junior high and high school kids.  In his schedules (Running with Lydiard, 2000 published by Meyer and Meyer Sport) he prescribes runs that are 0.75 to 1.5 hrs long for 13-14 year old middle distance runner’s and to do these 3-4 times per week.  The critic’s of this approach usually have two key arguments:

1.  Runs that long are too hard on the developing (growing) athlete.  Damage could be done to their joints.

2.  Runs this long are not good pschologically for these athletes.   

#1 – I have yet to find any evidence that shows running is bad for developing athlete’s.  Especially long (i.e. slow) aerobic running.  If you have a healthy youth, who is taught correct form and progresses properly then you can only improve their bone and joint health.  In today’s soceity, the opposite is usually true.  Those that do not participate do not stimulate bone growth and do not get stronger as they grow and eventually develop bone/jt problems in their adult years.  Plus, I have a hard time beleiving running easy for 60minutes is harder on a developing body then playing hockey, football, soccer or volleyball?

#2 – It is psychologically unhealthy.  Running for 1hr a day is a lot easier than doing farm chores for 1-2hrs a day.  Are we really getting that soft on our youth?  Sure, at first running for 60 minutes is boring, even 30minutes would be boring to most people.  But, if you are a runner or if you have aspirations to be a very good runner then you do it.  Once you get used to it, you actually enjoy it and then you actually crave it.  The only way to get good at something is to do it and then do it some more.  That is the start of learning how to be successful in anything in life.  I could not think of any better psychological lessons to learn than perserverence, commitment, confidence and resilence.  All of which sport (like distance running) can provide.  If you do not put youth in challenging situations they will never learn how to be successful.  It is the same with math, why would it be different for anything else in life.

I am sure there are more critisms out there and maybe I will address them in the future.  But, to start wrapping this up, I think Lance Watson’s arguement in his artice is a great one and I think Lydiard’s model for aerobic development is very important.  Your first impression may be that they are prescribing two totally different programs and  I can not speak for either of them but I think there are a lot more similiarities than there are differences.

An athlete at any age needs a strong aerobic foundation.  This is why we do base training.  This is why we periodize training over many years for Olympic athletes (not just triathletes).  Sure, an Olympic distance triathlete does not need the endurance of an Ironman athlete but they still need a sufficient base and a certain level of aerobic development.  AND, if they want to be fast then they need to do intensity and sport specific strength training.  Even Lidyard places intensity in his programs.  Fartleks, bounds, strides, time trials and even some intervals are part of his program.  If you want to get good then you need to do both (quantity and quality). 

In summary, I beleive it really helps to get fast at shorter distance triathlons before stepping up to half ironmans and ironmans.  But, I think a lot of coaches and athlete’s training for short course events are still lacking the commiment to aerobic mileage that is needed to meet their goals.

In the end, triathlons are aerobic activities that last at least 1hr for most people.  They are not 10, 20 or 30s sprints.

—Scott   

Decisions Decisions – Fast or Slow Training

This is one time of year that a lot of my athlete’s are starting to plan their goals for next season.  Kona (Ironman World Championships) wrapped up last weekend and Clearwater (70.3 World Champs) is about to end.

There are many reasons to hire a coach but one reason is simply to go as fast as you can at your goal race.  For many people this goal is an Ironman.  Some of them have done an Ironman and some have not.  For those that have not done an Ironman it becomes a question of when.  When to actually make that commitment and sign up for an Ironman.  This creates a dilemna for athletes and coaches:

1.  Should they do more short course training (basically work on their speed, threshold and VO2max) before going longer? or,

2.  Should they start doing the long training that really improves their stamina and aerobic threshold speed?

I will tell you a little more about my decisions to put this in perspective:

For me, I primarily just wanted to do an Ironman and finish it.  I guess I really started to consider it after I raced short course for 3 seasons.  In my 3rd season, I went to the Canadian National Short Course Championships and got my ass kicked.  I had an idea of how good the top guys were but I had no idea how good everyone else was going to be in the age groups.  I think that demoralized me a bit and coming up with a new challenge of racing long became very inviting. 

So I signed up for Ironman Canada with no plans of doing another one afterwards and really no plans at all.  After I did finish it though, I got hooked and it became my passion to qualify for Kona.  The race was a great challenge and I enjoyed it but I think I actually enjoyed the training more (except the 5hr trainer ride in Minnesota).

Over the next 5years by doing the long course training I actually became faster at short course.  So, it is possible to do Ironman and actually get faster at short course racing.  There are some coaches who promote this approach to their athletes that have an Ironman in their future plans.  Gordo Byrn comes to mind and i have to admit that I lean this direction with the majority of my athletes since they simply lack good aerobic endurance, durability and stamina.

However, from time to time, I do see younger athletes that could really benefit from doing more short course racing.  I am talking as though both types of training are completely different.  Well, they are not.  There are probably more similarities than there are differences.  Short course racing is still aerobic and is still an endurance event.  Eventually, to go fast at either distance you need to do some long training and you need to do some speed (or tempo/threshold) training.  The biggest difference is in how the plans are periodized.  That is, the percentage of time you do each type of training and when you do that training in your season.

Now you know you can get faster with both types of training.  But, for some athlete’s that is not enough to know.  They want to know how to become as fast as possible.  In Olympic sports, how to develop an athlete is thoroughly studied over many years but is not often looked at in Ironman circles.  However, to me the conclusions are pretty clear.

If you want to be as fast as possible then you should maximize your short course training during your late teens and 20s.  Dave Scott, Mark Allen, Chris McCormack, Norman Stadler, Craig Alexander and on and on were all really fast athletes in their 20s or earlier.  Some in triathlon specifically, while others got really fast in single sport activities.  I think we will see more and more of this as the ITU short course circuit grows.  These athletes will become very fast and when they either have enough or not enough success they will start to cross over to 70.3, Half Ironman and IM distance racing.  We are starting to see this happen more and more.  For instance, both Craig Alexander and Samantha McGlone placed second at Kona this year after only a year of specific preparation for an Ironman.  Prior to that they were very successful short course athletes.

So there you go.  You can get fast both ways, but I think one way is faster than another.  In the end, the type of training you want to do depends on your goals and what your heart desires.

—Scott  

   

What a Day! Ironman Hawaii 2007

Great race to watch!  I was hooked almost all day.

The ironmanlive.com coverage was awesome in my opinion.  It cut out a couple of times but considering what they are doing with the technology…I am very impressed.

Too bad Stadler, Faris and Michellie has rough days.  I was really hoping to see them showdown with the eventual winners.  And who is Wellington?  She did her first IM 8 weeks ago in Korea, recovered, and won Hawaii.  I guess Korea was a good training day for her!  What a natural she is.

Great to see Mcglone and Alexander come home in 2nd in there first go at Kona.  Debuts like that in Kona do not happen very often.

I saw a lot of great bike positions and great running form.  All the pro’s these days are getting dialed in!  Wellington and Macca demonstrated great technique all day.  Hopefully you got to see some it!

—Scott