There are several schools of thought regarding proper triathlon bike fit. One school says you should be as aero as possible. Another says you should be as comfortable as possible. I say, it really depends.

The first thing you should know is that your success in the bike segment of your triathlon has a lot to do with your bike fit. A good fit will not only make you fast but will help you conserve energy. While you’re never going to feel completely “fresh” when you get off the bike in a triathlon, you want to feel as fresh as you can.

Proper bike fit really begins with the right size frame. I remember Dan Empfield said at his annual bike fit camp that this same guy would come every year to have Dan look at his fit. And every year Dan told him simply that he had the wrong size frame. If you’ve got the wrong size frame you simply can’t get a good bike fit.

So how do you assure that you get the right size frame? Go to a reputable bike shop. A great bike shop, like Edge Cyclesports in Laguna Hills, will never sell you a bike that’s the wrong size. Hank would send you somewhere else to buy it rather than sell you the wrong one. Ask around; if you talk to enough people you’ll find a good bike shop.

One of the first questions, in my opinion, a bike fitter should ask you is what your primary race distance is. This has everything to do with how you’re fit to your bike. The reason is that you can afford a little less comfort if you race mainly sprint races. A more aero position will help you slice through the wind better so what you give up in comfort is made up by being faster.

On the other hand, if you’re racing mainly Ironman distance triathlons your comfort is critical. To try to race in an extremely aggressive aero position for 4 – 7 hours would be too much for anyone. Here, you’re looking for a balance between being aerodynamic and comfortable (that’s assuming you can actually be comfortable while riding for 7 hours).

While it would be nice to say that there was a perfect set of metrics you could use to optimize your bike fit it simply doesn’t exist. Yes, there are surely guidelines that provide a good place to start but it’s a very personal thing.

I’ve been fit on my Cervelo P3 by two very good fitters. The first was Hank at Edge. I totally respect Hank and what he knows about the sport. He got my fit in the ballpark and I was quite happy with it.

As my cycling progressed I wanted to know if I could possibly get more power out of my bike by tweaking my fit a bit. This time I went to one of the true icons in cycling and triathlon, John Howard.

John is a “trip.” He’s 60 something now and still a tremendous cyclist. He’s definitely an old school guy and goes by gut but still uses much of today’s technology in his bike fitting.

John will size you up and will make some general observations about your fit. He’ll then pull out his goniometer and take some measurements. Then he’ll put your bike on the CompuTrainer and give you a couple of power tips after he’s tweaked your fit. After about 2 ½ hours you’ll be on your way with a great fit.
Since the time John fit me I’ve only made one adjustment to my seat height – I raised it about one centimeter. That’s it. Today I’m totally confident I’ve got the right fit for the kind of racing I do.

How’s your fit?

You know what I mean, when you see another runner coming the other way and you say “hello” and they completely ignore you? What’s up with that?

I’ll never snub another athlete (purposely). In fact, I go out of my way to say hello. Here’s what I do: I’ll attempt to make eye contact with you, and if I do, I’ll say hello or at least give you a quick wave. If you’re looking at your feet I probably won’t say anything . . . unless . . .

Years ago, on one of my old running routes I used to pass this same woman nearly every time I went out. She ignored me every single time! I really thought this was odd behavior because we were both out there and saw each other all the time.

One day, I’m not sure why, perhaps just for fun, I said a loud “hello” and scared the crap out of her. Well, at least I got a good laugh from it. She continued to snub me.

Here’s how I look at it: We’re both out there and we’re working hard so why not be sociable. Hell, what if one of us has heart attack out there? I’m more likely to execute my CPR skills for someone I know as opposed to someone that snubs me all the time. Well, maybe I’ll do the CPR but don’t make me work too hard!
The funniest example of the “running snub” was in the 2001 or 2002 Ironman World Championships (I don’t remember which is was) when Tim Deboom (who won both years) was in the lead on the run and passed Nichole, his wife, on the course. She yelled and waved and he totally snubbed her. I’ll bet he had some explaining to do later that day!

Now, I do have to say, that when I’m racing the odds that you’ll get the running snub from me is 50/50. Please don’t take it personally but I can really get into the zone sometimes and just don’t pay attention to what’s going on around me. So please accept my apologies if I don’t flash the “shaka” when we pass.
One of the absolute best elements of the athletic community is how we support each other. I’ve made lots of friends through my athletics and I cherish each one. Seems only right that we at least say hello to one-another.

Cheers!

Ron Saetermoe

I love to race! All types of races and all distances. But my favorite running race is the half marathon. And if you’re considering doing a 70.3 or Ironman distance race it should be one of your favorites too!

The reason I like the half marathon for endurance triathlons is because it’s long enough to really challenge you while allowing you to recover in a relatively short time.

Here are some tips on how to make your next half marathon a complete training success:

1. If your half marathon is on Sunday keep your long Saturday bike ride. This will allow you to run on well-worked legs and will help simulate the fatigue you’ll feel when you get off the bike.

2. Pick a pace that will be significantly faster than your projected pace for your 70.3 or Ironman. This will vary for each athlete but to give you an example, my normal half marathon pace is around 7:00 per mile while my pace at Ironman 70.3 California was 7:46. So a target for your half marathon might be between 30 seconds and one minute faster per mile than your 70.3 pace. For an Ironman your pace might be one minute to two minutes faster.

3. Keep track of your pace on every mile. Make sure you use the lap feature on your sports watch so you can see how you’re doing. I don’t know about you but math becomes very difficult when I’m breathing hard so I let my watch tell me how I’m doing.

4. Most courses aren’t perfectly flat so you’re going to see some variance in your pace. However, if the course isn’t too hilly, I actually try to maintain the same pace throughout the run. I accelerate up the hills and coast down the hills. Yes, this is more challenging than allowing the terrain dictate your pace but when I’m training, I want challenging.

5. Start out with a slightly slower base and build from there. For example, you might run your first mile 10 seconds slower than your goal pace, the second mile 5 seconds slower and then run your goal pace until you reach mile 11. At mile 11 you’d go 5 seconds faster than your goal pace and at mile 12 you’d go 10 seconds faster. That way it all evens out and you finish with your goal pace.

6. How do you figure your goal pace? Try going to www.mcmillianrunning.com and use their race predictor. The figures seem a little aggressive, but I guess that’s what you want. For example, I put in a 10K best time of 40:18 which is a pace of 6:30 per mile. Based on their formula, I should be able to run a half marathon at 1:29:41. Sounds good!

7. If you’re going to run your half marathon less than three hours don’t be too concerned about your nutrition. More is not better when you’re racing under three hours. You won’t need solid food or even gels – both of which can cause GI distress you really don’t need. Trust me; if you’ve eaten well the night before and had a good breakfast, you’re only going to need the calories the sports drink on the course will provide. Your goal should be to grab a cup of sports drink at every aid station. That will be plenty.

8. Find someone going your same projected pace if you can. A lot of the larger half marathons have “pacers” that you can run with to help you reach your target time. If not, try to find someone you know, or perhaps, someone you’d like to know, and run with them. Once the crowd thins out you can usually find someone to key off of . . . preferably someone that doesn’t want to hold a conversation.

9. Allow yourself at least three to four days to recover from your half marathon. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work out, but make your workouts a bit easier and stay away from running.

10. Don’t do a half marathon any closer than three weeks prior to a 70.3 or Ironman event. You really want time to properly recover before your big event.

Check your race calendar now. There are lots of half marathons coming up between December and March.

In my opinion, every triathlete should have a coach. If you read the triathlete magazines you’ll see that even the elite in the sport have coaches; even those that have been in the sport many years.

Naturally, being a triathlon coach, I’m biased to coaching but I firmly believe that if you want to do your best you’ll get one.

This time of year I talk to a lot of athletes that are interested in obtaining the services of a coach. I enjoy these conversations because they’re filled with so much hope for the coming year. Which races should I enter? How much training will I have to do? What equipment do I need? It’s all really great.
Of course, being motivated now is the easy part. The tough part is all the hours and thousands of miles of training ahead.

Here are some of the people that have coached me: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and Michael McCormack and Michael Collins. Not too shabby, right? Here’s the thing, they all have different styles and different opinions. So what do you do?
Here’s how to get the most out of your coach:

• Interview him/her to make sure there’s a connection on a personal level. If you’re not compatible on a personal level just find another coach. Is there a Match.com for triathlon coaches? Hummm!

• During the interview have him/her discuss their coaching philosophies. For example, what do they think the appropriate volume of training should be for your primary race distance? If you don’t think there’s a fit, move on.

• How long have they been in the sport? I hate to say this but anyone can get certified as a triathlon coach. Personally, I’ve been doing triathlons since 1983.

• Do they have an organized approach? One thing they don’t teach you in triathlon school is how to put together an organized training approach. At Triathica we start by assessing your fitness and develop a plan based on your fitness and your key races. Are their workouts clear? Do you understand EXACTLY what you’re supposed to do?

• Do they give you feedback? Feedback is critical to your improvement.

• Are they excited about the sport? If triathlon is just a job to them it won’t be much fun for you. You want someone that’s going to get excited about hearing about your plans and your accomplishments.

Now is the time if you’re going to do it. I’m working with my athletes right now on their calendars and their training plans for 2011. Make next year your best year in the sport yet and get yourself a coach.

I’ve talked about it here several times. Is yours done? Your 2011 calendar?

In some cases the races you might be considering are filled up already. For example, I heard that the 2011 Ironman Arizona filled up in 35 minutes. Oh well!

However, there are still plenty of great races still available, but don’t wait too long because you never know when they’re going to fill up.

Here’s my calendar for next year, so far:

January 8: SoCal ½ marathon – I like ½ marathons because they help me with my leg speed and don’t take too long to recover from. It takes me over a week to recover from a straight marathon.

February 13: San Dieguito ½ marathon – This is a hilly run in San Diego county. This will help me run in the hills and the venue is beautiful.

March 6: Desert Triathlon (Olympic) – A great early season race to help sharpen my race skills and improve my endurance.

April 2: California Ironman 70.3 – Sold out long ago this is the premier SoCal 70.3. This will be my first attempt at qualifying for the Ironman World Championships in Kona. Only one Kona slot and tons of competition!

May 7: Ironman St. George – Lots of my tri buddies are doing this one and it is still open. A very tough course. I’ll really have had to practice my hill climbing for this one. My second attempt (if needed) to qualify for Kona.

June 4: Hawaii Ironman 70.3 – If I don’t qualify at California or St. George I’ll go to Hawaii to do this one. If I do qualify I’ll blow this off. No need to go to Kona twice in one year . . . although it is a great race.

July ?: Carlsbad Triathlon – This is a really great sprint triathlon. Lots of hills and lots of fun. Gives me a chance to improve my speed and compete against my sprint specialist pals like Russ Jones and Stuart Glick.

August?: Camp Pendleton Triathlon – Another great local sprint triathlon.

September 11: 70.3 Worlds – If I’m lucky enough to qualify, I’ll be here. A very tough 70.3 – one I never considered until they moved it to Lake Las Vegas for 2011.

October 8: Ironman Worlds – This is the big daddy of all triathlons around the world. It was a privilege to race here this year. It will be again in 2011 . . . I just have to qualify.

November and December are open at this point. I won’t be going back to Ironman Arizona in 2011 because I’ve done that race three times before and there isn’t enough time to adequately recover from Kona if I’m lucky enough to get in.

That’s my year. How’s yours shaping up? Share with us, post it below.

Cheers!

Ron Saetermoe

In the last 15 or so years, certain discoveries regarding stroke technique have moved the ball forward for triathletes who are looking to have an overall relaxed swim with energy left over to power through the rest of the race and improve their times.

But the next level of swimming is here- and it involves this concept of not only having that energy left over, but actually getting FASTER in the water and improving swim times by leaps and bounds!

We are kicking off the new year with an exciting 1-day clinic in Southern California at a fantastic price. To find out more, click on:

http://learntoswimfaster.com

The catch and the pull have been areas that are often overlooked when it comes to traditional triathlon swimming. Not anymore! Not only will we be covering some of the basics in this clinic, as well as doing video critiques of each swimmer’s stroke, we will be teaching the methodology that allowed 5’2 Sheila Taormina to compete at the Olympic level in freestyle against women an entire foot taller than her!

If you are doing lots of drills and even perfecting balance and swimming on your side, but not gaining speed in the water, this clinic is for you!

Find out how to leapfrog over the competition in 2011 by going to

http://learntoswimfaster.com

We are limiting participants to just 25, so if you are interested you will need to act on this quickly. Spots are filling up and we’re not sure when we will be offering the clinic again!

It will be a chance to start your year off right in the swim… and get to the next level with Olympic-caliber instruction!

We hope your season or off-season is going well, and I look forward to seeing you soon in California!

Kevin Koskella & Oguz Yildiz

P.S. We will be offering some take-aways with the clinic, so you can continue to review and improve throughout the year! To sign up go to
http://learntoswimfaster.com

Triathletes have a really tough time with recovery . . . we simply don’t give it the respect it deserves.
You may not know it, but your muscles actually develop during rest, not exercise. That’s the time that the muscles repair themselves so they can come back stronger than before.

The trick with recovery is knowing how and when to apply it.

Here at Triathica we suggest a three-week training cycle for our athletes. The first week is a “Moderate” week which means it’s a hard week. The second week is called a “Maximum” week which, as the name suggests, is a very hard week. We then follow that up with a “Minimum” week which is designed to allow your body to absorb all of the hard work you’ve done.

In addition to the three-week cycle, you should also be allowing your body some recovery time every week. At times that may mean an entire day off or an easy workout (recovery workout). In any case your body needs this time to allow you to really put in a quality workout later in the week.

There are some signs that will tell you if you’re getting enough recovery time. For example, if you’re having trouble sleeping or have extremely low energy. If you’re having trouble motivating yourself to do a particular workout or an elevated heartrate.

In my case, after having done the Ironman World Championships I got a bad cold. The timing was terrible because I had Ironman Arizona just six weeks later.

Knowing that I needed to rest after my race anyway, and that it was best to try to get my cold out of the way, I took an entire week off from any form of exercise. The problem was that when I started back to exercising after that my heart rate was elevated. The way I know that is that I do certain workouts each week on my CompuTrainer and treadmill that I repeat (these are also referred to as “marker sets”) and when I did one workout my heart rate was 20 beats per minute faster than my heart rate just before Kona.

Clearly, I wasn’t recovered from my Ironman or my cold. To try to get ready for Ironman Arizona I knew I would have to get some quality training in but my elevated heart rate told me that would be difficult.

I did the best I could within those six weeks, trying to balance workouts and rest, but at 55 I didn’t succeed the way I would have liked to. If you read my IMAZ race report you’ll see that I had two major breakdowns: my cycling power and my running endurance.

At IM Kona I managed to maintain 200 watts on my bike the entire race whereas I was only able to maintain 164 on my bike at IMAZ. Sure, that was good enough for 8th, which isn’t bad, but I was shooting for 190 watts.

In addition, my goal for the marathon was a 3:45 or 8:35 per mile pace. Sure, this was aggressive but I felt 4:00 tops (9:00 pace) was reasonable. I was able to maintain a 9:00 pace for the first 11 miles but completely bonked afterwards. The run/walk ensued.

It was clear to me that I was not fully rested for IMAZ. My nutrition was good, my training leading up to the race was good, everything was good, except my recovery.

The moral of the story is that you should not underestimate the importance of proper recovery and listen to your body. If it’s telling you you’re not ready for a hard workout, back off.

In May of 2008 I went to a Multisports camp prior to Ironman Coeur d’Alene. It was a great experience and I got to meet Paul Huddle, Paula Newbie-Fraser and Michael Lovado.

I also got to meet Jimmy Riccatello. You may know that name because he used to ride with Lance Armstrong and is the head referee for Ironman North America.

Anyway, part of our camp included riding one loop of the Ironman course and as luck would have it, I rode with Jimmy. We had the opportunity to talk about a lot of stuff over the course of the ride including compact cranks.

I’d never heard the term before that camp but Jimmy was a very strong advocate of them so I paid attention. When I returned from my camp the idea was validated by Larry (Lar Dog) Davidson who already had them installed on his bike.

Essentially, compact cranks are a set of chainrings designed to help you maintain a higher cadence, much like a third chainring would do. Since the common thinking in today’s cycling is that higher cadence is better (around 90) than lower, compact cranks help you with that goal.
A typical crankset would have a 53-tooth outer chainring and 39-tooth inner chainring. A typical compact crankset has 50-tooth outer and 34 inner allowing you to maintain a higher cadence, particularly when climbing.

There are some other up- and down-sides to compact cranks but for the majority of triathletes the main issue is preserving your energy while climbing by maintaining a higher cadence.
We’ve addressed the topic of cadence before in Triathica Weekly so hopefully you’re on-board with the idea that higher cadence relates to faster speed while minimizing work. If you can save your legs on the bike you’ll have a better run.

Another consideration when going to compact cranks is whether your rear gear cassette needs to be changed. Because your cranks are smaller your cassette may need to be changed in order to allow you to maintain speed in the flats and not “spin out” of your gears going downhill. For example, if your cassette has 12-25 gears you may want to change it to an 11-23 so you’ll still have the ability to pedal, rather than coast, downhill.

Should you rush right out and get a set of compact cranks? In my opinion, yes. But don’t take my word for it. Go visit your favorite bike shop and ask them about it. Undoubtedly they’ll have an opinion on the subject and help decide on the brand, configuration and whether or not you need ceramic bearings as well.

Last week I wrote about race week and how to deal with all of the excitement and anxiety so I thought this week I’d write about the week after your race.

Hopefully, you had a great race and you’re basking in the glow of your brand new winner’s medal. No? Don’t worry, there are very few of us that win those darn things – they are truly elusive.

Depending on the length of your race and how often you race your feelings may be very different. For me, this has been a very long, but great, season. I hate to see it end, but I definitely need a break.

For those of you that do long-course triathlons (70.3 and Ironman) you’re going to need some down-time. For you short-course folks, you’ll still need a rest but just not as much. Here’s my rule of thumb:

Sprint: taper 4 days before and 4 days after
Olympic: taper one week before and one week after
70.3: taper two weeks before and two weeks after
Ironman: taper three weeks before and three weeks after

Of course, this is the ideal arrangement but sometimes you’ll have other races scheduled within those timeframes that don’t allow a full rest so you’ll have to improvise. That’s okay but be sure you prioritize your races so you don’t burn yourself out on your “B” race and can’t “race” your “A” race.

Since it’s the end of the season there are three, maybe four, primary things you’ll want to concentrate on:

1. Rest and repair
2. Cross-training
3. Strength training
4. Dieting

If you’ve had a big season with lots of racing you really need to give your body a rest. If you’ve been monitoring your resting heart rate daily you’ll see that after a big race it will be elevated. Mine was elevated for three entire weeks after Ironman Kona. Allow yourself a break.

Now is the perfect time to integrate some cross-training into your schedule. If you haven’t been doing any yoga or Pilates this would be a great time to do so. Hiking, skiing, roller blading, kayaking, etc. are all great forms of cross-training.

While you should be doing strength training all year, the off-season is a great time to start or increase these efforts. During the season if you trash yourself too much in the gym you may not be able to do quality swim, cycling and run workouts. In the off-season . . . trash away!
Your weight will go down if you train but if you eat more while in a period of training you may not lose weight, or may actually gain weight. It is also not advisable to lose too much weight while you’re training and racing because your performance may suffer. So if you’ve got a few pounds to lose, attempt to do so in the off-season.

Rest up and get ready for next season!

Cheers!