by Mimi Winsberg, M.D.

I often joke that the endurance sports community is rife with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD is defined as an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors and rituals aimed at reducing anxiety.

Nowhere is this more manifest than in athletes' pre-race rituals and superstitions. As an important race looms, triathletes find themselves needing to eat specific foods, wear lucky clothes, look for significance in their race number, groom in particular ways (shave, paint nails, braid hair), listen to certain music, and do ritualized pre-race workouts and warm-ups. Some athletes need to carry a family photo or lucky charm on race day.

John Cobb, bike fit and aerodynamics expert, recently took the time to answer Endurance Corner team member questions. We're sharing his responses as part of a series throughout the summer. In this second part, John provides answers to questions about hilly courses.

by Gordo Byrn

This past week, we hosted our annual Boulder Summer Camp and I was very fortunate to be able to line up the following folks to assist us:

• World Champions - Chrissie Wellington and Craig Alexander
• Olympians - Laura & Greg Bennett and Matt Reed
• Ironman Champions - Chuckie V and Marilyn McDonald
• US National Road and TT Champion - Kimberly Baldwin
• Olympic Gold Medalist Coach - Bobby McGee
• Pro Tour Cycling Coach - Dirk Friel

This week I am going to share ideas, some unconventional, that caught my attention as we rolled through camp.

by Larry Creswell

I’ve noticed that my triathlete friends often give short shrift to some of the warning signs of potentially worrisome problems -- problems that stem from the heart or vascular system. This is particularly true for my male athlete friends! Young “healthy” men just don’t like to go to the doctor. I think that athletes like to believe they’re invincible, ignoring serious warning signs until they just simply can’t be ignored any longer. But just like plantar fasciitis, for example, it’s always best to recognize and deal with any serious heart-related problem earlier rather than later.

by Sue Aquila

Here is what I have learned about tapering in the last 10 years.

It works. Being fit with less fatigue is huge.

There are more ways to taper than there our races. I have tried virtually all of them: the no taper, the step taper, the swim taper, the gradual taper and the do nothing taper. Each works to varying degrees and results.

by Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

As long course athletes, we have some unique fitness requirements when it comes to race day performance -- requirements that may or may not be accurately expressed by the plethora of short duration fitness tests that fill the popular training literature: Functional Threshold Tests (that we abridge because the full 60 minutes hurts too much J), CP5s, VO2max tests, VDOTS, Lactate Threshold tests, etc, etc. While these tests are a good indicator of how fast an athlete is, they don’t deal very well with the other element of the ironman performance equation -- endurance. Put another way, how long can the athlete hold a given speed/percentage of his or her max fitness?

by Marilyn McDonald
 
This week we are talking about the oh so controversial taper. There are many different ideas and plans for tapering. I've heard as extreme as people saying they don't taper at all, to people who start tapering a month out from key events.
 
I have watched, listened and tried most different types of tapers over the years. My overall summary leans with my overall beliefs on training: we are all different creatures with different situations and levels of fitness and goals, so therefore many different protocols work or may not work in many different situations.

by Gordo Byrn

Where I think many of us go "wrong" is our interpretation of what it takes to appropriately train our minds. Most people train capacity to absorb pain and "be hard" -- in fact, performance is about being fluid, rather than being hard.

Are you training the mental skills required to perform... or spending mental mojo on pain tolerance... or simply adding stress/fatigue to your life?

Here at Endurance Corner, a lot of our team members have a wide variety of talents beyond triathlon. Vince Matteo, an EC athlete from California, gives us his recipe for Four Alarm Chili -- just because the temperature is heating up for most of North America doesn't mean it's a bad time for chili!

by Nick Mathers, EC Team Member

This month we sat down with with Larry Creswell, M.D., a cardiac surgeon in Jackson, Mississippi, and another of Endurance Corner's expanded writing team. Larry's going to be traveling to his fourth international ironman this year and he shares his thoughts on racing out of the country, as well as providing insights into healthy living.

by Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

In previous articles on "getting to know your enemy" I looked at minimal power/gear requirements to get around different courses in good shape. In this final article in the series, I want to investigate the question of: "what if you have some extra energy/power to play with? What is the best place to use this extra mojo on different types of courses?"

by Mimi Winsberg, M.D.

After spending months preparing for our A-races with laser-like focus, we toe the line and give it our best effort. A great outcome can make for a big rush of excitement, and a less than desired outcome can leave us with regret or disappointment.

With successful results the euphoria might last hours or even days. But, regardless of outcome, there is a point when the post-race buzz fades and we are left wondering, “OK, now what?” In considering how our minds work, this is probably a pretty typical response.

by Gordo Byrn

When you look at what most athletes "do," you will quickly see that their training is not about goal race performance. Rather, training is driven by other factors in their lives -- most typically habit and peer group. If performance matters then understanding the emotional component of your nutritional choices is an essential starting point.

by Jonas Colting

Jonas gives us his latest culinary masterpiece.

John Cobb, bike fit and aerodynamics expert, recently took the time to answer Endurance Corner team member questions. We'll share his responses over the coming weeks as part of a series. Up first: questions and answers about bike fit.

by Jonas Colting

I live vicariously through my dreams and yearnings. Dreams of new horizons. Yearnings of the simplest of days where the road itself is the goal. To move between two dots on the map under the steam of my own engine. The adventure disguised in a workout.

by Marilyn McDonald

The long brick is very specific to long distance triathlon. If you are preparing for a half or longer, it's a good workout to include once every two weeks or 10 days.

The session teaches you appropriate pacing, if your fueling strategy is going to work and how to manage yourself across the switch from bike to run. It also builds the endurance you will need for a long event.

by Gordo Byrn

When people start working with me, they are often confused by my lack of interest in high intensity benchmarking. In fact, they are absolutely itching to blast 5- and 20-minute best effort benchmarks. While high intensity efforts have a role in exercise physiology, the information they offer isn't all that useful in assessing your aerobic stamina -- triathlon performance is dominated by your aerobic stamina.

Most of us want to avoid the dreaded "zero" in our training logs, but sometimes deciding to skip a session or cut a workout short is the best decision. We asked some of our extended writing team to share their thoughts on when they'll opt out of a training session.

by Justin Daerr

It’s starting to get a little warm outside.

I left Boulder the last couple weekends and traveled to Memphis, Tennessee and Austin. In those particular locations, it’s starting to get hot and that is not going to change until Halloween candy starts making the rotation again (right alongside Christmas decorations). Almost all of us (minus my Norwegian triathlete buddies) are going to have to cope with some warm weather training and racing this summer.

by Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

In the last article on getting to "Know Your Enemy" we took a look at how athletes can best make use of the new mapping technology available to all of us via the internet. In that piece I suggested that it’s very much "worth the trouble" to download the elevation data to a spreadsheet so that you can see what sort of grades you’re dealing with over the course of your A race. So you’ve got lots of nice little numbers in front of you right now. The next question is, "what information can be derived from this sort of data?"

by Gordo Byrn

Triathletes, as a demographic, share an attraction to Big Jobs. I can remember the first time I ever heard about an Olympic distance race... "You swim a mile, then ride twenty five miles then run 10K. That's insane!" My work colleague that was telling me about the race said that he had a buddy that was training for a triathlon who would do three sports in a day and train for more than two hours on the weekend! Clearly a nutter...

by Marilyn McDonald

When I came into triathlon I had never swum a lap. Not one! I knew how to play in the water from when I was a kid, but I never actually knew how to do a stroke of freestyle. My background was riding a horse. That said, I did run around from competition ring to competition ring and I rode a bike everyday to get to the farm. But I lived inland in Alberta and hated getting wet, so there was no swimming for me as a kid. There were no swim lessons in country southern Alberta (why would you need to... you ride horses and if you're a boy you play hockey).

Where am I going with this? One big part of understanding your potential in triathlon is looking back at what you did all through your childhood. I can talk a lot about this subject but I'd type forever -- for this article I'm just going to stick with my hardest challenge: swimming.

by Sue Aquila

When I was younger I thought everyone had unlimited potential. The American way is that we are all capable of succeeding beyond our wildest dreams.

Flash forward 20 years later and I see potential differently. I have come to the point in my life where I am completely underwhelmed by potential. Today when someone describes potential it usually ends with a reference to a person's failure or their business failure. "But (insert name here) had so much potential."

Now most people will read the above paragraph and think, "Wow, she is a pessimist." Actually, I am a raging optimist who has come to believe that reaching our goals has nothing to do with our potential.

by Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

As race dates draw near, many athletes are beginning to enter their final race preparation phase in the lead up to their "A" event.

In my world, this means building the athlete’s key workouts around the specific demands of the race and the race course. You’ll notice that I distinguish between the two. Not all ironmans are created equal. Some, such as Lake Placid, are characterized by solid climbing followed by a good amount of rest while descending –- an interval workout of sorts, while others such as Florida are more akin to sticking your bike in one gear and grinding away on a trainer for six hours (for some of my guys who live in rolling terrain, this is exactly what preparing for a flat course feels like).

by Larry Creswell, M.D.

It’s springtime and for many triathletes (at least in the northern hemisphere) this season is already underway. We’ve laid out race schedule, we’ve sketched out a training plan for the year, the bike’s been tuned up, we’ve lined up some new gear, and we’re ready to go.

I’d like you to add one more item to your early season check-list: a check-up. For you.