New Blog

Hey everyone check out one of my friend's new blogs http://triathlon-daily.blogspot.com/. There should be some great interviews and other triathlon related goodies.

Easy Weeks

Contrary to their name I find easy weeks to be some of the toughest in training. Not necessarily physically but mentally. I recently read a blog post by Ryan Hall where he said "I constantly remind myself that resting takes confidence. Anyone can train like a mad man but to embrace rest and to allow all the hard training to come out takes mental strength." I definitely fall into the category of someone who can train like a mad man (and enjoys to), and I am slowly learning to embrace the rest when it comes. The last couple weeks of winter break the volume increased, but I was still feeling great so when the rest week came this week I just wanted to keep hammering. These are the times where I am glad I hired a coach because Cliff knows whats best, and I am confident in his plan (it is easy to have confidence when you are seeing improvements). So this week I will rest so I can go harder in the future.

I also started my new nutrition plan this week. Sunday I went to a class called weight loss for endurance athletes put on at Multisport-Zone by Cliff, and my nutrition plan has been completely reworked. I do not think I have eaten as many vegetables in one day as I did yesterday. With the volume coming up I needed to make some changes that would allow for proper fueling and recovery. I think I will be spending a lot of time on fellow triathlete Cheryl's blog getting some good ideas for food.

Cheers

I just realized for some reason things got highlighted white and were unreadable. I changed it to black so hopefully now it can be read.

Happy New Year

With the new year comes everyone's new year's resolutions, and you can definitely tell at the Western Student Rec Center. The place was packed in there today or maybe it was just because I slept in and went swimming a little later. The holidays have been nice so far because I have been able to do one workout mid morning and another in the evening. I find when I am home it is hard to go to bed early because the rest of my family does not live on that schedule, even though they are awesome. My new year's resolution is to start eating better. To start this off Cliff is sending me to his endurance weight loss class so I can learn some pointers on how to eat better. I did manage to gain some weight from the last time I weighed in, but I am telling myself its muscle from the weight room. Hopefully, this change in diet will translate to better training because I am sure the amount of cookies I eat is not the best fuel for this "finely tuned machine" (right mom and dad :P). This is going to be very important in the next couple of months as the volume starts to pile on. I have some interesting things planned in the new year and can't wait to see some results. I think my first race will be either the 5k or the 10k in London on February 26th. Hope to see some of you out there testing your early season fitness. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, but now its time to get back to work.

Testing Round 2 - Tie Game: Test 1 - Me 1

I am a bit late getting this up but a couple weeks ago I did retesting for running and cycling (swimming is a pain because the lifeguards don't like blood on the pool deck).

The run test was first and we did that on the Saturday morning. It included an approximate 4.4k solo effort. I started out way to fast with the 1st kilometer clocked at 3:10 and gradually slowed down from there. Still managed to run close to 5k pace, and even better news was that my running improved. My zone 1 and zone 2 saw huge jumps and the other zones saw some increases as well. Score: me 1 test 0.

The cycling test was the next day and included a 20k tt. This is the longest hard effort I have done since training started back up in September. This did not go as well as I hoped it would and we saw very little improvement. Score: me 1 test 1.

This next phase is going to put more emphasis on the bike and run as we build on the swim focus of the last couple months. We are going to be throwing in some tempos and hills to try and build some strength in these chicken legs. We have another 800m swim tt on Wednesday, and I have been feeling amazing after the swim camp. I am sure my time will be faster; the question is just how much?

I probably will not post again until after exams so good luck to all the students on their December finals. Happy Holidays

P.S. I hate rain

Swim Camp

This last weekend we did a mini swim camp to finish up the first training block of the season. My swim has been feeling great lately, and others have commented on how my stroke has improved night and day. This weekend we put all that training to the test with a double Friday, double Saturday, and a single Sunday. We ended up swimming over 20k in those three days, and I ended up with just over 27k for the week. Prior to this the most I ever swam in a week was 25k so to do 20k in just three days was tough.

Friday was actually the worst day of the three. I am not sure if I was just to pumped up for the weekend, tired from writing lab reports all day, or maybe it was just one of those rough day. Either way I had absolutely no gas. The second swim consisted of struggling through some 400s, and praying the whole weekend was not going to be this bad.

Saturday was the biggest day, and we did two swim of approximately 4200 and 4800. I was in the zone for these and just focused on what ever intervals were in front of me and not worrying. We did a hard set of 50s and managed to swim a couple 35s (scm) which I can't complain about when my pb is 33.

Sunday was the final day and just consisted of 4100m. We did a lot of fins today as our arms were dying and ready to fall off. The very last thing of the camp though was a 200m for time. I went out hard giving everything I had knowing that 200m was nothing when I looked back on the whole weekend. I managed to swim 2:35ish which I think is a pb.

All in all the swim camp was excellent, and I am running on a mental high after completing it. This week is super easy to recover from all the training in the last few weeks and let it sink in. The next phase is going to involve some hard running and cycling and my first test (Santa Shuffle 5k at Victoria Park).

What did you do this weekend?

Midterms are done

Midterms are finally over which coincides perfectly with a small up in training. I am already seeing tons of improvements in my running and swimming, but haven't done any real tests on the bike yet. My 800m tt in the pool dropped a minute in 4 weeks (the first time I had to do a 400 and 200 afterwards so maybe some difference mentally). I am super excited by that, and I should only get faster as we start to increase the volume a bit. This weekend I did a run set of 3x1mile with 90 seconds rest and felt amazing (5:11, 5:15, 5:19). The last time I did mile repeats I did 5 with 5 minutes rest and only went 5:25 5:16 5:20 5:30 5:44. I am going to be doing the Santa Shuffle 5k in a couple weeks, and get a real test of where I am at. If I can run a pb this early in the season that will be awesome.

I hope everyone's training is also going well. Remember triathlon is a winter sport played out in the summer.

Triathlon As A University Sport

After reading THIS article it made me think of triathlon at the university level in Canada. . . O wait triathlon at the university level in Canada is almost nonexistent. I can't speak for out west or out east, but from what I have seen in Ontario and heard from talking to people is that most schools do not have triathlon clubs. Those that do are not places for elite development but introduction. Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with that, but there needs to be another level. That next level may be pushing for triathlon to be a "competitive club"/varsity team or just having coached groups that keep running year round. There are a few hot spots such as Guelph where triathletes who have gotten into the sport prior to going off to school end up, but from my (small) amount of knowledge they are not involved with the university except the couple that may be on other varsity teams. In Ontario we have the UMS which basically consists of Queen's, Western, and Waterloo and has a couple races each year. This is a great spot to start recruiting as the athletes already have a bit of interest in triathlon. Why not coordinate these clubs with Triathlon Ontario and use it to recruit new people to triathlon. This is how I got my start and a couple other I know got started as well. We had to do this on our own though. My first year I knew nothing about triathlon, and besides a couple teammates there wasn't anyone to help. Here is a great idea . . . what if Triathlon Ontario came to the UMS championships. The night before there could be a dinner with a couple guest speakers. This would allow them to possibly get more members (money) and enlighten new comers to what is all out there. Along with this if they see potential in someone they could actively recruit them and direct them to clubs in that persons area. This would take worth from both the school clubs and Triathlon Ontario, but why not have a sanctioned race. I do not think the costs would increase to much.

Now for recruiting from other sports, and I think this is where the development system would benefit the greatest. Maybe this is just the American in me, but why not try to get the best athletes into triathlon. I am sorry if I offend any of my Canadian runner friends, but lets be serious only a small handful of runners in the CIS are going to be running on the national and international level after graduation. Most of the good Canadian runners are running in the NCAA, but the majority of runners in the CIS would make world class runners in triathlon. Triathlon Canada's world standard for U23s is sub 15 for the 5k and each varsity team probably has at least one guy who can do this. Last year in the CIS 21 guys ran the U23 world standard in the 3k and another 11 ran the intermediate standard. Then it would just take a little bit of work to see which ones may have done some swimming in high school or use swimming for cross training, and tada you have a potential world class triathlete. I don't know much about swimming, but it seems like every varsity swim team is full of guys who can swim sub 18 for the 1500. Yes it is hard to become good at the other sports, but they already have the aerobic engine and the work ethic.

This may not make any sense at all. I know my ideas flow terribly, but I am just putting my ideas onto paper for you all to read.

Cheers