Long Course Clinic Notes

The photo is more from Halloween -- the moose antlers were a gift from a good friend on my 31st birthday. I dug them out of storage from my candy duties. We had high margin candy, word spread in the neighbourhood and I was reduced to dealing out PRIA bars after a mere 60 mintues. Groups of 10-12 kids started turning up, some only wearing track suits!

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I'm writing this from my hotel desk in Hong Kong. I signed a stack of financial accounts down in the business centre and packed them off to FedEx. So my business trip is officially over. All that remains is an afternoon flight to Auckland and an early morning connection to Brisbane.

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Day One of the clinic started with Monica & Andy handling the swim session. I'd never seen my brother-in-law in action and he was an impressive guy. I think that I'll rope him into my tri team in Boulder -- more on the team in my next post (from the Southern Hemisphere).

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For Day Two, we had Susan Williams (the most humble olympic medalist I've met); Bobby McGee and Tim Hola (fresh off a <9 IM in Kona, studly). What follows is a mix of notes and thoughts that were inspired by their presentations. I'm not going to spend a lot of time making the notes "make sense" so I hope you get something from them.

The #1 thing that I learned last weekend wasn't at the clinic. It was in an email that my buddy KP shared with me. We've been taking about some changes that I've been making in my life and he shared the following that he had read recently. It's worth a moment of reflection...

"...the struggle is sometimes hard to see because it is not a struggle between good and evil as much as it is a struggle between the good and the best...

"...the good is always an enemy of the best because the good is so good; it has the feel of good, but ultimately it is less useful because it is not the best."

Those lines above sum up everything that I've learned in my adult life and explain why an ethical life devoted to excellence is, on reflection, the only option for personal satisfaction.

Back to the clinic...

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Susan talked about Barb building up to sets of 3x100 on the stretch cords -- we need some of those for Noosa!

Tim's program at 24 hours per week in the big weeks shows why he's so dominant. For a working athlete to hit that schedule in his on-weeks shows a mastery of recovery and scheduling.

Tim's tips for what to do outside of training -- W.I.N. and mental attitude -- show where he gets a little extra out of himself and his training.

Tim shared this... "See Your Goals Every Day". Reminded me that I need to print out my goals and paste them up in Noosa. FYI -- I had an "8:29 Ironman Canada" on my wall for 15 months before I did it -- even dreamed about it in the summer of 2004. Cam Brown probably thought I was nuts when he visited my "shrine" (bedroom) in 2003.

If you get the chance to visit Siri's basement in Boulder then you'll see the same thing in action today. She even uses the same quotes as me!

W.I.N. -- what's important now

In listening to certain of the debates/questions over the weekend. I wrote this down, "Information is rarely a limiter". In other words, many coaches/athletes would do better devoting their energies searching for simplicity, rather than additional complexity.

Bobby shared his elite periodization pattern -- by week it goes Long; Long; Easy; Hard -- then you repeat. If you inserted another "easy" at the end of the cycle then you'd have a nice pattern for a five week "camp" in any sport.

Bobby shared his experience that fit athletes need to be worried about key workouts going too well. This has been shared with me by elite swim coaches. As we near true peaks in fitness -- we need to be extra careful as we have the ability to spend that fitness in training. Dave shared this with me in 2004 and I did a good job of limiting myself in training.

Bobby pointed out that Ironman running has more in common with a long hike than marathoning. He challenged the coaches with the question -- do you train your athletes to get the most out of their walking? Do you equip your athletes with the mental skills to get the most out of their walking? Do you enter your races with the strategy to get the most out of your walking?

I've shared his run:walk strategy many times. More can be found on www.BobbyMcGee.com

His best concept... was when he asked that we consider if we are training a central or a peripheral response with our training. Very insightful.

By the end (or even the middle) of an ironman race, most athletes have a peripheral system that is so shot that they have an inability to place a meaningful load on their central system. Ironman is an event that challenges the peripheral system. This is VERY different from nearly all other endurance events (marathons, TTs, road racing, swimming).

Bobby's run:walk is so effective because it preserves the peripheral system. I'm going to trial his protocol when I am down in Australia. It's a good time of year to experiment. He's got a <2:30 guy doing it and even when I ran 2:46, I had some material fade in the last 10K.

His talk emphasized volume and mileage through frequency -- also using walking/hiking to train the peripheral system.

He started many of his techniques training regular folks for the Comrades Marathon in SA.

Bobby uses Big Day training with a few modifications from my method -- stay on your legs ALL day, even when eating and taking breaks -- use 2-3 hour hikes within the protocol. I liked these additions as they make it even more specific for MOP and BOP racing.

Bobby shared some run benchmarks -- I hit all of these before I ran 2:46 at IMC in 2004. ***Race distance at 3x daily average
***Three consequtive weeks inside the last twelve at 50+ miles
***Highest output run day (length and training load) five weeks out from race
***Last ten weeks 12-20% of distance is done at goal pace

On that highest output run day -- I'd extend that concept to the highest output training week.

Goal pace -- most people don't want to know their true fitness and over-estimate their true run pace & mileage. I loved that observation. Marked courses and HRMs can be eyeopeners. A

chieve manageable training overload through link run (PM/AM) and doubles (AM/PM). A great tool in my experience.

Do your FT work before your mod-hard work -- on combo days.

Three part pacing -- (run walk; run no more than 10 mins in one go) -- run piece stays the same but walking breaks increase -- 30s; 45s; 60s. Use this to reset vacularity; muscle firing; hydration; mental breaks. I want to talk to him more about this as I think that he's on to something.

Bobby even suggested walking the bike a few times to reset muscle firing -- I loved that -- total dedication to what works, rather than popular convention.

Prefers FuelBelts over hydration packs -- main reason is the back gives off a lot of heat when running. Back pack held out might work.

Workouts
***Three part pacing with long runs -- 0-75%; 75-90% KEY; 90% to finish.
***Build runs -- getting faster all the way
***Strong finish runs
***18M then 5K best effort TT
***90 min link runs (PM/AM) for three hours of running
***Slight downhills for tempo pacing at moderate HR

Choose cadence over speed in your run training. Cadence first then speed will follow -- a key point he gave me in both 2003 and 2004.

Someone recommended a book called Ultimate Fintess -- I need to look into that.

I've invited Bobby to join the coaching staff of my tri team in Boulder -- hopefully, he'll be able to fit us into his schedule.

After his talk Monica and I were so fired up that we wanted to run, run, run! He has a gift in terms of his effect on people.

Hope this helps,
gordo