Pro John Hirsch's Training Week. Variety is King!

Pro triathlete John Hirsch recently posted the details of a typical training week leading up to the ITU Long Course Worlds race.  It's an impressive account, logging 19.5 K of swimming, 300 miles of biking, and 60 miles of running.

If you know John and read between the lines, you will catch that his workouts have a huge amount of variety.  He mixes in tons of different locations, equipment and terrains to keep it fresh.  It's almost like every day is a new adventure.  This is a key habit to help get the training in.  It's the same technique that Paula Newby Fraiser also recently recommended as a key triathlon tactic.

I went for a run last night along my same old route, but I zig-zagged from one side of the road to the next to make it different.  The time flew by much faster than usual, and all I did was run the same route differently.  

Good luck to John at his big race!

Podcast - SVLC Triathlon California Road Trip!

Join in as we go to the SVLC Triathlon in Northern California! Includes interviews with Jamie Patrick, Rich Roll, Nick Tuttle, and MORE!  Click here to listen or download right from the website.

Here's a cool video of the weekend - 

And here's the link to MILA chia seeds - www.kcheadle.fueledbymila.net I fully believe in using chia seeds as fuel for training and racing, so support our sponsors if you can!

Yet Another Swim Technique to Confuse the Hell out of You

I've seen this one coming, gaining strength in the media lately.  On the far right, Triathlon Magazine tells how the 2:3 technique is worth trying.  

My opinion?  Why work on this crazy technique when it's possible to swim as fast as this other guy just breathing on one side?

The answer is to SWIM.  Time yourself doing techniques that click with you, see which is the fastest, and keep improving.  When it takes a bunch of mad scientists to figure out which technique is the fastest, top olympians do a variety of them, and nobody can agree, then they are all pretty good.  Get better at the one that works for you.

Avoid Crashing and Keep an Eye on Your Competition by Practicing Looking Back

I'm running down the last stretch of road at the Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon, when somebody yells out, "Hey! COACH BRETT!"  I turn to look and see who could possibly recognize me thousands of miles from home, catching a rock with my foot and then crashing to the ground.  I ended up OK, with just a banged-up knee, but it could have been much worse.  

It's accidents like this that can end your triathlon career, so it's worth working on avoiding them.  It's even more important as we age, because looking back and behind you becomes more difficult.  To clarify my point, car testers wear modified neck braces to simulate how hard it is for an older person to turn around and look for traffic.

Looking back for cars or the competition can really throw you off balance, so you ought to practice it often.  The more you do it, the easier it gets.

Practice it on your own, and for details on how I do this in training, look for the detailed explanation in the ZenTri Masters Area (link on left). 

Enjoy!

How to Swim Butterfly Forever

I've been knocking out some epic swim sessions this week, doing 2600 meters of butterfly without stopping.  I'm no butterfly phenom, so I thought I should share how I learned to do it for those of you that might want to try it.

First, I got used to swimming freestyle non-stop for 1 hour.  I just pace myself and take two extremely short breaks at 20 and 40 minutes just to gulp a mouthful of gatorade and then keep going.  If you don't refuel, then you aren't getting in the great workout that you should be.  Running on fumes leads to bad form, bad attitude, and bad results.  If you're going to be working out for an hour, don't waste your time by doing it half-assed.  Yes, you don't get to stop during a swim race and drink, but you've also tapered, carb loaded, and have a ton of fuel in your belly.  It's not the same thing, so we can all get over it already.

Once you learn the pacing to go for an hour on a regular basis, it gets pretty easy.  Next, start your swim sessions with some 100s of fly on an interval instead.  Swim 100 yards of it at a casual, very slow pace, and then add 30 seconds - That's your interval.  

At the beginning of every swim practice, start by doing fly at the casual pace on that interval.  Once you get up to being able to doing 10 in a row, you'll start being able to shrink the interval down.  Shrink the interval some, and then try to do more than 10.  11, maybe 12?

After a few weeks of this, you will get the coordination down of how to swim fly at a sustainable pace (very slow!) and doing 200s instead of 100s.  And doing 20 intervals instead of 10!  Eventually, the whole stroke finally "clicks" and you find you can swim nonstop, just like freestyle.

It took me a couple of months, but I went from nearly dying when swimming 25+ yards of fly to being able to go 1.65 miles of it in an hour.  The difficulty is easily outweighed by the feeling of accomplishment, so give it a fly try!

By the way, I wanted to mention that I just added my long audio interview with The Fruitarian Runner Guy in the ZenTri Masters Area.  Check it out!