Feb 2010 Triathlon News | Jan
2010 Triathlon News | Archived
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TRIATHLON AND MULTISPORT
NEWS - JUNE 2009
Planning your years training and racing is an
important step in ensuring ongoing progress and
helps your motivation by changing the ways your
body goes through the training process. Dividing
the year into phases of base, strength, race pace
and recovery and doing this several times over
twelve months is necessary to keep improving.
Working out how many hours you have to devote
to training over a year and each week is also
important. Remember that keeping some balance
your life and limiting your training with a cap
will go a long way to keep improving your results
each season. It's what you do with those training
hours that is the important thing - not to see
how many hours you can fit into the week.
Train smart to race well
Nick Croft
nick@multisportconsultants.com
LATEST SQUAD NEWS
The MSC camps pages are up and updated with
the Noosa tri training camp dates and tentative
dates for camps in 2010. The shopping cart will
be active soon and will be adding items to this
as the weeks go by.
Two Noosa tri 12 week training programs will be
on offer this year along with individual training
sessions in swim, bike and run with full program
content for all levels. A range of products to
improve your health well being and performance
will also be added to the cart.
The new MSC logo with colour change is also featured
on the site and will be seen on the MSC new team
kit and camp jerseys. An advertising campaign
has being launched on the United Sports Marketing
website (organisers of the Noosa Triathlon and
Triathlon World Championships).
From May 25 the MSC banner will appear on the
USM homepage and offer event participants access
to MSC coaching services, training camps, 12 week
training programs and individual training session
and the many new products we will be offering
this new season.
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RATTLER CHALLENGE
Many Noosa Tri club members are lining up next
Monday on the Queens Birthday long weekend to
face off against the Rattler (train) over a tough
and hilly 18.5km run into Gympie. A club challenge
between the Sunshine Coast and Noosa tri clubs
is set to take place. The Noosa Tri Club in these
club challenge leads the ledger to date at 2 to
1.
NOOSA TRI CLUB - WINTER SERIES
Race 1 of the series kicks off on June 21 at
Noosa Heads Lions Park - over a super sprint distance
it is the first of 3 events set down over the
winter months to help sharpen club members and
anyone keen that is doing the world champs or
just to get a jump start on the competition for
the new season. Go the the noosa tri club site
at www.noosatriclub.net
to resistor - spots will fill quick.
NOOSA TRI CLUB - WINTER SERIES
As part of the Noosa Triathlon Clubs Winter Series
a three clinics series will take place on a Tuesday
evening at the Noosa Heads Surf Club venue. The
first of the clinics takes place on Tuesday 16
June and will about programming and planning your
training year, month, week and how to work in
the elements to make you the best you can with
the time you have available to training and how
to work racing into the mix as well.
For further information visit www.noosatriclub.net
UP-COMING EVENTS
- Race the Rattler run June 8
- Brisbane to Noosa Century Ride June 14
- Noosa Tri Club Winter Series
Race # 1 June 21
- Noosa Tri Club Winter Series
Race # 2 July 26
- Noosa Running Festival August
2
- MSC Noosa Triathlon Camp 1
August 7-10
- Noosa Tri Club Winter Series
# 3 August 16
MAF FORMULA
How hard do I have to workout? How far do I have
to go? I workout 2 hours every other day of the
week and I still can’t lose those last 3kgs.
Why do I keep getting injured when I try to run?
These are all questions and comments people make
about their training that seems to have no simple
solution.
I want to give you that solution. It’s
called a heart rate monitor. Whether your goal
is to win a race or just live a long healthy life,
using a heart rate monitor is the single most
valuable tool you can have in your training equipment
arsenal.
And using one in the way I am going to describe
will not only help you shed those last few pounds,
but will enable you to do it without either killing
yourself in training or starving yourself at the
dinner table.
The words above are from 6 time Hawaii Ironman
Champ American Mark Allen and below an account
of his introduction to using a HRM
I came from a swimming background, which in the
70’s and 80’s when I competed was
a sport that lived by the “No Pain, No Gain”
motto. My coach would give us workouts that were
designed to push us to our limit every single
day. I would go home dead, sleep as much as I
could, then come back the next day for another
round of punishing interval sets.
It was all I knew. So, when I entered the sport
of triathlon in the early 1980’s, my mentality
was to go as hard as I could at some point in
every single workout I did. And to gauge how fast
that might have to be, I looked at how fast the
best triathletes were running at the end of the
short distance races. Guys like Dave Scott, Scott
Tinley and Scott Molina were able to hold close
to 5 minute miles for their 10ks after swimming
and biking!
So that’s what I did. Every run, even the
slow ones, for at least one mile, I would try
to get close to 5 minute pace. And it worked…sort
of. I had some good races the first year or two,
but I also suffered from minor injuries and was
always feeling one run away from being too burned
out to want to continue with my training.
Then came the heart rate monitor. A man named
Phil Maffetone, who had done a lot of research
with the monitors, contacted me. He had me try
one out according to a very specific protocol.
Phil said that I was doing too much anaerobic
training, too much speed work, too many high end/high
heart rate sessions. I was forcing my body into
a chemistry that only burns carbohydrates for
fuel by elevating my heart rate so high each time
I went out and ran.
So he told me to go to the track, strap on the
heart rate monitor, and keep my heart rate below
155 beats per minute. Maffetone told me that below
this number that my body would be able to take
in enough oxygen to burn fat as the main source
of fuel for my muscle to move. I was going to
develop my aerobic/fat burning system. What I
discovered was a shock.
To keep my heart rate below 155 beats/minute,
I had to slow my pace down to an 8:15 mile. That’s
three minutes/mile SLOWER than I had been trying
to hit in every single workout I did! My body
just couldn’t utilize fat for fuel.
So, for the next four months, I did exclusively
aerobic training keeping my heart rate at or below
my maximum aerobic heart rate, using the monitor
every single workout. And at the end of that period,
my pace at the same heart rate of 155 beats/minute
had improved by over a minute. And after nearly
a year of doing mostly aerobic training, which
by the way was much more comfortable and less
taxing than the anaerobic style that I was used
to, my pace at 155 beats/minute had improved to
a blistering 5:20 mile.
That means that I was now able to burn fat for
fuel efficiently enough to hold a pace that a
year before was redlining my effort at a maximum
heart rate of about 190. I had become an aerobic
machine! On top of the speed benefit at lower
heart rates, I was no longer feeling like I was
ready for an injury the next run I went on, and
I was feeling fresh after my workouts instead
of being totally wasted from them.
So let’s figure out what heart rate will
give you this kind of benefit and improvement.
There is a formula that will determine your Maximum
Aerobic Heart Rate, which is the maximum heart
rate you can go and still burn fat as the main
source of energy in your muscles. It is the heart
rate that will enable you to recover day to day
from your training. It’s the maximum heart
rate that will help you burn those last few pounds
of fat. It is the heart that will build the size
of your internal engine so that you have more
power to give when you do want to maximize your
heart rate in a race situation.
Here is the formula:
1. Take 180
2. Subtract your age
3. Take this number and correct it by the following:
-If you do not workout, subtract another 5
beats.
-If you workout only 1-2 days a week, only subtract
2 or 3 beats.
-If you workout 3-4 times a week keep the number
where it is.
-If you workout 5-6 times a week keep the number
where it is.
-If you workout 7 or more times a week and have
done so for over a year, add 5 beats to the
number.
-If you are over about 55 years old or younger
than about 25 years old, add another 5 beats
to whatever number you now have.
-If you are about 60 years old or older OR if
you are about 20 years old or younger, add an
additional 5 beats to the corrected number you
now have.
You now have your maximum aerobic heart rate,
which again is the maximum heart rate that you
can workout at and still burn mostly fat for fuel.
Now go out and do ALL of your cardiovascular training
at or below this heart rate and see how your pace
improves. After just a few weeks you should start
to see a dramatic improvement in the speed you
can go at these lower heart rates.
Over time, however, you will get the maximum
benefit possible from doing just aerobic training.
At that point, after several months of seeing
your pace get faster at your maximum aerobic heart
rate, you will begin to slow down. This is the
sign that if you want to continue to improve on
your speed, it is time to go back to the high
end interval anaerobic training one or two days/week.
So, you will have to go back to the “NO
Pain, NO Gain” credo once again. But this
time your body will be able to handle it. Keep
at the intervals and you will see your pace improve
once again for a period. But just like the aerobic
training, there is a limit to the benefit you
will receive from anaerobic/carbohydrate training.
At that point, you will see your speed start to
slow down again. And that is the signal that it
is time to switch back to a strict diet of aerobic/fat
burning training.
At the point of the year you are in right now,
probably most of you are ready for this phase
of speed work. Keep your interval sessions to
around 15-30 minutes of hard high heart rate effort
total. This means that if you are going to the
track to do intervals do about 5k worth of speed
during the entire workout. Less than that and
the physiological effect is not as great. More
than that and you just can’t maintain a
high enough effort during the workout to maximize
our benefit. You want to push your intervals,
making each one a higher level of intensity and
effort than the previous one. If you reach a point
where you cannot maintain your form any longer,
back off the effort or even call it a day. That
is all your body has to give.
This is what I did to keep improving for nearly
15 years as a triathlete. It is also the training
the Lance Armstrong’s coach put him on to
recover from his cancer treatment when they saw
that he could not handle the high end training
anymore. And, although it was contrary to what
most cyclists do to prepare for the grueling Tour
de France, it was what enabled him to capture
the title there for the first time in 1999.
Since my own health scare with Atrial Fibrillation
last year I have had to restructure the way I
approached my own training. Needless to say to
start with it was a very steady and easy method
of training pace wise and using a HRM for every
bike and run I did - obviously to keep the HR
in check as with AFIB the Heart was shooting up
to 230 beats a minute at times and around the
time of last years Noosa tri at least 5 times
a week when the training went hard.
I have been working on the health side with diet
and supplements instead of the beta blockers prescribed
by a doctor and have made great progress. Apart
from the supplements (some of which will be soon
available through the msc online shopping cart),
working to the MAF formula has been a great way
to slowly get stronger and more efficient at lower
HR. When I started running back in the Noosa National
Park 2 months back I was struggling to run up
the steeper hills and was nearly walking at my
MAF of 144 - same on the bike - I has to go slow
in order to get truly aerobic again. Fast forward
a few months and the run speed at the same HR
is much faster and a recent 8km time trial at
the tri club showed me the strength is paying
off with a 28.30 run where only back in Mid March
at Perth I was a 42min high off the bike!
The HR during the running race was of course
higher than 144 but running at a higher HR was
possible through the aerobic strength gained by
keeping it aerobic in the previous months as no
speed work as such as been carried out - just
the off fartlek run. With the World Champs looming
in September this is about to start.
Find more useful training tips at www.multisportconsultants.com/training-tips.php
Feb 2010 Triathlon News | Jan
2010 Triathlon News | Archived
Triathlon News | Subscribe to News
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