On The Water

If you want to run a faster 5K or a marathon or just get better in the running leg of a triathlon you gotta learn to tune with your body and understand what is often called, perceived effort. The majority of the runners out there start out a little faster than they can maintain over the course of the race and gradually slow down their pace or fade out. They may run a fast time this way but the question is: could it be faster with negative splitting? There has been lots of discussion on the subject over the years and there are lots of examples on elite athletes racing with different strategies. Excluding the exceptions (exceptions always exist to general rules) most records have been broken either by even splitting or negative splitting. The latter is what describes the time of the second half being faster than the time of the first half. And this is hard to accomplish. Understanding how fast you should go during the first half so that you can save a tiny bit to run the second ...

It's been incredibly cold right? One of the reason lots of us moved down here was for the weather. But 6F (-15C) in the winter? Hm...not quite normal for Atlanta!It's been killing our fitness!!! Not so much tho... Here is a cool workout I enjoyed the other day. You don't need any heart rate monitors or crazy gadgets for that! If you don't have too much time, if you are a beginner or if you are coming back from an injury, this is a quick workout that may take you up to an hour or so and you can combine it with weight lifting and stretching at the end. Got my CycleOps trainer down to the gym of my apartment's complex and did: BIKE -10 min warm up, easy effort -5x2 min (1 min break) @ about 50-60 RPM* on my big chainring, steady effort (~60% of your max effort) -5x1 min (1 min break) @ about 80-90 RPM* on my big chainring, fast effort(~80% of your max effort) RUN 3mi run on the treadmill @1-2min/mi slower than race pace Weight lifting/Stretch...

My chronic injury that lasted almost a year and a half is finally giving up. I am happy, I can run and bike faster and further. Yet, last week, my knee let me down, and I thought: "Why?Why are you not letting me enjoy a completely pain free period of training?" Well ... guess what? If you are an elite age group athlete, who puts in about 25 to 30 hours of training each week, you will always have small aches and pains...like, always or almost always! Some serious ones some not so serious ones. I have an IT band syndrome (hey, it's one of the most common running inflammations!) and once every so often it hits me on the outside part of my meniscus. This means pain every time i flex my knee, pain when I go up and down the stairs or when I sit at my desk for too long. The well-known  RICE (Rest-Ice-Compression-Elevation) works miracles. One of the things my chronic injury taught me is how to deal with other major or minor injuries and how to work around them: 1. I...

Finding the right coach or finding the right athlete and the right program for achieving your athletic goals can be challenging. I believe that the most challenging part for both the athlete and the coach is to set up a goal. A long-term goal (some years in the future) and a short-term goal (at the end of the season) - the latter will be part of the former. A coaching plan is a plan. And a plan is made to serve a purpose, a goal. A goal that has to be precise, measurable and challenging but also achievable. Once the goal is set, then the path to get there can be decided. There are many ways one can get to their goals. I am not an expert to say definitively which way is the best. The choice is up to the athlete and the coach. As long as there is trust between the two, trust in the goal and the outlined plan, good chemistry, enthusiasm, work ethic and passion, there will always be multiple ways to accomplish that goal and succeed. I know many athletes who do not have a goal an...