Ask Coach, Kona, and Good Ab Days

Ran into the above cartoon as I was pondering my swimming prowess (or lack of it) yesterday morning. Wonder how many would-be triathletes would take up the sport if there was an "Arm Floatie" division (kind of like the Clydesdale/Athena division, or the Fat Tire division...) at the local event. The only saving grace I can think of for my own pitiful skills, outside of what I mentioned yesterday (10-percent of a typical triathlon), is obvious...I can only improve.

And it is true. I know because I'm not as horrible a swimmer as I used to be nearly two years ago. Someday I hope to be able to no longer use the 'I grew up in the freaking desert' excuse for my lousy swimming. I might find another one, or I might just resign myself to the knowledge that, unlike dolphins, I can type 60-plus words-per-minute. Take that, Flipper.

Seems one of my athletes has a girlfriend in her early fifties, who has not run consistently until this last year. They ran a 5K course near their house, finishing in a little under 40 minutes. The conversation continues: 'I could see her putting in 35-36ish without much problem. With proper training, I see (but haven't said, of course) a 30ish in her future. What do I do with her now? Track? A steady plan? She's not a competitor at heart, just a happy participant, but I know she'd like to progress. Advice?'
I didn't mention I felt "a happy participant" was a great goal - heaven knows with the number of cranky people I've seen after a 5,000-meter road race, we could use a few more happy participants. So, I suggested 'steady running. Let her go out, run & enjoy herself. If she gets the bug to compete & thinks she needs to improve, then you point her in the general direction of your "friendly neighborhood Jedi master." If you push she might rebel. If I push she might rebel. Let the incentive come from within.'

Sounds like one of my local triathlete friends will be paying a few more large bills between now & October 10th; he qualified for the Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Kona, Hawai'i. Talk about the flip side of the coin; yesterday a friend misses the privilege of finishing her second Ironman by eight minutes on the bike, today three knuckleheads at that same triathlon decide not to accept a Kona slot (For those of you who may not know, Kona is Boston for tri-geeks. You either pay lots of money to get a charity slot or you work your butt off & qualify.). Some times the circumstances beyond your control are in your favor, I guess. Congratulations, Mark. I guess Steven and I will be riding the IM Florida course about the same time you're making your way back toward Dig Me Beach.
One of my friends has motivated me to try & achieve the goal of having "good ab days." For lack of a better definition, I guess that means getting some definition in the abdominal area...which means getting rid of some of the adipose deposited in the general vicinity of my mid-section for starters. To facilitate these metabolic (diabolic?) changes, it seems necessary to profoundly cut back on french fried darn near everything. That's a lot easier than it looks, especially if you're the type who doesn't take lunch in with you.
Most fast food joints have menu offerings like Henry Ford's 'Model-A Dictum:' You can have anything you want, as long as it's deep-fried.

Good Ab Days notwithstanding, the dietary advice & counsel provided by six-time Ironman world champion Mark Allen & Huichol shaman Brant Secunda in their recent work, Fit Soul Fit Body, only made more & more sense. Something that flies in the face of if the furnace is hot enough it will burn anything. Face it, it ain't going to get any easier to become a lean, mean triathlon/running/swimming/bicycling/coaching machine if some sensible chances don't come to pass. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy myself, or my food.

It's balance, friends, that counts.

Strengths And Weaknesses

It's a nice day today; sunshine, blue waters, a little breeze here and there. Vicious rumor has it the weather won't be so nice over the weekend. That's all right. I'll settle for something close to nice, considering the alternative. I could be working. Worse yet, I could be unemployed and looking for a j-o-b. That's right: As the song in the end of the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian goes, '...always look at the bright side of life.'

I haven't touched my bike (save for putting on and taking off my race wheels) at all this week; no spinning class and no ride since Sunday morning. I'm not that concerned about the bike, because right now it's probably the most confident discipline I have. I'll need to have a decent swim and a strong run in order to have a better finish than last year. It would be nice to finish a little higher in the age group, but if I finish with a better time than last year and don't score any hardware, that's all right, too. My goal is to put all three disciplines together without looking stoopid.

One of the uber-gods of triathlon/coaching/mental and spiritual aspects of athletics, Mark Allen, wrote a really neat piece for this week's on-line version of Triathlete magazine, talking about how to fix your weakest link in the sport. The biggest thing I take away is to, as he said, work on your weaknesses to make them strengths. If you can take your race, regardless of the distance, and work it backwards to the beginning, you will probably find where things begin to go awry. At that particular point is where you can find the weaknesses in your own training.

I've talked about some of this before. Often we train our strengths and try to overcompensate so our weaknesses don't (we hope!) show on race day. If you (like me) tend to peter out in the latter stages of a 10-K run, it might mean looking at more 20-to-30-minute tempo runs. Other folks may go out too quickly in the first half mile of a 5-K, and that's all she wrote during the remaining 2.6 miles of the race. Some 500-to-1000-meter repeats at a consistent, sustainable pace, with brief rest intervals might do the trick. Lack that acceleration to get away from a pack in the middle of the race, or you're not able to kick at the end? How about some acceleration drills of 150-to-350 meters?

One area that can't be trained on the road or the track, or the gym, or the pool, is that gray area between our ears. Some coaches are great at tapping into the mind of the individual athlete, making them believe they are capable of great things. Others like to use tools like (as Mark Wetmore was quoted...) "ridicule and sarcasm..." to influence the athlete to think, 'well, I'll prove that blankety-blank wrong by succeeding where they think I can't.'

It takes honesty on both the athlete and the coach to look at a performance and ask the question, 'okay, where did things go wrong?' Not that every performance needs to be picked apart with a fine-toothed comb; some days nearly everything goes right and you say 'cool, I think we're on the right track.' However, more often than not we can find something to work on if we look hard enough.

Just make certain to enjoy yourself; there's plenty of folks who can't get out to do what many of us are blessed with by opportunity or physical ability. As for me, my thoughts will be with my sister this weekend, especially as I try to turn the scenery along the southern Alabama coast into a blur on my triathlon bike.