Training Log Archive: Bash

'Bent and I joined the C3 triathletes for their Saturday morning spin. I was afraid I'd get bored but this was their annual session where Gary (surname?) spoke about exercise physiology and racing and occasionally jumped off his bike to draw graphs on the whiteboard. There was a fair amount of review, since I read about sports science on most days, but it was all good and you can't be reminded of that stuff too often. There were some different ways of looking at things that were useful.

A key concept in today's discussion was "decoupling" - the phenomenon where your power output decreases during a race while your effort/heart rate increases. Winners in events like the Ironman World Championship have a constant power output during their 180 km bike ride. They start out with a low perceived effort that increases then levels out and stays constant for the rest of the ride. They go slower up hills and accelerate down hills.

Even in the top 10 in the world, it's not unusual to find racers whose power output starts out too high, then decreases during the race - and they feel steadily worse as the race goes on. Studies have shown that racers who choose and maintain the correct power output will have the best race result. The jury is out on whether a negative split is desirable but you definitely don't want a positive split.

There are several reasons for decoupling:
- Starting at too high a pace
- Dehydration (stroke volume of heart decreases with dehydration so the heart needs to beat more often to push the same amount of O2 to the body)
- Nutrition (mostly a factor in races over 2 hours)
- Heat (80% of your effort goes into creating heat. Above 16C, heat starts to degrade performance and you need to choose a slightly slower pace to compensate)
- Slow twitch muscles tiring out due to insufficient training for the chosen pace, forcing fast twitch muscles (which need far more glycogen and are not well-trained in endurance athletes) to take over

Random thoughts:
- In a long race, avoid even short bursts of anaerobic activity such as pushing up a hill, since this will reduce your body's capacity to perform aerobically over the long term.
- Most endurance athletes have sufficient glycogen stores to race for up to 2 hours without taking in calories. (Nothing much, anyway.) If you are racing longer than 2 hours, start eating earlier to postpone the exhaustion of your glycogen stores. For example, I may not need any calories for a 2-hour run but I may expend 600 calories if I continue for 3rd hour. Rather than waiting until the 3rd hour to eat, I should try to take in 200 calories per hour from the beginning.
- In the days leading up to a race, work harder than usual to preserve your glycogen stores. Even if you go for a short run, eat something during the session or within an hour or two of finishing.
- A power meter is one of the best investments you can make for your bike. It will make more difference than, say, buying lighter wheels.
- Base training - at least 40 km/week of running and 100 km/week of road biking (for triathletes) for 6-8 weeks. Long run should not be more than about 35% of total weekly running and should not increase more than 10%/week.
- Ironman finish rankings almost always = Ironman bike + run rankings. You can't make a big difference on the swim but you can over-exert yourself on the bike and wreck your run. You need to think of performance on the bike/run together as a unit.
- When it comes to training, the priority is running. If you don't have enough time for all the training you want to do, keep the running and reduce other activities.
- Visualize and prepare.

There was more but that's all I can think of for now. I couldn't take notes because I was busy pedalling. Interesting, interactive discussion with lots of people in the room drawing on their own racing and training experiences. No chance of getting bored!

I am such a weakling...