A Terrible Thing and What to do about it!

Today many of us learned of the passing of Gretta Waitz, the champion runner from Norway (and honorary member of the NY community) who won the NYC marathon 9 times! It was so sad to hear, but we (especially those of us with active, athletic lifestyles) should once again be reminded that there is no running away from cancer. As much of a champion as Gretta was, her 6 year battle was lost to a debilitating disease that I'm confident nobody reading this blog has not been touched by.

So, what's our take away? It does us no good to mire in the sadness of her passing, or for that matter, anyone's passing from the disease. And we can consider ourselves at the effect of the disease (maybe it will get us too). But for me, I recommend we take up the battle where Gretta left off and fight the disease with everything we've got. It may not have stricken us individually, but it certainly has personally. The challenge is not to be a victim or at the effect of the disease, but to be at the cause of doing something about it. Of course, as one person, it seems such a miniscule thing that I can do. Like a grain of sand on the beach. But as a world we can come together and create that beach, composed of the uncountable grains of sand all fighting for the same thing: A world that is cancer free. It's not important (in my way of thinking) that we direct our energies at raising money and awareness for breast cancer, prostrate cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, blood borne cancers or you name it. It's important that we do something!

Personally, I've been a member (and a coach for people who were members) of Fred's Team (for those of you who remember Fred LeBow, founder of the NYC marathon who passed away from brain cancer) and for the past 11 years have coached or The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. I've seen Team in Training pass the $1 Billion mark in fund raising! There's also Livestrong (which organization has been rated among the best in terms of percentages of fund raising that actually goes to the cause- in the Livestrong case-81%!). And there are so many more. It's your choice.

The important message is: don't just read this, say "oh, that's a nice idea, maybe I'll do a Susan B. Komen walk" and then go back to life. Make a commitment to give something of yourself in the vision of you (and your children) living in a world without cancer! And then take the first step: make a call, do an internet search, take action. If we all just give a little bit of time on a regular basis, we can make this happen!

What do you think about Aquabike?

The USAT Age Group Committee is working on the promotion of Aquabike as a sport to be included in more and more events across the country. This is a sport (swimming and cycling) that is growing and in fact has now been established in two regional championships: the Northeast Regional Championship and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship. The benefits of including this event include:

• Opening up the multisports world to people who may be daunted by all three events of Triathlon
• Creating more opportunity for market exposure for sponsors (and therefore their participation at more events)
• Making it possible for aging and/or injured athletes to continue in their multisports participation despite injuries or degenerative conditions.

What do you think? Please post your comments!

Are Athletes Really More Focused Thinkers?

Here's an interesting article from the New York Times on a study that shows how athletes my be more focused thinkers than non-athletes. Seems to me that there may be a lot of reasons for this, and my personal experience is that after training, I'm particularly focused but that's certainly not empirical. Click here to read the article.

Quality Recovery

Many of you are starting to ramp up your training for the season. As you do, recovering quickly from your workouts becomes more important. As your body recovers, it needs to restore amino acids that are used in training. Restoring leucine, isoleucine, valine and glutamine after exercise helps to rebuild the muscle fiber that is damaged in training, helps prevent muscle soreness and aids in the production of growth hormone.

As I did last year, I just ordered a fresh supply of RecoverEase! I don't sell supplements for a living, but when I find a product that is especially good, I try to pass it along to those I know might benefit from it. This is a recovery product that I've found works better than anything I've tried in over 25 years of training and racing. As my own case study, when I first started using RecoverEase, I cycled from my home to Long Beach Island, NJ (154 miles) on a Friday. I took RecoverEase that night and the next morning and did a strong 10 mile run on Sunday without significant fatigue or soreness!

The key ingredients include essential amino acids including (especially) L-Glutamine which you may recognize as an amino acid that many athletes load with prior to a race. The contents are very similar to Endurox R4, but RecoverEase has twice the amino acid potency without the calories. Because I ordered in bulk, I can offer friends and athletes I coach a 25% discount from the price offered by the manufacturer. Bottles of 120 capsules are available for $29.99. If you're interested follow the link below!

Triathlon Camp at Lake Placid- Almost Filled

Our June camp at Lake Placid is very close to being "sold out". We're very happy with that news because it (we hope) speaks to the reputation of the coaches who manage this camp, myself and my good friend and colleague, Tom Manzi.

We intend to run a 1st class camp. We don't coach any other way. It is our intention to be sure that everyone has a great time and gets some individual attention and so to insure this, we limit the number of people we register. And those registered so far span the spectrum of Triathlete from sprint and Olympic distance people to those intending on racing at Ironman USA this year. We've charted out rides from 10 to 112 miles (and more if you wish). We're putting together some workshops on varied and (we think) interesting topics ranging from how to calculate your Training Stress Score for your three sports to race day strategies for Ironman.

We're excited about this year's camp (as we have been each year that we've done it). Tom and I have done almost 500 tris between us and the thrill of the starting line has never changed for either one of us so we can identify with the excitement of our campers. We'd love to have you along, but as I mentioned, we do limit the size of our camp and we're thrilled that we'll likely sell out in the next week or so. So if you're interested, or have questions, shoot me an email or give me a call and we can address any thoughts that you might have...but do it soon!