Riding Just for the Fun of Riding

I'm sitting here in my Killington, VT home looking out at the beautiful fall foliage colors that have taken over the Green Mountains. Yesterday was a major, long work day on a project that I emailed out at 9:45 last night. Today! A reward for the long day...a ride through these beautiful mountains. Problem is, like a dog in a meat locker, I don't know which direction to go in first. Each direction that I look in is more beautiful than the last.

For those who have trained with me, you know that this time of year, unless you are training for a late Fall marathon, I tell you to get off the "schedule" and ride "for the love of riding". No target pace. No minimum (or maximum) distance. No structure. Just enjoy being in the saddle and loving life.That's what I'm going to do today.

I hope you all are able to take advantage of the weather and enjoy the Fall season over this Columbus Day Weekend.

Beautiful Day in Lake Placid

Here's wishing the very best to the 2500+ anxious athletes racing at the Ironman in Lake Placid this weekend! They're apparently going to have a super day weather-wise with temperatures ranging from 60-80 degrees and clear skies. Water temperature in Mirror Lake is in the high 60's and perfect as well for a good race day.

One of the most important rules of racing (and of Life in general): Some factors you can't control, so focus on those you can!. One of the major uncontrollable factors (weather) looks to be really favorable, so what's left is to go out with the right mental attitude and get to the task that you've been training for.

Special Shout out:
Rich Kiser- You're going to have a great day! Welcome back to Lake Placid. It's a bit different from Colorado Springs and coming from an elevation of about 6,000 feet should help, although your commitment to training will pay big dividends and your experience on the course from Training Camp will be a huge advantage

Joe Bordieri- You've shown a great consistency in training; following the schedule meticulously and making some huge progress. You've got your game plan in place, your fueling strategy has been tried and tested and conditions are aligning themselves to provide a really great experience for you!

So the overall theme: the work is behind you. Sunday will be about the celebration of having completed that work and having gotten yourself to the best fitness level of your life. Focus on enjoying the day. You'll be on one of the most beautiful Ironman courses in the world so why not immerse yourself in the surroundings.

To all of the athletes: Have a great day on Sunday! I'll look forward to watching the day unfold for you and will be at the finish line listening to Mike Reilly shouting over and over again: "You are an Ironman"!

Chuck Graziano's Blog: A New Meaning to "Going Camping"

Chuck Graziano's Blog: A New Meaning to "Going Camping": It's that time of year again! Making plans for our Triathlon Training Camp at Lake Placid and feeling all of the anticipation and excitement...

A New Meaning to "Going Camping"

It's that time of year again! Making plans for our Triathlon Training Camp at Lake Placid and feeling all of the anticipation and excitement growing around the 2012 race season. So, I wonder what percentage of Triathletes attend a training camp. I wonder if they see the value of getting out of their normal environment for a few days to live a great, healthful life of training and building friendships with a whole new group of people who share the common love for the multisports lifestyle.

Our camp is a three day experience. Just long enough to build some momentum in your training, but not so long that you need to build in a recovery day in the middle. We include workshop/clinics during camp to help people understand the "why's" of training and not just the "what's". Yes, we all know we have to build endurance, and we know we need to do intervals to increase our ability to handle higher pacing for longer periods, but why do we do, say, 10 x 30 seconds all out sprinting over the course of a long ride. How much recovery time should we allow and what's the benefit of doing one type of set versus another?

We also have some fun. Last year, we had a night of Triathlon Jeopardy with some pretty good prizes provided by our sponsors. This year, you just might anticipate some questions on our Jeopardy Game that revolve around the impending Olympic Games in London! So, knowing who is on the US Mens Team might be useful. Or knowing how many slots we have on the Men's and Women's Team.

Camps are a great opportunity to have some fun, get in some quality training and meet some new people. I love training camps for these qualities and always come back with my batteries charged up for the season.

To those who will be joining us this year, I look forward to meeting you. To those coming back again (about 1/3 of our campers), it's going to be great to see  you again. To those not yet registered, we have a few spots left, but not many.If you'd like to join the fun, visit our link to Camp Information by clicking here

One of my favorite quotes

Saw this one the other day and it reminded me that it's one of my favorites:
“A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”
― Tom Landry

In working both with executive business leaders and athletes, I find this to be one of the most relevant definitions I've ever seen!

Are you Wasting Training Time?

I monitor the metrics of my athletes pretty closely, so I know if/when they're not getting the most bang for their training-time buck. For many people, the object of their training is to "just do it", or to just go out to run a little further this week than last, or ride a little harder (maybe on a hillier course than last week). Will this get them to their training goal? Maybe, and in many cases, I suspect yes, when their goal is just to finish, or to just finish a bit faster than their last year's time. The problem is that this kind of training takes more hours and delivers a lower ROI (return on investment) than when you go out to train with a specific purpose in mind.

Given that if you're reading this blog you are at the very least "aware" of periodization and the importance of first developing an endurance base early in the year, followed by working on some intensity or pace work, followed by some time that is very race specific to your "A" race goal. Here's some quick tips on what I recommend:

1. Make sure that your training and racing season at a minimum has a broad brush "annual training plan" that is written. Print out a calendar and mark down the weeks that will be for for base building, pace and speed work and pre-race preparation.
2. Given where we are in the year right now, you are likely ready to start building your ability to go faster now that you've established your ability to go far. Going out and riding "faster than usual" will likely improve your performance, but you'll achieve greater improvement in fewer hours by following a good routine of intervals. In my last newsletter, I outlined some recommendations and some of the reasons why you should follow some general parameters for your interval work. The bottom line is that if you want to improve your body's ability to burn Fat as fuel and more effectively utilize your "Type II" muscle fiber during aerobic events (which all triathlons are), you have to get your heart rate up to the appropriate level (80-120% of Heart Rate at VO2 Max) and accumulate a minimum amount of time at this level among several intervals in order to achieve the benefit. 
3. You've heard this before: avoid "junk miles". Just riding or running to log the hours is not productive and can certainly be counter productive. Doing a "recovery run" or "recovery ride" is okay, but staying low on the intensity scale, keeping it short and spinning at a high cadence is crucial.
4. You get stronger when you're resting, not when you're working. During your recovery days (and weeks built into your schedule) your body has a chance to rebuild itself, much like scar tissue that builds an injury back up to be stronger than it was before so that the injury does not recur. Imagine continuing to aggravate a cut and not allowing it time to heal! Alternate your hard days and easy days and monitor your metrics (daily resting heart rate for a very simple check, and your performance management chart for a longer term monitoring of fatigue.

As the saying goes: Train Smarter, not Harder!
Enjoy the Spring training season!

Do you care what your max heart rate is?

What is your maximum heart rate? Are you using the "220- your age" formula, or the Karvonen formula to estimate? Do you really care what it is? After all, what does max heart rate have to do with your training zones? Very little, actually.

 The first thing to bear in mind is that estimating your max heart rate using one of the two conventional methods mentioned above can be off by 15-20%. That's a lot! And once you get that number, what do you do with it? Many coaches estimate that your Lactate Threshold (if you're a trained athlete) will be around 85% of your maximum heart rate. That's another "estimate" that can be way off, so now how far off the mark can you be?

If you really want to dial in to your training zones, find a local college that has an exercise physiology program and see if they'll use you as a guinea pig and do a blood borne ramp test. They'll get you on a treadmill and increase the incline every couple of minutes and take a blood sample from a prick in your finger. That test will be pretty spot on. If you don't have access to such testing, you can do a ramp test at home that will get you pretty close.

For a good estimate of your Lactate Threshold on the bike, warm up well on your indoor trainer. Then start a 30 minute time trial at the maximum effort you can sustain for the 30 minutes. When you get 10 minutes into the test, hit the lap button on your heart rate monitor and continue on. At the end of the test, find the average heart rate for that last 20 minutes (the final lap). That will be the estimate of your lactate threshold. From there you can calculate your training zones:

Zone 1 Less than 81% of LTHR
Zone 2 81% to 89% of LTHR
Zone 3 90% to 93% of LTHR
Zone 4 94% to 99% of LTHR
Zone 5a 100% to 102% of LTHR
Zone 5b 103% to 106% of LTHR
Zone 5c More than 106% of LTHR

For running, you can add 7 to the Lactate Threshold HR that you got from this test or do the same ramp test above, but running and calculate your zones as follows:

Zone 1 Less than 85% of LTHR
Zone 2 85% to 89% of LTHR
Zone 3 90% to 94% of LTHR
Zone 4 95% to 99% of LTHR
Zone 5a 100% to 102% of LTHR
Zone 5b 103% to 106% of LTHR
Zone 5c More than 106% of LTHR

Either way, it seems to me that maximum heart rate has little to do with effective training. Your Lactate Threshold (or the point at which your ability to continue on in your race is impacted) is more of an important metric to measure and train by.