Triathlon Research - Coaching Clinic Day #1

Hello again from the foothills of the Colorado Rockies!

I am back in Colorado for Triathlon Research's coaching certification clinic in Denver.  This program is an intensive six days of instruction; unheard of in the realm of sports certification and education.  Day one was yesterday (Monday) and this week is shaping up to be quite packed with information.  Having completed my USAT Level 1 certification course the Friday and Saturday prior, it is going to be a rather information packed week altogether.

We began Day #1 with breakfast at the Hampton Inn and then moved to the conference room for our morning session, Exercise Physiology and Athlete Monitoring.

The session was led by Bob Seebohar from the eNRG Performance Lab, who is an incredible presenter and very well versed exercise physiologist and sports dietitian.  He began by pulling us outdoors where we got a visual example of what coaching vs. writing training plans was.  He also put three coaches on the spot to put us through a warm up.  Great experience!

 Back inside, we went over 4 hours of exercise physiology and athlete monitoring including testing methods, when to test, what use testing has, what use monitoring your athlete plays in their progress and your business, and so much more.

For lunch, eNRG performance chef Adam (chef, sports dietitian, and culinary professor and Johnson & Wales) made us food specifically based on the Metabolic Efficiency principles

Our afternoon session was inside the eNRG performance lab and covered nutrition.  You can tell that Bob would go on for DAYS without getting bored.  His passion for the subject is incredible!

Dinner was back at the hotel.  Chef Adam grilled salmon on the back porch along with various salads; again based on the metabolic efficiency principles.

At the last moment, we were offered the opportunity to get in a local pool for open swim.  Five of us jumped on it.  The Foothills Park & Recreation District is an INCREDIBLE facility!  I am excited to get back in later this week for the swim portion of the week.

You also cannot be in this area without looking in awe at the beautiful Colorado Rockies!  What a beautiful back drop to the week.

Today is the run; a morning lecture and afternoon activity session.  I can't wait!

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Questions
1.  What certifications have you earned and how did they relate to six full days of instruction?

2.  Where would your ideal location be to have your next certification?  Would it be tropical, mountainous, or remote?
I love the mountain back drop!  ...not so much the altitude acclimation.


DREAM.  BELIEVE.  ACHIEVE. 

Rev3 / Challenge Race Registration Discount Code

Are you planning or looking to race any of the following races?!

Challenge Pocono Mountains (Olympic or Half) - August 16th
Challenge Maine (Olympic or Half) - August 30th
Challenge Cedar Point (Half or Full) - September 12th
Challenge Florida (Olympic or Half) - November 8th

If so, here is a discount code for 10% off your registration.  If you have already registered, contact Challenge today to see about applying the discount to your registration.  FREE MONEY!!!  (aka. more gear!)

LINDBOOMBA15

Race on! 

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Questions
1.  Where are you racing this year?

2.  Have you ever done a Rev3 or Challenge race?
I've done Quassy and Cedar Point.  Both were AMAZING!  

3.  Where are you racing NEXT?


DREAM.  BELIEVE.  ACHIEVE. 

Ondale! Ondale!

I'm only two days into this training schedule (with multiple weeks of seat-of-my-pants training behind me) and I feel great!  With the longer warmup and some stretches, the shins have been feeling good and my legs feel really good too.

I ran the same exact path today as I did yesterday - a three mile out and back - and when I headed out, I let my body find whatever pace it wanted to go.  I wasn't going to push myself today because Wednesdays will be my mid-week recovery runs.  Anyone who knows me knows that short recovery runs don't go well.  haha  I made it a mile before the evil plan hatched!  I'll continue on to the turn around at the current pace and then see if I can high tail it back and beat yesterday's time.  The whole "recovery run" thing will work much better once I get Wednesday's distance higher than Tuesday and Thursday.  But until then...

I hit the turn around at about 11 minutes and had to beat a 10:21 on the way back.  The nice part about this course (and part of the reason I run it so often) is that it has gentle hills.  My mind works best when you give me small little tasks to complete (i.e. make it to the corner, just to the top of the hill, ease down this hill, final stretch) as opposed to one straight and flat shot.  Anyways, I felt great on the way back.  I wasn't pushing it hard, but I had it a notch higher. 

I finished in 21:07, fourteen seconds faster than yesterday.  And to beat that, I felt better today than I did yesterday.  Double bonus!!

Keeping my watch on hand will certainly be a threat to slower pace days (I have a lot to teach my competitively oriented mind still), but it's fun to keep track of pace!  The true test will be seeing what pace I hold for Saturday's long run (6 miles); 7:45 maybe?

Questions

1.  How was your workout today?

2.  Do you ever have spontaneous challenges mid-workout that you simply can't refuse?
The two goals of a coach - as I've always been told - are to tell you when enough is enough and to make sure you're pointed in the right direction.  I need a coach!


Stay fit.  Stay healthy. 

150 Miles by X-mas

Since today was a very short workout day - I only ran 2.0 miles and didn't get to the gym at all (work does that to ya' I guess) - I decided to sit down and develop a goal and a schedule for running.  And here it is:

150 miles by Christmas!

That's my schedule.   My plan is to run on average 5 days a week, slowly building up my mileage.  I started running on the 9th at 1 mile/day and as of today (Sunday the 14th), my mileage has increased to 2 miles/day.  However, you'll notice that the math doesn't quite work out - 5 days of 1 mile/day plus 5 days of 2 miles/day does NOT equal 16.7 miles.  I would actually only get to 140 miles on that pattern, so what I've done is added 10 extra miles evenly over the next six weeks (1.66 miles extra per week) in order to get up to the total 150 miles. 

What I'm going to do is make Saturday my "check-in" day.  I'll report on how much mileage I got the past week and compare that to where I wanted to be at that point.  Then Sunday will be the first day of the new week and I'll increase the mileage.  But since I obviously didn't come up with this plan yesterday, I'll do my first check-in today.

Check-In #1

Date: November 13th, 2010

Scheduled Mileage: 5.0 miles

Total Mileage Ran: 6.2 miles

Mileage Difference: +1.2 miles

I'm already 1.2 miles over my schedule.  The key to this schedule is that I left it flexible to deal with not only weather, but injuries and personal schedules.  If I miss a day, I'll spread those miles out over the other 4 days of the week or just run on a planned 'day off' later in the week.  On the other hand, if I feel like running longer one day, I am free to rest later on.  Flexibility is key in my training schedules.  But the 2nd key is always challenge - from an Ironman quote I really love "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it."

It's nice to have a goal, a means by which I can measure my progress even if it's somewhat (or completely) arbitrary.  Either way, it keeps me going.

This week I want to set you a challenge:
Sit down tomorrow at some point and make a goal for yourself.  It could be something personal, social, academic, work-related, or anything.  Set a goal and figure out a way to keep it.  Maybe for your ultimate goal, you can set smaller goals as a "path" to keep yourself or break it down and work on pieces of the goal one at a time.  Goals are amazingly helpful, but I find it incredibly hard to schedule them out over time.  Smaller goals or partial goals along the way will certainly help you realize that you either are or aren't making progress each day, week, month, or year depending on the goal you set.

Ciao!