Beginner Training Advice

So, you want to become an endurance athlete... Congratulations! You've taken a great step to becoming a happier, healthier person. I'm writing this post to share my experience, advice, and observations. I was a beginner myself once, and I've helped multiple people beginning to participate in running and swimming. I'm obviously not an expert, but hopefully this helps you.

I'm assuming you're already a healthy, average person. If not, see "Health Tips/ Weight Loss Advice."

For the true beginner:
Once again, take it slow! Gradually get into these sports. The biggest mistake people make is to try to train too hard, too fast. You'll injure yourself, and it'll take you longer to reach your goals than if you took it slow in the first place. Then you'll probably start trying to get back into it too soon and have your injury nagging at you or reinjure yourself. This is especially a problem in running because it's high impact and most people aren't used to the repeated pounding running causes on your joints. Do yourself a favor and start slow. A good guideline is the 10% rule. This means that in any given two weeks, try not to increase your mileage more than 10%. If you can only do a 1 mile run, try to do that 4 times in a week (hopefully not all in a row!) for a total of 4 miles. If you feel the urge to do more, just do some walks on your rest days, especially if you're feeling sore. Give yourself time to recover, or you might get injured. The next week, run the same or maybe try a 1.5 mile run or 2 mile run on one of the 4 days for a total of about 5 miles. The next week you should definitely be ready for a 2 mile run on one or two of the days (again, hopefully not in a row!) for 5 or 6 miles. The next week, depending on your soreness level, 6 or 7 miles, and still try to achieve this with 1 or 2 mile runs with rest days in-between. It's been about a month and the 5th week, you should bring your mileage down just a little to about 5 miles before continuing to increase the next month.

This brings me to my next point: periodization. Periodization is the concept of putting your training through cycles. These can be macrocycles or microcycles. I consider micro-cycles to be weekly or monthly. A weekly microcycle would be a long run on one day, a couple days of medium length, and a couple days of shorter, recovery distance, and a couple days of recovery/active rest (like walking or crosstraining for the advanced.) A monthly microcycle involves upping your mileage for 3 or 4 weeks, and then lowering your mileage maybe 10% to give yourself some time to recover and allow yourself to break through any plateau you might hit.  I personally consider macrocycles to be over a year. This includes about four stages, endurance base building, the incorporation of some faster workouts, a buildup of faster workouts/ race pace work (mixed with endurance work... you are an endurance athlete after all!) and then a racing cycle where you have to balance recovery with endurance and some race-pace work. When you're ready for periodization with speed work, look up strength running (I have the link in my favorite websites!).

Now that I've mentioned speed work, I need to mention anaerobic/aerobic training. You may think faster running gives you more bang for your buck as far as time and effort go. Many beginners train at a pace that has them huffing and puffing because they're out of shape, and then continue that indefinitely because they think it's normal. When you are huffing and puffing and your heart is racing, you're training anaerobically. This means you're burning mainly carbohydrates for quick energy and your heart is working very hard. This kind of training is hard on your body and can lead to a high amount of inflammation as your body tries to compensate and heal or even injuries when utilized too much by both inexperienced runners and elites. Since you're just beginning, you'll find much more benefit from training your aerobic system. When you're training aerobically, you are burning fat primarily and working your heart without causing excessive inflammation  You're going at a moderate pace but it's not like you're struggling to maintain. A guideline to know if you're training aerobically is to check whether you're able to talk full sentences before you get too out of breath. Try saying "My name is ___ and I like running." Maybe "I eat big hills for breakfast and this is cake!" Forgive the corniness, inside joke. The point is you will motivate yourself and check whether you're aerobic. Sometimes I sing. You're obviously going to have to take a breath in the sentence but you shouldn't be gasping for air. This is going to give you the most health benefits and make your easy mile pace much faster. Elite athletes can run easy miles at 6 minute mile paces because they have amazing cardio conditioning. Try looking up Sock-Doc's advice (check for the link in my favorite websites post) for using heart rate monitors if you have the money... they're a good resource! The sock-doc is awesome in general.

If I figure out more I want to post or any of you have questions that prompt another post, I'll make a part two. Now get out there, and have fun!

Riverwinds Triathlon 2013

Last weekend I competed in my first triathlon of the season with Drexel Tri in West Depford, NJ. The race was a 200m pool swim, a 10+ mile bike, and then a 5k. Registration was through iathlete and was moderately easy and reasonably priced. They ask you for a seed time for your swim and there is a staggered start, one at a time.

The swim was not bad. I wore my Drexel Tri Uniform, which is a tri suit made by Louis Garneau. It is awesome, very comfortable (stretchy and soft!) and the padding is sufficient yet doesn't hamper movement. Saves so much time in T1. The pool temperature was very warm, which I didn't really notice, but some found uncomfortable. The person in front of me jumped in and I had to wait about 10 seconds before I could step across the timing mats and go in, to avoid passing issues. I seeded myself around 2:50 and went pretty close to that! My first flip turn was decent, but my second was awful, so after that I just ended up doing open turns. I hadn't been swimming much so I just tried to kick moderately hard and be long and efficient. I couldn't really bring myself to go very hard at any point, but the 10 seconds I could have saved compared to the following 59 minutes seems insignificant to me! After the swim was over, you had to go up the steps and run out the door and to the mats before your time finished. I went 3:18, but I'm sure this run took about 20 seconds so I was pretty close to my seed time, despite not swimming in over a month!

I then ran the length of transition (which was fairly substantial as there were 334 triathletes alone, excluding duathletes and aquavelos!) and came in the back of transition. I ran through transition to my bike which was just about at the midpoint of the corral. At this point I dried off quickly, put on my helmet and shoes, and started running through transition to the mount line. This was interesting because of my cleats. I didn't want to damage them, so I jogged on my heels pretty slowly. If I could do it again I would have put my bike closer to the exit and/or ran without the shoes! Still I don't think it affected my time too much, and thankfully the shoes are still fine! Because we had to run the length of transition twice, transition times were pretty long. Mine was 2:31 and I thought I was going pretty fast!

Once I got over the mount line, I hopped up on my bike and started trying to clip in. It took me a couple seconds... I've only had clip-less pedals for a week. It felt pretty silly, but when I think about it, it was only a couple seconds Not bad looking too. The ride out of the community center was a bit curvy but not too bad. From there, it was a pretty flat ride. There were some slight grades every now and then, significant enough that I had to pay a fair amount of attention to my shifting. There were somewhere around 5 turns, some of them left which could be annoying. There were policemen at every intersection, which was nice and eliminated issues with cars. I'm still getting the hang of biking, it's probably my weakest sport at this point. I passed about two people and got passed by maybe ten people (you know, the serious bikers, the ones with the tt bikes and aero wheels). I held a little under 18 mph for the 10 miles for a time of 35:11. I will say the worst thing was that there were a fair amount of potholes/cracks in the road. We also went across railroad tracks about two times. Still, it was pretty enjoyable. I tried to take in some of my gatorade for a little mix of carbs, electrolytes, and hydration, and had half of a vanilla honeystinger waffle (yum!).

I rode into transition and found that I had lost two out of three screws on my left cleat. This was my fault, I didn't tighten them tight enough. Since I couldn't just clip out as normal at that point, I clipped out with my right foot, dismounted over my down tube with my left leg still clipped in, and unstrapped my left foot to get out. I also took off my right shoe so I could run faster and wasn't lopsided. I ran in, put on my zoot men's ultra race 3.0 shoes (wow! no socks, so comfortable and quick to get on, lightweight and decently but not over cushioned) and ran out of transition to the run. My transition was 1:12. Considering the size of transition, I'm happy with that.

On the run, I finally started really passing people! It felt good. I was able to sustain a strong pace for me. The course was flat, there was a small loop and then a run out where the bikes went and back into finish. I went 21:13, and my time for a regular 5k is about 20:00.  ETA's coach Jason Kilderry alerted me when I had about 200m to go and I broke into a really nice pace for the finish. Maybe I should have gone a little faster earlier but I really booked it and felt it at the finish. My total time was 1:02 and I missed third in my age-group by less than a minute and second by two minutes. Hopefully I can continue to improve this season!

After the race, they had pizza, doughnuts (Dunkin'), gatorade, and some water. Not the best post-race meal I've ever had, but not bad! It was a beautiful day for a triathlon, and my friends on the tri team made it even more fun. A special congratulations to my girlfriend Jenna for completing her first triathlon! This made me excited for the season, I can't wait for the next one!