energy spent and the potential pay-out in performance

I have been moving pretty quickly through some books lately, it has been nice to catch my stride again in the "educating myself" department. But, I haven't done a good job of sharing and/or applying all of the things that I've been reading. So I figured I would start to share some of my notes that I take and thoughts that come from them.

My current read is, Lance Armstrong's War, by Daniel Coyle. I have several notes taken from this book, but this morning something caught my eye:

"Thanks to the cruel magic of physics, that relatively small increase in speed meant a huge increase in effort.* Going 8 percent faster meant pushing 25 percent more air, thus doing 25 percent more work, burning 25 percent more energy. The cold and rain increased the workload. All of which added up to perhaps the most-expensive first week in Tour history." pg. 223-224

As a triathlete, the balance of energy expenditure can be the difference between running off the bike and shuffling off the bike. I don't want to get into the science of the energy expenditure (you'll have to read the book to see what the footnote * said on the mathematics of it), but from a race strategy perspective, every triathlete should consider where they would benefit the most from using the extra energy in terms of improved time.

For example, as a below average swimmer, I come out of the water several minutes behind the leaders in my age-group. One might think that it would be good to spend the extra energy in the water to close that gap. I believe this could be the worst place to spend the energy. Even if I come out of the water 5-8 minutes down (in a half IM), that is insignificant in terms of the overall race. If I use that extra energy to stay closer, then I get on the bike still down, but I've also created an energy deficit that the leaders didn't have to. So then I would be down a couple minutes and riding from a deeper hole.

What this does mean is that during training, I need to work on becoming a highly efficient swimmer. (In my case, by swimming more often.)

Gordo had an interview with Endurance Radio in July of 2005. He talked about "medium of movement" towards the end of the interview.

A key point to remember as a triathlete is that the race is one long race.... not three individual races. Know where to use those different events to your advantage.