How to pass the "suck threshold" in triathlon.

I read a great post on the Creating Passionate Users blog titled, "How to be an expert." The first line of the post reads,

"The only thing standing between you-as-amateur and you-as-expert is dedication."

At first this quote kind of pushed my thinking in the wrong direction. Why? Because while I consider myself dedicated to triathlon, I don't consider myself an expert. I especially don't consider myself an "expert" athlete. So I got this feeling that they might be (indirectly) suggesting that I wasn't dedicated enough. (We'll look at how much dedication is needed later.)

Before I mention anything more about the article, go and look at the article yourself - at least look at the graph they lead off with. It is really interesting to see the three different paths or choices they offer on their time vs. ability graph. The choices are:

a. "give up" - but if you can get past the frustrastion you may be able to make it past the "suck threshold"

b. "I'm ok, so I'll continue this way" - in which you remain an amateur as time passes on, never passing the "kicking ass threshold"

c. "push myself, because there is always a better way" - you may finally pass the "kicking ass threshold" and become an expert.

There were a few things that stood out to me about those who make the choice to continue working towards being an expert. Those people tend to do these things:

1. They find new ways to get better. There is always some way to get that little edge.

2. They work on their weaknesses, even if it isn't fun.

3. They are willing to pay the cost, whatever that cost might be in order to not suck.

So what does it take to pass the "suck threshold" in triathlon?

This is a very good question that I ask myself on a daily basis. This winter I made the decision to focus on Ironman Wisconsin and move away from a running focus in the spring and triathlon focus in the summer. This decision has meant that I have been swimming a lot more than normal (I am actually swimming) and getting ready to bike a lot until April. So maybe I'm on my way to passing the suck threshold by working on my weaknesses, but what about passing the kicking ass threshold. What do I have to do to get close to moving in that direction?

In Ironman competition there is one accomplishment that can show that you are getting close to the kicking ass threshold - qualifying for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. So to find out exactly what this threshold is for Ironman Wisconsin, I went to triresults.com and used the "reports" feature to find this information: (for my age group, male, 25-29)

2006: sub 10:18:19
2005: sub 11:10:09 (the slowest time of any IMMOO year)

This is great information, but one of the characteristics of those that don't suck was dedication. It is hard to extrapolate what amount of dedication someone has by seeing a finishing time. What if all those 25-29 year old males were just really gifted athletes?

A really good look at the amount of dedication a Kona qualifying athlete has was just presented by trigeek76 over on slowtwitch.com by conducting a survey of over 600 triathletes. You can check out the survey at http://www.triathlontrainingsurvey.net/results.html

In the second release of data interpretation he answers the question, "What will it take to get my Kona slot in '07?" You will have to fill out the survey to get all the data, but I'll share a couple things that point out the amount of committment or dedication that might be involved:

1. You need to train more! The average training volume for a 25-29 year old male was approximately 800 annual hours. It was around 840 annual hours across all age groups. (As a comparison, last year I trained 378 hours... yikes!)

2. You need to be consistent! The training was consistent throughout the prior year, even during the off season they would have their volumes at 20-40% of peak volumes. At six months out, their volumes were at 60% (bike) to 80% (swim and run) of peak volume.

A few training ideas came from this data that shows what those-that-don't-suck do for their training. The biggest one is that they have big bike volumes, especially within the 19 weeks leading up to the race. The second variable that correlated to race performance was run volume over the year. Even as these triathletes biked and ran a lot, guess what - they still swam! In other words, if you want to be a good triathlete that passes the suck threshold you need to bike a lot (especially the last 6 months), run a lot and don't forget to swim regularly.

So you want to kick ass! You want to be an expert.

What does it take to get to this level. To be honest, it is so far beyond my reality of my personal athletic experience that it is hard to explain. So what I did was find a few resources that I keep an eye on to help illustrate it for you. Get ready this is going to get ugly!

1. Sergio Marques - Sergio finished 19th at this years World Championships, putting in the fastest run leg of the day. What did it take for him to get there? (Keep in mind this is one year, but...) He recently analyzed his 2006 year compared to his 2005 year. Here are some things to think about:

- He had 803 workouts and put in 1,300:14 hours over the year. (Almost 1,000 more hours than me!)

- Swim: 387:6 (n=291), Bike: 646:23 (n=267), Run: 266:30 (n=245)

2. Zach Ruble - another pro triathlete I looked up after watching his IMMOO performance. You can go and search through his 2006 season starting right after IMAZ and going to IMMOO by reading his blog: Zach's Training Blog and he just started using workoutlog (yeah Zach) and sharing his log.

(Note: I think that Zach and Sergio are now coached by the same coach, which is new for Zach this season I beleive. If I read his blog correctly? They actually are using the same coach as our local pro Dave Kuendig.)

3. Epic camp discussion. One of the better discussions that I've heard discussing what it takes to not suck in triathlon was the recent podcast with Scott Molina and Gordo Byrn - Ironman Talk Podcast #40. Could I survive that kind of training? At this point in my develeopment I don't think I could. What is amazing is that some (if not most this time around) of these guys are age-groupers!

4. What it takes. I have not seen this documentry yet, but if you are not into all the x's and o's that are provided in the links above, maybe you can purchase this video and get motivated to start breaking through that kicking ass threshold.

So what are you going to do?

It looks like you got a few choices to make - give up, do the same ol' same ol' or push through and kick ass by becoming dedicated, working on your weaknesses, be consistent, find a new (better) way and then just pay your dues.

You know two of the coaches mentioned above have little "tag lines" that follow them around: "more is more" and "there is no easy way".... I guess the first one might be right and the second one is just a reality we'll have to face.

"Everest a reasonable goal"

I mentioned in my last post that I was starting to read Into Thin Air by Jack Krakauer. I'm not completely finished with the book to give a complete review, but I wanted to share a quick quote that hit home a little bit. The quote is actually a quote of a quote that he used at the beginning of chapter 7.

"Everest has attracted its share of men like these. Their mountaineering experience varied from none at all to very slight - certainly none of them had the kind of experience which would make an ascent of Everest a reasonable goal. Three things they all had in common: faith in themselves, great determination, and endurance" by Walt Unsworth in Everest

I like to think that I have great determination for certain things. I like to believe that I have endurance to achieve certain things. (Persistance if nothing else). There are a few things that I have faith in my abilities to accomplish, although maintaining this faith and dealing with self doubt is a regular battle. So what does this mean? I am not sure, but maybe it means that I am foolish enough to attempt climbing my own "Everests" even if it doesn't look smart.

If I am honest, the people I respect the most are those few people I have been around that place their fears aside and are willing to take a chance. The people that not only dream, but take steps that give inertia to those dreams. Sometimes they have failed, a couple times they have succeeded. In both instances (failed or succeeded) they have demonstrated a characteristic that I envy. They dared to make a dream turn into a reality.

Maybe I can get some feedback from a couple of those people and share it with you?

Deep Survival : Book Review

I finally completed the book - Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. I have already written about this book in a post titled, "Is Fatigue Physical or Psychological?" The truth is that I tore through the book, but sat it down prior to finishing the last chapter or appendix. Why would I do that? Who knows because this book is a treasure chest full of information related to survival, but it seems to be much more than just a survival "guide." In fact, I might say that if you are looking for a "how to" book on surviving in the wilderness than this might not be what you are looking for, at first.

This book takes you into the minds of survivors. It digs into what kind of mind-set and behaviors they exhibited when faced with their life-or-death situations. He pushes through the most obvious assumption that those with the most talent survive, while those with less talent do not become survivors. The stories range from climbers on Mt. Hood (an very relavant situation given the current news while I was reading the book), men lost at sea, a climber escaping an accident with broken bones and terrible weather conditions, navy fighter pilots learning to land on a carrier and many more stories that make you wonder - Could I survive in a similar situation? Am I a survivor?

The book gives you so many ideas to think about and stories to digest that I will probably be going back to the stories several more times. (I have a lot of notes and underlined texts to go back and review, hopefully gaining a deeper understanding.) Not to leave you stranded without some sort of text to think about yourself, I wanted to share the suggestions (or characteristics) he has in the appedix for survival when in trouble:

- perceive, believe, then act
- avoid impuslive behavior; don't hurry
- know your stuff
- get the information
- commune with the dead (he talks about reading accident reports, etc.)
- be humble
- when in doubt, bail out

One of the more interesting things that I remember from the book was when he wrote about young children being better at surviving then older children. This is a very interesting concept to think about if you look at a child and then think about what you perceive to be the characteristics of a survivor. Maybe some of the conditioning we've had throughout our own life puts us in a place that makes us less able to suvive, in any situation. (i.e. work, relationships, financial, triathlon ....)

This book has made me courious about the topic of suvival, so I've started reading, Into Thin Air and bought, Touching the Void (a story talked about in Deep Survival).

I want to be a survivor, but how do we know until we are faced with a survival situation? Maybe that is one more reason that I've put in an application for the North Pole Marathon entry sponsorship over at yourrunning.com.

North Pole Marathon Application. Vote for the Underdog!

A little while back I mentioned that Brad Feld and Yourrunning.com is giving away an entry to the North Pole Marathon. Actually Brad is sponsoring the entry and Yourrunning.com is taking care of the travel (if I read all the information correctly).

Well, Today I completed my application. According to the website there are 25 other runners that have put in their application to have a chance at running around the North Pole. Does this mean I have a 1 in 26 chance? If it was a "lottery" then I probably would have a 1 in 26 chance, but it is not. The application is just that - an application. The most qualified, based upon their qualifications gets the opportunity.

So what are my chances? Well, I looked at some of the other applicants and they are pretty strong applicants. That being said, I don't know to many athletes that toe the line that don't have a desire, belief or even a dream that they could win. (I admit that many of the races I race in I understand that coming in first isn't a strong reality, but who lets reality influence them.)

My request: I need some way to show the people at yourrunning.com that I am a good candidate to run this race, besides my application pleas. So can help me out by letting them know that you think I would be a good candidate? How? Well, one way would be to use their Feedback page and leave them a message saying that I (Gary Ditsch) would be a good candidate. Another possibility would be to wait until my application gets posted (it will be posted here) and then vote through their voting system or leave a comment in the comments section.

The biggest effort may come from you telling at least 1 or 2 other people (that I may or may not know) to help me out too. Any little step or help to set my application apart would be appreciated.

Here are two questions I answered in the application:

Why should we pick you to go to the North Pole?

I believe that there are times in most people’s lives that they look back and say, "What in the world is my life about?" There are people who come to this realization when they wake up one day and find out they haven't paid attention to their bodies in decades, so they decide to exercise or lose weight. There are people that look at their child walk across a stage to grab a college diploma only to wonder just who that child is, so they vow to spend more time with their family and less time at a job. I am no different than those people, yet I am only twenty-eight years old.

The one thing that I have found in those moments that I have questioned myself and who I was is that there was one constant - running. As a child growing up in Nebraska, I found myself running the gravel roads or by the bean fields to find peace. In college, I began running again in order to have an excuse to drink less on the "party" nights. I also found a major of study in college that allowed me to learn about exercise and still get a degree. It also propelled me to a place where I could get a graduate degree. After college I found myself stuck in an emotionally bankrupt job, contacts that I made with fellow runners and triathletes lead me to a more fulfilling job. The combination of all these choices and situations have lead me to a place where I hope to make running and helping others run (and swim, bike and exercise) a full-time, life-long mission.

Running is essentially who I am and the best way that I have to express myself. (Picture Robby Benson at the end of "Running Brave".) Why should you pick me? By choosing me you would be assisting me in this continuous search I have in finding out who I am, but yourrunning.com would also be able to use the passion I have to reach out to new runners that want to share their journey too. Yourrunning.com might just discover things about itself that it has not noticed before.

Offer some evidence that you can complete a marathon in harsh, sub-zero conditions at the North Pole.

Every runner has a story about how they completed a race in terrible conditions. These stories are often the only type of story a runner has to tell. I like to equate them to the fisherman's tale. "You should have seen the one I threw back!"

The best tale that I have happened in September of 2006. Prepared to complete my first Ironman distance triathlon, my wife and I headed to Lake Barkley, Kentucky. The weather was predicting a rainy day, but I was more worried about the race than the weather. The night before the race was to take place there was an athletes meeting where the discussion of weather came up, primarily because it was getting bad enough that flooding was becoming a possibility.

That night was full of thunder, lightening and heavy rains. Still I loaded my bike up in the morning and headed to the start line. The race was cancelled due to the many floods and constantly heavy rains. The race director held a meeting to decide what would happen. Many of the people went home and called it a weekend. But there were 6 of us full distance athletes that chose to stay and see what it would take to finish an iron-distance triathlon. The water was filled with debris, the bouys were washed out of place, the volunteers didn't come to give support along the course and once again I found myself in a place where I was all alone trying to find out what I was made of.

I finished! The lessons from that race keep revealing themselves to me still today. The biggest one that I have taken home to date is that I don't need to race others in order to feel accomplishment. Racing yourself is more of a challenge to win anyway.

Shout out: Triathlon Blogger Network

Over the last few days I have been trying to get a Feedburner Network started for triathletes. With a little bit of explaining and emailing, I finally got the ok from Feedburner to go ahead and get it started. I'm still learning about the "networks" and how to manage the invitations, but we have a few members of the network signed up. I hope to continue to build the network into a solid group of people that are willing to explain and share their "triathlon life" with us.

Check out the network at this url: Triathlon Network

We currently have 5 members signed up. I thought that it might be nice to introduce the first few:

JT's Tri-spot - (a quick take from her "about me")

My mission: In a moment of grandeur and compulsivity I signed up for Ironman Coeur d'Alene having only completed a single sprint distance triathlon. The long journey to Ironman ends on June 24, 2007 and I seek to enjoy every minute of it. During the journey I will be raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society in support of a good friend who was just diagnosed with Lymphoma.

You can subscribe to her blog here.

Ironclm's Tri World - the byline of her blog is "mostly race reports, rides and other tri and cycling stuff..." You can subscribe to her blog here.

Ironbeach - My road to Kona 2009 (a quick take from his "about me")

I'm a 20-year-old triathlete from Finland. I'm a freshman student studying business at the University of Jyväskylä. I'm also working part-time for this great accounting company

You can subscribe to his blog here.

The other two blogs in the network are my blog and the Mideast Multisport Training Blog (which is maintained by myself and the other 4 coaches at Mideast Multisport). So there it is, I hope you head on over to the Triathlon Network and read what's new. To make it even easier on yourself subscribe to the network feed.

Location wise this is how it breaks down:

Kentucky (US) - 2
Ohio (US) - 1
California (US) -1
Finland - 1

A brief look at overtraining.

There was a post on slowtwitch that asked, "What does overtraining feel like?"

One of the posters provided the following list that I thought was pretty comprehensive and valuable:

Common warning signs of overtraining include:
1. Washed-out feeling, tired, drained, lack of energy
2. Mild leg soreness, general achiness
3. Pain in muscles & joints
4. Sudden drop in performance
5. Insomnia
6. Headaches
7. Decreased immunity (increased number of colds, and sore throats)
8. decrease in training capacity / intensity
9. moodiness and irritability
10. depression
11. loss of enthusiasm for the sport
12. decreased appetite
13. increased incidence of injuries.

The interesting part is that I can see #'s 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9 over the last few days. It could be due to a lot of things, like training too much too soon, but I also believe that it has been due to staying up too late (and not sleeping when I get there) and poor nutrition.

New Years Eve, college football bowl games, holiday break and a little too much free time, all these things have added up to the poor nutrition and little sleep combo. The solution to this point has been to use the Starbucks gift cards I got for Christmas and force my body to handle the fatigue. Bad idea. Luckily I wised up this morning. I'll be spending tonight laying on the coach reading a couple of the books I recently got.

Eric wrote a nice little post about approaching workouts during this time of the year and season yesterday. Head on over to the Mideast Multisport blog and read what his thoughts were: link to post here. I wrote a little comment at the end.

Challenge? On the north pole!

Today I checked my bloglines headlines and saw a post by Brad Feld titled - "Update on my North Pole attempt". I read awhile back that he was going to run a marathon at the North Pole. At the time I was thinking, "wow, that's amazing. but a little crazy!"

If you went and read his post today you saw that he has decided to not run the marathon himself but to sponsor an athlete (along with yourrunning.com) to go and run the race.

I talked to Nikki about it this afternoon and of course she is completely supportive if it is something I would want to do. So I'll be putting together my application soon. Here's to a little luck.

If anyone has any great ideas for things to include in my application, I'd be willing to accept ideas. I also know that there are some other "crazy" people out there that see this idea as completely exciting and not foolish. Send in your applications too!

Belief in myself during 2007!

Over on the Mideast Multisport Blog we have been talking a little bit about process goals for 2007, so if you haven't read that post yet head on over to the site and take a look.

The one process goal of mine that I put out there for everyone to see was to complete a 30/15". Which means 30 consecutive weeks of training 15+ hours. This seemed like a good idea at first until I looked a little closer at my 2006 logs and realized that I didn't go plus 15 many times last year. It just makes me nervous aboutcommitment early on in the season. Why? Because going plus 15 hours won't be too difficult once I can get outdoors and complete 5 - 6 hour rides on the weekend, but those probably won't be coming until late March or even late April. (I am doing a 200km ride in March so I'll have at least one long ride.)

Today's good start: am run - 40min run with Kelty, afternoon ride - 1:55 ride on trainer while watching the Huskers lose.

Belief in myself - and reading the Jim Vance story last night.

I have to be honest with people right now, over the last 6 months I have been noticing a consistently eroding self confidence in myself. I am not sure why, but it probably has something to do with the expectations I have had for my life and myself. It's hard when you dream big and
feel like you are accomplishing very little.

There are things that I have done that others have said are "accomplishments" but I have felt little sense of positive feelings from, such as getting my masters degree.

I don't want to go on too much about this, but I see 2007 as a great year to find some things out about myself in many ways. Academically, I had applied to the University of Kentucky to finish my degree in dietetics, but I'm not going to take classes because I've found that it would spread me too thin.

Athletically I would like to press myself. This doesn't mean I want to end up over trained all year long - what it does mean is that I would like to see how committed to the goal of racing Ironman I can be?

Stop being afraid! There is always a fear of setting your expectations too high because what if you don't reach them. This year I will have to realize that I am valuable enough to take a chance.

I am not doing a great job of explaining how I feel about this and what I would like to use the 2007 season to find out - so maybe the best way to explain it better is to share another triathlete's story. Go read this: A Touch Decision Pays Off for Vance. I remember Vance being around Lincoln, NE when I was in school atUNL and always wondered if the Jim Vance in Xterra was the same person. I guess he is. Anyway, if you read the story than I would have to say that I feel about like he did when he was driving home from theLos Angeles Triathlon this past September.

There's always that fear that I am not doing what I should be doing. Maybe I should have went to law school, business school or even medical school. Is being a triathlon / running coach "IT". I hope in 2007 I will find a few more hints.