Balance and Athletic Success.

The picture above is from this past weekend. The weekend was a good reminder as to what balance can create for your health, sometimes fitness, but may not be a positive factor for performance. Read On.

This past weekend Nikki and I spent Saturday afternoon through Sunday afternoon at the Boone Creek Anglers Club. It was a short retreat with the other trainers and families from Fitness Plus (the studio we personal train at). It was a great way to spend some time socializing, relaxing, hiking and just being around nature. We often take little trips outdoors in order to get away. Thankfully, we live in Kentucky where there is a lot of natural beauty to be explored. (Even though people say that we should still be living out west if that is what we truly desired... take a look for yourself. Pictures here.)

The whole experience allowed me to solidify some thoughts that I have been having on what type of year I would like to have in triathlon, running and competing.

The process of an active lifestyle:

Last year around the New Year, I wrote a post discussing the benefits of setting up process goals. It sounds easy, but often we fall into the outcome based thinking. As I approached Ironman Wisconsin in September, I felt that pressure to become more and more outcome focused. Some of that pressure was from others always asking what my goals were, some of the pressure was within in my own mind deciding what would be and what would not be successful.

I feel like I succeeded in fighting off those pressures and just allowing my training plan take care of itself and allowing the race to happen. (You can read my race report if you want.) The interesting thing for me was what happened after the Ironman. I quickly became dissatisfied with my accomplishment and found myself looking for how I could "better" my efforts this year. And by better, I mean, how can I prove myself to others and myself again.

By November, I was making plans to do two and possibly three ironman distance races in 2008. And my training plan was beginning to be sketched out. But that is not what I want to be about. I can't force myself to be happy only by beating "x" or even out-doing myself. Triathlon, running and all the activities that I've competed in over the last 9 years has been about a lifestyle.

I find it interesting that on January 1st, 1999, I sat down and wrote down on a piece of paper

"complete a marathon"

And nine years later, I fully anticipated completing a couple marathons and iron-distance triathlons in the same year. There could be a lot said about the change in lifestyle that has occurred during that time!

This year I have decided to revive my commitment to the lifestyle, the daily process of being active. I'm not 100% sure what that means right at this moment, other than it means I will seek balance in my activities and I won't target an A race.

Why? Well my thinking is this; when I have an A race chosen each day is geared towards one single day of the year. This reality alone makes it difficult at time to chose activities that will increase my enjoyment, because the activity chosen is the one that will prepare me to do that race better.

I will still race, but hopefully no race will become more important than another. Nor will any race become more important than my Saturday rides. There might be a lot of peace available for myself if that is true.

The bottom line is that I'm taking the "Basic Week" idea to a lifestyle extreme of having a noncompetitive anticipation as my end. The reality is that is where it all began 9 years ago. As an 11 hour Ironman athlete, that is really where it is anyway!

Balance and Athletic Success:

My perspective of this as a coach is that this is not an optimal strategy that results in the best possible race. When it comes to health and fitness there is a level of balance that we all can achieve; when it comes to race performance, there is often little room for balance. The best athletes are those with a life that has little balance involved in it. If you have any questions about this, watch the documentary "What it takes".

I received the documentary (along with the trainer version and Showdown) for Christmas. It is a very inspiring and interesting video, but you don't see much balance available for those at the top end of the sport. They live swimming, biking and running.

Many of you are probably saying, "yeah but". Yeah but, I don't want to be the best. Yeah but, I'm an age-grouper not a professional. Yeah but, etc....

The truth is that at the long end of the tail, there is not much balance - even for the "everyman". I personally will not be a top professional in Hawaii, I know that. But even when I compete against myself, I realize that to become a much faster Ironman than 11 hours, I'm going to have to sacrifice a level of balance.

In 2008 I will likely not become a faster Ironman athlete, but I will be very active. That's the point.

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.