Jesse Kropelnicki

Racing In The Heat - Part I

January 26th, 2010

Racing in the heat can be a challenging task for many athletes with either higher sweat rates, or a poor ability to dissipate heat. This writing explains the approach I like to take for athletes racing these types of events. In fact, this will be a two post topic with this first post covering the pre-race measures any athlete should take. The second post will cover the things you can do on race day to help further mitigate any damage the heat may impose on you.

Here are the preparatory measures that should be taken:

1) First on my list is body composition — you must get down to a body fat that’s optimal for your gender/age. For folks that have too much body fat, they are racing with a 1/8-1/2″ full body sweater. This has a major impact on both heat dissipation ability and sweat rate.

2) Acclimate for the event — for those who live in warm climates, this one is easy. Spend time during your workouts in the sun, and heat the best you can during the 4 weeks leading into the event (minus race week). For those who don’t live in warm climates, you have a couple of options to acclimate before the event and get the sweat rate and blood plasma changes that occur when properly acclimated. The first is to arrive at the event location at least 2 weeks early, and do your final training during the warm part of the day. If you have access to a refractometer, you can test hydration levels each morning and evening to make sure you are hydrating well, and acclimating to your new atmosphere. Another good metric to use in judging your acclimation, is average overnight HR and variability. Take some readings before you head out to your destination, and then compare them to after you arrive. If you can’t arrive at the race location 2 weeks early, a good approach is to layer up and acclimate at home. This requires a solid 2 week period where almost all rides and runs are done “hot” by either turning up the heat at home, or by layering up. Ideally, this is done 4-6 weeks out and is then maintained by continuing once, every other day acclimation sessions through to race day.

3) Last but definitely not least, is to develop and train a solid fueling plan — the first piece of this is to develop a plan based on sound principals. For me, this means a sweat test, to get an idea of fluid losses, and then an assumption based on your previous history (cramping, etc), for sodium content of your sweat. Most athletes fall between 500 and 900 mg per 16oz of sweat loss. With sweat rates at 80 degrees of about 24oz-60oz per hour for most athletes, you can see how quickly the sodium losses add up. Using the fluid losses from your sweat test, the calculated sodium losses, as well as estimated carbohydrate requirements (based on lean body mass), you can put together a feeding schedule to compensate for those losses. This is a topic I can go on about forever, but the biggest take home for hot races is to develop a fueling plan that supplies enough carbohydrate/sodium solution (sport drink) to pee at least once on the bike in half IM, and at least twice in full IM, and then practice that same plan during every single training session for at least 4 months prior to race day. You’d never go into a race without training your metabolic system……You should never going into a race without training your digestive system just as intensely.

My next post will go into those things you can do on race day to help mitigate the heat in addition to the preparatory items above.

-Jesse

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Body Composition Tools

December 29th, 2009

While we’re all enjoying some holiday eating before the New Year, I thought it would be a good time to talk about body composition!

Anyone who has worked with me or understands my approach to coaching knows I take a very holistic approach. That is, I don’t like to leave many details to other “specialists”. I believe that in many cases, a mixed “team approach” of specialists can confuse the athlete and make them feel as though they are being pulled in too many directions. Because of that, I have learned, think about, and develop most pieces of triathlon preparation including nutrition. One major piece related to that area is body composition management which is the focus of this writing. Primarily I’d like to discuss two very important toolsI use in this area (this isalso theevaluation method that I teach QT2coaches and dietitians):

1) Body fat (BF) measurement with calipers. This gives us a sense of what body fat is available to remove (ie, what dead weight we are carrying). The available weight to remove through body composition tweeks is based on current body fat and how low that can go based on gender and age (better to stay conservatively high here versus even a little too low).

2) Calculation of Body Mass Index (BMI) AFTER correcting weight to optimal race weight (based on optimal BF determined in #1) is super useful for determining if an athlete is strength limited or too muscular (more muscle than the sport of triathlon requires to power you forward). This is calculated simple by (body weight x 703)/(height in inches)^2.

The benchmarks I like to use for triathlon are a BMI of 21-23 for males, and a BMI of 20-22 for females, both assessed at optimal BF. The lower end of these ranges is reserved for the elites and world class professionals. Being below these ranges typically means the athlete is strength limited (to be verified by other metrics) and therefore requires strength work with heavy focus on protein while above these BMI’s means the opposite (too much muscle).

As you can see by this, its not one of the two tools that’s useful to make body comp assessments as many think. Instead, its about using both available tools to reach a very educated decision and approach to optimal performance.

Here’s an example:
Joe is 5′-11″ at 160 pounds and 15 percent body fat. He is 25 years old and wants to race elite.

1) First, we correct his weight to optimal BF (where we plan to be on race day). For him, this is 6 percent meaning he needs to lose 9 percent. In terms of weight, this means 0.91 x 160 equals 145 (assuming no muscle loss occurs).

2) At this weight and height, his BMI is 20.2 which is well below the range defined above meaning he requires a heavy strength focus, combined with adequate protein intake to help him gain some muscle mass.

Based on this example, we can see that Joe needs to lose 15 pounds of fat, and try to put on about 5-7 pounds of muscle to race at optimal body composition.

If only a BMI assessment was carried out, we’d think he only needs to just lose weight when in reality, he needs to lose some weight that’s not helping him and gain some that will. If we had just used BF measurement, we wouldn’t have identified a potential strength limiter and the need for a focused strength routine.

I hope this post was helpful in clearing up some of the misconception between these two both very useful body composition metrics. Happy Holidays!

-Jesse

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IT Band Friction

December 15th, 2009

This is one of the most common injuries for runners and triathletes. It can be a tough one to deal with for “A type” athletes because its one you just can’t run through. Yet, every day we don’t run, the season or race gets closer and the training plan numbers back up. To make matters worse, we train ourselves to run through all pain that may be presented to us, and be tough. How do we deal with this?

1) The moment you feel any IT band pain at all, you have to stop running! Take it as a challenge to have the discipline to do this.

2) Start a comprehensive stretch routine daily that hits hams, gluts, quads, TFL, and calfs at a minimum. This routine should take 20-30 min if done correctly.

3) Once you don’t feel any pain at all on a day to day basis, start running every other day. Don’t plan a run time instead, stop the moment the pain becomes worse than a 2 out of 10. If the next run fails to go any longer than the previous, wait 2 days before the next run. If that one again, does not improve, go to 3 days before the next run…etc. Each time you get a better run (longer), you can subtract a day, until you are back to every other day. Once you are able to run 45 min every other day, you are likely good to go. Don’t go to back-to-back days until you are able to run 45 min every other day!

While going through this process, follow the RUN INJURY protocol to help keep fitness through this period. You’ll be surprised when you begin running again that you have lost very, very, little run form.

These little injuries can be frustrating, but with a little patience, they are just another speed bump, to a successful race season and long term progress.

-Jesse

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Sweet Potato Fries!

December 11th, 2009

It’s the off season for me right now (2 weeks of it), which means no exercise, and some more “normal” foods. The top of my list of junk foods is fries…..I just love them. With the thought of fries on my head more often than not right now, I got thinking about sweet potato fries and how I’ve perfected the art of making the home batch. For anyone who has tried this, its no easy task to get them coming out like the local pub’s version. I actually make sweet potato fries on almost every major 70.3 or Ironman race week that I do, at 5 days out from race day. This is part of a mini fat load prior to the carbohydrate load during the final 2 days before the event. I thought I’d take this time to go over how to make the PERFECT batch!

#1 Buy the largest, straightest sweet potatoes you can.

#2 Skin your sweet potatoes with a peeler or with a knife and cut off the ends.

#3 Cut your sweet potatoes into fry size morsels with a rectangular cross section of about 1/2″ x 1/4″. Make them as long as you wish!

#4 Soak these fry’s in an ice bath (a bowl filled with ice water and ice), for about 2 hours. This step pulls some sugar out of the potato and helps keep them from burning.

#5 Prepare a plate with plenty of corn starch (enough to coat the fries), and season the mound of corn starch with “Emerald’s” seasoning (or other at your choice).

#6 Pull each fry out of the ice bath and coat with this mixture…..place them on a separate plate. Let them sit for about a 1/2 hour to allow the coating to really sit in.

#7 Begin heating a good sized sauce pan (the big one that looks like a pan but has short vertical sides), with about 1/4-1/2″ oil in it. I typically use smart balance oil which behaves pretty well under high temps, and has a good blend of omega-6, and omega-3 fatty acids. It’s actually just a blend of soy bean oil (”vegetable oil”), canola, and olive. Heat this at about medium heat….not hot enough to have the oil smoke.

#8 Once the oil is up to heat, place enough fries in the pan to cover all available space without stacking them. Cook until a golden brown and a good crispy crust. Pull them out with a screened spatula or tongs. Place them on a paper towel and layer with other batches until complete.

#9 Once done, toss the fries in a mixture of seasoned salt:

2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon chili powder

#10 Place all of the fries on a single plate and enjoy with Catsup!

I hope this post solves the mystery of the sweet potato fry which so many people struggle with at home (go ahead and do a search on them and you’ll see what I’m talking about)! They are a great, reasonably healthy way to eat “bad”……particularly during the holidays!

-Jesse

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IM Cozumel Race Report

November 30th, 2009

Well, it turns out the course wasn’t as advertised (not fast at all)! Here’s the summary:

Swim (51:XX): Leading into race day this was the biggest area of uncertainty as the days before race day were unbelievably chopping and current filled. I thought race day could easily bring a 1:10 swim for me if the conditions were tough as they were all week. As it turns out, this was the nicest part of the day! With a shift in the wind direction, race brought calm conditions with current in our favor. I’d say the swim was about 8 minutes fast.

Prior to the swim start we were treated to a dolphin show (which was awesome). Once the gun went off it was the cleanest IM swim I have done to date, with almost no contact at all, crystal clear waters, and a current at your back for the 1.2+ mile leg of the rectangle (that was one long single leg!). When I came out in 51:XX, I thought, this is going to be one fast day!

Bike (5:14:XX): This course is flat, flat, flat! The days leading into the race had some windy conditions (12-20 mph) which definitely make this course challenging, however, the forecast for race day had 4-8 mph predicted so we thought it would be a super fast bike day…..boy were we wrong! I had thought, given the conditions, that a sub 5:00 day would be in the cards for me. This bike course has 4 distinct legs: from the start to the beach (typically a tail wind), along the beach (typically a stiff head wind), back to town (typically about neutral), and lastly through town (typically a tail wind). The first loop went as planned averaging 22.3mph, the second loop suddenly had shifted winds and when we came to the leg along the beach, was a 15+ mph head wind….just brutal to go 16-17mph for 1 hour plus for each loop. The only other place I have experienced that is Hawaii. By the third loop, the conditions were horrendous and the carnage on that bike course was more than I have ever witnessed. Overall, given the conditions, I was very happy with my ride.

Run (3:31:XX): This is a flat run course (notice I didn’t say fast). Some combinations of the windy bike course, concrete running surface, and heat, make this run course much, much tougher than it appears. Going into the race, I thoughts of a sub 3:05 marathon. I headed out the first few miles at 6:45 which felt pretty comfortable. I slowly drifted to the 7:00 range through 9 miles which was sustainable. Around 7 miles into the race though I began to feel a bit of knee pain….I thought would just pass. By mile 9 I knew I was in trouble….it was some serious IT band friction which just came out of the blue. I had a bit of trouble with this in February but really nothing at all since then so it wasn’t even on my radar of potential limiters for race day. By mile 12 it was the full IT band lock up….I knew I was in trouble. I began stopping every ½ mile to try and stretch it but it was no use. This slowed me down to the 8+ minute mile range pretty quickly given all of the stops. I finally got some Advil around mile 16 which helped a bit. Even given the knee pain and stops though, I’m not sure I’d have run much faster than 3:20 on this day. Scratching my head now trying to figure out where the IT stuff came from….I’m thinking the 5 hours in the aero bars combined with the concrete run surface, did the trick. No problems, Utah is around the corner for me to lay down a redeeming run!

Total (9:43:XX): Overall, this is a fantastic IM to do. The people were unbelievably nice down here, the race is well run, the spectators made lake placid’s look like a bowling match audience, and the island is beautiful. I’d come to do it again in a heartbeat, although I’m not sure I want subject myself to those brutal conditions again! I said it yesterday, but that race was easily as tough as the Hawaii on a stiff day.

Thanks as usual to all the QT2 athletes who inspire me on a daily basis, and my wife Chrissie who puts up with more than any spouse should have to.

-Jesse

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IM Cozumel

November 28th, 2009

Well, I’m racing Ironman Cozumel tomorrow! It’s been a long season for me…..running about 54 weeks since a break I took after Kona last year. I’ve spent many of those weeks focused on other’s performance which is my real focus. However, here I am sitting a day out from an IM, most of my athletes are finished with their seasons, and I am feeling very good and ready to roll. I really haven’t done an IM on such a fast course (if as advertised), so should be able to put down a pretty quick time. Maybe around 9:00-9:15 I think. Here’s my latest performance metrics:

400TT: 4:48
20 min Power: 340w
5k: 16:10
156lb at 5.5% BF (BMI = 21.7)

These are the best they have ever been for me. I’m most excited about my running which was very consistent for the past 6 months. I think I may have a shot at going under 3:05 for the marathon if everything goes as planned.

Following placid I realized that my best route to any speed improvements would be increased restoration (through lower volume and better sleep), and lower body weight. From my body building days I still have a bit of muscle I could use to lose so set out to drop 3-4 pounds of it following placid. At placid, my BMI at optimal body fat (5.5% for me) was about 22.2. I typically like to see top level men at about 21.0 at optimal BF for race day (good metric of how much muscle an athlete should have for triathlon), so this meant I had 8 pounds I COULD lose before Cozumel which would be worth about 16 minutes in IM. However, 8 pounds is a bit excessive in such a short timeframe following Placid so I shot for 5….worth about 10 minutes in IM (so much more than what I could get from fitness during the same period). This puts me at a BMI of about 21.7 and optimal BF for tomorrow.

Following this event, it will be some down time for me before beginning my build up to IM Utah along with 15+ other QT2 athletes. Already looking forward to it…..

-Jesse

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Caffeine

November 5th, 2009

Caffeine can be a great tool for athletes of all abilities used to enhance performance. However, when abused (or not used as a tool), it can be a detriment to your training and racing.

What I typically recommend for caffeine use (if an athlete would like to use caffeine as a supplement) on both a macro, and micro level is as follows:

1) Keep total daily intake below 200mg unless its race day. This is the ADA recommendation (for healthy adults) and helps avoid receptor up-regulation that weakens the affect of caffeine when you really want to use the extra push. It also helps keep you from lying in bed each night with your eyes open.

2) Use it as a tool! That is, save coffee or caffeinated products for before/during, key intensity based workouts. Don’t waist it (and encourage receptor up-regulation) when just sitting around the office. What I have found, is that chronic usage during the day can really impact an athlete’s ability to performance best effort workouts in the evening due to a skewed perceived exertion. Like most drugs, you then need another big dose to even feel like yourself…not a good cycle!

3) During the day while not working out, if you need a pick up, consider using lighter caffeine products like green tea. This avoids the receptor up-regulation described above. Green tea also provides tremendous antioxidant properties which as athletes, is a really big plus to mitigate free radical damage produced by all of the aerobic oxidation that we create.

4) During the final two days before a key event, limit caffeine to 100mg at 2 days out, and 30mg the day before. This ensures that your race day boost is felt in a big way.

5) Increase caffeine intake throughout workouts and races, such that peak serum caffeine levels occur as your peripheral system becomes the most fatigued (ie, at the end of the session/race). Early caffeine consumption on long days (5+ hours) typically results in over pacing the early portion of the event/session and subsequently leads to a significant drop off in pace later in the day as the peripheral system becomes fatigued. Use caffeine to help continue stimulation of your core system as this fatigue sets in.

6) Lastly, excessive caffeine and/or coffee can really do a number on your gut…reducing your ability to absorb key nutrients, and also just plain irritate it. This is a common cause of race fueling difficulty (habitual caffeine intake) that many seem to miss.

In summary, caffeine can be a great, undeniable performance and training aid when used properly. However, it can also be a slippery slope that any serious athlete should avoid being pulled into. I hope these recommendation from both a macro (day to day) and micro (within each session) perspective help clear up some of the confusion (and/or my logic in this area).

-Jesse

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Keeping The Streak Alive….

October 23rd, 2009

Yup, this is a race report! I haven’t done one in a while. Having said that, I did the baystate half marathon this past Sunday and thought I’d post about it. This is a flat fast course for the most part.

The day before wasn’t the best in terms of preparation as I decided to rip a hole in the house and install sliding doors to the back yard. On race day, the gun went off and I dialed into my goal race pace based on my recent aerobic training metrics (QT2 Z1 pace). This had been predetermined before the start to be 5:39 on the garmin. I held onto this through mile 3 where the pace started to slide a bit due to a stiff head wind. The weather was 38 degrees, windy and rainy…..just nasty…..typical new england. By mile 6 my average pace was 5:42 on the garmin (after the 3 miles of head wind). Following that, I ran pretty steady through 12 and had a 5:43 pace on the garmin. The last mile I was able to pick it up and crossed the line with a 5:42 average pace. I had a distance of 13.18……so ended up with a 5:45 pace recorded in the results……1:15:13…another PR at the half distance!

This is my 6th open half marathon (ever) and my 6th PR….keeping the streak alive! To reiterate just how aerobic our sport is, I’ll point out that the last time I ran faster than 6:30 pace in training was back in June on this day: HERE. Again, for those geeks out there or for those with too much time on their hands, here’s my garmin file from the race: HERE. Average HR was about 4 beats above threshold HR, which is about right (we typically figure 5 beats at half marathon). I’ll note, HR becomes a great metric to pace your day when hit with heavy winds, hills, or heat like this race. You’ll notice how consistent I tried to keep HR throughout the day once calibrated by expected pace through the first few miles.

I’m getting ready for IM Cozumel (in 5 weeks), and things are going quite nicely…..

In other news, I’m viciously preparing season plans and setting athlete meetings in preparation for next season. Its going to be another great one……

-Jesse

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Acclimation

October 13th, 2009

This is a topic you hear people talk about periodically but don’t really get many logical conclusions out of. Here is the process I have used successfully with many athletes in regard to these two very similar topics: heat and altitude acclimation.

Before an event that’s either at altitude or in a very hot location, either arrive at the venue greater than 14 days out, or as close as possible.

1) Further than 14 days and you can actually begin to acclimate to the conditions. For heat, this means training outside during the warm part of the day and sleeping without AC.

2) When you arrive closer than 14 days, the intent should be to avoid the conditions as much as possible. This means staying inside with AC and training early in the day. If you arrive in the no-mans-land of 2-14 days, the conditions will typically deplete you rather than acclimate you since your body just doesn’t have enough time to adjust and compensate.

3) For altitude, either come further than 14 days out or as close as possible since there’s not much you can do to hide from it.

For heat, arrive further than 14 days out and train in the conditions, don’t use AC, etc. Closer than 14 days and get workouts done in the morning to avoid the heat, sleep in AC, etc. If it’s going to be less than 14 days, ideally arrive very close to the event and take these measures to avoid being depleted come race morning.

I hope this helps shed some light on an otherwise confusing topic.

-Jesse

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Carb Loading

October 9th, 2009

As I sat on the plane for 15+ hours today, with a mental block on a new blog post, I came up with this beauty as it relates to IM preparation……more specifically, the carb load!

For many, this is the most fun, anticipated, and exciting thing about IM prep. For others, its a dreadful experience of forcing food with a bloated gut. Let’s first review what the purpose of any carb load is: to make sure you arrive at the starting line with fully stocked muscle glycogen. Now, I can do this quite simply be eating a ton of carbs starting 1 week from race day. Why isn’t this a good approach? Because, any potential benefit you get from the carb load (which is small in the first place), is negated by the fact that you put on 3 pounds through the process (worth about 6 minutes on race day). So, its intuitively clear that any carbohydrate loading program should try to ride the line between these two competing interests. How heavily you weigh either one is based on how critical one is versus the other for your race distance. That is, longer races require a longer carb load since the impact of having fully stocked muscle glycogen can be more significant for those races versus shorter ones. This is important, even if it means putting on a half pound (worth about 1 minute in IM which shows how small an impact we are talking about with this whole discussion).

With those interests in mind, I like to start the carb load for IM at lunch time 2 days out, and shorter than that as the race distance gets shorter and the potential positive impact becomes smaller. Sprints require no carb load while Olympic and longer do. How significant the load is (how long it is) depends on the length of the event.

Another, potentially skeptical addition to the proven carb load, is a 1-2 day fat load prior to the carb load for the real long events like IM. An example may look like this:

Monday: Fat Load
Tuesday: Fat Load
Wednesday: Normal
Thursday: Normal
Friday: Start carb load at lunch (half carb load day)
Saturday: Carb Load
Sunday: Race

Fat load definition - have your body weight (in pounds) in grams of fat that day…..very little focus on eating carbs and protein. These days should result in 0-200 calorie surplus overall which defines the amount of carbs and protein we are talking about. Fat choices should be as omega 3 and omega 6 rich as possible while avoiding saturated fats.

Carb load definition - 4.5 times your body weight (in pounds) in grams of carbs that day…..very little focus on eating fat and protein that day. These days should result in a 500-1000 calorie surplus overall. Carb choices should be very low in fiber and nutrition density. Almost no fruits and vegetables (this is about the only time you will ever hear me say that).

I’ve found the fat load to work quite well (based on real world experience) with it’s length also varied by the length of the event. As I mentioned, this one is a bit skeptical (try to look up some of the research), but for the sake of full disclosure, it is something I have been experimenting with for a while with athletes depending on ability and body composition goals.

Happy eating on race week!

-Jesse

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Kona 09′

October 6th, 2009

Well, I find myself heading to the big island this Thursday for the 3rd year in a row. The funny thing for me is, I qualified to race this year at lake placid, I bought tickets to go, but am not racing! What gives? Well, I’m doing IM Cozumel in November and am taking Kona as an opportunity to support the athletes that I coach who are racing. This was a decision I made months ago. Here are the athletes I’m talking about here:
Pat Wheeler
Michelle Joaquin
Molly Zahr
Jaime Windrow
Caitlin Snow
Hannah Freeman (England)
Chris Casey

QT2 also has racing (under other coach’s direction):
Pam Roesch
Matt Powell

Its a solid group and I’m really looking forward to devoting myself to their races this week. Should be a blast!!!

-Jesse

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Specific Flexibilities, Stretching, and Strength

October 5th, 2009

This post addresses my opinion on the hot button topic of stretching. I’ve been in the sport of triathlon for about 10 years, and dedicated weight lifting for at least 4 years prior to that with a few year overlap between the two. Based on my experiences as an athlete, and in working with others, this post represents my opinion on the topic of stretching. It IS NOT based on the most recent research paper available in the journals which was crafted to achieve a specific objective. On this topic in particular, you can find just as many papers for stretching as you can against. In these situations you have to rely on your own experiences. In general I think too many people site papers for things rather than making their own decisions….get your own ideas people! Use the papers as input to your decisions……that’s a post topic in of itself. Anyhow, here we go:

First off, when I say stretching, I don’t mean a quick hamstring stretch for 4-5 seconds before you run, I’m talking about yoga style stretching, or 30+ second holds for multiple sets……

1) It never seemed like a natural act to me to stretch…..draping a muscle over a bone and then pulling on it for some prolonged period of time. Tugging on a hunk of soft tissue? Have you ever seen an animal in nature doing this? I’m a believer that this unnatural act creates unnatural muscle elasticity that can actually slow you down due to reduced elastic rebound at the muscle.

2) Having said that, there are specific flexibilities which are required in our sport to achieve proper mechanical efficiency. An example here would be adequate soleus flexibly to achieve proper run form. In this case the inability to achieve proper run form will slow you down more than the loss of elastic rebound in the muscle. The trick with this is to achieve just enough flexibility to meet the objective…..no more!

3) Targeted stretching periodically when you may feel an issue start to arise is sometimes required as a Band-Aid. Realize though, the issue is likely not due to the lack of stretching, but typically the lack of strength. I see this one a lot……someone has a tight calf and is told to stretch it as a fix. This alleviates the problem initially, and then the athlete makes the connection that’s it’s the stretching that they lack in their routine. What they typically then find is a bad Achilles again in 2-3 weeks because the root problem was never addressed….calf strength! My favorite saying on this topic is “a tight muscle, is a weak one.” Basically, when a muscle is too weak to adequately handle the stress it sees, its response is to contract and protect itself…..a tight muscle. My point is that although stretching is a temporary fix for a particular issue, the lack of stretching is typically not the root cause. Typically, the cause is muscle weakness.

In triathletes, there are two major areas where you see chronic tightness which leads to injury….the hips (which can cause it band issues, sciatica, hip flexor pain, etc), and calfs (which can cause calf tears, Achilles tendinitis, planter fasciitis, etc). Many folks think the solution to these issues is stretch the heck out of the hips and calfs….this can work over the short term, but does not address the root cause of the tightness which is typically lack of strength! It’s so common in triathletes, that it’s worth including a standard hip and calf strengthen routine throughout the season as a proactive measure. In many, many cases these same weaknesses are the root cause of run mechanics issues which lead to slower run times.

Bottom Line: hip and calf strengthening can go a long way to reduce common injuries seen in triathletes as well as improve flexibility which both, in turn typically improves run mechanics to some degree. Eccentric calf raises, and the typical hip exercises with a stretch band (glut medias, TFL, psoas) do the trick! Consider this approach next time you go to stretch something that hurts and I bet you’ll find the long term solution as well.

-Jesse

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Open Water and Triathlon Swimming

September 24th, 2009

This post comes from a realization I made a while back…….just finally getting around to sharing it! It’s really just a bunch of points that I think explain a lot of the uncertainty in swim styles and swim stroke approaches among triathletes. I’d have to say, there is likely more confusion or unknown around swim stroke mechanics in the athletes and coaches I meet versus any other topic in triathlon:

1) High Turn Over - Open water swimming, when choppy, requires a strong back end of the stroke and follow-through (push past the hips). Folks that have a strong glide phase to their stroke (from either TI swimming or lots of pool based technical swimming as youngsters) tend to be slowed down by the open water chop while in the glide phase of their stroke. They then get re propelled with each pull phase. Unfortunately, a long glide phase typically results in a slow turnover and therefore not too many pull phases per minute to re propel the forward motion (that was slowed down by the chop). Based on that realization, rough open water swims require a high turnover. Many collegiate pool swimmers have a very graceful glide and strong front end that results in efficient, fast pool swimming, however results in a major de coupling between their pool and open water swim times. This can be frustrating for many pro’s who have a swimming background since they crush their competition in the pool but then take a lashing in the open water on race day when competing with swimmers who are more open water borne. This is particularly true if it’s a rough (choppy) swim.

2) Strong Back End - Triathlon swimming requires mass starts with people sometimes around and in front of you for extended periods of time. Due to this situation, what’s the first part of the swim stroke that gets lost? The front end! Due to people/feet in front of you, sometimes there is no way to get a strong catch and pull during the front quadrant of the stroke. This leaves the back end of the stroke as the critical piece to keep the forward motion. Since the back end of the stroke and follow-through are protected no matter how crowded the swim is, it makes sense to apply focus here for top level triathlon swimming.

These two points explain why pool borne swimmers can look very graceful and be super fast in the pool. It also explains why many pool borne swimmers have trouble translating their pool swim times to open water. It’s the front end focused swimmers with a long glide, strong catch, and low turnover (cadence) that are the most efficient in calm, smooth, non-crowded water. However, this same group gets out swam, time and time again in open water by the “hacks” who have a high turnover and strong back end to their stroke.

I hope this helps! Again, if you are looking for an efficient comfortable way to swim in training and racing, focus on the front end, a low stroke count, and long glide. If you are looking to get out of the water first in your triathlons, focus on a strong back end, and higher turnover. All of which still require good balance in the water of course.

Different swim objectives require different training techniques and mechanics. So when getting swim advice or looking for a coach, make sure you clarify the type of swimming you are looking to do and make sure the advice matches the specific objectives….many, many coaches and athletes miss this point.

-Jesse

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Stress & Diet

August 28th, 2009

Many athletes fall into the following trap as it relates to diet and training. Here’s the scenario:

An athlete has a poor diet (low in protein, low in healthy fats, low in antioxidants and vitamins/minerals). They are training at a fairly low level (maybe 8-14 hours per week). They reinforce their poor diet by saying “well, my training is going fine and I feel fine so why change my diet. I’m also training so much that I get to eat anything, right?”. The periodic cold or illness is never blamed on the diet. Rather, its “bad luck” to this athlete.

Let’s say the same athlete now decides to train for the IM. As training volume increases they begin to notice more and more frequency of illness. They may also experience a prolonged period of fatigue and plateaued or declining performance even though they have the best coach in the world writing tailored plans with a very reasonable training approach. What gives? “Why is my luck so bad” is what they say. “It’s just been a bad season for me”. In my mind, this is a year wasted in terms of log term progress.

I’ve seen this happen over and over again where new athletes to IM with very poor diets end up with a major illness requiring antibiotics, or have major physical burnout/fatigue requiring a long lay off. What many athletes (and sadly some coaches) don’t realize is that as training stress increases the quality of the dietary intake must increase as well. If the super compensation cycle is to take form, it must be supported by very, very, sound nutrition (and other restoration methods) as training load increases.

The basic situation is: the athlete was perfectly fine under low training stress given their current diet. They increase training load and they are then in trouble. The amount of training stress one can handle is not a fixed value that can be calculated by all the new gadgets on the market (TSS, CTL, ATL….etc.). It’s greatly influenced by one’s ability to recover well through nutrition and rest. This is why every great training plan must be dove-tailed with an equally great nutrition and restoration strategy. With out one, the other is just not effective at making us go faster.

Although the lime light is always on training methods with nutrition in the shadow, I focus a lot of attention on nutrition/restoration because that’s what I have to do to make my athletes faster. A single pronged approach (training only) is just half as good. Bottom line.

-Jesse

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Lift Like You Mean It

August 16th, 2009

I’ve been ranting quite a bit recently (sorry)…..for what its worth, here’s another:

What’s with triathletes and weight training? 99 percent of the triathletes I meet are doing (or being told to do) 20 reps of every exercise in the gym. This is not a sport specific activity, period. As soon as you step foot in a weight room, you are not doing anything remotely sport specific in terms of energy production physiology.

Weight training by nature is very unsport specific regardless of how many reps you are doing. As discussed in one of my previous posts, anything with a duration over a 10k running (as an example) is more than 90 percent aerobic in terms of energy production. Given this fact, our sport is primarily aerobic. For some reason, many folks (and coaches) think that because we are triathletes, we should be doing high reps because its more “sport specific” relative to lifting heavy weights (3-8 reps). The reality is that to get to any energy production even remotely aerobic from weight training, you’d need to do 100+ reps. Based on that, this argument just doesn’t hold water and you should be lifting heavy for the best possible adaptation.

Another one of my favorites to hear (mostly from women) is “I don’t want to bulk….I just want to tone” . I’ll tell you right now, don’t worry about bulking! I spent a good part of my life dedicated to doing that (before triathlon), and I did it, but that took many years of serious focus and some heavy calories/protein (not an easy task). The sad part is that most women have the primary limiter of peripheral system strength and therefore miss out on turning that dial because of the “I don’t want to bulk attitude”. As an aside, the so called “toning” thing you hear all of the time just means gain muscle and lose body fat. Gaining muscle is done with heavy weights (again, tough to do), and losing body fat is done with a solid diet. “Toning” has nothing to do with lifting 20 reps as most of the pop magazines will tell you. Its actually tough work (with heavy lifting and focused diet)….no one wants to hear that.

Back to triathlon…..sadly, 8 times out of 10, most woman should try to become more like men (get stronger), and most men should try to become more like woman (lose muscle mass) to get faster. Are we creating some weird mono-being human here? Hum? I’ll be back with another post on this one down the road since it deserves its own topic.

Let’s review the primary purpose of being in the gym: 1) get strong, 2) build soft tissue toughness to avoid injury, and 3) gain joint strength (tendons and ligaments). Getting strong is best done with heavy weights. That’s what we came to the gym to do, so let’s do it and stay out of the gray middle (12-100 reps) where we neither get strong, durable, or build aerobic efficiency. Sure, 15 reps will build some durability and strength, but its way more efficient to do it with heavy weights and few big compound movements like leg press, squat, dead lift, etc.

One exception to all of this is if you are doing weight training into the race season (mostly for specific population groups like woman over 40, or men over 50). In these cases, the heavy lifting requires just too much recovery time and may start to undermine key workouts or race performances. Lighter weights with more reps is less damaging to soft tissue, and reduces recovery time. Note, this is the exact reason to go heavy during the early season….its more effective (more damaging) which should tell you right there that’s its the way to go during periods where you have the opportunity to get strong.

Lastly, for any heavy lifting period to be as effective as it can be, the training should be properly paired with a focus on protein (extra important for those athletes with low BMI at low BF, and strength limited) and proper nutrition periodization.

This is my last rant for a couple of months….I promise.

-Jesse

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PB & Oatmeal

August 12th, 2009

Peanut Butter, what’s the obsession with peanut butter? It’s as if when a person begins endurance sports they are taught a few things by some seemingly knowledgeable tri god. The first thing they are taught is that peanut butter is the best pre race and pre training meal available. Not that I don’t believe peanut butter is a great source of protein, nutrients, and EFAs….it is, and is a great choice during the day between workouts….just not on race morning! The second one on my rant list today is oatmeal; for some reason people like a good dose of fiber before they start their races and attempt to handle 3500+ calories of race nutrition. Interesting!

Peanut butter: You see folks run into trouble when using peanut butter during pre workout or pre race periods. The purpose of any pre activity meal is to provide blood glucose for the impending activity. This is best done with a carbohydrate that is easily digested. Peanut butter does a great job of slowing digestion in the gut, which is one of the reasons it is so good during the day between workouts….it slows digestion of other foods and therefore dilutes the blood sugar response of anything else you may be eating. This is not a quality you want in a pre race meal where the intent is to get your system cleared to handle your race nutrition. You don’t want something that’s going to linger around in your gut and get in the way!

Oatmeal: Oatmeal is a great food to have on a day to day basis since it has good nutrient density (for a grain), great fiber content, and an overall relatively low glycemic index. However, when it comes to race morning, the last thing you want is a fiber filled treat before you attempt to exercise for 10+ hours and handle your race nutrition! Oatmeal (and fiber in general) is known by its qualities to scrape the digestive system like Brillo pad and remove bile from the gut. Is “Brillo pad” a term you want in your vocabulary for a race day food item in IM?

It’s easy to see how folks get confused with this since both of these items are “good for you” on a day to day basis. What is missed, is that race morning should be only those foods that will help you go faster on that day (and not upset your gut)….not necessarily the most nutrient dense foods. Its okay to eat bland, easily digested foods on race morning because they serve a specific purpose, to fuel the race that day.

The only thing better than using peanut butter or oatmeal for your pre race breakfast, is using them together! I can’t tell you how many people I see make this ridiculous mistake, and its typically an “I’ve been doing this for years” type scenario.

I do a lot of race fueling plans….for folks from the back of the back, to top 10 Kona pros. One thing I can tell you is that this little combination on race morning causes a lot of trouble for many, many folks. This frustrates me because athletes put so much work into their training and then miss a small detail like this, and end up with stomach issues in IM. The other thing that bothers me is just how many people make this mistake. I don’t know where some of this information comes from! The only issues I see as dominate as this one in the clients I work with, are the folks who drink water (as apposed to sport drink all day), or use products with only maltodextrin as a carbohydrate source……we’ll save those nuggets for another day and another porta-poddy stop!

-Jesse

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IM Lake Placid Race Report

July 29th, 2009

Wow. I’m once again very, very pleased with QT2 athlete performances this past weekend at IM lake placid. We had 14 athletes race with each of them having a projected race outcome based on their training indicators and resulting targets for race day. Based on those, reasonable pacing/execution strategies were developed. The result? A 2% average error on race time for the entire group of 14. I’d even say that half of that error was due to some stiff head winds on the bike during the second loop which caused almost everyone to be a bit slower than expected. Of the group, I have to call out Andy Salmon who was the loan athlete that actually went faster than the outcomes we had predicted by about 2 minutes…..great, great race Andy (10:14)!

I’ll also call out my wife Chrissie for her first IM and an outstanding 11:16 finish (7th AG).

We had a great day overall and I couldn’t be happier. 6 Kona qualifying performances, multiple age group wins and PRs along with some of the fastest run splits of the day across the pro and amateur fields.

I believe, the consistent results we produce show the value of understanding your limits before you toe the starting line, and then executing to those predetermined potentials on race day. Reverse goal setting typically sets up athletes for unreasonable pacing strategies and disappointing results (explained HERE and HERE). Even at the pro level, it’s disappointing to see so, so many athletes making this BIG mistake.

Onward we go!!!

-Jesse

PS: How was my day? Fantastic! I got to watch the above unfold from the best view point available…the race course. Again, I love this game.

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IM Lake Placid 2009

July 26th, 2009

Here we go again, another 3:30 am breakfast and another IM morning. When I look back on the past 9 months (since my last IM in Kona), first off, I can’t beleive it’s actually been that long. Mostly though, I remember a relentless grind of hard training and others around me pushing themselves to their limits. I remember, early mornings to train and late nights coaching. I’ve seen some of our athletes change their lives with triathlon over the same period by losing huge amounts of weight or by meeting new friends.

As mechanical as I am about my approach to this sport, I can’t help but see the qualitative side at times…this is one of those. As I face race day today, it’s more about the athletes QT2 has on the course than it is anything for me. Given the hard work everyone has put in and the fitness I know everyone has, there’s nothing more I’d like to see than have the day executed well and a big pay off for everyone.

It’s going to be a great day!

Cait Snow, Pat Wheeler, My Wife (chrissie), and Tim Snow this morning (3:30am) having a QT2 breakfast…..

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Run Injury Protocol

July 17th, 2009

Running is a very demanding activity. The force of your body weight plus some momentum can really create a lot of stress for your lower body. Because of this, runners are more prone to injury than cyclists or swimmers. Of course, the best training approach keeps you from being injured, but if the dreaded happens, here’s how best top approach it….

In coming up with an approach to working with triathletes that have running injuries, I’ve developed a protocol that works quite nicely. The basic concept is that a triathlete’s gluts, hamstrings, and quads get adequate stress on a daily basis from bike training. The only major movement (relative to running) that is neglected is hip flexion. Another less significantly neglected area would be the calf (soleus and gastroc), although this does get some stress through cycling. These identifications make it intuitively obvious that if you are not running and would like to stay in “run” shape, you must keep these areas engaged and fit.

The other major piece of information that we have to use to our advantage related to IM racing, is that bike durability plays a significant role in being able to run well off the bike. The simple way to say this is you want to be trained such that you get off the bike as fresh as possible as if you were just toeing the line of a marathon. Wait a minute, you are!! It amazes me how many people forget that very simple fact.

Armed with this information, here is the approach I like to use during the period you are injured (when you are not running at all):

1) Take half of your planned run volume and add that time to your bike mileage. This will improve your bike durability a huge amount and therefore help you run better, or arrive at the marathon start fresher.

2) Take the other half of your planned run mileage and add that to devoted time of engaged hip flexor work. This can come in the form of water running, Power Cranks on the bike, or kicking in the pool. Of those, I’d have at least half be pool running. While pool running, execute the workouts just as you would have if you were real running except note that pool HR zones are typically about 10% lower than on-land run zones. This is due to the venous return you get from the water pressure in the pool (like wearing a giant compression sock). Your body just doesn’t have to beat as much to move around the same amount of blood.

3) Spend three days a week doing Calf raises and hip flexor exercises. Just 3 sets of each on each day is sufficient for these.

This protocol has been so successful that in the extreme case, I’ve had a first time IM athlete, develop a stress fracture 12 weeks out from race day, we executed the above protocol to the letter, and on race day she ran a 3:38 and qualified for Kona. She achieved this run, without running even once in the preceding 12 week period before race day. If that’s not proof, I don’t know what is!

-Jesse

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Highest Possible Heart Rate?

July 9th, 2009

How does one know if they are durability limited? One of the best ways to get your arms around this concept is to observe HR data from yours or your athletes (if you are a coach) races…the higher the HR relative to threshold HR, the better. One could say, I work with my athletes to try and produce the highest HR possible while racing. If I can do that, I’ve been successful. This may sound silly, ridiculous, and counterintuitive however; it actually captures a lot of information, physiology and is pretty darn close to the truth. Now of course HR is a parallel indicator of other things going on at the muscle, but in most cases it’s a pretty good metric to use in evaluating a very complicated system. Let’s take a look at two scenarios:

1) The significantly durability limited athlete: this guy does his IM and due to peripheral system limiters, is forced to walk the second half of the marathon (assuming nutrition wasn’t the limiter). Now, while he’s walking along the marathon “RUN” course his HR is 85 bpm. Of course this significantly reduces the average HR for the day and he might end up with a 120 avg for the day (just picking numbers from the sky).

2) The non-durability limited athlete: this guy is able to run the whole marathon and continue to produce high HR’s throughout the day. Of course his average HR will be higher (maybe 130 for comparison sake), and his overall time much better.

What you find is that pros are able to continually fire their HR all day long using their peripheral system as the driver. Note, I like to include the head (mental game) in the peripheral bucket. We need to be mentally tough in order to continue telling the muscle to fire, which in turn demands more blood and increases HR. Another interesting limiter that HR is good for tracking is nutrition related limiters. If an athlete “bonks” on the course due to improper fueling or is forced to slow down due to cramping, his HR will be much lower during that episode and end up dragging the HR average down for the day.

Based on this qualitative theory, your job as an athlete/coach is to take the best strategy you can in both preparation and execution to produce the highest HR avg for the day. How do we do that?

1) Meet critical volume through aerobic intensity exercise which insures adequate durability.

2) Avoid nutritionally limited HR on race day by having a solid and practiced fueling plan.

3) Use a pacing strategy that gives you the best shot at a high HR average. This means knowing what average to shoot for and staying there all day (respectively in each sport).

4) Don’t stop on the course! Bathroom breaks for instance would pull down the HR average quite a bit.

As a coach, one approach is to known what ratios of race day HR avg versus TH for each race distance are good. From that, you can than evaluate how a particular athlete is racing and whether or not there are peripheral, nutrition, or pacing limiters on race day. If you turn all the dials properly (fix all of the issues), you should start to see higher and higher HRs on race day.

What’s the difference between pro level and amateur level athletes in IM racing? You’ll find pro level Ironman athletes have the ability to continuously push their core system and stimulate HR to high levels throughout the whole day.

Bottom line: do whatever it takes to achieve the highest HR average throughout your day of racing whether it is from better preparatory activities, or better execution on D day.

Just another way to look at things…

-Jesse

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Jesse Kropelnicki

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