- Morning Trainiacs.
Easy little run that I will show you later.
Today, I woke up to the worst news
that could have happened for the men's race
at Ironman Kona this year.
Jan Frodeno is out.
(upbeat techno music)
Well, waking up to the news that Jan Frodeno
is not gonna be in Kona this year was like, pssh.
I was not expecting that whatsoever.
The guy has been so fit, so dominant all year
that he's coming in dominant.
Lionel Sanders is coming in super fit.
Patrick Lange is Patrick Lange,
you can never count the guy out
when he's running a 2:40 marathon in Kona.
We're gonna have clash of the titans.
Javier Gomez, too, is gonna show up.
We're gonna see a rematch of Half Ironman Worlds
and then all of a sudden,
Jan Frodeno announces that he has a stress fracture
in his SI joint, his hip.
He's had an amazing year.
Started out winning Half Ironman Oceanside
against Lionel Sanders.
Won Half Ironman C* against Patrick Lange.
Won full Ironman Frankfurt against Patrick Lange.
Won the Half Ironman World Championships
against basically everyone.
Like Javier Gomez and Alistair Brownlee,
two of the best triathletes to ever race,
and then out.
Let's talk about this.
A stress fracture is just a tiny, little crack in a bone.
Typically, it's caused by repetitive motion and stress
in one single area.
So with runners talking 15,000 steps
over the course of a long run
and professional athletes doing long runs constantly
day after day after day,
we're very susceptible to getting stress fractures.
It can particularly happen
if you increase volume too quickly,
if you don't take enough rest,
if your stress levels in life are particularly high
or you don't eat properly.
It's tough to say why this has happened specifically to Jan
because over 2018 and little bit in 2017,
he's been quite a closed door
with all of his training, with his nutrition.
Like I really don't know what he does day to day,
but he just kinda makes these pretty photos on Instagram
and sips coffee, and makes coffee,
and has all the most amazing sponsors out there
and then shows up and wins an awesome race
in dominating fashion,
but we don't know what his
training and nutrition has been like.
Now one thing that it could be
is did he maybe push too hard, too much,
coming off that defeat that he had
with the injury at 2017 in Kona.
Did that give him too much motivation to push himself
and he pushed himself into that really fit place
and held it for a long time,
that was almost too long?
And he wanted to win everything this year
and that holding fitness too long
is actually a big problem with a lot of pro triathlets.
Something that we heard from Linsey Corbin
when we did the podcast with her.
She gets so fit, so quick,
that the thing that is limiting her
wasn't cardiovascular fitness or muscle fatigue
or power in the run, or the bike, or the swim,
it's being fit for a really long period of time
and that line between world class athlete,
ultra fit, and sick, is a very, very fine balance.
They're kind of teetering on that line all year.
Did Jan potentially dip into that level of fitness
too much, too long?
Well, we know he peaked four times throughout the year
and it was early in the season in March at Oceanside,
it was late in the season,
coming into Kona and Half Ironman Worlds.
It was even mid-season at * and Frankfurt.
So that is a long period of time to be fit
and while a lot people do say,
well, you know what, I can race
that many times throughout the year.
We saw that last year,
Sarah Crowley won a whole bunch of races,
still did well in Kona,
but caught up to her later in the year,
where she was injured.
Leanda Cave, back when she had a dominating season
winning Half Ironman and full Ironman World.
She was basically injured and sick
for all years thereafter.
Maybe that's what happened to Jan.
Rest wise, I don't think I would say that
that's likely the case with Jan.
Seems like he enjoys sipping coffee.
He's got a family now,
which tends to level things out quite a bit,
and he was so good about his media obligations
in Half Ironman Worlds,
I would actually say so difficult because I was media,
that he almost wasn't available to the media
throughout the entire week.
That's kind of a sign of having enough sense
to manage your obligations to be able to perform well.
So, I don't know if I would say rest is the issue
and nutritionally, we don't know if
he's sticking to that vegetarian or vegan diet
that he was doing back in 2017,
but vegetarians, vegans, as a whole,
do have a greater likelihood
of being nutritionally deficient
because we're just stripping out a lot of nutrients
and before all the vegans out there say,
hey Taren, what are you talking about, aren't you vegan?
No, I'm not vegan.
I eat probably 90, 95% vegan meals,
but I make sure I incorporate some animals products
in just a little sliver of my diet
to make sure that I'm not missing out on a lot of things.
Is Jan missing out on a lot of things?
Don't know, however, some of the stats say,
depending on which study you look at,
that vegans, vegetarians,
because we aren't eating so many animal products,
which tend to actually have a degenerate effect
on our bone density,
that vegans, vegetarians sometimes have more dense bones.
It's just a guess on what's going on with Jan.
Actually, there was no guess there.
Nutritionally, I wouldn't say that that's the issue.
So my guess is that he pushed too hard for too long
and his age being 37 years old just caught up to him
and that's what happens when you're trying to get
to the absolute top 1% of 1% of 1% in a sport
that is extremely repetitive.
You have to dance on that fine line between
amazing record-breaking athlete
and injured, close to out of the sport.
Hopefully that's not the case
because the only thing that we know for sure
is that this sucks.
We were gonna have one of the best head to head match ups
that's happened in recent memory in Kona
and it's not gonna happen.
We are still going to have the favorites,
I'd say Lionel Sanders, Sebastian Kienle,
Javier Gomez, and we can't count out Patrick Lange,
even though he's had a little bit of a lack luster year,
man that can run 2:40 in the lava fields of Kona,
you can't ever count out.
So, with that said, Jan, I hope you're back,
I hope you get better soon.
We want to see you on the start line.
I want to see this head to head match up
and if I have to wait 'til 2019, so be it, I'll be there.
Now, we'll usher you out by saying
if you aren't already subscribed,
make sure to hit that subscribe button below
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We just had some phone calls today, it's gonna be awesome.
I'll send you off with the run from this morning
and if you want to know more details about that run,
go to triathlontaren.com/traininglog,
and every single week,
I'll send you out the exact details
of every single workout that I do.
Later.
(upbeat techno music)