- Are you ready for a sprint or an Olympic?
Even just 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes.
Clean bikes are fast bikes.
Morning Trainiacs.
Yesterday I told Pat that I've entered
Iron Man 70.3 Austin and I gave him the go ahead
to get me a ticket to the pain train.
And then later, yesterday,
I also told him to go easy on me because
I don't know if I'm quite ready for the full treatment.
Which then brings to mind,
are you ready to do a triathlon?
And I think this is a two part video.
We'll do one another day.
This'll be, are you ready to do a triathlon period?
Like where do you start?
If you're coming from another sport,
if you're coming from no sports,
if you're coming from all the sports,
if you're coming from an injury,
if you're coming from sickness,
just in general,
like are you ready to do that first triathlon?
Let's do it.
Fricken high performance kids jump in
for a warm up that's faster than my sprint today.
Alright, so are you ready for your first triathlon?
Well, we're gonna have a couple of caveats
to determine this.
Number one, I want to assume that we're talking about
just a sprint, or Olympic triathlons.
Can you finish an Iron Man or a half Iron Man,
for your first race?
Yes, absolutely.
But we're gonna talk about that in another video.
But in the case of most people's first triathlons,
I recommend that you do a sprint or an Olympic.
Even if your main goal is to do an Iron Man
or a half Iron Man, I would recommend doing
a sprint or an Olympic as like a test event
so that you know what you're getting into.
So then the question becomes,
alright, are you ready for a sprint or an Olympic?
I'm gonna give away a secret here.
Yes, you are.
Everyone can do it.
They're not that hard.
Now, are you going to have a drop dead,
kick it in the balls kind of race?
Well, that depends on your fitness coming in.
So overall, are you ready to start training
for a triathlon?
Everyone is, yes.
As long as you are structurally healthy
and by that I mean you don't have any injuries
that a doctor or a physiotherapist won't say,
don't be doing any activities.
You're not recovering from surgery.
You don't have any lingering illnesses.
You don't have any immune deficiencies.
Basically if all your medical professionals
say that you're healthy enough to train,
have at it.
Beyond that, you shouldn't have any excuses.
Start doing it.
Now you might be saying,
well Taren, I don't have any sort of history
in endurance sports, I'm not built to run.
I haven't ever done anything like this.
I've never played a sport in my life.
That's cool, you're starting in the same place
that a lot of triathletes are.
When I first started running and thinking
about doing a triathlon,
I would literally run the length of a house lot,
like 50 feet,
and then I would walk three house lots, 150 feet.
And then I would 50 feet.
That was literally how much I was able to run
when I first got started.
My first bike, after 20 years of not biking
since I was a kid,
I went out and I did nine kilometers.
And it shattered me.
But, everyone has to start.
You gotta start somewhere.
So just start.
A great place to start getting information
on how to start, when to start,
where to start, is right here with this Trainiac community.
Go ahead and binge watch a good,
I don't know, around 277 videos or so
and you'll be up to speed.
Or, you can go to triathlontaren.com/coaching
where my coach, Coach Pat,
has designed all of the coaching programs
from sprint to half Iron Man,
for people who have a slight base of fitness.
If you can run a little bit for five to ten minutes,
bike for 20 to 30, and swim for five minutes,
even if you're not that good a swimmer,
we've got a swim training program.
Designed all of those for as simple
as do you have the equipment?
Do you want to start?
Here you go.
So now that the, should you start is out of the way,
which again, is a hell yes.
The question becomes, am I ready to do the race?
And what I'll do here is I'll give you some
rules of thumb for how much you should
be able to do in the swim, the bike, and the run,
not all together, but like individually,
to know if you're going to be able to have,
not necessarily like a pro level personal best,
but at least have a race that you can be confident
going in to and knowing that 100%
you are going to finish.
So in a sprint, I would say that if you can swim,
even just 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes,
there's a lot of information on this channel
that will help you get through that swim portion,
even if it's something that scares you.
We've got information on how not to panic.
Where you should position yourself
so that you don't get knocked around.
What kind of goggles you should have.
How to sight.
All kinds of things that'll make that first
swim seem fairly effortless
and not a really scary thing.
And you know what,
once you put on a wetsuit
and you get to a race and the excitement is going on,
the 10 to 15 minutes that you might be doing in a pool
will actually seem really easy in a race
because it'll be exciting,
it'll be fun, you'll want to do it.
Now as far as the bike goes,
it's a 20K bike and a sprint.
So if you can bike upwards of about 25 to 30 kilometers
in one single setting,
doesn't matter what the time is,
that should be enough.
And then as far as the run goes,
if you can run about six to seven kilometers nonstop,
doesn't even have to be nonstop,
you can walk and run it,
and you can use the recommendations
that we have doing a few brick workouts,
so that you have the ability to run off of the bike,
then you'll be good.
If you look at all of these distances,
you're talking about a 15 minute swim,
a 30K bike, which you should be able to do
in an hour to an hour and a half,
and you only need to do a couple of those before
your race, and a run which might take you a half
an hour to 45 minutes, outside of your race,
these are very manageable goals that you can set
in the few months leading up to your race.
It's not like it's gonna take you days
and months and weeks of like constant,
constant, punishing training.
Just do a little bit consistently pick away
at it and do that first sprint race.
Now as far as an Olympic race goes,
the approach is very much the same.
Do some brick workouts, watch a bunch of
Triathlon Teran swim tip videos.
The distances are just a little bit longer
and if you can swim off and on,
start and stop, but swim for a total of 1500 to 2000 meters
over the course of an hour, you're gold.
If you can bike for a total of about 50 kilometers
over the course of two to three hours,
you're gold.
And if you can run, say, 11 to 12K
over the course of an hour to an hour and a half,
you're set.
Sprint or an Olympic distance triathlon
are not nearly as intimidating as you might think.
They aren't made for just super human athletes,
they are made for badass athletes.
They are made for athletes that just
want to conquer some fears
and take on a challenge that's new to them.
And I guarantee you that once you conquer that challenge
and you realize how much fun it is,
and how un-intimidating it is,
you're gonna have coworkers, family, friends,
that are intimidated by how awesome you are.
And then you're gonna want to keep going,
I guarantee it.
Triathlon is like drugs.
It's so addictive and it's probably more expensive.
Alright I got to take back dead drone
and get home for a meeting.
We got to hurry, we got to hurry.
(funky jazz)
Trainiacs, yesterday I went on a ride
and it was sloppy.
I think I'm still picking a little bits
of Headingley Road out of my teeth.
And if I want any hope of keeping up
on the ride tomorrow, I have a clean bike.
Clean bikes are fast bikes.
Has anyone ever tried floss threaders
in the Trainiac community?
Fellow triathlon YouTuber named Triathlon Renan
told me about them and I can't find anyone
around here that's used them.
Comments below if you've used Cogset floss threaders,
degreasers, something like that.
(funky jazz)
And that is how easy it is to change
the batteries on the PowerTap P1 Power Pedals.
Love these guys.
Damn, just like that?
Done, basically no stains on my hands,
no stains on my nice clothes.
I'm quitting for the day.
Gotta end on a high note Trainiacs.