- Morning trainiacs .
Today As I've been trying to do
for the last couple of weeks,
I am revisiting one of the best things
that I used to do from a training plan
to help keep me motivated,
help keep me regular ,
help keep me accountable.
And right now with what's going on in the world,
I think this is something that all
of us should be doing.
Something that I haven't done for a couple of years.
And,
it's affected me.
It has.
(upbeat music)
Something I like to do before my runs
turn on all those stabilizer muscles here
is get this stretchy band,
do some monster walks back and forth.
And these stabilizer muscles here are really,
really important.
Especially if you work at a desk job,
because when we sit,
what happens is these shorten up
and then the opposing muscles back here go to sleep.
And when we land,
when we are running all that vibration
and the force of the ground,
which is like seven times,
our body weight ends up rattling up through the chain.
If that muscle isn't turned on and actually stabilizing it.
And then what can happen is Aaron Carson.
- Hey, there, this is Aaron Carson from ECE Fit.
- And Tim O'Donnell.
Just a damn good iron man .
- Talks about this is you get energy leakage.
So we're trying to run straight.
Meanwhile, we're planting and energy
is going that way and that way.
So it's just less efficient.
Your heart rate ends up going up.
Your speed ends up coming down
and injuries can happen.
- American runner Ben True,
who I think still,
but at least at one point he had the 5k
American road race record time in like 13 minutes,
13 seconds, something like that.
Like crazy, crazy good runner.
He does that before every run workout that he's got.
- Holy geez, man. Look,
who's on time.
(people chattering)
- The celebrity guests runner
- been awhile,
- Yup.
- You also know that you got here after Dave, right?
(both laughing)
(upbeat music)
- last From the past,
if you've tuned in for a few years,
you might remember Trev and super Dave
used to train with them a ton.
And he did 15 and a half K
at low heart rate.
Fitness is coming back.
I think it was five 21 per kilometer at sub one 40 HR.
That's great.
- So back in 2017,
I got a fair bit.
Over trained,
wasn't feeling very good
at all by the very end of the year.
And one thing that I did to end up coming back
from that over-training was,
I said, you know what?
I can't train with the people that I was training
with at the time,
because a lot of the workouts
were just really high heart rate kind
of threshold sort of workout.
So I just started focusing on myself,
making sure that I was doing a lot
of low heart rate training
and that I was staying controlled,
that I was following a training plan that manage
the overall training load really well,
because I didn't want to dip back into that.
Over-training yeah.
I came back from it 2018 was a really good year.
I went four 41 in my first half iron man back
then I did a four 36
then another four 36 last year.
Then I did challenge Roth last year.
Cause I really,
really focused on that.
And I was training solo,
making sure that I wanted to do as well as I could.
So I made sure that every single workout
was optimized as good as possible,
working with Dan Palooz.
And then I wanted to continue that through
to the end of the year, when I did half Iron man,
Atlantic City going for 28,
I really want to push the boundaries.
But then starting last year,
I really started noticing that I
was dragging a little bit towards the end of the year,
doing everything on Swift,
by myself,
here on the thrift running there
in the pool right underneath you right now.
It's good.
But being the only thing was wearing on me.
And now you might be saying that
while Lionel Sanders trains by himself.
Well, yeah, but even him
who has trained historically very, very solo,
mostly indoors he's even started enlisting
the help of guys like Corey Bellmore
and other training partners that you see him training
with his wife is coming out with a more
Sarah True and Ben True who are
in New Hampshire and train by themselves
because it's not a triathlon hotbed,
but Sarah was telling me that after four or five years
of training on her own and basically a decade
of training on his own,
Ben and Sarah are finding it,
you know,
being a little bit hard
to continuously push month after month,
year after year when all the training is solo.
And that's largely what I'm finding.
So you see today I got pals again
and I'm starting to try to get my training wrapped
around the idea of having pals
and maybe sacrifice some of
that perfect training for good training,
maybe great training that I can
do year after year after year.
And as I've thought about it,
it's taken me,
you know,
probably a year to really wrap my head
around how do I do this?
I think from my standpoint,
and maybe this will help you.
I have sort of come to the realization
that it all comes down to matching the goals
and the expectations and priorities with the training.
And let me explain,
I'll show you what I've kind of got in mind.
So you all know how much I like my spreadsheets.
I love my spreadsheets,
I think in terms of spreadsheets
and the best way that I can explain
what I've kind of got in mind for how I,
and maybe you can balance training
with friends versus training for your ideal perfect race
is with some spreadsheets.
So what I've laid out here
is actually last season for me in 2019.
Alright, well in March,
I'm going to raise 70.3 Puerto Rico
and I'm going to try to qualify for world.
So all of a sudden that became an A race.
That's all of a sudden a race
that I am going to really focus
on and try to just nail it out.
So all of a sudden,
now my training for that becomes really,
really specific challenge Roth.
It's my first full distance race again.
Alright.
Okay.
That's also going to be an,
A race and by A race I should say with everything
that's going on in the world.
I mean like your number one key race event,
and then September,
I want to try to take another crack
at getting to world or just seeing totally
what I was capable of
and really focusing on that in that.
So then that became an eight
and apparently I can't spell race today.
That became an A race.
Challenge Daytona,
not necessarily A race,
but I'm looking at this and leading
into like throughout the entire year here,
I've got nine months of key training.
And the way that I've kind of realized
that I should have approached this
and how I think most people should approach
it is really only having one key race a year,
one, A race that is the main thing that you focus on it.
And during that time that's when you say all right,
I'm not going to train with other athletes.
I am going to focus on the perfect training plan.
So this is when you go dark.
This is when you just start focusing on nailing,
everything that you want to do.
You're making sure that you're
doing really key interval sessions,
race pace, interval sessions.
Now in the other times of the season,
say here and here,
what I could have done
was i could have instead of going
and doing eight minute VO two max interval sessions ,
32nd interval sessions
over and over and over by myself,
I could have gone and been doing some group rides.
So instead of training alone for nine months,
I'm really just training alone for these three months.
And then these other three months are more like,
Hey let's train and let suffer together.
But to do that,
what's probably gonna happen
is I've gotta change my mentality.
This all of a sudden needs to be a B race that yeah,
the group rides that I go on during the weekday,
they're a great workout.
Are they the best workout?
No, but they're very mentally engaging
because we go for coffee.
After I chat with my friends,
they're really exciting.
They are hitting some peak effort levels,
but they're not the best thing that I can do.
So maybe just by approaching it
from a different mindset of saying,
you know what,
instead of every race,
trying to be a PB saying,
Hey, maybe once a year,
I go all in.
And for that once a year,
that's when I trained for three months
by myself and maybe I have some friends here or there,
but the focus is on that single race.
And then the rest of the year,
I'm focusing on really good training with other people.
So getting your week set up
so that you can train effectively,
but with people is I think the balancing act
and this week here is an example
of what I was doing leading into half Iron man,
Atlantic city.
We've got a key strength ride
on Monday.
We've got a key swim on Tuesday
and easy run on Tuesday with low heart rate,
more cycling that was race specific on Wednesday,
a low intensity run on Thursday,
lap swimming.
That's easy on Thursday,
easy run on Friday,
more lap swimming.
That's easy on Friday,
a key long run on Saturday,
our long race simulation cycling on Sunday
and then a run off the bike.
And when I was looking at this week,
I'm like every single workout
has a really serious purpose
and I can't train with other people
because I'm not going to be able to do
the workout that I want to do.
Now what I could have done.
And what I think I'm going to do is look
at the intention of the workout
and see what I can change.
So let's say for example,
this Wednesday interval session,
this really hard interval session for a A race.
Yeah. By all means that interval session
is the interval session,
but for a B race,
I can change that interval session to a hard group ride.
- And you know what,
as long as I can get some decent sleep,
maybe a nap later,
and they're not all crappy sleeps,
it's even worth getting up.
It's silly. O'clock,
(group chattering)
- it's chilly when you're on camera.
Exactly.
Yeah.
- The key swims,
instead of doing an exact swim that
was prescribed to me from say tower 26
or whatever you're using,
or even team training act for that matter.
If this is a key swim well,
is it really going to be that much different?
Whether I'm doing my key swim from tower 26
or team training app
or doing somebody else's team swim
from a local masters group or a bunch of friends
that are going in swimming,
probably not.
So matching up the key swims to the key swims,
the easy swims to the easy swims
and still being able to surround yourself
with people for those B races,
totally acceptable.
The one thing that's probably the hardest
is that when you start getting into a group run,
like what I did today,
the vast majority of the time the tendency
is to start talking
and all of a sudden one person
starts taking a few steps up
and the other people meet
and then one person starts taking a few steps
up and the other people meet.
And all of a sudden everyone is
in zone three heart rate.
That's probably the biggest thing that
is going to be a downside to training in a group.
And that's where it's really important to,
if you are going to start running
with people together,
getting a group that has the same mentality
that today is going to be an easy run.
And really when you're going on an easy run,
there is no too slow.
So that's really like the biggest thing
that I've been struggling with over the past,
I would say year.
And when you start looking at studies,
they do confirm that in a lot of cases,
when you train with a group,
your motivation level is higher.
Your stress hormones are actually kept better in check.
So there is a bit of a balancing act
between perfect training
and good training that is mentally rewarding.
And you can do year after year.
So this is good.
I'm coming back.
Trainee acts,
I'm coming back.
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