- Morning Trainiacs.
Let's start our endurance adventure together today.
Yoga is new to me, so I'd be lying if I said
I didn't feel just a little bit ridiculous owning.
One of the things that I've been doing
over the last month is a little bit of yoga
and specifically this was Yin Yoga,
which is longer sustained like two minute holds,
which really helps loosen up the muscle.
So I've actually created for me personally
and I figured I'd share with you
seven new rules that will govern
my approach to endurance sports.
And I can still have fun while keeping it exciting,
while still keeping that bit of a competitive edge
but not sacrificing my health or sacrificing my wellbeing.
Also, there seems to be a tremendous amount
of sweater on my dog hair.
Getting a lot of comments about that on social media,
deal with it, I do.
Come on guys, let's go give the world the business.
Gracie, hey.
So the first new rule for endurance sports athletes
is that we will race in whatever the hell race we want,
wherever the hell race we want, however the hell we want.
What I've found is that endurance athletes
tend to now race how they feel what they should do.
They feel like they have to do a half Ironman.
And if they do well in a half Ironman,
then they have to do an Ironman.
And then if they've done well in an Ironman
and they have to do a PB, then they have to get to Kona.
Well, in 2019, throughout the entire year,
my entire goal was to race half Ironman Atlantic City
and qualify for the half Ironman World Championships.
I raced half Ironman Atlantic City,
I did qualify for the half Ironman World Championships
but I didn't actually take my spot.
What was going on there was the start of me recognizing
that, that half Ironman World Championship
didn't excite me anymore.
I was just starting to listen to what excited me
and I'd already raced a half Ironman World Championships.
And what excited me more was chasing Kona at the time.
So I ended up turning down that spot
and it was a weight off my shoulders
because I felt like I could actually go
and try to train for something that really got me excited.
Really got me going instead of following
what I thought I should do.
I think athletes should race whatever race they want.
If you wanna to do a running race, do a running race.
You wanna do a trail race, do a trail race.
If you then wanna go and do a bodybuilding competition
while you're training for a trail race
don't expect to do really well in either, but that's okay,
do whatever excites you most.
As long as you are trying to just use endurance sports
to be a better version of you,
who cares what you race in?
Now one C, is that you should race
whenever the hell you want.
Don't wait until you're absolutely, perfectly ready
for your best possible ever fitness.
If you find a race that this weekend you want to go in
and you're not ready for it, that's okay.
Maybe step down to a race distance that you know
you're comfortable with doing so that you can have fun
but don't think you have to put off reaching your goals
just because you aren't ready for that perfect race.
And then finally one D and all that
is race however the hell you want.
Mountain bike, in a race cool,
Aero helmet in a group ride? Fine by me.
Wanna wear a Speedo in a triathlon? That's all cool.
And I know a lot of you think that my days
are just filled training and lounging around
living the life of a glamorous YouTuber.
Well, actually most of my days are spent kind of like this.
How in the hell do we do this?
Like right now, what I'm working on the whiteboard here
related to rule one is,
how can we make team training
and what is going to become the motive app
able to allow people to race 5Ks, 10Ks,
half marathons, marathons, trail runs, sprint triathlons
Ironman triathlons, grand fondos, road cycling races
whatever it is that excites you, you can do that
and not have to abandon your training stats,
your data, your friends.
Rule number two, personal bests are a sometimes treat.
Over the past few years I got caught up in the thought
that every single race that I did had to be a personal best.
I had to constantly be putting out better
and better times so that I could inspire you.
I thought that times were the only thing
that would inspire you and thus motivate me.
But in the process of doing that,
I abandoned my training group
because I had to do every single workout
absolutely perfectly.
I took a lot of the enjoyment out of training
because everything was just marking off
another training session because I had to personal best.
And I did personal best in all of that, but I didn't get
to experience a lot of races that came around
that were sounding really fun.
So I was spending like nine months a year,
10 months a year, just grinding it out.
PBs are great and all, but if instead you look at it
from the standpoint of maybe once every single year
for two to three months, you go all in
and change your training and just go into a hurt locker
to get that PB.
And then for the rest of the year, it's more casual,
it's more lifestyle focused.
You're able to train with friends.
You're able to abandon a set workout
in your training plan to go do a spin class
or something like that.
Something that gets you really jazzed up
and that you save those times that you put fun
at the back burner to put performance at the forefront
of what you're focusing on are a sometimes thing
not an all the time thing.
I know somebody really well who has to work on that.
Rule number three, we will take pride nurse success
and laugh at our failures.
Pride in our success is yeah, definitely something
that I got no problem with.
Most triathletes don't, but laughing at the failures
that's what we got problems with, big problems,
we don't like to fail.
We're A-Tech triathletes we don't fail, but we do.
Earlier this week, I was doing a zone two run
and at the beginning of 2020
I was running like five, 505 per K
for my zone two runs.
This run, it was getting all the way up, back to six
even though like I've had a full season of training.
At the start, it really started making me feel
self-conscious like I wasn't making progress,
like things weren't going very well
and they weren't and it was starting to stress me out.
And that stress it's obviously not good for you.
It starts taking fun out of the training,
it adds cortisol, the stress hormones start going up.
So your health starts deteriorating and let's face it
unless we are an elite age group
or those trying to become pro or we're pro
where our livelihood depends on performance in a race
or performance and progress in our training.
Whatever happens in a race and in training
it doesn't really matter, oh over and it's out
So if instead of putting all this pressure
on ourselves to always perform well
and always progress in training
and always have good sessions.
We instead just look at having sessions
that are fulfilling, that give us a little bit of health,
a little bit of enjoyment.
We're actually gonna be more healthy
and we're going to have a better time doing it.
(clanking sound)
Oh yeah, rule number, I don't know what it is.
Do not ignore strength and mobility just to get
like 10 minutes faster in an iron man,
but then make the last 20 years of your life
feel like prison.
So a few weeks ago, a friend and I were running
and we were talking about what we wanna be like
when we were like 60, 70, 80.
And the answer for us and probably for you is
mobile and active, not couch ridden or bedridden.
Well, one of the number one reasons that people
end up not being able to function
is they end up at some point in their adult life
having an injury or an illness or something like that
that takes them out of the game for a long time.
And if you've been gone for a year or two years
or three years, it's gonna be so much harder
when you're older and coming back from an injury
to ever come back.
And one of the reasons that those injuries
and those illnesses and those things
that take you out of the game happen
is because muscle deterioration and mobility deterioration.
I can tell you this, when I started focusing again
on strength and particularly mobility with that yoga
and just making sure that I function well,
this year I was astounded.
I can touch to my toes and that was always the test
that I thought, oh, hey I can do that.
But when I started going side to side
or up and down in dynamic ways,
moving around in ways that weren't just dead straight,
all of a sudden I was pretty immobile
and that's not a good thing.
That is a recipe for being on the couch
or in a chair when I'm 70 and that's not what I want.
Being that 10 to 20 minutes faster in a race
because I let strengthen mobility take such a back seat
to swim, bike, run exclusively, that's not worth it for me.
And guess what?
When you focus on strength and mobility,
you're probably actually gonna get faster.
So it's like, I wouldn't know
because it's not common for us to do.
We're so invested in winning the game as triathletes
that we're not worried about getting booted out
of the game with an injury.
Now, next thing, if it didn't happen on Strava,
it still happened.
This year when I ended up just deciding to go for a run
and just feeling it out and not stressing about,
well, am I three beats per minute over?
Or am I losing my pace?
Just going for a run for as long as I felt like running
and going for a bike for as long as I felt like biking
and strength training.
However, I felt like strength training,
that's when it started getting fun again.
It started becoming a lifestyle again as opposed to
something I had to do.
So as you're doing that, yeah by all means
collect your data, but don't stress about it.
Don't stress, if you aren't the perfect 80, 20
where 80% of your training is under your heart rate cap
and 20% is over.
As long as the majority of your efforts
aren't turning you inside out
and you're doing the majority of your stuff fairly easy,
you're gonna be okay.
Now, if you are somebody that's going for performance
that's where monitoring all of those exact metrics
are important
but that's when you start deciding
to have the sometimes PR not the all the time PR.
What are we on?
Rule, Q12, something like that.
You earn hard workouts by sleeping
more seven and a half hours.
It's not the other way around where you earned sleep
because you worked really hard.
And as you see on Instagram, the people that are getting
up at 4:30 in the morning and like, Oh gotta get in
a killer workout before I get to work at 7:30
cause everything's super busy.
I ended up doing that in 2017
getting up at 4:30 every single morning
so that I could get in my hard workout.
And you know what happened?
My hormones just went to crap.
Sleep, minimum seven hours, eight to nine, even better.
If you look at every single pro that I've ever talked to,
every single one of them is a superhuman sleeper.
And here we are not superhuman athletes
thinking that we can get away with much less sleep
and still perform really well in races and just life.
(phone ringing)
- Good afternoon Ulterior Sports.
- Hey, it's Taren.
I'm here to pick up my tri-bike and a step.
While we're waiting for them to get
the curbside pickup together.
The last piece of this is that we need to start
being conscious of what we like.
Do we like weight training?
Do we like shorter distance races?
Personally, I really love draft, legal, sprint
and Olympic races where you've got somebody
side by side with you.
Just because the culture is that we have to do Ironman,
that we have to get to Kona,
that we have to do the longest distance possible,
sometimes it's good for us and sometimes it's not.
And that's not saying I'm not going to do any Ironmans
and I'm not saying that you shouldn't do any Ironmans.
What I'm saying is that we should just be conscious
of what excites us.
Don't put performance above our enjoyment.
So with all that said,
yeah, I am still going to be doing triathlon
and Ironman and trying to get to Kona at some point.
And I'm gonna come in and out of the training
and the sports and the disciplines
and the durations and lengths of races that I enjoy.
And if that's what maybe helps you
enjoy endurance sports more
and have a good relationship with it, hopefully this helps.
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Later Traineeacs.