Today a friend sent me a link to an interesting article by Michael McCormack, a triathlon coach and former Ironman champion. In it, he points out that “time-consuming long slow distance (training) will produce a long and slow race”. He goes on to state that speed and strength work not only helps you to race faster, but also builds endurance. So, if you’re looking to improve your race times, training for speed and power is a great way to get in shape and shave off those precious seconds.

One of the statements made that I find particularly interesting is “Your body will only do what it has been trained to do”. If you never train to be fast, you can’t expect to be at the front of the pack come race day.
Over the next couple months, I’d like to improve my race speed. So I’m trying to vary my workouts between endurance building and speed training sessions. For example, I might do a long “brick” workout, where I bike 25km and immediately follow that with a 5km run. For me, I’d consider this an endurance workout, since I’m not up to the Ironman or half-Ironman distances yet.

For my next workout, I’ll take a short bike ride to the track, to run some 400m sprints. Sprint a lap, take a rest, sprint a lap, take a rest. This sort of workout is great for training speed – if I can’t run 400m at sub 4:00/km pace, then I can’t really expect to run 5km at that pace, can I? But this type of workout also helps to build my endurance. If I do 10 laps, I’m running 4km – at a good pace. Considering that most of the Sprint Triathlon’s I’m considering entering only have a 5km run, these sort of workouts are great preparation for my race (or at least I’m telling myself that).

Back in my football playing days, we used a similar program in our summer training. Here we were much more speed and power focused. However, playing wide receiver meant that we put on a lot of miles over the course of a game. So we also needed that endurance base for the fourth quarter.

We had a sprint workout that consisted of 2 sets of 50 yard sprints. The goal was to keep each one under 7 seconds. We started with 2 sets of 5, and over the summer, worked up to 2 sets of 25. That’s equivalent to sprinting approximately 2.5km, which apparently is how much we’d run in the typical game (I think we used to get about 60 plays a game on offence, so 2 sets of 25 was pretty good preparation for two halves of football).

I’m going to continue trying to work these speed workouts into my triathlon preparation! Hopefully I see some good results! I’ll keep you posted over the next couple months!

This past Sunday, I competed in my first duathlon. Man, was it hot! 35 degrees Celcius (that’s about 95 Fahrenheit for our southern neighbours). For the first time, I realized why those nice light running hats are a good idea. By the time I got around to the second run, the sun was beating down on us. And I was lucky – I was only doing the sprint duathlon. 2 km running, 20 km on the bike, followed up with a 5 km run. Those crazy half-Ironman competitors had to run a half-marathon (21.1 km), and that was after a 2km swim and 90 km on the bike. I know how I felt after my half-marathon last year, and with the heat we had, I would not have wanted any part of that on Sunday!!

So, going into the race, I set some goals. I thought they were challenging for my first race, but definitely achievable. I managed to hit 4 out of 5 – I missed my time for first run. But I heard after the race that it was quite a bit longer than 2km, more like 2.5km. And I definitely felt like I was running those first 2km pretty hard, so I’m not too worried about it! Most importantly, my overall time was 1:09:47, which was about 2 minutes faster than my overall goal! Not too bad, for a first-timer. The results are posted here.You’ll find me right in around 27th place, which also is quite respectable.

I have to say that this seemed like a walk in the park compared to the half-marathon I ran last year. In that race, around the halfway mark, I looked down and saw blood seeping through the top of my shoe from where my blisters had formed and popped. Between the blisters and the burning, aching feeling in my legs, the last few miles were complete agony! And don’t ask how my socks looked when I finally finished. A bloody mess. Let’s just say that they went straight into the garbage. Afterwards, I couldn’t walk for two days. Oh, and my toenails fell off. So comparatively speaking, the duathlon was a breeze. I think it’s mainly because the bike ride is a lot less stressful than the running. I also felt a little better prepared, having actually trained up to the distance I would be racing.

On the whole, the weekend was a great time. Two of my friends were racing in the sprint triathlon, so we camped the night before. Our pre-race carb loading consisted of a few cold beers around the campfire! And we wonder why we’re not at the front of the pack! The race was well organized, and there were lots of goodies afterwards. Blair even one a nice Camelback hydration system in the draw afterwards. After one race, I’d definitely recommend the Subaru Triathlon Series for anyone looking for triathlon or duathlon events.

So, what’s next? Well, I’m looking at getting into a real triathlon. Which will involve swimming. Swimming is difficult to practice because it requires a little more planning and effort. Biking and running I can do out my front door (well, I have to go down a few flights of stairs, but you know what I mean). To work on my swimming, I have to look up the lane swim times, pack a bag, drive to the pool, change, shower, swim, shower again, change again, and drive back home. It’s a 2 hour process for less than an hour of training. But it must be done. I’m going to comptete in a Try-A-Try next weekend, so hopefully I’ll get into the pool a few times before then.

I’d also like to get more competitive, because that’s just the way I am. I have no idea what I’ll be like swimming, but at least now I know where I stand in the biking and running. My biking is where I think I can improve the most. I may need some bike upgrades – clip on pedals and aerobars are on my list. Hopefully I can get my average speed up a few km/hour by the end of the season. My running is pretty good, and should improve a little too. I actually had a great little run tonight after a couple days off. On my 5km training course, I ripped off a time of 19:40 – my previous best was 21:04. That feeling of being in a race has motivated me to try to step things up a notch over the next couple months. Tonight’s run was a good first step! Come back soon to see how I’m doing!

Well, I finally did it. I actually signed up for the Peterborough Sprint Duathlon coming up this Sunday, July 10th. I guess technically, I haven’t actually done anything yet, but at least now I’m committed to something!

I’ve actually been doing some good training over the last week. I’ve done a couple “brick” workouts, where I bike and then immediately go for a run. I did some speed training at the track last night; and had a nice hard bike ride tonight. I’m planning on one more hard workout on Thursday, then just some light biking or running on Friday and Saturday to make sure my legs are nice and fresh come Sunday morning.

I promised last week that I would post my goals up here, so here they are:

1. Finish the race.
   Now, I should be able to get through the distance, but there’s always the possibility of a crash on the bike or something like that. Finishing is always good!
2. Run #1 – 2km – 8 minutes
   I’m not too bad on my feet, and last year ran a 5km race at this pace, so I think this is reasonable!
3. Bike – 20km – 40 minutes
   I haven’t actually done much biking after running (mostly the other way around), so hopefully that first run doesn’t hurt my biking too much. The bike ride may give me trouble if it’s hilly!
4. Run #2 – 5km – 22 minutes
   I’ve been working hard on running after biking. I’ve been pretty close to this pace in my training runs after the bike, so we’ll see if I can do it come race day.
5. Transitions – 1 minute or less
   Since this is my first multi-sport race, I’ve never had to go through a transition. I hear it can get a little crazy just trying to find your bike, so I have no idea what to expect here!

So, that’s it. I guess if I total all that up I come out with a total time of about 1 hour and 12 minutes. We’ll see how it goes come Sunday! Come back Sunday night if you want to see how I did!