USA Triathlon Level III Clinic - Day 2

Hey Gang,

Day two here at “The Springs” started at 6am with a 30 min run. It’s probably 22 degrees here in the morning – no snow which disappoints, but cold nonetheless. Emerging into the dorm hallway at 6 sharp were Kurt from down the hall and my two room mates, Sherone and Matt. We’re all pretty bundled: running tights, long sleeve shirt and vest or light jacket, warm hat and gloves. We walk to the Athlete Center and the others grab a shot of coffee and I get a sip of juice at one of the 24 hour stations that serve the athlete’s residence hall when the cafeteria is closed. Then it’s a 30 min run through the neighborhood that surrounds the Training Center. We run at as easy pace since all of us are form sea level and it’s ~6,000 feet elevation here. After the run; breakfast and it’s jammed. There are some archery coaches that I recognize from the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista (San Diego) – turns out there are 53 archery athletes, coaches, and staffers here for a conference. I also saw Matt Seymour an ITU pro from Hawaii who is a resident athlete here in at the OTC. He was injured last year and couldn’t run but is healthy now and eager.

We basically had two, 4 hour sessions today. The first was Bob Seebohar who is one of the highest authorities on nutrition for USAT. He’s a great presenter and covered an enormous amount of material. One of the biggies was that athletes are generally not getting enough salt into their bodies in the 5-7 days leading up to an event and not taking enough in during the event. Some heavy salt sweaters loose up to…..wait for it…..5 grams of salt per hour. That’s incredible! He spoke of many salt products but raved about Jonathan Toker’s Salt Stick Caps. Jonathan is an Los Angeles local, pro triathlete, and former Amgen employee. He’s a bio-tech science guy who works for Slowtwitch now and sells a respected product. Other notes in today’s lecture mentioned the value of Whey protein because of his high values of BCAA (Branch Chain Amino Acids). And Omega 3 which help dilate arteries and increase blood flow.

Some of the talk of “studies” can really make your head roll off your shoulders but Bob kept us involved and kept things moving beautifully.

After lunch we launched into another 4+ hours with a guy named Bobby McGee. I’ve heard of Bobby but this was my first time in one of his lectures. I could have done 8 hours with him and left wanting more. He’s like that college professor who changes your perspective and avails you to ideas so vast and interesting that you walk away with a sore brain. I had my mind blown today. Quick points on Bobby: South African but with a muted accent so it’s doubly smooth – primarily a running coach but tri too – he’s coached gold medalists, world champs, record holders, everything. His presentation on psychology was phenomenal. He referenced: Covey (7 Habits), Gladwell (Tipping Point), Jack Daniels (running coach), The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture), Churchill (UK leader during WWII) – we were all over the place and yet right on track at the same time. He backed up every clinical item with real world examples. He also presented on the “training block” approach in building performance plans and basically tossed out some corner stones of coaching lexicon: never uses “Tempo” only uses “SSH” (Steady State Half – as in marathon). Hates “interval” only uses “repetitions” (says interval refers to the recovery so it’s not specific to the work). Makes the argument that periodization is dead, that running is all about velocity (not even about watts in wind as the track is circular so you get benefit and detriment equally), what else? ….oh god, it’s all so much. It’s like trying to take a sip from a fire hose. The guy has forgotten more about run pace than I have ever learned. He put us through this exercise where we took a current US female ITU pro who is a weak runner and has no confidence in her run. Our job was to take her 37:30 OTB 10k (that’s Off The Bike) and boil it down to training paces for 400, 1200, 3k, 5k, and 10k pure – AND at both elevation and sea level, using known percentages of post bike degeneration (4-5%). It basically became a math problem where you had to KNOW the expected adjustments to get to a pure 10k, 5k, 3k, and on down to 400m. And then propose appropriate training load for improving that run performance. I had a cramp in my medulla oblongata early into the process but was still fully engaged by his passion. It was a joy.

Dinner “off campus” with the whole crew tonight and now I’m back in my dorm room exhausted. Tomorrow is all practical and I get to coach a treadmill workout and a swim workout. Looking forward to that.

Ian