Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Catching up on reading


travel means reading....I boarded our flight to DFW with 6 magazines- Triathlete, Lava, Inside Tri and Outside. I diligently read each one and tear out articles, ideas that I want to revisit later.  I have a fairly well organized binder at home with tabs for swim, bike, run, strength, racing, injury, nutrition - when I find something good I tear out and add.  It is a good resource manual for my athletes and me personally,  

One of the cool articles I read today 

There 2 camps in swimming....1- high elbow or 2- deep catch.  I came from the school of high elbow but have experimented with the deep catch and event paid for a lesson to truly feel the difference. I remain in the high elbow camp and thus am excited when I read article that support my thinking.

....most swimmers naturally opt for the deep pull. But doing that is like putting your right foot on the gas pedal and your left foot on the brake … the entire way. Pulling with EVF requires a leap of faith. You simply have to trust that using EVF reduces drag enough to more than compensate for the greater power you will get with the deep pull. When you first try pulling this way, it will feel downright awkward. But keep working at it and you will soon get stronger and the motion will become more natural. The stronger your “EVF muscles” (scapular, shoulders and forearms) get, the faster you will go.

So I will keep my teaching as is....and my swimming as is until I can be convinced otherwise.

The other great article was in Inside Triathlon about race set up. I tore out the key pages and thus do not have the authors name or info to give credit where credit is due....for that I apologize. Here are some key bits I picked up

BIKE 
- "the goal is achieve what we call  a no-loss gain, basically riding with extra stuff (without adding drag) says Chris Yu (Specialized) - this is primarily for long course races.   
- Pack behind the saddle-  tucking stuff up extremely tight behind the saddle is a no loss gain (Yu) 
- Hide your bag-  tuck it behind the stem
- Mounting bottles to the frame (down tube or seat tube) is a speed loss.  All test show they add drag- where to put them? behind the saddle or horizontal front bottle carrier

TIRES
-less rolling resistance is the goal.  tests show a 25 mm tire has roughly 15% less rolling resistance than a 23mm tire.   The time saved by switching from a slow rolling tired to a fast one can equal the difference between a great aero frame and a mediocre one ( says Morrisson) 

Great article in Inside Tri by Kim McDonald-  Find your Long Course Requirement- long article....but few nuggets that caught my attention
- Are your long runs too long?  I learned from my coach and ran my best IM Marathon (3:51) with my longest run being 2:30.  While the 20 miler, 3+ hour run is a perceived "mental" necessity I think it breaks down the body too much, requires more recovery than gain from the run and can lead to poor form and lead to over training. 

- Are you practicing your race n nutrition plan?  this is easier said than done..I can practice my race plan all day every day but never is the day the same- for me the "excitement" of racing add a GI distresser that I cannot emulate in training.  so while yes, try the combo to make sure you can train effectively with it - it is hard to know until race day how it will hold up. 

More to come...but good stuff so far! 



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