Reply To: Mid Season Check In

[CoachAJ]

Great feedback!  Thank you all for sharing your thoughts.  It is a challenging time as our usual routine has been disrupted.  However, as I shared with the HIP group, remember the whole point of a training program is to learn and grow as a triathlete.  There is seldom a perfect training season (work interference, illness, injury, etc) or perfect race day.  Something will come up that is unplanned. Thus it is how you respond that matters and determines the ultimate success of your season. So, yes doing dryland work is not the same as getting in a pool, which is not the same as getting practice in open water.  However there are always ways to find benefits of what you are able to do.  And, like many of you have mentioned, you are able to do the ‘other’ things like fulfilling the bike workouts or getting in strength training. So let’s celebrate these wins!

In addition, this is a great opportunity to talk about other areas like nutrition!  Here are the baseline data points that you want to work from.

Bike nutrition: 1.5 – 2 times your body weight in calories per hour; minimum of 1 bottle (20 ounces) per hour of hydration and 400-800 mg of sodium per hour

Run nutrition: 1 times your body weight in calories per hour; minimum of 1 bottle (20 ounces) per hour of hydration and 400-800 mg of sodium per hour

Remember that what you do on the bike will ultimately affect your brick run.  Unfortunately, you can’t dehydrate yourself on the bike, drink a couple of glasses of water between your bike and run and then hope to be rehydrated for your brick run.  Once you are dehydrated there is no coming back.  You are dehydrated for the rest of your time.  And science finds that once you become dehydrated, it can take up to two weeks to get your body back to baseline.  So you never want to become dehydrated.

Like Brian mentions, if you must set an alarm to remind yourself to drink then please do so!  In fact, I just received a message from one of my athletes that conquered her first IM last season.  This is a distance that all comes down to perfectly executing your nutrition plan.  Otherwise a DNF is not surprising.  Thus we had her set an alarm to eat every 10 minutes and drink every 15 minutes (to ensure she got in the targets listed above).  She laughed because now that alarms continue to go off and remind her to drink even to this day.

Personally, those alarms mid race made my crazy.  However if this is what you need, then you need to set them (if the education learned above isn’t enough to scare you into remember or your resulting brick run bonks aren’t too).

As others have mentioned, there are places to ride outdoors.  You just have to find them.  They often require a few strategies:

1. Get out early or on off peak times
2. Get out during less than ideal weather.  There was a little wind the other day that kept everyone else home and I had the roads to myself
3. Seek the hills.  Most people avoid the hills.  They desire the flats.  So take advantage of some A+ efforts on hillier terrain (or hill repeats)

And remember, sharing your experiences here is a great way to feel connected to an active community and keep motivated.  So let’s keep sharing!  What is working?  What can we keep refining?

Great feedback all!