Welcome to the Pacific Elite Fitness newsletter!
Special Announcements:
- Ironman Canada Triathlon training camp is now scheduled for May 23-25, 2008. Click here for details on this fantastic camp in beautiful Penticton, B.C.
- The world renowned Solvang Triathlon Camp starts March 31, 2008 in sunny California, and will feature coaches Peter Reid, Chuckie V, and Ben Greenfield. Click here for more information.
- The September book special is being extended to October - 3 OF BEN GREENFIELD'S BOOKS AT OVER 50% DISCOUNT! Take advantage of this discount by clicking here.
- Ben Greenfield is teaching a Triathlon 101 Training Clinic! This comprehensive clinic takes place at 6pm on Friday, November 16 at Fleet Feet Sports Coeur D' Alene, ID.
Featured Triathlete Product
Cordygen5 from Millenium Sports. Click here.
Ben Greenfield's 2007 multi-sport race season sponsors:
Blue Seventy wetsuits - Ben Greenfield's official wetsuit sponsor for the 2007 race season!
Did you know that Ben Greenfield's practical nutrition expertise is available through comprehensive monthly online nutrition coaching? These packages included unlimited e-mail consultations and weekly phone visits to design and track your optimal meal plan. Most individuals enroll in 1-2 months of coaching at $140/month and completely change their lives and health in this short period of time. Go to www.pacificfit.net/fitness.html and select the Online Nutritional Coaching package to sign-up today and begin coaching as early as this week!
IRONMAN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: LESSONS LEARNED
Rather than explaining the entire meteorological condition of race day weather (hot as hell), describing the intricate complexities of my pre-race sweet potato breakfast (apparently sweet potatoes are purple in Hawaii), or giving a blow-by-blow description of the swim (can you say WWF Raw?), I'm just going to give you six tips from lessons I learned at Ford Ironman World Championships:
1) The race doesn't start on race day.
Surviving the mean streets of Kona for the days leading up to the race is tough. Look at the handful of pros who got sick or had injuries and dropped out of the race. Faris Al Sultan, Michellie Jones, Normann Stadler, Luke Bell...and for every pro there were a handful of age groupers that didn't make it. One of the biggest issues with a race that has all the pressure and build-up of Kona is that it can be very difficult to stay in tip-top condition during your last days of race preparation. You can get sick on the plane. You can twist an ankle running up and down Alii Drive. You can bash heads with someone in the raucous morning swims at Dig Me beach. You can deplete electrolytes, water, carbohydrates, and sap your energy just surviving the heat of Hawaii in your pre-race training sessions. Being able to arrive at the starting line healthy, non-injured, and well-fueled is quite a feat. So there is far more to this race than just the race.
2) The ocean has salt in it.
Sure, there's a freshwater rinse going into T1. But when you hit the bike you've still got salt water dripping out of your hair, coating your skin, and perhaps most importantly, sloshing in your stomach. It tastes nasty and makes your skin feel like a piece of plastic. This can make for a difficult and uncomfortable bike ride. I adopted the strategy of consuming simply clear water for the first 15 minutes or so, then rinsing my eyes and skin with freshwater from bottles at the first few aid stations. So salt from the ocean is not cool. But the topic of salt leads me into the third lesson...
3) Butterfingers will hurt you.
Not the candy bar. That actually would have tasted pretty good out there. Especially the frozen one with ice cream in the middle. I'm talking about slippery fingers, the kind that makes a wide receiver bumble a football, a waiter drop an expensive wine bottle, or in my case, a triathlete lose control of their electrolyte pill bottle. I dropped it with just 12 miles to go, and didn't bother to stop and pick it up. Figured I could get my salt from Gatorade at the last aid station or two. A big mistake, which relates to my next topic...
4) All sugars are not created equal.
I'd been using a maltodextrin based fuel leading up to the butterfingers episode. But the switch to Gatorade, a fructose based fuel, introduced a different sugar into the stomach. Maltodextrin is basically a bunch of linked glucose chains, but fructose has a slightly different carbon-to-hydrogen-to-oxygen linkage compared to glucose. Due to this chemical difference, fructose not only absorbs more slowly from the gut than glucose, but also requires more water diverted into the stomach for absorption. And once it enters into the small intestine, fructose must enter the liver for conversion to glucose prior to being utilized as a fuel. What does all this mean? Basically, my stomach felt a little funny after the second half bottle of Gatorade, and by the time I got 5 miles onto the run course, I had puked 3 times, had one Dumb and Dumber-esque bowel movement on a race course porta-potty, and was stumbling along about a 9:30 pace. Lesson learned: stick to the sugars you know.
5) Ice feels good in funny places.
Every aid station has what seems like thousands of volunteers, shoving in front of your face ice, water, coke, gels, broth and fruit. One trick that I figured out once I hit the Queen K highway on the run was that a cup of ice dumped down the front crotch region of my VO2 max suit provided an incredibly satiating feeling of icy coldness. It was almost as good as cracking open a cold beer on a hot summer's day. Except in this case, the beer was just ice and the hot summer's day was my crotch. As the ice melts, the cold water runs down your legs and feels just fantastic. Enough said.
6) Never say die.
Kona was probably one of my most challenging mental and physical trials ever experienced. I almost quite nearly a half dozen times in the first 5 miles on the run. My foot hurt. My back hurt. My stomach was killing me. It's the closest I've ever come to quitting. At that point, I never would have been able to predict that my stomach pain would start to subside by mile 10, and I would actually start to feel pretty decent for the last half of the marathon. But thanks to the encouraging cheers of the Tri-Fusion cheering squad and my deep, masochistic stubbornness, I plodded on, step by step. Ironman is a long race. You can feel incredibly strong one hour and be in the depths of despair the next. During the hard times, just keep moving, and you could be surprised at the resiliency of the human body.
So those are the valuable life and racing lessons I took away from the big race in Kona. Feel free to post them on your refrigerator or turn them into a sing-songy mantra. Even us coaches are constantly expanding our knowledge of the intricacies of the sport - which will help us enhance your multi-sport performance in the future. Go to www.pacificfit/triathletes.html for more information on triathlon coaching.
Until next time, train smart
Ben Greenfield
P.S. Ben Greenfield's OFFICIAL BLOG for the winter triathlon season is now active. Check out his triathlon adventure stories and photos by clicking here.
