Don't let the Tri love go stale...

Vince Kamp is both a triathlete and an awesome mountain bike racer, a great friend, advisor and confidante. We've spent many hours chewing the cud about racing, improving and smashing our opposition. He has completed four Ironman races and four 70.3 races with a 3rd place finish at IMUK and 3rd place at World Champs 70.3 Clearwater Florida.

The training plan is taped up on the fridge. It hangs there taunting you. Follow me or lose the edge, hit every session to the letter or lose everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. I’m the plan, you need me, I am your master, you must execute these instructions or you will FAIL.
Is this you? The training plan is often the dictator we feel we must obey to the last threatening detail, or come race day we will be mentally beating ourselves up for missing that key session or not hitting the prescribed number of intervals at the right intensity. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, if you continue along this path, you may find that one day, tri Love has gone stale and you’ve forgotten why you got into this awesome sport in the first place.
The very nature of those that get into Triathlon, I mean really get into triathlon, is that of your stereotypical type A personality. They are highly motivated, extremely competitive and raise the bar on the definition of organized. We are goal orientated and executing a plan follows that mindset, there is reward and satisfaction at the end of a week of hitting the numbers, but this way of training can soon result in hitting a plateau, getting stuck in a rut, boredom or even depression.
So what the solution? Mix it up. I’m sure many of you already hit the trails on foot or on your mountain bike. If you don’t, you really should, off road running builds excellent strength in both joints and muscles and off road biking teaches you awesome bike handling and smooth cadence to maintain traction.
For me, there is nothing like racing offroad to really open up the engine and find out how quick single sport specialists really go. I compete in these events all through the year, there are so many amazing races out there to try your hand at.

I recently raced the Bontrager 24/12 mtb race in the 12hr pairs category as part of the Torq racing team and I don’t think I have ever been more exhausted in my life. This format of racing involves smashing a 14km offroad circuit and then handing over to your partner who then does the same. You get around 35 mins to get an energy bar and a gel into you, warm the legs up on a turbo and then get ready togo again. This goes on for either 12 or 24 hours and I can tell you by the time you hit those night laps you are thriving on a strange combo of adrenaline and any kind of sugar you can cram into your body. The feeling of hitting that finish line after 12hours of red line racing was euphoric. I was smashed for a couple of days after but the training effect over the next couple of weeks was significant. Although physiologically it was too early for any improvement, psychologically, I found I was clicking down the gears and hitting hills feeling much stronger and the watts confirmed it.
Mixing it up can make you a stronger athlete and faster triathlete, I’m convinced of it. Let us know how you mix it up.

Use Your Commute To Go Faster!!

Vince Kamp is both a triathlete and an awesome mountain bike racer, a great friend, advisor and confidante. We've spent many hours chewing the cud about racing, improving and smashing our opposition. He has completed four Ironman races and four 70.3 races with a 3rd place finish at IMUK and 3rd place at World Champs 70.3 Clearwater Florida.I climbed up on to the over the top scaffolding podium full of nervous energy. The tall man in front of me was blahing something through the microphone, which distorted with every letter ‘S’ he pronounced. He grabbed my skinny wrist and thrust it into the air announcing me the winner of the ‘Bluebell Cup mountain bike race’.
The handful of people standing around applauded. I think my parents even cheered a bit. The announcer shoved a small trophy into my hands and yanked my hands back into the air with enough enthusiasm to nearly dislocate my shoulders.
‘So Vince, what kind of training have you done to prepare for this race?’ He asked, his voice echoing around the caravan park.
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Uh oh, I thought. I searched around the crowd for my parents faces, hoping they would have the answer.
‘Er....I have a paper-round.’ I said quietly.
‘Sorry, Vince, speak up a bit please.’
‘I have a paper round’, I said leaning in too far and clinking my tooth on the metal mesh of the microphone. At that moment, I saw my Dad’s face. He smiled and shook his head.
I was quickly ushered off the podium to make way for the elite prize giving.
What the announcer did not give me the opportunity to explain, is that I had two very long paper rounds and for 6 mornings a week, from age 10 till 16 I may have been the fastest paper boy in the south East. Although I didn’t know it then, I was brick training the hell out of my juvenile body with high intensity intervals. I would sprint the driveways, leap over walls and sprint back to my bike, then sprint on my bike to the next road and go again. I would then ride to school, doing the same thing, I was totally smashed every day.
The point of this anecdote is that not everyone has the opportunity to follow a nicely structured training plan with built in recovery, threshold and high intensity sessions. Work, family and social commitments are often just too unpredictable to really follow a decent plan. Before you know it, you miss key training sessions and then get stressed trying to catch up. Sooner or later you’ll put yourself into a hole you can’t climb out of.
I know this, I’ve been there. But it didn’t take me long to realize that I needed to change things back to the days of the paper-round.
I raced several half and full Ironman races at the sharp end of my age group with baby at home and a stressful job.
So how do you stay fast without the time to execute well defined training sessions?
Use the commute.
If you can bike to work, make the route at least 45mins long, get in the usual 10min easy pedalling warm up to get heart rate up and muscles firing, then build the route into interval sections. For most commute journeys, steady tempo is just not feasible, there are traffic lights, pedestrians throwing themselves in front of you and damn cars everywhere. There is just too much recovery built in, so you have to really smash it for the sections of the route that you know are going to be uninterrupted. Time yourself for these sections or try to hit a certain speed, better yet have power targets to hit. Build the motivation in the recovery set before you hit that certain road, ‘I’m gonna smash 450W for this whole street.’ Then reward yourself with really easy spinning recovery so you can hit the next interval at the correct intensity again.
I hit my morning commute without any breakfast on board and just take a bit of fruit juice mixed with water. Despite what you may think, you have plenty of glycogen from last night’s dinner to get through 45mins of high intensity intervals and your metabolism will be properly ramped up for when you do chow down at work, so you will replenish when insulin is at its peak.
There is plenty of research that shows the benefits of high intensity intervals on increasing cardiovascular fitness (read endurance fitness) and fat burning. Save your tempo rides for the country lanes at the weekend.
You can do the same with running, you can use a run, walk strategy to make sure you really hit vVO2max (velocity at VO2max) for the intervals. Take a look at Bobbie McGee’s blog for some real insight into run walk training for triathlon.
Use your commute to your advantage. The commute can be used for excellent high quality training. It just takes a bit of planning.

I agree with Vince, living 20Km from work gives me the perfect opportunity to both run in or cycle in and home, adding a little extra distance in Richmond Park on the way home to make up 2 -3 hours of ride time. Utilising this dead time is paramount to my training strategy.