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Showing posts from March 26, 2017

Swim smart in the open water and be seen with New Wave Swim Buoy

My favorite open water swim location - Lake  Wörthersee  in Klagenfurt, Austria. Picture taken before I finally broke 1 hour in an Ironman swim after 10 attemps (IM Austria 2016 - 2.4 miles in 57.04).  In case you missed it in our latest newsletter,  we dedicated issue eleven to swimming smart and swimming safe. With the warm temps (almost) here, triathletes all over the globe are getting ready for the upcoming race season. This means triathletes are not only biking and running outside more often, but are getting closer to swimming in open water. For many triathletes, the thought of swimming in the open water can bring a lot of anxiety and nerves, which may discourage you from signing up for a triathlon event or you may find yourself with extreme panic on race day morning. If you feel intimidated by the thought of swimming in a pack of athletes, in a large body of water, I encourage you to check out our latest newsletter  to read about some of my tips and tricks to help y

Train smarter with a new approach to triathlon periodization

For many triathletes, training looks similar to this above model.  Base, build, peak, taper, race, recover.  But what happens after race day? Can the athlete who is racing in May continue on with training and still improve and peak again? Is the athlete strong enough to withstand another 6 months of training and racing? What if an athlete races in November - can the athlete start training in May and still achieve peak fitness in November? Want to learn more? Read on.  ------------------------------------------- When you think about training for a triathlon, it may appear to be a complicated sport - Swim, bike and run. Training for a triathlon is much more than simply checking off swim, bike and run workouts because the sport of triathlon is one sport - SWIMBIKERUN and this sport requires great skills, endurance, resilience and strength, as you transition your body from swimming to biking to running. Although you may feel overwhelmed with the thought of training for a triathlon

Requirements for athletic success

Most athletes want to be successful on race day but success is all relative to the person, in his/her individual journey. Regardless of your definition of success, whether it is to complete a race, to arrive healthy and injury free to the start line, to podium, win the race, have a personal best performance or qualify for a World Championship event, very few athletes truly grasp what it takes to be successful. The reason for this lack of understanding of "success" is because life is never a smooth path. Many athletes have this idea (in the head) of what it requires to be successful on race day and when life detours in a different direction, it's easy to feel frustrated, with an immediate loss of motivation. In other words, if success isn't easy to achieve, it's easy to quit and give up. As an athlete, it is important that you are persistent but also see training for an event as more than simply the physical preparation of completing workouts in order to gain

Performing high quality workouts - weekend training wrap-up

Like most competitive athletes, Karel and I are extremely dedicated to our training but unlike many, we are highly competitive triathletes who are not too obsessive with the sport. We give a lot of our energy to training but training provides us with more than race day performances as we gain good health, enjoyment, socializing, being outside and pushing our boundaries thanks to training. We can also clear our minds and de-stress. I like to say that we have the ability to turn on and off our training lightswitch very easily so that the light only comes on when we train and then it's back to normal life so that the light never burns out. One thing that Karel and I do not focus on as it relates to performance improvements, is marginal gains. While we do focus on all of the areas in our life, from diet, to fueling, to strength and mobility, to mental strength, sleep, gear and training in order to gain the competitive edge, we focus on optimizing the areas in our life that h