Bricks and Books...

Happy Presidents Day!

I enjoyed my day off doing a little work from home in the morning and followed it up with a great brick workout. If you check out the details of my workouts on Daily Mile, you'll see I'm trying something a little different for a while...going slow. Well, I already go slow so maybe just slower. I've been reading a lot about Low Heart Rate training and am waiting for a book from Amazon to arrive in my mailbox.


From what I've heard, The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing is to physical fitness as Think and Grow Rich is to entrepreneurs. It creates a foundation and basically explains in no uncertain terms what you need to do to accomplish your goals. It makes it seem simple. The hard part, as anyone knows who's ever tried to do anything, is that you've actually got to start and, more importantly, be determined to stick it out through the tough times.


The author, Philip Maffetone, doesn't make grandiose claims to help you create a beach body or give you a secret to run a 5 minute mile. Instead his methods to make you go faster are to actually go slower. The goal for each training session, whether it's running, biking, swimming, pogo sticking, or skipping to your lou, is to keep your heart rate as close to a certain number without going over. Welcome to The Price is Right...For Faster Run Times.


Take 180 and subtract your age. This is your new favorite number. The idea is that your body will become more efficient at this "low" heart rate and over the next couple months of training you'll actually see improvements and run faster while maintaining this rate. You become aerobically fit.


My first experience at maintaining this heart rate (on the run today) dropped my pace from my usual 8:45 pace to a molasses-like 12:30 pace. I honestly felt like I could walk faster. In preparation for Ironman 70.3 Austin in October, I expect to see my pace at 149 beats per minute drop from 12:30 to around the 7:00 minute mark. Maybe I'm just being optimistic. After all, the book is still on its way to my mailbox.

Want to swim faster?

When I was younger, my grandfather would take my cousin and I to watch greyhound races. It's okay, we're from the South and that's just one of the things you do when you're 10 and spend the summer with your grandfather.

If you've never been (to the dog races...not the South), it's very similar to horse racing except there are no jockeys. My grandfather told me the dogs go so fast that no one could ever hang on. The other big difference is that there is a "rabbit" that travels along the inside rail of the loop and is the carrot for the dogs to chase. I'm pretty sure it's just a pillow though with some kind of yummy liver and bacon flavor because the dogs just maul it once they cross the finish line.

This is the time when you're asking yourself "Wow, what a great story, but what does this have to do with making me swim faster?" and the answer is...What's your rabbit? In the pool this could be the feet of your lane partner in front of you or swimmers in neighboring lanes. At today's swim practice, I was in one of the faster lanes that I don't usually swim in and was surrounded by fast swimmers on both sides. Lo and behold, I was able to keep up with the shorter intervals and probably had the best swim practice of my aquatic career.

I'm pretty sure there's some anthropologic predator-prey theory that could explain this, but chasing stuff is fun and it'll push you to go harder more than any yelling the coach on deck can muster.

Finding a rabbit isn't just for swimming. It works the same for cycling and running, too. Find someone 100 yards ahead of you, track them down...and then maul them at the finish line.

5 Reasons to Do an Ironman

If you're just starting out in triathlons and tell someone you're thinking about doing an Ironman they'll probably look at you like you're crazy. Tell someone else, and they'll regale you with stories of the time they did 4 in one year. Everyone's got a different reason for going 140.6 miles, but if you can't figure out why you want to do one, here's 5 -- courtesy of Ray Gill at myfitnessdepot.com.

1. Test Your Limits

There are few things in life more challenging than 2.4 miles in the water, 112 miles in the saddle, and 26.2 miles on your feet. In the same day. Back-to-Back-to-Back. As you progress through the sport of triathlon, you will start by questioning if you can swim-bike-run even a Sprint distance all in a row. Then once you do you will question the Olympic distance. You will continue to question the longer distances until youprove to yourself that you can or cannot complete them. A lot of people are satisfied with the knowledge that they can complete a Sprint distance triathlon and I applaud them for being active and testing their limits. Others want to keep pushing until they know for sure what they can put their body and mind through.

2. Sense of Accomplishment

Endurance sports, as a whole, are all about setting goals and the attempt to attain them. Whether that goal is being able to run a 5K or complete an Ironman. The bigger the goal the greater the sense of accomplishment. It just makes sense to set your goals high and reach for the upper echelon of your abilities. Only then can you truly believe you have accomplished what you are truly capable of.

Click here to see the rest of the article. It's definitely worth the read.

Go hard. Go harder. Repeat.

I was on a swim team when I was 11 and swam through high school earning a Varsity letter although I was never very good. When I decided to get serious about triathlon training, I joined the SCAQ masters swim team, and that has made all the difference.

Not in any sort of swimming shape, when I first joined SCAQ this past April, I could swim about 100 yds before my arms started to feel like cooked spaghetti noodles. Today I was able to complete 3 sets of a 100, 200, 300, 400 ladder on a 1:30 interval.

3000 yards in 45 minutes!

It used to be unthinkable: How do people push themselves so far? How can someone run 26 miles or ride a bike over 100 miles? One of the biggest lessons I've learned in increasing distances is how to mentally just keep going. Mental toughness can overcome physical toughness, you just have to work at it.

For me, there's no better time to work at it than when I'm staring at a balck line 8 feet below going back and forth convincing myself to just keep swimming.



@heystevelang