Last year, my coach M2 gave me a set of cycling workouts which changed subtly; knowing that I had progressed many years with him, he knew he could increase their difficulty. The rest intervals now had a small but important change: they would be performed at 100RPM. Now anyone who has tried to spin at[…]
In the last few months, I’ve been really into Total Immersion and their teaching method. Swimming is one of those activities which require mastery of so many little details that trying to learn swimming all at once is very very difficult. So they do a great job of breaking down technique with drills, and enforcing[…]
In recent months, I’ve come to realize how much I love the tempo trainer for swimming. It also sparked the realization that I have finally found a method for to ensure measurability and repeatability for swimming. What’s so important about measurability and repeatability? Repeatability is the ability to come back day after day and train[…]
A lot of focus on hill climbing in either running or cycling is on building leg strength, and aerobic capacity to support a strong push up the hill. Hill climbing for me has been a real challenge; I have been training constantly to increase my leg strength. However, I did discover another piece of training[…]
In my interactions with my coach M2, I have learned that there are 6 types of training. These are: 1. Neuro-muscular – training of the nervous system to do something either differently, better, or to some form which maximizes efficiency and minimizes effort. Example: super short high speed treadmill intervals for 15-30 seconds per interval,[…]
At the start of the season, I took a bike benchmark test to set a baseline from which training levels would be calculated. We used a Computrainer hooked up to a PC to record the results. The course I used was a flat 10 mile course so that I did not get distracted by hills.[…]
How cool is this: both Lance Armstrong (lancearmstrong) and Chris Carmichael (trainright) are on Twitter and tweeting their training. It’s pretty amusing to follow Lance and check out what he is doing right now. Apparently he’s in Kona hanging out, but also training furiously with Chris. Heard on trainright: good day of training for lance..[…]
Today the Bay area was sunny, although it was a chilly 45 degrees this morning. After my Computrainer workout, I decided to finally take my fixed Zipp Powertap disc out for a test. In case you didn’t know, pumping up a disc wheel is kind of a pain. You get this little L shaped adapter[…]
If there is one training principle I have come to both love and hate, it’s the negative split. It’s also one of the most important. In short, it means that you increase effort and, thus (hopefully) speed, on the second half of your workout or race. Workouts can also be gradual in increasing effort, resulting[…]
Whoo hoo! Got my Yield to Life bike jersey today, signed by Dave Zabrieskie himself. I’m proud to be a donor and a part of Yield to Life, whose mission is to promote safe cycling everywhere. The popularity of cycling and triathlon has put an enormous amount of people on the roads on bicycles. Add[…]