Spring is approaching!

Some of us remember last spring - the spring that taunted us with nice weather during the week and blistered us with rain, wind and frozen precipitation into April.  We finally got fed up with the weather in mid-April and decided to go for a nice little 60 mile ride on the Musselman course in 38 degree temperatures, 40 mph winds, and heavy rain.  I knew I was in trouble when my left foot was frozen before mile 3.

The wind tore this flag from its perch at the
Geneva Chamber of Commerce!!!

Actually, I'd rather not talk about that anymore.


This year, we've also been trying to get out to do our 60 minute power tests on the road.  There's really not much point in doing this test on the trainer.  You really need to have some cooling airflow in order to have a meaningful test, and a 20 minute test on the trainer just doesn't cut it.  We've found that the 20 minute number is not a good picture of the power you'll be able to hold for rides over an hour since it tends to favor athletes with a high anaerobic capacity.  


We've not yet been able to get a weekend with dry roads and temperatures in the 30's, but we know we'll get it in eventually!


It's really been enjoyable to see how much everyone is improving.  We've had several athletes reporting PR's in their swims at distances from 100's to 1600's not only through fitness improvements, but also by correcting deficiencies in stroke mechanics and body position errors.  


We've also seen some extremely solid run performances surprisingly early in the year.  The miles and miles of steady state aerobic base work is paying dividends in run performances.  Joe Tally is one of our training plan athletes who has been participating in the Fleet Feet winter run series, and can't seem to keep from getting a PR at nearly every event.  The coolest part of his PR's is that he hasn't done any fast run training yet this year and has had super slippery footing at several races!  This further proves our point about consistency in running being the most important ingredient to success.  


I absolutely love watching the athletes improve their performances throughout the training season, and it's been very interesting to have done our run and bike performance testing with blood lactate sampling throughout the base period.  We've been able to tailor workouts to the individual's physiology, and then conduct a retest to make sure we're achieving the desired result.  

Ryan Cameron has had a great year of improvement on the
bike and has improved his watts at Max_LaSS over 30%!
Ryan will be competing in Ironman Lake Placid this summer.

Several athletes have actually had to slow down their training (or more accurately "reduce their intensity") to get faster on the bike, and we've found how difficult it can be to conduct threshold intervals with just a heart rate monitor.  In every athlete that we've tested that has done threshold intervals without a power meter, their aerobic capacity has actually decreased while their anaerobic capacity has increased!  Without lactate testing, we might wonder why the athlete's functional threshold power has stagnated or regressed.  We can now actually peer into the actual physiology within the athlete in a way that was not possible previously, and can see that this athlete was turning into a "sports car" instead of a "diesel engine".


Very exciting stuff for 2012!  Nice Tri has been blessed with a full quiver of dedicated and talented athletes, and we even have four triathletes that are hoping to acquire their pro cards this year.  The coolest part about the athletes on our team is their friendly and approachable demeanor, so if you see someone in a Nice Tri jersey this year, stop and say "hi"!  I'm sure they'd love to tell you about how their year is going, what races they'll be doing, their favorite gel flavor, the most comfortable type of chamois butter....