Simril gets an assist!

Simril gets an assist!
My neighbors dog decides to go for a swim this morning, and then my neighbor follows. I grabbed my paddling rope and ran down to the river just in time for them to climb out onto the river bank. So I really did not assist that much, but I was ready if needed.

The ice on the river is melting, and so we will be paddling in the sun.

Fixing a Flat Tire

No one likes having a flat, but if you know how to fix the flat your ride will not be derailed.

When you flat:

Have a plan; do not let this be the first or second time you try to figure this out.
Be familiar with your saddle bag and how to get it on and off of your bike.
Have two tire levers, a tube, co2 and/or a pump.
Know how your co2 works!
Shift the chain to the smallest cog
Take the wheel off
Take one side of the tire off.....if you are good you usually will not need a tire lever.....but that is another story
ALWAYS try to find the reason for the flat. Did you pinch, run over glass, or did the rim strip slip.
If you get in a rush and do not find the reason for the flat you are likely to flat again.
Run your finger around the inside of the tire. Be careful here, if you have a bit of glass you can cut your finger.
Blow a bit of air into the new tube with your mouth.
Put the tube one the wheel and start to put the tire back on.
Work away from the valve.
NEVER use the tire levers to get the tire back on the wheel.
Make sure you do not have any of the tube pinched under the tire.
Double check to make sure that you are not pinching the tube!!
Pump or use your co2.
Put the wheel back on, tighten the skewer and go.
This whole process should not take more then 3-5 minutes, but can take much longer......

Overtraining

Overtraining

The term overtraining is complicated. Magazines like “Runners World” love to sell the “less is more” idea of training. Well, less is usually not more. Most of the time the athlete that trains the most wins. That is one of the beautiful things about endurance sports – the more you put into the sport, the more you get out of the sport.

I do not even like the term overtraining, because really, that’s what training is all about. You stress the system by pushing your body, then recover and then repeat.

That said, I want to give you a few tips on avoiding “overtraining”. Stress comes from all areas of life. Even the things we love to do can be stressful. Work, family, social life and training are all stressors. So the things that stress our system need to be accounted for and managed.

There are many ways to determine if you are over trained. I will talk about the one that I like best:

· This method is based off of heart rate (HR). In the morning after your alarm clock goes off take your HR while still lying down. It is important that you do not sit up in bed. You should turn off the alarm clock and relax for a moment (hopefully you do not fall back to sleep). The goal is to relax and get a true resting HR.
· Next, stand up and take your HR again. Simply stand next to your bed without walking around.

So now you have two HR’s: lying down and standing. Now, compare the two HR’s and clculate the difference. This is a test that you will need to perform consistently to find your normal spread between the two HR’s.

A typical spread might be 5 beats higher when standing, but that varies from person to person. The key is to find YOUR normal spread and watch for changes. If the number increases and stays that way for several days, you should back off of your training a little.
Backing off of training does not mean to stop working out, but to decrease intensity or duration or both. If you are in the middle of hard training your body will respond better to “active recovery” than complete rest. Active recovery can be any form of exercise that you enjoy and you feel better after completing.

Overtraining is not something that happens because of one training session. True overtraining takes weeks and is not that common. The nature of training is that some days you will feel beat up and in need of a recovery workout.

So, use your HR to give you a real measure of your training status.

PRTriCoach heading to Curling World Championships

PRTriCoach Brian McWilliams will be working with the Women and Men's Curling World championships.

The Women's World Championships will be held in Vernon B.C., on March 22nd-30th http://seasonofchampions.ca/2008worlds/index.asp

The Men's World Championships will be held in Grand Forks N.D., on April the 5th to the 13th.

http://www.worldmenscurling2008.com/

Reality Check

As an endurance athlete you are faced with long training days week after week and month after month. You often feel tired and can question the wisdom of another workout. Generally, more is better unless your body stops adapting to the stress. The question is, how do you know if you are adapting to the stress and if you are doing the correct type of training to make you faster?

One way to get feedback on your fitness is a time trial. Another way is a standard workout that you can compare to previous weeks. Here are a few samples that are tried and true:

Swim 10 x 100 yards
Bike 10 x 1 mile
Run 10 x 400 yards (typically on a track)

You should allow your heart rate to drop 110-120 bpm or your zone 1 before starting the next hard effort.

These are basic workouts that will serve as reality checks. Not only will they give you a true measure of your fitness, they will make you faster as well.

The main difference between racing and doing intervals is the added bonus that the workouts give you by increasing your speed. Often times races are too long and too hard to make you faster. Racing teaches your body to move at your current race pace, but what you want to do is teach your body to move faster than your current race pace. The end result is that you keep lowering your race PR.

A good example of this is an Olympic marathoner – he doesn’t race marathons to get faster at marathons; he races 5k’s and 10k’s. The same holds true at all distances.

Use these workouts to gauge your fitness and go faster!

Coach Lee
PRTriCoach.com

Brenda's new ride!