Picture of 2000 Olympic Champion & 2008 Silver Medalist, Simon Whitfield just prior to the start of the 2009 world triathlon championships on the Gold Coast of Australia.

Whoa there is SO much going on in the world of endurance sports. My areas of greatest interest - distance running & triathlon have had plenty to talk about.

The rivalry between Sammy & Haile in Berlin that failed to materialize, the heat at that race that did not stop Haile from being on pace for over 30km of the 42.2 & the dramatic drop of pace that took him from a 2:03:33 possible world record to "only" a 2:06.

Then there is the ongoing despicable behavior of the South African Athletics Federation, ASA (Athletics South Africa), as regards the matter of Caster Semenya, the young girl who won the 800m at the world champs. She caused eyebrows to be raised after her world leading time earlier in the year. ASA was asked to look into it by the international governing body, (IAAF). They lied & said they had not & when the IAAF did the testing, ASA accused them & the world of being racist. Turns out the president of ASA was lying all along & that tests had been done & the poor kid should never have been allowed to participate in the 1st place. The IAAF messed up by leaking information that was supposed to be doctor patient privilege. Horrible - the biggest loser is now the poor athlete; she may never compete again & the emotional damage could be immeasurable. Turns out the tests, as far as the experts are concerned, were a relatively simple affair.

Then we had the world triathlon championships, where I am sad to say the USA did not bring back a single medal. 2012 is rapidly approaching & those role players involved (myself included) had better get our butts in gear. I know the athletes are working really hard, (& so too the support entities) & as of yet this is not enough.

More on this next time.

A thinking man's game? Perhaps not

Spending 10 days with triathletes of varying ability, from world class to their countries best, but somewhat beginners still, I have wondered about learning & skills acquisition, both mentally & physically.
When it comes to their training, in a perfect world, most endurance athletes are considered by their coaches & themselves as being methodical. In my empirical experience nothing could be further from the truth. Both running & triathlon require some significant skills development. This is hopefully done in the tried & tested pedagogic method of setting a purpose for a workout or skills session, breaking it up into its separate parts, then learning those separate parts & finally putting it all together in sequence repeatedly until it becomes automatic.
We learn 1st automatically & instinctively as a response to the demands of our event – then as those demands evolve, so hopefully do we. Of course there are those who carefully study what we do & through science, physics, debate & thought come up with possible models by which we can do things more effectively. Then the athlete faces a daunting task; unlearn what was learned without thought through thoughtful, cognitive processes. This unlearning is best done with a “replacement” mindset – i.e. replace the existing behavior with the new (& hopefully better) behavior & then have the patience to accept a period of decreased effectiveness while habituating the new skill set & then with a little luck come out the other end a better athlete.
Good athletes allow themselves to be open to constant learning – it is a natural process. Even habituated skills get better each time we use them, especially under pressure. Like peeling the layers off an onion, we can only get to deeper realizations about our physical ability mentally, by experiencing & then revisiting our experience after the fact. Here video & photography are very useful, as we cannot always trust what we feel, but video (in slomo) does not lie! Great athletes have a hard time teaching what came “naturally” to them. I use parentheses, because it really was quite a formal, but perhaps unconscious effort on their part to get that good. Some have been lucky to have great conscious thinkers for mentors or coaches who took them along the journey with great care & attention to the processes of learning.
The process of “making automatic” is an interesting one – keen, but inexperienced coaches try to create rules for each process & then teach these rules & often young athletes learn these rules with great fervor & are left in competition trying to remember the rules for each situation without allowing habitually learned responses to show up automatically. This is also a product of anxiety – you can literally see an athlete thinking in competition – a fatal flaw! True habituated skills acquisition actually makes the conscious mind emptier. This is the true meaning of the sayings: “I just knew it. I had a gut feeling. I stayed out of my own way. I got out of my head. I just went on auto-pilot.”
Great athletes can give reasons for why they worked their magic at a certain time. The truth is they think this after the fact when they go through their performance in their mind. When Tiger Woods was asked what he thought of the phenomenon that he is, his answer was both astute & revealing. He said that he is busy with the process of being a golfer & not observing what it is to be a golfer – a BIG difference.

Racing pressure & anxiety need not be negative

As I prepare for a lecture to some junior & U23 athletes as they prepare for the world triathlon championships on the Gold Coast in Australia, my thoughts go to the processes of handling pressure.

Here are some thoughts that may help you as you train hard in preparation of your next race.

-High self expectations can create stress that is perceived as negative. A more empowering interpretation can be that you have confidence in your ability – that is why you are entertaining the prospect of doing well
-Realize that setting yourself a high standard actually points to your belief in your ability
-Some anxiety indicates that you have put something important at stake that demands a higher standard from you.
-Having shown yourself (& others) that you are capable of competing at this level should bring pride rather than concern.
-Preface races & hard training with formalized thoughts around the challenges that need to be met in order to continue the process of transcending your current level of ability
-Confronting thoughts & what they pertain to should be viewed with satisfaction as they point to the purpose of training hard & give the self assurance that your efforts are meaningful & correctly directed

Triathlon in Australia

My 1st trip to Australia. I have been working my tail off & I have only just got here. I love the country. Reminds me so much of South Africa. I apologize for the lack of posts recently, I know it's been a while, but plenty of work & inter-continental travel will do that. All the usual suspects - triathlon training, running, sport psychology being the order each day. Juniors, age-groupers, aspirants & pros - all looking for that extra edge.

This is a great sporting nation & it's easy to see why; every level of athlete is out there every day working at their skills & fitness.

I have often wondered why certain circumstances that logically would be a limiting factor in an athlete's development turn out to be a reason for success. Take the British dominance of middle distance running in the 80s. Training in traffic & wet miserable weather gave the world Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe & Steve Cram, plus a few others. In South Africa it is generally the rural kids, from areas that have very little of what you would call opportunity, that produce the great athletes.

In triathlon it's nice to see that despite the super sport powers like Australia & the USA, that there is a healthy mix of top athletes from unexpected corners of the world.

Here are some themes that I am working on with coaches as we lead into the world triathlon championships:

· Training progresses linearly & logically from baselines
· Work from actual, repeatedly verifiable data
· Distinguish between open running ability & OTB running ability
· Physical training should always be viewed also as mental training & be designed as such
· Specificity is the overriding principle
· Variety overcomes plateauing – even the triathlete can easily lose effective stimulation from excessive repetition of the same workouts. Not to be confused with phasal emphases
· Maintain perspective
· Differentiate athlete & event/situation/sport performance requirements from personal /ego desires. Be brutally honest

Should we train by feel or with science?

I have just read an interesting article on the above subject: http://bit.ly/sn6OD. Check it out & then read the following blog entry. Then, decide for yourself if you are in balance with your training, or whether a boost from either side could help you achieve the next level in your development as an athlete.

The article is somewhat subjective, contradictory & anecdotal, but raises some excellent points. It I do however agree that the Africans train by feel, & that they have a different relationship with the sensations of the sport at high intensity. For a long time now I have admonished runners for having lost their “feel” by over-reliance on heart rate monitors, stop watches, GPS’s, etc. I feel that workouts like fartlek & runs for time teach pacing & feel & too many leave them out, especially the triathletes, who want it all recorded. That’s why I love workouts that emphasize distance over time (e.g. run as hard as you can for 30 minutes, versus time over distance, (run a 4-mile time trial). Recovery based training is an excellent model for most amateurs, but it does make targeting a specific event (to have peak fitness on the day) rather hit or miss. The conundrum is setting intensity/pace & volume for athletes who have not developed feel through trial & error from years in the sport. Break down or plateauing through a “suck-it-and-see” approach is not a luxury that most coaches can afford, & breakdown through illness or injury leads to massive detraining (& loss of confidence & momentum) & therefore under training is a better way to go for most. Many, many Africans fall by the wayside due to this feel approach – we just don’t know about it. We either figure out how hard to train without breakdown & get better – metabolic progressive overload, or we don’t & break down, lose it all & start again – catabolic excessive overload. They have many more talented athletes in their gene pool who are trying to succeed than we have & an “eggs against the wall approach” (push them as hard as possible & the survivors become champs) is one that the African coaches can afford, but we cannot, (unless we have a huge recruiting budget!).

The point is well taken though, but science as a means to establish what’s working & what is not, is very useful. The heart rate monitor has long been known to have serious limitations as a coaching tool. Racing heart rates under similar conditions & the same velocity are often much higher than training heart rates. In the world of cycling, where the measure of output in watts is now a simple enough procedure, has long since all but tossed out the heart rate monitor as a training tool & uses it more as a secondary confirmation that training is having the desired effect &/or that certain training is not appropriate at a specific time. In swimming where variables are able to be tightly controlled, that besides lactate threshold testing, (again to determine the efficacy of training), velocity (speed) is all that coaches need to measure advancement & even the Kenyans measure that right?

Lastly, pros race to win & that is what this article is about, but amateurs & age-groupers are less warrior-like & more the athlete type, i.e. they wish to improve their own performance & do not often consider that they are racing to win a race outright. In this scenario, pacing & effort – especially in the longer events, greatly determines the quality of the performance – with this approach the tools of the trade can prove very useful. If I know that my pace needs to be x, to achieve a certain goal outcome & I exceed that pace greatly in the early stages, (which is really easy to do), then I am inefficient & will most likely not achieve my target. The Ethiopian star could not give a two-penny hoot about his mile pace, (kilometers in his case!), whether that be 5:15 (a pedestrian marathon pace for him), or 4:15 (approx. WR 10km pace), he knows where he is at in the race & where he needs to be positioned to win & if his physiology & fitness let him down on the day, then it’s “ah well, maybe next time”. The scientists & coaches may be able to determine why it was not on, on that day, but they cannot with any certainty determine what training & tapering exactly would have produced an optimum result – that is where the art, feel & intuition of coach & athlete come into play. Probably why so many great coaches peaked so late in their careers; it took a LONG time for them to blend the art & the science & learn the process of reading each individual athlete & then applying, testing & repeating until voila, a world beater!

Science & feel (art) need to go hand in hand; I have seen too many great performances not achieved by Africans because they failed to pay attention to what science could have foreseen. Similarly I have seen numbers-focused athletes freeze when they realized the devices were telling them that perhaps they were operating in unknown territory & were bound to implode & the thoughts alone led to the slowing or the implosion.

World Champs are hotting up!

More as regards results later with the Bobbysez Blast, but in the mean time just a quick teaser to those of you who do not necessarily follow the world of T&F that closely - go & look at the uTube clip of Usain Bolt's new world record run in the 100m, sub 9.6!!! It was good to see Tyson Gay go fast as well in the same race.

While still powerful, it's beautiful to see sprinting back to the realm of the graceful & lithe again - these men are not physically as muscled as earlier generations, but they are immensely athletic & coordinated - wow.

In the classic high school mistake, that one sees quite often nowadays actually. Ethiopia lost gold in the women's 10 000m; where they may have had the sweep. Arms went up in celebration of the win, while a young Kenyan sneaked by to win it! Meseret Dafar seized up over the closing 30 meters, (ending up 5th!), allowing her team mate Meselech Melkamu to come by, thinking she had won it, when the young, but not entirely unheralded Linet Masai came by & won by a hair.

The Tour is over for this year - but...

This is an extract from a February post from The Science of Sport website, which I highly recommend by the way.

"It brings to mind one of the most fascinating quotes I've ever come across in a cycling book - it was in the book "The death of Marco Pantani" by Matt Rendell, in which a story is recounted of how in the 1990's, with EPO use rampant, the cyclists would set their heart rate monitors to sound an alarm if their heart rate dropped below a certain level. On hearing the alarm, the cyclists would have to wake up, get the bike out and spend 10 minutes on the rollers, in their hotel rooms, just to jump start the circulation.

In the words of one cyclist: "During the day we live to ride, and at night, we ride to stay alive". "