Laid-back Fitness

Even with all the research and testimonials I’ve read, shadows of doubt still lingered in the back of my head as the first sprint triathlon of my race season approached.  After all I only had one open water swim under my belt in 2010, I hadn’t hit the 40 mile mark cumulatively on my bike yet, and OMG I hadn’t continuously run more than 1 mile since last August!  Well, I was pleasantly surprised yesterday after a respectable finish (23/221) in my hometown‘s race.  Here’s a great post by a man who figured out the intensity vs duration debate a long time ago. 

So how does it work?  In the interest of full disclosure I will concede that I’ve been training for triathlons pretty consistently for the past 4 years so I’m familiar with the three movements.  Also, I knew I could handle the distances because I’ve done them so many times in the past.  Having said that, I had an ”aha!” moment two seasons ago when I logged a PR in a 1/2 ironman by over 12 minutes (could’ve been 20 had I not gotten dehydrated and been reduced to walking part of the run – rookie mistake).  Anyway, at the time I had two jobs and thus no free time at all to train.  Whenever I could however, I trained intensely.   The following season I was true to the primal way and went against my endurance athlete instincts by training hard and fast and not just “grinding out the miles”.  I only raced twice but my performance improved markedly and I spent less time training and more time enjoying the summer.  Fast forward one year and several sprint sessions later and I’m fully convinced this is the right thing to do.  I even felt that I went into the race relatively unconditioned but hoped to make up time by focusing on technique and efficiency of movement.  Plus, as a sort of mental encouragement on the course, I could say to myself: you’ve swam faster than this before (albeit not often!), you’ve hammered it more radically than this before, and you run harder than this all the time.  Success!  Check the Race Reports tab in a couple days for race details with pics and videos shot by Laurie “steady hands” Lemay.

In health and consequent performance!