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TIM O’DONNELL:
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CONTENTS
32 • Can Timothy O’Donnell win Kona? By Tim Carlson Photograph by Nils Nilsen
ON THE COVER RAW DATA Inside Triathlon photo editor Nils Nilsen captured T.O. using Nikon’s flagship camera, the D3X. Matched with the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G lens, Nilsen was able to use a small sliver of focus to create the cover look and feel. The image was created in a friend’s garage using a mix of strobe and available lighting. Look for a series of outtakes on Insidetriathlon.com.
6 INSIDETRIATHLON
WINNING FORMULA CREATING THE WORLD’S FASTEST ROAD BIKE REQUIRED A NEW FORMULA FOR LIGHT WEIGHT, STIFFNESS, AND AERODYNAMICS. SPECIALIZED LEFT THE WORLD OF CYCLING AND TOOK THE VENGE TO McLAREN, WHERE WE APPLIED MATERIALS, TECHNOLOGY, AND MANUFACTURING METHODS NORMALLY RESERVED FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF RACING. SOLVE THE FORMULA AT VENGE.SPECIALIZED.COM
contents JULY/AUGUST 2011
14
61 26
76
89
44
doctor search
abu dhabi
Golden boy
Find out why you need a doctor who understands that athletes are different. By BoB augeLLo
Journey to a mysterious land with the Abu Dhabi International Triathlon. By courtney Baird
Triathlon’s greatest Olympian talks about gold, silver and peak performance. By courtney Baird
61
76
89
plus
the caveman
uberbikers
super recovery
Conrad Stoltz is dominating offroad triathlon. But how did he get there? By hoLLy Bennett
Want to be the best cyclist you can be? Learn the tricks of the world’s best. By torBjørn sindBaLLe
Put in a ton of hard training with few results? Poor recovery could be to blame. By Matt fitzgeraLd
Letters 10 Moving on 18 gear 22 conviction 24 at the finish 96
8 insidetriathlon
From left: John Segesta, Nick Salazar, Hunter King, Delly Carr/triathlon.org
44
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IS IT GETTING HOT IN HERE, OR IS IT JUST ME? GET FIT. STAY HYDRATED.
!
CAUTION: CONTENTS MAY BE HOT
Pro Triathlete
Terenzo Bozzone
EDITOR’S LETTER
LEARNING FROM THE BEST The idea for our special “icons issue” came from Inside Triathlon’s mission to educate our readers on cutting-edge training techniques, nutrition and racing tactics. No matter how you slice it, the pros and high-performance coaches are always going to be light-years ahead of everyone else—including, and perhaps especially, the scientists—when it comes to training and racing. They do what they do because it works. That’s why I’m excited to offer readers this special issue, packed with tips and tricks from three of triathlon’s biggest icons. On page 44, Olympic gold and silver medalist Simon Whitfield and his friends, coaches and family talk about attitude, nutrition, training—and what it took to become triathlon’s greatest Olympian. It helps that Whitfield is a fantastic interview: He’s open and willing to say what he feels without regard for what people will think. On page 61, journalist Holly Bennett profiles Conrad Stoltz, triathlon’s greatest off-road triathlete and a man who is such a ferocious cycling talent that he’s considering an Olympic bid in the time trial. (It would be his third Olympics if he qualifies, having competed in Sydney and Athens in triathlon.) Bennett’s story outlines how Stoltz became a four-time Xterra world champion—a lesson that can be extrapolated to any endeavor. On page 76, Inside Triathlon contributing writer Torbjørn Sindballe reveals all the cycling secrets he learned while he tore up the roads as one of triathlon’s uberbikers. Sindballe still holds the second-fastest bike split in history at the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and he offers advice on how to become the best cyclist you can be, even if you don’t have a lot of time on your hands. Which leads me to our cover story: Timothy O’Donnell. While he isn’t an icon in the triathlon world yet, if you read journalist Timothy Carlson’s profile on him, it becomes obvious that he certainly has the potential to be. Carlson spent some time with O’Donnell in Arizona over the winter, and he came back with a fascinating piece of information: O’Donnell just might be America’s greatest hope to end its drought in Kona. It has been nine years since American Tim DeBoom crossed the line in first, and while Carlson is quick to point out that the chances of O’Donnell winning Kona this year are slim, he has what is required—the background, work ethic, run speed and ability to suffer—to eventually come out on top. I hope you enjoy these stories, as well as everything else we have to offer in this issue. Happy training,
Courtney Baird
Editor-in-Chief cbaird@competitorgroup.com 10 INSIDETRIATHLON
editor-in-chief Courtney Baird editor-at-large T.J. Murphy senior editor Jennifer Purdie associate editor Bethany Leach Mavis contributing editors Matt Fitzgerald, Aaron Hersh contributing writers Courtenay Brown, Tim DeBoom, Torbjørn Sindballe, Jené Shaw copy editor Adam Elder art director Bridget Durkin photo editor Nils Nilsen contributing photographers/illustrators Paul Phillips, Robert Murphy, Nick Salazar, N.C. Winters digital media chief digital officer Alex Baxter content director Kurt Hoy web producer Liz Hichens senior video producer Steve Godwin video producer Kevin LaClaire digital advertising sales director Jason Rossiter, jrossiter@competitorgroup.com advertising and marketing San Diego, CA associate publisher Lars Finanger, lfinanger@competitorgroup.com, 858.362.6746 account executive, endemic sales Justin Sands, jsands@competitorgroup.com, 858.768.6747 account executive, showcase sales Alex Jarman, ajarman@competitorgroup.com, 858.768.6769 production manager Meghan McElravy director, audience development John Francis, jfrancis@competitorgroup.com manager, audience development Cassie Lee-Trettel, cleetrettel@competitorgroup.com marketing manager Danielle Aeling daeling@competitorgroup.com Boulder, CO account executive Nathan Forbes, nforbes@competitorgroup.com account executive Mark Gouge, mgouge@competitorgroup.com account executive David Walker, dwalker@competitorgroup.com
A Publication of Competitor Executive Chairman David Moross CEO Peter Englehart President & COO Scott Dickey EVP, Media Andrew R. Hersam CFO Steve Gintowt SVP National Sales John Smith SVP Marketing Bouker Pool VP Digital Media Dan Vaughan VP Western Region Sales David O’Connell SVP Midwest Region Sales Doug Kaplan VP Eastern Region Sales Rebecca McKinnon VP Sales Development Sean Clottu Mailing Address 9477 Waples Street, Suite 150, San Diego, CA 92121 Telephone 858.768.6805 Fax 858.768.6806 Subscriptions U.S. & Canada 800.494.1413 International Subscriptions 303.245.2162 Retailers 800.381.1288 Circulation Inquiries insidetriathlon@pcspublink.com Editorial Inquiries cbaird@competitorgroup.com Website insidetriathlon.com
No part of this issue may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Editorial contributions are welcome but a stamped self-addressed envelope is necessary for the return of all materials. Inside Triathlon is a registered trademark of Competitor Group, Inc.
Go farther.
速
Focused on the finish line
Determined to end world hunger
Team up with Janus and make your next triathlon a fundraiser for your favorite charity. Turn your passion for triathlon into a passion for your cause, with fundraising support from Janus, a global investment company. The Janus Charity Challenge helps you turn your race into your personal fundraising platform for any charity you choose, in select races in the Life Time Triathlon Series Race to the Toyota Cup. Janus provides everything athletes need for successful fundraising, so you can put your effort into your training where it belongs. And we will donate up to $30,000 to the charities of the top fundraisers at each race.
Visit januscharitychallenge.com to find out how to make your next triathlon a winner for the cause that matters to you most, or to make a donation to your favorite athlete or charity.
Life Time Triathlon Series Race to the Toyota Cup Capital of Texas Triathlon May 30, 2011, Austin
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contributors HOLLY BENNETT pProfiling four-time Xterra world champion Conrad Stoltz was “a bit like winning the journalistic lottery,” claimed contributor Holly Bennett. “Conrad is such a rich character; there was certainly no lack of content.”When Bennett writes about professionals, something she does often for Inside Triathlon sister publication Triathlete magazine, she is rarely concerned about their race results. “What interests me is the lead-up to the top—the individual’s childhood, relationships, values, trials and passions,” Bennett confessed. “I believe success is as much about the ‘who’ as it is the ‘how.’” Bennett herself is enamored with endurance, having competed in five Ironmans, multiple marathons and—though she rarely admits it for fear of having to stage a repeat performance—even a handful of Stoltz’s beloved off-road races. Her profile appears on page 61. TIMOTHY CARLSON pTimothy Carlson, who profiles pro triathlete and Kona hopeful Timothy O’Donnell on page 32, is a veteran journalist and photographer who worked for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Los Angeles Bureau of TV Guide before focusing on triathlon, something he’s done since 1993. He has written about triathlon for The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Competitor magazine and Outside Online. From 1995 until 1998 he worked on contract and as a staffer for Triathlete magazine, served as editor and senior correspondent for Inside Triathlon from 1999 until 2008, and was co-writer with Mathias Müller of the English language edition of “17 Hours to Glory: Extraordinary Stories from the Heart of Triathlon” (VeloPress, 2010). He is currently a senior correspondent for Slowtwitch.com. HUNTER KING pIllustrator Hunter King has been doing two things for as long as he can remember: riding bikes and drawing pictures. He pulled from his personal experience as the son of a USA national team cycling coach and the hours he spent in his family’s bike shop in this month’s “Becoming an Uberbiker” feature on page 76. He’s grateful to be able to draw about what he both loves and knows. King resides in Tucson, Ariz., with his wife, Aimee, and works with a nonprofit called El Grupo that helps disadvantaged kids by showing them the rewards of racing bicycles. “I’ve met so many ‘somebodies’ in cycling that I’m no longer impressed by results or logos on jerseys. I’m more impressed by the 12-year-old that is 30 pounds overweight who gives it everything they have because they are in love with riding,” King said.
12 insidetriathlon
Letters This is the first time I have ever written a note about a magazine, but the issue with Chris McCormack and Rinny’s coach (May/ June 2011) was the best cover-to-cover reading I have ever had. The magazine is normally very good, but this one will be hard to top. By all means, please try. — Todd Wright, Lakeville, Minn. Send your letters to cbaird@ competitorgroup.com. Include your full name and address. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
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AT THE FRONT
the big idea
exhausted? Your doctor could be to blame “It was like going from being blind to getting my vision back.” This is how Paul Thomas, an elite runner, duathlete, triathlete and cyclist for most of his life, described finding a health practitioner who knew how to evaluate the lab results of an athlete, whose body has different requirements than those of normal folks. Thomas went looking for this professional because of the “deep hole” he had dug for himself “by training for and racing an Ironman in just four months.” During the Ironman, Thomas was unable to get his heart rate above 122 on the bike, no matter how hard he tried. Afterward, he was constantly tired. Knowing something was wrong, he visited his general practitioner, who ordered lab tests including a comprehensive metabolic panel (total cholesterol, protein and electrolytes), glucose and CBC panel (complete blood count). But Thomas’ creatinine, sodium, phosphorous, thyroid-stimulating hormone, iron, pH, 14 insidetriathlon
aspartate aminotransferase (an enzyme) and other markers all came back within normal ranges. Nothing was too high or low. But Thomas knew something definitely wasn’t “normal,” so he began searching for someone who could help. Finally, he connected with Jerry Moylan, a chiropractor in San Diego who not only has more than 20 years of experience working with athletes, including Canadian triathlete and Olympian Carol Montgomery, but is an avid athlete himself and three-time Ironman finisher. Moylan explained to Thomas that the “normal” reference ranges that most health practitioners use to evaluate lab results are intended to assist in identifying and diagnosing disease states and do little to help one reach an “optimal” state of health. To help Thomas get back on track, Moylan used narrower, or “functional,” reference ranges supported by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. Taking this approach, Moylan found more than a dozen
results “within the limits” of normal reference ranges but that fell outside of functional ranges, or the ranges an athlete’s results should be within to remain healthy and able to consistently respond to training stimuli. Thomas’ sodium level of 143, for example, was within the normal reference range of 135 to 145 mmol/L but outside the narrower functional range of 135 to 140. This high sodium level naturally upset his electrolyte balance, something critical to performance for any endurance athlete, yet his initial practitioner overlooked it. Moylan compares the “normal ranges” that are tested for in traditional lab tests to the FDA’s recommended daily allowances for vitamins. These recommendations are structured to provide the minimum nutrients necessary to stave off disease. Similarly, lab values falling within a normal range simply mean that there’s likely an absence of disease, not necessarily normal health.
Nils Nilsen
By Bob Augello
the big idea
A centrifuge used in blood tests: Athletes are discovering that they may be at risk for misinterpreted lab results.
Using these functional ranges for guidance, Moylan helped Thomas tweak his diet and suggested nutritional supplements and a detoxification regimen. After Thomas spent a year rebuilding his health, he was able to respond to training stimuli again and continues to train at an elite level to this day—almost seven years after his Ironman incident. Indeed, Thomas won the individual general category of the pro/Cat. 1 division of the 2011 Valley of the Sun Stage Race in Arizona in February despite being twice as old—42—as the youngest rider. Thomas’ example demonstrates just how important it is for athletes to find a conscientious doctor who is experienced with athletes and willing to take a long, hard look at cur16 insidetriathlon
rent and past lab results. This doctor must also be adept at evaluating not only disease states, but also whether or not an athlete’s body is functioning as optimally as possible. Besides finding a conscientious doctor who is used to working with athletes, triathletes should be concerned with finding a health practitioner who understands the intricacies of cholesterol, thyroid hormones and iron. Endurance athletes are especially at risk for poor health if they don’t have enough HDL cholesterol and iron in their bodies, and if their thyroid isn’t functioning properly, according to Victoria Vodon, a chiropractor from Newport Beach, Calif., who has worked with many elite endurance athletes, including those under renowned athletics coach Bobby Kersee. HDL
cholesterol is particularly important, as it is “used by the endocrine system to create hormones via the adrenal gland,” Vodon said. But many endurance athletes do not have enough of it. And thyroid problems often go undetected, as many patients with thyroid problems have normal lab tests, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. Finding the right doctor can be a challenge, however. Former Ironman 70.3 world champion Samantha McGlone dealt with a doctor who misread lab results, and this experience pushed her to do the research required to assemble a team of practitioners she trusts, largely by using input from other athletes. McGlone recommends that triathletes find a doctor who will read results with an eye on how they trend over time—that is, how current lab results compare to lab results taken months or even years in the past, paying special attention to any big swings. Athletes can also use the American Medical Society of Sports Medicine as a guide. Failure to properly interpret lab results is a top reason for medical malpractice lawsuits, according to a study published by the University of Wisconsin Medical School, so choosing the right practitioner is key. Before you settle on one, seek a second opinion. And when you do find a prospective practitioner, Moylan and Vodon recommend that you give the practitioner your previous lab results and boldly go where few patients have gone before—ask why you should put your health and fitness in his or her hands. If the practitioner doesn’t take the time to provide a thoughtful answer, how can you be sure he will take the time to carefully consider your lab results? Lab tests are of immense value, but only when interpreted by the right practitioner. It pays to treat your hunt for that practitioner as the most important shopping venture of your life, because it may well be. it
Augello is a retired coach who has worked with Lance Armstrong, guided NCAA national champions in crosscountry and track and sent five cyclists to the Olympics.
istockphoto.com/Miguel Malo
AT THE FRONT
AT THE FRONT
moving on
OLYMPIC DREAMS By Olly Freeman
I’m a perfectionist—always have been, probably always will be. That was not a bad thing for a professional triathlete who was attempting to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics for his home country, right? Indeed, for me it was one of my greatest strengths. I could hit (and recall) every split in a 40 x 100-meter swim workout to within a couple of tenths of a second of what my coach set, so I was always able to get as much as was humanly possible out of every training session. I couldn’t have achieved what I did in triathlon—I finished the 2008 season ranked sixth in the world—without my perfectionism, not just because a certain obsessiveness is necessary to scale the heights of elite sport, but also because of my limitations—a history of mononucleosis and a less than robust digestive system meant I needed to plan my recoveries generously and my meals meticulously throughout every day of my career. By the same token, however, such a disposition is dangerous in triathlon. Every breath you take, every morsel you eat, has a tangible effect on the object of your perfectionism, which is not something you can ever file away or leave at the office. It’s inescapable. It’s your own body. It’s you.
*BEFORE
18 INSIDETRIATHLON
*AFTER If you had a shot at qualifying for the Olympics—a dream you had worked for for nearly your entire life—would you give it up just when you thought it might become a real possibility? In 2010, British pro Olly Freeman, pictured here, did just that.
From two-time IRONMAN® Hawaii World Champion CHRIS ”MACCA“ MCCORMACK
ERIC WINN
Find Out Everything It Takes to Become a Champion “If all you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail, right? For many athletes and coaches, the only tool they have is training more…. An Ironman is eight hours, but races are won or lost in moments when one athlete makes a move.” —from I’M HERE TO WIN Available in hardcover, as an audiobook, and as an eBook
In I’M HERE TO WIN, Macca provides concrete training advice for everyone—from weekend warriors who casually compete to seasoned veterans who race every week to armchair athletes looking for an extra push—with excitement and inspiration on every page. FOR MORE INFO
“A superior book for anyone searching for keys to take their racing and life to the top level.” —Mark Allen, Six-time Ironman Triathlon World Champion
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AT THE FRONT
moving on
My only release from triathlon was, ironically, the act of training itself. Last year, a combination of mixed results and tedious politics prompted some self-reflection, which made me realize that I was finding myself unable to escape the sport—both the actual restrictions that training imposes on your life and the interminable mental noise that was my constant analysis of past and future workouts. My only release from triathlon was, ironically, the act of training itself. I realized I wanted to be on a journey that I could enjoy for what it was, not just some speeding underground train that featured a possible stop at the Olympic Games. I seemed to be straying farther and farther from what I really wanted to do with my life, which lay outside the simple confines of the one-dimensional existence that I was leading. My weapon had become my downfall. By the end of the 2010 season it was pretty obvious that I needed a bit of change, so I took some time off and indulged in all the things that I feel define me as a person much more than “that triathlete Olly Freeman with the posh voice and the big eyebrows who finished in such and such a place and who writes weird things on his blog.” And what is it that defines me? Well, in a word, I’m a geek, so geek is what I did.Yes, I watched all of the “Lord of the 20 INSIDETRIATHLON
Rings” movies (and all of the behindthe-scenes features) back to back. And, yes, I did re-read a couple of my favorite quantum physics books. (Yes, I have favorite quantum physics books—that’s normal, right?!) But I also explored a bit further. I picked up a few philosophy books, and I began to understand myself and why I think the way I do. My reading even revealed that I’d been beaten to some of my burgeoning misgivings about triathlon by a good 2,500 years by some old fart called Plato, who mused: “Have you noticed how a lifelong devotion to physical exercise … produces a pretty uncivilized type … if you treat it properly it should make them brave, if you overstrain it turns them tough and uncouth.” Over the following couple of months, I drifted away from the idea of returning to proper training but found my brain just as clogged, now with the difficult yet inevitable decision that was standing before me. While I missed the almost meditative, blissful mental release of being purely in the moment of exercising, I realized I could no longer rely on this form of escapism to distract from the change that was necessary, and I was finally forced to face up to my own little personal truth. I realized what I needed to do. I realized that, for me, triathlon and everything that I was striving to achieve in the sport was just an obstacle that I was desperate to get out of the
Freeman, pictured here, used his time away from professional triathlon to fulfill a lifelong ambition to volunteer in Nepal.
way, or tick off, so that I could start the life I wanted to live. I needed to let triathlon go. So here I am, writing this article in a pitchblack classroom at a Monastic School in Nepal where I’m volunteering (lifelong ambition— Nepal that is, not the daily 16-hour power cuts). I have been accepted to Cambridge University’s computer science department, where, beginning in October, I hope to learn how I can fulfill my dream of becoming one of those digital effects techno-nerds who makes magic at movies. I have some hopeful applications in to my dream employers for summer internships already sealed and delivered. I’ve shifted from seeing every day as a necessary rung on the ladder to my goals, to not being able to believe how bloody short each day is, as 16 hours (a guy’s gotta sleep) is never long enough to eat my way through every morsel of what life is now presenting to me. So there you go. Maybe you could call this the spiritual awakening of a non-spiritualist, or maybe just the pretentious ramblings of a crazy person. I love triathlon, and think that it is an amazing sport full of amazing people—and my time as a pro was a privileged, priceless experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world. But it’s just not right for me anymore. Like all of you, I had to do what’s best for me, and hopefully now those who know me will understand why that means that I will no longer be pursuing the start line in London come the summer of 2012. IT
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CONGRATULATIONS TO CAMERON DYE o n h i s b i g w i n a t t h e N a u t i c a S o u t h B e a ch Tr i . L i ke a l l o u r a t h l e t e s , C a m w o r k s d i r e c t l y w i t h o u r P r o d u c t Te a m t o c r e a t e c u s t o m g e a r f o r r a c e d a y. T h i s s y m b i o t i c r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n H u m a n G u i n e a P i g a n d P r o d u c t Te a m a l l o w s u s t o i n c o r p o r a t e w h a t w o r k s i n t o e v e r y p i e c e o f g e a r w e m a k e . G e a r t h a t a l l o w s t h e h u m a n m a c h i n e t o m o v e a s f a s t a s h u m a n l y p o s s i b l e. P E A R L I Z U M I . C O M
Nils Nilsen
AT THE FRONT gear
insidetriathlon 23
Shimano’s Dura-Ace Di2 is the best tri component group available, bar none. That opinion isn’t exactly controversial—more than $1,000 separates it from the next priciest option—but the benefits of Di2 are undeniable. It shifts more precisely and rapidly than any mechanical kit, and
2. components
Many of the most aerodynamic triathlon bikes are built with a narrow front end. It only makes sense: Reduce the frontal surface area and wind resistance might decrease. But narrowing the downtube and head tube also reduces the bike’s side-to-side stiffness. Not only are many tri frames flexible, but the headset and aerobar spacers used by many riders to find their ideal fit add another layer of bendability to the bike. As a result, many tri bikes sitting in transition have very flexible front ends. The Felt Bayonet III fork connects the fork blades to the aerobar attachment system with a piece that extends in front of the frame.This extension is designed to reduce aerodynamic drag, and it also buttresses the head tube and greatly stiffens the DA’s front end. As a result, the bike calmly tracks through corners without wobbling or swaying under the stress created by leaning into a tight bend or accelerating out of the saddle.The DA has quick handling characteristics, but the bike is never overwhelmed by a turn.
1. Ride expeRience
The DA’s stack and reach values—its frame fit specifications—are moderately aggressive as compared to other tri bikes. This foundation allows for a fully rotated triathlon position but doesn’t require a position too demanding for most triathletes. The frame’s fit—stack and reach—is only one component of the DA’s complete bike fit. A bike with a traditional front end has headset spacers and stem options that can be swapped to accommodate a wide range of fits. The Bayonet III system replaces the headset spacers and stem with a single, rotatable extension to connect the bars to the frame. This unique attachment system reduces the bike’s range of fit adjustment when
3. Fit
it simply does not come out of adjustment. In addition to the transcendent shift quality, Di2 allows the rider to shift while in the aerobars or from the brake levers. This lets the rider select the ideal gear at all times, even when he or she is forced out of the aerobars. No more grinding up hills or sprinting out of a corner while over-geared. In addition to the otherworldly drivetrain, the DA is equipped with Felt’s outstanding Devox carbon aerobars with slight-upturn extensions that create a pleasant and reassuring amount of tension in the wrists. A Zipp 808 front and 1080 rear tubular wheelset finishes the package and makes the DA race-ready out of the box. Because the bike is equipped with race wheels, the rider will need to find another pair of training wheels for everyday riding. The brake calipers are the only weak spot. Both calipers are partially hidden by the frame, but they lack stopping power and the rear feels squishy due in part to the full housing leading from the lever to the brake.
Every triathlon bike worthy of a spot in transition is designed to optimize rider and machine aerodynamics—and with good reason. Other than improving fitness, minimizing aerodynamic drag on the bike is arguably the best way to go faster. This focus on aero resistance has made wind tunnel testing an indispensable tool when designing a new tri bike—whether or not the bike is priced in the five-figure stratosphere like the completely redesigned 2011 Felt DA. Although this move to quantifiable aerodynamic development has greatly improved tri bike quality across the board, the focus on wind drag has left every other attribute in the darkness. But a bike with a low drag coefficient doesn’t have to sacrifice ride quality and comfort. Felt has done its homework in the wind tunnel, and its engineers say the DA has the drag characteristics to match, but the 2011 DA’s most distinguished trait is the harmony it creates between rider and bike due to its geometry, front-end stiffness and stunning component kit. But enjoying all these characteristics comes at a steep price: $12,499.
By Aaron Hersh
a look at the 2011 Felt da
it
Every bike company wins its own wind tunnel test. I have never seen a piece of wind tunnel data published by a bike maker that shows a competitor’s bike to be superior to its own. Although it is of course impossible for multiple bikes to have the lowest drag coefficient, test conditions can be set to favor one bike over another. This ability to manipulate the results of a wind tunnel test makes it unwise to put too much stock in a manufacturer-funded wind tunnel test stating that it has the “world’s fastest bike.” A bike brand comparing two if its own products, however, carries more credibility. Instead of stacking the DA up against high-end tri bikes from other manufacturers, Felt compared the 2011 DA to its predecessor. The 2011 DA creates roughly 10 to 15 percent less aerodynamic drag than the 2010 version, depending on the yaw angle, according to the test published by Felt.
4. AeRodynAmic design
compared to a standard front end, but still offers substantial adjustability. With the shortest extension piece, the DA’s aerobar can be positioned like the bike is spec’d with a 96mm stem positioned between 1 and 38 degrees above zero. The aerobar attachment piece can be swapped for a longer version, but it cannot be shrunk. The Devox aerobars provide ample extension reach adjustability, but the pads themselves cannot be drawn back to the rider dramatically. The bars do offer the ability to fine-tune the elbow pad reach, and they can be raised substantially. The Bayonet III and Devox bars create a wide range of adjustability, but they struggle to accommodate a short reach distance from the rider to the aerobars or a low stack height to the top of the bars.
AT THE FRONT
conviction
did Macca Miss his olyMpics When he skipped athens? By Courtenay Brown
more appropriately here, Ironman’s) course that was Athens, which was won by New Zealand’s Hamish Carter, a strength athlete just like Macca. Such a course will not favor a breakaway. Furthermore, the cold waters of the Serpentine are likely to mandate wetsuits and keep the pack relatively unified into T1. At the outset this would favor Macca—he is not a superior swimmer in ITU terms—but it further decreases the likelihood of a breakaway on the bike leg. In light of this, it is reasonable to expect that federations will prefer to field three solid, fleetfooted medal candidates, which Macca is not, over two medal candidates and one powerhouse domestique. Not to say that Triathlon Australia would be taking a knife to the gun fight by naming Macca to the team, but they could very well be packing the wrong bullets. This harsh assessment is based on race strategy alone. Looking at pre-race strategy, however, Macca’s Olympic bid appears in an entirely different light. Regardless of its outcome, Macca’s Olympic bid has been fantastic for the sport. It has generated more interest in ITU racing at a time when the commercial focus is shifting toward long-course racing, especially in the U.S. I doubt this is a coincidence. Commercialism has its downside, and the World Triathlon Corporation’s (WTC) increasingly corporate approach to triathlon is winning it increasingly fewer friends.There didn’t seem to be much love lost between WTC and its new champion throughout the 2010 Ironman World Championship coverage (nor, incidentally, between Macca and Triathlon Australia in 2000, when he was unfairly left off the Sydney Olympic team). Macca’s announcement seemed an unspoken, yet tangible, “screw you” to WTC. How will Macca’s announcement affect WTC? On one hand, it won’t. Demand for WTC’s long-course events will not be im-
pacted. Kona’s siren song all but drowns out the chirps of its pros, whether they are world champions or not, and we are not going to see any decrease in entry figures due to Macca’s (probably temporary) departure. On the other hand, the defection of its reigning world champion to a different race series is a symbolic blow, in a category of blows that WTC simply cannot answer. Namely, the Olympics. Ironman does not have the Olympics, and no over-abundance of sold-out races in remote locales is going to change that, at least not any time soon.WTC started its own Olympicdistance race series this year, the 5i50 series, but it’s an Olympic-distance series with no tie to the Olympics.There isn’t a single WTCowned race, long-course or Olympic-distance, on Macca’s 2011 schedule as of now. So while Macca’s defection might not affect the WTC’s long-course entry figures, it likely won’t do anything to boost 5i50 entry figures, either. Was 39-year-old Greg Bennett’s own defection over the past year, from Australian to U.S. citizenship, a factor in 38-year-old Macca’s decision to pursue an Olympic berth? Perhaps yes. Bennett, a 2004 Olympian for Australia, is also shooting for London, and would have been a viable challenger to Macca for that third Australian spot. Instead, he’s now seeking an American spot, against a somewhat weaker talent pool and organizational unit, but amidst less certainty of a three-athlete team. Bennett could have the shorter straw here, but based on his proven abilities in the current ITU field, he’s the more likely of the two men to become a London Olympian. Whatever the outcome of Macca’s bid, I am certainly going to enjoy watching it play out. We all love a good race, and the addition of one more talented athlete to the fast and dynamic ITU pack will make the only circuit that leads you to the Olympics even more exciting.
Courtenay Brown is an elite triathlete and a public policy Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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it
Nick Salazar
In case you missed it, in February, reigning Ironman World Champion Chris “Macca” McCormack announced that he would forgo defending his Kona title in favor of pursuing a London Olympics berth in 2012. The announcement itself became quite the media darling, with an explosion of compelling peanut-gallery questions in forums, blogs and interviews. Many of the questions involving his ability to compete at the Olympic distance are compelling in their own right, but the issue as a whole begs a second look, and a deeper dig. First, is Macca fast enough? The short answer is a qualified “yes.” As long as he avoids injury as he attempts to recoup the speed he lost when he moved from short-course to long-course more than a decade ago, he has the potential to regain enough speed to at least be competitive in the short-course circuit today. Second, can he make the team? Again, the short answer is a qualified “yes,” thanks to Triathlon Australia’s almost entirely discretionary selection process (which lies in contrast to USA Triathlon’s hybrid qualification-plus-discretionary criteria, which I discussed in the Jan/Feb 2011 edition of this column). Third, can he accumulate enough points? At a minimum, his standing in the International Triathlon Union’s world rankings needs to be 120th for him to be eligible to compete in the Olympics. And right now,Triathlon Australia is giving him the chance to chase ITU points by offering him discretionary starting spots at several ITU races this year. But digging deeper into the Olympic race itself—and the practicality of Macca’s hypothetical berth—one must look at the London course, which is quite different from the Athens course that Macca has so openly regretted missing. London is flat and fast, suited for the sport’s super runners, rather than the hilly strongman’s (or,
1 1 on
With Matty Reed Nickname: Boom Boom Age: 35 Born: Palmerston g North, New Zealand Years Professional : 17 Style: Triathlon Team: Reed Favorite food: Thai and M ost memorable m steak the bike: Winning oment on my first US Professio nal Championships and winning the 20 08 Olympic Trials. Toughest race/com pe to get the taper right tition and why: Olympic Games… , the emotions on th e line and you are up against the best in the world on the day. I am a super fan of : Honest, down to ea rth people. Long climbs throug h the mountains an d no cars on the road My kids laughter. Br . eaking the tape at ra ces. What are your ‘goto’ Maxxis tires?
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For the full interv ie visit our website w with Matty Reed at: www. maxxis.com /Bicycle/1on1.aspx
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ACTION PHOT OS: CRUSE
GALLEry
A Look Back at the Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi is, above all else, a testament to humanity. Only mankind would be brash enough to seat itself on a barren desert island in the middle of the Persian Gulf and exclaim, “This will be our home. And we will make it livable.” Fifty years ago, there was nothing in Abu Dhabi except its sea of sand, defenseless against the desert sun. Perhaps there were a few ambling goats and camels, Bedouin tribe members dressed in traditional white robes and fishermen searching for pearls, but there was little else. Today, however, thanks in large part to the wealth that follows oil, Abu Dhabi is a center of business and tourism in the Middle East. The sounds of construction clang through the night, and hotel rooms can cost thousands of dollars per day. Walk the streets of Abu Dhabi, and skyscrapers built like undulating waves will unravel before you, and Lamborghini sightings will become commonplace. It was amid this strange desert oasis that the annual running of the Abu Dhabi International Triathlon unfolded for a second time, in March. On the surface, participants were there to race either the long-course (3K swim, 200K bike, 20K run), short-course (1.5K swim, 100K bike, 10K run) or sprint event (750m swim, 50K bike, 5K run). But on a more primal level, the participants were there to answer a simple question: Like the settlers who walked before them, could they endure a journey through Abu Dhabi’s dangerous and mysterious terrain with only their arms and legs to propel them? —Courtney Baird
International Triathlon
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Gallery
Racers rode on the Yas Marina Circuit (above), which is part of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The heavily hyped match-up between two-time Ironman world champions Craig Alexander (bottom, center) and Chris McCormack never came to fruition, as McCormack was one of 16 elite men to drop out of the race (out of 37 that started). McCormack later Tweeted that he had lost a cleat, but most of the athletes simply succumbed to the severe wind and heat of the Arabian desert, including Sweden’s Bjorn Andersson (bottom, right), who led a large portion of the bike leg. He was spotted resting under a shaded tree while the elite men filed into T2. Alexander finished in sixth and was limping after he crossed the line.
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Chris “Macca” McCormack 2-Time Ironman World Champion
Gallery
Frederik Van Lierde of Belgium (top) was the surprise winner for the day, later saying it was “the best win of my career without question.” Julie Dibens of Great Britain (bottom, left) was the women’s victor for the second year in a row. She took a beating in the heat, however, and had trouble keeping down liquids during the race. Van Lierde, Marino Vanhoenacker of Belgium and Dirk Bockel of Luxembourg (bottom, right) and Raynard Tissink (bottom, center) all finished within 33 seconds of each other, with Vanhoenacker finishing second, Bockel finishing third and Tissink crossing the line in fourth. photographs by: page 26: Wouter Kingma; page 27 (top to bottom): aaron hersh, Wouter Kingma, Wouter Kingma, paul phillips; page 28 (top photo): Wouter Kingma; (bottom, left to right): Wouter Kingma, aaron hersh, aaron hersh; page 30 (top photo): Wouter Kingma; (bottom, left to right): paul phillips, aaron hersh, paul phillips
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w i l l t. o . b e t h e n e x t A m e r i c A n t o w i n
KONA?
As TimoThy o’Donnell tAckles the iron distAnce, he steps into the role As An AmericAn with A legitimAte shot At ending the u.s. drought. By TimoThy Carlson PhoTograPhs By nils nilsen
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here are countless reasons for Timothy “T.O.” O’Donnell to doubt that he could be the top American, much less a factor, in the men’s race at the 2011 Ironman World Championship this October if and when he qualifies. Odds are he will not be a contender for the win—this year. First, he must qualify by placing high in his debut Ironman this May in The Woodlands, Texas, against a tough field, and then he must score points with wins on the 70.3 circuit. Then there is history. Certified all-time greats with world championship titles such as Mark Allen, Greg Welch and Chris McCormack endured six or seven years of frustration before finally breaking through at Kona. Other multiple world champions such as Simon Lessing and Spencer Smith crashed and burned on the lava fields. And Mark Allen’s American inheritor, Tim DeBoom, spent six years working his way up before he became a true Kona contender, taking third in 1999 and second in 2000 34 insidetriathlon
before his wins in 2001 and 2002. And then there are the current, proven Americans with better résumés and more experience than O’Donnell: Chris Lieto took second at Kona in 2009 after years of struggle and has the best bike in the Ironman game. Andy Potts has an Ironman 70.3 World title, two Ironman wins, victories at ITU World Cups and a bushel of wins at the 70.3 distance—and a seventh and ninth at Kona. But betting against the tenacious O’Donnell, U.S. Naval Academy graduate, has never been a smart long-term play. And it is never too early to dream—to hold the glimmer of belief that drives all triathletes who have set Kona as an ultimate goal. O’Donnell holds this belief in himself, one that is bolstered by a well-executed training program devised by a coach with valuable experience at the iron distance. Indeed, when Cliff English took full charge of O’Donnell’s training and racing in 2009, he helped transform the frustrated top-tier swim-biker into one of the swiftest runners in the 70.3 game.
are yo u na tura l?
timo thy o’don nell ironm an 70. 3 cham pion
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d u rb a l ra je s h a th le te onman ir e te pu m a le tr ip
a ll- n a tu ra l prote in s h a ke pre-wor kout fuel • post-wor kout recover y
So with Kona in mind, O’Donnell found himself in the middle of a nine-week base training phase in February in Tucson, Ariz., that featured greater-than-ever volume, intensity and distance. On one particular Thursday, O’Donnell and superb triathlon cyclist TJ Tollakson whipped through a 25-mile Mount Lemmon time trial, climbing 5,500 feet from the desert floor up through alpine climate zones to Summerhaven. Dancing on the pedals, not breathing heavily,
O’Donnell and Tollakson made it look easy in one hour and 42 minutes. The next day, after a 90-minute workout at the University of Arizona pool, O’Donnell ran 7 miles at an effortless 6:30 pace then warmed down with a light session on the wind trainer to prep for a long weekend that would include a solo 102-mile bike ride up Madera Canyon and back with 2,500 feet of climbing and three hours of heavy headand cross-winds followed by a moderate cool-down run. On Sunday, O’Donnell topped things off with a longest-ever 23-mile run in 2 hours and 30 minutes—a 2:50 marathon pace. While the sheer numbers of the workouts through the arid desert were encouraging but not earth-shattering, it was O’Donnell’s metronomic form, his soft impact, his rapid footfall, the stillness of his 36 insidetriathlon
upper body, his quick recovery and the calmness of his demeanor that made an impression on me. When English quietly explained that all of O’Donnell’s training benchmarks had improved markedly in the past few months, I asked what he thought his athlete might do at the iron distance, and what might happen if Kona is on the table this year. People didn’t give too much credence to English when he said his athlete and former wife, Samantha McGlone, had trained to run three hours flat in her 2007 Kona debut. But she ran almost exactly that while finishing second to Britain’s Chrissie Wellington, who was the surprise winner that year and who thereafter came to dominate the women’s Ironman game. English therefore has established credibility for his evaluations, never giving in to hyperbole or inflated claims about his charges. This is why he got my attention when he said, “If everything is going right, Tim can swim with the lead pack, and he can ride with the serious chase group in Kona. And when it comes to the run, he can run whatever is required to stay with the best runners. Depending on the day and the weather, that means anything O’Donnell recently finished a training camp in Tucson, from 2:48 to 2:42.” Ariz., where, among other If English’s evaluathings, he climbed Mount tion of O’Donnell is Lemmon, ran 23 miles at a 2:50 marathon pace and as spot-on for him as used a Ryobi car buffer to it was for McGlone, massage his muscles. it means O’Donnell may be on his way to stepping in to the role of the American heir apparent—the one who has the best shot at winning a title in Kona, however long that takes.
When you ask English why he works with O’Donnell—a man who started his triathlon career in short course as part of his dream to represent his country in the Olympics—he doesn’t talk about watts on the bike or body fat percentage or any other popular quantification that passes for critical judgment of triathlon talent. And he doesn’t talk about O’Donnell’s 2009 ITU Long Course World title, his six Ironman 70.3 wins, his six U.S. Military Triathlon championships, or his multiple long course world championship medals. When he talks about why he coaches O’Donnell, English says the 30-year-old possesses that certain critical quality of a champion. “It’s a fire,” said English, who observed that quality up close when he coached McGlone. “It’s the quality of staying hungry and the habit of always giving your all. It’s easy to go hard when you are in the hunt. But even if you are running 30th or 40th or 50th, you have to run like you are winning the damn race.”
“If everything is going right, Tim can swim with the lead pack, and he can ride with the serious chase group in Kona. And when it comes to the run, he can run whatever is required to stay with the best runners. Depending on the day and the weather, that means anything from 2:48 to 2:42.”—Cliff English Back in 2009, O’Donnell roared back from a discouraging 11th off the bike to third at the line with a race-best run of 1:15:45 at the New Orleans 70.3—one of the first demonstrations of his first-rate running ability. But during the very next race, St. Anthony’s Triathlon in St. Petersburg, Fla., O’Donnell got a penalty on the bike he felt was unfair and lost heart. “I got off the bike in 11th [again],” he recalled, “But when I started the To amp up O’Donnell’s run without breaking him down, coach Cliff English cut O’Donnell’s swim and bike workouts in half and built his running up to 98 miles per week.
run, I was running with some people on my shoulder I didn’t feel should be there. And boom! I just let them go.” After the race when English asked, “What the hell was that?’” O’Donnell replied, “Yeah, I gave up.” “He knew he had wussed out and pouted,” recalled English. “I didn’t raise my voice.We didn’t have bad words. But to be able to do the type of training to win at this level, he needs to be honest with himself and with me. And it turned out OK, because he admitted it, and he remembered it in his next race.” The St. Anthony’s performance was a rare exception that proved the rule, as O’Donnell is a guy whose entire life is defined by his plunging ahead in the face of all discouragement and embarrassment. O’Donnell says he was “by far” the slowest swimmer in his family, the child who could not make the B standard on his club swim team while his brothers and sister were champions. He was also the fellow who could only manage a 47-minute 10K in his first try for the Naval Academy Triathlon team, the fledgling pro who once got lapped in the run at the Chicago Triathlon, and the guy whose elite international prospects were initially discounted by most experts because they did not believe the swimmer-turned-triathlete could ever run a 31-minute 10K off the bike. Yet O’Donnell was never discouraged by his initially lackluster results. By the time he graduated from Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory 38 insidetriathlon
School, he had set multiple school records and achieved Pennsylvania all-state honors in swimming—and his times were good enough to earn a place on the NCAA Division I Naval Academy swim team. O’Donnell’s quest to become a world-class triathlete—and specifically to master the run—involved a little more struggle, however. Not long after he graduated from the Naval Academy in 2003, he won the USAT Under-23 U.S. National Championship in Kennebunk, Maine. The success was encouraging but the run split wasn’t: 35:03. His split at the 2003 ITU Under-23 World Championships in New Zealand was even slower—43:02—with rigorous study at the University of California, Berkeley’s ocean engineering program partly contributing to his subpar performance. As he continued his short-course career, the run splits continued to roller-coaster. By 2008, his 33:55 run split at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Tuscaloosa, Ala.—2 minutes and 48 seconds slower than the top mark, set by Matt Reed—meant he would cross the line in sixth and fail to earn a spot on the Beijing Olympic team. During this period, he says he was learning how to run efficiently, how to race and how to endure the pain of redlining effort. But due to circumstances involving the Navy and USA Triathlon, he never had enough time to spend five or six months carefully building the aerobic base that is required for a true breakthrough in running. Instead, he was left without the aerobic speed required to mix it up with the true studs of triathlon. After his failed Olympic bid in 2008, O’Donnell found himself free to spend uninterrupted time with English, focusing on his run. To amp up his run without breaking O’Donnell down, English cut O’Donnell’s swim and bike workloads in half and built his running mileage up to 98 miles per week at the top end of his training cycle. O’Donnell emerged from six months of this type of training, in the spring of 2009, with a new identity—that of a dangerous runner. While his greatest success came at the half-iron distance, he also proved he had the sheer run speed that could translate to a 2012 London Olympic slot. By the end of 2009, he would place second at the USA Triathlon Elite National Championship with a run split of 29:54 on a slightly short 10K course. And at the 2010 USAT Elite National Championships, O’Donnell found himself with a run split on a slightly long 10K course that was only 14 seconds slower than that of Jarrod Shoemaker, one of the ITU’s most deadly runners. O’Donnell’s run splits,
“They gave me five more days to pass the [physical fitness] test, and I failed again. I went before a Navy board and they dismissed me from the class. For a guy who hates to fail at anything, this was huge. Shattering. My head was spinning.”—Timothy O’Donnell Despite the increased pressure during his second go at diving school, O’Donnell made it through his sharking test, and he eventually graduated at the top of his class. “I ended up winning the Honor Man Award for the top graduate in the class,” O’Donnell said.
One week after his discouraging performance at St. Anthony’s in 2009, when he quit on himself after receiving what he felt was an unfair penalty, O’Donnell raced Ironman 70.3 St. Croix. It was a turning point in his career. At the 32-mile mark, he almost crashed when he followed Stuart Hayes of Great Britain off the road and into the grass. Then he spent 20 miles expending energy catching up to the leaders. With 5 miles to go, Kiwi Bryan Rhodes and Dirk Bockel of Luxembourg made a break—and O’Donnell, whose early triathlon identity was as a top-rate swimmer and biker without a first-rate run, could have pushed the panic button. “I didn’t bite,” said the new O’Donnell. “It was the first strategic race I ever had where I said to myself, ‘I’m going to stay here and set myself a running race. I know I can run.’” O’Donnell started about 80 seconds down from Igor Amorelli of Brazil, Rhodes and Bockel. “I started the run with Richie Cunningham, who is a fantastic runner when he is on, and [he] was the guy I was really worried about,” said O’Donnell. “We were running time into the leaders and on the first steep hill on the golf course, Richie popped me. That was the moment I needed mental toughness to stick to my plan. So I held the margin to 20 meters and at the end of the first lap [of two] I started to pull back on him and I thought, ‘All right! I’m not out of this.’” By the time he was done, O’Donnell passed everyone ahead of him with a race-best 1:17:05 run split. It was the first time in his career that he had relied on his run to win. To add icing to the cake, he won St. Croix by breaking the course record set by two-time Ironman world champion Craig Alexander. “[At the finish] I let out a scream like a battle cry,” said the normally soft-spoken O’Donnell. “My eyes were on fire, and I let out this roar and thought, ‘Maybe that was a little too much.’ But it was so emotional for me, the culmination of everything I had put into the sport over the years, a realization that what I’d been doing was working and I was on the right course.”
During O’Donnell’s early training with the Navy, he endured the “sharking test,” which includes being hit in the gut while under water and having your breathing tube tied in knots.
whatever their measurements, were fast enough to earn him the U.S. elite men’s runner-up spot for two years in a row.
While O’Donnell has shown himself to be an athlete who refuses to give up, perhaps the best example of his iron will came in November of 2005— two years after his Annapolis graduation and after finishing his graduate work in ocean engineering at Berkeley—when O’Donnell was assigned to Navy diving school in San Diego as part of his required training for a special operations forces assignment in Explosive Ordnance Disposal. “I was this kid straight from grad school who had never done any hard-core Navy training, and they were ready for me,” he recalled. The master chief was a hard-driving former professional football player, and O’Donnell’s first task was to pass a simple physical test by doing seven pull-ups. The skinny Annapolis grad, one of just two officers in the class, did what he thought were seven pull-ups. “You failed!” the master chief roared. He had only cleared the bar in proper form two times. “They gave me five more days to pass the PT test, and I failed again,” O’Donnell said. “I went before a Navy board and they dismissed me from the class. For a guy who hates to fail at anything, this was huge. Shattering. My head was spinning.” His commander in San Diego assigned O’Donnell to an officer known as Big D, who would help him regain all those upper-body swimming muscles he’d lost when he became a triathlete. In February, he went back and banged out three times as many properly executed pull-ups as required. But the master chief and his cohorts kept up the pressure. Near the end of his training, O’Donnell faced a test called sharking that prepares Navy divers for combat in open water. The candidates dive to the bottom of a pool and instructors swim down and hit them, pull off their masks and regulators, tie their air hoses in knots and move their oxygen tanks to the other side of the pool. For good measure, the instructors mete out a few shots in the gut. Recovering from these attacks and straightening out air hoses and regaining the oxygen supply might take anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds. While this was bad enough, O’Donnell said he later learned that his instructors wanted to make his test tougher than everyone else’s. A fellow diving school candidate told him that one of his instructors had yelled: “Keep O’Donnell down there. Let everybody have a hit on him.” 40 insidetriathlon
Despite O’Donnell’s newfound success at the 70.3 distance, old dreams die hard, and he couldn’t extinguish his desire to take a second go at qualifying for the Olympics, especially after taking second at the USA Triathlon elite short-course nationals in Tuscaloosa in 2010. “I felt I had some unfinished business,” O’Donnell said. “I felt that if I had been chasing an Olympic slot with the run I had developed in 2009, the results might have been different.”
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Indeed, the Olympics had been a lifelong dream. “As a kid growing up swimming, the Olympics is the end-all be-all for that sport,” O’Donnell recalled. “Our whole family grew up watching Matt Biondi and Summer Sanders represent the U.S. in the sport we loved. When I got into triathlon, it was a natural desire for me to think of the Olympics. I wasn’t on a level of swimming that could make the Olympics, so triathlon was a way I could be a part of the bigger dream. And being a military guy and a person who devoted his life to serve his country, the opportunity to represent the United States on the biggest athletic stage in the world was something I had a hunger to do.” But there was someone in O’Donnell’s life who would help him change his perspective, even if she didn’t intend to: Australian triathlete Mirinda Carfrae. At a dinner the night before St. Croix in 2009, O’Donnell stuffed a few brownies down his hatch, which drew stares from some of the athletes—including defending women’s champion Carfrae. The night after O’Donnell won in St. Croix and Carfrae finished an off-form second, O’Donnell got a laugh from Carfrae when he said, “If you had eaten one of those brownies, it might have helped that last mile and a half.” Six weeks later, the two triathletes went on their first date together. “We shut the [restaurant] down,” O’Donnell said. “We were eating and talking outside and time just seemed to disappear. All of a sudden we looked around and all the chairs were stacked up on top of other tables. I think there was a connection there.” And while O’Donnell followed Carfrae to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, in 2009 to watch her debut at the Ironman World Championship, where she would finish second to Wellington with a record-breaking marathon split, it wasn’t until Carfrae’s second attempt at Kona, in 2010, that the allure and magic of the Big Island actually set in for O’Donnell. For one thing, last year O’Donnell found himself in the fortuitous position of having front-row seats to all the action. “I was lucky enough to be in a control car observing the entire bike course and the men going up to Hawi,” he said. “It taught me to be patient. And to know the players and when to react to certain moves and know which moves not to react to.” But the biggest impact came simply from watching his girlfriend—a woman whose relationship with him had only strengthened during the
in the States. At the end of the day, it is also about career development and reputation. I feel I am really starting to develop that in long course. I am building a brand that will carry on after my racing career is over in eight years, and I can be a part of the sport after my racing career.”
While English ultimately coaches O’Donnell because of his will, desire and mental fortitude, English has stressed that O’Donnell needs to develop his mental toughness on a different level if he wants to succeed in the sport’s most competitive long-course race. “The type of athletes who do well at Kona are very mentally tough, very stoic, very psychologically self-sufficient,” said English. “I remember Peter Reid was incredibly happy going out to train for eight or nine hours by himself. He was not afraid to be alone.” That’s why O’Donnell made it a point during his winter training camp in Tucson to go out alone on his longest-ever 23-mile run the day after a fast, draining and solo 102-mile bike with 2,500 feet of climbing. “It is important to do without external stimuli, to go out there and go through those ups and downs you will face when you are alone on the lava fields getting depressed and stressed,” English said. “You need to train yourself to work it out on your own.” While he concedes that anything can happen during an Ironman, he doesn’t put any limits on O’Donnell’s potential at the iron distance. “All champions fight through in that same realm,” English said. “When you get off the bike, you have to begin the new leg and put all that behind. Tim has what I believe is a physical and psychological arsenal and skill set to run whatever he needs on the day. I truly believe that.” O’Donnell understands that the Kona gods are fickle, and any number of issues could disrupt his admittedly long-shot bid at the title this year. Case in point: his first three races of 2011. After a dominating win at Ironman 70.3 San Juan, he suffered some gastrointestinal woes that led to some vomiting during the last half of the run at Ironman 70.3 Texas. The very next week, O’Donnell was taking antibiotics to stem a fever but opted to tee it up at the New Orleans 70.3 anyway. He slogged through the run and ran 10 minutes slower than he should have. At press time, O’Donnell has had five weeks to rest and recover, and he
“I let out a scream like a battle cry. My eyes were on fire, and I let out this roar and thought, ‘Maybe that was a little too much.’ But it was so emotional for me, the culmination of everything I had put into the sport over the years, a realization that what I’d been doing was working and I was on the right course.”—O’Donnell
year they had been together—accomplish a goal she had sought for years. “Watching her face when she crossed the line [in first], I could feel the emotions she was expressing,” he said. The feeling was powerful. “I felt the energy and the history in Kona and I came away really wanting to experience that for myself,” he said. “There is something in the air that is raw excitement and positive energy.” After his stay on the Big Island, it didn’t take him long to decide that he was made for the iron distance. “I wasn’t a superstar ITU racer, but I was on the national team, and at the end of ’08, people were asking me if this was my first year as a professional,” he said. “That shows you just how much off the radar ITU racing is 42 insidetriathlon
should do well at Ironman Texas. But if not, English says O’Donnell will focus on the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Las Vegas and put off Kona for another year.That way, he won’t wear himself out chasing Ironman points. But O’Donnell has faith in his preparation—and his ability to bounce back however things play out. And he is willing to keep trying, however many years it takes. “I think my skill set in terms of dedication and focus and not giving up in the face of obstacles was a process that took a long time to get to where I am,” O’Donnell said. “Those intrinsic qualities are the ones that make you succeed at the longer distance.” it
Carlson has been writing about triathlon for almost two decades.
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A Portrait of Simon Whitfield Two-time Olympic medalist Simon Whitfield and his peers talk about his career, what to expect from him come London 2012, and what you can learn from the two-plus decades he’s been in the sport. By Courtney Baird Photographs by John Segesta
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imon Whitfield, 36, is triathlon’s greatest Olympian. He became the sport’s first male gold medalist in Sydney when, despite crashing on the bike, he worked his way back up to the leaders and then outran everyone in the field, outsprinting Germany’s Stefan Vuckovic in the final meters of the race. The victory stunned the pundits, with no one expecting the unknown Canadian to even be a factor. But being the sport’s first Olympic gold medalist isn’t what makes Whitfield an icon. He earned his iconic status when he collected his second Olympic medal, a silver, in Beijing. In the eight years between Sydney and Beijing, Whitfield reinvented himself as an all-around triathlete, largely because he knew the game was changing and he could no longer fake his way through the swim and bike. In one of the highlights of his career, he led his peers out of the water at the ITU World Championships in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2008. “I would absolutely decimate the kid I was when I was 24,” Whitfield said
46 insidetriathlon
recently, while preparing for his fourth Olympics with the Canadian national team at a training camp in Maui. Triathlon has been a part of Whitfield’s identity for longer than it hasn’t, with him having started the sport when he was only 11. But watch Whitfield in action, and it becomes obvious that he realizes how lucky he is to do what he does for a living—after an open-water session in Maui, he and his teammates splashed through the waves like kids, videotaping themselves as they bodysurfed. And Whitfield made it a point to spice things up for Inside Triathlon’s photographer, stopping mid-run for an unplanned portrait and throwing a coconut for the cameras. Below, Whitfield and the people he credits with helping him along the way—his coaches, teammates, friends, mentors and wife—reminisce about the 11 years since Sydney, what it took training-wise to get him to the top and what the name “Whitfield” will mean to the sport once he finally decides to hang up his racing shoes.
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the BeGinninG On Whitfield’s early years in Australia, where he attended a high school boarding school.
a part of history with Simon. After the ceremony he came over to me with the gold medal and put it around my neck and said, “This is yours!” That was pretty cool. Whitfield: I have a scroll at home that says “Olympic champion” on it.
Whitfield: I met Greg Bennett at a race in Australia, and I’ve looked up to
him ever since. … I was very, very lucky to have Benno. And frankly I had Crowie and Macca, too. They were a couple of years older than I was, and I spent time around them when I was in a club [team] at age 21.
… I raced clean my whole career, and I have a medal at home that’s a gold medal, and that’s the biggest joy of sport.
the BeiJinG olYMPiCs I first met On the controversy surrounding Canada’s decision to name Colin Jenkins to Simon back in 1993 at an event just north of Sydney. He had taken the the Canadian Olympic team for Beijing to serve as a domestique for Whitfield. train, I think, to this event and needed a lift home. I thought it was unusual that a 16- or 17-year-old kid was in Sydney on his own. I Whitfield: When I started in Sydney we had zero budget for high pertook him under my wing, I guess, for a few years as he finished formance, and we got zero funding, and now we have $1.3 million, high school. He was mad about triathlon. His energy and it’s based on medals. That’s just the way it is. So if siMon for the sport was great to be around, although it we could do it again with domestiques, we would do it SayS: was sometimes exhausting. His running ability as a again, unapologetically. In Beijing, you know, our favorite teenager was something I had never witnessed before, expression was that people love to—they’d wave the anbut he couldn’t swim to save his life. He was lucky to archy flag with the left hand and they’d cash checks with break 1:30 for 100 meters. I still think the highlight Jordan Rapp cried his eyes the right hand. They would say, “No! Stick it to the man!” out when I won a silver, of his career to this day is when he won the swim And then they would just be like, “Thank you! Money, and everybody on our prime at the Kitzbühel World Cup a few years ago— money, money.” whole squad did. We all talk about hard work and perseverance! earned it together. I saw Colin Jenkins: Going into the Olympics I was the fifththem all later and I was Craig “Crowie” Alexander (a two-time Ironman world ranked Canadian and there were obviously only three like, “This is our medal. I champion): Simon and I met around 1994. We had spots. There was a bit of a controversy. But we knew that didn’t win this medal—we both just started in the sport. He was a very accomwe had a game plan, and we laid it out on the table. It won this medal. It’s the plished schoolboy runner and I remember the first caused controversy. Some people were really against it. squad.” I believed it. time we met, he told me his goal at the time was to It especially got a lot of negative press. It really put a lot run a sub-4-minute mile on the track. We trained of pressure on Simon. It also put pressure on the team, together for a couple of seasons and traveled to races if I didn’t do well or if it didn’t work out. Just imagine together. He was an awesome training partner. if Simon [had been] a little off on his run [that day]. And there were people who were so negative, who were blatantly writing in Bennett: Those years as a high schooler at boarding school in Sydney, he the newspaper all these stupid quotes about him having a big head and was alone. I had a car and Simon didn’t, so naturally I would pick him “Colin doesn’t deserve to go to the Olympics” and “Simon’s running up for swim squad at 4:45 three to four mornings a week. He was never Triathlon Canada.” on time, and I would sit on the horn until I woke up most of the street. Finally his head would pop out of the round window from his loft bedOn the special group dynamic of the squad that Whitfield trained with in Victoria room. “Sorry!” he would say. He’d then sleep in the car until swimming. leading up to Beijing. The squad included Whitfield, Jenkins, fellow Canadian Greg “Benno” Bennett (An Olympian for Australia in 2004 and Whitfield’s de-facto brother while he lived in the country):
athletes Dan Wells and Kyle Jones, and American Ironman athlete Jordan Rapp.
the sYdneY olYMPiCs On winning gold
Bennett (who trained with Whitfield in Victoria, British Columbia, in the lead-up to Sydney): I went to Sydney as a reserve for the Australian
Olympic team. We were both incredibly fit and fast. I was confident Simon would mix it up. When they hit the 5K mark on the run I had a tear in my eye already. I truly believed he would do it. With 800 meters to go there was no one in the world who could match his speed to the finish. Although I didn’t get to race, it was incredibly rewarding being 48 insidetriathlon
Whitfield: I had a ton of pressure in Beijing. That was like nothing I’ve ever
experienced. … We had that great squad. I felt real pressure, in a positive way, from our squad because we had a really special group of people. Jenkins: We all worked so well together. It was a group of us out there. If he didn’t win a medal or he didn’t do well, we never felt like he would be letting us down. But we were all working together for that one goal of him trying to get a medal. Joel Filliol (Whitfield’s coach from 2004, after the Athens Olympics, until 2008, through Beijing): There’s
often talk about the team tac-
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tics of things. I don’t think that was enough. How we raced on the day may or may not have impacted the race. How much did it help to win? I couldn’t say. But I can say that all of that time training together, and the work done together—sharing that common goal— was essential to supporting Simon. Beijing was a pretty special performance. There were a number of challenges he overcame. He had his first daughter the year before, which impacted the training he was able to do. And it wasn’t an easy day, either. ... It wasn’t the kind of day where it looked like it was easy. There were a number of times when he dropped back [from the leaders] and he pulled himself back on.
Jenkins (who finished in dead last after serving as Whitfield’s domestique): I was going into the last lap and Simon was finishing, and there was a team mechanic on the corner. I asked, “What place did he come in?” And he held up No. 2. That whole last lap, I was so ecstatic. What we were training for for so long, that one goal of him getting a medal, it was so—it just made everything worthwhile.
FaMilY On adapting his training to a life of marriage and children (Whitfield has two daughters, Pippa, the oldest, and Evelyn).
Jordan Rapp: It was the perfect storm of Simon being at his peak and his
best and really mentoring a lot of us, and in exchange for the mentorship that he and Joel offered was we were there as support staff for his goal, and his mentorship provided support for our goals. It came down to finding a group of individuals, of finding goals to focus on, that overlapped enough for a good training environment but didn’t overlap too much that Simon felt he had to race for a gold medal every single day.
Whitfield: Jennie and I are lucky. I mean, we can work out together.
Whitfield: Jordan Rapp cried his eyes out when I won a silver, and ev-
We go on runs with the jogging stroller. I’m the fastest jogging stroller guy in the world. I crush it. I have a chariot jogger—I have a double, a single and a sidecar. I fucking rule the jogging chariot. I’m the fastest charioteer ever. … I go to King George’s Terrace in Vic [Victoria], with a single [jogging stroller] with Evelyn in there. Before the Beijing Olympics I did a ton of hill reps with my buddy Adam. He comes with me. And we run [the stroller] up, and it’s the best workout. It is awful, and I think there’s no way [2009 ITU world champion Alistair] Brownlee is doing this because nobody would lend that guy their kid.
erybody on our whole squad did. We all earned it together. I saw them all later and I was like, “This is our medal. I didn’t win this medal—we won this medal. It’s the squad.” I believed it.
Jennie Sprigings (Whitfield’s wife): When we were new parents that year leading up [to Beijing], he did a lot of runs with Pippa in the
On Whitfield’s silver medal being the squad’s medal
50 insidetriathlon
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jogging stroller. He’d go with friends to a hill workout, pushing a jogging stroller up the hill. It was a nice way for me to get a break, for Pippa to get a nap and for Simon to get a workout.
On perception
Whitfield: I understood outcome and process pretty early on. Like when I
was a kid I understood it. My parents reinforced it without me even really knowing it. I was never asked if I won. I was always asked, did I give a great effort? And that really paid off because it taught me that everything was about the process and about the preparation I put in.
attitUde On “The Relentless Pursuit Of …”
On Whitfield’s reputation as the absent-minded triathlete
Kyle Jones (a fellow Canadian national team member who has trained with Whitfield since 2004): Simon changed the name of his blog recently to “The Relentless Pursuit Of.” I think that summarizes him as an athlete and how he approaches the sport and always has approached the sport. There’s that saying “no stone unturned.” He embodies that. I’ve seen him with the coaches and our highperformance directors over the years. He’s always asking, “What can we do better?” I’ve seen him kind of struggle when he’s forced to interact with people who don’t have the same commitment—with people who don’t have that same commitment to excellence. That relentless attitude, I think sometimes it overwhelms people. He’ll do anything to win, and he’s always searching for more ways. And it wears on some people. But he’s found a way to surround himself with people who share that same commitment. People who don’t, over time, disappear.
Jones: Simon is a bit of a scatterbrain. He’s the guy—
simon SayS:
[Bevan Docherty] is in the same situation I am. He doesn’t want to be done yet, and people are telling him his time is up and he’s got his two medals and it’s time to go home. And Bevan wants to punch them in the mouth—and same with me.
Rapp: I got to see him every single day, and for me the takeaway was he never bagged a session. He never sort of phoned it in. It’s not to say he didn’t have bad workouts. Everyone has bad workouts, and there were the demands of life, of having a kid, and that’s when people would have fights— everyone was tired. If you looked at, over a year, or years, the commitment that he demonstrated, it’s not all that surprising that he won another medal.
I shouldn’t say this, being as I’ve lost my passport recently—but he’ll put his passport through the wash three times. I don’t know if he can get another passport now. He’s under high security from the Canadian government. I’m the younger one by 10 years, but I guess I have better organizational skills. I kind of keep us on track while we’re traveling so we don’t miss any flights. Simon’s got an ADD personality of always moving on to the next thing. I try to keep him focused and on track. Sprigings: It’s interesting because someone might
laugh and say, “He’s so disorganized.” It’s interesting because he’s not. [There are] things that don’t directly apply to his goal, that don’t require his immediate attention, so he might forget his keys or wallet. But not once have I ever seen him forget a detail of a training session or a piece of equipment. He’s never late. He’s so on it.
the london 2012 olYmPiCs On Whitfield’s mental preparation for the Games
Whitfield: That’s what I admire in [Chris “Macca”] McCormack. McCor-
mack just doesn’t give a fuck what people think about him. He’s about “the pursuit of.” And it’s not a popularity contest to him. He just is like, “This is how I feel. This is who I am. If you don’t like it, move aside.” And for me it’s sort of the same thing. 52 insidetriathlon
Whitfield: I’ve probably thought about Brownlee or [reigning ITU
world champion Javier] Gomez or [reigning Olympic champion Jan] Frodeno every day I’ve been here [in Maui] in some form or another. Whether it’s been on a climb, or sitting before my run,
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or at the pool when we’re lining up for the next 50, I think about Brownlee, Gomez and Frodeno. I think about them every day in every workout—in everything. On not wanting to be written off
Whitfield: [Olympic silver and bronze medalist] Bevan [Docherty] and I are
in very similar situations, where people want to write us off and we don’t want to write ourselves off yet.We’ll see who’s right. I don’t know. He’s in the same situation I am. He doesn’t want to be done yet, and people are telling him his time is up and he’s got his two medals and it’s time to go home. And Bevan wants to punch them in the mouth—and same with me. I want to punch them in the mouth. But maybe they’ll get the last laugh. Bevan Docherty (who, along with only Whitfield, has two Olympic triathlon medals, which he achieved with silver in Athens and bronze in Beijing):
Both Simon and I are veterans, and we both like to believe our past results have proven ourselves. And when someone tries to tell us different and doesn’t have results to back it up, it frustrates us. … Going into the last Olympic campaign, a lot of people had written us off, but we’ve shown that age isn’t a factor. We’re still driven and achieving our results. Courtney Atkinson (a fellow ITU athlete, from Australia, and a good friend to Whitfield): Simon has this uncanny ability to go away in the off-
season, work on his weaknesses, build on his strengths and come back another year older and another year better. Filliol: Simon is an incredible athlete. He’s intelligent and able to make great decisions and race well. I wouldn’t count him out at all for London. … I don’t think you can discount an athlete like Simon and the abilities he has. Although I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I think he’d be better off if I were still there. If he’s anywhere near [the leaders at] the finish, he’s a dangerous guy. 54 insidetriathlon
traininG On intensity in training
Whitfield: I’m training very differently this year than I ever have
trained. … It’s less intensity and more general mileage. I always used to train at an incredibly high level of intensity with not a lot of volume. It was intensity, intensity, intensity. Every single day. Except for Mondays, basically. I didn’t do a lot of long rides. I didn’t do a lot of long runs. It was just intensity, intensity, intensity. Last year I was doing, at one point, five hard runs a week. Some of them were just 10 minutes off the bike, and others were, you know, 6 x 1 mile, or 7 x 1 mile, whatever it was. But I’m not doing that anymore. We’re just doing long—we’re doing a lot of like zone 3, zone 2 training. We’ll see. It’s working so far. On Whitfield’s distrust of exercise physiologists
Whitfield: It seems to me they’re so trapped in the acquisition of
grants, and there’s so much more to it. If you had the sole attention of an exercise physiologist who worked with the coaches closely, who built a trusting relationship with them and used practical application of whatever tools they had, that would be one thing. But that’s not the way it is. The exercise physiologists always have the fancy equipment and they always have great ideas—theoretical ideas—and they’re always telling the coaches how it is. They’re educating them and yet they get to a race and they’re saying, “Oh, I didn’t realize that happened. Oh, I didn’t know you had to do that. Oh, I didn’t realize that this happened.” And so it’s a huge learning process for them. But I can’t afford for the exercise physiologist to be guinea pigging me. I can’t be his experiment, you know, where he finds out, “Oh, those first five things I tried with you are wrong. Sorry about those three years.” I don’t have three years anymore.
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we climbed that climb or how fast we did that rep. We weren’t allowed to wear watches on certain reps because we weren’t going to search for confidence. We were just going to run.
On altitude training
Whitfield: I’ve done altitude before. We did it before Beijing, but we
did it in the winter. And we didn’t know what we were doing. And we didn’t even pretend we knew what we were doing. So we just went to altitude and just trained hard. Because we were like, well, we don’t know what we’re doing but altitude is the hardest stimulus, so we’ll just use the hardest stimulus. But we’re not going to pretend we know what we’re doing. … Now we have access to a very, very smart and very, very accomplished altitude protocol. And a consultant. And so that’s our weapon. That’s the card we’re going to play, and we’ll see how it goes. We are absolutely either going to hit a home run or go down swinging.
On nutrition
Whitfield: I subsist on a ton of quality bacon and quality fats.You
wouldn’t believe how much omega oil fish oil and Udo’s flax oil and NutraSea omega oil—you wouldn’t believe how much coconut oil—we use at home and how much bacon I eat.You wouldn’t believe how much avocado my kids eat and I eat. So it’s a high-fat, high-protein, limited carbohydrate diet—a quality carbohydrate diet.
On tapering
Whitfield: You can’t just simply lie on your back.You
have to keep some intensity, but you have to figure out what that balance is. … So, for tapering, keep some intensity and stick to your routine—there’s some simple tricks. I mean, like I see guys over-hydrate, which is always funny. Like you get to the race and they’ve got the 2L water bottle with them and they just flush everything out of their system. Whitfield: One of the best things Joel ever did was he
taught us not to search for confidence before races. Joel had great advice before the races.You did all this training and then six weeks out you weren’t allowed to do things that were searching for confidence. We did quite a few workouts where we didn’t know how fast 56 insidetriathlon
On his favorite workouts
simon SayS:
I hate going out for easy spins. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t really like long, easy rides, but I do them because I have to. My swim-bike theory would be summarized as “go hard often.”
Whitfield: My favorite swim workout is open water. I
think we get the most out of that. On Thetis Lake in Victoria, there’s the big island loop—it’s 1,400 meters. We used to think it was 1,500 until we measured it properly. I like hard open-water sets with a group, properly, with a group. Not alone. Quality swimming. I believe in just quality swimming. None of this floating around—slow precise strokes that are actually really bad strokes ’cause you’re doing them slowly. … With cycling I like anything competitive, like group rides, and attacks and big, long, hard climbs—just rides with the boys. That’s what I like. I hate going out for easy spins. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t really like long, easy rides, but I do them because I have to. My swim-bike theory would be summarized as “go hard often.”
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On the most useful gadgets
on Salt Spring Island. He said he would retire after 2008, but until he actually does retire—I’ll believe it when I see it.
Whitfield: The most useful is the power meter. I have a LeMond Revolu-
tion Trainer at home. It’s so consistent. It’s like riding on the road. I bought it because it’s just the best trainer. I use the Quarq Power Meter. … There’s too much intensity involved in our training to be just out riding, so using the power meter to know I’m doing this in the right zone as prescribed for me—that’s quite useful.
Sprigings: I remember when he said he was retiring after Beijing. I think
On the most useless piece of equipment
this will be his last Olympics, but he’s not done with sport.You know he’ll be around the triathlon scene—I’m not really sure in what sense— but you’ll still hear from him. Once in a while he talks about doing some longer stuff, but I’m honestly not sure what will actually manifest. It’s hard to imagine him without it. He loves it. I have never met anyone who loves their job as much as Simon.
Whitfield: The heart rate monitor would have to be up there. It’s not to
Alexander: If Simon had decided to go down the path of Ironman instead
say it’s not useful, but it sure can be deceptive if you’re not using it in the right context. … Your heart rate is going to change as you’re dehydrated, as you’re tapered, as the day prescribes, as the amount of coffee you had. This is the stuff I hate. I hate measurement data mining—measurement for the sake of measurement.
of the Olympics, I am sure he would be a multiple winner in Kona. I think he is just that talented, has a great work ethic and knows how to plan and prepare for any style of race. He is a very versatile athlete. I have seen him win big non-drafting races like Life Time Fitness. Like most great athletes, Simon can turn his hand to any style of racing. He is very balanced across all three disciplines of our sport. He is a front-pack swimmer in his sleep, a great time trialist on the bike and a superb runner. It is not a surprise to me that he has a lot of respect for the race in Hawaii—that’s the way Simon is. He should have a crack at it, though. In my opinion, he has the talent to get himself on the podium the first time out there. I would love to help him prepare for it!
the end On retiring and Whitfield’s legacy to the sport
Whitfield: This is a selfish answer, but [parenting] is gonna give me the
ability to move on. Without kids, I wouldn’t have been able to move on. … [Parenting] is going to make it much easier to move on. In fact, it will just be time. Instead of being like 45 and limping and being told it’s time to pack it in, I’ll be able to just pack it in. I could pack it in today because—I couldn’t afford to pack it in today, but—I could pack it in today, and I’d be happy. And I would have another challenge and another thing that would fulfill me. Jones: He said he was going to retire after 2004 and move to his cabin 58 insidetriathlon
Filliol: For Simon to be at or near the top for so long—I feel very fortunate to have been able to work with an athlete like that. He’s unique. Alexander: I think Simon’s legacy in triathlon will be as one of the
greatest male triathletes in our sport’s history. His name will be mentioned alongside the likes of Mark Allen and Simon Lessing. He will always be remembered for being triathlon’s first male Olympic champion, but he has also won so much more. His legacy to us personally will be as a happy guy who loves to have fun, and as a good friend. it
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ThE
M O D CavEMaN E R N
A childhood in South Africa’s bundu helped shape Conrad “the Caveman” Stoltz into the greatest off-road triathlete in history, and training in these wild lands in a wild way has him fitter and faster than ever.
Nils Nilsen
By Holly Bennett
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Proud.
That’s the translation of Conrad Stoltz’s German-derived surname.Yet it could easily mean free-spirited, fun-loving, unorthodox, sweet-tempered, humble, endearingly disorganized, outrageously talented or pretty darn tough—because Conrad Stoltz is all that and more. Chances are you’ve heard a tale or two about Stoltz’s eccentric, South African bush-born, farm-bred nature. The abundant Stoltz lore offers a glimpse of the curiously complex—yet never complicated—man. He’s a man who has raced triathlons for more than 20 years, earned early success on the ITU circuit, competed in the Sydney and Athens Olympics, and who has dominated the Xterra off-road format, winning an unprecedented But bunnies beware: Steer clear of the Caveman. In the late ’90s, four world titles and the inaugural ITU Cross Stoltz trained with a group of South African triathletes on the Olympic short list, living together in an old farmhouse in the village of Cahors Triathlon World Championships in Extremadura, in Southern France. Driving home from a swim session one morning, Spain, in April. He is a man with his sights set Stoltz struck a rabbit. squarely on a fifth Xterra world title, and there’s “I hopped out and saw that luckily I hit it in the head only. Well, not so lucky for the rabbit. I took it home, skinned it and cooked it with red even talk of an Olympic bid in the time trial. wine and rosemary,” Stoltz recalled. “One of my training partners looked Indeed, Stoltz’s day-to-day reality is the stuff of in the oven and was shocked to see that our ‘chicken’ had four legs!” legends—the stuff that expressly earns his oftStoltz’s resourcefulness was ingrained at an early age. Says his father, Gert Stoltz, “I gave him a copy of the booklet issued to the bush pilots, used nickname, the Caveman. ‘Don’t Die in the Bundu.’ I think he must have tried out every bit of “He’s as tough as iron when you meet him on the advice given on survival. He would disappear for the day and return in race course,” says longtime friend, former training the afternoon covered in dust, and of course famished.” His legendary cycling skills were honed early on as well. partner and global sports marketing manager for Spe“Conrad’s life virtually started on a bike,” claims the elder Stoltz. “As cialized Bicycles, Bobby Behan. “But off the course a high school teacher I cycled to work with Conrad on the top tube, he’s a true gentleman. He’s gentle like a bunny.” Continued on page 66
Nick Salazar
The only fancy gadgets that impress the Caveman are those that allow him to play hard and fast—bikes and motorcycles.
62 insidetriathlon
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Stoltz winning the 2011 ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships, left, and the 2002, 2007 and 2010 Xterra world titles, right. His 2001 win is not pictured.
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ITU Cross Triathlon: Janos Schmidt/triathlon.org; XTERRA Photos
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dropping him off at the crèche on the way. When he got on his first bike—a pink one we bought from a swap shop—he just rode off. Perfect balance. He must have been all of 3 years old.” Stoltz stuck with cycling, not only for pleasure but as necessary transport. “I was never driven to school—I had to cycle the 4K no matter the weather. Because I hated school so much I was always the last to arrive. Many a morning I had to time trial flat out to avoid being late. When I had time I would detour and ride through the dirt.” The example set by Conrad’s parents (Gert and Liesbeth) for their only child was a strong one, ripe with equal parts compassion and tough love. “I once showed him a dung beetle that was trying to roll his ball of dung up a very steep incline,” Gert Stoltz recalled. “The ball kept rolling back, but the beetle kept retrieving the ball and pressing forward. I said to Conrad, ‘That’s how one should live one’s life. One never gives up.’” It only takes a glance at Gert Stoltz to see where this school-of-hard-knocks resilience originates. Friends call him Tarzan for a reason. “The man is cut,” Behan said, “and not from the gym, but from hard work. At 67 [years old] he’s got a six-pack, a bulging chest, biceps, triceps—he’s “We train as little as possible to still be able to win. Whereas everyone else trains as much as utterly ripped.” they can and hopes for the best,” Stoltz said. Conrad Stoltz’s rural roots and his parents’ penchant for the outdoors instilled a love of nature, which resonates deep within the Caveman to this day. “You’ll only ever meet the real Caveman on the ing a train to Cape Town followed by a ship to Amsterdam. Despite farm,” Stoltz admitted. “Perfectly calm, collected, centered and totally his grandfather’s forfeit of the Olympic dream, athletics have always in touch with my surroundings.” played a primary role in the immediate clan of the Caveman. His faThe farm he refers to—a working cattle farm—is his family home ther coached track and field, and his mother taught PT (the South Afin Mpumalanga (“the place where the sun rises”), deep in the South rican equivalent of American PE), and when Stoltz took on triathlon, Liesbeth Stoltz found the sport to her liking, working her way through various federations “I gave him a copy of the booklet issued to the bush pilots, ‘Don’t to her current post as president of the African Triathlon Union. DIe In the BunDu.’ I think he must have tried out every bit of The young Stoltz’s first multisport competition advice given on survival. he would disappear for the day and return in the was an IronKids event at the age of 14, followed afternoon covered in dust, and of course famished.” — Gert Stoltz soon after by a father-son sprint race. “There were older boys and younger fathers in African bush. It was a weekend and holiday retreat from Pretoria durthe race,” Gert Stoltz recalled. “But when I said, ‘Let’s go!’ we outing Stoltz’s childhood and has since been his parents’ full-time home. sprinted them all.” There’s limited solar electricity, powering five lights for the entire place Stoltz was seldom beaten in any triathlon. When he won the African as well as Internet access. The connection is weather-dependent—a Championships in 1993 as a 19-year-old he caused a stir. When he won few cloudy days can literally cut the farm off the grid. In 2008, lacking the South African Championships the following year there could be no a proper pool, Stoltz famously hand-dug a single-lane sandbag-lined doubt of his sporting talent. That made it easier for Stoltz’s parents to 25-meter ditch to enable his swim training while on the farm. bid adieu as he pursued a professional triathlon career in France. Grit and sacrifice are no strangers to the Stoltz family. Liesbeth “Our only condition was that he sustain himself,” Gert Stoltz said. Stoltz’s father qualified for the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics in the 880 “Otherwise he had to come back and start a ‘real’ life. It was quite a yards and the mile. But he was a sheep farmer and could not be three hard time for him, but I am sure the dung beetle philosophy pulled months away from the farm—competing in the Games involved takhim through. Although Conrad is a very likeable and caring person, he 66 insidetriathlon
Nick Salazar
Continued from page 62
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has a head as hard as a rock, and once made up, is not going to change it for anything. Combine that determination with talent, courage, fearlessness and a relaxed temperament, and you have the makings of a great athlete.” Stoltz’s early experience overseas was far from easy. From his base in Cahors, he traveled the country, chasing money and glory—or at least adventure. One weekend, he hopped a train for Le Triathlon Internationale de Narbonne, a prominent race where the organizer had agreed to meet him and provide accommodation for the night. The race director was a no-show, and with hotel prices in the touristy enclave beyond his hand-to-mouth means, Stoltz dined on a can of corn and pondered his options. “I figured the police station might have a vacancy. Probably not too spacious and I couldn’t be guaranteed a view, but certainly within my budget. I reckoned sharing space with supervised criminals was safer than sleeping under a bridge or on a park bench,” Stoltz reminisced. The bemused gendarme gave the “Triathlète Sud-Africain” a lengthy once-over, but agreed to let him sleep on the hard foyer floor, bedded down atop his bike bag and amidst a smattering of cigarette butts. “My dad would say, ‘Every year you come home with nothing but a big bag of dirty laundry.You better pull up your socks and make a living,’” Stoltz said. “I was really shy back then—English was my second language—so to go after sponsors was very hard. It took a huge mind 68 insidetriathlon
shift. Rugby and cricket were the only sports where you could earn money at that time in South Africa. My parents were supportive, but they also gave me a kick in the backside when I needed one.” Nowadays, the financial side of things may be easier, but Stoltz is hardly swayed by the trappings of wealth. As Behan said, “He’s not superficial in any way whatsoever. He still drives this Toyota Cressida his dad bought back in 1988. It’s falling apart, but that doesn’t bother Conrad. He’s such a down-to-earth, low-key guy. It’s one of the things you love about him. He would never tell you he’s a world champion.” The only fancy gadgets that do impress the Caveman are those that allow him to play hard and fast—bikes and motorcycles. “My mountain bikes and dirt bikes combine two of my passions— nature and the challenge of negotiating technical terrain. Covering beautiful, rugged terrain at high speed helps me balance my mental and physical game,” Stoltz said. His longtime sponsorship with Specialized (Stoltz is the longest-term sponsored athlete currently racing in the elite ranks for the cycling company) is a perfect pairing. It affords Stoltz direct access to the latest and greatest toys—which he frequently breaks and needs replaced. The relationship also allows him to provide the most extreme field-testing imaginable for the company. Says Behan, “He’s a big guy and he’s really hard on his equipment. I mean really hard. Instead of finding the smooth line, Conrad rides straight through, and whatever the hell is in
Nick Salazar
“Last year, at 37, I was the fastest I had ever been. That’s a very powerful thought. Age is not my limiting factor,” Stoltz said.
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••ICONS the way, he hits it. We basically have to custom-make tires for him that are Caveman-proof. He’s tough on his gear but he also communicates in an incredibly articulate way how the equipment performs and how it might be improved. When it comes to R&D, his feedback is indispensable. He’s the reason we have the Epic 29er down to almost nine kilos.” Stoltz rarely lets mechanical failures derail his rides. “Armed with a big rock or an old inner-tube, I can usually fix anything,” the Caveman claims. Stoltz has been vital to the development of Avia’s trail shoes as well, and he takes great pride in his namesake model, the Avia Avi-Stoltz. He also derives an edgy sort of pleasure in showing how the shoe’s color palette balances against the red of a bloodied foot. On more than one occasion, Stoltz has finished an Xterra run bathed in red—nowhere more frighteningly than in the 2009 Xterra Richmond race. Having gouged his foot on an underwater rusty steel girder at the swim start, and sporting a makeshift bandage, Stoltz raced to victory before finally succumbing to shock and blood loss. Emergency surgery immediately followed, along with a second surgery soon after to battle an ensuing infection—largely due to Stoltz’s insistence on training with the intent to race one week after the original injury. “When I was 18, I almost lost the same foot after I got a bad case of gangrene from a chainring gash,” Stoltz recalled. “I was scheduled to race ITU worlds a few weeks later, and I begged the doctor not to cut my foot. I had no idea how serious it was. The doc said he thought the gangrene had gone into the ankle joint and he’d have to amputate. But I was so young he wanted to give me a fighting chance. After some hectic surgery he told me to forget this pro sports thing—I probably wouldn’t
whose every minute is tied to a tightly disciplined training regimen. But Stoltz is the last person to lay out an organized plan. Early on, he trained under the tutelage of notoriously hard-driving triathlon coach Brett Sutton (lasting all of six weeks), followed by a decade with South Africa’s ITU sport development director Libby Burrell. Then, feeling he knew his own body best and preferring a less structured approach, Stoltz set out on his own. In 2009, however, struggling with a return to form following the Richmond foot incident, Stoltz looked up former colleague Ian Rodger. “In 1999, as part of the Olympic team selection we had a series of lab tests. Ian was the sport scientist in charge. Halfway through my Peak Power test he called the rest of the staff to ‘come watch something special.’ I was pushing 512 watts,” Stoltz said. Stoltz found his old friend on Facebook. Their newly paired training method emphasizes minimalism, yet produces undeniably powerful results. “We train as little as possible to still be able to win. Whereas everyone else trains as much as they can and hopes for the best,” Stoltz said. When asked about his peak training volume, he confesses, “I have no idea. Maybe 20 hours? Ask Ian. All I know is that 8K is a good swimming week, training seems easier than ever and I don’t feel like I need three months on the couch at the end of the season.” He continues, “Last year, at 37, I was the fastest I had ever been. That’s a very powerful thought. Age is not my limiting factor.” Motivation doesn’t seem to be, either. “I’m not that goal-driven. I enjoy the journey more than being able to say ‘I did (blank).’ Although being world champion does feel much better than not being world champ.” “I figured the polIce statIon might have a vacancy. Behan has first-hand experience with Stoltz’s casual attitude toward training. probably not too spacious and I couldn’t be guaranteed a “He’s the best procrastinator in the world. When we view, but certainly within my budget. I reckoned sharing space with trained together, everything would be put off. At 10 supervIsed crImInals was safer than sleeping under o’clock at night he’d say, ‘Shit, I have to train!’ We’d a bridge or on a park bench.” —Conrad Stoltz end up running through the middle of Jonkershoek Nature Reserve in the pitch black. I’d be deathly worried about snakes—a reasonable thing to worry about run again. Within weeks I was cycling one-legged. Ten months later I in Africa—thinking, ‘This is the Caveman—I’m in trouble!’” won the All African Triathlon title in a three-man sprint.” Indeed, Stoltz’s preference for procrastination often puts his training Then there was the wrist. In 2005, Stoltz broke the scaphoid bone after dark. He also tends toward some rather unusual sessions. After in his hand and tore the cartilage in his wrist. The doctor threatened a his twice-over foot surgery, he finally followed his doctor’s orders for a series of screws and bone transplants if Stoltz did not adhere to strict tediously slow return to running. orders—three weeks of complete rest, followed by a gradual return to “I hadn’t run for three months. Then I was cleared to run for six minthe treadmill and the indoor trainer. So Stoltz ran hard on the beach and utes. Every second day. Then eight minutes. Every second day. Finally, trails, mountain-biked and even wake-boarded. Sick of the stench from one day I could run pain-free. I was a new man. I ran shirtless on a the sweat-drenched cast, Stoltz had a friend slice the plaster open with warm African evening on my beloved grassy sports field at Stellenbosch an angle grinder. He washed it thoroughly, replaced the cotton gauze University. The full moon was up over the silhouette of the mountains. with a Gore-Tex T-shirt, drilled ventilation holes all over the cast and I was floating along as if on a cloud. I felt incredibly alive. In fact, I felt zip-tied it back together. His doctor was mortified. so alive I decided that running without any clothes would make me feel Stoltz explains his lack of patience: “Overcoming injuries caused by even more alive. It did. Every now and then I would pass through the trauma seems a lot easier to deal with than overuse injuries. We athsprinklers, which was even more fun.” letes recover much faster than normal people. And after the horrific Despite his semi-bohemian lifestyle, Stoltz is not one to shy away things I see the cattle recover from, I think we tend to be a bit sorry from hard work. for ourselves.” “When we were training under Libby, she couldn’t figure out why we While the Caveman’s approach to injury may follow a “grunt and were always so tired, why I had blisters all over my hands,” recounts Bego forward” philosophy, his athletic record could easily belie an athlete han. “Conrad had had me help renovate his house in Stellenbosch. It was 70 insidetriathlon
Stoltz spends his off-season laboring on his cattle farm in South Africa.
hard manual labor, working a sledgehammer for days. He’s not afraid to get down and dirty if there’s work to be done. He spends his off-season laboring on the farm. And he’ll rope you in if he can. He roped me in, and I’ve never been back for that sort of work!” Behan’s obvious admiration for his friend stems in part from this man-of-the-land ethic: “He’s grown up hard. He really is a caveman; there’s no other way of saying it. He’s an enigma. I’ve never met another guy like him. And yet there’s no badness in Conrad. There’s not a bad bone in his body. He would never wish anyone ill,” Behan said. Not to say there’s nothing that ruffles the Caveman’s fur. When asked what irks him, he answers without hesitation, “Cheats, smokers and arrogance. In that order.” Stoltz is a popular figure in small-town Stellenbosch, the endurance sports hub of South Africa and his home away from the farm. Dan Hugo, South Africa’s next generation of Xterra athlete and likely someday successor to Stoltz’s crown, speaks with reverence for the local icon. “As 12 years my senior, Conrad played a lead role in my corrup72 insidetriathlon
tion from clean-cut high school student to athlete journeying the road less traveled,” Hugo said. “His infectious perspective, paving his way to the top with a casual yet passionate ‘doing-it-my-way’ approach inspired me to go against conventional wisdom. It was mythical and appealing, this Stoltz thing.” Of course, boys will be boys, even if an icon, and Stoltz loves nothing more than a prankish laugh. Recalls Hugo, “A favorite memory is of Conrad trying to fit a condom over his plaster of Paris wrist cast so he could compete in a post-race midnight naked mile swim, kitted with fins and a boogie board. I unfortunately lost the lot between three guys and had to purchase the rubber.” Now, Stoltz and Hugo compete side-byside as Specialized teammates. “I still idolize much of the character, the defiance, that is Conrad,” Hugo said. “I get the impression he often enjoys racing more than any other. It’s a style that never takes it too seriously but will crush you around the first swim buoy.” Never too seriously, that is, until the 2010 Xterra World Championship, a race dedicated to his father. Gert Stoltz may seem like a firm man, the kind whose feelings remain inside, who greets his only son with a strong handshake and a smile after spending the majority of the year a continent apart. But the bond between father and son Stoltz is clearly apparent. According to Behan, “It’s not the kind of relationship where they’re hugging and saying, ‘I love you.’ But the deep respect and love is there in the silence. In the quiet between the two, the love and pride is obvious.” Stoltz’s love for his father was never more evident than in the raw satisfaction he exhibited at the finish of the 2010 race. Gert Stoltz had successfully battled colon cancer a few years prior.Yet the disease reared up again in June 2010, and by October the ever-stoic elder Stoltz had taken a turn for the worse. “Usually I just race for myself. But the 2010 Xterra worlds was much more emotional,” the younger Stoltz recounted. “When my dad started getting really sick I wanted to go home, support him and help my mom run the farm. But my dad said no, that I must race worlds and make him proud.” And race he did, demolishing the field by more than five minutes (the second largest margin of victory in Xterra World Championship history) and crossing the line with a look of pure primal ferocity. “My dad is an exceptionally proud man, so it was the only time I crossed the line with built-up aggression,” Stoltz acknowledged. The victory certainly seems to have been bigger than the race
Nick Salazar
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“It was mythical and appealing, this Stoltz thing,” said fellow South African and Xterra athlete Dan Hugo.
in which it was won—since March 2011 Gert Stoltz’s health has test positive without taking drugs!’” laughs Stoltz. dramatically improved. As for the legacy of the Caveman, perhaps the future is best portendThough the Caveman possesses absurd strength, it’s his softer side that ed from his angle toward the present. is core to his being—an aspect which teammate Hugo has witnessed. “I want to feel really alive. Every day if I can. For that I need regular “You need only see some of his photography, or his smile when talkdoses of adventure, adrenaline, lactic acid, caffeine, chocolate, love, ing about fly-fishing, to appreciate the subtle sides to the man,” Hugo said. Sick of the stench from the sweat-drenched cast, Stoltz had a friend slice Ask Stoltz about his budding new the plaster open with an angle grinder. He washed it thoroughly, romance and you’ll swear he sounds replaced the cotton gauze with a Gore-Tex T-shirt, drilled ventilation like a gushing schoolgirl. As he proclaimed in a recent blog post titled holes all over the cast and zip-tied it back together. His doctor was mortified. “The Caveman Has Met His Match,” he has forged a fast connection with now-fiancée Liezel Wium, a South African professional netball player. nature.You create your world by what you think and talk about, so I try “We spent a weekend on a friend’s houseboat three weeks and six to stick to the things I like and ignore the negatives as much as I can.” days after we started dating. We had a lot of quality time together, and by It’s easy to imagine those nighttime runs, under the full moon and the way we bonded I knew there was no point beating around the bush. the South African sky, will continue to figure prominently, whatever We get on like a house on fire. The cliché is right:You’ll know when you Stoltz’s future holds. know. We’re not traditional and we don’t care what people think.” What people do think is that it just might be the greatest athletic Bennett is a frequent contributor to our sister publication, Triathlete magazine. Her profile of Conrad Stoltz marks her pairing to grace South Africa’s green and gold. Inside Triathlon writing debut. “The joke in Stellenbosch is, ‘When those genes mix, the kids will 74 insidetriathlon
Nick Salazar
it
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Becoming Becoming an UberBiker Want to be the fastest cyclist you can be? use these tips from one of triathlon’s greatest. By TorBjørn SindBalle
illustrations by hunter King
i
t was one of those early spring days. The sun was out for the first time in months, shining from a clear blue sky. It was still cold, with the temperature just creeping above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but the air had the crisp freshness you only find when the winter has finally given way to spring. I was 10 days away from my first race of the year and aboard my time-trial bike for a final test—a double TT session on one of my favorite training courses close to my home. It was an 18.1-mile loop of undulating terrain on uninterrupted roads in the Danish countryside. I knew the course like the back of my hand. I had done it hundreds of times and knew exactly which
line to take around every corner whether it was wet or dry. I knew which gear to push over every hill relative to my fitness, speed and freshness for the day. Over the previous several years, I had written down numerous splits and power and heart rate data during all kinds of weather and could recite most of them without blinking, giving me intuitive and exact feedback on my performance at any given place on the course. After an hour warm-up, I did one lap at my estimated half-iron pace, as this was the race distance for which I was preparing. Despite the cold weather I made it in 43:33 and felt very comfortable, averaging just over 25 mph. After a 15-minute spin, I prepared for the second
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•••ICONS loop, which was my actual test for the day— one lap all-out. I stripped my pockets, dropped my wind vest and only carried a small bottle of water. I felt good and started aggressively up the first hill. My legs opened immediately, and I continued pushing over the hill and down the other side. My legs were turning faster and faster. I felt the power from my entire body transferring into the pedals. My upper body was steady despite the force generated from each stroke, my glutes fully firing in synchrony with my quads and calves. It almost felt like I was riding on top of the pedals, like there were no dead spots in my pedal strokes, and I could just turn and turn no matter how high a gear I chose. The road disappeared quickly beneath me, and the asphalt transformed into a gray mass. The wind was whirring past my ears, and I settled into a rhythm at the very top end of my ability, guided by my subconscious sense of it being one of those special days. I stormed through the halfway point
Growing up, Sindballe’s primary form of transportation was cycling. Sindballe’s mother even once took him to the hospital in a bike trailer.
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in a blistering split yet continued to search for the sweet spot with my gears. The final stretch of road was straight, with no corners but a few significant hills. I was tired but able to let it all go, powering over each hill— stretching myself to my limit—before hitting the descents in my most aerodynamic tuck. Despite my fatigue, my body and legs were still working in symmetry—flowing. I put it all on the line up the last hill and sprinted the final kilometer of the loop. My watch said 41:07, which was my personal best split by far in cold and windy conditions. I had just experienced uberbiking! Each generation of triathletes has a select group of individuals with the right mind and body to go the distance on the bike in the biggest and most important races. Thomas Hellriegel, Jurgen Zack, Normann Stadler, Chris Lieto and myself are all examples of such uberbikers—guys whose weapon of choice was and is the bike. We are not afraid of getting wind in our noses and have all boldly made moves early in many important
races, becoming the sole focus of the fleetfooted chasers. But what does it take to be out there all alone coming into T2—to become so powerful on a bike that you can literally leave everyone else in the dust? a ViKinG’s tale
My native Denmark is a cyclist’s paradise. There are bike paths everywhere and miles of quiet roads with little or no traffic just a few steps from any front door. I grew up in a town with separated traffic, where there were long systems of paths that were safe for kids to ride on to and from school, a friend’s house, a soccer field or a swimming pool. We did not own a car and hence had to bike everywhere—my mother once took me to the hospital in a bike trailer to get the cast from a broken leg removed. My leg was sticking out of the trailer, up in the air, for the entire journey. During summers we would often go on longer bike trips around Denmark as a family, and once we even biked for three
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Fans of EPO BOOSTª point out that the patent-pending use the product for a full 90 days and if not completely satisfied, send back whatever formula is all-natural and is clinically proven to increase erythropoietin levels, product is remaining - even an empty bottle - and get a Ô no questions askedÕ refund. resulting in greater strength and endurance. A company spokesman, speaking off the record, admitted that the product doesnÕ t The scientific evidence behind EPO BOOSTª does seem to represent a work overnight and that most athletes wonÕ t see the extreme performance enhancements breakthrough in sports medicine. A 28-day double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial, for up to four weeks. In a world infatuated with instant success, that kind of realistic performed by Dr. Whitehead from the Department of Health and Human Performance admission might cost some sales but is likely to keep customers happy. at Northwestern State University, showed that the ingredients found in EPO BOOSTª While the controversy over the advantage athletes using EPO BOOSTª are obtaining increased EPO production by over 90% compared to the group taking the placebo1. is unlikely to go away anytime soon, one thing is for sure: blood doping and synthetic The supplement group also showed dramatic improvements in athletic performance (as drugs are a thing of the past now that amateurs and professionals alike can tap into a natural product that generates Olympian-like strength and endurance. measured by VO2max and running economy). One of the active ingredients in the formula is Echinacea Purpurea, an herb that Biomedical Research Laboratories accepts orders from its website at www. stimulates the immune system and is normally associated with alternative treatments for EPOBOOST com. A company spokesman confirmed a special offer: if you order the common cold. Surprisingly, Dr. WhiteheadÕ s study revealed that Echinacea promotes this month, youÕ ll receive FREE ENROLLMENT into the companyÕ s Elite Athlete a substantial increase in natural levels of EPO (erythropoietin). Industry experts were Club where youÕ ll qualify to receive a full 25% discount on all your bottles of EPO shocked to discover that this simple herb had such an effect on the body. BOOSTª . And so you donÕ t go a day without EPO BOOSTª in your system Ð Since its release last year, competitive athletes have flocked to this new supplement, increasing your endurance, youÕ ll automatically receive a fresh bottle every 30which offers all the benefits of greater EPO levels with none of the dangerous side effects days and your credit card will be billed the Elite Athlete Club Member Price of or legal trouble. A company spokesman confirmed that the patent-pending formula $44.95 plus S/H Ð not the $59.95 fee non-members have to pay. There are no contains active components that have been shown to boost EPO levels, resulting in minimum amounts of bottles to buy and you can cancel at any time. The number to call is 1-800-590-6545, and you can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. greater strength and endurance. Jason Walkley, a member of the Royal Air Force Elite Triathlon Team in the United Kingdom claimed an increased tolerance to fatigue after taking EPO BOOSTª . Jason 1. Whitehead et al. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab, 17 (2007): 378-9.
•••icOns weeks in France. Like the east Africans who get to where they need to go by running, we biked to get around. I took up triathlon at age 14, in 1990, after two years of competitive swimming. My tri club was 7 miles away, and on top of my long Sunday rides and occasional weekday time trials, I always biked to swim and run practice. My mom and dad split when I was a young kid, but we still visited my dad every other weekend, and I often biked the 50 miles back and forth. During one of the first summers after I became a triathlete, I biked 70 miles to a city where we would spend a vacation. It was the first time I ever bonked. There was a severe headwind during the entire journey and the final 10 miles were
Danish national team, led by Gabor Kløczl, I quickly got absorbed in the group environment around him and the big Danish star at that time, fellow uberbiker Peter Sandvang. Kløczl’s philosophy is one of the secrets to my bike skills: intense training. He believed in intensity over volume and that the training should be race-specific almost year-round. We did two time trials of anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes every Tuesday and Thursday. Each time trial was literally an all-out race with a self-enforced 10-meter non-drafting rule and a handicapped start based on the previous week’s performances. At the time, the dayto-day ability levels of me, Sandvang and a fellow teammate named Allan Månsson were virtually identical, which made for a fiercely competitive environment. On top of the weekday time trials, The besT way To develop This sTrengTh we did a Sunday is Through whaT The germans call ride—68 brutal miles where we would “kraftausdauer,” or strength average more than 27 endurance training. miles per hour despite stopping at traffic over wide-open terrain. I was still far from lights and sometimes holding back for slowmentally skilled in the art of suffering, and I er traffic in front of us. Only the toughest was so tired that I cried for the full 10 miles. triathletes, Cat. 1 and ex-pro riders could But I got through them. I had to—there were hang with us until the end, and many skilled no cars, no cell phones, no gas stations and riders had sore legs for days after attending no dear mum. our 2.5-hour maximal effort session. At the age of 18 I took part in a study While the volume we did was unexcepat the University of Copenhagen where tional, the intensity and extremely competiscientists measured my VO2max, which was tive setting taught me how to suffer, which well into the 70s. (The average VO2max for a is something I used when I began to train on healthy young male is 45.) Despite my young my own and is a key skill for anyone striving age, I was already keenly interested in exerto become a great triathlete. After the early cise physiology, and I knew that such a high days with the Danish national team, I only VO2max was largely genetically determined very rarely sat behind anyone. I took pride in and a sign of big potential. I was convinced getting wind in my nose. I also took pride in that other elements of peak performance training in the worst possible conditions, such such as technique, tactics, mental toughness as wintertime in Denmark or on the rough, and nutrition could be developed, so my high hilly roads of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, VO2max sparked a belief in my own ability where I spent many weeks each winter for that lasted throughout my career. several years. In early 2003, my career took a My development, however, took longer turn for the better, and I became increasingly than I expected, and I spent many years more focused and professional in my attitude learning how to train. It was not until after toward the sport. By then, Kløczl had left I was selected for the ITU Long Distance the federation and was replaced by Michael Triathlon World Championships in 1998 that Krüger, who introduced me to the German I was able to endure the pain and develop method of high-volume training. For the first the discipline needed to train consistently time in my career, I broke 30 hours of trainon an elite level. After being selected for the ing in a week. I did most of it in the saddle,
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and the countless hours made me begin to feel like I was living on my bike. I often found myself going through the morning routines with the family in a haze, not fully awake until I was an hour into yet another five-hour ride. This high-volume regime helped transfer the speed I developed with Kløczl’s intense program to longer distances, and it kick-started a string of significant victories—victories that were won on the bike—including the ETU Long Distance Triathlon European Championships in 2003 in Fredericia, Denmark, and the ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships in Sater, Sweden, in 2004. In 2003 I also formulated the goal of winning the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and started working with mental coach Lars Nielsen, who was a former rower and peak performance specialist. He helped break down, in the tiniest details, what it would take to win, which gave me a very clear idea of the race I would need to have and the work it would require. I believed that becoming the best triathlete in the world meant that I needed to become the best at every little aspect of the game. I needed to train the hardest, create the best team around me, eat better than everyone, become the strongest mentally, have the best equipment, the most aerodynamic position— the list goes on. No detail was too small, and I worked under the motto that even though Ironman is an eight-hour race, I only needed a single second to win. From 2003 until 2007, I honed my bike skills (as well as my swim and run skills) with the iron distance in mind. My time trials became longer, and I routinely suffered through five- to seven-hour rides at a very high average pace. I went to the wind tunnel and perfected my position. I tested every piece of equipment and every new training method that could potentially give me an advantage. I even started developing my own equipment if I felt I could build something better than what was currently available on the market. While I never reached my goal of becoming the Ironman world champion before I was forced to retire from the sport in 2009 due to a heart valve abnormality, I did break the bike course record in Kona in 2005— my split of 4:21:35 is still the second-fastest split of all time—and I finished on the podium, in third, in 2007.
•••ICONS deVeloPinG UBerBiKer-ness
When striving for excellence, there is no magic pill. Sure, the latest aero wheels and a teardrop helmet are important, but becoming really fast on the bike is a long process that occurs over many years and demands endless hours of hard work, sound logic applied without compromise, and a strong belief in your own ability. While superb genetics are needed to get to the top end of the sport, anyone can work on improving cycling skills—no matter who you are and what your inherent ability is. Below are some of the things I have learned over the years that can help you drop some time off your bike split and become the best cyclist you are capable of becoming.
• Training
The cycling industry has gone crazy with drag over the years, and this has caused many people to forget about the importance of simple bike-handling skills.
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Uberbiking requires a blend of high aerobic power (VO2max), endurance and strength, so it is important to gauge which one of these aspects is your limiter and then work mercilessly to improve it. Your maximal aerobic power is largely determined by your genetics, but it can be improved with a focused effort over long periods of time. If your engine is a bit small and you have a subpar VO2max, spend a couple of winters focusing on interval sets. Twice weekly, do four to six intervals of three to five minutes on the bike, recovering between each interval by spinning for at least three minutes. Try to do each interval on the same loop or on a trainer so you can measure your progress from session to session. If you are fit, you will need to take yourself to your limit by the end of each interval, finishing each with a heart rate close to max effort for the workout to have an effect on your maximal aerobic power. Even if you don’t have much spare time on your hands to build endurance, you can get a near maximal training effect from just three hours of cycling per week. Three times per week, start with a 15-minute warm-up and then do a 30-minute time trial, followed by a 15-minute cooldown. This time trial should be hard and you will need to suffer, but you will see improvement to your fitness, even after just a few weeks. Just
make sure you put in an extremely solid effort for each of those 30-minute time trials. If you are preparing for an Ironman, the same rule applies: Make sure every minute counts. If you cannot find the time to cycle five to six hours every weekend, go for three hours at iron-distance pace. This type of training is very effective at providing the stimulus you will need to perform the best you can at your iron-distance race. If you instill these three-hour training sessions into your program you will only need to do a few select long rides before your goal race—done simply to build your confidence. Strength is a component of cycling that’s sometimes overlooked. To push in excess of 400 watts for an hour, or more than 300 watts for 4.5 hours, you need to be able to push a significant load with every pedal stroke. That’s why many of the greatest cyclists in the sport have had sizable glutes and the characteristic “tree trunk” quads. The best way to develop this strength is through what the Germans call “kraftausdauer,” or strength endurance training. By pushing high gears at 40 to 60 rpm and moderate to high loads over various interval distances, you can develop your ability to handle the force component in higher-intensity riding. For example, during your longer ride on the weekend, try putting in two to three uphill or headwind segments where you spend 10 to 20 minutes at moderate intensity, using a high enough gear that you can only pedal 50 to 60 rpm. This will help you build the strength that is required to be a good climber. During more intense workouts during the week, you can work on your strength by doing three to six 5-minute intervals at a high intensity and in a gear that only allows you to pedal 50 to 60 rpm.You can also boost your strength by doing 10 15- to 30-second intervals uphill, all-out, at a gear so high you can only pedal 40 to 50 rpm. But remember that if you are looking to build strength, you must do so gradually, as strength endurance training puts a load on your hips and knees that is much greater than when you are cycling at a normal cadence. To get the maximal benefit out of your strength training, work up to adding strength elements into two of your weekly high-intensity or Ironman-focused sessions. If you belong to the sprightly runner section of the tri demographic and are search-
•••iCons ing for more bike power, try hitting the gym in the off-season to work on your max strength, as this will be great preparation for pushing those bigger gears. Additionally, cyclists of all shapes and sizes will benefit from workouts on core strength, as this will help them stabilize their pedal stroke and use the force from their legs more effectively. No matter what the limiting factors are to your cycling, you will need to challenge yourself if you want to improve. Go harder or longer than you ever have before and you will see results—as long as you pay attention to the fine art of balancing training with recovery.
• Aerodynamics and position
When biking at higher speeds, 80 percent or more of your energy is used to overcome wind resistance—this makes aerodynamics a key factor in cycling success, and it’s why leading cyclists and triathletes spend hours in the wind tunnel perfecting their aero positions. For many, this wind tunnel time can break the bank, but a basic knowledge of aerodynamics, which can be learned with a little research, a trainer and a camera, can take you very far in perfecting your aero position.
These two experiences taught me that positioning was not so much about how my bike was set up but rather how I acted on the bike. From that point on, I called how I acted on the bike “dynamic positioning,” and I used what I learned from my wind tunnel experiences to the fullest extent possible. In every race I would put my head down, tuck my shoulders in and make sure I had aerobar extensions long enough so I could stretch forward when I was riding downhill, optimizing my aero position when it was most effective and important. I made sure my helmet lay flat on my back at all times and concentrated on riding in a straight line, which again helped me cut drag without buying a single piece of equipment or loosening one screw on my bike.
• Technical skills
In recent years the bike industry has gone nuts with drag, and there are numerous papers and studies published from subjective sources that claim to have discovered the be-all, end-all when it comes to aerodynamics. While significant gains have been made in the industry, they often distract from other areas of equal importance to the would-be uberbiker, such as bike-handling skills. If you have ever gone down a hairpin descent or
spend a couple of winters focusing on inTervAl seTs. twice weekly, do four to six intervals of 3 to 5 minutes on the bike, reCovering between each interval by spinning for at least 3 minutes. My own wind tunnel experiences have given me insights into my aero position, but not in the way you might expect. During my first wind tunnel fit, in 2005, we tinkered with my position by moving my handlebars down, pushing my elbows together and stretching my arms a bit more, but nothing really helped until I accidentally dipped my head down in front of my shoulders midway during a test run. My drag numbers immediately dropped significantly to a level that would give me a three- to four-minute savings over 112 miles—not too bad for just lowering my head. At another point during the test, we set my elbow pads so close together that I started to wobble, and the bike going side to side made the drag numbers go through the roof.
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a roundabout with a pro roadie, you know what I’m talking about, as the difference between a great and a poor bike handler easily amounts to five to 10 seconds per corner. On technical courses, the importance of feeling at one with your bike, of knowing how to cut corners by virtue of what you feel and not what you think, can save you several minutes. In 2002, I lost the ITU Long Distance World Championships to one of the nicest athletes I know, Cyrille Neveu, who now runs the Alpe d’Huez Triathlon. While Neveu is definitely a great rider, he never really reached uberbiker status, and yet during the 2002 Long Distance World Championships on a mountainous course in Nice, France, he was able to take seven minutes out of a bunch of equally
strong and stronger riders through his superb descending skills. These were skills he had learned while riding his bike in the Alps. Bike-handling skills can be taught to some extent, but they are best learned with practice. When cornering, a cyclist must choose the line that will catapult him or her out of the corner relative to riders who aren’t as skilled at cornering. Usually, by going in wide, then cutting narrowly into the corner, and then exiting wide, a cyclist can achieve this catapult effect. In other words, the line you are following is a relatively flat arc compared to the arc of the corner. The maximal speed you can travel along this line without crashing is determined by things such as road surface, tire choice, bike fit and geometry. But more importantly, the maximal speed you can travel along this line is also determined by how you position your body on the bike. Bringing your center of mass a bit forward and down when entering the turn, leaning your inner shoulder into and forward in the corner as well as popping out your inner knee as an air-brake will usually give you the best result. If you decide you want to learn how to corner, you should first practice the skill in an empty parking lot or on a deserted street before trying it in a group ride or during a race.You might also search out the help of a good, technical rider, because no matter how much you read about cornering, the quickest way to learn the skill is to follow the line of someone who excels at it.
• Cadence
The debate about choosing the most efficient cadence has been ongoing for many years. Studies in physiology tell us that a lower cadence—about 60 to 70 rpm at moderate workloads—is the most energy efficient, and yet many triathletes race the iron distance with 80 to 90 rpm. Along those same lines, Lance Armstrong’s extremely high cadence— often upward of 110 rpm—baffled the scientific community during his seven straight Tour de France wins. I believe this inconsistency between science and practice has to do with strength and acceleration. There is a big difference between pedaling on an ergometer in a lab and riding in a peloton on undulating roads, where you need to constantly accelerate or decelerate in response to other riders, the course and the terrain. Acceleration at lower cadences occurs
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•••icOns less rapidly and requires far more muscle force than accelerating at a higher cadence. So while a lower cadence of 60 to 70 rpm is more energy efficient, if you are accelerating at all while you ride—which you almost certainly are—accelerating at a lower cadence also saps the strength you need to run once you get off the bike. To get an idea of the difference between strength fatigue and energy fatigue and why you need to worry about it, imagine going to the gym and doing three sets of 10
than the back half. Sometimes the difference can be as much as 50 watts, which equals a whopping 10 to 15 minutes. Part of this is due to a rarely well-enforced 10-meter nondrafting rule, but in many cases it is often a sign of misjudged pacing that costs triathletes dearly in the latter stages of a race. Holding an even effort over the entire course will save you precious fuel for the run that your impatient competitors won’t have. Another element of tactics is to distribute your energy intelligently over the course of the race relative to wind resistance. When riding uphill, wind resistance is relatively low, In trIathlon, finding The righT but when riding downcadence is a balance between hill, resistance is high. Therefore, it is wise to use strength and energy effIcIency. a bit more, but not too much, of your power going squats at your max weight.You aren’t going to up hills and spend less on the way down, use much energy doing this, but you are going deliberately tucking into your best aero to sap your muscle strength and break down position as you do so to decrease the effect muscle fibers, making it very difficult to run of the added wind resistance. Another little well after you’ve finished the workout. trick involving wind resistance is to limit Thus, in triathlon, finding the right your fluid intake to the uphill sections, as cadence is a balance between strength and reaching for bottles or straws often involves energy efficiency.You cannot go too low, as subpar aerodynamics. it will drain the strength you need to run, and you cannot go too high, as it will deplete • The hurt locker your energy stores too fast. Cycling is a tough sport. Not only do we use Other factors should also influence your big muscle groups that enable us to ride at a high intensity for hours, but our muscles cadence choice. According to a 2009 scientific work concentrically, meaning they fatigue review by Ernst Hansen and Gerald Smith in much less quickly than in weight-bearing the International Journal of Sports Physiology sports such as running. This slowness to and Performance, cadence has been shown to fatigue means that already-fit cyclists have to go up when workload, or power, increases, so ride longer or harder to expose their muscles you will most likely choose a higher cadence in to new stimuli. This is why your ability to a short time trial compared to your usual long become an uberbiker is closely tied to your training ride. Athletes with a high VO2max willingness to suffer. choose a higher cadence when riding at the While you can use this article’s tips to help same relative intensity as athletes with a lower you move toward your goal of becoming an VO2max, most likely because they push higher uberbiker, remember that you must also train watts and thus need to ease the load on the your ability to stay positive while you’re in legs. (This phenomenon partly explains why pain and explore your physical limits. Goal Armstrong chooses a higher cadence than the setting and joining a stimulating training rest of us—he pushes higher watts.) group can also improve your chances of becoming an uberbiker. • Tactics Very few athletes consider the impact of tacHave fun turning those cranks. tics on overall performance, yet accurate pacing can make or break your race. Even pros Sindballe was one of triathlon’s uberbikers when he was a pro. He is a often ride the first half of an iron-distance contributing writer for Inside Triathlon. bike leg at a significantly higher workload it
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ExtrEmE
RecoveRy A proFessionAl triAthlete goes “All in” on recovery. WhAt’s he getting out oF it?
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Although cold baths are generally promoted as a way to control post-workout muscle tissue inflammation, “The benefit is less on the anti-inflammatory side and more on the side of deadening of pain,” Sage Rountree said. She adds that there is little point in taking cold baths after bike rides and after runs lasting less than 90 minutes. It’s only the long runs that cause real muscle damage.
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BIOMETRICS Recovery is Tollakson’s first thought every morning. Literally. He starts each day by taking his pulse and stepping onto a Tanita Ironman scale to assess his hydration status. “I really pay attention to the weight and hydration for recovery,” he said. Tollakson does not often change workout
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plans based on a higher-than-normal morning pulse and dehydration, but he does often find that these numbers validate subjective feelings about his recovery status (energy level, muscle soreness, mood, etc.).
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BODYWORK Massage; rolfing, a form of deep-tissue massage that was developed in the 1950s; active release technique, a form of body work involving active movements of the limbs under threatment; and chiropractic are all parts of Tollakson’s weekly routine. According to Sage Rountree, author of “The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery,” there is no evidence that bodywork enhances the normal recovery processes such as muscle damage repair. However, it can help reverse some of the negative, cumulative effects of training, such as the formation of adhesions that may lead to overuse injuries. Rountree notes that there is not much scientific support for most of the things that athletes do for recovery, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth doing. “I think pretty much anything you do ritualistically will help you,” she said. “It’s not just about the science behind it and what it may be doing for you physiologically. A whole lot of it is that, psychologically, you are now putting a value on your recovery. If you do one of these things, you are probably going to wind up doing more of them. And the more you do, the more they work together to help you recover.”
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COLD BATHS Tollakson submerges his legs in a 55-degree bath for 10 minutes, either in a backyard pool or in a special tub set up in his garage, after every run and ride. Although cold baths are generally promoted as a way to control post-workout muscle
Triathlon.org/Delly Carr
In
2008, professional triathlete TJ Tollakson, whose home base is Des Moines, Iowa, spent a couple of months living and training with fellow pro Craig Alexander in Boulder, Colo. Both men were preparing for October’s Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. While they did all of their training together, Alexander went on to have a great race in Kona, winning in 8:17:45, while Tollakson performehd terribly, finishing 249th in 9:53:43. The problem for Tollakson was that the same training that was just right for the older and more experienced Alexander was too much for him. “I realized I tanked because I had done too much training and I wasn’t allowing myself to recover properly,” Tollakson said. “Craig gave me one of the greatest gifts possible, which was to see what it takes to be a champion in the sport.” It wasn’t just Alexander’s extra years of training that allowed him to better recover from the same training load, however. The Australian also had “a pretty aggressive recovery program,” as Tollakson describes it. So Tollakson decided to do everything Alexander did for recovery and more. He made a plan to go all the way, doing everything possible to maximize his physiological recovery from training on a daily basis, and see where this “extreme recovery” approach led him. Here are the top 10 items in Tollakson’s recovery regimen:
16 World Championships Including Xterra www.XLAB-USA.com
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tissue inflammation, “The benefit is less on the anti-inflammatory side and more on the side of deadening of pain,” Rountree said. She adds that there is little point in taking cold baths after bike rides and after runs lasting less than 90 minutes. It’s only the long runs that cause real muscle damage.
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COMPEX Compex is a brand of electrical muscle stimulator that is popular among endurance athletes. Tollakson owns a unit and uses it not so much for daily recovery, but to treat incipient injuries and prevent them from getting worse. “If I get back and my hamstring is sore, the first thing I’m going to do is ice it; the second thing I’m going to do is stick the Compex on it to increase the blood flow around that area,” he said. There is no clear line distinguishing normal tissue trauma incurred during exercise and the beginning of some overuse injuries. Many overuse injuries, most notably patellofemoral pain syndrome, which is an overuse injury of the knee characterized by pain beneath the kneecap during activity, start when muscle or connective tissue fails to fully repair itself between workouts, allowing damage to accumulate. Thus, there is no clear line between this particular aspect of recovery and injury prevention. So, in using his Compex to nip injuries in the bud, Tollakson is also using it for recovery, in a sense.
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COMPRESSION SOCKS Last year, Tollakson started wearing compression socks during all of his hard runs, for the sake of his recovery following those workouts. “I always thought of them as something for post-run recovery,” he said, “but I really started to notice the benefits of using them during the run.” According to Rountree, “There are three questions with compression socks: Does wearing them during workouts improve performance during workouts? Does wearing them during workouts improve recovery? And does wearing them after workouts improve recovery? The answer on the first question is probably no, and on the other two, probably so.” In fact, a recent study provided strong evi-
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dence that wearing compression socks during a hard run does not improve performance but does reduce the strain of hard running. Researchers at Massey University in Australia recruited 12 runners and had them run four 10K time trials on a track on separate occasions while wearing three varieties of compression socks (one at a time, naturally) and also without compression socks. The researchers found that the compression socks had no effect on their 10K times. However, the runners did experience a smaller decline in jumping performance after the time trials when they wore the compression socks. This indicates that the time trial took less out of the runners’ legs when they wore compression socks. In essence, the socks improved post-run recovery by reducing the need for recovery.
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NAPPING It’s too often forgotten that, like healing, post-exercise recovery is something that the body does for itself. Recoveryboosting measures such as bodywork and cold baths work around the margins. Infinitely more powerful than such measures is simple rest, which allows the body to do what it does naturally. Sleep is the most potent form of rest in relation to recovery. During sleep, hormonal, immunological and neurological changes occur that greatly enhance recovery. Sleep needs naturally increase with training loads. Athletes such as Tollakson, who exercises up to 30 hours per week, find that their bodies demand far more than the seven or eight hours that seem to suffice for the rest of us. To successfully handle those training loads, they must satisfy those demands. “I’ve always been big on napping when I’m in heavy training,” said Tollakson, whose typical routine is eight hours of sleep at night and a two-hour nap in the afternoon. “If I don’t have time for a nap I’ll sleep 10 hours at night.” Interestingly, a couple of years ago Tollakson briefly tried sleeping in an altitude tent, for the blood-boosting benefits, but had to give it up because it reduced his sleep quality and thereby compromised his recovery. While the tent significantly increased his hematocrit level, or the percentage of red blood cells in his blood, Tollakson discovered that recovery was more important than having richer blood.
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NORMATEC BOOTS NormaTec is a pneumatic compression device, originally developed for medical uses, that has become popular as a recovery aid among elite endurance athletes. It consists of a pair of soft, boot-like enclosures that cover the legs. These boots are attached to a generator pump that fills them with air, causing them to compress the legs. But instead of applying static compression, as wraps and compression socks do, NormaTec applies intermittent, or dynamic, compression, which is said to better mimic normal physiology. Tollakson uses NormaTec boots for approximately 30 minutes after every run, usually following his cold bath. According to Rountree, that’s time well spent. When she was researching her book on recovery, Bill Sands, the former director of the U.S. Olympic Training Center’s recovery center, told her that NormaTec was the most effective recovery-boosting method he knew of after training smart, eating well and sleeping well.
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NUTRITION When triathletes think about nutrition for recovery, they usually think about post-workout nutrition. But Tollakson pays just as much attention to nutrition during workouts. “That’s really when recovery starts,” he said. “I’ve started to focus on staying hydrated and staying fueled.You never want to finish a workout really dehydrated or really low on calories or glycogen.” Tollakson often runs right after riding his bike, but he always squeezes some kind of snack into his transition between the two sessions. If he’s home, he often eats peanut butter and jelly on toast. Otherwise, he gobbles an energy bar. As soon as he’s really done training, Tollakson blends a recovery smoothie that he drinks while soaking in a cold bath. Heavy on dairybased protein, it contains milk, Greek yogurt, whey protein powder and frozen fruit. Tollakson’s recovery nutrition also includes three supplements: CoQ10, a coenzyme that enhances aerobic metabolism within cells; L-arginine, an amino acid that promotes dilation of blood vessels and circulation; and HMB, a metabolite of the amino acid leucine that is believed to suppress muscle protein breakdown.
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Stretching Most triathletes feel they should stretch more than they do. They are sold on the benefits of stretching, but not enough to actually do much of it. Tollakson was one such triathlete until a couple of years ago, when injuries motivated him to finally make a serious commitment to stretching. Now, he says, “Every night I go through a 20-minute stretching routine before I go to bed. I’ve found that it helps a lot with my recovery as well as injury prevention.” According to Rountree, stretching is like bodywork in that it is not strictly relevant to recovery. But, she said, “Stretching will keep adhesions from forming. It’s almost like massage from that angle. It’s going to make it easier for you to get into the next workout by keeping you from getting gummed up between the muscle fibers, and between the muscle fibers and connective tissue.”
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trainingPeakS It is easy to overlook the fact that training affects recovery more than bodywork, cold baths, compression, electrical muscle stimulation, napping, nutrition, stretching and whatever else you might do to enhance recovery—combined. Don’t believe it? Then stop training completely and see how that affects your recovery. By far and away, the most important thing you can do to maximize your recovery is to balance training stress and rest appropriately. The name of the game is to apply training stress and in doing so stimulate a need for recovery, and then rest enough to allow that recovery to occur. It is through the physiological recovery processes, after all, that fitness increases. When training stress and rest are balanced appropriately, the body does not merely return to its previous equilibrium between workouts, it bounces back stronger, achieving what exercise scientists call “supercompensation.” The art of training is all about planning and executing workouts and rest to achieve ongoing supercompensation. It sounds simple enough, but athletes botch it all the time, as Tollakson did in taking on too much training before the 2008 Ironman World Championship. TrainingPeaks is an online training application that Tollakson now uses to avoid
repeating this mistake. By inputting all of his training into his TrainingPeaks account, Tollakson is able to continuously graph his “training stress balance,” which is the difference between his recent training stress and his long-term training stress. This variable provides a reliable indication of his recovery status. Through experience in using TrainingPeaks, Tollakson has learned the training stress balance window he needs to stay within to gain fitness without overtraining. the reSultS So what exactly is Tollakson gaining from his extreme recovery program? It’s too early to make a final judgment. Tollakson has only recently returned to serious training after having surgery on his left hip to correct a condition called femoral acetabular impingement, a condition that he was born with but which his triathlon training aggravated. The condition was also part of the reason for his poor performance at Kona in 2010, when he placed 38th. But he responded well to his first heavy training block post-surgery at a camp with coach Cliff English and English’s other elite triathletes in Tucson, Ariz. “The biggest thing I’ve noticed is my ability to do back-to-back hard weeks,” he said. “This whole process allows me to train longer and more intensely week in and week out. It’s obvious to me when I’m training with the group; I can compare myself to the other athletes who are training with Cliff. I feel more recovered and ready to train day in and day out.” Beyond feeling better and training better, Tollakson has also learned an important lesson from the experience. “Being a truly professional triathlete is a 24/7 job,” he said. “It’s not 30 hours a week of training. It’s everything you do. It’s how you eat, how you sleep and how you take care of your body between workouts that makes you the best you can be.”
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Fitzgerald is a contributing editor to Inside Triathlon. He’s written 18 books, and he last wrote about the potential for Kenyan dominance in triathlon.
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triathlon as therapy By Tim DeBoom
their relationship with God. Some turn to drugs or alcohol to get through tough times. I spent every waking hour running, biking, hiking, swimming and doing whatever I could to drain myself of the ability to think. I would collapse at night and close myself off from those around me. Some days I would cover a hundred miles and not remember a thing. On others, I would make it to the edge of town and just sit and cry by the side of the road. This was my grieving process. I slowly began to have conversations with my dad out there. I took him on rides up in the mountains and runs over the trails that he had only heard about from previous conversations. I imagined him on my shoulders as I went screaming down a 20-mile descent and felt safe because of it. Sometimes I could trick myself into literally feeling his grip. Gradually, I was able to share some of those stories with my wife and my brothers. We all had been dealing with the tragedy in our own ways, but it was time to grieve together and celebrate his life. My hours spent alone, with my heart thumping and lungs searing, had helped comfort me. Until the death of my dad, I had always
thought that dealing with problems by going for a run or ride was my way of running from confrontation. I thought it was an immature way of handling difficult situations— I would have to change if I were ever truly going to “grow up.” But what I learned was that we all cope with things in our own unique way. There is no “right” way to deal with grief. I am surely not the only one who’s found solace in the roads and trails. I have to assume my fellow endurance athletes do, too. Have a bad day at work? An evening run usually solves that. Get in an argument with someone? A quick-paced group ride can curb that negativity. Have a bad race and want to quit the sport for good? Just make it to that next workout, and you will surely know everything that went wrong and exactly how to fix it before the next event. Getting outside is still my first reaction when I need to sort things out. It does not take a hundred-mile ride or a 20-mile run anymore, either. Sometimes I can get away with a walk in the hills around my house— just enough to open my eyes and thoughts to new possibilities. I still have conversations with my dad, too. He’s a great listener and still loves going downhill fast.
Pro triathlete Tim DeBoom is a two-time winner of the Ironman World Championship and lives in Boulder, Colo. 96 insidetriathlon
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Certain moments get frozen in time—good and bad. I remember hearing the phone ring as I was rearranging my bedroom furniture. When I answered, I immediately smiled with surprise when I heard my aunt on the other end. We had not spoken for a long time. But from that point forward, time began to crawl, and the memory of what happened next will forever be seared in my mind in slow motion. I dropped to my knees and cradled my body to the floor. The exhaustion was immediate and paralyzing. The expression on my wife’s face is now ingrained in me. I hope I never see it again. It was one of tragedy and grief without even knowing what had happened yet. It was simply a reaction to my reaction. My father had passed away. I was not mature enough to deal with this. I was just a kid—a kid who still talked to his dad almost every day. My life was suddenly in a state of paralysis. I did not want to talk to anyone or think about anything. The only thing I knew how to do was waiting for me outside. So, that’s where I went. Some people use friends, family or even psychiatrists to talk about and deal with problems. Others find strength in religion and
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