How About a 17 Hour Training Day?

We cannot tell you how happy we are with this journey into extended distance training. Many discussions have been had about junk miles, over training, burnout and injury and our belief that we could implement an extended distance theory training philosophy to Ironman training without experiencing any of the aforementioned symptoms of over training. The actual 17 hour training day was designed to be a long, slow, distance effort day. The goal was to be on our feet training for the entire 17 hours. There was no speed to be had this day, and it was important to involve other Practical Coaching teammates to participate in the day.

Tyler spearheaded "Camp 17 Hour Home Base" and did an amazing job keeping the day organized for us. He had people meet us coming out of the water to do the first portion of our bike ride. Others were ready to go for the 2nd half of the bike ride. Once we returned from the 8.5 hours of riding Tyler had burgers ready for us to eat and had people organized to take off on the first lap of the run. In the inbetween times Tyler had activities planned for families so everyone had a great day. Thank you to each and every person out there who offered a smile, food, encouragement, or themselves to us this day. Your support and comittment to teamwork made our day spectacular. And, on a side note.... it was Troy and Sonja's 7th anniversary! Happy Anniversary to them!

Going into the water at 5 in the morning was a pretty cool experience. We owe a thank you to Chatfield State Park for granting us a special permit to swim early. It was a risk for them to allow a group of swimmers to be out there early on a holiday when the park is busy with people doing many different activities. Laura was a rock star kayaker who paddled around the lake keeping an eye on everybody and taking pictures. The general consensus on the lesson learned in the pond this morning was that even when taking it easy we are moving pretty quickly. Our goal for the Iroman swim is to take it easy as to allow for more speed on the bike and the run, but not under-pacing ourselves to come out of the water too far behind. Mission accomplished.

The bike ride was the wild card of the day because the weather forecast was predicting rain. Our goal was to get to LookOut Mountain and turn around and get back for the 2nd group of riders to join us for the 2nd half of the ride. We meandered through Ken Caryl at a pretty easy pace and made it to Golden and decided we had taken it a little too easy to make it up LookOut and make it back to pick people up. Also the weather on top of the mountain looked a little ominous, so we decided to head back and pick up the pace a little bit. The second group joined us and we headed to Deer Creek and finished doing laps around the Chatfield area. Overall we hit approximately 100 miles and felt we could have gone a little bit faster without compromising the run. In hindsight, we would have planned the bike portion of the day a little bit differently...so next year there is a different plan in place. You may be already thinking in your head, "Next Year? Really?" YES!! But even better we are opening up the 17 hour training day to more athletes who are commited to this type of training to join the team for 2010 Ironman Wisconsin training. More information to follow later.

So, after a nice bike ride with the weather holding out perfectly for us we headed out to run 10+ mile laps around Chatfield. Sonja, Anthony, and Steve got 3 laps in while Andrea got 2 laps in. The only issue encountered on the run portion was Andrea getting some blisters that were pretty painful, but totally manageable. The first lap of the run the clouds let go of the rain they had been holding onto all day and believe it or not, it was pretty cool to be out running in the run. It didn't slow us down or affect us negatively in any way. The fact that everybody was running was pretty fantastic. The mental side of Ironman can really real its ugly head and wreak havoc on many people's experiences. One of the goals for the 17 hour group was to work on the mental aspect of training and racing with the extended distance theory. Running at Chatfield on the fourth of July was pretty awesome because there was a panoramic view of all the firework displays in the surrounding cities and mountains. It was too cool to watch the sun go down and run surrounded by firework displays. While we were all very tired at 10:00 at night we were not exhausted. We were ready to be finished but not unable to do things to get ourselves home. All in all, it was a perfect day that ended with huge smiles on everyone's faces!

Ironman is going to be difficult both mentally and physically. Racing for these distances is going to be a challenge, but we think we are going into the race well prepared and with a little bit of knowledge of some of the struggles we may encounter during the day. Going prepared puts luck on our side!

If you are looking to be a part of something remarkable and are commited to your triathlon passion we are opening up registration for the 17 hour training day for the 2009-2010 race season. One of the races we are targeting is Ironman Wisconsin.

OUR MISSION
To prepare passionate triathletes of all abilities with a deep athletic base by capitalizing on their commitment to excel in multisport through extended distance training, while fostering professional, charitable teamwork.

If you believe you you fit into this model please CLICK HERE to go to the Practical Coaching website to begin the application process.

WOW! We did it! July 4th the group began their swim at Chatfield State Park (under special permit) at 5am and finished running at 10pm surrounded by firework displays.

The 4 of us are getting together to have a meeting this evening to go over the experience because we all wanted to go home and go to bed!

We will write more after the meeting but wanted to let everyone know the day was a huge success and we want to say THANK YOU to everyone who came out and supported the day.

First and foremost, we are all here and we are all healthy! 2 more months to go with our training for Ironman Canada. The time we have spent training has given us all an appreciation for what we are accomplishing and learning. Some of the lessons have been physical, some mental, and some have been on how to organize and balance all of the pieces of life, work, family, and friends. The overall theme of the lessons this month are based on a statement: Commitment to Passion. Whether your passion is triathlon, for us an Ironman this year, or anything else the only way to succeed is to be committed to what you are doing. This passion is what creates the desire to go out and train for 9 or 10 hours at a time, come home eat and sleep, and head back out the next day to do it all again. Passion keeps the smile on your face when you are out there.

Next up on our agenda is our 17 hour training day on July 4th. The post prior to this has the invitation with all of the information for others to join in the day. Team PC crew member, Tyler, has been kind enough to arrange all of the details that pertain to our home base campsites in Chatfield State Park. There will be food and festivities located at the campsite for friends and family, kids too, and there are several opportunities for you to join in to bike and run and support the day. If you are around on the 4th of July we would love to see you!

After the 17 hour training day we have our 225 mile bike ride to accomplish as our final "double the distance in training" event. We will be headed to Kansas, well almost Kansas for this final long ride the beginning of August.

Another big part of the meeting this month was putting together an outline for opening the 17 hour training day opportunity up to more athletes. If you are committed to your passion for triathlon and would like to join the 17 hour group stay tuned for all of the details to apply for the extended distance group in August and start training in October of 2009.

We would like to thank everyone who has supported us along on this journey, family and friends. This support has been an integral part of our success and we appreciate you all!

May has flown by! Even though the group did not spend a lot of time together this month the time has still gone by quickly. All the team members rode the double epic loop since our last meeting. Anthony posted a personal best in the Lincoln Half Marathon. Steve hit Florida 70.3 and had a good race with some opportunities. Sonja ran a trail marathon outside of Grand Junction and dealt with no so perfect situations and came out the other side with some valuable lessons and a smile. And Andrea ran the Greenland 50K two days after the double epic loop and felt great except for a gnarly sunburn that threw her to the lions. Some important lessons learned this month:

1. Just like skiers have different wax for their skis for different conditions we could possibly need different nutritional choices available for different conditions or situations.
   
2. Be self sufficient even when there are aid stations. Being able to run past an aid station can save a lot of time. But being able to grab a couple extra things in an aid station and take them with you can be critical sometimes. Andrea has experienced more than once aid stations running out of items because she is behind the main pack, but on loop courses you have more athletes on the course at the same time and aid stations can run out of items early on. If you can grab a couple of things to take with you it might just save you in the end! Also, Sonja learned that just because a race advertises they are going to have certain things at their aid stations does not guarantee they will have those items. Being self sufficient can be the difference of having water only for a 4.5 hour workout or having everything you need.
3. When you are promoting yourself you are always in the spot light. Even when you forget you are. We are ambassadors for our sport and we need to always behave in a way that represents our sport and ourselves in the best light possible. Disappointment happens and that is alright, but we have chosen to put ourselves in the spotlight so we are going to remember to take challenges and face them with a sense of adventure and get the smile back on our face and remember how lucky we truly are. The ultimate goal is not to win, but to be the best we can be on any particular day and to take what is thrown at us in stride. Winning is a by-product of being our best, the real reward is when we grow and learn and become better human beings.
   

It will be nice coming back together in June for some key training events and for some future planning of our 17 hour training day. After sharing our personal stories from the month we put our heads together to come up with some resources and ideas for next month’s training goals.

The meeting started at 8pm after the attempted 9k swim. We got going in the pond right at 4:30 to try to get as much time in the water as we could to get as close to 9000 meters as possible. Steve and Anthony got 4 laps in (7200), Sonja got 3 (5400) laps in, and Andrea had to leave an hour before the rest but was able to get a fast, solid 2 laps (3600) in! Everyone did great and was happy with the result of the swim. Andrea and Sonja are a little short on their distances swam so the two are going to have to do a little make up work to get an 8000 in. With a late start we decided to stay focused and keep it short and simple so we could all get to bed! In a nutshell, here is what we came up with for June:

June Itinerary:

• Kansas 70.3
• Loveland Lake to Lake
• Planning and riding a bike course to simulate Canada course
• Start spending lots of time in the aero position on the bike
• More Planning for the 17 hour training day in July

Stay tuned for our June report, as it will have our results from racing Kansas 70.3 and our results from Loveland Lake to Lake 6 days after Kansas. We will also have everything together for our grand finale-training event… the 17 hour training day. Thank you to all of our sponsors and supporters. Our successes are not only ours but yours as well.

WOW! We are FOUR MONTHS out from Ironman Canada! It is pretty unbelievable how much we have grown in the past five months. Each of us has learned more about ourselves and each of us has gained a level of physical fitness above where we have ever been. The things we are accomplishing are pretty unbelievable to us. Sitting here one week post Grand Canyon run talking about the next distance training day without feeling compromised is pretty crazy. We all feel at least 85% recovered from the past week's training and racing and feel ready to hit the next long distance training session.

The plan is to bike Epic two times. Andrea will leave at 3am and park Zizou at the start of the loop with a cooler with food and drink refills for the 2nd lap. Sonja, Anthony and Steve will leave from the house at 5am. The group is excited to get out on the bike and see what we are capable of after the previous week's activities. We are all impressed that we are excited about doing a 120-130 mile bike ride after our Grand Canyon adventure and that none of us feels hesitant or worried about the day in terms of feeling recovered or compromised. The loop is 67.4 miles long, give or take depending on where you start, and has 8029 feet of climbing. I pretty much stink at math, but I believe this makes us riding 134.8 miles and climbing 16,058 feet. TOO COOL!! (A map is included in the post if you want to check it out and give it a go sometime.) The ride is pretty cool and definitely challenging. The biggest challenge, we think, is going to be getting all the way down the mountain and turning around to do it all again. It will be a wild ride!


After discussing food and drink preparations for the ride we started discussing the fact that some might be viewing us as ultra runners, including ourselves, because of all of the long distance running we have been doing. However, we are not ultra runners or ultra athletes. We are just a group of triathletes getting ready for an Ironman race by doing "longer than Ironman distance" training events. Triathlon is our goal and passion. You might not believe this, but olympic distance races are our focus this year! In fact, USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships in Tuscaloosa Alabama is our KEY RACE this year. It is 8 days before Canada. And for Sonja and Anthony, ITU Age Group World Championships in Australia is a second KEY RACE 2 weeks after Canada. One of the questions we had at the beginning of this experiment was: "Can age group triathletes train long and race back to back? Can we maintain quality speed to be competitive in both shorter and longer distance races?" Professional athletes do this type of training all the time. In fact, Chris McDonald raced Ironman Louisville placing 2nd in 2008 and turned around and raced Ironman Wisconsin 1 week later and won it! One week. Although many told us we were crazy and that we would get injured and burnout we wanted to press forward and answer the question for ourselves.

After the past weekend at Rage in the Sage and turning around and running 47.8 miles in the Grand Canyon and being ready to do a 130 mile bike ride we are more convinced than ever that age group athletes are capable of doing this type of training, if it is done correctly. Ironically, at Rage in the Sage a Triathlete magazine (March 2009) was in the goody bag and one of the front page stories is "How to Over Train Effectively". I thought, how ironic, they are actually going to support what we are doing even though they are using the wrong term for it. In my opinion, this type of language is what gives the type of training we are doing a bad reputation. You cannot ever overtrain effectively, ever. The definition of overtraining is: "A decline in athletic performance caused by subjecting the body to more training stress than it can properly adapt to in a given period of time." The author of the article chose to use the term overtrain to catch your attention and very quickly changes the term overtraining to overreaching in the article, which is something you can do effectively. We are calling what we are doing extended distance training. Our experiment is designed to track our progress, results, and recovery with the goal of creating a base so huge that it not only changes our fitness level but that it changes our perception on our athletic ability. That is happening.

The craziest thing about this is that it is not our results at the previous race that supports our theory. It is our individual responses to this training. Each of us reports feeling stronger, faster, and capable of giving more when we previously would not have. Each of us is excited about the next opportunity to grow as an athlete. We have learned in extended distance training the training isn't the only thing that makes us better athletes. It is the rest days, the nutrition, the sleep, and all of the aspects of recovery that are just as important as the actual training events. When we feel compromised we change our goals for the day or take a rest day. We are paying attention to our moods and our other interests in an attempt to prevent staleness and burnout.

The month of May has us going our separate ways as we all have different commitments and aren't able to schedule too much time together. Anthony will race a half marathon in Lincoln Nebraska, Steve will head to Florida for 70.3 Florida, Andrea will run the Greenland 50K, and Sonja will race a trail marathon and participate in the Western States 100 training camp in California. Our 9000 meter swim got rescheduled for the 20th. We will not have to do this in the pool.....oh yippee! No counting laps! No flip turns, well maybe a couple at the shore just to be silly, and no chlorine!! We will be swimming 5 laps in the Gravel Pond. It will be very exciting to be in the open water. One thing I think we will have to be aware of is the temperature of the pond and getting cold.

All in all our performances, energy, desire, and lack of injury support we are headed in the right direction. We all feel incredibly fit and have learned about our nutritional and recovery needs the past 5 months. Our next race as a group is Kansas 70.3 on June 14th.

AW

The double crossing of the Grand Canyon was next on the 17 hour training day agenda. 2 days after racing Rage in the Sage the group took its journey through the incredible canyon. Setting our eyes on the canyon knowing we were going to run the entire canyon and come back again left us all in awe. It really is quite the sight to see.... but imagine seeing this and knowing you are going to run it! And not just once, but twice!


Sonja did a remarkable job researching information for the run. Countless hours were spent putting together the information to make this training day possible. Her attention to detail left everyone feeling prepared and gave us all the feeling that we were on an adventure. The Tuesday before we left she headed up a group meeting to give out all of the details and the map with the route and water stops. Steve and I put together a recovery plan for post Rage race and a post Grand Canyon run. Recovery was critical for going into the training run.

This was a totally self supported training day. There was no one to meet us and give us our rations. Everything had to be carried in and carried out. We decided on start times: Andrea 1am, Sonja (with Dave Newcomer) 3:30am, and Anthony and Steve would start at 4am. The staggered start was implemented in hopes that we would all finish running up the South Rim together.

The big morning had arrived! Our first footsteps into the canyon were in the dark of the night! Everyone of us felt pretty ready for the day. The NormaTec sessions and the attention to post race recovery helped us go into the day feeling positive. Our experiences getting ready for Canada have taught us so much. One of the most important things we have learned is to not go into a deficit during an event but also to spend as much time preparing for recovery as we do for the event itself. We felt our preparations for the day were solid and headed into the canyon feeling confident, but also aware of what we were attempting. There are lots of people who attempt a double crossing of the canyon and fail, and we were attempting it 2 days after a race. We just needed to be smart and make good decisions. We all agreed that if at any point we had doubts or felt we were in trouble that we would turn around and that making good decisions was just as important as finishing the day.

All of our experiences were different in the canyon. All four of us (and our friend Keith who is also getting ready for Canada) finished the entire double crossing of the canyon. It was totally cool and we each earned a life tile this day. Each of us came out with a different perspective and different things learned. Some of us hurt more than others, but we all finished! As a group we have decided we came out a little more compromised than we went in, we all experienced muscle soreness, but none of us is injured in any way. Complete success!

Recovery post Grand Canyon run was a little less than optimal. Anthony drove back to Vegas, got 2 hours sleep in a hotel, got on a plane, landed in Denver and went straight to work! Sonja, Andrea and Steve all made the drive back to Denver. It was pretty painful, but we made it! Sonja ran 10 miles and Andrea ran 9 miles 3 days post G.C. The boys took a little more time off as they were both a touch bit more compromised than Sonja and Andrea. All in all, everyone came back within a week and we are on to the next epic adventure.

Happy Training
AW