About a week ago I attended The USAT Coaches Conference on the Art and Science of triathlon in Colorado Springs. This is the second one they have done. Apparently they want to do this every two years or so. I am always personally interested in going for a couple of reasons. One because I like to hear the experiences some other coaches have but second because you get Continuing Education Credits (CEU) towards the renewing of my coaching license. The final reason I like to go is because for the first two conferences the organizers had invited Mark Allen to speak. The first one they had two years ago seemed to concentrate on famous endurance training researchers. This was good if you were a scientist but at some point the researchers lecturing lost about every one listening. The topics were too complex to follow. That was not a problem at this second conference. For the most part I was able to understand most speakers. I did get a little bored a couple of times as each speaker started with the explanation of what is most important for endurance athletes. That is to train long and steady. Develop aerobic endurance. Does that sound familiar? Once each speaker got to the knots and bolts of coaching and training is when each lecture got interesting.
Here is a little summary for each speaker.
Joe Vigil Ph.D. - Joe is a famous running coach and he is famous for coaching elite distance runners. If I am not mistaken he coached Dena Drossin to a medal in the marathon in Athens. He totally emphasized running a lot miles per week to be at the top level. Apparently a 19 year old Kenyan distance runner is already putting 100 miles per week at that age. This is something that not many American runners at that age are doing. That puts us as a country at a huge disadvantage in terms of aerobic endurance and running economy.
Larry Armstrong Ph.D. – Larry is a researcher and an expert in hydration and nutrition. He used results from many studies. I was not really impressed as his studies were not done with athletes in many cases. He quoted many soldier studies and studies of folks walking and not exercising at a high level. He did have some interesting numbers in terms of how much we can drink. He said that if you are a big sweater you may not be able to keep up with the sweat loss and you can potentially lose too much body weight. He also mentioned that caffeine although it can make you pee it does not really affect your hydration levels at the cellular level.
Another interesting quote was that although we know that cramping is associated with sodium and potassium loss we are not quite sure of how and why. Cramping is for the most part a big mystery with no one solution for all.
Todor Bompa Ph.D. – This gentleman was entertaining. His talk was more practical. He totally emphasized many of MarkAllenOnline training philosophies. One is that you will not be able to go fast if you are not strong. Thus you need to develop strength. He also emphasized aerobic development. Even for the 1500 meters at the track 84% of the energy needed for it comes from our aerobic endurance. Imagine the percentage for a triathlon. He talked about how speed training for a long endurance event can be a waste of time as it produces too much stress and the gains are not significant. In the end he told us to stay away from gimmicks. There are too many of them today. He said he does not get invited to many conferences because some conference sponsors who market training gimmicks do not want to hear him putting them down.
Hunter Allen – Hunter is an expert in power training. He talked about how we can now track performance in every ride and every race using the power meter. Hunter has analyzed hundreds of power data files and has developed his own zones and theories as to how to train and race using the power meter. Some of it was very interesting and had some good merit, but not really useful to me. I can see how if I trained a professional cyclist and could spend hours every day on him at the Olympic training center, then I may be able to have some conclusions and help the athlete. But as a triathlete coach I can not make generalization about this analysis without taking the run and swim components for which I have no equivalent power numbers. Another thing that I did not like was this theory that since going downhill you could not generate enough watts you all of a sudden had spare watts to put out on the way up and as such we should push it up the hills. That is such a cyclist mentality. In triathlon this strategy will have you blowing up very early on the run. Here is another thing he never mentioned. He never mentioned how to account for climate when racing with power. I know of an athlete who trained with power and was going to race at 230 watts average for the bike of the Ironman. His power data from training showed him this was not going to be trouble. Well he got out there on race day and it was super hot, now he was suffering and only putting out 170 watts. What was he going to do now? His race was mentally destroyed. I think that power data is good but you have to know what to do with it and I have not seen a good approach to be used for triathlon other than for testing and tracking progress.
Jack Daniels Ph.D. – Jack is a very famous coach. He told many stories. I may be wrong but I think I read many of his stuff in runner’s world. His lecture was really a primer in endurance training. Some basic principles most coaches should know. I was surprised to hear from him that you do not lose speed by training at altitude. I do not agree with that one. He did say that you do not have to train at altitude to be world class. I agree with that and many people have proven that.
Ernest Maglischo Ph.D. – Ernest is a famous Division II swim coach and won many titles. I was definitely not impressed with his lecture. Being a famous college coach at division II means you can recruit well. I should know this one. My college coach stunk. It was his assistant that was the good coach. The head coach needs to be a great recruiter to keep his job. College coaches do not make swimmers. By the time many swimmers reach college they can already be world champions. As a coach you just have to get them to come to the school. He did have one great word of advice. If you do triathlons stay away from 50’s and 100’s. Many masters coaches do way too many of these. You should try to have a main set of at least 20 minutes where you maintain a good heart rate and not let it drop with too many long stops or too many short of swims.
Mark Verstegen – This guy talked about muscular balance, flexibility and stability of the core. He had some great demonstrations which I wish he had spent more time on. I think he was more interested in selling his book and having us bring people to his gyms than telling us anything of value. I could not get over his salesmanship. You know that little muscular guy with long hair that does infomercials for exercise equipment. This guy reminded me of him a little. Granted if having a top best selling book is the measure of greatness this guy has that. I guess I have to go buy his book to learn about his methods.
Dr. Max Testa – Max talked about performance testing and he introduced some new zones for training. He is very knowledgeable. He had some great information and I spoke with him after the lecture. The problem with all these zones and thresholds is that there is so many different definitions and names. I tried to match our zones with his and I think I came close. I have to follow up via email.
Jackie Fairweather (Gallagher) – Jackie was a world triathlon champion and I saw her race in Boulder many years ago. She won by miles and her performance here in Boulder was stunning. She gave stories and talked about what she is doing in Australia with her new job with the federation over there. I lost my focus on the lecture as I could not find it useful to me. Perhaps if I was an administrator at USAT then I could take advantage of her stories.
Andy Ording – Andy is the owner or president of Zipp. His lecture was really interesting. He talked about material like carbon. He also talked about how carbon works and how to put it together into wheels. His style was easy to follow and did not use extremely technical terms. He later talked about wheels. A disk is king unless it is extremely windy and you are in danger of getting blown away. He also said the deeper the dish the better. Finally he mentioned how dimples in a dish wheel makes the wheel more aero just like it helps a golf ball go faster.
Mark Allen – Mark talked twice and participated in a champions round table. The latter was more fun and nothing memorable. His lecture was about things you do not learn in the lab. How often what looks like it works in the lab or even in training does not work on race day. One big example of this is hydration and nutrition. As I mentioned earlier, just because soldiers that ate candy bars survived a desert crossing better than those that ate fig bars. It does not mean that Ironman athletes need to take candy bars. Some scientist once told Mark that based on his research it was impossible to run a 2:40 marathon in Kona because of the fatigue and climate conditions. That went out the window when Mark and Dave did it. Mark says that labs do not take into account things like the mind. A much underutilized force. Also the lab is a calm setting. A race like the Ironman is actually full of many stress factors. If applause is a sign of an impressive talk Mark won this contest at his dinner keynote talk where he presented video and walked the audience through his race where he came back from a 13 minute deficit to win his 6th World Ironman title. He talked about how he had to fight his brain every time it got full of negativity. Many times he had given up hope of catching the leader but once he managed to stop thinking and concentrate in the moment he starting getting stronger. When Mark ended the talk the entire room stud up and applauded. He walked back to his chair and had to give a curtain call. I have seen this presentation before and I even got emotional during the video as Mark kissed his son Matts at the finish line. I guess it reminded me of my son Camilo.
Overall I think it was an impressive lecture. I would not say the lecture Conference was practical but rather informative. It would be for each attendee to take home pieces and see how to integrate it with their everyday coaching and training.