Life is basically revolving around the following at the present:

• Training
• Going to Core Class at w/ Darwin Evolution Fitness (amazing)
• Eating
• Sleeping
• Working remotely a few hours/day with my office in Chicago
• Skyping w/ Kristi
• Watching the series Homeland with my foster parent, Dana Rucker

54 days until Ironman Melbourne… I am pretty happy with my run and cycling fitness, however, my swim continues to plague me. It seems like I take 2 steps forward then 1.9 steps backward.  I have some pretty bad shoulder impingement going on at the present, however, Darwin from Evolution Fitness and PT is helping me rehab and restructure my body.

Aside from all of the soft tissue work, stretching, and strengthening Darwin has been helping with, one of the most helpful tactics we’ve used to address the shoulder issue is Myotrac. The Myotrac device is a simple tool that registers neuromuscular activation in a specific muscle then converts the signal into a beeping sound.  Essentially, if you know you are deficient in a recruiting a specific muscle (in my case my middle and lower trapezius), I can attach an electrode to that part of the muscle belly and when I engage the muscle it beeps according to how strongly I engage the muscle. The stronger it is engaged, the faster the beeping.  My shoulders, like a lot of people, are pulled forward and up by tight pecs and upper trapezius and this makes shoulder impingement more likely. I wear the Myotrac while doing our bi-weekly core classes and during PT workouts and the “beeping feedback” allows to have more tactile feedback as to what is going on in my body.  Now when I am running, riding, swimming, or laying in bed I can flex my lower trapezius, bring my shoulders down and back and almost hear the beeping in my head.

That’s the news from Lake Wobegon. Where all the runners are strong, the cyclists are good looking, and the swimmers are all above average.

When it comes to  training meccas in the USA for the sport of triathlon, there is a short list people usually think of: San Diego, Tuscon, Boulder, and Kona. That’s about it. It seems that 75% of American professional triathletes spend either all, or some, of their time in these locations.

Los Angeles isn’t a location most knowledgeable triathletes would usually associate with world class training. Well, in the words of Biggie Smalls “well if you don’t know, now you know…..” LA is legit.

I’ve had the opportunity to make several multi-week trips to LA to train with the Siri Lindley elite squad based out of Santa Monica. While LA does have a lot of traffic, a lot of noise, and a lot of ….. well, everything.  The metro area also has a lot of outstanding training roads and trails that hide in plain site. For instance, the Santa Monica Mountains (see the pic below).

I am not sure if there is another place in the world that has so many categorized climbs in such a small area as the Santa Monica Mountains. Check out this link for a comprehensive list of climbs: Los Angeles cycling climb database

The above picture was taken during the descent of the Piuma climb. Can you see the ocean in the background…. AMAZING!

When I was kid, everything could kill you; and my father never hesitated to remind me of this fact. If I was playing with small firecrackers, my father would say “I remember my friend Sam Sachs lite some firecrackers in his house and he blew up. They never even found a piece of the kid…”

If I was sledding on the small 5ft hill in front of our house in Michigan, my father would say ” I remember my friend Neil Hearst who went sledding in our neighborhood only to get clothe-lined by a wire supporting a telephone pole. His head came straight off. Pop! Just like that”

Growing up in this environment led my sisters and I to have somewhat of what you might call a  complex.  It is for this reason, I have certain qualms about traveling to Noosa, Australia for a 2-month training camp with my squad under the tutelage of Siri Lindley. Why qualms? Well, If you Google the phrase “things than can,” Google automatically pops up search phrase “Things that can…. KILL YOU IN AUSTRALIA.”

Great, so death is all but guaranteed… Well, if I die, I bequeath my baseball collection to my cousin Mikey…

In the meantime, I still have a few weeks to get my last will and testament in order and also whip my body into shape for what is to be a hellacious amount of training.

Here is the Top-10 list for a fate I hope to avoid Down Under…

1. Don’t get killed by a shark
2. Don’t get killed by a box jellyfish
3. Don’t get killed by a poisonous snake
4. Don’t get killed by Siri Lindley swim workouts
5. Don’t get killed by crocodile
6. Don’t get killed by Budaberg Rum (bad experience in college)
7. Don’t get killed riding my bike the wrong direction on the road
8. Don’t get killed by a funnel web spider
9. Don’t get killed in the surf and disappear. In 1967, the acting Prime Minister of Australia, Harold Hold, dove into the surf off Port Phillip Bay never to be seen again. Just imagine if this happened to Barack Obama while on one of his famous vacations to Hawaii…
10. Don’t get killed by a frickin’ bird. I am serious about this. The Cassowary bird will F*** you up! But don’t take my word for it, check out this video. Pay attention that the naturalists that when interviewed said they’d rather tend to the crocodiles than the Cassowary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA58sS3x2Oo

I’ve heard of people crying in their goggles, but I usually just go cross eyed!

First week back to training camp in Santa Monica and Siri is whipping me into shape. I am a few weeks behind everyone in volume, so I need to catch up quickly! Swimming has been my achilles heel the past few years so a big swim block is just what I need to kick start my 2013 season. IM Melbourne, here I come!

A few years ago a friend of mine went on what was supposed to be a routine weekend rock climbing trip in Oregon.  David, my friend, and his girlfriend were experienced climbers, however, they were new to the area would be climbing in.  In order to get a sense and feel for the area, they decided to start their trip with some easy sport climbing – a style that utilizes permanent bolts installed on a route so the climber can simply click in their quick-draw carabiners and rope as they ascend opposed to “traditional or trad climbing” where the climber carries and places their own gear.  Sport climbing is supposed to be easier than trad climbing as the climber can focus more on climbing rather placing their protective gear.

David and his girlfriend used their topographic maps and guidebooks to hike to the start of their first route and quickly surveyed the single pitch climb of a little more than 90ft.  The climb was rated as a 5.8 which is exactly what David’s comfort level was for lead climbing.  From the ground, the climb seemed to fit the guidebooks description and off David went climbing as his girlfriend belayed.

David flowed through the first several bolt placements and was quickly 25ft off the ground. As he looked for the next bolt placement he didn’t readily see it so he climbed higher, then higher, then even higher.  Quickly David began to panic as he realized that he was approaching the critical point at which if he climbed any higher past his last bolt placement, he would fall past his last bolt and “deck out,” or hit the ground! David made the decision that he probably missed the last bolt, or it had been dislodged, and would try to climb up to the next bolt.

David looked straight up to see a overhanging shelf of rock, which he assumed would have a bolt placement directly underneath it.  He made a few moves to get up to the overhang and to his horror couldn’t find the bolt!  David’s hands began to sweat and he leaned into the rock and jammed his fist in the tiny crack under the overhang.  ”Just breath,” he thought. “Relax, Relax, Relax.” The bolt wasn’t there. He was 50ft off the ground now. If he fell, he would die.

David called out to his nervous girlfriend who was realizing the severity of the situation herself.  As she panicked, she pulled all the slack out of the rope nearly pulling David from his hold.  He shrieked as he twisted his clenched fist in the crack securing is hold.

With his feet smeared on the rock, David’s calves began to cramp as he spent minute after minute taking inventory in situation.  His hands, with knuckles now bleeding and forearms filling with lactic acid added to the urgency of the situation.  Down climbing was not an option, David thought, as doing so would require climbing backward without being able to clearly see your holds.  With the chance of falling and splatting in front of his girlfriend being too high, David only had one option – UP!

Nearly an hour went by as David tried to assess the overhang above him, blindly feeling for the next handhold above the overhang with an outstretched hand.  Several times David would try to put his weight on the next blind hold above the overhang only to dive back to the security of the wide crack below the overhang.

Somehow, someway, David was able to find the strength and courage to climb over the top of the 90ft route, unclip from his rope and and down climb back to his extremely relieved girlfriend.  Exhausted, David collapsed and while laying on the ground grabbed their guidebook trying to find out what he might have missed on the route. As it turned out, they were on the COMPLETELY WRONG ROUTE! They were one section over on a different route that was a SPORT to TRAD route which meant there were pre-placed permanent bolts for the first half of the climb, but it transitioned halfway to where you have to place your own gear.  Not only that, but the route was rated as a 5.11b, not a 5.8! That’s an incredible 6 grades higher than David could comfortably climb, and he did it in a situation where if he fell he would surely die.

David’s story is remarkable and thinking more about his adventure leads me to think there are a few lessons to be learned from his experience.

1. It’s amazing you can achieve when you have no choice.  
2. Sometimes your limits are wildly beyond what you might think they are.

As I start another season in the sport of triathlon, I’d like to think that perhaps my true abilities and talents lie beyond where I traditionally asses them in my mind.  I think many times we establish a tare for ourselves in which just as you tare a scale, you tare yourself in relation to your workouts, your peers, and your competitors.  Rather than settling into the same position in my mind of where I belong in my sport, I am going to challenge myself in 2013 to try to find my true physical and mental limits. And if failure is not an option and i have nowhere to go but up, perhaps I might just blow my mind….

So how does a pro triathlete qualify for Kona, the Ironman World Championships? It’s tough! Unlike age-groupers/amateurs that can qualify by placing well in their age group and getting a coveted “Kona Slot,” pro qualification is a much more tedious process. Until a few years ago, pros qualified much in the same way age-groupers did. If you did well in an Ironman-branded race (e.g. top 3), you would automatically punch your ticket to the World Championships. Recently, the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) implemented a Kona Points Ranking (KPR) system that takes only the top 50 men ranked in the world and only the top 30 women. While on the face of it, it might seem like an innocent change, but there are some business strategy/greedy motives that drove the KPR system into existance.

The WTC is a for-profit entity. It is owned by a private equity company. Like any business the WTC has competition. The WTC’s competition is pretty much every race that is not “Ironman-branded.” Races put on by Rev3, Challenge, HITS, and your local race organizer all take a bite out a finite piece of the triathlon market pie. With the triathlon market growing at a rate of almost 18% year over year, every bite out of their pie represents a significant loss of brand equity and profit by the WTC. Races that offer prize money attract professional athletes that are vying to eek out a living competing in a sport they love.

The WTC cleverly realized that KONA is the key race that most sponsors and athletes want to compete in as it garners the most amount of attraction from the media and public. In order to ensure that professional triathletes were still showing up for their Ironman-branded races, the WTC implemented the KPR points qualification to ensure that athletes HAD to race their races if that wanted to have a spot in the “big dance” in Hawaii. It was a smart strategy move, a business move. Just when the competition is started to squeeze in uncomfortably into the WTC’s key segment, they reacted by playing the biggest chip they had – KONA. Just like the Empire’s “Death Star” in Star Wars, the WTC is using their biggest tool in their shed to dominate the Universe

Like some other pros, I have fallen for the WTC’s ploy hook, line, and sinker. I want to race Kona in 2013 and will need a monumental amount of racing and KPR points to be able to have a shot at competing.

I haven’t run this by coach Siri yet, however, this looks to be a general outlook for the 2013 racing season. While I would prefer to only race 1-2 full distance Ironman races/year, in order to qualify for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, a pro on the “bubble” of selection must race a minimum of 5 Full-Ironman races to be able to have a chance at selection. Only the top 50 ranked Ironman triathletes in the world achieve a spot on the starting line in Kona.

The KPR allows for your top 5 Ironman results to count towards your qualification. Not all Ironman events are created equal in allotting KPR points. The Ironman KPR points range from 1000-6000 points depending on the race (see the point breakdown below). The more points the better. Whereas winning Ironman Canada in 2012 only got you 1000 KPR points, placing 13th at the European Championships in Frankfurt netted you the same tally.

What is also worth noting, is that the WTC can flex their will on would be competitors by increasing or decreasing the amount of points allotted at different races. They do the same thing with Kona slots and amateurs. They can use ecomonic incentives to motivate potential racers to compete in different races. For instance, say Ironman Tremblant is a new race and trying to establish itself as a marquee race in Canada. If the race was expected to struggle for participants, the WTC could significantly increase the number of Kona slots and KPR points to elicit more sign-ups.

Unfortunately, the days of racing 1-2 Ironman races/year in top A+ form are long gone. Where as Marc Allen could do Ironman France, then go to Kona, you’re going to have great champions of the sport chasing all over the world for KPR points. Ultimately, such high frequency racing could have a profoundly negative impact the the prospective career duration of pros and the quality of performance could significantly decline….

The force is strong with this one….- KT

The running fad known as minimalism is by no means a new concept. For humans, minimalism WAS the concept before the advent of the modern running shoe. For thousands of years minimalism worked. Why? Because humans were pretty dang active creatures that spent their entire lives building up strong feet, joints, muscles, and ligaments. Humans could tolerate barefoot or minimal footwear such as leather/thatched sandles because they had spent their entire lives building up a tolerance to it. The state of nature for humans back then was as Thomas Hobbes noted, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Well times have changed. Rather than living “brutish and short” lives, humans are now living extremely luxurious and long lives – compared to our brethren of even just a few hundred years ago. We now live most our lives in relative sophistication. Rather than spending most of the day walking, farming, hunting, and gathering, we spend our most of our lives sitting in office chairs, cars, or on the sofa in front of the television. Us humans have been getting soft.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably an active athlete and might be thinking to yourself “Hey, I’m an athlete! I’m not soft. Grrrrrrr…I work out and stuff” But I don’t care how many CrossFit classes you take or how you might be on a new paleo/caveman diet kick, you are still extremely soft compared to the humans of thousands of years ago; and so am I. And there is nothing wrong with that. What I mean is that I’d much rather sit on the couch and watch Jerry Springer than get chased around sub-Saharan Africa by a saber-toothed tiger. Wouldn’t you? The choice between lazy comfort or certain painful death isn’t a tough call. But at the same time, I’d much rather go out running in the beautiful mountains behind my house than watch Jerry Springer inside cooped up on the couch.

So there is the rub; I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want to have my nice, modern, comfortable life, but still enjoy the primal and rewarding bliss of being able to run. I am not alone.

Since 1990, the number of Americans completing road running races has grown 400%. The sport of triathlon in the US is growing even faster – at a rate of almost 20% Year-Over-Year. Since the big running boom in the US in the 1970′s one company has dominated the running shoe market more than any other. Nike obviously. The problem is that since Bill Bowerman (University of Oregon running coach and Nike co-founder) first ruined his wive’s waffle iron making his first polyurethane outsole – Nike’s formula hasn’t changed. Nike’s formula is essentially this: take an extremely durable and somewhat stiff polyurethane-type outsole and mount it to the bottom of a soft and cushiony EVA foam sole that is much thicker in the heel than the forefoot. The big heel-to-toe “drop” allows for a cushioned feel if you’re a modern human that doesn’t know how to run efficiently and over-strides with a heavy heel strike.

Just look how similar Nike’s current model-year Pegasus 29 compares to its original of more than 20 years ago. These has been more evolution in toothbrushes than Nike’s shoes since the 1970s:

Want to know something interesting? While Nike still has massive 31% US market share in running shoes, only one competitor in the Top-15 Men & Women at the 2012 Ironman World Championships ran in Nike’s – Axel Zeebroek. Only ONE in THIRTY athletes. In fact, in the same group of athletes, the average heel-to-toe drop of racing shoes was just over 7mm with a range of 3mm on the low-side (Newton Distance Racer) to 10mm on the high-side (Zoot Ultra TT and Pearl Izumi Streak II). The average heel-to-toe drop of top competitors at Kona is approaching what I consider to be the threshold “drop” of minimal or neutral drop footwear – a drop of 6mm.

Why is drop important?

I consider low to zero drop to be the most important aspect of modern running footwear, minimalist or otherwise. While hardcore minimalists want their footwear to have zero drop, little cushion so you can feel the road, and have no support so you strengthen the ligaments of your feet – I say THE HELL WITH THAT. I want to run and I want to run fast. That means I have to be able to train and train a lot. If I don’t have enough cushion, I’m not able to run on the jagged rocky trails behind my house without destroying my feet. I have no interest in barefoot running because it isn’t sustainable for serious training and isn’t worth the pain and suffering of stepping on rocks, thorns, critters in the desert.

Low to zero drop in running shoes gives you almost all of the benefits of “super minimal shoes” like the Vibram Five-Fingers, with none of the downsides. Low to zero drop does not mean that you don’t get cushion and can’t have a comfortable shoes. Just look at the line of shoes from Hoka One One. Hoka’s motto might as well be “if less is more, than a LOT MORE IS A HECK OF A LOT MORE!!” Hoka has turned the minimal world upside down by giving their shoes and incredible amount of cushion, while still having little amount of drop. When I first saw these shoes I thought they must be extremely clunky, but I was wrong. The low drop promotes an efficient stride by improving the ability to land with you’re feet under your center of mass. That is the key with low-drop footwear. A shoe with an extremely built up heel, like the one’s Nike is used to making, gives the user no tactile feedback when they are over-striding/ heel braking. In fact, a big heel drop rewards poor running form. Low drop footwear is similar to running barefoot in that you feel like you want your feet to land as close to under your center of mass as possible. Feel = Proprioception = Naturally better technique. This allows for a spring like action that the master of running efficiency, Bobby McGee describes brilliantly in this video: http://tinyurl.com/beuk7bx

If you’re a stanch barefoot/dogmatic minimalise consider that even Abebe Bikila preferred shoes. If you’re up on your running history you’ll know that Abebe Bikila was the Ethiopian runner that won the 1960 and 1964 Olympic marathon. In 1960, Bikila was given racing flats that were too small for him, so he opted to run barefoot. Four years later he would have the right shoes and run 4-minutes faster. The descendants of Ethiopian distance running Kenenisa Bekele, Haile Gebreselassie, and others all prefer shoes, even when running on soft trails and track.

While companies like Hoka, Altra, Inov8, and Newton are leading the cushioned minimalist trend, large companies like Saucony, Mizuno, Brooks, and others are starting to catch up. With market growth in the minimalist segment growing at a rate of over 150% according to Leisure Trends, are you behind the curve? If you haven’t tried some of the new cushioned minimalist shoes, if you have the means, I highly recommend you picking some up…

-KT

Shoes are my bag, BABY!