The long turbo session

With the weather being up or down. There are times when you don’t want to ride outside due to the rain, cold or even restricted by time. If you chose to opt out of that weekly long ride you will be pausing your progress and the stronger the base developed during the winter months then the higher you will be able to push your threshold come the season.

Here are a couple of simple ways to break down that long turbo session:

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What if it goes wrong?

Lucy Owen asked the question of What do we do if something goes wrong?

Firstly, if the triathlon / cycling gods wish to test you then they will test you. It’s not worth stressing about as at times there’s nothing we can do for factors outside our control. BUT what can control is your mind set and then strategy to get back into the game.

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Wheels

Calvin Woods posed today’s coaches corner question. He wanted to know the difference between clincher & tubular wheels.

What are the different types of wheels?
There are four different types of wheel now on the market, they are clinchers (either carbon rim or traditional aluminium), then you have tubular wheels and a more recent addition in the tubeless clincher.

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Running

Lara asked today’s Coaches Corner question as she wanted to know about how to run efficiently and the terminology that goes with it

Over striding: look many running over stride resulting in the heel striking the floor first – this is a breaking action causing you to slow down and also aid to the increase chances of injury as a result. You should think about running in a phone box. This will stop you from over striding.

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Recovery & Racing

Hannah has posed today’s Coaches Corner question. She wanted to know about training & racing and how much rest & when.

Why rest?
Rest allows the body to repair muscle cells that have been stressed during exercise. The body needs time to adapt to the demands placed upon it during prolonged periods of training. If the body is not given regular periods of reduced intensity, then it will become fatigued and weak. This will then naturally effect the body’s ability to train and perform.

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Training / Racing & illness

Today’s Coaches Corner question has been asked by Simon Tacx as well as couple of other members this week. Simon wanted to more about training or racing with illness.

Firstly I am not a doctor so all the information below is based on personal opinion and
experience.

Symptoms
Your body will give you subtle hints, so ask fatigue, tiredness, loss of appetite, poor sleep quality, temperature as well as the classic signs of coughing, running noise etc. Also looks to other factors during your training. Is your normal working heart rate higher than normal, are you finding that you aren’t as powerful, strong etc. These are key signs saying that your body is stress out due to illness or over training with insufficient rest. You might be eating or drinking more as the body will be using key energy stores to fit the illness or infection.

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Correct number of sessions

Morning Andre asked today’s Coaches Corner question which was What are the correct number of session per discipline per week?

One of the hardest things in triathlon is to get the correct balance of sessions across the course of the week. Single discipline sports such as running or cycling don’t have this as a major concern – squeezing in the training, but with three sports init one this can be the case.

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What is VO2 Max

Lara just asked a great question so I’ve answered it – I’m in the mood today

What is VO2 Max and does it relate to watts?

VO2 Max is simple. Nothing directly to do with watts. It’s all to do with the amount of oxygen you can process during exercise. This is refereed to as VO2 Max

V = Volume & O2 being oxygen. This is expressed in litres per minute.

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