In September Rob and I attended this session to complete our required CEUs for maintaining our USA Triathlon coaching certification. We were excited to see and hear Bobby McGee again after meeting him last year during the Long Course Racing and Training clinic, also at the OTC. Below are some of the notes I took in the session. This session was addressed at various times to the challenges of both long course and shorter distance racing.
The first session covered run theory. The goals was to teach coaches how to take an athlete from 'intake to racing', to take any athlete and teach them to run off the bike. Swimmers - have a huge engine and may be able to run very fast, but they break easily. Cyclists are hard to teach to run because of the amount of time they spend inclined forward. For a runner, the coach must determine what is the minimum run training needed to maintain run fitness, and ask 'can I improve this person's run off the bike or should I merely make them a better runner?' If an athlete experiences a 15' degradation from a sand-alone marathon time to an IM marathon, s/he just needs to be a better runner. If more, then learn to run better off the bike (e.g., manage bike pacing better so as not to blow up).
**Bobby mentioned that elite men and women run differently off the bike, partly due to the difference in years in the sport. Men run strategically; women run 'defensively' - get out ahead on the bike and hold on for the run. These differences should level out as women's time in the sport increases. Not sure how to apply this nugget to age group athletes.**
Bobby stated that IM athletes need to become more athletic, more versatile, more fast-twitch.
In warmer weather, the best mechanics will win; therefore, stride rate is more predictive of good performance than heart rate.
Coaches must design training plans based on physiological traits. Bigger, stronger athletes may not be able to run 60 mpw, so will have to get more out of 45.
Run training progression must be much more gradual than swimming or cycling. Swimming and cycling workouts are frequently all out (ride as hard as you can every day till the watts drop, then rest; repeat; swimmers can work to exhaustion every day). With running, something has to give. Some sessions may take as much as 5 days for recovery, especially dependent upon runner's mechanics.
For triathletes, assess the athlete's event ability hierarchy: how much is the pool workout taking from the athlete:
- nutritionally
- emotionally
- in recovery time
For competitive swimmers, the coach may need to reduce overall swim volume, and use swim meets to stay competitive. Same can be true for runners; instead of repeating a prolonged base training period year after year with experienced runners, use a short, intense race period before beginning interval training in each seasonal macrocycle to help build speed for long race preparations. Use 'volume of quality' measure, meaning the most the athlete can do at race intensity - and still recover.
May need to change an athlete's run mechanics to facilitate this load. Ask the question, are you making the athlete faster or protecting them more from injury? If mechanics changes, the peripheral system (mitochondria, capillarization, etc.) must regroup. More in the next post.
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