Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January 13, 2013

Win at all costs - is it worth it?

In light of all the Lance Armstrong talk that is going around, I couldn't help but think about the "win at all costs" philosophy that keeps our society driven to reach the standards of others. Certainly, we feel pressure to please others or meet expectations and then we feel like failures if we come up short. The pressure that we put on ourselves is often unbearable yet we do it all the time. Beyond competitive athletes, our society is built on standards. Living a certain way, acting a certain way, looking a certain way. The interesting thing is that we all live in our own community bubble so depending on who we surround ourselves with on a day-to-day basis, that is our standard. Live in a runner or triathlete bubble? Perhaps you are constantly comparing your body, training schedule, paces or performance to those who are better than you. Live in a wealthy bubble? Perhaps your lifestyle isn't "good enough" for your neighbors or coworkers. Live in an

Triathlete swim advice & Kiefer backpack product review

If you are currently training for a triathlon event and wanting to improve your swimming, the most important thing you can do right now is to get into the water. Depending on where you live (weather), pool times and accessibly and overall motivation to jump into water, only to swim the exact same distance, over and over again for x-amount of time, it's likely that many of you will put off swimming until you start to freak out that it is time to start working on your swimming. As a coach, I call this fear-based-training and it isn't limited to the triathlete who is not comfortable in the water. Fear based training also applies to individuals who do an excessive amount of mileage or volume on the weeks leading up to a race because of the fear of not feeling prepared and thus, the need to "test" themselves that they are physically prepared for race day. Sadly, they end up wasting their best performance in training and end up feeling overtrained, on the verge of injur

Finally warming up again

Two weeks ago I braved 20 degree temps in Utah at an altitude of 8000-11000 feet. I stayed extremely active in the snow, both on my board and a few times on my butt. The Oakley Women product testing summit was amazing and I had such a great time stepping outside of my comfort zone.       The following weekend (1/11-1/14) I braved even colder temperatures and traveled to Iowa to speak to the Missouri River Runners group for their yearly banquet. Despite living in Kentucky for the first 21 years of my life, I have become quite soft in the cold..or as we like to say in Florida - when it gets "down to 40 degrees outside". An average temperature of around 10 degrees each day, with a few flurries and a few gusts of wind making the wind chill drop below zero.     My talk was on "Common mistakes made by runners: train smarter to reach success faster." I met so many new people and got to know some of my Trimarni Nutrition athletes (from the web) eve