As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been playing with Baron Biosystem’s Xert for the last few months. It’s an interested and amazing product that fits part of my 2018 training schedule. I’m breaking this post into three bite-size parts. First, I’ll talk about why Xert is such an amazing product. Next, I’ll discuss how to use the Xert ConnectIQ Player, which is the most effective (but evil) realtime coach you could ever have. Finally, I’ll share my thoughts about how to integrate running and cycling into Xert.
General Training Ideas
Lactate Tolerance and Stacker Workouts
As I mentioned in my last post, anticipatory grieving saw me doing a lot of hard intervals over the last year. This short post describes a really cool workout that I did, how I expect to change it in the coming months, and why I think it’s a pretty vital part of my future workout plans. Continue reading
Running and Grieving
For the last ten months, I have been dealing with anticipatory grieving– and using my running to help me cope. I’m not a psychologist and I can only talk about my personal experiences and thoughts on the subject. Continue reading
USAT Duathlon National Championship (Bend, Oregon) – A Race Report and Lessons Learned
This wasn’t my greatest race result by a long shot, but it was the result that I deserved. As I mentioned in my last post, my body has been a house of cards this year. Maybe a teetering stack of Jenga blocks is a better metaphor with each race being like pulling out another supportive block from the bottom. Any way you look at it, I’m frail this year; one tiny mistake and everything comes toppling down. That happened in Avilés when my back went out and boy did it cost me. This time everything held up—consequently, Nationals were definitely easier and faster than Avilés even though it was at about 3,500 feet of altitude. But I was also definitely racing well within my already compromised limits.
I’m going to write this race report a little differently because I don’t want to focus as much on the actual race as much as what I’ve learned from doing the race and what I’m doing about it. Even though I’m not in ideal shape, I am excited and I have a plan. Also towards the end, I’ll mention some of the longer term challenges that affected both this race and Avilés—as well as what I’ve learned from going through this darker period. So let’s dig right in! Continue reading
Using EMS Before a Big Race
In about a month, I am competing in the ITU World Duathlon Championship in Aviles, Spain. Then, about three weeks, later, it’s on to USAT Duathlon Nationals (with a rather hilly bike course). Yet in the last two races I’ve been in, my legs have taken an unusual beating. Here’s a quick post on an idea that I have for solving this problem. Continue reading
Periodization to Varied Training
In my last race report, I hinted that I would be elaborating on some of my recent training ideas. This isn’t exactly a new idea for me– it’s just particularly acute for me this time of year. Add to that a suggestion from a friend, a recent post by Joe Friel, and my desire to simplify my training routine and voilà, I have the foundation for a new training regimen. I can’t quite say that this is the best training philosophy ever, but it is the one that will be guiding my training for 2016. Read on if you would like to shake things up a bit as well. Continue reading
An Idiot’s Guide to Using a Muscle Oxygen Sensor
For the last few weeks, I have been utterly geeking out on using my BSX Insight Generation 2 muscle oxygen sensor. If you’ve been following the buzz about muscle oxygenation, you’ll notice people talking about how this device will revolutionize sports training because it delivers what heart rate monitoring never could– an objective view into our bodies to see how we are responding to exercise stress. But it’s awfully complicated getting simple answers. This post pulls together a bunch of hours of crawling different websites and watching countless videos on muscle oxygenation. Continue reading
Chinese Liniments Revisited
A few months back, I started experimenting with different Chinese liniments and I’m quite impressed with the results. While everyone is different, I think some of theses things could make a big difference for older athletes out there—and maybe a few young ones too. Continue reading
Running Well Off the Bike
“It always comes down to the last run,” my old coach used to warn me. Yet many triathletes and duathletes will admit that they have miserable final runs. Their legs turn to blocks of concrete and their pace falls far short of their potential. A lousy run seems to be a rite of passage for most multisport athletes– and it takes a very long time until the run finally starts coming together. This short blog post will hopefully shorten the learning curve. Continue reading
Training on Business Travel
I’ve been swamped with business travel recently, so my blogging activity had to be put on the back burner. This makes this blog topic particularly apropos given that I crammed a bunch of training into these trips. Continue reading
The Athletic Time Machine 
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