Half Iron Fueling Example and Logistics, how you actually do it in real life

I started this in A race season when I was fielding questions on how to actually accomplish carrying your nutrition and hydration during a race and in training. So, the athlete knows how many calories they want to get in, but how do you actually make it happen.

It's an interesting question, the solution sits at the confluence of metabolic needs, effort during the race, aerodynamics and comfort. This is what seems to work well for me and the athletes I work with.

What follows is largely based off of an email I sent to one of my athletes a few weeks before the big race.

Calories
The first thing to consider is how many calories should be used during the race. There are a few different ways to figure it, for the bike we use 1.75 calories per pound of body weight per hour. This is actually a little light and when I look at race reports from pros and top amateurs who say what they took in, it is usually a little higher than 1.75 cals / lb / hour. On the other hand, new athletes who maybe haven't cracked the nut of a high quality run at half iron or maybe haven't done it before usually balk when I first say they need to take in that much, claiming it to be too high. But to set yourself up for a good run, this seems to work well. For the people I coach this is where we start with our race simulations, if an athlete can uses this fueling plan for a race simulation brick and executes a good run then it might be prudent to consider lower calories. In my experience that has never happened, if any changes are made it is to a higher calorie intake.

So 1.75 cals/lb/hour.
(See note 1 below for information on contrary thoughts)

How to get your calories in.

Firstly, you want to split your hydration and calories to the degree you can. This means in practical terms you want to have a water source, an overconcentrated calorie source and maybe a supplemental drink.

Here's how I recommend it.

Equipment
1. Aero bottle
2. Bare frame (aerodynamics, worth a minute or so for half iron)
3. Behind the seat water bottle holder, setup lower than the saddle or as low as possible. (worth real time savings over frame bottles.

Calories:
125 pound cyclist * 3 hours * 1.75 calories per pound per hour = 650 calories
A 24 ounce bottle of gatorade has 150 calories in it, so you need an extra 500 calories in it. You can easily get 500 calories of maltodextrin into a 24 ounce gatorade squirt bottle.

Mixing the Maltodextrin
Empty half of the gatorade bottle, put the maltodextrin in it, cover and shake the ever living snot out of it. Then fill it back up with gatorade, you'll only have a little gatorade left over.

Hydration:
We pretty much know how many calories you need but hydration needs vary widely with temperature. Drinking when thirsty works BUT, you need to have water available. If there is any question of whether you will run out, you will subconsciously not drink as much. Also, if it is a pain to get to your drink, you won't drink it, so you need a hydration source accessible. Since you are using a concentrated calorie source, straight water is the best choice for hydration. You use the straight water to chase the calorie source. A very concentrated calorie source in your stomach is trouble, so you chase with water to help make the molecular concentration of the solution in your stomach pretty close to that in your blood.

The other thing to have would be sports drink, whatever is on the course of your a race so you can practice with it. What I recommend is having one bottle of straight water and one of sports drink. The calories go in on a schedule ad are chased with straight water. At any other time during the race if you are thirsty, then use the water or sports drink as you feel the need for it. Sometimes you will want just water and other times the sports drink.

So what goes where:
You need three bottles
1. Sport drink goes in the aero bottle. This is your default drink when thirsty, has some electrolytes and some calories in it.
2. A high concentration calorie source, for half iron this usually can go in a single 24 ounce bike bottle carried on a behind the seat bottle carrier.
3. One bottle of straight water, also on the behind the seat bottle holder.

How to do it:
Your calorie source should last the entire ride, so you schedule it. Every 15 minutes you take a small swig of your drink. In 18 miles you should have drank 1/3rd of the bottle, after 36 miles 2/3rds and so on. Every sip of the calorie source you chase with a drink of straight water.

In between, when you are just thirsty, take a drink of whatever you are thirsty for. If thirsty for the gatorade, then drink that, thirsty for the straight water, then drink that. When your water or sports drink bottles run out during the race, you replace from the course.

And what about training:
On long training days, you leave the water bottle cages on your frame and use your jersey pockets. Each of your three jersey pockets can hold one of the 20 ounce cycling bottles, that should get you though the day.That helps it go down.

Associating and Dissociating in Endurance Events

In my experience coaching, there are a few different mental skills I have found immensely helpful. The ability to associate or dissociate at will when in long races is one of those things that I and my athletes rely on frequently. Typically, in shorter races or early on in a race we use the associating skills to zone in on an aspect of technique and stay on track. However, for long workouts and races pain or discomfort gets so intense that all you can think of is how much it hurts or how uncomfortable you are, That is the time to deploy dissociating as a skill to get past the pain. It seems that in that circumstance, dissociating is a better technique in order to stop thinking about how much things hurt. The dissociating usually comes up in races that last 4 hours or over, though it might work for you in other situations as well.

Association and Dissociation are definitions of different attentional states. In 2004, Baghurt had this to say about Association and Dissociation.

"Association is a cognitive strategy in which the individual attends to the body’s internal related cues such as muscle tension and breathing and/or external performance information such as distance completed, stroke rate and race position. This strategy allows individuals to alter their movement pattern according to body awareness, racing strategy, and muscular tension. Dissociation, on the other hand, is a cognitive strategy in which the performer focuses on external cues, such as daydreaming, admiring the view, and problem solving; thereby restricting the influence of sensory information from the body."

Early research into these styles seemed to show that associating led to better performances but later research has shown a more complex relationship. Further research showed that an athlete's predilection affects which strategy seems to work the best. That is to say someone with a natural external focus will do better following an external dissociating focus; so it is good to know what one's natural type of attention is. 

Also, research has shown that in endurance events, people switch from one strategy to another throughout the race. More specifically, successful athletes tend to switch from associating at the beginning of the race to more dissociating at the end of the race. In the beginning, the association strategy allows the athlete to keep track of effort, heart rate, hydration and other cues necessary to make sure that he doesn't later run out of fuel or otherwise overdo it. Toward the end of the race, dissociating can help distract the athlete from the pain and fatigue that may be intruding during the race. (Burton, 2008)

Switching strategies is something that needs to be practiced if you want to control how you deploy it on race day.

How to do It

In practice, I almost always recommend this to be done as ascending intervals and or descending intervals. Where the length of each repeat gets longer until a peak and then drops back down. Much like speed or physical techniques, practicing these mental techniques in bite-sized chunks helps in the beginning. Since many of us are relatively unpracticed at this sort of thing, we start with very short intervals and build up the distance. 

Associating Practice

To practice associating, pick a single, simple aspect of your technique and focus totally on that one thing. In most cases, I pick one side as well. One arm or one leg for example. If your technique focus is too broad, it is much more easy to get distracted from what you are working on.

If you get distracted, bring your attention back to the original focus you were working on. As you practice more and more you will find it easier to keep your focus and what some people call your monkey mind (it jumps all around) will calm down.

Example focuses:

Swimming - focus on the hand entry of a single hand. At the very simplest level, a swimmer can work on having their fingers and thumb together at entry rather than spread open, it's very simple but can keep one's focus. Or, I teach hand entries when swimming to be angled down and forward and ends at a point below your shoulder after extending. There should be no swoops on your entry, it should be straight, down and forward. But you can use whatever particular focus point works for you best. 

Biking - Focus on keeping your head looking downward at an angle, with your back and neck as straight as possible in the aerobar position. Looking forward out of the top of your eyes. Focusing on this early will help avoid neck pain later on.

Running - Focus on a short contact time when running. Land lightly with your foot underneath you and allow the elastic recoil of your muscles to work for you.

Dissociating Practice

It doesn't seem so, but this is an important skill as well. It isn't just a matter of letting your mind drift, it is a matter of intentionally excluding internal information. The situation where this might be appropriate is the 2nd half of a long bike ride when your neck is very sore and you do not want to get into your aerobars because of it. But you need to be in your aerobars to go faster. So use your dissociating skill to listen to something besides your neck telling you to sit up. 

In a long swim, soreness in a person's upper shoulder muscles can prove to be intense and slowly build up, deploying your dissociating skills to stop concentrating on the pain can help you push through.

To practice this, you need to find something that can wholly absorb your focus, away from what your body is telling you. Sometimes this is the scenery at the race although in my own experience, scenery is rarely engaging enough to dissociate me from internal body cues. But it may be different for you. By far the most common is a song. The MAJOR thing I will let you know is that you will want to have a song you know from front to back. Not one that you know two lines from, the two lines probably won't work for you, or might drive you crazy! So it is worth planning ahead, figure out in the days leading to the race what you will sing, maybe even listen to those songs on the way to the race.

Sample Intervals

Swimming - 100 / 200 / 300 / 200 / 100 (:20) - Concentrate on your entry for each repeat of the ascending part. Start with your breathing side hand. That is the easier side to work on, then move on to your non-breathing side. Another one you can try is to not hesitate at the end of your stroke, while you don't need to speed up, make sure there is no lag between the end of your pull and the start of your recovery. These are both small and simple enough to concentrate on while swimming, although you are encouraged to get your own focuses.

On the descending distance intervals, practice your dissociating with a song you plan to use on race day.

Biking - 1:00 / 2:00 / 3:00 / 2:00 / 1:00 with 1:00 of relaxation in between. Focus on staying in your aerobars with a straight back and relaxed neck for the ascending intervals. Do the descending parts as above.

Running - 1:00 / 2:00 / 3:00 / 2:00 / 1:00 with 1:00 of relaxation in between. Focus on short foot contact time when running. Do the descending parts as above.

Results

As a coach and an athlete I practice these techniques as part of the training plan. These sets are put into the workouts just like a threshold set might be put in. I don't have any controlled trials, can only give the reader reports from athletes that have found the ability to change attention strategies very helpful. We have used it in 50k runs, ultra distance swims from 4.4 miles to 27 miles, and a couple of dozen triathlons of half iron or longer. I think you will find that with this practice, mentally you can get through long events in a much better place mentally able to keep up a strong effort for the entire race. 

References

Baghurt, T., Thierry, G., Holder, T., (2004). Evidence for a Relationship Between Attentional Styles and Effective Cognitive Strategies During Performance. Athletic Insight, 6, 1, 36 - 50

Burton, T., Raedecke, T., (2008). Sport Psychology for Coaches. (164)

Kingdom Swim 2013

Kingdom Swim 10 Miler 2013 

M route around the lake, up the left side, down the right side.

Race reports are an interesting thing. I think they started as a report on the race for other people considering the race, but now they have morphed and seem to serve a purpose that is part education, part vanity, and part remembrance for the athlete. The education part is not just the race itself, but particularly in long races, how did you actually get it done, how did you pace yourself, what did you use for calories, did that saltstick thingy everyone talks about work? The vanity is obvious, "Hey everyone look what I did." The remembrance is similar to the education, you can look back and say. "Oh yeah, THAT's what I did there."

This was my 5th time doing the Kingdom Swim Ten Miler in Newport, VT. I have done it every year they have had it, and really enjoy it.

Anyone who goes to New England in the summer will tell you how beautiful it is and I am no different. This is a lovely race in a lovely little town and in a beautiful lake for the swim. I recommend it highly.

The race has distances from 100 and 400 yards for the kiddos to 6 miles and ten miles for adults. This year, the ten miler was slated to be the US Masters Swimming ten mile nationals. Due to some changes in sanctioning that nobody likes, that part didn't work out. The Kingdom Swim was the newly formed World Open Water Swim Association's ten mile world championship.

Newport is a lovely little town and the night before the swim was the Aquafest parade. The only swim I know of where the athletes walk in a parade the day before. We grouped up with our state flags, put on viking hats and off we went. It's a solid 7 block long parade, quite nice. Leading our group in the parade was Memphre, the legendary monster that lives in the lake. Though I didn't have them with me this year, in years past my kids have walked with me in the parade, it's a grand time. <My wife and kids were vacationing on the Delaware beaches while I was at this swim.

Immediately after the parade is the carbo dinner right on the water, a pretty good meal as far as carbo meals go. This is also where you meet your volunteer escort kayaker if you hadn't done so already. This race uses escort kayakers for the 3, 6, and 10 mile versions of the race. My kayaker this year was Pam, a veteran kayaker who paddles the lake often. We discussed feeding strategy and staying on course in the wind and we were set. I went back to the hotel to mix my nutrition for the following day.

All my Supplies

I use a similar solution for open water swims as I do for triathlon. Maltodextrin mixed into full strength gatorade with a separate bottle of water. The way this is done is that the two bottles are tied to a rope of 20 feet or so. That way the kayaker can hand or throw me the bottle and then just pull it back in when I am done. My calorie intake is 1.3 cals / lb / hour in the first 3 hours and then 2.0 for the rest of the way. It comes out this way because in the first three hours I feed every 30 minutes and every 20 thereafter. This solution has worked relatively well for me. I have used half strength gatorade in the past and seemed much thicker, maybe some of the additives in the gatorade make the maltodextrin thinner in solution - or maybe it is in my head. But I prefer the full strength. I take in 8 ounces per stop and the math all works out. Though I may consider going to a slightly higher concentration so that I need maybe 6 ounces of mix and then chase with water.

Having that done,I made some channel grease. Channel grease is a 50/50 mix of vaseline and lanolin. While it took me time to find, lanolin is available at your neighborhood pharmacy in 2 oz tubes with the breast feeding supplies. I showed it to my wife and she said "Oh yeah, I remember this stuff." There HAS to be a less expensive way to buy lanolin btw. But for the purposes it worked well, lasted much longer than the vaseline usually does.

Channel grease ready, calories ready, other things set up. Time for bed.


Got down to the race start in the morning and get everything packed up in the kayak with Pam, put in sunscreen, put on channel grease and ready to go.

I suppose this is as good of a time as any to mention that I am due for surgery this month on two herniated discs in my back. Yes, the excuse paragraph. Actually they don't bother me much in open water swims. Sitting, lying down, walking, pool swimming, running, cycling - almost anything else but open water swimming. So I put off surgery until after the swim so I could keep my streak of 5 straight times going. But since pool training hurts, naturally my mileage wasn't what it had been in the past. I also put on a fair chunk of pounds, but out here in the cool water, it shouldn't slow me down much.

When we set off for this race, I always intentionally start at the back; my biggest fear is going out too fast in these and crapping out. So I intentionally make myself wait. I made my way in slowly and started swimming. As another pacing device I usually swim the first mile breathing every third stroke. Similar idea, you can only swim so fast when breathing every third stroke. Actually I tried that for a bit and found that I couldn't, so i went to a 2/2/3 rhythm. Still holding back.

We headed west across the lake for the first mile and tried to find our kayakers. I didn't see mine at all until after the first turn buoy, it's hard for them to see us in the crowd of 75 swimming and pick out who is whom. After the turn I looked up and my kayaker Pam was right in front of me, looking the other way. I got her attention and we were off, her on my right so I could see her when I breathed.

In the race we proceeded North up the west side of the lake. Feeding every 30 minutes was fine. Though one change from previous years was that I didn't drink any extra water unless I felt I needed it. In past years I drank gatorade and watrer at every feeding, but that also meant I needed to pee at every feeding. I can pee while treading water just fine but can't go while swimming so it costs me about 90 seconds for every pee!

After the 2nd feeding I asked Pam to let me know if we were passing or being passed at feeds. Turns out I was passing people the rest of the day.

Headed out to the First Turn Buoy

Also around this time I started feeling some soreness in my chest and arms, muscular soreness basically just like I was pushing hard. The thing was, I wasn't pushing hard, so I was a little put off by that. but it was still early and told myself not to worry about it.

Made the turn across the lake and stayed with the 2/2/3 breathing rhythm. This is always a question for me, when to switch breathing rate, in 2012 I had cramped badly in about 8 miles so I was hesitant and played it conservative here.

I am on the far right and had just passed the two swimmers behind me

On the trip across the lake, I was watching two swimmers who were close together and it seemed like I took forever to get past them, but eventually I did pass them for good though it seems like it took a full mile to get past them.

As we hit the 2.5 hour feed, I was pretty much halfway through, at the far end of the lake. Here I also took some excedrin, the caffeine is helpful and so is the pain relief. I usually use non-aspirin version of excedrin but I had run short on time and i had the regular one. Aspirin is an NSAID and like the other NSAIDS can slow down your kidney function so I avoid those in races. Since this wasn't a terribly hot race I felt relatively safe in using it.

Made that turn and finally changed to 2-stroke breathing to the right, I figured I'd be picking off some swimmers, though I didn't actually really pick up the pace, I just let the somewhat higher turnover take care of that, once again didn't want the repeat of last year.

At 3 hours I ate my kit kat, a little delicious bonus calorie source. Man that was delicious and hit the spot. Very soon thereafter we went past an island and now the full waves from the west side of the lake were hitting us from the right. So I switched to breathing left. Interestingly enough, while my speeds are pretty close on either side, when breathing right I have a little smoother faster turnover and breathing left I have a longer, slower turnover stroke.

At that point in the race, I think it is a 2.5 or 3 mile straight stretch, no turns no nothing just straight heading for a turn buoy you can't even see. You can see it on the map as the long stretch down the east side of the lake. A mind breaking part of the race. People who don't do endurance races will ask, "what do you think about?" I happen to remember that at this point, I was counting strokes. I would breathe normally for 120 strokes and then look up to see if I was catching anyone. Thankfully, I usually was.

Right in this part of the swim I had my second bout of food wanting to come up. I think the first was at 2 miles or so. This was simply an exertion thing, right after the feeding I needed to keep form getting ahead of myself and it would be OK. This is kinda similar to half iron bike nutrition where for me it always seems I am on the edge of my stomach getting backed up.

So I held my pace solid but no heroic through that section. Also on my mind at the time was last year's episode of hamstring cramps that I thought would take me out of the race. My hamstring had cramped up and when I bent forward to try and stretch it out, both quads cramped. Think about how you would go about stretching your hamstring out in the middle of the water with nothing to grab onto, it's pretty difficult. So last year I couldn't stretch the cramps at all and just had to suck it up and wait them out.

Not wanting to repeat that, as I said, I held my pace. Kept breathing left. Somewhere in here I also went to feeding every 20 minutes, 21 minutes actually. Also in here my kayaker Pam was having some difficulty keeping her line. While the swimmer is deaf and blind, the kayaker does get blown by the wind while the swimmer doesn't. So while it is happening I wonder if I am losing my direction or the kayak is. Most of the time it is just me, but in the case of a side wind, it can be both of us. The only difference in swimming was that rather than being 10 feet or so from the kayak, I was 10 or 15 yards away and it got further with every breath.

FINALLY, I made the left turn for home. From there I think it is a solid mile. By my reckoning I was 100 yards behind the nearest kayaks at that point. I went back to breathing right, so my rhythm improved, my feedings had been good and I was smelling the barn so I laid the hammer down, that was good. But as these things tend to go, that last mile was the longest mile in the race. My effort was redlining the whole way, on the rivet as it were, and blowing by people lef and right. Some of them were actually from the 6 mile swim, so I SHOULD have been blowing by them, but a good number were ten milers and I improved several places in the last mile.

All except for the last one, as I made it to the last buoy, which I think is 75 or so yards offshore, I could see another guy had just turned the corner. I figured I had him. Turned and of course I was still hammering away. I thought I saw him breathe left, so I figured I'd pass him on the right and I'd be past him before he realized I was there. Well, maybe I was mistaken but for whatever reason he saw me and he turned it on as well, so after ten miles it was a sprint for the last 50 yards. As we got close to the end I figured, "I can get him on the run in if I don't cramp up!"

It's hard to look good with a hamstring cramp

As soon as I stood, I cramped up in my hamstring :-). So I missed another place by 8 seconds as I waddled across the line.

Final time 4:47

In the end I was happy, not my best showing there but not my worst and ten minutes faster than last year. I'll be back next year if it is within my power to do it. And I recommend this race or one of the shorter ones for anyone to do. Lovely race.

My results show I was the 14th male, same as last year and 2nd in my age group, 2 better than last year. So I am happy. Not sure how many men did it, but there were 75 total swimmers in the ten miler.

Training for the Heat, when it's not that hot outside

What follows is an article I sent to USA Triathlon for inclusion in the coaches newsletter this year. A such it is written as if the audience are coaches, but the themes and recommendations would be the same if you are coaching yourself.

To train for the heat when the local temperature is not as hot as the athletes’ key race will be, follow these points.

1. Check historical temperature data to see what sort of temperatures can be expected at the relevant points of the day.
2. Have athletes exercise at those same temps using indoor trainer with no fan, treadmill or outdoor workouts with excess clothing.
3. Verify the skin temperature of the athlete with a non-contact infrared thermometer under their shirt. 
4. Perform two heat acclimation workouts per week.

Training for the Heat, even if it isn't that hot outside

Specificity is the name of the game. And like everyone, you do everything you can to make the key workouts for your athletes specific to the big race. On those race simulation days, they eat the breakfast they will eat on race day, ride the bike they will ride on race day, practice nutrition just like they will on race day, drink just like they will on race day, pace like they will on race day, and maybe even wear what they will wear on race day; but what about temperature? Are they training in the same temperatures they will face on race day? If you think about it, temperature will affect most of what you are considering above. The race day temperature will affect what food goes down, the race day temperature will affect the hydration needed, temperature will affect the pace or effort that is sustainable for the race. So overlooking temperature in terms of specificity can lead to problems on race day. To be prepared for race day, temperature is something that needs to be looked into. There is also the issue of your day in and day out training. Even if it isn't a specific race simulation day; should EVERY weekday workout be done at temperatures lower than race day? Or perhaps some of those workouts should be done in heat conditions mirroring race day.

The Easy Way

If your race is local and is mid or the end of the summer, then the issue isn’t as big; have the athlete go out and train at the same time of day they will be racing. For most working men and women getting ready for longer races this means training in the later morning or perhaps mid day on the weekend depending on your race. For people with a more flexible schedule this can of course be done any day of the week. For an 8 Am start, at a half iron race the athletes can expect to be riding from 8:45 AM to somewhere close to noon and then running somewhere from noon until 2 PM, depending on the athlete of course.  We often get the word not to train in the heat of the day, yet if those are the conditions of the race, then the athlete needs to do SOME work in those temperatures. After all they will be doing it on race day. Training the same time of the day as the race works if the race is in a similar climate to where the athlete lives. If the race is in August in Washington DC, but the athlete lives and trains in northern Vermont; simply training later in the day might not be enough to get them ready. Or if the athlete is from the continental US and will be racing in Hawaii in October, same issue.

A similar and frequent issue is one of races in the spring or early summer, where even living in the right climate, the athlete might not have enough time to be exposed to race-like temperatures. Here in the Mid-Atlantic a race where this comes up is Eagleman in early June. Temperatures at the race can be expected to be above 90 for the run, not every time but there have been several times where temperatures have been that high. The issue here, for an early June race in the middle of the country is that while race day may be very hot; there probably were not many hot weekends before the race for the athlete to prepare themselves. April can be quite cool, early May can as well and by the end of May many athletes are hitting taper time. Since the vast majority of triathletes are age groupers, most likely working men and women; the weekend is really the only time to get out in the heat of the day. But if we suppose that race day may be 90 degrees for an early June race, how many weekends before that were at those same temps? Not very many, so the opportunities to train for race day heat the easy way (training at times similar to race day) are limited, the athlete needs to create their own heat training opportunities to help get ready.

The Somewhat Harder Way

Just because the race in a hotter area than the athlete’s home doesn't mean they can’t do well but there are some modification to be made. You can still do some relatively easy things to get ready.

How Hot?

The first question to be answered is how hot will the race be? Thanks to the internet this is relatively simple to figure out. I use the history data section of weatherunderground.com to find historical data for the race day to get an idea of what the athletes need to be prepared for. For example, I can see that in Cambridge, MD, two times in the past 5 years the temperature at 1 PM has been 95 degrees. Also, in Houston Texas once in the past 5 years the temperature at 3 PM (an estimated Ironman run time) the temperature was 93 degrees. The result being that athletes getting ready for Eagleman should be prepared  to run in 95 degree heat and if preparing for Ironman Texas they should be prepared to run in 93 degree heat (and lots of humidity in Houston).

You can do this same analysis for any race. Once you know the high side of what temperatures to expect then you need to try and replicate those situations in training. And remember that the athlete now doesn't have access to that type of heat either due to climate or season. Most coaches have seen the different guidelines for wearing “an extra layer of clothes” but personally I have never really found that approach specific enough for my taste. My own approach grew out of experience with an athlete. This particular athlete owns a Suunto T6 watch which records temperature. And one day in blinding flash of the obvious I realized that I had access to a database of what real temperatures the athlete experienced at a whole host of races here in the area. I already had access to what temperature readings were on race days past, and to better prepare we could use that same temperature reading to guide heat preparation. It all seems so obvious in hindsight. So that’s what we started doing. In training, the athlete wears the extra layer of clothes yes, but has the added advantage of being able to look at the watch and see if the microclimate he is experiencing under his long sleeve shirt (with the watch under the sleeve) is close to what is expected on race day. Initial results were good and so I looked to expand it. But, most athletes don’t use suunto t6 watches.

As of this writing, the garmin watches don’t have temperature readouts and I must admit to not being very well versed in the offerings from Polar but to my knowledge they don’t have temperature readings either. The solution to this is pretty inexpensive and easy to get, an infrared temperature sensor. There are a couple of options, the first is a small waterproof one available at Amazon that can easily be carried during a workout, it is made by a company called Kintrex and this link will take you to the listing.


You can also use the ones for construction that are available at your local Lowe's or Home Depot, just look for an Infrared Temperature Sensor and you will find them. We use one of these to measure the athlete’s skin temperature under their shirt during the workout to make sure that they are within a couple of degrees of the temps they will face on race day. The goal is to get the athlete’s skin temperature within a couple of degrees of the air temperatures they will deal with on race day. One of the major ways a person loses heat is transfer of heat from their body to the air around them, convection. Since this is the case, a person’s skin temperature will approach and possibly exceed the air temperature when exercising. So on race day if the air is 90 degrees, their skin temperatures are more than likely going to be close to that. That is the rationale for using skin temperature and shooting for the race day air temperature as your target. So now, instead of saying, “Wear an extra layer” you as the coach can give the instruction, “Wear an extra layer and check 40 minutes into the workout that you are close to predicted race day temperature of 90 degrees.”

How to get those temps when it is cool out

Overdressing is the most obvious way and shouldn't need a lot of explanation. The one thing to note is that for some fabrics, once they are wet, and in these cases they may become soaked through, for some fabrics the insulating properties change drastically when wet.  So 20 minutes into it, the athlete may be exposed to target level temperatures, but 20 minutes later when their shirts are soaked their skin temperature may drop again. The best tool though for getting the athlete’s temperatures up is probably already in their basement or garage, the trainer. Once at a triathlon club meeting, our guest speaker was the legend Ken Glah; he was telling us about racing in other countries and the issue of training for the heat for races in South America in January and April came up. His comment at the time pointed out that if you are on your trainer for long rides in Maryland in November without a fan, you are already doing heat training. The experience of my athletes far and wide is very similar. Riding indoors with no fan and a shirt on can quickly get skin temperatures up into the high 80s and with some diligence into the low 90s. A treadmill is also good although fewer people own their own and the athlete is dependent on the situation at the local health club for temperatures and so forth. But even so, a treadmill run over 30 minutes with a long sleeve shirt can get skin temperatures where they need to be for the examples given.

How Long?

Weeks
In terms of how long before the race, the sooner the better really, once the specific preparation for a given race starts, then heat acclimation should be part of the program. Common heat acclimation protocols previously studied use daily exposure to high heat that lasts from 4 to 13 days and recommendations for maintaining the acclimation is for one day of heat exposure for every two to five days without it (Garett et al, 2011). However, we don’t live in a lab environment and so setting aside 7 solid days for heat acclimation training may be a lot to ask. Our implementation is to do two days per week of workouts dedicated to heat acclimation. Usually that would be one mid-week workout and one of the longer weekend race simulation type workouts. That said, short term heat acclimation has been shown to have profound effects on performance in the heat. In their review from 2011, Garrett et al showed five separate studies with work capacity improvements from 1.5 to 13% with heat acclimation of no more than 7 days. All of these protocols used every day exposures.  So, it’s not necessarily too late if the race is coming up soon.
Minutes
And how long does a workout need to be? The most recent study on 20 cyclists showing improved performance in hot and cool environments used 90 minute exercise bouts in the heat (Lorenzo et al, 2010). Also, the US Army Ranger and Airborne School Students Heat Acclimatization Guide (USA CHPPM, 2003) recommends a maximum of 100 minutes.  This maximum would be appropriate for mid-week or perhaps some weekend workouts. However, for specific race simulations, depending on the race, this might be inappropriate.

Execution

There's one big thing hanging out there still though. The references I cited earlier max out at about 1:40 of training as the top end to beneficial sessions. But I am saying that some of your weekend workouts should be done mimicking race temperatures. Does he really need to do for example a 4-hour ride keeping your skin temps at 92 degrees? Yes. If your athlete is preparing for long or ultra distance racing you need to figure out what sort of execution plan will work for her in 92 degree temperatures. For example, you need to know if your athlete can ride for 56 miles at 210 watts and still get in his 1.75 calories per pound of body weight per hour. You also need to know what sort of range of liquids he might need to take in as well. Yes, you might already have an estimate of those things, but if your estimate came from workouts in 75 degree weather, it will all change. The sustainable power will be different, sustainable heart rate will be different, the amount and types of food will be different as well. That's why you need to practice the long workouts in the heat. Not EVERY time, but some of them. every coach is familiar with the idea of a nutrition or pacing strategy that works for 1 hour or 2 hours or even 5 hours but then falls apart. So for that reason, the time of a heat acclimation session that is also a race simulation should be set with an eye on the length of the race most of all.

Conclusion

Preparing for the heat of an upcoming race is simply another wrinkle to the specificity principle. Overlooking this aspect of training can lead an athlete to be under-prepared and in particular can lead to that athlete’s execution plan to be off base in terms of food, hydration, and pacing – leading to sub optimal results. The usual way to acclimate to hot race conditions is to train in the heat of the day however due to climate differences or early season races, coaches may need to work with athletes to establish other ways to train for the heat. Recommendations for doing so are these:

1. Determine the likely heat exposure on race day using historical weather data.
2. Have athletes track skin temperature during key workout.
3. For heat acclimation, have the athletes’ skin temperature reach the predicted race day temperature.
4. Perform two heat acclimation workouts per week, possibly including the race simulation workouts.
5. Max time for normal workouts should be approximately 90 minutes, race simulation workout length should be based on the length of the key race.

I am confident that if you incorporate these strategies into your athletes’ training their experiences in hot race days will improve as has been the case with my own athletes.

References 

Garrett, A T,  Rehrer N J,  Patterson, M J. Induction and Decay of Short-Term Heat Acclimation in Moderately and Highly Trained Athletes. Sports Med. 2011; 41 (9): 757-771

Lorenzo S, Halliwill JR, Sawka MN, Minson CT. Heat Acclimation Improves Exercise Performance. J Appl Physiol. 2010 Oct;109(4):1140-7.

US Army Ranger and Airborne School Students Heat Acclimatization Guide. USA CHPPM. 2003

Engineering Endurance Performance Clinic

Join several experienced triathlon coaches and scientists from the US, UK and Canada at MIT in Boston for a weekend clinic covering several technical aspects of endurance training and racing. Learn how to use science and engineering principles in your coaching and get the most from your triathletes.

Dates: January 18th and 19th 2013
Location: The clinic will be held in Boston, MA on the MIT campus. Exact room locations for each session will be sent upon registration.
Registration Fee: $700
USAT CEUs: Application for CEUs is pending, this site will be updated when the
To Register: email us at kpjoubert@yahoo.com for instructions on registering. Space is very limited.

Agenda

Friday 9:30 am-12:30 pm: Guest lectures

Benjamin Rapoport – Modeling marathon pacing

A presentation covering the energetics of marathon racing. Using models to predict how many carbohydrate calories are needed for marathon racing and estimating the range of performances an athlete can expect on race day.

Jim Papadopoulos – Bicycling science

Presentation on the main points covered in the book Bicycling Science. Notable topics will include aerodynamics, mechanics and the role of heat in fatigue while cycling.

Barry Spiering – Evidence-based Strength and Conditioning

Evidence Based Practice is more than a buzzword,  it is a defined process by which practitioners incorporate the "Best" available evidence into the everyday training of athletes and clients.

Friday 1:30-4:30pm: The Principles of Training

Phil Skiba – Basic exercise physiology 

Explanations of VO2max, lactate, muscle biochemistry and fiber types

Dave Clarke – Principles of training and Periodization

Case study examples of implementation of periodization. Including so called advanced periodization concepts from Issurin, Tschiene and Verkoshansky.

Dave Clarke – Motivation for using models of human performance

A presentation showing what an athlete can gain from using models of human performance to guide their training.

Friday 5:30 PM - 7 PM: Special Topics
Ayesha Rollinson - Coaching Females
Discussion of how the menstrual cycle affects performance and adaptations. What do we change about workout session sequencing because of it?
Jason Digman - Variability in Pacing
How does the stochasticity of racing affect how we prepare athletes to train and race?

Saturday 9:30 am-12:30 pm: Models of human performance

Phil Skiba – Critical power and Anaerobic Work Capacity Modeling

The critical power model can be used to guide training racing intensity, this presentation will cover how that is done. Also, models of Anaerobic Work Capacity depletion and recovery provide guidance on what sort of price the athlete pays when exceeding their sustainable effort.

Dave Clarke – Impulse-Response Model

The Banister Impulse Response Model is a tool that can be used to find an individual's response to exercise and among other things, to find the perfect taper for each individual athlete.
Phil Skiba – Using the models in planning for world-class athletic performance
How Critical Power, Anaerobic Work Capacity, and Impulse Response are used in practice by elite athletes.

Saturday 1:30pm-7:00pm: Guest lectures and special topics

Kevin Joubert – Using Heart rate variability measurements to monitor fatigue

With inexpensive ant+ devices now making Heart Rate Variability measurements available to virtually everyone, we take a close look at how we can use these simple Heart Rate Variability measurements. Special emphasis on monitoring fatigue and  using it as an input into the Banister performance model.

Jason Kilderry – Running Biomechanics and Technique

There are lots of theories around that espouse certain types of running technique, but which of these have scientific support behind them?

Jorge Martinez - Motor Learning in Running

Once an athlete has been given the all-clear from treating medical profesionals, how do we integrate them back into their running schedule. How to do they learn to avoid those aspects of previous run training that may have led them into injury.

Phil Skiba - Medical risks in endurance sports

Dr. Skiba will review the evidence of long term health risks from endurance sports. The main emphasis will be on recent reports of heart issues that may come from long

Saturday 5:30 - 7 PM: Psychology and roundtable

Mark Van Akkeren - Coaching Psychology

A discussion of various psychological aspects of coaching.

Roundtable - Chaired by David Tilbury-Davis

Implementing and selling "evidence-based" coaching.

Speakers

Dave Clarke

Dr. Clarke is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and endurance athlete. His research includes work on mixed modeling of liver cell signals and his modeling background has naturally led him into working with the Banister Impulse Response Model and also modeling of the depletion and replenishment of Anaerobic Work Capacity.

Kevin Joubert

Coach Joubert has been a masters swim and triathlon coach since 2002. He is a certified Level 4 ASCA Masters swim coach and Level 2 USAT Triathlon coach. He developed a mathematical solution and implementation of the Banister Impulse Response Model in 2006 and has been using it with his athletes ever since. His area of emphasis has been overcoming some of the more difficult aspects of implementing the Banister model in practice.

Jason Kilderry

Coach Kilderry is a USAT and USATF Level 1 certified coach as well as a National Strength and Conditioning Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. He holds a degree in Health and Exercise Science from Rowan University, and is currently pursuing a masters in exercise physiology. Jason is the owner of ETA Coach.

Jorge Martinez

Coach Martinez is the owner & head coach at E3 Training Solutions, LLC and holds certifications for USA Triathlon and USA Cycling.
He has helped athletes from different levels achieve their goals, whether completing their first race, qualifying for races such as the Ironman World Championship, ITU Age Group World Championship and the Boston Marathon to winning races overall or agegroups.
As a student of the sport, Jorge has completed different certifications and training in areas such as biomechanics, training concepts, physiology, injury prevention and nutrition.

Benjamin Rapoport

Dr. Rapoport is an MD-PhD student pursuing his MD in the Health Sciences and Technology Program at Harvard Medical School, having earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering at MIT (Analog Circuits and Biological Systems Group, Research Laboratory of Electronics).  He received his AB in Physics and Mathematics and AM in Physics from Harvard in 2003, and an MSc in Mathematical Biology from Oxford in 2004.
Ben is also a dedicated marathon runner with a special interest in optimizing human performance through quantitative physiology and is the author of the research paper "Metabolic Factors Limiting Performance in Marathon Runners." He will be presenting an in depth look at the topics of that paper.

Ayesha Rollinson

Coach Rollinson is a Canadian professional triathlete and coach based in Toronto. Born in Midland, ON, Ayesha raced on the International Triathlon Union’s World Cup circuit for five years and is now adding longer course events to her repertoire. She also competes in running and open-water swimming competitions.

Phil Skiba

Dr. Skiba is a USA Triathlon certified coach, and gives back to the sport through his weekend lecture series, which is conducted several times yearly. An authority on training, Dr. Skiba has been interviewed on the radio and in the New York Times, among other publications. His research has been presented at international sports conferences such as the AAPM&R (2006), the ACSM (2007, 2008) and the AOASM (2007, 2008). Among others, Dr. Skiba has coached Joanna Zeiger - World Ironman 70.3 Champion and Catriona Morrison - World Duathlon Champion.

Barry Spiering

Dr. Spiering is a former sport Physiologist at the US Olympic Training and Center and is currently a Research Physiologist at the US Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine. Dr. Spiering's presentation will be an expanded look at the topics from the recent paper "What is Evidence-Based Strength and Conditiong?" of which he is a Co-Author.

David Tilbury-Davis

Coach Tilbury-Davis is a British Triathlon Level III coach and has 10 years experience coaching clubs and individuals from 14 to 65 years old and novices to World Class elite athletes (ITU elites, World AG athlete's, Pro cyclists and Ironman athletes). He has also carried out 4 years biomechanics research and continuously broadened knowledge and coaching experience.

Periodization

Our last article implied that you change the frequency of the different types of workouts throughout the season. This process, the varying your emphasis and training mix for peak performance is called periodization. Periodization hasn't really hit buzzword status for the majority of masters swimmers but it is out there. Even if you haven't heard of it yet, your coach probably has, your coach might even be using it for your training and you didn't even realize it
Most sports use periodization in one form or another even if they don't call it that. In the triathlon world we talk about periodization up and down backwards and forwards. As these things tend to go, the popular image of periodization is a bit different than what it really is. In the popular view of periodization, you start with long and super duper easy in the offseason, do some threshold type work as things get closer and do vo2 max and other intensity stuff at the end. This is *a* form of periodization and for certain sports it works quite well, but it isn't *the* form of periodization for all sports. Most notably for long distance efforts over 3 hours or so, that form of periodization wouldn't make any sense. And why wouldn't it make sense? There are two main ideas that lead us to use a periodized schedule:

1. Stagnation
2. Specificity

Stagnation

It's not that hard to understand that if you do the same type of thing all the time, you will stagnate. Your body gets accustomed to the training type and load and it doesn't induce training adaptations any longer. You have to mix it up. The illustration to the right shows an example of how adaptations proceed in time. At first as you get accustomed to a new training load you progress slowly, then there is a time of rapid improvement, seemingly day to day you feel better and better and get faster and faster. But then eventually, the new training load becomes routine and your adaptations either flatline or sometimes even decline. Work by a guy named Verkoshansky indicates that this is roughly 6 to 8 weeks. It varies from person to person and varies by training load type and how much variety you include but in general after doing a certain thing for 6 to 8 weeks you tend to stagnate.

So when planning out a training year or season, we need to consider the stagnation effect. You can’t just bang away at a certain type of training month after month and think it will get the best performance. By changing the training mix, you can spend more time in the rapid adaptation phase shown in the graph. If you started a season and kept the training mix the same you would go through one rapid adaptation phase and that would be it. By substantially changing the training mix, you can go through more than one rapid adaptation phase per season.

Specificity

The principle of specificity is that you get better at what you train for. Or conversely to get better at something your training needs to mimic the requirements of the event as closely as possible. If you want to get better at swimming the 200 breaststroke, you should spend a good bit of time swimming the breaststroke at speeds and distances similar to the event and using the same metabolic processes you will use during that race. For a 200 breaststroker, a two hour run will have limited benefits on his breaststroke performance. For the reason why, think back to the adaptations in article 2, how many of those adaptations needed for 200 performance would be targeted by a two hour run? Not many of them actually. And what about two hours of shoveling snow? Even fewer. Two hours of playing poker? Probably none. In previous articles we have discussed that for most events at a typical masters swim meet, SP2 training is the most specific to what we are doing. So as we get close to the big meet we want to emphasize that type of training above the others. As the big race approaches, you want to be doing the most specific work closer to the big race. This will allow you to train the most important things right before the race. Not only in terms of energy systems and physiology, but you will also be training yourself mentally, training your pacing and even tactical skills. This is to say, since your workouts will resemble the main race, you will tax not only your energy systems as you will in the race but also your mental skills etc.

Why not nail it all year?

But why not just to SP2 work all year? Don’t mess around with anything else, just nail the SP2 work all the time? That goes back to the previous paragraph and stagnation. If you did a heavy SP2 emphasis all year you would stagnate, so you need to change up the training mix during the year. And the reason you do the SP2 emphasis last is that you want to be doing the most specific work right before the big race. In the weeks leading up to the championship meet you want to be refining your racing speed and strategy, you would not want to be putting in huge amounts of long easy yards at that point; you want to be sharpening yourself.

Typical Periodization

So what does a typical periodization schedule look like for a masters swimmer? The chart below shows a periodized schedule you might see for short course season where the final competition is THE main competition. The assumptions are that the main meet is at the very end and that there is no taper or emphasis change for mid-season meets. Another assumption is that the workout group has three or four workouts per week of an hour to 90 minutes. With more frequent workouts you could do more things and cover more bases in a week. The schedule shows the emphasis for a given week. Not to say that you exclude any single type of workout at any given part of the season, but rather for a given week which sets are the most important ones.

Week

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Emphasis

EN1

EN1

EN1

EN1

En1

En1

En1

En1

En2

En2

En2

En2

Sp3

Sp3

Sp3

Sp3

Sp3

Sp3

Sp3

Sp3

Week

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

Emphasis

En2

En2

En2

En2

En2

En2

En3

En3

En3

En1

En1

En2

Sp1

Sp1

Sp1

Sp1

Sp1

Sp1

Sp1

Sp2

Sp2

Sp2

Sp2

Sp3

Endurance

We are assuming that the target event will last from one to three minutes. Of all the endurance set types, EN3 is the most specific type of work. Following the logic laid out above regarding stagnation and specificity, EN3 training would come last among the endurance work. However, for this case endurance work is even less specific than SP2 work. So in weeks 22 and 23, the endurance work gets less intense to make room for more SP2 work. As discussed above, if there were more workouts per week, then there may be more time to do both workout types. But with three workouts per week and 90 minutes per workout it is hard to do both EN3 and SP2 work and have enough rest in the workouts. Three or four workouts per week is pretty common for masters swimmers.

Sprint

At the very beginning of the season, there is no sprint training at all. Only endurance type work to expand the athlete’s work capacity. Soon after though, SP3 work starts. The reasoning behind it is that the SP3 work is relatively low stress and raises the eventual performance capacity. By raising the max speed you can maintain, you increase the room to improve. If you can train yourself to hold a given percentage of your max speed for a 100 swim, then raising the max speed will increase your speed in the 100. There is a fairly long period of SP1 work that leads eventually to four weeks of the very high intensity SP2 type sets right at the end of the season.

Is this the only way to periodize a season?

So is the chart I laid out above the only way to proceed for a masters swimmer? Not at all, the schedule depends on time allowed, the swimmers involved in the program and their strengths and weaknesses and of course it depends on the races being targeted. If we were to go through this exercise for a summer season of open water racing it would look totally different, the endurance work would take the emphasis in the end of the season, not the SP2 work. Also, if we were to value the mid-season meets more heavily, then we would probably shorten the length of the cycle. Once the meets start we might abbreviate the time in between to a sort of mini season. We would not hold an emphasis for the full 8 weeks but rather would shift emphases every two weeks or so while the meets are going on. I Hope that by this point the readers are getting a feeling of why things are usually structured the way they are and can make some sense of what is going on in terms of the season and why the sets are where they are in the season.

Set Types

Swim Set Types and the Adaptations They Produce

This article is part of a series on why we do the things we do, the series explains set types and periodization through the lens of lactate metabolism. Fatigue is more nuanced than simply being about lactate accumulation and consumption and these articles are getting old. But I have left them in place because while lactate is not itself a cause of fatigue, it is closely related to the causes of fatigue in events from 1 minute to around 30 minutes.

The previous article can be found here, the first article of the series is here. 

USA Swimming has adopted a set classification system that has seven levels. Recovery (REC), Endurance Level 1 (EN1), Endurance Level 2 (EN2), Endurance Level 3 (EN3), Sprint Level 1 (SP1), Sprint Level 2 (SP2) and Sprint Level 3 (SP3). Other sports and other countries use slightly different classifications but most systems break out along similar lines. Each category aims at a slightly different set of adaptations, as a result the set types have characteristic lengths, rests and intensities.

It is important to realize that different sets are doable in different amounts. As we will see in later articles, the stress induced by SP2 sets is much higher than that induced by EN2 sets. SP2 sets put a big hole in your schedule, recovering from them both during and between workouts is difficult. Conventional wisdom holds for this and other reasons to hold off on the more stressful work until relatively close to the main competition. But more on that later.

Endurance Sets

The bulk of any program in terms of yards, and to a lesser extent in terms of time spent, consists of endurance sets. These types of sets are meant to lead mostly to the aerobic adaptations pointed out earlier. In terms of the bathtub model, you are trying in increase the size of your bathtub drain.

REC

Recovery swims are done at very easy paces and the rest intervals during the set are usually not critical. In an acute situation, a recovery set is used after a hard set or at a meet after a race. In this use the purpose is to help rid your muscles of lactate and other byproducts of effort. It has been shown that active recovery in the form of easy swimming is more effective than passive rest at lactate removal. In the long run recovery sets are used to loosen up or help get rid of stiffness in the days following a hard workout or competition. It is meant to help you recover for the next workout.

Many drill sets can also be thought of as recovery sets. In terms of your physiology this is true, even though the drill will have other useful adaptations outside of your aerobic metabolism. Recovery sets tend to increase fat metabolism at a given speed. Fat metabolism is not addressed in our bathtub model but becomes quite important in races over 40 minutes or so in length. Recovery sets address all the aerobic adaptations but on a minute per minute basis, induce adaptations at a lower rate.

EN1

EN1 type sets are also good at inducing the aerobic adaptations, but due to increased intensity they are more effective at creating these changes than the recovery sets. The intensity of these sets is from around 90 to 95% of critical pace for the stroke you are swimming. This can vary widely with the amount of rest and length of the swim however, longer repeat distances with short rest mean you can swim a little slower and get this adaptation. Longer rest for shorter repeats mean you need to swim a bit faster, closer to your critical pace. The duration of the sets needed to induce adaptations is over 16 minutes and rests are short, generally 20 seconds or less to keep your body from recovering. You want to keep your hr up for an extended time. These sets improve fat metabolism as the recovery sets do but not quite as well. These sets also increase the number of mitochondria in your muscles, as discussed before the mitochondria are the power plants of the cell and are where all the aerobic metabolism takes place. Having more mitochondria means a bigger bathtub drain and pays dividends in every distance of race.

EN2

EN2 type sets are done very near critical pace. A little faster than critical pace for shorter repeats and a little under critical pace for longer repeats. EN2 sets are the most effective way to develop your aerobic metabolism. Minute for minute, the best bang for your buck in aerobic developments, the stress is moderate and they can usually be performed multiple times in a week without causing problems for the athletes. The typical set length for EN2 sets is 16 to 40 minutes. Depending ont the set structure, rests can be from 5 to 40 seconds, or even up to one minute on a very long repeat. In terms of our model, EN2 pace work induces the greatest adaptations in mitochondria, it makes your bathtub drain bigger. It is also the best training pace for raising your MLSS, this is only natural since these sets are done close to MLSS pace. MLSS and critical pace are very close to each other.

EN3

EN3 sets are done at or very close to VO2max. As discussed before this is where your energy metabolism is at full tilt, the firehose is open, the drain is draining and overflow drain is draining as fast as possible. In fact it seems like this should be all we ever do. But like everything there is a downside, the EN3 sets are high stress and can be done in somewhat limited quantities. If we were to continue to do them they would bring on stagnation more quickly than other types of sets.

EN3 sets are also usually 16 minutes long but there is significant amounts of rest in them, up to 1 to 1 ratio of work to rest. Since your hr often gets very close to its max, this type of set affects your heart function. The amount of plasma in your blood goes up, maximum stroke volume is improved, and since you are working near VO2max, your VO2max level is improved.

Sprint Sets

If all you ever did were open water swims an hour or longer, you could pretty much end the discussion here in terms of metabolism and energy production. Go off and develop your aerobic metabolism and be happy and healthy live a good life out there with the sea critters and the jellyfish. Of course, there is more than one way to look at things and sprint sets have uses for marathon type swimmers, it's just that those benefits don't have to do with metabolism. However, the masters swimmers, most of their events are from one to four minutes and involve high lactate levels. A bathtub overflowing just at the last stroke. So to be sharp for raceday sprint work is included. Like sprint racing itself, sprint training also creates high lactate levels.

Work on critical paces has shown that doing a lot of sprint work, the SP1 and SP2 levels can be detrimental to your aerobic fitness. So at the extremes, if all you ever did was sprint work, your aerobic metabolism would get worse and you could actually end up slower in your chosen event for it. The mechanisms once again are not exactly clear, if nothing else, sprint work takes a lot of time in your workout. Thirty minutes spent on an SP1 set would not be unusual, but that is 30 minutes not spent developing your aerobic metabolism. There are other more in depth mechanisms used to explain why, but they are all offshoots of, if you do less aerobic work for one reason or another, your aerobic metabolism won't work as well. And included in that "One reason or another," is a 40 minute set of sprint work.

This is one of the major reasons why coaches tend to switch emphases a bit as the year goes on, too much sprint work early in the season could deteriorate your aerobic metabolism and leave you a step behind come the big race. How much istoo much sprinting? How early is too early to start to emphasize sprint work? That will be discussed in a follow-on article on periodization.

SP1

SP1 sets are also called lactate production sets, these sets are intense and faster than MLSS speed but due to the set structure with shorter intervals and longish rests, the lactate levels don't get too terribly high. On these you should have some lactate type fatigue setting in during the set but not so much that your arms start to burn and really struggle. You should be able to maintain a pretty consistent pace through the set. In terms of our bathtub model, you would say that these sets are meant to increase the size of the firehose and to an extent they also make your bathtub bigger. These ets also induce some aerobic changes, although in magnitude probably less than the recovery sets do. SP1 sets are high stress and can be taken in small doses for a good chunk of the season.

SP1 sets have intervals of 25 yards to possibly out to 200 yards. The speeds are at about 95% of max speed and the total time of an SP1 set would be 20 minutes or more. However rest durations on SP1 sets are equal to or twice the duration of the work interval. So of the 20 minutes half or more of the time would be taken up by rest between swims. These types of sets are usually done earlier in the season than the very hardest work that is the SP2 work.

SP2

SP2 sets or lactate tolerance sets are the hardest sets a swim group will do. They are similar to the distances and speeds of competition events. The idea behind a lactate tolerance set is to get accustomed to the type and amount of pain you might experience in a race. In this way you increase the size of your bathtub. It is thought that your muscles get better at buffering acid and that your brain resets the "STOP!" point on how much you will take and still swim.

SP2 set distances are usually directly relevant to your chosen event. An SP2 sets for a 200 person would consist of 150s to 300s, for a 100 person it would be 75s to 150s. These swims can be done straight through or perhaps broken up with 5 to 15 second rests in the repeat. The rest intervals usually involve active recovery and are 2 to 5 times as long as the swim interval. The effort is 100% for these sets and the lactate levels induced are quite high.

SP3

SP3 sets exist largely outside of the bathtub model. These types of swims are prominent but really don't do THAT much in terms of our bathtub model. The most applicable thing they do is to indirectly increase the size of the firehose. I say indirectly because these types of swims work on your neuromuscular system mostly. They enable you to turn over faster and recruit muscles faster. In a bit of an odd situation, while the SP3 sets are the fastest ones we do, they are not the most stressful. The intervals on SP3 work top out at 25 yards and the rest is complete, a work to rest ratio of 1 to 5 to 1 to 8. Since these sets are lower stress these are actually included both early and late in the season.

Early in the season, before your fitness has really come around you can still work on SP3 without inducing a lot of stress, the work on your turnover and coordination is quite effective and this type of work continues to a degree all through the year. SP3 sets also become a mainstay in the taper, in a taper the general idea is to reduce the training loads so your body gets into the supercompensated state, but you also want to do some fast swimming as well to keep your feel for the water, the SP3 sets can fit the bill late in the taper.

Please see below a summary chart of all the different set types.

Type	Repeat Distance	Rest	Speed	Total Set Time	Exertion (1-10)	Sample Set
REC	Any	Any	Easy	Any	6	400 IM pull / 400 IM kick / 400 IM order
EN1	Any	5 - 30 secs	90 - 95% critical Pace	20 - 120 mins	7-8	800 / 8 x 100 / 600 / 6 x 100 / 400 / 4 x 100 (:20 rest on all)
EN2	25 - 3000 yds	10 - 45 secs	95 - 103% critical pace	30 mins	8-9	15 x 100 on Critical Pace + 0:15 holding Critical Pace
EN3	50 - 2000 yds	30 - 240 secs	>103% critical pace	20 mins	10	3 x 100 max (:05) 4 mins rest between sets
SP1	25 - 200 yds	30 secs - 3 mins	95% max pace	15 - 45 mins	9	5 x 50 at goal pace (:30) 1 minute between sets
SP2	~ Race Distance	2 - 5 mins	~ 100%	15 - 45 mins	11	3 x 100 at goal 200 race pace (2:00) 4:00 active rest between sets
SP3	10 - 25 yds	1 - 5 mins	Max	15 - 45 mins	Ample Recovery	12 x 25 on 2:00 from a dive

Pitfalls

So now that you have an idea of the general structure of workouts we can look at some ways in which modifying a workout on the part of a swimmer can change what the workout does and may change it significantly from what the coach had intended.

Resting too Little

A common thing that might happen is if the coach puts up an SP1 set. It might be:

12 x 50 (:40) FAST!

Without more input from the coach is is entirely foreseeable that the swimmers may decide it is too much rest and shorten the interval. What is probably happening is that the swimmers don't understand how fast "FAST" is supposed to be in this case. The swimmers swam it "moderately fast" and don't think they are working hard enough. So they swim slower than the coach intended and rest less than the coach intended.

What happens is that the high quality SP1 set turns into an EN1 or EN2 set. The problem with that is that there are not enough yards in this set to get aerobic adaptations from it. So you get a set that is neither here nor there, not fast enough to increase the size of your tub and not long enough to make a bigger drain.

Swimming too Slowly

Swimming too slowly might happen if the coach puts this EN2 set up on the board.

15 x 100 on critical pace + :20

Without further instruction and if the swimmer does not recognize it as an EN2 set, then the set may end up being swum too slowly. Instead of swimming them near his critical pace and getting 15 seconds rest he may find it easier to swim them at 10 seconds slower than critical pace and get 10 seconds rest. In doing so he turns the set from a an EN2 set with very profound effects on his mitochondria, into an EN1 set with much less of an effect and a lower quality.

Swimming too Fast

So the coach puts this on the board:

2 x 800 swim easy (:30)

The swimmer doesn't recognize or doesn't understand set design and so does this at a pace very near to his critical pace. Or how about the swimmer goes out and does the first 400 faster than his critical pace, the 2nd 400 is slower than that and the 2nd 800 repeat is a very difficult slog but he manages to get within 2 seconds of critical pace. He swam that fast because because he "Can't go that slow". Did he do the right thing? Faster is always better, right?

Well what we didn't know about the swimmer is that he is a 51 year old sprinter with excellent times in the 50 and 100 and has struggled his whole life with big yards workouts. So while this set was of decent quality, the BIG main set for the week is in two days on Thursday morning when the coach planned on a 40 minute SP2 set. Come thursday, our swimmer in question is still not quite recovered and just doesn't feel right during the big set for the week.

So those are three problems that can arise when the swimmers don't understand what the underlying purpose of a set is. A problem by the way that YOU my dear reader won't have any longer because you are now versed in a nearly universal language of set construction.

What's Next?

How we change the mix of set types through the year to peak for the big race.