The newbie becomes a mentor

Pablo and I recently volunteered to become mentors for the tri club’s new triathlon program. As relative newbie to triathlons I felt funny signing up to mentor, but I am also really excited about sharing our love of triathlons with others and helping a new group of triathletes find their way around the sport.

While we are by no means experts, we have enough races under our belt to be a decent resource for new sprint and Olympic distance athletes. We have walked down that road or shall I say swam, biked and ran down that road and as we continue our 2014 Ironman adventure I know I am always looking for others to help me, so I am happy to pay it forward. A quick shout out to one of our resources, fellow DC Tri Club member and blogger TriDreamer Holli (check out her blog), who has completed IM Louisville and just became a member of the Snapple Elite Team. Go Holli!

Mentoring and becoming more involved with the DC Tri Club is also just exciting, because it allows me to meet more kindred spirits! Most people I talk to about triathlons either tell me I’m crazy or say they could never do that, so when I run into someone who actually wants to go out and tri, I can’t help but get excited! And by the way, if you’re in the “I could never do that” group, YES YOU CAN! (Consider joining the DC Tri Club or your local triathlon team).

Mentoring is also a great learning opportunity for me. In recent months I have made the decision to not only begin shifting my behavior consulting practice to include services for adults, but I have also decided to focus specifically on health & fitness. I have started taking nutrition and exercise courses and post-Ironman, when I get my weekends back, I plan on completing a health coach training program. In the meantime I am excited for any opportunity to begin practicing these skills through the mentoring program. Of course I’ll also get to practice on myself, because the truth is, Pablo and I are definitely going to need to work on balance. As we embark on this Ironman journey (our coached training program officially starts March 3!), we are faced with balancing our personal, professional and social lives with our training schedule and we’ll each need to work on ensuring we get the proper nutrition to support our training and balance our training schedule with ample rest and recovery so we can stay injury free!

If you had a health & fitness behavior coach, what kinds of things would you want to work on?

Small steps, long-term change!

"Small, seemingly insignificant goals can turn into life-changing experiences in the blink of an eye"
-Susan Lacke

We all set long-term goals, I know I do, I just did actually: Ironman 70.3 Raleigh, NC June 1, 2014 and possibly a full Ironman in 2015.

I haven't officially signed up for either, because registration isn't open yet, but Raleigh is my goal half ironman and I've got a whole lot of expectations for that race. I want to be at least 20 lbs lighter, I want to be faster in the swim, bike AND run, I want to feel stronger, look better and hopefully place in the top 50%.

Yep, I've got big expectations and I think that's okay, but let's admit it, humans are bad at long-term goals. The further away and bigger the goal, the more likely we are to procrastinate, make excuses and shift our goal. Ironman makes it a little harder, because registration is mighty expensive, so once you register, you don't really want to back out, but I could probably finish the race at my current weight and speed, so why set such high expectations?

Honestly?

Because I can. Because I deserve to be the best version of me and because I WANT to be the best version of me.



While my mind has already made this lifestyle a habit, I know in order to reach my long-term goal, I'm going to have to set some short-term ones. More importantly, I'm going to have to set realistic, attainable short-term goals that will keep me motivated.

I'm a behavior analyst, I know all about motivation and behavior change. It's what I do for a living and it's definitely what I am doing for my own training. I recently already gave you the basics: pair and condition the activities, take small steps, reinforce yourself and find your motivation.

But what does this actually mean?

Shaping: When creating new routines, you have to shape up the behavior. In run training programs you'll often see the Saturday long runs increase by as little as 10% every week. Not only is this the healthiest thing to do for your body (to avoid injury), it's also the best thing to do for your mind. Remember what Susan said, small insignificant change can turn into life-changing experiences. You've got to shape up your behavior and if you do it in small enough steps, you won't even know you're changing. Don't compare yourself to others. Collect your baseline pace and distance and build up from there. Most importantly, take it easy. It's good to be sore, but if you train right you can avoid injuries. Trust me, I know. I went from having all kinds of knee injuries to being completely injury free once I started following a plan.

Balance: Elite and endurance athletes look at their CTL (chronic training load) to help them decide when and how much to train. As Matt Fitzgerald explains in Racing Weight, CTL looks at the average training stress which includes duration and intensity of workouts. Humans it turns out have a maximum CTL. Exceed the threshold and you crash, get close to it without exceeding it and you can thrive. If you're really into racing like me, it might be worth investing in a TrainingPeaks account or some other software that can help you track your CTL.

Another option is following these basic rules:
1. Listen to your body: Don't make excuses, but if you feel tired or overworked, re-assess your plan, take a day off, go easier on yourself during your workout. Again, do not make excuses, but take care of yourself.

2. Balance your sleep, nutrition and training: Are you training too hard? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you fueling your body enough? Studies have shown correlation between sleep & performance and nutrition & performance, so if you don't focus on all three, you won't get very far.

3. Take breaks: The general triathlon rule is to take a break every 12 weeks. In general, take a break after an A race (like I did this week after my first Olympic). In the half Ironman training plan I recently downloaded, the coach actually suggests a recovery period every 4 weeks of training. This doesn't mean you dont' do anything during the recovery, it just means you take it easy on your body.

4. Try High Volume, Low Intensity training: What this basically means is that you train more, at lower intensity. Sure you can do the reverse, but if you do that you're more likely to exceed your CTL threshold and crash or get injured. Try training at 80% below threshold and 20% above it. For example, if you're going to do speedwork, start with a warm-up and end with a cool-down and mix speed intervals with recovery intervals, so that only 20% of your workout was an all out effort and the rest was lower intensity.

Nutrition: Depending on your current nutritional habits, it might be unfeasible to cut out all sodas, junk food, processed foods and a bunch of calories. The thing is, you don't have to. Cut out little bits at a time, make replacements gradually and identify those things you just can't live without (for me that's a lot of stuff, including cupcakes, margaritas, chocolate, eggs benedict, and cheese, so I'm finding ways to eat a healthy balance of those things).

Cutting all your favorites out for good will not work and more importantly, it will make you miserable. This is a lifestyle change, so the last thing you want is to be miserable.

Last, but not least, celebrate progress. Set small goals and celebrate them when you reach them. Whether it's completing an Olympic triathlon, losing 5 pounds or cutting out sodas from your diet.
Set the goal, commit to it, track your progress and celebrate when you reach the finish!