USAT certified coach Sonni Drer is a long time INFINIT certified partner and 6x USAT All American. He has coached numerous All Americans, National Champions and World Champion.

I have been racing endurance events for a long time. Last week I was trying to remember the date of my first race, I think it was a duathlon in Columbus Ohio way back when Pyro pedals were the hot equipment. Late 80’s or early 90’s I think, I really cannot remember which. The only hard clues I have is  some finisher plaques from the Muncie Endurathon dating back to 1991. So it has been a while.

I know that sounds like an obvious statement, but it is still hard to do in everyday life. Even when things are a bit chaotic, most of us seem to under estimate the effects of stress on the body. As athletes we look at our training, equipment, and nutrition in hopes of a faster race and improving our fitness level. However, the majority of us never consider our stress levels. As an athlete stress can hurt your performance in many ways including an increased heart rate and oxygen consumption. It can also harm your exercise efficiency and cause a workout or race to feel tougher than it actually should. Increased muscle tension and reduced leg turnover are also contributed to stress. 

Sweat Rate Testing. Most athletes this time of year find themselves measuring and analyzing things like VO2 Max, Lactic Threshold, etc. On the hydration side of this is Sweat Rate testing. Understanding the amount of fluids your body uses and loses on a per hour basis can give you a much better understanding of how many ounces of fluids you need to be replacing each of activity. Below is a great way to find what your sweat rate is.

Trying to use food + drinks + gels is a complicated proposition ESPECIALLY when I am racing. If I have to think about more than one thing, I am going to probably going to mess it up. Multiple tasks are a sure recipe for failure and possible DNF. I may have food in my pocket…but I certainly ROCKS in my head.

The newest fad being touted as the “secret to success” for endurance training is to train and eat to become “metabolically efficient”.  What exactly does this mean? The term efficiency combined with metabolism sounds like an athlete’s dream, especially to an endurance athlete.  After all, efficiency means to “save energy without waste or unnecessary effort.”  Well, this surely must be the key to success for endurance performance; go as long as possible and waste as little energy as possible.  Unfortunately, this new fad is just that, a FAD! “Metabolic efficiency” training or fueling to enhance performance will come at a cost, a big cost which happens to be your performance.

After you have made some strength gains in the gym, the time is ideal to build sport specific power.  The goal is for the strength gained in the gym to translate into added swim, bike, and run power.  Here are some high resistance intervals you can do in the pool and on the roads to build strength and power for each of the three sports.  As these intervals involve explosive movements, you should be warmed up before beginning them to reduce the risk of injury.  The first time, just do one interval toward the end of your workout.  Assess your body’s response to the first interval to determine how many you will do the next time, and gradually increase the number of intervals.