MapMyTri.com - General Road Cycling: General Road Cycling on 07/14/2009

MapMyTri.com - General Road Cycling: General Road Cycling on 07/14/2009

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Why do I feel like the air is trying to kill me...

The hardest part of training for a triathlon for me is the running. I feel completely at home in the pool. I could swim and swim and swim and feel great. Biking is tolerable for me. It is hard, and at times kicks my trash at times but I never feel like I am dieing. Running other the hand makes me feel as though I am at deaths door. It hurts my lungs, because of asthma, and I literally feel like the only purpose of the air is to kill me. I can't get enough. I am okay until about 2 miles into the run, then my lungs start to shut down on me. By the end I feel like I am breathing through a tiny coffee straw.

So here are a few of the tactics I use to get through my hardest part of training:

First: I love to go running with my AverageIronHusband. He rocks, not only does he motivate me to go running, we run together! He often runs ahead and runs father because he can, but I love having a partner. I love having someone to catch, a goal to focus on.

Second: Hydration, Hydration, Hydration. In my training experience I have noticed that when my body is lacking hydration I cramp up and can't go as far. Now this doesn't mean hydrate right before the run, this means hydrate well the day before. Then 30 minutes before the run hydrate again.

Third: Know your body and it's limits. Over training only slows down your training efforts. When training for my first Iron Girl Event, the trainer suggested only training 10% farther then the distance you will be running.

Finally: Proper equipment. I know, this is a no brainer right. But it is true! Get a good pair of shoes to prevent injury, and in my case, do not leave home with out an inhaler!
Happy training.

Don't Let Fear-Based Training Sabotage Your Next Race

By Gale Bernhardt
For Active.com
If you train with a plan, you'll be more confident about your training and less likely to be motivated by fear.

There are many different philosophies and strategies on how to train athletes for a triathlon. My strategy for assembling a training plan varies, depending on the individual athlete, and I consider the athlete's race goals, current fitness and athletic history to develop a plan.

For self-trained athletes, I believe it's critical to establish your training strategy and map out a training plan so you'll have a clear path to race day. If you don't have a plan, it's easy to succumb to fear-based training.

Fear-based training takes different forms for different athletes. Let's take a look at a few examples of how fear-driven training can get you into trouble.

I've signed up for this event, now I really need to get in shape
Fear-based training puts you into panic mode and has you doubling or tripling, at minimum, the aerobic training volume you've been doing in the past few weeks.

Sometimes signing up for an event is just the kick in the pants you need to get fit again. To get started on your training journey, take a look at your training log to determine how much aerobic training you've been doing in the past four to six weeks.

When you begin designing your training plan, the first week of training shouldn't exceed the highest-volume week of the past four weeks by more than 10 percent.

I want to be sure I can go the distance and I want to see the course
Countless stories are told of athletes who decide to do a race simulation (full-race distance) workout -- the day before the race. Fear convinces them to test their endurance with a dry run to be sure they can go the distance for all three events together. Fear has also convinced them they need to physically experience the entire race course before race day in order to succeed.

This story is most common for sprint- and Olympic-distance triathlons. If you complete the course the day before the actual race, there's no way you can be rested enough to perform optimally on race day.

To help you ease your endurance fears, here are few simple guidelines I've found to be helpful for sprint- and Olympic-distance racing:

• In general, if you can build endurance so you're capable of completing a long bike ride that's between 50 and 80 percent of the time you think the entire race will take, it's enough endurance to get you comfortably through the event. For example, if you think an Olympic-distance triathlon will take you 3:30, your longest bike ride can be between 1:45 and about 2:45. I like the longest bike ride placed between two and four weeks before race the event.
• For sprint- and Olympic-distance racing, highly experienced or competitive athletes build the longest bike ride in training to 100 percent, or slightly over, the total estimated race time. These athletes will also include intensity within that ride. How much endurance and speed you can tolerate in your training load is related to how long you've been training and racing. Note: You will not find highly competitive athletes doing a complete race simulation on the race course within a week of the event.
• If you want to experience the course before race day, do some of your training on the course. If training on the race course isn't possible, try to drive most of the course before the race.

I don't want to be slow
"If you want to be fast, you must train fast. There's no sense in trotting along at a slow speed because that only teaches your body to go slow. Every workout needs to be at race pace or faster," your Fear Demon whispers to you.

If your Fear Demon convinces you to train fast all the time, there's a fairly high likelihood that you'll end up injured or your "fast" speed will dwindle to mediocre speed. The best athletes in the world know that getting faster means that some workouts are conducted well below race pace while only portions of other workouts are conducted at race pace or slightly faster.

Make a plan

If you train without a plan, it's easy for fear to creep in and convince you to do things that are counter-productive to your health and fitness goals. Map out a training plan, no matter how rough or simple it is, so you can literally see the path to success.

Plan the progression of your longest workouts, your weekly training volume, the volume of speed training and don't forget to plan rest. There may be times when this plan needs to be modified. Plan modification is normal, don't worry about it.

When the Fear Demon comes whispering in your ear, trying to get you to do something counter-productive to your goals, don't give in.

Gale Bernhardt was the 2003 USA Triathlon Pan American Games and 2004 USA Triathlon Olympic coach for both the men's and women's teams. Her first Olympic experience was as a personal cycling coach at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Thousands of athletes have had successful training and racing experiences using Gale's pre-built, easy-to-follow training plans. For more information, click here. Let Gale and Active Trainer help you succeed.

Less then 4 weeks away from my next trialthlon

So it is official... Average Iron Girl is 4 weeks away from her next triathlon. I am not going to lie... I am totally nervous. I have never done an ocean swim triathlon. I hope I haven't gotten in over my head. My last open water swim was in a large man made lake, Lake Las Vegas. Any swim not in a pool creeps me out. I can not look down! In fact, I think it is fairly normal to have a full blown panic attack. Many of the women in the last tri I did were panic! For me the difference between a lake swim and an ocean swim has to be the sharks! There is nothing more scary then entering into great white territory with a black wet suit hugging your body screaming, "I am a seal, eat me!" AAHHH... I have to stop or I might not do it! I will let you know how it goes.

Back to the training... Training with this fear, I realize that I probably will start swimming out of breath. So, in the nice call pool where there isn't a lockness monster or a great white shark waiting to eat me I try and master a shorter breathing pattern so the day of the race it won't feel awkward. I normally breathe every 4 strokes. I know I should rotate to 3 or 5 but I like 4. Every few days though I make sure and practice 2 stroke breaths. Hopefully, this will help me calm my fear race day. Pendleton Here I come!

Monkeys live longer on low-cal diet; would humans?

AP – This May 28, 2009, photo provided by the University of Wisconsin at Madison via the journal Science shows …


By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard, Ap Medical Writer – Thu Jul 9, 3:42 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Eat less, live longer? It seems to work for monkeys: A 20-year study found cutting calories by almost a third slowed their aging and fended off death. This is not about a quick diet to shed a few pounds. Scientists have long known they could increase the lifespan of mice and more primitive creatures — worms, flies — with deep, long-term cuts from normal consumption.

Now comes the first evidence that such reductions delay the diseases of aging in primates, too — rhesus monkeys living at the Wisconsin National Primate Center. Researchers reported their study Friday in the journal Science.

What about those other primates, humans? Nobody knows yet if people in a world better known for pigging out could stand the deprivation long enough to make a difference, much less how it would affect our more complex bodies. Still, small attempts to tell are under way.

"What we would really like is not so much that people should live longer but that people should live healthier," said Dr. David Finkelstein of the National Institute on Aging. The Wisconsin monkeys seemed to do both.

"The fact that there's less disease in these animals is striking," Finkelstein said.

The tantalizing possibilities of caloric restriction date back to rodent studies in the 1930s. But it's a hot topic today among researchers trying to understand the different processes that make our bodies break down with age. The hope is that some of those processes could be delayed or reversed.

Captive rhesus monkeys have an average lifespan of 27 years, so spotting an effect takes a lot longer than in short-lived mice. The newest study involves 76 monkeys — 30 tracked since 1989 and 46 since 1994. They were normal-sized adults eating a normal diet for a captive monkey, a special vitamin-enriched chow plus some fruit treats.

Then researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison assigned half the monkeys to the reduced-calorie diet, cutting their daily intake by 30 percent but ensuring what they did eat was properly nourishing.

So far, 37 percent of the monkeys who kept their regular diet have died of age-related diseases compared with just 13 percent of the calorie-cut monkeys, a nearly threefold difference, the researchers reported. A handful of other monkeys died of unrelated conditions, such as injury, not deemed affected by nutrition.

Death wasn't the only change. The calorie-cut monkeys had less than half the incidence of cancerous tumors or heart disease of the monkeys who ate normally. Brain scans showed less age-related shrinkage in the dieting monkeys. Those animals also retained more muscle, something else that tends to waste with age.

Compare two cage-by-cage photos of the monkeys and the difference is obvious: A 29-year-old monkey happens to be the oldest non-dieting monkey still alive, and a 27-year-old the oldest still-living dieter. Yet the dieting monkey looks many more years younger than his fatter, frumpier neighbor, not just a mere two.

"All these pieces put together provide rather convincing evidence in our view that caloric restriction can slow the aging process in a primate species," said lead researcher Dr. Richard Weindruch, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor heading the NIA-funded study.

He contends that somehow the diet change is reprogramming metabolism in a way that slows aging.

The federal government is funding a small study to see if some healthy normal-weight people could sustain a 25 percent calorie cut for two years and if doing so signals some changes that might, over a long enough time, reduce age-related disease.

But NIA's Finkelstein cautions that people shouldn't just try this on their own; cutting out the wrong nutrients could cause more harm than good. Just follow commonsense healthful lifestyle advice, he said.

"Everyone's obviously looking for the magic pill," and there's not one, Finkelstein said. "Watch what you eat, keep your mind active, exercise and don't get run over by a car."

Size 14 is the New 10

By Elizabeth Landau
CNN

(CNN) -- The little number on the tag on a pair of pants that indicates size can mean a lot to a person, and retailers know it.

The probability of people describing themselves as overweight is decreasing, researchers find.

That's why, in recent years, as the American population has become generally more overweight, brands from the luxury names to the mass retail chains have scaled down the size labels on their clothing.

"You may actually be a size 14 and, according to whatever particular store you're in, you come out a size 10," said Natalie Nixon, associate professor of fashion industry management at Philadelphia University. "It's definitely to make the consumer feel good."

Research shows that, when it comes to self-perception, the concept of "overweight" may be relative.

A working paper from a group led by Mary Burke, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Massachusetts, suggested that people's perceptions of overweight have shifted, and "normal" is now heavier than it used to be.

Researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, nationally representative surveys run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first group was surveyed in 1988-1994, and the second was surveyed in 1999-2004. Because there were different people in each survey, it is not possible to tell if the perceptions of individuals shifted over time, the authors said.

Participants were asked whether they consider themselves "underweight," "about right," or "overweight," and reported their body mass index, a measure of the health risks associated with weight. Calculate your BMI »

Are people more complacent, or better educated?

Although the BMI of the general population increased from the earlier survey period to the later one, the probability of people describing themselves as overweight decreased in the later survey, researchers found.

They found that weight misperception tended to decrease among women -- meaning women with normal BMI who were surveyed in 1999-2004 were less likely to say that they're "overweight" than women with normal BMI in 1988-1994, especially among 17 to 19-year-olds. For men, it was about the same.

"For women, this was good news," Burke said. "Women seem to get a more realistic perception of themselves."

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Although the study authors said this trend may reflect healthy body image campaigns, physician nutrition specialist Dr. Melina Jampolis, who was not involved in this research, said she doubts that positive messages had this much influence.

Rather, it is the relative increase in weight of the general population that makes people with normal BMI feel more normal, she said.

On the flip side, feeling normal but being overweight may decrease a person's motivation to lose weight, Burke said.

Still, while the BMI scale reflects disease risks associated with being overweight, it does not reflect the whole story of a person's health, experts said.

There have been reports that being somewhat overweight, but not obese, is associated with decreased mortality, such as a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that looked at deaths from a variety of causes.

Innovations such as treatments for high cholesterol have lowered the death risks for overweight people, Burke said. Especially for older adults, being slightly overweight may increase bone density, cushioning bones against falls, she said.

But the JAMA paper shows associations, not causes. People should not take this information as an excuse to gain weight, Jampolis said.

There are, however, other reasons that BMI isn't the whole story -- for instance, it does not reflect the distribution of a person's weight, Jampolis said.

"You could have really skinny arms and legs and just carry your weight in the middle, and it could be only 10 pounds, but belly fat, the visceral adiposity, it could very significantly increase your risk of disease," she said.

A brief history of body size perceptions

Experts noted that plumpness has been in style during some historical periods, especially as an indicator of prosperity when food was scarce. But the ideal of controlling one's food isn't new either. The book "Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West" by historian Peter Stearns points out that fasting was a religious virtue seen throughout the Middle Ages, and continuing into the Puritan version of Protestantism. Christianity also espoused the idea of restricting food to fight sin.

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The artistic and literary movement known as Romanticism, beginning in the late 18th century, stressed "slender, ethereal" ideals, Stearns wrote. The 1830s brought a prominent New York fashion style of a "willowy" look for young women, and there were many reports of anorexia nervosa during this time, the book said. But for older women, plumpness remained fashionable, and women on stage were expected to be voluptuous.

The meaning of the word "diet" came to include the goal of weight loss as early as 1910, Stearns wrote. "Middle-class America began its ongoing battle against body fat" between 1890 and 1910, Stearns wrote. The main factors that contributed to this shift were the advent of fat-control devices, the rise of public conversation about fat, and changes in fashion for both men and women, he wrote.

The culture of beauty that shaped up around the turn of the last century, promoting slimness as beautiful and fatness as ugly, has intensified since then, Stearns wrote.

Despite the widespread notion of dieting, obesity has risen dramatically over the last 20 years in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health found that the percentage of adults classified as obese went up in 23 states in the last year. View a map of obesity in America »

As clothing size numbers scale down in an era when bodies are getting more overweight, portion sizes have been increasing, Jampolis said. Photographs of fast food hamburgers from 50 years ago reveal that the serving size back then would seem like a "joke portion," now, she said.

"The same thing has happened with our body sizes. We're perceiving them as totally normal," she said.

As far as vanity sizing, Nixon called it a "temporary fix" that reflects a larger problem of people looking for quick solutions for losing weight, she said.

"It doesn't really deal with the root of the problem," she said. "It's really a lifestyle issue. It's not about a temporary diet, it's not about being pleasantly surprised because you're a size 12 instead of a size 16," she said

Las Vegas Iron Girl May 9, 2009

Okay Ladies, I am finally getting on to report about Iron Girl. It was a Blast!!!! Every woman should experience participating in an Iron Girl Event. So much excitement, anticipation, emotions, and the best, feeling the self worth of knowing that you accomplished something you set out to do!

We arrive on a Thursday and the event was on Saturday. That gave us one day to become familiar with the course (which was not mostly flat as advertised). Friday night we all had a spaghetti dinner together and discussed what time we were leaving and talked through our fears (most of which had to do with the open water swim).

Here are some pictures... more details coming soon.