LPC Training Camp

I recently returned from the annual LPC training camp at the ridiculously nice Emerald Island Resort in central Florida. What an amazing experience! Check out this link or like Loaring Personal Coaching on Facebook to see more photos and videos.

I realize this picture is from the other resort we went to but you get the idea!

It was great to finally get outside on the bike and enjoy some amazing weather (only one day of rain; the rest hot and sunny). The camp houses were basically mansions...pool, hot tub, huge open kitchen and living spaces...and a pool table and foosball table in every garage, just so you don't get bored. Or more accurately, so you have something to lean your bike against.

Pre-ride instructions

By far the highlight of the camp was meeting and training with all the other campers, coming from as far north as Thunder Bay and as far south as Brazil! Everyone was enthusiastic, positive, supportive and really friendly. So many amazing athletes and people! Nick, I got your book in the mail last week. Thanks! I'm pretty excited to read it...seems kind of like "On the Road" with more of a sports theme (go here to buy it).

Camp Potluck Dinner: What we all came for

Throughout the week, we logged some solid bike miles, worked on skills, drills and endurance in the water, and got a few chances to run off the bike at various efforts. Also included was a healthy dose of dynamic stretching and motor control work (thanks Charlotte), and we capped it all off with a long trail run and some spectacular scenery at the Orange Grove (and an ice cream eating contest).

Dolphin diving at Lake Louisa

Heading off from the resort for a big ride

Post-workout motor control exercises

Romantic sunrise run

Optimal post-workout refueling

The LPC training camp was a perfect launch point for my own season. I'm doing the Oliver Half Iron in BC at the start of June, which represents my earliest ever half IM. But my 2012 debut comes pretty late compared to many of the athletes who have been passing through the Lab for hot-weather hydration analysis: Tyler Lord had a solid race at the Lonestar 70.3 in Texas against a stellar field. Two other visitors to the U of G heat chamber will be taking on the New Orleans 70.3 in a couple weeks, and another is gunning for a Kona spot at the very hot, and very competitive, St Croix 70.3 in early May. It is great motivation for my own training and racing to work with so many amazing athletes!

One more note from the camp: a big thanks to Coach James, for all his hard work in making the camp a huge success, and for trusting me enough to let me lead one of the bike groups (we only got lost a couple times). Thanks to Luigi from Clif Bar for supplying the camp with a MASSIVE amount of gels, chomps, and bars, that we demolished over the course of the week! Thanks to Tom Lokody for driving a group of us (and 18 bikes!) to and from Florida...and to all the other coaches and athletes who made the camp such an awesome experience.

Refuel = ice cream, rehydrate = beer. Any questions?

Update from the lab to the field

I'm looking forward to an exciting next month and a half, both in the lab and out in the field...which will be a whole bunch of points between here and Florida. We've had some really great athletes passing through the lab lately to test out the capabilities of the heat room. And I'm starting to see more athletes going for the bike/run combo test, which is great. Very cool to see how hydration needs change between the two sports depending on things like wind speed, body size, etc etc etc. I'm also looking forward to taking some of the testing outside when the warmer weather hits! The heat room is great in the winter but I don't want to be trapped in there in July.
Next weekend I'm heading out on the road, first to Cambridge to visit the Cambridge Multisport Club and talk about race-day hydration and nutrition, then to Windsor for a talk as well as the second installment of LPC Training Days.
And finally, in March, we'll be hauling down to Florida for the LPC Training Camp to start the outdoor riding season early! Not to mention getting in some open water swimming and a few brick workouts, and enjoying a distraction-free week of training and socializing! Then just so I can make sure my biking is up to par in time for the Oliver Half Iron in early June, I'll have the guys drop me off in South Carolina on the way back so I can visit my grandparents, then bike up to Virginia Tech to see some University of Waterloo friends. If anyone knows a good route let me know! My plan right now is to avoid major highways and not be too proud to stop and ask for directions along the way. It can't be that bad right?

Exercise hydration and YOU

It's hard not to notice the huge swing in opinion over the past decade or so regarding running footwear. In the early 2000s, we were all told we needed the bulkiest, most supportive shoes we could find, whereas now we are being told the very opposite: to let our feet do the work, and switch into a "minimal" or "barefoot" shoe.
The same sort of swings are evident when it comes to the evolution of exercise hydration guidelines. We've gone from drinking nothing, to drinking as much as possible, to drinking to maintain body mass, and now a recommendation among some researchers to simply drink when thirsty and not worry about body mass loss. A recent study by Tim Noakes and colleagues supports this claim, showing an inverse relationship between dehydration and marathon running performance.
Whether it's a shoe or a hydration plan, both of these shifts in thinking reflect a trend towards paying more attention to your body, and relying less on a rigid structure. And when it comes to hydration, being flexible is important. If someone tells you to drink 800mL of fluid every hour during a marathon, but after 2 hours you start feeling bloated and cramped, it's probably not a good idea to blindly continue with the recommended schedule.
So listening to your body is good. But for many athletes, it's not quite that simple. As is often the case, different strategies work for different people.
Example: Last month we had a runner come into the lab for hydration testing leading up to a recent marathon. He had previously withdrawn from a marathon, and passed out near the finish of a triathlon, seemingly due to dehydration. In the lab, we had him run at his goal marathon pace, for one hour, while drinking to thirst, in mild conditions: 21 degrees, 35% humidity, with a 10km/h facing wind. After just one hour, he lost 1.6 litres of sweat, and more than 2 grams of sodium, while drinking 600 mL of fluid. He was on pace to lose more than 5% of his body mass during his marathon. Clearly drinking to thirst was not working for him. So we recommended a higher fluid intake (to get him more in line with the current guidelines for exercise hydration), along with more sodium, and sure enough, he recently reported back that his race went very well and he felt much better than in previous marathons.
If you look at the summary of the Noakes study again, you'll see that the standard errors of the body mass loss measurements are quite large, indicating that individual variation was high. In other words, lots of athletes did not necessarily fit into the observed trend.
So, put simply, proper exercise hydration recommendations should rely on a combination of individual data, some common sense, and up-to-date research findings. Average data from large populations provides valuable insight, but when the concern is developing hydration guidelines for one athlete, the most important data come from that one athlete.

A few pics from the heat chamber

I can now happily say that our heat room is capable of reaching 30 degrees Celsius and 80% relative humidity. Check out the pictures below. For more info on the testing we offer, click here. More pictures coming soon!

Also, thanks again to Barrie and the rest of the Personal Best group for having me speak about exercise hydration and nutrition at their triathlon clinic this past Saturday. And thanks to all who attended for their awesome questions. Hydration and nutrition is far from an exact science, so the more discussion we can have, the better!

The heat chamber set-up.

The rider.

Room still heating up.

Able to sustain (even increase) RH at higher temps!

The camera wasn't able to catch it but trust me, this says about 30 degrees and 80% RH.

The rider?

Progression of Performance

I am currently putting together a short bio for the Loaring Personal Coaching website. One of the things I have to include is a list of my "athletic accomplishments". Most (slash all) of these accomplishments have come in triathlon (although one time I scored 8 goals in a houseleague hockey game). So I listed the handful of races I have won, and alluded to the fact that I have come 2nd or 3rd on WAY TOO MANY occasions. But the coolest "accomplishment" I found is not one single race:
Going through my results on Sportstats, I realized I have done the Milton Triathlon 13 times! I did my first one in 1998 and only missed 2003. I don't really remember why, but it was my first year of undergrad so maybe it makes sense that I don't remember. Anyway, I decided to look up each result and note what my finishing position was, overall and in my category. Now I am aware that the Milton Triathlon isn't exactly the Olympics or anything, but since I've done this race almost every year since I first started tri's, it serves as a good indicator of my progression over the years. Here's the data in table form, then in graphical form (Side note: James "Loring" was 9th in 2000, just behind Colin Jenkins...whole different ball game back then!):
 

Year	Category	Cat Place	Overall Place
1998	<20	12	293
1999	<20	13	177
2000	<20	8	277
2001	<20	6	160
2002	<20	9	94
2004	<20	4	60
2005	20-24	7	29
2006	20-24	4	40
2007	20-24	3	27
2008	20-24	2	13
2009	20-24	1	7
2010	25-29	1	6
2011	Elite	2	3

 
Graph: Category place in blue (left axis), overall place in red (right axis)

So I think this is kind of cool. I have never had a formal coach, and I have never been "totally invested" in triathlons; I have just tried to enjoy doing them and I have continually tried to train a bit "better" (not necessarily more) each year. Plus I am lucky enough to be surrounded by some of the best triathletes and coaches in Canada, so that doesn't hurt. This will be a good figure to show athletes that I coach who may be at various levels along this "curve". I haven't forgotten what it feels like to be a rookie (the first 2 times I did Milton I walked my bike up the 6th Line Hill), and I have taken lots of different lessons from all the points along the way. But I still need to learn to read a map - See my most recent sportstats result (I missed a turn on the bike)

Next post: Pictures from the testing lab!!

Back to the grind (sort of)

Shortly after watching the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, I looked at my training log and calculated that I, too, ran the equivalent of a marathon... over the last 2 months. I have been dealing with a hip injury since early August, but things finally seem to be looking up (thanks Brenda!). So for the past 2 weeks I have been doing a few easy runs while diligently performing my physio exercises and trying to schedule an MRI so that I can (once again) stop worrying that I have some sort of terrible career-ending injury.

Whenever I have to take time off I am always a bit concerned about how much "fitness" I have lost. It's a natural thought, and probably one that a lot of athletes have. But there are a few things that I can look to for reassurance:

#1: Endurance trained athletes maintain a lot of their fitness despite long layoffs: A study from the '80s by Ed Coyle and John Holloszy took a bunch of athletes who had been training regularly for an average of 10 years, and had them do NOTHING for 3 months (and I mean nothing; at least I have been swimming and biking a bit). After 3 weeks, these guys had lost some fitness, showing a 25-40% drop in various mitochondrial enzymes levels. However, these levels did not drop much more over the next 2 months, and by the end, all the subjects except 1 still had mitochondrial enzyme levels (and VO2 max) that were double that of an "untrained" person. The only guy whose levels went back down to "untrained" had only been training regularly for 1 year. Basically, long story short, the fact that I have been training fairly consistently for a number of years means I don't need to be worried that a couple months off will wipe out all the hard work I've done.


#2: It doesn't take long to get back into shape after a layoff: In a study where subjects detrained for 15 days then retrained for 15 days, athletes were able to "handle their original training level" by the last week of retraining. This jives well with other "anecdotal evidence" I have gathered (talking to other athletes) who typically find that it takes them a few weeks to a month to get back into things following an offseason break or injury.

Anyway, I made sure to enjoy my time off and now I am mentally (and hopefully sort of physically) refreshed and ready to get back into it. I will continue for now with my weekly regimen of an hour and a half of easy running and, oh, maybe 2h of easy biking (with some swimming thrown in), and at least start to think about how fast I'll be next season. There's no point trying to be in top form in November (unless you are one of those crazy people who do November Ironmans). Next race for me is Around the Bay at the end of March. Plenty of time...

McMaster tri clinic and hydration/nutrition planning!

So it's been a few weeks since my last (attempted) triathlon of the year, and I haven't been training too much so I figured starting a blog might be a good use of my new-found free time. This corresponds nicely with an invitation to speak at Barrie Shepley's upcoming McMaster Triathlon Clinic on Dec 3 (thanks Barrie!). I will be speaking about nutrition and hydration during long-distance triathlon. There are plenty of questions to address: How much will 2% dehydration hurt my performance? What kind of carbs should I be taking in, and in what amount? How much salt do I need to take in? How much does the weather affect all this? How much should I be drinking before my race? And any other questions you might have! I'm looking forward to a great discussion as we get to the bottom of these issues using a combination of current research, actual lab and field data, and, perhaps most importantly, a bit of common sense! In the meantime, look under the "Pages" heading on the right hand side of this blog for a summary of the individual hydration and nutrition testing we do at the University of Guelph. Having a solid race-day hydration and nutrition plan is extremely important whether you are looking to complete a particular triathlon distance for the first time, or compete for the win in your age group!