Don't let your club awards night fall flat

My triathlon club’s dinner and awards night was at the weekend. A great night was had. No shortage of drink, food and dancing. Where the evening fell a bit flat was when the awards were announced. The club has always awarded its best male and best female triathlete awards based on points earned in the National Series. This year, although the club has only a couple of Category 1 triathletes, an award was also introduced for the highest earning Category 1. This sounds ok in principle, but this is a club with few members who compete for National Series points and one that had only a single Category 1 eligible for the male award and no females, so three awards were issued. On the night therefore the awards were effectively handed out to those who had actually taken the time to compete in the necessary races to earn points. What’s the problem? 

There’s no problem if the club’s best triathletes are each doing National Series and Category 1 races, but what If they are not? Gerry Duffy would not have won my club’s best triathlete award for his Deca Ironman exploits, Bryan McCrystal would not have won despite breaking the Irish Ironman record twice in one year and winning the Lost Sheep along the way and no club member who is an aquathon or duathlon specialist and consistently wins those races can win. In fact, no club member who consistently achieves excellent performances in non Triathlon Ireland point scoring events (of which there are many inside and outside Ireland) can ever win. This folks is bullshit. 

Had these awards gone to a popular vote prior to the event, as Triathlon Ireland does with its awards, the resulting awards winners would have been very different. Clubs across the country are having their awards nights around this time of year. My advice is to avoid the obviously bogus way my club sets out eligibility for its awards and to instead give the awards for the most outstanding triathletes of the year in a given season. Ideally have a single award such that the club can honour the most outstanding season achieved by a club member. 

Using points or races won or similar criteria for giving out the awards simply reduces the pool of those capable of winning the awards to such a small number that the rest of the club members have no reason to believe, not matter how well they do, their club’s annual awards are available for them to win. I genuinely think any club member should have a chance of winning if their performances across a season in any triathlon races merit it. Those unhappy with how their club’s awards are dished out should raise the issue at their next club AGM.

Is anyone else disappointed with Challenge Galway?

Is anyone else disappointed with Challenge Galway’s decision to include a half distance race on the same day as the full distance one? Also, has the pricing of the event caused anyone to pause and think – WTF?

I first want to express my irritation over the pricing. The half distance is currently selling at well under half the price of the full distance. I don’t get it. I think the pricing must have been wrong from the start. They expected more people to enter the full distance race and when they didn’t (it is over-priced for an Irish event, the weather might cause the swim to be cancelled, Galway has a history of cancelling races and so on), they have had to include a half but realised it would be necessary to make the price competitive against other half distance events run across the country. This means the half is priced in a way as to make the full distance race seem ridiculously expensive. Even the early bird price seemed high by comparison. The pricing has put me off the event. Irish triathletes do not have a bottomless pit of cash from which they shovel entry fees into organiser’s arms.

There are reasons why full distance race organisers like Ironman don’t usually run half and full distance races on the same day. These include:

1. Huge numbers of people will be able to say: “I did Challenge Galway” when they only did the half. This event should provide a massive sense of achievement, but when anyone and their dog has done the shorter distance, it takes away from this.

2.  The half distance race will take many of the entries which would have gone to the full distance race making the longer race a smaller event.

3. The half distance race, taking half the time and those taking part going faster, is more enjoyable from a spectator’s perspective. By the time the full distance racers start to come in, most spectators will have left.

4. Crossing the finish line behind possibly thousands of half-distance racers would make anyone feel their day has been wasted.

5. Anyone who has attended an Irish event comprising of half and full distance races on the same day will know that the full distance race is always the poor cousin.  

For those who don’t get me, imagine you are racing a middle distance triathlon on the same day and most of the same course as an Olympic race.  The Olympic racers have left mess in their wake, the marshalls are bored by the time you get there, you cross the line and much of the drinks and snacks are gone, you go for a massage but they are packing up as they are already knackered. The fact is the first race of the day is the race – the next race is just a chore.

A full distance event should be a full distance event. It should be the big one. This the first big name full distance race in Ireland in as long as I can remember. It should be the race of the year – not part of a festival of races.

Why do Irish people do triathlon?

Why do we do triathlons? Why put ourselves through the plainly ludicrous hours of training (marrying a triathlete should come with a warning about time away from home) and the obvious suffering we experience while racing? Why do we come back year after year for more of the same? We might go marginally slower or faster, but mostly we are just doing triathlons. For me the answer lies in the individual nature of the sport. I’ve played team sports of various types and always did well, but I had little control over what I did in training or in games. Triathlon, for those without a coach, puts all of the responsibility on you to do the best you can do. In team sports it is easy to play your part and leave it there.

Triathlon requires you to think of every detail of training and race planning, as Roy Keane would say: “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”, so preparation in triathlon is everything. As my own coach, I found my motivation went through the roof. Setting my own goals meant I was no longer dancing to anyone else’s tune. Instead of training when I was told to train, I designed my training to suit me, my life and my lifestyle. I quickly grew to love the training in a way I had never loved team sports training. I had become bored with standing around pitches.

I loved the constant work required in triathlon training: an hour of lengths in the pool, miles and miles of cycling and focused running sessions. I trained because I enjoyed it. I now train with clubs and I train on my own, but one thing has changed above all – I now train longer and harder every week than ever before. I have lost weight built up over years of team sports. I no longer get asked in that mildly offensive tone if I “play rugby” because I no longer walk like one of the wrestlers from the movie Foxcatcher. Instead of team mates, I now have friends from training with a swimming, triathlon club, cycling and running clubs. It has become a way of life.  I don’t believe you can be a triathlete year after year and not learn to enjoy the work. After all, just one day’s triathlon training can often be the sum total of what training in another sport involves in a week. Looking back at my training diary for my last Ironman race, I can tell you that, on my biggest training day, I did an hour swim, a 160km bike and a 10km run. Few sports can come close to triathlon for requiring training commitment.

As for racing, you have to have a well developed pain threshold – and to enjoy pain to a certain extent – to withstand the screaming of your body during a sprint race or the aching and all round suffering of your body during an Ironman. Aside from learning to cope with pain, what draws me to race after race? There’s no simple answer to this. I am not sure myself. I’ve read countless books by athletes, cyclists and triathletes and for the most part they all confirm the reason why they raced was because they were good at it. Now, I am quite good at triathlon, but I don’t win many races. Indeed, I’d be lucky in many races to be top ten and happy in others to be top twenty.

What makes me do it? I think the answer is because racing if the only time you get to fully be yourself. You go as hard as you can for the whole race and you only have one thing to think about: finishing. There is something zen about it. Stressful a race may be, but away from the daily stresses of life, it can be just what you need. As for the fear of racing, most veteran triathletes welcome the adrenaline rushes accompanying thoughts of racing and realise these for what they are – anticipation.

Long time triathletes don’t do it to tick the bucket list, to get ripped, to show off, to wear stupid clothing and helmets or any number of other reasons I have heard from non-triathletes. They do it for the love of it.

Carolyn Hayes was named Athlete of the Year 2015

Good to see triathlon on RTE. Here's what was reported:

Carolyn Hayes was named Athlete of the Year at the Triathlon Ireland Annual Awards in Dublin on Saturday evening.
Limerick triathlete Hayes won the Sprint Triathlon, Standard Triathlon and Aquathlon National Championships in a hugely successful 2015.
Asked about her season highlight, Hayes said: “I have to say I’m honoured to be receiving this award. There are some incredible names on this award before me so I’m very thankful for this.”
Elite paratriathlete Catherine Walsh received the Caroline Kearney Memorial Trophy in recognition of her contribution to the development of the sport. Walsh is aiming to qualify for the Rio Paralympic Games after she burst onto the paratriathlon scene this season, rising to 11th in the world in just her first season.
“It would be an honour to qualify for Rio but the margins are so tight that if we get it right on the day, well just watch out.”
Other winners on the night included The Lost Sheep Triathlon, organised by Cork Triathlon Club which was voted as Race of the Year, and Darren Dunne, who won the Junior Athlete of the Year award.

See: http://www.rte.ie/sport/athletics/2015/1115/742096-carolyn-hayes-named/

Bryan McCrystal has broken the Irish IM record again

I can't put it any better than stickybottle.com:

Having set a new IronMan national record less than two months ago, one of Ireland’s leading cyclists Bryan McCrystal has put in another performance of his life in the United States.
On Sunday at Arizona IronMan he lowered his own Irish record by more than 10 minutes, clocking a time of 8hrs 30mins 50secs.
Despite having only recently come out of a long road racing season during which he won the new National Road Series, McCrystal’s time in the US on Sunday was good enough for 12th place against a first class international field.
He completed the 2.4 mile swim in a time of 1:02:54, followed by the 112 mile bike leg in 4hrs 16mins 34secs.
And the Irishman rounded out his race by completing the 26.2mile run in 3hrs 7mins 14secs.
In Barcelona last month he set a time of 8hrs 41mins 29secs; four minutes faster than the national record set by fellow Louth man Liam Dolan in Copenhagen two years ago.
Dolan, who has also since turned to cycling, set a time of 08:45:26.
Also in action for Ireland on Sunday in Arizona was Martin Owen who came home in 31st place in a time of 9:03:58 in the 390-athlete field.
Another Irish man, Mark McCabe was 338th in a time of 11:01:57.
McCrystal is a former pro football who played for Leeds United until injury cut short his career in England after four years.
He then played League of Ireland with Dundalk FC before being hit by further injury. Having then gone on to triathlon he quickly became an international before moving to cycling.

See: http://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/top-cyclist-mccrystal-smashes-irish-ironman-record-again/

Lost Sheep wins Race of the Year

Congratulations to Cork Tri Club, its race organising committee and to its club members for marshalling Triathlon Ireland's Race of the Year.

I did this race myself and I voted for it to win. I am pleased to see a middle distance race top the poll.

This race should be a Super Series event and the national middle distance championship.

This is one race you never regret doing!

Entry at: http://www.corktri.com/events/the-lost-sheep-triathlon-kenmare/

Am I buying a power meter for my bike this Christmas?

This season I noticed a number of triathletes training with and then using power meters during races. When I see power meters I can’t help myself thinking: ‘more expensive equipment – where do people get the money?’ (power meters are expensive, but not as expensive as they were some years ago, and there are many types – each with their own pros and cons), so are people mad to buy and use them? Or, are they a solid investment? 

Before going on, I must declare my allegiance to the non-pioneer approach to gear. I tend to let others buy expensive new gadgets and gear and wait to see if they work, are durable and, most of all, are worth it. I was a late comer to early heart rate monitors, Garmin GPS devices, to Strava, to disc wheels and to myriad other now standard biking technologies. I now use all of these and would enjoy cycling less without them all. But will this be the case with power meters? Are they here to stay? Will everyone who cycles a bike and cares about the data which can be collected on every ride soon have one as standard as every bike tends to have a bike computer these days?

I have discussed this with friends who have used them for triathlon and for cycling – for training and racing. Common themes emerge from these conversations. Some now view training without a power meter or a heart rate monitor as “old school”. The days of following a training plan or race plan and relying on experience is seen as almost naïve. They want to avoid blowing up during a race by knowing what they are capable of before a race even starts. 

For anyone who watched Chris Froome during this year’s Tour de France will know he did not always follow the bunch up the climbs, but kept his eyes firmly fixed on his power meter and stayed within what he knew was achievable across the entire climb. Nearing the end of the climbs, he was almost always back up at the front. He was using power meter technology to determine when attacks from his competitors, where the speed ramped up, could or could not be maintained and therefore whether he should or should not react. Treating each hill as a personal time trail may not be as exciting to watch as seeing the main contenders taking lumps out of each other, but it is effective.

More experienced cyclists and triathletes reading this article will note how they have been using heart rate targeting to effectively plan their training and racing for years, so why move to power targeting instead? I have used heart rate monitoring with decent results in running races, cycling and triathlons – so even I needed convincing. Some I spoke to say their power meter has dramatically improved their training, but why?

Much of the reason lies in growing expectations of our bike computers. Like the evolution of our mobile phones to pocket computers which perform an endless range of tasks, our bike computers no longer just tell us how fast we are going, the distance travelled and other basic data. We are now connected to satellites for our entire ride and we fit ourselves and our bikes with a heart rate monitors, cadence sensors, speed sensors and more – the result is masses of data we can upload to sites like Garmin Connect and Strava where detailed training diaries are kept and analysis of our training fully anoracked. We now want not only data though; we want the all the data we can get.

For many, this increasingly means recording power output data. Heart rate is not a great measure for training and racing as our heart rate differs – and sometimes quite dramatically – between when we are tired or rested, so it can be hard to judge, on any given day, what a very hard session is in heart rate terms. Power is less subjective than heart rate.

What you get with a power meter, I am told, is an absolute measure of output, say averaging 200W, 225W or 250W for a given training interval. Different power outputs provide targets to aim your training at. But more than this, you can target the right power for your race.

Those who have trained with a power meter say you quickly get to know the highest sustained power you can maintain for one hour or estimated functional threshold power - FTP. This sounds a bit like Jason Bourne in the Bourne Identity and apparently isn’t all you can use to determine your pacing plan. You can also, like Froomey, take into account your previous efforts. Those using Strava have a record of what they have done on many routes before. This data provides an idea what you can do on certain routes. If you know you’ve previously completed a climb at your maximum intensity then you will have power data for that effort. During your race, you will know you can hold the levels of power you previously achieved on the same climb.  If you can’t do it in training, you can’t do it in a race. If your fastest 50km time trail was undertaken at 70 percent of your FTP, then riding an Ironman race at 80 percent FTP is going to cause you to blow up.

When racing triathlons or bike races (especially time trials), you need to have a pacing strategy which is not just going 100% for the entire race. A power meter can give you an accurate percentage of FTP which you should be racing at for various length of race. The shorter the race, the higher should be the FTP. This might mean 100% of FTP for a 10 mile time trial or for a sprint distance triathlon, while an Ironman might be raced at as little as 65% of FTP. These can be worked out for you and you can then go out and race to your pre-race percentage of FTP strategy. No longer do you need to spend the entire bike race or triathlon bike leg worrying that you are going too hard or too easy – you are simply sticking to the plan and the plan should get you through in your target time. If you go above your FTP, you ease off; if you go below you go harder.

But remember, you need to build up your power data. If you have only just purchased a power meter, have no data, or have been using it for little more than telling you your speed, you should train and race using you established pacing strategy, whether by experience, heart rate or other, and not even looking at your power. Use the training or racing to collect the data needed to develop your FTP.

I also asked friends whether the meters are accurate. Those I spoke to used PowerTap which measures at the rear hub); or Quarq/SRAM, SRM, Stages and Power2Max which measure at the left or right crank; or Look/Polar and Garmin Vector which measure at the pedal spindle; and there are others which measure at the shoe cleat. All felt their power meter of choice was accurate enough.

The thing which struck me about the different power meter options was not how each one measures power, but how you transfer the device from bike to bike – say from racing bike to winter bike. For example, the power meter can be on a wheel hub, a crankset, a crank arm and so on. Either buy multiple power meters or get used to swapping parts across bikes. Although I haven’t used any of the systems, the one most riders were using was the Stages Power meter (which requires you to install  a left crank arm with a ready fitted Stages device fitted), though, without ever having used one, I like the idea of a pedal or cleat system as these can be changed easily across bikes. As ever, the decision for most people will come down to cost and Stages is currently the least expensive. There is a bit of a price war on at the moment and you can get a power meter at a lower cost than ever before.

But, will I be buying a power meter for Christmas? No. There are still items in my equipment shopping basket which will be purchased before I splash out on a power meter. I think prices will come down and down (they are half the price now that they were a little over 5 years ago), until eventually power metering forms part of bundles like those offered by Garmin (bike computer, heart rate strap, sensors, ANT dongle, etc.). It is still the pioneers buying power meters, not every day cyclists.  If you already have your fully kitted out time trail bike, race bike, winter bike and every bit of gear you need, then a power meter is for you – sure, what else would you be spending your money on. For the rest of us peasants, there will most likely be gear you need more than a power meter (better bike(s), better bike frame(s), better groupset, better wheels, a disc wheel, a Garmin bike computer – you name it).