This past Thursday, I got some bad news. The TriOneOOne season finale in Woodlands, TX (suburb of Houston) was cancelled. From the beginning of the year, this series had been my focus. The money was great, HFP racing puts on great events, and I liked the distance (it is quite bike-centric, even among long course races). I also thought I was a good stepping stone should I ever want to do an Ironman. I really enjoyed the OneOOne series, so I didn’t have the Ironman itch. I kept saying “when I do my first one, I want to be prepared.” Well, with the cancellation of the race (and the series), that plan of “be prepared” went out the window. I was standing in the ocean with Simon icing my legs, as I do most every night, and I said “well, what should I do now?” In typical Simon fashion, he said “why don’t you race Ironman Canada on Sunday?” We laughed, and then, suddenly, it didn’t seem so crazy. So, after talking about it some more, we got it in our heads that this would be a good idea.

I called Steve Fleck of Nineteen Wetsuits, who is part of the whole Ironman Crew, and left him a voicemail saying “I think this is crazy, but do you think there is any chance I could do the race on Sunday?” After a hearty send off dinner at Hernandez for Dano Wells, who is taking a short leave of absence from Team BAMF, Fleck called back and said “yes, we can get you in.” I really didn’t think this was a possibility, so thanks Fleck!

Coach Joel didn’t seem thrilled by the idea, but he did support my decision and gave me a good prep speech. And, more than that, he gets all the credit for the an incredible year of training. After a short swim Friday morning, I booked a ticket to fly out of Victoria that afternoon. A HUGE thank you to Paula Newby-Fraser and the rest of the North America Sports crew for letting me race last minute. So after a last minute packing job, I landed in Penticton at 4:30PM on Friday. Jill was nice enough to pick me up, and we headed over to registration, but they were unfortunately closed for the evening. So, with the big day looming, we headed off to get some stuff to make dinner. I was careful to eat something I knew would sit well, and I also tried to get some extra salt in. I also tried to listen to several people’s advice to not overeat, as many folks are wont to do trying to cram in calories for the whole race at each meal. And then, it was time for bed.

Saturday, I got registered was assigned number 62, which seemed like a good omen since I was number 162 at the OneOOne race in Clearlake, which was my best race to date. Then I did a short swim and run just to stay loose. After that, Jill went over the course with me on a map, and helped me to know how Joel’s plan of racing by 60km increments on the bike would actually play out. I knew I had to be a bit conservative, since I’d never raced this far. Joel had a great gameplan, and laid out what I had to do well - keep your watts under control and stay on top of your nutrition. After registration, I had some lunch, got my gear bags ready, checked in my bike, and then dinner and bed. I did manage to take a few short naps during the day, since I didn’t think I’d sleep well that night. Not so much exciting there.

And that’s how I ended up racing my first Ironman on three days notice!

Seconds per 100 that is… The BlueSeventy PointZero3 name actually refers to the frictional coefficient of the swimskin, which is 0.03, compared to ~0.10 for something like a Speedo Fastskin, or 0.50 for human skin. But who really cares about all that? How does that number translate into a number we really care about, namely how fast we go in the pool.

In order to try to answer this question, which I’d heard rumored was as much as five seconds per 100, I headed off the pool. The suit, which works in two ways - reducing the friction over your body AND increasing your buoyancy slightly - is very comfortable, and swimming in it requires no changes to your stroke, unlike swimming in a wetsuit, where you really should change your stroke a bit to take maximal advantage of the suit. In the PZ3, you just swim, and, *hopefully*, go faster.

So I wanted to test a few things - maximal speed, cruising speed, and then consistency over a steady interval set. Maximal speed is a bit flaky, since warm-up, turn-quality, etc. plays such a large role. But I can pretty consistently bang out 31 second 100’s when swimming fast. In the PZ3? 29.5 at what I perceived to be the same exertion level. So far, so good. I also did a cruising 200 just to see how it did for steady, which I can normally nail at 2:35-2:40, and I was 2:28. Again, so far, so good.

But this was all one-off stuff. How about a workout where consistency is key? So I had a good set - 30 x 100 as 10×100 swim on 1:30, 10×100 pull-buoy only on 1:25, 10×100 pull paddles on 1:20. The swim 100’s were really good, and I was consistently 2-3 seconds faster than when I had done the workout the week before. The pulling sets were harder to compare since the pull buoy slipped down so easily on the smooth skin of the suit, so I would call those basically useless for comparison.
So, after my basically unscientific study, I have concluded that I like this swim skin an awful lot. Thanks guys… To give a reference point about this suit, a good wetsuit will save you 8-10 seconds per 100, so to have just a swim skin save you 2-3 seconds is pretty darn fast. As with all these sort of things, I’ll offer the disclaimer “your mileage may vary.” Or rather, I should say “your timeage may vary.” Of course, timeage isn’t a word, but never mind…

Well, it sounds funnier if you imagine some guy from NYC saying it, phonetically, “Wat’s a wat?” Anyway… I digress. The point is, what exactly is “a watt”? Technically speaking, it is a unit of power. Depending on how strict you are in terms of units, it is THE unit of power. Sorry America, horsepower is only for cars… It is named in honor of scientist James Watt, and it is equivalent to one joule/second, or the power required to generate one joule of energy every second. For those who don’t like joules, it is one kg*meter/second^3 (a joule is one kg*m/s^2), which is to say it is the power required to accelerate a one kg object one m/s^2 every second. Which is to say you need to increase an objects speed one meter/second every second every second. Make sense? Good…

Now that we have all that out of the way, let’s discuss what a watt really means. For you, as a triathlete, it is relevant to your cycling. It is relevant to swimming and running too, but in a more abstract way, since you can’t measure it directly. Well, you can’t measure it outside a lab. Fortunately, on the bike, you can measure it directly, and you can measure it with something that comes with you on every ride. There are three basic systems for measuring power out there: the SRM (the first real on-bike powermeter), the PowerTap, and the Ergomo. By all accounts, the SRM and PowerTap are the best, with the Ergomo receiving mixed reviews, usually dependent, it seems, on who installed it. All three systems measure the same thing, our friend the WATT. If you are considering a powermeter that is not one of the above three, STOP. I won’t name names, but you don’t want it.

Now, forgetting all that mumbo jumbo in the first paragraph, a watt is the power you, as a cyclist to overcome three things - air resistance, rolling resistance, and gravity. That’s it. Those are the only things slowing you down. Sure, it might be hot (or cold) or humid (or dry) or raining (or snowing). But none of that matters to the watt. Power is the same regardless of these things. Which makes power the only way to really gauge power on the bike.

BUT, and this is a big but (as opposed to butt, like wat and watt, only wat is not a word), you can’t forget about the other stuff, since that stuff does affect, to some extent, how many watts it takes your body to apply X watts to the pedals. They are not the same, which is why you get hot and sweaty when you exercise. But, generally speaking, a watt is a watt is a watt. And this means if you suddenly see someone flying away up a hill during a race, it is often a matter of seconds (if you are pacing with power) before you reel him back in because he doubled his power output to do so, and now his legs are toast. Of course, he doesn’t know this, because he doesn’t have a powermeter, so he is attacking the climb “old skool.” Which is fine, because then seconds later I pass him “new skool” style - with steady power.

Watts are also good because all those roads you thought were slightly uphill (or downhill) or slightly into a headwind (or tailwind) can be confirmed as such. Speed ceases to be relevant (not that it ever really was), and power is your new guide. It’s like the Force, only since power is ~force^3, we shoudl really call it THE POWER, since it is that much more hardcore than “the force.” For reference, if you want to be a super geek, which we know triathletes do, the unit of force is the Newton. So if you have buddies with Newton shoes, you can say your powermeter is tres cooler, even though tres is three times and we are talking cubed. But so watt? I mean, so what?

Alright, aside from the fact that you may be thinking I am crazy, how does this really affect you. The simple answer, it means you should get a powermeter. Specifically, one of the three I mentioned. Team CSC uses the SRM. Team Phonak used the Powertap. So either one is good enough to train to win a Grand Tour. Bjorn Andersson uses the Ergomo, so it’s good enough to set a multitude of fastest bike splits in triathlon.

Once you have said powermeter, you will begin training WITH power. This means that you will go out and ride and see what your power is. After you have done this for a while, you will then be able to start training BY power. And this is where you get real gains. Because you can set minimum effort levels for your workouts (and occassionally maximums for those rare recovery rides). So suddenly, you can be assured of a base level of quality on your long rides. And you can also make sure you don’t coast that road that really is slightly downhill and that you don’t toast your legs on that road that is slightly (or even more than slightly) uphill. And once you know how to train by power, you can also choose to race by power, which is the best way to ensure that you run well off the bike. Since that guy that drilled the uphill X seconds before you passed him, he probably isn’t going to run so well either courtesy of said toasted legs.

If you have ever said this (and most triathletes have), “I felt so good on the bike, but then I just died on the run,” the pacing by power is going to help you.

So what is a watt, really? It is the thing that is going to help you take your training (and racing) to the next level…

So, what is the difference, besides the obvious one, of a sleeveless vs. non-sleeveless wetsuit? Overall, the differences can be described in terms of “comfort,” with comfort breaking down into two categories - temperature differences and stroke differences.

If you are fighting for a podium spot that you routinely miss by a couple seconds, then, yes, a sleeved wetsuit will be faster in terms of strict hydrodynamics. But for most triathletes, the issue of hydrodynamics and fractions of a second of speed should take a back seat to comfort in the wetsuit.

In warm water, close to the 78F cutoff, a sleeveless wetsuit can keep you from overheating during the swim. Especially if it is sunny out, and you are in a black rubber suit, the extra cooling of water on your arms and a little more flow through the suit can make a big difference. In colder water, keeping water from flowing through the suit during the swim, as well as keeping your arms covered, can help make the swim a much more pleasant experience.

But beyond comfort with regards to water temperature, there is also the issue of swimming effectively in a wetsuit. A wetsuit should make you swim faster for a couple reasons. First off, it has a very, very smooth skin (which is why you paid for a fancy QR suit instead of a BodyGlove surf suit) which has a very, very low skin friction coefficient.

Think gliding across ice vs. gliding across, say, a pile of boulders. Secondly, it makes you more buoyant, so you float easier, which for many super-skinny runner/cyclist types, can be a big boon. It also provides that buoyancy in an engineered fashion, lifting your hips up especially high, to put you in what is known as a “downhill position,” which makes swimming with proper technique easier. Both sleeveless and sleeved wetsuits do this basically equally well.

The sleeves *can* get in the way of proper swimming, though. For some athletes, their rotator cuffs are not strong enough to flex the suit for an entire 1.2 or 2.4 miles of swimming. Moving the rubber shoulder, which is obviously molded to want to stay in one position, can be tremendously tiring.

Some companies, including Quintana Roo, have put a tremendous amount of effort into making the shoulders as flexible as possible. The ribbed, 0.5mm shoulders of the QR suit are paper thin. BUT, they are still less flexible than having nothing there. Especially over an IM, if you don’t posses the deltoids of a boxer, moving your arms can become tiring enough without needing to worry about flexing a suit as well.

If you feel this way, a sleeveless suit may very well end up being faster for you than a sleeved suit. I talk to many triathletes who bought sleeved suits because they think they are the fastest, without any sort of regard to how they would work for them specifically.

Wetsuits are a very individual item, just like a bike saddle or shoes. Don’t pick a suit just based on who swims in one. The right suit for the fellow leading the swim at an IM may not be the right suit for you. Of course it might be, but that’s just coincidence.

Many retailers have excellent exchange policies on suits that have only been used in the pool (with an obvious preference towards ones that have also not been peed in!). So try suits out. And, of course, make sure to try both sleeved and sleeveless to see which one works best for YOU.

Unfortunately, it is starting to get a bit chilly in the mornings up here in New York, and I’m starting to dread the arrival of winter. Actually, it is not winter so much as the indoor rides that go along with it that I really hate. The trainer is, in my mind, an odious and tortuous device, capable of driving the sanest of men crazy, to say nothing of those of us who already dance along that edge of athletic genius and madness. But the trainer can be a very valuable device, in large part because of what exactly it is that makes riding the trainer so different.

The trainer is, by definition, a “low inertia” (in layman’s terms there is not much weight moving) environment. Unlike on the road, where you have your body weight the weight of the bike moving at X mph, on the trainer, you have nothing but a little flywheel. Even on “deluxe” trainers, the heaviest flywheel commercially available weighs 6lbs.; this is the flywheel on the Kurt Kinetic road machine.

So, for an “average cyclist and rider” of ~180lbs. (this seems to be the industry standard), that means your flywheel is basically 1/30th the weight of your bike out on the road. The fluid or mag units in most trainers is designed to mimic air resistance on the road, so that as you go faster, it becomes exponentially harder to pedal.

Most good trainers do a pretty good job of mimicking the power required on the road to go a given speed, though you may feel a bit “slow” on the trainer if you are very light and/or have a very aerodynamic position. The trainer does not take into account your fancy aerobars, aerhelmet, skinsuit, etc.

But when people describe feeling “bogged down” on the trainer, it is not that their wheels are going slower for a given effort, it is that the SAME effort feels easier out on the road. And this is one case where perception actually matches reality. Because the trainer doesn\’t have much momentum behind it, it slows down very quickly.

There is a noticable slowdown even within each pedal stroke. So while you are outside, your momentum carries you through those little blips in your pedal stroke, those brief moments of inattention where you are coasting without realizing it, and those extended pauses to drink from your waterbottle, the trainer punishes you and reminds you to keep pedalling.

Obsessive cyclists, of which there are many, who seek a more roadlike feel on their trainer can replace the flywheel. A simple ratchet removes the wheel on most trainers, and any good machine shop can build a 20 or 30lb. flywheel to replace it. This, of course, is going to be very heavy and make your trainer very awkward to move, but it will make it feel much nicer, albeit at a bit of cost.

But you can use the low-inertia of the trainer to your advantage. A trainer workout can be very productive for doing interval work, where you want to be 100% on all the time. During interval workouts, you should not be soft pedaling, drinking from your waterbottle for extended periods, or stopping to take in the scenery.

Since the trainer is so harsh on these momentary lapses, it will encourage good cycling behavior, forcing you to keep on top of yourself even more than you would outside. Especially for riders without a powermeter, the trainer offers a repeatable and consistent environment that can help to weed out the imperfections in your cycling technique.

One other reason the trainer is feels so much more difficult is because there is no air movement except what your piddly little fan pushes over you. Outside, the cooling effect of cycling at even modest speeds is tremendous. Inside, your core temperature can skyrocket without the cooling effect of the breeze, limiting your ability to cool down, which is why it feels similar to riding outside in heavy winter gear. A good fan (or two or three or four…) can make a big difference in performance.

Since there doesn’t seem to be much benefit in training with a higher core temperature, it makes sense to improve the circulation in the room so that you can ride harder. It makes a lot more sense, training wise, to feel exhausted from pushing the pedals rather than overheating. Drink more (the bathroom is close at hand), and even change jerseys, during a longer session to keep wicking the sweat away.

Indoor riding is practically a different sport, so knowing why it is so different, and realizing how best to take advantage of those differences, can go a long way towards making those tortuous hours on the trainer more bearable.