Being an amateur on Team Timex is like being the proverbial fly on a wall; you hear a lot of stuff that’s not being said to you. Sometimes you pick up some helpful or funny pieces of information from the team sponsors and pros. By helpful/funny information I don’t mean “Our brand X is the fastest,” or “You need to swim 42 X 100’s on sub 1:07 to get faster at the IM swim”. The first isn’t kept as a secret and the second isn’t helpful…or funny to someone who swam 1:20 last October.

Take wetsuits, for example. Sure, we’ve all heard that Vaseline petroleum jelly is bad for wetsuits, but is the damage to the suit worse than the damage to your neck from a wetsuit hickey, and if so how bad is it? And how about swimming in chlorinated pools with wetsuits? How much will knowledge about my 1000-yard wetsuit aided time cost me in terms of wetsuit wear? According to blueseventy’s Ben Bigglestone both Vaseline and chlorine will degrade the stitching of your wetsuit. But if you’re a pro and get a new one every year, what the heck do you care? Apparently, neither eats away like acid so base your behavior on how long you want to keep your suit.

How about Pam non-stick cooking spray? OK, according to Ben, except that it makes you smell like “chips”. That’s across the pond talk for french fries.

But the big question everyone wants answered is, what about peeing in your wetsuit? Will this shorten wetsuit life and friendships? Ben says you can use your wetsuit like your own private port-a-potty with no worries, enough water gets in the suit during the swim that there is no harm and no one will ever know.

The Timex pros are also a great source of tips. Ever had trouble pulling the ankles and wrists of a wetsuit up high enough for a snug fit? You should, it takes time to put a suit on right. Timex pro Blake Becker said he puts his suit on starting with it inside out. I had to see it to believe it. It works.

Encourage Blake to post pictures or video of this tip. There is no way I’m posing in a Speedo for pictures on the Internet!

Next time I’ll post what I heard about the Equinox TTX from the man know as “Lance’s bitch” at Trek. It’s not on their web site!

I felt so cool! Like a famous pro triathlete. I went to Rodale Press on Thursday (5/17/07) out in Emmaus, PA for a presentation of the fabulous Timex summer and fall lines of fitness and sport watches. Including the new Hi-Ti, coming out in July (very snazzy!) Also the “Divers” watch is soooo cool! And they have a solar powered watch coming out in June.
 

The Timex PR team met with: Christine Bucher, Fitness & Exercise Senior Editor, Bicycling Magazine
Joelle Junior, Fitness & Exercise Assistant Managing Editor, Prevention Magazine
Warren Green, Jogging & Running Editor, Runner’s World
Jennifer Mack, Editorial Assistant, Bicycling/Mountain Bike Magazines  

We introduced the Fitness Series of heart rate monitors. They have three models with different features, all very simple and easy to use:
The Easy Trainer is ideal for the regular exerciser looking for a simple heart rate monitor.
The Personal Pacer is perfect for the active exerciser who enjoys various forms of physical activity from bike riding to running on the treadmill.
The Zone Trainer, in a variety of styles for men and women, has a comprehensive range of functions geared to the more intense exerciser interested in maximizing training. Each is an invaluable tool for those trying to achieve a better level of physical fitness.Each of the Fitness Series HRMs recalls the average and peak heart rate and exercise time. Analog transmission allows the Easy Trainer and the Personal Pacer models to work with treadmills and other HRM-enabled fitness equipment. Digital transmission in the Zone Trainer eliminates interference and cross talk from other HRMs.
 

After the presentation, I was talking with Jennifer Mack who writes LAB RAT for Bicycling magazine and she had just tested a new recovery drink from PowerBar. My ears perked up as I am shopping around for a recovery drink. She gave me a sample and I couldn’t wait to get home to try it after a big workout.

Out in the parking lot I met Bill Strickland, from Bicycling Magazine, who was just coming back from a lunchtime ride. Bill said, “If you don’t ride, you can’t write.” The employees get to run and ride during the day. They have full locker rooms! How awesome would it be to work there? For me, a true dream job! (I’m a graphic designer with loads of printing and editorial experience…. hint, hint, HINT!)
 

Monday - I used it yesterday after a bike workout. I liked it, and I feel pretty good. It tasted like a vanilla shake. YUM! Next to try is the chocolate flavor. We will see how my run goes today, 2 hours! Gotta love Ironman training.
Tuesday - So it’s the day after my long run. I had the recovery drink again. Chocolate is a good flavor too!  Lets see how my time trial goes tonight. Maybe we have a winner!

Wednesday - OK, the TT went well. I felt really good. Another recovery drink tonight, chocolate flavor. These are getting pretty good.

So Team Timex has been something that I have wanted to become a part of for the past 3 seasons.  Each year, something else has come up that has prevented that from taking place.  Well, this year I wan’t going to let that happen again. 

 I am now a part of what I believe of the greatest multisport team in the world.  I am not just speaking of the talent on our team, which by the way is AMAZING.  I am speaking about the types of people that are here.  Yes, everyone is nice and they are fast and they are have been in the sport for a while.  But everyone is also a ”good” person, they have good morals and intentions…maybe that is why everyone gets along so well???

By the way, I am speaking about the athletes, the team support crew and everyone else that is linked in with Timex.  There is a reason that they are in. 

 Either way, team camp was great.  SoCal is much different than i thought…at least on the coast.  It is beautiful, but VERY crowded.  Traffic jams at 11pm????  You have to be ok with the fact that you could potentially be delayed for HOURS, sitting in your smog filled car.  If you lived on the coast, the training would be tough, I can see why and how so many cyclists get killed each year.

 Besides a bit of training and meeting the team this weekend, we also got a chance to meet the sponsors. 

 The wetsuits have been updated and are even better than last year.  The big feature is a cuff that blocks water from entering and leaving through your sleeves when swimming. AWESOME!

The Trek Bikes are probably the stiffest bikes on the tri market and I think that it will show by some of the times that people put up.  Just wait, everyone is going to want one.  You won’t be able to miss them either, because the new team color is ORANGE!!!!  BLAZE ORANGE for all the Wisconsin-ites out there.

Ok, that is all for now.  I am currently in Tempe putting the finishing touches on my taper for IM Arizona in 10 days.  Should be a HOOOOT Time. 

 Also, a thank you to Ben H., Keith M. and Tom S. for everything that they put into this team…can you imagine living out of a truck and trailor for 2 months at a time???????????  I owe you all a few beers after the 15th.

 BB

www.blakebecker.com

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.

I went to a large party recently and, after a while, noticed I felt out of place. I didn’t know why, it was a nice party and I was wearing appropriate party clothes. Then I got it - I was the only one I could see wearing a plastic watch.

At first, I worried that this stamped me as some sort of fiscal under-achiever, everyone was wearing expensive watches. Then, I hoped that my plastic OVA Ironman stamped me as something else, a triathlete.

In a room full of people with watches designed to make a personal statement of affluence, I thought my watch said something else about me. Or maybe posing as someone who swims, bikes and runs all the time is just a different way to say the same thing.

Nonetheless, the anti-bling of my $55 watch made me feel left out. Would two carats in each ear plus the Timex equal the dress for success impact of a Rolex, or don’t gentlemen wear jewelry?