What did I see athletes doing wrong - Oceanside 70.3 and Florianopolis 70.3

The last two weekends were exciting as I had a chance to be supporting my athletes at these two iconic races : Oceanside 70.3 in California and Florianopolis 70.3 in Brazil. Both races had unique conditions and athletes had to manage different challenges!

Christina Jackson with another great performance winning the 40-44AG at Oceanside 70.3

Hello athletes!

The last two weekends were exciting as I had a chance to be supporting my athletes at these two iconic races : Oceanside 70.3 in California and Florianopolis 70.3 in Brazil. Both races had unique conditions and athletes had to manage different challenges! 

And that's where my inspiration to write this email came from! I saw athletes making mistakes that could be easily avoidable and it would positively interfere on their results:

1 - Not be prepared for the weather

It's crazy how this happens over and over again! At Oceanside 70.3, the temperature was on low 40's in the morning and I saw athletes struggling with the cold! It's crucial to always OVER dress to make sure you are warm before the race start and to have a plan to stay warm during the race. Easy tricks like the rubber gloves, plastic grocery bags for the chest and zip lock bags for your feet are cheap and you can dispose them during race if need it. You can see a video I made on the www.sbxtraining.com site.

2 - Not having the right Goggles for the conditions

At ANY race you go, you need to have TWO pair of goggles, one with clear lenses and one with dark/mirrored because we never know what the conditions will be in the morning. I can say that 80% of the time I had chosen to use clear lenses because I can see the buoys better!!! I also like to race with brand new goggles so the lenses are not scratched or blurry. 

3 - Not having the right tires for the conditions

At the Florianopolis 70.3 it rained all day! But the days before it was already raining and the forecast was clearly pointing to be a rainy race. Well then you should be changing your tires for a "All Weather" tires especially if you know the course is technical or you don't have a great bike skills. Knowing you have better and proper tires for the conditions will reduce your stress and keep you safe during the race!

4 - Not mastering hydration and nutrition

Very common to see athletes ignoring proper hydration due to colder weather. We know you are not going to be sweating at the same rate you would if you were in hot , humid races but you still need to hydrate properly. 

What many athletes don't know is that cramping is the extreme result of lack of electrolytes but before you reach that level, you already have your muscles not functioning at it's best. you start to lose power, strength, speed of reaction and even your cognitive suffers! So you have to pay attention to keep your minimum consumption per hour to guarantee your muscles will perform at their best.

Another thing I keep seeing is the lack of understanding of how to consume your CHO. I see athletes having an isotonic drink (mix of electrolytes and CHO) in their bottles and they carry gels for extra CHO.

Well the problem is that if you drink your mix WITH the gels, you are having a stronger concentration of CHO that you should which could cause stomach discomfort (specially at IM races that are longer).

You have to know that you should NEVER take your Isotonic drink with your gels! So when you are taking your gels, take them with water or better electrolyte drinks like ZYM (no sugar or CHO)

5 - Not understanding how to race when swim is cancelled

Due to tough ocean conditions at Florianopolis 70.3, the swim was cancelled and they only had the Bike and Run as a Time Trial start. This is happening very often now as Ironman do not want to take any risk so we need to be prepared to this "new" race format.

This is tricky because now we usually do not have time to a proper warm up. Very unlikely that you would have access to your bike or able to get the bike out of transition for a spin but we all know we need a warm up!

In this case we can do some body movements to mimic the cycling motion like squats and lunges so we can get a little bit of a warm up before the start but still not enough to be able to start the bike full gas!

It's important to start the bike and spin a bit higher to get your HR up and to hold back the first 3-5km so you can have a better bike split overall.

It's common to hear athletes trying to justify their bad performances due to the weather conditions or the race format but the truth is that the reason for not performing well is their own fault for not preparing themselves accordingly!

Have a great week and stay healthy!