Justin Daerr Elite Triathlete

Empowered Athlete Training Camp

January 30th, 2012

For the last eight days I took part in a Denver-based training camp held by Melissa Mantak (Coach and Owner/Operator of Empowered Athlete). The camp consisted of daily swim, bike and run sessions as well as evening presentations and discussions on various topics related to sport, performance, nutrition, altitude, etc.

The camp included nine triathletes (self included) with a mix of ability and experience. Most of the athletes have turned professional, but a couple are on the verge of earning their pro cards and moving on to the next level. We also varied in distance-discipline; most were focused on Olympic to HIM racing, but a few of us were long course athletes. Regardless of race duration, the training load of the camp would have progressed any athlete and I’m sure everyone walked away with better fitness (and new friends).

In almost every camp I’ve ever been to, someone falls ill. Unfortunately, this time, it was me. I came across some sort of stomach bug; I have no idea if it was from something I ate or something I caught, but it hampered the second half of the camp for me. Below, you’ll see the layout of the camp with my missed sessions in ().

Day One: 30 minute easy run, 4 hour moderate ride with two tempo climbs of ~20-25 minutes of duration up Lookout Mountain. ~5K swim, short course yards, with a mixture of intensities.

Day Two: 13 mile run with the final 4K uphill (steep) towards the top of Red Rocks. 5K swim, Long Course, with some pulling. One hour recovery spin on the trainer.

Day Three: 5K swim, Long Course, challenging main set. 30 minute skills session with dynamic warm up and run drills followed by a 10K run on trails. Afternoon ride of nearly 2 hours at moderate, aerobic effort.

Day Four: 5K swim, Long Course, pulling and fast 50s. 10K run with a main set of 3x: 10 x 30on/30off. Afternoon trainer ride with threshold and vo2 main set (2 hours) with 7K tempo run off the bike (my choice, others ran broken tempo or aerobic).

Day Five: 5K swim, Short Course Yards, technique focused (skipped). 2 hour ride, aerobic (skipped). 45 minute aerobic run (skipped).

Day Six: 5K swim, Long Course, Aerobic/strength with fast 50s. Afternoon brick workout: bike/run/bike/run/bike/run. Lasted nearly 4 hours with a lot of intensity (skipped).

Day Seven: Morning run, aerobic/longer, 90 minutes (about 12 miles). 4K swim, Short Course meters, aerobic with skills.

Day Eight: 3.5 hour ride with 50-60 minute tempo climb (my choice, others rode moderate). 7K easy run in the afternoon.

++++++++++++++++

I find training camps with this structure to be highly effective. The camp is bookended with aerobic overdistance sessions, while the middle of the camp sees the highest intensity. When a camp follows this layout, I believe its easier for athletes to come in and out of them with little disruption to their personal training schedule they execute at home. Training camps need to push, not break, athletes and this camp will most likely do just that for everyone.

As with most camps, I walked away learning a lot. Each athlete and coach has their own story, own style and own way of doing things. Listening and absorbing all their perspectives goes a long way in helping progress all of us as athletes. Each evening we formalized various topic discussions, but we also exchanged lots of ideas and stories during the downtime between sessions. Sometimes, its those moments that really generate some of the most valuable insight for all of us.

One the athletes, Jackie Arendt, blogged about each day’s training. If you want to read more details about the sessions, you can find them here.

I’ll be spending the next couple weeks here in Boulder before heading to a two week training camp in Tucson with my coach, Cliff English. That will be followed by Endurance Corner’s first camp of 2012 in Tucson beginning on February 26th.

cheers,

justin

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Get Better

January 12th, 2012

My latest article for Endurance Corner can be found here:

http://www.endurancecorner.com/Justin_Daerr/get_better

-j

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Key Race Selection

December 12th, 2011

Please check out my latest article on www.endurancecorner.com

http://www.endurancecorner.com/Justin_Daerr/race_selection

-j

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Offseason

December 5th, 2011

This year I made a goal of racing every month from February to November and I managed to do just that. As a result, I learned a lot of lessons and gained a lot of experience, but I was also in need of a good break once this season came to a close. Next year, and season, will be here soon and I’ve just started to look at the upcoming race calendar.

The following is set in stone for the first six months of the year:

February 10-24th; Training Camp (for me) with Cliff English Squad

February 26th-March 4th Fifth Annual Endurance Corner Tucson Training Camp

May 19th; Ironman Texas

June 17th-23rd; Endurance Corner Boulder Training Camp

As you can see, I don’t have a lot of race plans at the moment; other than Ironman Texas which is the only race I’ve committed to for the first half of the year. I will do my best to try and incorporate 2-3 races leading into IMTX, but my choices are limited based on some personal commitments. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make it all happen.

Check back periodically as I’ll be staying on top of updates through the winter.

Also, check out www.endurancecorner.com to read some of the 1000 articles in our database (including mine).

-j

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Ironman Florida 2011

November 9th, 2011

Following Louisville this year I decided to race Ironman Florida. Around 6-7 weeks out from the race I wrote down my goals for the event:

Swim: 51

Bike: 4:31

Run: 2:50

Transitions: 5:00 combined

Gives you 8:17:00

What really happened:

Swim: 54:45

Bike: 4:29:52

Run: 2:48:33

Transitions: 4:50 total (2:50 and 2:00 for T1 and T2)

Total time: 8:18:02; good enough for 3rd overall on the day.

The finishing time was almost exactly where I wanted it to be, but the execution of getting there was a little off. I started the day with a mediocre swim. I made some tactical errors in the first 10 minutes of the day and found myself having to swim in no man’s land. This resulted in starting the bike around 3-4:00 down from the group of people I wanted to ride with. I was a little concerned as the IMFL bike course tends to favor strength in numbers, but I felt good from the get go and started to chase.

We had somewhat favorable conditions on the bike because the majority of the wind would be in our face for the the first half of the bike. The second half of the bike has a tailwind about 40% of the time with the last 10K being into a headwind. They made some changes to the course last year and it was my first time riding it, but the bike course still utilizes much of the same course and I’m quite familiar with how things play out since I have raced here 5 times before (03,05,06,07,09).

I made some headway through first 40K of the bike and moved up about 3-4 places. The wind wasn’t terrible, but it was noticeable and I tried to keep the pressure on all the way to the turnaround of the first out-and-back (about halfway). This was my first chance to see what was going on: Basically a group of three at the front (with Ronnie S), another group of three (with Eduardo Sturla and Maxim Kriat), then 2-3 more athletes peppered between myself and the second group.

I hit the turnaround and was pretty excited to finally have an extended tailwind. I did my best to keep my head down and kept hammering away. With Ronnie, Eduardo, and Maxim up the road, I knew I had to keep the gap as close as possible.

The course offers a new out-and-back just before the 100-mile mark so I got the chance to see the groups again. It looked as though the first group had gained time on me (they had), but the second group was still within the same range. At this point I also realized I was riding in 7th so I had moved up pretty nicely since finishing the swim.

I came into T2, transitioned as quickly as possible and started the run. The first few miles splits had me right on ~6:20/mile (or even a little quicker), but I wasn’t making up much ground on anyone at that point. I kept things rolling along and around mile 9 I saw Brooke and she told me things weren’t really changing. The gaps were holding as everyone was running well.

I finally moved up one place around mile 11 and I could see that 2nd-5th weren’t totally out of reach at the turnaround (halfway point). It was right at this time that I crossed paths with one my AG buddies on the run. He quickly asked me how things were going. Honestly, I hardly ever respond to anyone when I race (even my buddies), but this time I said: “I’m going pretty well… …but so is everyone else.” I realized that all these guys were racing tough and they were not going to roll over so I could move up.

I caught 5th place around mile 16, then I caught 4th around mile 18 and I could see 3rd place up the road when I entered the park. As I closed in on mile 20 I was within striking distance of 3rd, but I was also hurting. The gap had been coming down pretty rapidly, but the last 50 meters seem to take me nearly a mile to finally close down. With less than 5 miles to go I moved alongside 3rd place and he started to match my pace, but I eventually broke free and started to move onto the home stretch. I had hopes that 2nd place might be somewhere within reach so I did my best to keep the hammer down.

As I went into the final couple miles I knew 2nd place was nowhere near, but I could see I still had a chance of setting a new run PR so I did my best to stay on point and I eventually made my way across finish line in 8:18:02. I was just a few seconds off that 8:17 goal, but I felt totally spent; I had nothing left. It was great to finish the season with an 11 minute PB and a new bike+run split PR. I was also happy to post my second Ironman podium finish of the year.

And that’s all she wrote for 2011.

See you next year,

Justin

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IM Talk

October 26th, 2011

I chatted with IM Talk on Monday about run speed work for Ironman athletes.

Check it out here:

http://www.imtalk.me/home/2011/10/24/imtalk-episode-282-justin-daerr.html

cheers,

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Pocono 70.3 and IMFL

October 18th, 2011

A little over two weeks ago, I made a last minute decision to race Pocono 70.3 in upstate PA. It was last minute only because I was trying to apply a lesson learned from IMTX. Following Texas, I put in a couple races early in the summer, but neither panned out to much. I just simply didn’t recover very quickly from Texas. I’m not exactly sure why, but it seemed to be a consistent feeling among a few other finishers I spoke with. The heat, concrete run, etc just added up to a little longer recovery time.

ANYWAY, I opted not to commit to any race following Louisville unless my training gave me positive feedback. I decided that the training was ‘good enough’ post-Lou to give the race a try and I flew off to Philadelphia.

Unfortunately the race had to cancel the swim two days out from the event. Apparently the river was too high following their constant rainfall and was deemed unsafe to swim in. I’m not sure what the river usually looks like, but the current was MOVING and it would definitely make for an interesting swim since the course is not entirely down current.

As a result, we had to do a bike/run TT start with 30 seconds staggered between each professional. Aside from the flooded river, we also had cold temperatures and wet roads. I was wearing a skinsuit, bike jersey, arm warmers, tall socks, toe covers, and full-fingered gloves. And at no point was I too warm.

I was one of the last athletes to go off so I was going to have to chase from the get go. The bike course was very hilly, technical and challenging and I felt this would play to my favor. As the race got going, I settled into a nice rhythm and I thought things were going pretty well as I moved through the first 20 miles of the course. However, I really didn’t have the gearing for some of the steep hills and I was getting pretty worked as I climbed these short, steep grades over and over again. At any rate, I had caught up with two athletes and the three of us were moving along the course trying to catch as many other athletes as possible.

Unfortunately at the 60K point I could tell my front tire was going flat and I had to pull off and make a change. I got the tired off, replaced and inflated in about five minutes and got back out onto the course. Stopping for that long had really stiffened me up with the cold weather and I lost some mental mojo now that I was riding along solo again (and lost a lot of time). I also blew through a turn at one point and lost a little more time. I was starting to race fairly sloppy, but as I approached T2 I got a second wind because, if nothing else, I wanted to try and run a fast split off the bike.

The run start with a pretty convoluted first mile, but then we went out onto the meat of the course. Once again we were treated with some nice hills, but the rise and falls were moderate grades for extended periods of time. I found these hills to be challenging, but also very ‘runable.’ I managed to start to run some people down and I thought maybe I could actually get back into the money.

I only managed to get back into 6th place and finished one minute out of 5th (the last money spot). I had the second fastest run of the day, but only by a ~60 second margin over several other athletes. I felt like my effort on the run was good, but I still was hoping for 60-90 seconds quicker in the end. I didn’t hit my half marathon goal of the season (sub 76) and that will just have to wait until next year.

My final race will be Ironman Florida in a little less than three weeks. Even though its only been a couple weeks, the training after Pocono has been encouraging and I believe I still have one day of fight left in me for 2011.

-j

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