Common Mistakes Triathletes Make (and how to keep it fun!) Ep 23

Oh, my favorite when you watch people in that is when they're dismounting and they take their feet out of their shoes.

Yeah.

And as they're running, the pedal moves around and the shoe catches the ground. You see their bike like almost flip over.

Oh yeah. Yard sale. Welcome to the Find Your Edge podcast. Get ready to dive into all things training, nutrition, recovery, and more. Whether you're a new or experienced endurance athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone who just Wants to improve your health and fitness. This podcast is for you. I'm Chris Newport, founder, head coach, registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, and certified personal trainer with the Endurance Edge and the Fueling Edge. With more than 20 years experience in the fitness industry, 18 years in multi-sport, and over 10 years as a sports nutritionist, I'm speaking with athletes and experts about key actionable steps you can take to reach and sustain peak performance and health. Let's do it. Welcome Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am your host, Kris Newport, and today's guest is our new coach, Mr. Marty Owens. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

So give us a little bit of background on both your experience in coaching and your experience in sport.

Oh man. I know.

Where do we start? Yeah.

And coaching-wise, I've been coaching at the collegiate level for 20 years, obviously Um, starting off with cross country and track and field, I started off at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. I was there for 17 years and then moved over to, or down to Guilford College, um, where I started as the director of cross country and track and field. And then we recently added women's triathlon and we'll be having our first competitive season in the fall. My involvement in sport originally, I was a soccer player and then my background in the triathlon started back in watching the old broadcast of Ironman on ABC Sports, and it was the year that Julie Moss got passed. And I remember turning to everybody in my family going that when I'm done playing soccer, I'm doing the Ironman. And I still remember everybody laughed, you know. And so after a while, like when I got to college, I start— I was still playing soccer, but I started training on my own, you know. I would do some running, you know, get on the indoor bike in the gym. And then immediately, so this is 1991, would be my first experience with really fully training. Did my first triathlon in 1992, got hooked, and been involved in multi-sport, whether it's triathlon, duathlons, marathon running, biking races. You know, I've been involved for over 3 decades now and had a passion for it since, you know, lucky enough, you know, to have competed in Hawaii twice, you know, and then just recently, that is the Ironman Championships.

Yes. For those of you who don't know what that is, cause we'll probably have to touch on Ironman. And I mean, clearly it brought you into this sport, right? So, and it brings a lot of athletes to us, but anyway, and you just completed one.

And I recently qualified for 70.3 World Championships in Utah this year.

Yes. Congratulations. Yeah. That was Ironman 70.3. Do they call that Blue Ridge or Roanoke?

It's okay. It's got one of the longest names. It's, Ironman 70.3 Virginia Blue Ridge, Roanoke.

Okay. All right. Just in case you didn't know exactly where it was. Now we do. And you have a little hydration issue, right? So I'm looking forward to getting your sweat test results back.

Yeah. If I had the picture here to share on screen, it was pretty— I mean, I showed it to somebody in the store yesterday at this running store and they were like, oh my God, I've never seen anything like that. I'm like, neither have I.

We're going to fix that, Marty. I'm looking forward to that. All right. So involved in college sports, collegiate triathlon. How, what's it been like to coach a women's team? Is it any different than some of your other experiences?

The funny thing is like, obviously, you know, we really haven't had our first season yet, but I really got my first start coaching women. I was first a head coach of the women's cross country and track and field team at my last school. And then when the men's coach retired, I took over both. So I really got my start coaching women. And my style of coaching, I treat both the same. And I think that's really what made the women's team so competitive and helped me recruit at my last school because they wanted to be treated the same. It's amazing. Like people think you gotta, you know, put the gloves on, you know, you can't train them. No, the group I had, they wanted to train as hard as the guys. And I'll be honest, my last couple of years at Susquehanna, my women's teams were more competitive than my guys' team. And had a better attitude about working out. Like if I took it easy on them, they would get more mad at me than the guys would be.

Were they competitive amongst each other or was it more like a team atmosphere?

Team atmosphere. And that was part of the culture I tried to build. It was just like, look, you know, we only have so many spots, like especially during cross country. But remember in track and field, we have more events. I can spread you out a lot more in terms of the events. You got 800, mile, on up, 3K, 5K. You know, and then the whole idea was telling them that one season always builds on the next. And so it was a competitive in a friendly way because they motivated each other.

That's cool. And not only is your coaching career in collegiate sports, but you also have a degree in exercise phys, right?

Yes. And it goes back to the old school days. You know, I graduated college in '91. So back then, nobody called it exercise science. It was still the old health phys ed and recreation. Oh, yes.

Mercy. Yeah.

The gym teacher major, as they called it.

Yep. Well, it's nice that it has more respect now, and clearly your experience is pretty vast. So that's awesome. But here, what we're going to talk about today is mistakes most triathletes make and how to fix them. Cause that's really, that's really our kind of main meat and potatoes. That's what Marty and I do is we love triathlon. We love coaching triathletes. We have some runners too. We love them. They're, you know, not to discount them too, but, um, today's focus is triathletes. So let's start, let's start with the training aspect. And we got a couple of fun ones in here too. I would say one of my main things that I feel like triathletes do too much is training too hard. Too often. What are your thoughts on that, Marty?

I think that just stems back— even though training's got a lot better, more scientific, I still think it stems back to the old school way of the sport. It was like, how far can we push ourselves? You know, and I think some of it too is people watch— when they see the Ironman on TV, they see the people crawling across the finish line, and they don't realize that's like a select few people that do that.

Oh my gosh, yes.

And if you watch the broadcast, I used to have videos, you know, the watch while I rode indoors. There was a stretch I had 4 or 5 years in a row, all on VHS back in the day. And I started realizing that 2 or 3 of those people were the same 2 to 3 people every year doing the same motion going. I'm like, and so people see it as the gruel-a-thon. So they think they got to do more and do more and do more. And so I think it just is the nature of the sport. And that's why I think coaching needs to be more out there for people. And I know a lot of articles are out there why everybody should have a coach, why you need to do this. But yeah, it's— people train way too hard.

Yeah, I agree. I, I think a lot of it is just, oh, sort of a cultural thing too, like, you know, harder, better, faster. And it's like, not always. And especially what we know now from what we've incorporated into our practice with genetic testing and from nutrition The ability to absorb training effects and the ability to recover are genetically predisposed. So there are those people who can train a whole heck of a lot and they get better faster, but the majority of us generally, we're like ordinary mortals and we need plenty of recovery. And are you getting 8 or 9 hours of sleep? Probably not. You know, so. Yeah, I think definitely training too hard, too much is, is an issue. Now you mentioned coaching in terms of like a potential fix. What other tips would you give for people to not train too hard, too much? Other than hiring us, but you know, shameless plugs are necessary sometimes.

Well, there's, well, even if you're not going to do the coaching, there is a lot of better ways to, you know, in terms of there's a lot of places out there. I know you do it. There's places you can do some of your testing. You know, and then get numbers and stick with them.

Yeah. So in other words, use, use your zones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whether your power meter, you know, get on one of the platforms and do your step test, your ramp test, whatever it is, and stick to your zones. You know, the biggest thing too is getting a plan in some sort, even if you're not going to hire a coach, find a plan online that's going to methodically get you from point A to point B, your big race. In a nice fashion.

Yeah. Yeah. I would also say on that note, give yourself plenty of time because before we started, we were kind of joking a little bit about when Ironman Raleigh was in— Ironman Raleigh 70.3 was in the area. It's no longer here, but it was a June race and people would call me and like, they'd be like, oh cool, a race, an Ironman in Raleigh. I'll sign up for that. And they hit register and then they realize in like April, like Oh my word, I'm not ready. And then they would call me and they're like, can you help me? I'm like, no, not really. Like, I'm so sorry, but could you have called me like 5 or 6 months ago perhaps? And of course depends on like your experience in swimming, biking, and running. All of that helps in terms of the timeline.

I think it also falls into like the eating thing. A lot of people in triathlon Their eyes are much bigger than what their stomach is.

Oh, that's a great analogy.

It's like, oh, I'm going to start triathlons. You know what? An Ironman sounds great. You know, that'll be my first race, or even the 70.3. Like, there are a lot of people who even at, you know, the Roanoke race, which had almost 4,000 feet of climbing, and you know that you're in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Yeah.

It was like their first triathlons or first experience in an Ironman event. And I'm like, Really? Did you not look at the course? Or they're like, I didn't realize there was so much climbing. It's the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I think they just, I think they just pick a race that is potentially either a nice place to travel to or it's near them. And then they ignore the actual like logistics of the course, which maybe should be one of our mistakes is not investigating the course appropriately because I like a blend and you can kind of chime in and give me your take on what you like, but I like a blend of big wins for athletes, like getting really super confident, like feeling super awesome about themselves, but also challenges along the way so that you're not always feeling like, oh my gosh, this is too hard. I can't do it. Like, I like a nice blend of like, well, yeah, I did that sprint and it was super flat. And I know that that's my strength. So I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to feel really good about it. But I'm going to continue training for the Blue Ridge race because that— the hills will challenge me.

Oh, you need that. Definitely. You've got to have steps where you gain confidence along the way. And then you got to have those steps where you get your humility, you know, and understand that not everything's going to come easy, you know. And I think, you know, it helps them understand when you have a bad day, you have a bad day, but you do need the confidence build up every once in a while. And I used to do the same thing with my teams, you know, in cross-country. It's like, Like, so if you had a conference championship that was going to be a hilly course, you obviously trained a lot of hills. You always find that one race mid-season that was pancake flat so they could run fast. Then they go into the second half of the year like, yeah, we're ready to go. Maybe we're running slow on the hills, but hey, you know, it's paying off when I really need to go fast. Yeah, you need that along this— on the long— any process.

I would also relate that also to like, you know how we were talking about how much you sweat at Blue Ridge? I have some athletes who just like you are just, they're like massive. They are like leaving behind body prints on the ground with the amount of sweat. So trying to find key races that are cooler times of the year so that they don't feel completely buried because they have lost so much weight from hydration. So picking certain races at certain times of the year sometimes can be a little bit of a tricky thing, but feel like that is also a good strategy for certain athletes depending on their strengths and weaknesses and time of year and all that kind of stuff.

That's why Lake Placid's normally in my wheelhouse because it's normally pretty cool compared to the rest of the summer. You know, like, like where I'm at now, Lake Placid feels very nice compared to here.

Was that your first Ironman?

No. Well, see, you know, when I qualified for, you know, Hawaii, there were no other Ironmans in the US.

Other than Placid?

No, Placid is older. Oh, or younger. Placid's 40, you know. So at that time, the only other Ironmans you had were Europe, Canada. So there was all the international ones. And so I qualified at half Ironmans. That's all they had. Oh, so I qualified my first year in '95. I qualified at Mont-Saint-Michel, which is now back to an Ironman race.

Yeah.

And My second year, the race doesn't happen anymore because the reservoir is empty, I believe. Wildflower.

Oh yeah, yeah, of course.

Claim to fame there. Yeah, I was the second overall amateur.

Nice.

It was the— I think I had the 15th or so fastest half marathon, including the pro men. And some of the pros that were there that year were like Christina Fiumara back in the day, and I beat the pro women, including Pauline Newby-Fraser, who owned Ironman at that time.

Whoa, Marty, that's, that's pretty cool.

And as an amateur, we didn't care saying that, hey, we beat Paula, because if she beat you, you were like, okay, she can.

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. It's Paula. That's awesome. All right. So we've talked about training too hard, too much. We've talked about, um, not making Ironman your first. Race, that's kind of important. And let's— since we're on the topic of Ironman, let's talk about some other events in triathlon that maybe are sort of the unsung heroes, because I think a lot of people like you, they hear about the sport via Ironman, but there's a lot more to the sport. Do you want to kind of touch on that? Maybe like other types of like local events or other races that you know of that are really great races that people—

I think everybody should support the like the mom-and-pop races too, which there are a lot of great local races. Like I used to do, I mean, obviously back in the day there were so many of them, but even if you're going to get involved with some of the bigger race series, like what is it, Kinetic Motion or whatever it is in the, you know, Mid-Atlantic does some great races.

We did a podcast with Setup Events with Bill Scott from Setup Events. There's Trivium, right?

Yeah. They do a lot of great races. I love their races. They do a lot. Yeah.

I've done some of theirs. They're, they're They are awesome.

You know, I think, you know, you get more out of those and more cost efficient for a person too.

Oh, absolutely. If somebody told you how much Ironman was at that time of it airing, do you think you would have been swayed at all?

Well, the funny thing is, I mean, granted it was cheaper then. Yeah. So, oh no, I still would have, I still would have done it.

You were, you were convinced.

Yeah. But you know, now it's like, you know, I got my email for 70.3 Worlds and it's like, I think this is what I paid for Hawaii.

Oh geez. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the local races definitely are, have a great atmosphere. You can still train just as hard and have just as much, if not a better time. You've probably got more room in transition. It's cheaper. I love the local races. Challenge or Clash is another option that has kind of made it its way into, uh, it's more in Europe, but that's another sort of big series.

So, and then you have like the swim bike now, swim run, you know, like if you don't like, or if you don't like swimming, do the run bike run, you know? So there's different ways to get involved with the multi-sport, you know, and even now there's a countless number of pool swims. Then you continue on your triathlon.

Yeah. I think that's a great place for people who are not confident in the water to start. So you're around a lot of people, but you still have the safety of the pool.

I've done a few of those. It gets quite hectic in the pool.

Yes, it does get, it does get very hectic, but it's still not the open water. And that change for a lot of people is a big step to go from if they are not experienced in the water. Okay. Let's talk about a fun one. We're calling it nerd alert. So those things that triathletes do that you're like, What are you doing? Okay. So I'll start. The aero helmets, while they do make a difference in your bike, why do you keep wearing it around everywhere? I don't understand that one.

And yeah, get off your bike, helmet comes off.

Yes. That's kind of how that goes. But you, you had a couple of good ones. What did— share, share some of yours, Marty.

Oh, it's— and I know I'm going to get blasted for this one.

It's all right.

Because I try to avoid it. You know, once in a while you have to just to test the gear out, but training in your race kits, no.

Yeah. Yeah.

Race kits for race day.

Yes. Yes.

If you want to plug your sponsor, buy their bike shirt.

Oh, there you go. Yeah. Although it is nice to make sure things don't rub in the wrong places.

Right.

So yeah, but all the time, honestly, race kits are not really meant to train in because they're just not super durable.

No, but leave the kits at home once in a while. That's my whole thing. Or same thing with the bike helmets. I'm done training. I'm going to walk around and it's all the time at Lake Placid. I'm going to walk around all day in my race kit. Everybody knows who I'm racing for.

Yeah. And sometimes they don't realize that those race kits get a little thin in certain places.

Yes.

That might be a little nefarious to be showing.

There's kids around here.

Yes, exactly. Like, huh. Okay. Maybe we can remove the spandex for something a little bit less revealing.

Well, that's one of my favorite things when I go to Placid, you know, there's a few spots I'll go buy a coffee and I'll sit at the table outside the place. And I just watch and do my people watching.

Yes.

And I'm tweeting, here's what I just saw. Here's what I just saw. And my friends are all like, are you serious? I'm like, yeah.

Yes. People watching is, is kind of fantastic with triathletes. We did. And perhaps we'll turn this into a blog or a podcast at some point. Uh, in 2019 at Ironman North Carolina 70.3 down in Wilmington, we stood at the dismount line and we took the GoPro and we just recorded for a couple of minutes to just, cause we saw so many people who had just a train wreck of a dismount or were running into people or just like didn't know which end was up. And so it was kind of like our, our opportunity to actually film it and say, okay, this is why you need to not be doing X or Y or—

Oh, my favorite when you watch people in that is when they're dismounting and they take their feet out of their shoes.

Yeah.

And as they're running, the pedal moves around and the shoe catches the ground. You see their bike like almost flip over.

Yeah, yard sale. Yeah, that is— yeah, people don't expect that, nor do they possibly practice it. Yeah, it can be. Or similarly, they don't take their shoes off and then they do the clip-clop in a very, you know, you've just been on the bike for 112 miles or 56 miles or whatever, and then you have this like very awkward trying to run with your bike while you're clip-clopping everywhere. And yeah, it's not really something people practice. But thank you everyone for your entertainment. We're not making fun of you, or maybe we are.

We don't know. There is a reason that triathlons, you know, back in the day you had the roadies and you had the tri geeks. It's triathletes. We bring it on ourselves.

We did. We totally do. And, and I'm glad you said that because trust me, I have made my fair share. Speaking of dismounts, one of my most memorable dismounts, my parents came to watch me and it was like their They were so excited to watch me race. And I remember it was wet that day. So, you know where this is going. So I remember squealing up to this, to the dismount line, stepping off and literally boom, right on my rear end. So, and then of course everybody's like, oh my God, are you okay? And I'm like, I'm so embarrassed, but you know, we all do it and, um, it's okay. You know, we can, we can band together. All right. Let's, Let's move on to another mistake potentially people make. And this is kind of twofold. Data. We've got both data dopers and data mongers, or I don't know, what do we want to call that?

I'll put it that way. They're, you know, data obsessed is what they are.

Yes. Yeah. It's like overload. And being somebody who— we use a platform that's incredibly data rich. And sometimes there are some things that even I just have to be like, I have to ignore it and very much take the athlete. I think at the end of the day, the athlete's the most important part aside from the data. But tell us about the data doper stuff.

I've experienced this recently only because like I'm a part of a Garmin Connect group and, you know, and it's a bunch of friends. We have the challenges every month, you know, and we put some in for those that are never going to hit the highest mark. So we have most walk the most steps, you know, run the most miles. Swim the most yards, you know, and bike the most miles. And then there's some others who walk the furthest distance, you know, throughout the month. So not just most steps, maybe furthest distance. So you record your walks. And all of a sudden, like, we're watching people that were not even on the list, you know. And like, so like, I would be at 300 miles on the bike, you know, or somebody else in the group actually biked more than me. And all of a sudden, person appears out of nowhere. And so you can click on them, you're looking at him like Wait a second, he just did 280-mile rides on Saturday. And then you go and look and you're like, wait, they were at the same time. What is he riding two bikes at the same time?

Yeah. How is this happening?

And then we figured out, and then we were looking at it, we're like, oh my God, he's recording it twice and doesn't even think to delete one. So he was recording it on the Edge 520 and then a Garmin watch. And we're like, dude, you need to stop that.

Yeah. Not fair.

The challenges aren't that important.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll, um, back in 2020, of course, when, uh, COVID was a giant disaster, Ironman came out with a virtual racing series and people went a little bananas with that. And like they would do this, they varied it week to week. Some weekends it was like a sprint distance. Some weekend it was a duathlon because of course some people couldn't get to the pool or pretty much all of us couldn't get to the pool. Some weekends it was longer distances. Anyway, people would oftentimes like go up to the top of the hill and just ride down the hill just to sort of amp up their, how quickly they were going, you know, amp up their speed. And I'm like, ah, it's not the point.

Oh, there were people finishing the half Ironman virtual one in like, like 3 hours and 45 minutes. And I'm like, the pros don't even go that fast.

Yeah. Uh-uh. What are you doing? Yeah. And similarly, people who also get like so attached, and I know we've touched on this already, but getting so attached to their data. You have to tell the story about what you did to your athletes with the tape.

Oh man, it goes back to my, it was my men's cross country team at my last school. And they became, and cross country, we all know it's not the same as being on the track. You've got to develop a sense of feel. And we had that, they had it. And it was a team that scored 22 points in our conference. Like we had 4 guys in the top 5. Wow. You guys are that good. We're going to win. Just learn to run on feel. And so they come and they were the data geeks when it came to heart rate, everything. And I'm like, I, I'm glad you guys picked that up, but we got to learn. And so we're getting ready to start our intervals and it's a threshold day, which they should know how that feels. And so they're ready to start their watches and they're getting ready. I'm like, okay, 1 minute. And I called them all over and I got athletic tape out. And I put it over their face so they could not see their heart rate to see if they were running in their zone. They could not see their split times. Now, I left the button so they could get their start and stop because, you know, if it's not—

it had to count.

If it's not on Strava, it doesn't count.

That's right.

So I let them so they could hit the buttons. They were fuming at the time. They're like, how am I going to record time? I got the stopwatch. How we did it was instead of looking at their watch, we actually did heart rate by checking it themselves, either here or on the wrist. So we did a 10-second count and then go, and they didn't know their splits at all. It's just like, okay, you ready to go? Okay, wait 10 more seconds, then go. And so at the end of the day, we were where we needed to be, you know, but it was just like, stop looking at your watches.

Yeah, yeah, there are some Some days when either you need to just like, you sort of develop that sense of where am I? Also, watches are not all perfect. Batteries die, especially wrist-based heart rate. I have found that it does not cooperate very well in the extreme heat and the extreme cold. So then it throws off these like training stress scores and everybody's obsessed with what's my TSS score. What's that? You know, I'm like, stop thinking about just that. Like we were thinking about the whole athlete and the whole, like, Where are you in relation to your training cycle? Where are you in relation to your race, your skills? Like, I think that's the big value of a coach is that we think about all that stuff. The athlete just gets to execute. And some days I literally will put on somebody's schedule, like fun ride, go. And they're like, wait, what? I don't have a zone to be in. I'm like, it's okay. You can do it. Did you know that there's like trees to look at and entertaining things like that? Or just go out and just run how you feel, especially in the weeks, like after a race when they might still be recovering.

It's not like being in a group ride and the person in front of you, all they do is stare at the power meter. No, look up once in a while, please.

Yes, I know. Can we all not have a giant collision? So, all right. So we've covered a lot. We've covered nerdy things. We've covered data dopers, people who are too attached to their data, training too hard, too much. Signing up for things like Ironman for their first race, do other races. If you had to put like 1, 2, maybe even 3 tips for people on how to make the most out of triathlon, how to kind of like do it right and still enjoy themselves, what would be your like put a cherry on top tips?

Keep it fun early.

Ooh, I like that.

Is it, you know, it's kind of like, you know, steal a quote from, uh, the movie Without Limits about Pre, when Bowerman told him about, this is an absurd pastime. And that was about running. Triathlon might be even more absurd.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. Like, don't take it too seriously. Start off fun, you know, start off short, work your way up. You know, and that's what I did. I didn't do my first Olympic race to the end of my second year. I didn't do my first half Ironman until 3 years into racing. The whole idea was a 5-year plan, but somehow, I mean, I managed to qualify in 4 years and you're not going to pass up the opportunity. So I got there 1 year earlier, but it was a steady progression, you know, and that's how it should be. You know, don't get into the sport and think Ironman is your ultimate goal.

Yeah. I think that's some great tips that fitness does take time. That it's not something that can be like immediately achieved, like overnight. It does take time. And something like qualifying, like you mentioned, years. And we oftentimes spend years with our athletes because it does take time. And I like that you mentioned the fun part because I started triathlon with a group called Team in Training, which is a, a group that does training programs to benefit Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. So I had a community on the front end and that was probably what hooked me because I met all these awesome people and had so much fun. So. I would say my tip would be find a community, whether it's an online community or physical community, whether it's group rides or, you know, to layer on top of that fun piece.

And I think some of it goes along with too, is realize you might not have the lifestyle that may lend yourself to be able to train, like understand how much training would go into the ultimate goal. And maybe you have to just stick with the sprints or Olympics and maybe up to the half marathon.

Yeah.

It's just understand what your limits are and just go with it. To be a triathlete doesn't— it doesn't mean you have to do an Ironman.

I totally agree. Let's finish on that. Marty, thanks for joining us. I'm sure this will be a regular thing.

My pleasure.

If you want to work with either of us, check out our website, theenduranceedge.com. You can book a free training consult with me and that will get you either Placed with me or Placed with Marty to do some awesome training, evidence-based multi-sport coaching. All right. Thanks, Marty. And we will catch you next time. To all you awesome Find Your Edge podcast listeners, we're taking the month of July to prepare for season 2. We'll be back in August with all new episodes featuring experts and athletes to help you reach and sustain peak performance and health. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform if you haven't already. And if you or someone you know would like to sponsor our show or be featured as an athlete or expert, please reach out to us at info@theenduranceedge.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you in August.