MLK Virtual Training Weekend: Webinar and Podcast

The EN Coaches organized a virtual training weekend for TeamEN as a way to kick off a season of cool stuff!

• Training Weekend Introductory Podcast
• MLK Weekend Webinar: Epic Training Weekends
  
• Webinar Podcast
  
• Member Training Reports
  

Triathlon: Off Season Podcast is finally posted!

As you know, we are committed to producing one free webinar a month for Endurance Nation members. After the event, we save the audio and PPT files, then post them in the Endurance Nation library for our members to take advantage of on their own schedule.

This month we have posted the audio and PPT files from the Dec 2007 Off Season Webinar. Rich and I cover our approach to the offseason, what to focus on and why, as well as answer a few questions. The files are available inside the EN Library here. Enjoy!

Coach Patrick

Why the Endurance Training World Needs EN

Much like you, I usually register for races via Active.com and receive their newsletters. So, like you, I received the Active Triathlete Newsletter on Jan 7th, the Active Cyclist newsletter today, Jan 10, containing the articles below:

Triathlete: Base Training Basics
Cyclist: High Intensity Training

Triathlete: the same largely anecdotal thoughts that have been recycled year after year until they have become the foundation of a "seasonal culture" within the sport of triathlon. I know...I've written stuff like this in the past, back in the day before I learned otherwise through talking to smart guys, experimenting with my training and applying those lessons to my athletes.

Cyclist: good article, challenges the cultural norms and expectations of what we are supposed to do in the off-season, or in endurance training for that matter.

The conflict: they're both published by the same organization, received by the same athletes with no context or perspective given to link the two. Neither is inserted into a comprehensive framework of coherent and consistent training advice that gives the athlete that "Ah hah!" moment, enabling them to become better self-coached athletes.

As an experienced coach who's been playing inside the traditional triathlon business sandbox, I can tell you exactly why this is: many, many websites, are in the business of selling clicks on their site, whether on ads, race registrations, etc. At the same time, coaches with decent writing skills who are thinking a little bit outside of the traditional box of attracting local athletes realize these sites get lots of traffic and submit articles for publication, exposing their thoughts, communications skills, training knowledge, and personality to large numbers of athlete. Hopefully, one or more of these athletes become coached clients, buy a training plan, attend a camp, etc.

Content host (website) needs content to attract readers and advertising dollars. Content creator (coach) needs venue to host their stuff where it can be read by lots of potential clients. Site eager to take content + many content creators submitting content = confusing hodgepodge of often conflicting advice that you, the customer, have to sift through. See example above.

How do I know this? Google Rich Strauss Triathlon and see how many articles I have out there on the net. Writing has indeed been very, very good to me.

At Endurance Nation we have made a strategic business decision to step out this sandbox by creating our own. One where we:

1. Create a vibrant network of endurance athletes. Our own team.
2. Provide quality, consistent, and coherently presenting training and racing resources to them. Resources that have been vetted by the science and refined through their application to your training: real people in the real world.
   
3. Leverage the scale of #1 and #2 to create coaching values that simply can not be matched in the current marketplace.
   
4. Do not rely on advertising dollars, click thrus, sponsorship relationships, etc. We are quickly learning that the fewer external relationships we maintain, the more focused we can be on you and your needs, adapting our model and services in an instant.
   

Endurance Nation is the brainchild of elite triathlon coaches Rich Strauss (Crucible Fitness) and Patrick McCrann ( Performance Training Systems), who have combined communities, resources and training plans to create Endurance Nation. Endurance Nation is a growing community of 380+ triathletes educating and inspiring each other, managed within the framework of a consistent coaching and training philosophy. Members can take advantage of free coaching articles and high quality - yet affordable – coaching. The EN experience is augmented by our community platform, bringing experienced teachers to the desktop of every athlete. Finally, Endurance Nation will provide opportunities for the members to meet, learn from and train with the coaches and other members, through camps and clinics, an organized EN presence at national races, and other cool events. Membership in Endurance Nation is open to athletes of all ability levels. Join us today!

Triathlon: Basic Week Webinar

Listen and read along as Coach Rich outlines the underlying philosophy of the "basic week" that is the foundation of all EN training plans. You'll need to open the audio file (below), then go to the presentation and follow along. Enjoy!

View the presentation here; get the audio here.

Note: The audio runs approximately 60 mins, google might prompt you to sign into google docs to access the presentation.

Long Run Training for Ironman -- The EN Version

If you've done an IM, and you've had a bad day, you'll know it was the run. So what do 70% of the people out there do after a bad IM run experience...why, next year they run even more! The other 30% you ask? Well...25% of them are too injured to really train for the next go-round, but the last 5% have it actually figured out. And I am about to let you in on their secrets. Without further ado...

A Poor IM Run Split is the Result of Poor Bike Pacing and/or Poor Run Pacing
Whether you've personally experienced an IM Marathon meltdown, or just heard the horror stories, you know how bad things can get. What you don't remember (or hear, if it's from a buddy), however, is how he cruised through mile 56 on pace for a record bike split, or how she ran the first 6 miles 30-seconds faster per mile than she intended...and they both felt so good...until they felt really, really bad. Improving your next IM can be as simple as executing better on race day; be conservative on the bike and jog the first 6 miles before you run. In otherwords, if you nail your execution off of the same training cycle as last time, you'll be faster, period. (See the EN Four Keys to IM Racing to learn more.)

Overall IM Fitness is Built Across all Three Disciplines.
True IM fitness isn't about one run (or ride or swim), it's about connecting all three via a plan that allows you to training effectively and consistently across about 20 weeks. Sure, we build up to some pretty significant distance benchmarks, but the fitness here is all about the "journey" -- not the "destination." Focus too much on a single discipline and you not only run the risk of injury, but you will also be taking time and energy away from something else.

Try thinking of a basic week of fitness instead of any one workout or discipline (link coming soon). At Endurance Nation we think in a "weekly view" as all of our workouts are connected. And not a week as in Monday -- Sunday (or however you look at it), but as a rolling seven-day window. For example, looking at this Thursday's long run, we consider have you done over the last seven days to get here. There is not magical "reset" that happens every Monday. Run too hard or too long on Thursday and you'll mess up your weekend of riding; or worse yet, you'll fake it through the weekend but blow up somewhere else down the line.

IM Run Fitness has nothing to do with your longest run.
This is a hold over from open marathon training, where folks are training to run hard for the whole event; in this case it makes sense to build that solid pace up to a long run of 20-21 miles. In an IM, however, we are training to not slow down on the run. Let me repeat that: Marathon training = go fast on run; IM training = don't slow down. Instead of being a marathon runner aiming for a pace (8:00 per mile, who cares about HR zones!), you are a triathlete who aims for an HR, not a pace. Race day is a great equalizer; most people end up running an IM at their easy long run pace (roughly 20 beats below LTHR). So instead of looking at a magical distance marker, we look at time. In the case of an IM training cycle. the peak run that a person can do during the typical race preparation week is 2.5 hours in Zone Two. Anything longer (or harder) starts to become a problem regarding recovery and overall running health. Can you run 24 miles in training for an IM? Yes. But when you are out there on the course, no one is saying, "Sure am glad I did that 24-mile run @ week 18, it's really helping me now!!!"

IM Run Fitness is about Frequency, Durability, and Consistency
If you have grasped the concept that your total aerobic engine, developed across three disciplines, is what drives your run, we have almost converted you. While the longest run peaks out at 2.5 hours, that doesn't mean you aren't running a lot; in your biggest run weeks, you'll do 5+ hours of running -- that's a lot, especially when you add it on top of swim and bike time. With the EN model of Iron-distance training, we work first to build durability by increasing run volume deliberately. Then we add "speed" in the form of strides and fartlek work. Once this is accomplished, we back off the intensity and start to increase the distance. When we move to the race preparation phase, "tempo" workouts move from being closer to 10k Pace and instead move to Half Marathon Pace.

Hope this has been helpful! For more info on the long run, be sure to search the EN Library or hit the forums and ask around!

Happy Training,

Coach Patrick

Putting the best tools of EN together = a $13/wk solution

Join TeamEN Today!

Below is an example of how we are working with a TeamEN member to create a high quality, affordable training solution that costs only $13/week. That's not a typo, people: $13/week. This incredible price includes our proven plans, online tools, full community interaction via EN, and all residual member benefits (free webinars, resources, etc.). We have worked together to link the tools of EN across an entire season. I thought this might be a good example for everyone to see not only how to "create" your season via EN, but also of the incredible value we have collected for you in a single place.

Gina joined EN and is now in our ENGroups Off-Season program that began in October and will end in early Feb. Her next A race is a half Ironman at the end of May and then she is racing IMFL in November. She wants to roll from the ENGroups Off-Season program into an ENGroups Half Ironman program for the half in May. Then she needs a solution to bridge the gap between the end of the HIM program and the start of the ENGroup Ironman program for IMFL. She and I have exchanged a few emails about how we will tie it all together for her, a job quote of sorts. So, here it is (Note: When Gina joined the ENG OS program for $189 it included a 1yr TeamEN membership. We've since separated those two elements and I'll use that in my job quote below):

• Gina joins TeamEN for $99, giving her access to our entire library of training plans, etc.
  
• She upgrades her membership by participating in the Off-Season ENGroup for $99.
• When the OS Group ends she rolls straight into an ENGroup HIM program, as 16wks x $15/wk = $240. She gets a 10% discount cuz this is her second ENG for a calendar year, so $216.
• To fill the gap between the end of the HIM program and the start of her IM program, I'm going to take one our training plans and tweak it to work for her for this purpose, cost = $75.
• Finally, she rolls into the ENG IM program for her assault on IMFL. This is 20wks x $15/wk - 15% discount as 3rd ENG in a calendar year = $255.

So, doing the math here, Gina is $744, all-in, for a 13+ month training solution that includes:

• Focused off-season training + focused HIM and IM solutions with full EN interactivity (podcasts, webinars, etc.)
  
• All stitched together so they fit together nicely
• A TeamEN race singlet worth about $40, if you wanted to count that :-)

That's approximately $13/wk for 56 weeks of interactive, on-line, real-world tri goodness. A comparable mid-level coaching deal, with an online plan and phone + email access (without forum, with no podcasts, no webinars, no videos, no 400+ articles), could cost Gina $150 a month -- or $1950 for the full 13 months. With EN Gina gets more and saves $1200. That difference covers her race entry fees for the IM + HIM ($450 + $200), race wheel rentals for both ($300), and a plane ticket ($350).

FWIW, Gina today posted her results for a 10k TT run in the ENGroups forum. She has put up a 3' PR after only 12 weeks inside the house. Looking forward to the final tests in 4 weeks!

Note: That $75 for customization is something you could do on your own via the Basic Block plans that we'll publish soon: a tool to help you fill the gap between plans.

Join TeamEN Today!

Training and Racing with Power Webinar Series

Training and Racing with Power, for Multisport, presented by Endurance Nation

• Do you own a powermeter but have difficulty finding quality information on how to apply the tool to multisport racing?
• Are you a power wannabee, interesting in learning more about these cutting edge tools?
• Are you ready to take your power training and racing to the next level?
  

Endurance Nation announces a webinar series focused on the unique power training and racing considerations of multisport athletes. The presenters are leading authorities on power meter use for multisport athletes, with years of experience teaching age groupers how to use these tools to further their multisport training and racing.

In the end, any powermeter is only as valuable as the investment YOU make in learning how to use it effectively. Augment your $2000 whizbang gadget with our $99 webinar series and get the most out of your training and racing power investment!

SPECIAL OFFER!
Register for the series by January 15th and we will include a one year membership to Endurance Nation, a $99 value!

• Open access to 25 training plans, proven across 3 years and 1000+ athletes, available in TrainingPeaks, WorkoutLog, or Google Doc.
• Training plans include a wide range of power-based plans already used by hundreds of successful athletes.
• Weekly podcasts and monthly webinars on a range of endurance training topics.
• Advice from expert coaches with hundreds of Ironman finishers to their credit.
• And more!!

Special Offer Registration, $99, expires January 15

Schedule and Registration

Sunday, January 13, 2008, 5pm PST: Power Training, for Multisport, FREE

• The specifics of power-training as they relate to multisport, with special attention to the concepts put forth by CyclingPeaks: Functional Threshold Power, Intensity Factor, Normalized Power, Training Stress Score, etc.
• Everything you need to know, explained in a language you can understand.
• Training protocols to make you a stronger triathlon cyclist.
• Transcript and podcast of this event will be made available afterwards in the Endurance Nation Library.
• Register Now!
  

Sunday, January 20, 2008, 5pm PST: Power Racing, for Multisport, $55

• We will introduce the concept of your legs as a bank account, with successful racing simply an exercising in spending from that account wisely so you have $$$ left over to pay the Man on the run.
  
• We will give you a proven power race strategy for your next event: from Sprint to Iron Distance, hilly or flat, windy or calm, we will explain the art of racing with power.
• Register:

Sunday, January 27, 2008, 5pm PST: Analyzing Power Files, $55

• Power files with their many lines and numbers can be overwhelming. We teach you how to analyze the data, from rides and races, so you get what you need, and only what you need.
• Tracking performance over time is about analyzing data trends. We cover what a multisport athlete should watch and what it means for their training and racing.
• Register:

Power Training and Racing, for Multisport, Full Series: $99, includes Endurance Nation membership, offer ends January 15th.
$89 for Endurance Nation Members

• Special Offer Registration, $99:
• Current TeamEN Registration, $89:

The Presenters

Rich Strauss, founder of Crucible Fitness and Endurance Nation. Rich has been training, racing, and coaching with power since 2001. Hundreds of athletes have use his power training plans to PR in the HIM and IM distances. Rich has distilled his experience into a simple, easy to understand and implement power training and racing system.

Jason Digman, Coach and Founder of Dig It Triathlon and Multisport. As an expert in power based training and racing, Jason coaches individual athletes of all levels and abilities in using power to its fullest advantage. Dig It athletes not only use the latest technology to train effectively, they have a good time doing it.

Kurt Perham, Coach and Founder of Personal Best Multisport Coaching . Kurt has trained/raced/coached with power since 2000 and helped to guide athletes from first timers, to Ironman World Champions. He specializes in integrating power data into the day-to-day training of his athletes.

Rich Ashburn is an age-group triatlete (M45-49) from Lafayette, CA, competing in all distances since 2002. He has been using power data in his training and racing since 2003, and has brought is day-job skills as an analyst to bear on some of the number-crunching aspects of using power data for training and racing.

Registration Process: after we receive your payment for Sessions #2, #3, or the series, we will email you a link to actually register for the webinar.

Refund Policy: Sorry, we have a very strict no refund policy. If you can not attend a webinar we can apply your registration towards a future webinar or Endurance Nation membership.

TeamEN Webinar: Off-Season

Join us for a Webinar on December 16 Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar Seat Now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/607964673 Did you come off a great season but wonder what to do now? Tired of building your fitness 9mos a year, only to see it be torn down and need to be recreated from scratch...every...year? Confused by all of advice that's about there about what exactly you should be doing this time of year? Using the training and results of the ENGroups Off-Season platform as the model, TeamEN Head Coaches Rich and Patrick will discuss their thoughts on the elements of a successful off-season. They will be joined by TeamEN members, like you, who've "drank the OS Kool-Aid" and will share their experiences and observations with you. The presentation will be about 40' long. Rich and Patrick will then answer questions from the audience for 10-15'. This webinar is FREE for all Endurance Nation members, friends and training partners. Please invite them to attend our FREE webinar. Please also note time and time zone. Title: TeamEN Webinar: Off-Season Date: Sunday, December 16, 2007 Time: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM PST System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer Would you like to see more webinars in the future? Please post a comment and let us know what you'd like to see!

Podcast: Planning Your Triathlon Season

Podcast: Planning Your Triathlon Season

Wed, 12 December 2007

EN: Planning Your Triathlon Season

Coach Rich and Coach Patrick talk for 20' about how to lay out a proper triathlon season. The main points are:

• Conserving Your Head Across a Long Season
• Focus on Short Term, Consistency
• Epic Weekends to Boost Fitness
• Cool Events to Maintain Fun Factor

Please visit and subscribe to our podcast channel! Did you find our podcast helpful? Please leave a comment for us here or on our podcast blog!

Open House Invitation to CF and PTS Training Plan Customers

Thank you for purchasing a Crucible Fitness/Performance Training Systems training plan in the past. We wanted to invite you to participate in the next evolution of our focus on creating high value yet affordable training solutions for endurance athletes: Endurance Nation.

• Membership in Endurance Nation includes open access to ALL of our training plans (25+ and growing) for only $99 per year. These plans have been honed through the results and experiences of 1000+ athletes, including YOU, over the past three years. Remember the 1-3 of our $99-150 plans you used to PR last season? You now have access to ALL of those plans--and many more--for only $99/yr.
  
• Communicate and network with your fellow TeamEN members on our cutting-edge social networking platform. Join a race group, upload photos, start, share, and read member blogs, upload a video or podcast, or browse our library of over 400 quality training articles.
  
• Leverage the TeamEN mojo on race day! We have team training and racing kit in the works, will conduct training camps on almost all of the North American Ironman courses (www.enationcamps.com), and will be there for you with a pre-race talk and support for your family at IMAZ, CDA, LP, WI, KY, Kona and FL.
  

For the month of December we are hosting an Endurance Nation Open House. Come on in, take our platform and the community for a spin for free until December 31, 2007. If you decide to join during this Open House month, Membership is $89 vs $99 and you'll be designated an Endurance Nation Charter Member, complete with secret handshake and decoder ring!

If you choose not to join EN, no worries. You've still purchase a training plan through us, with our Crucible Fitness and PTS hats hats on, and we'll support that plan in the open forums at Endurance Nation.

Since our "super soft launch" on Thanksgiving Day we have quickly grown to over 200 members! We consider each of you to be inside our inner circle, athletes who have been an integral part of the Crucible Fitness and PTS experience for years. We sincerely hope you chose to join us in our new club house, Endurance Nation.

Sign up for your trial membership today and we'll see you on the inside!

Coach Rich + Patrick

EN: Four Keys to Ironman Execution

The Endurance Nation "Four Keys" To Ironman Execution

I'm flying home from IMFL, the last Ironman of the 2007 season, and the end of a long season of Ironman coaching, speaking, clinic-ing and spectating. I'd like to take this time to deliver to you, one last time, the end-all, be-all of how you should race Ironman. Frankly, because after six years of full-time Ironman coaching I'm tired of seeing people screw it up! We're absolutely, 100% convinced that what we're going to share with you works. Our observations this season -- and the results of our athletes -- speak for themselves. Note that we're writing this a little tongue in cheek, using humor to get our point across. This is the style of our live schtick, delivered to you in pixels.

First, our CVs...
Rich: Ironman coach since 2001, has personally coached 200+ Ironman finishers. Over 800 athletes have used Crucible Fitness training plans since 2005. I have delivered pre-race talks at 2-4 Ironman races per year since 2003 to about 50-70 athletes per talk. This year alone I've:

• Conducted race specific training camps (ie, how to train and racing Ironman) on the IMLou, IMLP, and IMWI courses for over 70 athletes.
• Delivered pre-race talks at IMCDA, IMLP, IMWI, and IMFL to over 200 athletes.
• Ridden motorcycle support for IMCDA and then stood at the turnaroud at mile 7 for three hours. Rode the IMLP course backwards during the race, then stalked the run course on my bike. That is, I've seen, first hand, hundreds of athletes hammering up a hill at mile 60, and the same athletes walking at mile 10.
  

Patrick: Triathlon coach since 2002, with over 150 one-on-one athletes and 400 training plan athletes sucessfully hitting the finishline in the last five years. I have conducted over 15 race-specific and epic training camps. My personal best is a 10:01 at IMUSA and a 10:37 at Kona 2007.

In short, we have a lot of experience with what works, what does not work, and we've honed this message through the results of our athletes, our observations while being ON the course during the race, and the feedback we've received from pre-race talk attendees.

This is the official Endurance Nation Ironman Kool-Aid, we hope you enjoy it. Help us help you!

The Four Keys

1. Execution, not Fitness. All you've done for 9 months is build a vehicle. Ironman racing is about how you DRIVE that vehicle, it is NOT about the vehicle. The majority of athletes on race day are fitness-focused (look at my T-shirt, look at my abs/veins/etc, look at how fast I can go in the first hour of the bike, etc.) As coaches we can make you stronger, but we can't fix stoopid if you decide to race your own way.
   
2. The Line. Nothing on race day really matters until you reach The Line on the run. The Line is the point at which continuing becomes very, very difficult. You define success as simply not slowing down at The Line. EVERYTHING before The Line is simply about creating conditions for success for when the Line comes to you. Additional Kool-Aid flavored thoughts we'd like to put in your head regarding this point are:

• A successful race = a good run. There is no such thing as a good bike followed by bad run, period. In our world, if you showed up with solid run fitness, had a "good" bike and a poor run, we will ALWAYS assume you boogered your bike pacing unless you are missing a limb or are in the ICU with an intestinal parasite.
• If you think you can ride faster than we're telling you, prove it by running well off the bike first (preferrably not attempted for the first time on IM race day).
  
• Ride your "should" bike split vs your "could" bike split. Your Could split is what you tell Timmy you could ride on a good day, when you're out together for your Saturday ride. If you say you "could ride a 5:50," your Should split is likely 6:00 and defined as the bike split that yields a good run (see above).
• Don't eat the paste. Ironman in general, but especially the bike leg, is at best a special ed class: you only have to show up with your C game to be at the head of the class. If you find yourself doing the opposite of everyone else, you're doing the right thing. If Jimmy and everyone else is in the corner eating the paste, don't join them! Sit down, do what we're telling you, and don't eat the paste! Lots of people passing you in the first 40 miles? That's good, don't eat the paste. Going backwards through the field on a hill? That's good, don't eat the paste.
• Think you made the mistake of riding too easy? You now have 26 miles to fix that mistake. Make the mistake of riding too hard? That mistake now has 26 miles to express itself, to the tune of X miles at 17-18' walking pace vs X miles at 8-10' running pace. Do the math. How is that bike split going to look as you are walking/shuffling the last 10 miles of the run?
• Every time you feel yourself about to get stupid, look at where you are. Are you at The Line? No. Then sit down, shut up, do what you're told and don't be stoopid. Please. :)
  

3. The Box: all day long you are going to race inside a box defined by what you can control. Ask yourself "What do I need to do right NOW to create the conditions for success at The Line? Is what I'm doing right now counter to this goal? From what we've seen first hand on the IM courses this season, we believe you should ask yourself "Am I participating in some short-term tactical masturbation?" If yes, STOP!!

On the swim, the Box is the space your body occupies in the water: focus on your form and the rest will come. On the bike, the box is probably about one aid station long. On the run, the box begins as 2-3 aid stations long but often diminishes to "from here to the next lampost/manhole cover/mail box." Regardless:

• Keep the box as big as you can for as long as you can.
• Keep in the box only the things you can control. Let go of the rest.
• Exercise this decision-making process inside your box: Observe the situation, Orient yourself to a possible course of action, Decide on a course of action, Act (OODA Loop).
  

4. The One Thing. If you swallowed the Kool-Aid we're serving you here, you will show up at the Line, in your Box, ready to git'erdun and simply not slow down. But we're not done yet. There is still some psychological stuff you need to address.

During the course of your race day, expect your body to have a conversation with your mind: "Look, Mind, you've had me out here slogging away for 132 miles. This is really starting to get old and very painful. You need to give me a good reason to keep going forward. If you can't give me a good one, I'm gonna slow down and you can't stop me!" Before the race, you need to ask yourself "Why am I doing Ironman?" In other words, you need to determine what is the One Thing that put you in this race? To finish in the daylight with a smile on your face? To run a 4:10? Whatever your One Thing is, be absolutely clear and rehearse your mind/body debate beforehand. But be warned: your body can be a helluva good negotiator at mile 18, especially if your mind hasn't prepared its rebuttal arguments beforehand.

Unity of purpose creates clarity of focus, yielding breakthrough performance.

What have we not talked about so far? The things you are likely most torqued about: heart rate, pace, speed, watts, how to eat, what to drink, etc. We believe that if you can keep yourself focused on the Four Keys above, the rest of the day is relatively simple and you don't need to worry about these relatively small details. In other words, all the whizbang guidance in the world can't help you if don't have your mind right about the Four Keys above.

But because you're a Type A Triathlete and you want the details, here they are:

• The Swim: Swim only as fast as your ability to maintain form. When you feel your form go, slow down. Counting strokes is an excellent technique for bringing your mind out of the race and into the Box of maintaining your form.
• The Bike: JRA (Just Ride Along) for about 45-60'. Then shift from JRA to Easy (5:45+ should split) to Steady (sub 5:45 should split). Guage how well you're doing by how well you're NOT doing what everyone else is doing. REMEMBER: Don't eat the paste!
• The Run: Jog for 4-6 miles, with a jogging, do-no-harm pace and heart rate cap. Jogging is defined as a pace you could sustain for hours if we kept feeding you. After 4-6 miles, shift from jogging to "running," running comfortably, getting what you need, and preparing yourself for the Line, where things become very uncomfortable. At the Line, just suck it up and giterdun.
  

Conclusion
That's it, that's as complicated as racing Ironman needs to be and we can't say it any more simply. We've basically given you a Vegas betting strategy, having managed and observed many rolls of the dice. If you sit down, shut up, do what we tell you, you will have a good day. But as you stray towards the Ricky Racer side of the execution scale, you begin to rattle the dice.

Still not convinced?
The results and feedback of our athletes speak for themselves:

"First, the things Rich and Coach P preached were a lot of common sense, but somehow they seemed to hit home.

1. There is generally not failure to train, but failure to execute an effective race plan. Test your plan prior to race day, know it, use it.
2. Don't get caught up in other people's "stuff", e.g., trying new things 24 hrs before the race. Do the things you have tested long before race day
3. Race your race. If the other guys want to blow past you on the bike, let them. You WILL see them again. Know your training data and use it.
4. Prepare yourself mentally for the arguments your mind and your body are going to have toward the end.
5. Swim: only as fast as form stays good.
6. Bike: pace within your ranges (power/hr) ignore "speed"
7. Run: start SLOWLY, you don't want to have to walk 26 miles,the real "race" starts @ mile 18
8. Enjoy what you've worked for and know that while you are suffering Rich and Coach P are somewhere sucking down a Starbucks!!"--Gina

"I passed 20% of the field in my first Ironman marathon, and I am far from being an elite runner. I credit the EN masters with allowing this to happen. Simple, repeatable concepts & key words helped me to remain patient, focused, and detached from other competitors. Look out, ‘cause I’m taking another sip of their Kool-Aid in ’08." -- Dan

"Pre Kool Aid - I had completed 3 previous IM without Kool Aid. They were each about survival rather than completing the event with confidence. I walked the majority of the marathon in each of these events. I honestly thought that maybe I wasn't cut out to run the IM run.
Post Kool Aid - An hour run PR. I ran the whole run. Finished with confidence and absolutely "flew" on the second half of the run. Thanks to the EN pacing guidelines, I ran a 10 minute negative split. It seemed surreal, to think I could actually enjoy the IM run. What an incredible experience! More coaches need to preach execution just as much, if not more than the training phase." -- Alex

Have you had a great race after listening to or reading our drivel? If so, please post your comments and experiences!

Ergomo Coaching Center, powered by Crucible Fitness and Endurance Nation

Elite triathlon coaches Rich Strauss and Patrick McCrann launch the Ergomo Coaching Center, powered by Crucible Fitness and Endurance Nation. The site will offer sales and support to Ergomo customers via a library of technical videos, podcasts and a live customer service chat window. In addition, the Ergomo Coaching Center will host power-training resources as Rich and Patrick develop these products for their Endurance Nation members.

The Ergomo Coaching Center is an official, fully stocked Ergomo Dealer offering same day shipping on all Ergomo products. Every Ergomo purchase from the Ergomo Coaching Center also includes:

• 2-Day shipping via UPS or FedEx
• Power-training plan hosted by Training Peaks
• Copy of Racing and Training with a Powermeter, by Hunter Allen and Andy Coggan
• 1-month membership in Endurance Nation (coming soon!)

Questions? Ready to order? Contact us or visit the Ergomo Coaching Center today!