Haines City, Florida

Lets just start by saying that winter in Canada (especially this winter) is not conducive to training motivation. It has been consistently -20 degrees since January and won't give up. When I woke up on the 8th of April it was snowing. Thank god I get to go to Florida to get in some warm weather training and a 70.3 Ironman race to top it all off.

FUUUUUUUUUUUU

My trip starts on Tuesday April 8th and I get to stay in sunny, hot, wonderful, relaxing Florida until the 15th. The best house-mate ever dropped me off at the Hamilton International Airport. I didn't need to be 2 hours early I realized once I arrived. The check-in was 5 minutes and you could throw a rock to the terminal gate. I literally sat at the gate for 1 hour 55 minutes, and then the plane was delayed an extra 20. No matter, my bike only cost me $21.00 to get on the plane, significantly better than Southwest was 3 weeks earlier at $75 US. I have a new found love and that is Westjet. The flight was great, I slept most of the way and we landed without a problem. The usual customs and bag claim was slow but no issues there either.

Rental cars...I don't know what to say. Sometimes you just have to say "fuck-it" and suck it up. I have never rented before and assumed that I had already paid for the rental car when I had purchased the rental agreement before I left Canada. no, no, no, no. This simply covers the cost of literally "renting" the car only. It doesn't include insurance (which is insane) and taxes (equally insane). On top of the $175 I had already paid, to get the car I had to pay another $333 US to the least enthusiastic spanish-speaking man I have ever met. On top of this he asked if I would like to upgrade to a convertible. I literally laughed at him, probably not necessary but I thought that was kind of ridiculous considering my reaction to these new costs. Anyway, I got my Ford Focus, shoved my bike and hockey bag in the back and set the proverbial sail for Haines City. Just blare some music and everything will be OK.

We just need the deed to your house and your kidneys and you can be on your way.

So...I arrive at my homestay just outside of Haines City in the small community of Cypress Wood. My hosts are two of the most kind people I've ever met, and their home is incredible. I'm staying in the guest house across the courtyard from the main house. They welcomed me with wine and snacks and we stayed up chatting about everything and anything. Excellent people.

My first day was kind of an adventure. After breakfast - which was eggs, greek yogurt, granola bark, and a double espresso - I drove to the race venue in Haines City to scope out the area. There was also a community pool at the race site where I planned to do my swim for the day. Of course, there's a detour and the only road I know is closed. So I drive for 10 minutes through rows and rows of orange trees until I get to somewhere in Haines. I knew I had to go west so I just took a left, then a right, then another left and bang - race site. I walked around to see the tents being set-up then walked into the community center. The pool apparently wasn't open yet and wasn't going to be open until Saturday. Not exactly something I wanted to wait for. They suggested I go to the Winter Haven pool instead, so I did. Another 30 minutes of driving and I was in Winter Haven.

I never really feel that lost, even though I have no maps or GPS, because if I ever can't find my way I just keep driving until I find a McDonald's. There's always a McDonald's. And they all have free-WiFi. Sure enough, after enough driving where I felt I might be getting lost, I pulled into a McDicks. This was no ordinary McDicks. First thing I notice is the clear-top Yamaha grand piano sitting in the lobby, just waiting to be played. I walk passed resisting the urge to play something and order a small coffee while I connect to the WiFi. When I went to pay, the woman working told me it was free. She handed me my coffee and I walked to the bench. If anyone saw me, it would have been obvious I was trying to figure out if I was dreaming. What McDonald's has a grand piano just sitting in it. Turns out, the pool I was looking for was one block further so I headed over and parked.

Roudy Pool in Winter Haven. If this is winter, sign me up.

Last time I went to swim, it was $15 per swim or $55 for the week at the National Training Center in Clermont. This was different. Long Course pool with 10 lanes, open swim from 11am to 5pm...$2. Jackpot. The only catch was the lack of lane ropes, i.e. there were none. But that didn't matter, I was the only one in the pool, and there aren't any lane ropes in a triathlon anyway. I finished my swim in the sun (outdoor swimming is just the best thing ever), grabbed some groceries, and went back "home".

Next was a quick 1-hour run to loosen up the legs and then the rest of the day off. I look forward to dinner tonight, which is going to be fresh grouper. First day all went according to plan, lets hope the rest of the week can stay the same.

Brain Training

I'm not one to believe that there is a single key to success or special recipe for peak performance, but I've always believed that what goes on inside your head is the most important part of your game. Everything you do, swimming, biking, running, breathing, emotion, attitude, stress, etc. is controlled by your brain. Therefore to train your brain is to train everything. Throughout my university athletics career I have been very interested in sport psychology, specifically motivation. I am fascinated by the best. What makes them click, why are they consistently better than the rest, how do I get to their level? From book to book and interview to interview, the story seemed to be the same - hard work wins in the end. But if all of these professional athletes are working the same, wanting to win the same, and are physiologically the same, why isn't everyone winning equally?

I wasn't until I read a book called "Iron War" by Matt Fitzgerald that I started to see an answer that I accepted. The book is about the legendary 1989 Ironman World Championship race between Dave Scott and Mark Allen. I had heard a lot about this race and watched NBC's broadcast of the event, but I never realized what was actually happening on that day as explained by Fitzgerald. The chapter that stuck with me is called Iron Will, and I have read it many times over. In this chapter, a new brain centered model for performance is introduced to explain why these two athletes were so dominant over the rest, and why this race in particular is so significant in the history of endurance sport.

The theory has always been that an athlete's performance will decrease with fatigue due to the consumption of muscle glycogen and build-up of lactic acid. Physiologically, the muscle runs out of energy to burn so it can no longer perform the desired task, whether that be swimming, biking, or running. This theory, however has a few flaws. One study had cyclists perform an endurance test where they were asked to pedal at a threshold power for as long as they could. The cyclists were able to maintain this for an average of 12 minutes before they failed to hold their threshold power and claimed to be completely unable to pedal that hard anymore. Immediately after they failed, they were asked to pedal as hard as they could for 5 seconds. EVERY cyclist was able to output 2-3 times their threshold power for that 5 seconds, even though they had just made the claim that they couldn't possibly pedal at threshold any longer. The study explains this as involuntary quitting, not due to low muscle glycogen (their muscles still had plenty), but because their brains simply told them to stop.

This completely changed how I thought about racing and training. The theory is that when the body is under physical exertion, the body does things such as produce lactate, produce more CO2 and so on. Your brain "reads" your blood chemistry to understand what is happening in the body, and it is very good at trying to prevent you from hurting yourself through overexertion. What the brain does is give you sensations of pain to try to convince you to quit or give up or slow down. The theory behind brain training is understanding this and learning to push your pain tolerance limits. The physiological side is important too, however. The more fit your body becomes, the less pain you perceive for the same amount of exertion.

Learning to train both systems and understanding how to manage the sensations during racing and training has opened new doors in my athletic performance. In the last season I dropped 3 minutes in my 10K run off the bike and dropped an additional 2 minutes in my 1500m swim. I highly recommend giving this book a read if you want to improve your training, and want to read a great story.

Dave Scott and Mark Allen in the 1989 Iron War, Ironman World Championship - Hawaii