Swim – 7:30-9:00
Run – 9:20-10:30
Classroom – 10:45-11:30
Bike – 12:15-1:30

Cost is $20.00 for TNS members; non-members will need to purchase either an annual or one-day membership.

We will be again offering video for athletes and any of those who had video taken during the last clinic will have the chance to review the video with the coaches.  Once again we will be running on the indoor track and the bike workout will be inside; some trainers will be available if you do not have one.

Please email Shane if you plan to attend and also let him know if you need a trainer (shane.macleod@ns.sympatico.ca).

Swim – 7:30-9:00
Run – 9:30-10:30 – indoor track
Classroom Session – 10:45-11:30 – Nantucket room
Bike – 12:45-2:00 – Nantucket room

The cost for the day is $20.00/athlete and athletes must either be TriNS members or pay the one day membership fee (an additional $20.00). The run will be indoors on the Dartmouth Sportsplex track which is around the rink so please dress accordingly. For the bike session we will be indoors so helmets are not required but please bring your trainer if you have one.

Athletes are responsible to provide their own meals and snacks for the day.

Hope to see you out!

Jan 8
Feb 5
Mar 4
Apr 1
May 13

These sessions will be hosted at the Dartmouth Sportsplex; athletes are asked to register at 7:15 for a 7:30 swim session which will be followed by bike and run sessions. Through the winter months we will likely be indoors for both the run and bike and transition outside once the weather improves. Athletes are asked to bring a trainer or rollers if they have them and if not, please let Shane know so he can plan to have enough trainers for everyone.

The cost of the sessions will be $20.00 for TriNS members; non-members will need to pay the one day fee ($20.00) or join TriNS in order to participate in these sessions.

If you are interested in attending, please contact Shane MacLeod at shane.macleod@ns.sympatico.ca to register.

Hope to see you out!

We arrived in Verdun in the early afternoon which gave us the chance to visit the race venue and have the athletes ride the bike and run courses.  With hot and humid conditions, we kept the effort quite low for the ride, primarily using it as a chance to see the course and to loosen up legs after a day and a half of driving.  Following the ride, we did a quick transition session; working on rolling and flying mounts and rolling dismounts as well reviewing transition setup and practicing fastening helmets.  Finally, a quick dip in the St. Lawerence to check sight lines, water temperature and, as it turns out, to discover just how many weeds athletes will be swimming through on race day.  The course was very straight forward with a counter-clockwise loop and good sight lines but it was definitely going to be non-wetsuit legal (race day temp was 24C) and the weeds were going to add an additional challenge for the swim leg.

After supper, we sat down and reviewed race strategy with everyone, including discussing how to deal with a crowded bike course and the rain that was in the forecast. With everyone ready for the race and uniforms distributed, it was time to head to bed for a 7:00am departure.

The following morning, everyone was up and ready to go and there was lots of nervous energy as the athletes filtered down to the lobby. Once everyone was accounted for and grabbed some breakfast items on the way out the door, we packed up the vehicles and headed back to the venue. With no prerace packet pickup, the first order of business was getting everyone through the line, getting body marked and to transition with time to review any final chnges to the course and warmup. Unfortunatley (or fortunately depending on who you asked) the race was about 45 minutes behind schedule so everyone had lots of time until their race. Also, the promised rain did not seem to be on its way nor did the promised cool day with the predicted high surpassed by 9:00am.

Most of the Team

First up we had Raphael Choquette, Liam Dunbar and Kayla Boudreau in the sprint; Raphael had a strong swim and run while Liam got stronger as the race went on; posting the 11th best run on the day. In the women’s race, Kayla was third out of the water and was having a solid ride until she flatted out; a disappointing finish but a strong race to that point.  In the U15 Elite race, Patrick Stewart finished 18th with a very strong bike and a great run to pull back time from those who were out of the water ahead of him.

The U13 race had four athletes; Eveline Choquette and Kelly Stewart in the female race and Shamus McMillin and Jarod McCallum in the male event. In the female race, Eveline led out of the water and held first place off the bike as well; Kelly was almost a minute back out of the water but posted really strong bike and run legs to catch Eveline on the run. Kelly was 4th and Eveline 5th both less than 15 seconds back of third. In the male race, Jarod had a very strong swim and then had solid bike and run legs to finish 14th while Shamus had a tough swim but then moved up in the field with stronger bike and run legs to finish 37th.

Finally, Corbin McCallum was in the U11 event and apparently there was an issue with timing as he has no finishing time posted in the results. Despite this, we believe he was fourth out of the water and did not lose any positions on the bike and run.

Rounding out Nova Scotia athletes, Denis Choquette was in the duathlon and took fifth in his age group and 11th overall.

Great work by all Nova Scotia athletes and very impressive results in a very deep field.

We arrived in Ottawa on Friday afternoon and paid a visit to the race site; the temperature was 29C according to the van when we pulled in and the humidity added at least another five degrees; after the summer we have had, we all felt as though we might melt just stepping out into the heat.  To add further angst, there was a sign at the beach indicating that it was closed due to bacteria levels and the prospect of a duathlon was not well received by the athletes.

Team Nova Scotia

With the beach being closed, we could only scout the course from the shore but it seemed to be a pretty simple swim course; deep water start with one clockwise loop of the buoys and back to the beach.  From there, the run to transition was quite long; at least 300m from the swim exit to the racks and then another run through the trees out of T1 before getting to the road.  Depending on the event the bike course was either one or two loops of the 10km out and back on Colonel By which is pretty flat but the grade was described to the athletes as not enough to help but enough to frustrate you.  The turnarounds on the bike course, really the only technical sections in this event, were one sweeping 180 using the road furniture at a stop light and the other was a tight 180 on a fairly narrow section of road.  T2 was back through the trees and then off on the run over a bike path that had a bit of a hill and a little shade.  After scouting the course, we headed to the prerace brief to hear all the standard stuff.  Well run, less than sixty minutes and we were headed to supper.

The following morning we were biking to the venue to loosen the legs a bit and arrived with what I believe would be plenty of time to get transition setup and do whatever else needed to be done before transition closed at 6:45.  I misjudged the length of the time required and we were a little rushed so in the future I will plan twice the length of time required for prerace logistics to ensure there is time for setting up, warming up, porta potty visits, etc.

In the men’s race, Liam McInerney was out of the water toward the back of the field after missing the pack on the swim but he was able to get his group organized and pull back some time on the bike.  Unfortunately since he was with a group of cyclists who were not as strong on the bike, he ended up doing more work than would be ideal to keep the group riding hard.  In fact, he spent so much time on the front that he was only able to get one foot into his shoe and the other was on top for the entire 20km.  Despite a having to work harder on the bike, he was able to get off and put up a solid run and finish as the 34th junior.

The final Nova Scotia athlete on the start line was Patrick Stewart in the 14-15 race; unfortunately this was a much smaller event with only 13 athletes which meant that draft packs would be few and far between.  Patrick came out of the water alone and although he wasn’t able to get together with anyone to form a pack, was working hard on the bike and then able to chase down one athlete on the run to take 11th spot.

Overall Nova Scotia athletes enjoyed a very successful race; the last time any of these athletes raced in an elite event was 2009 and the goal this year was to gain experience and test their fitness.  With lessons learned and goals set for the future, we packed up and headed home.

Phil Tremblay captured some video from his bike for anyone who is interested; Ottawa Junior Race.

Don’t worry, this is actually about gears, not beer, so bear with us.  There’s a saying back home, real men drink pints.  There’s also the somewhat sexist corollary, women can only drink half (pints).  As such, the TA has even heard of a woman ordering a pint of beer in Scotland and being served said pint as two halves.  Honestly.

Interestingly, this doesn’t carry through when dealing with the insanely-strengthened Belgian beers so beloved by cyclocrossers.  One wonders if this pintism isn’t so much volume apartheid as it is alcohol apartheid.  If regular beer is ca. 4% alcohol by volume (v/v), then a pint (ca. 500 mL) has about 20 mL of pure ethanol, whereas a 300 mL bottle of Duvel (8.5% ethanol v/v) has 25.5 mL of ethanol.  What would happen to “men pints/ladies halves” thinking if Tetleys had the same alcohol content as Duvel we have no idea but we know we wouldn’t go down Leeds City centre on a Saturday night!  But we digress.  Too much Hoegaarden perhaps; only 4.9% but the TA has always been a bit of a lightweight.  We must have the dodgy  ADH gene.

Anyway. Gears.  This beer thing sounds frankly ridiculous doesn’t it?  But you’d be surprised how many people ask for a lower granny gear on their bikes, but when told to get a compact crank (50 Tooth and 34T chain-rings) instead of a racing double (53T/39T) the reaction is “but compacts are a girls’ gear“.

Really?

Let’s look at this graphically.  Here are three graphs showing sprocket size (in teeth) on the x and metres development on the y (click for larger versions).  The former measurement is how many teeth on the rear sprockets, the latter the distance the bike travels per crank revolution.  So for a gear of 53 x 11 the bike travels 10.2 m per revolution, whilst at 34 x 28 it only travels 2.5 m.

For the math-geeks, we assumed a 700 x 23 wheel, 172.5 mm cranks and an 11/12/13/14/15/17/19/21/24/28 10-speed cassette.  Metres development were calculated using Sheldon Brown’s gear calculator and the cadence was calculated at Velominati.

The top three series are for the big-ring; 53T, 52T and a 50 tooth chain-ring.  The bottom three series are the inner ring; 34T, 39T and 42 tooth chain-rings

A bit confusing, so let’s blow this graph up a bit and look at the big ring only.  A 53T chain-ring is the top line, and the compact’s 50T chain-ring is the bottom line.  The middle line is an old-fashioned racing double’s 52T chain-ring.  As you can see, there’s little difference between a 52 and a 53T.

When you change from a racing double to a compact, you change top gear from 53 x 11 to 50 x 11 or in gear development terms from a 10.1 m to 9.5 m gear.  This is a sixty cm drop, or about 2 feet, per pedal revolution from the racing double to the compact.  If you’re spinning these gears at 100 rpm then it’s the difference between 66 kph and 60 kph.  When you think of a pro bike-racers who jouent l’accordéon through the roads of France, this is likely to make a difference; in an age-group triathlon, less-so!  If you’re still mourning the loss of your 53 x 11, consider that the next biggest gear on a racing double is 53 x 12 or 9.3m, which is the same size as the 50 x 11 top gear on the compact.  Ask yourself, do I ever use 53 x 11?  Maybe.  Aha, but do you spin the 53 x 11 at 90 rpm ?  This would give you a speed of 57 kph, which is about the fastest average speed clocked in a Tour de France time-trial (excluding prologues).  If you can do this on the flat, let us know, there’s a guy in France who’d like to talk to you!

Now lets look at the little ring.  As you can see there are meaningful differences in the granny gear, the smallest gear you have.  The racing double’s 39 x 28 (top line) gives you a 2.9 m gear, whilst the compact’s 34 x 28 gives 2.5 m (bottom line), again a 60 cm difference.  For comparison’s sake, am old-fashioned 42 T inner ring doesn’t really lower your granny gear that much (middle, red line).  If you look at the overall graph, you see the lines of the 34 and 39 overlap, you get the same range of gearing on a compact, but the compact gives you at least one lower gear.

The main difference between the racing double and the compact is that with a compact when you are at the small end of the gears, you get a gear you are likely to use (34 x 28) whereas at the other end you lose a gear that you likely do not use (53 x 11).  Sure, with a compact you might lose out to Mark Cavendish in a bunch sprint (but he’s probably turning 54 x 11 anyway) and this specific instance (you, me, Cav, bunch gallop) isn’t a consideration in most of our lives (if it is, feel free to ignore this article).

We often hear “but I spin out in my compact“.  Let’s look at this.  As a fixie rider, the TA knows something about spinning out.  At the Cyclesmith Du one year we hit about 45 kph on 42 x 15 fixed and we had nothing left, we were spun out, we couldn’t pedal any faster, and this was at about 140 rpm.  If you are spinning out your compact, let’s assume you are doing ca. 140 rpm in the 50 x 11, which would mean you are going at 84 kph/52 mph.  This correlates nicely to the “what is your speed-record” poll the TA did a year ago, where ca. 80 kph/50 mph was the average fastest speed, but we’re pretty sure these speeds were gravity-assisted going downhill!

We hear all the time “I want a smaller granny gear, whatcha got?“. We never hear “I need something faster; do they make 10s yet??”. A compact will help you here as you will lose one gear you likely don’t use anyway (53 x 11) and gain one you will use (34 x 28).  In the middle, you have all the same sized gears you are used to, except you might have to change your cadence a bit (faster is better) and you may need to shift up-front a little more often; but we all have indexed shifting anyway, so that’s easy (but you might want to get a chain-catcher).  The TA’s favorite gear was 52 x 16 or 6.6 ms (or 87 inches for you wool-jersey curmudgeons out there) and we can still find a similar gear here, despite no 52 or 16.  Sure, the combinations might feel a bit strange, but let your legs get used to it and you won’t notice the difference.  Trust us; we ride a compact on the road and it doesn’t bother us any.

So, in the final analysis; girls’ gearing?  We think not.

Oh, and mine’s a pint.  Just the one glass please.

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However, since many triathletes have spent a great deal of time building their aerobic engine, a short 3-6 week block including some VO2max work can help a short course athlete with the extra gear required on race day to set that new PB.

It is not hard to add some VO2max intervals into your training; all you need is a good warmup and then aim to do 10-20 minutes of work using intervals of 3-5 minutes hard with equal rest (i.e. 5×3 minutes hard with 3 minutes easy). The idea is that your hard pace stays about the same each time so you are not all out sprinting for the first one and then struggling for the rest.  An alternative to the previous intervals is to include some 30 seconds hard – 30 seconds easy repeats; generally you would aim to do 10-15 repeats in a workout. It has about the same effect on the body but many find them an easier approach when doing this type of work for.the first time; whether that be ever or just in the current season.

It is important to consider how much of this type of training you should be doing; while recommendations will vary, a common recommendation is 10% or less of your weekly volume should be done at this intensity on the run and 15-20% in the pool and on the bike.  For athletes that are new to higher intensity training, it is generally better to err on the side of too little as opposed to too much.

So, if your key events are at the Olympic distance or shorter in 2011, look to add in a three to six week block of VO2max work and see if it might help give you that bump in fitness you need to have a breakthrough race this summer.

Saddle, horse, man is an old cavalry adage that lists the order of priorities in which a trooper would look after his kit.  Firstly he would look to his saddle (and all the other tack), then he would see to his horse and only then would he look after himself.

The same can be said for us as bike-riders, or at least that was what the TA was taught in our first bike-club (many, many, moons ago).  This is not surprising perhaps, as many of us treat our bikes like horses.  The stabling fees may not be as high, but the up-keep certainly can be (Dr Rob Klue DVM?)!  We refer to saddling up, go for a trot in the country, bunch gallops and so-on.

Maybe this is as far as we should take it; after all it used to be said, a touch cruelly, that the only brains in the cavalry were kept in their horses heads.  Sure we’re all an intelligent lot, by and large, but we all know some-one (I’m sure) who is regularly out-smarted by his (or her) Di2 controller!

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that

So, after any ride, espcially a damp, wet one, look after your bike and your kit before you look after yourself.  Wipe down the frame, wheels, bars and drive-train down at the very least, if not actually wash them with soap and water,

Use a drive-train cleaner on your chain.  We’re not talking to you as your latest LBS guy, we’re talking to you as a cyclist.  If you can’t, then at the very least, give it a squirt with WD40.  Now WD40 isn’t a lubricant (repeat after me, and write down 100 times, no Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V please), and you’ll still have to lube the chain again afterwards, but at least it might displace some of the water from out of the bushings.

Getting the gunk and crap out of your chain on a regular basis is going to save you a fortune over your life as a cyclist in replacing rusty, worn-out parts.  Sure, you could just slap some more oil on the chain before the next ride, but really this is like putting deodorant on straight after a run.  It might disguise the smell, but it does nothing to address the fact you’re still sweaty and dirty.  Plus, dowsing the chain in the equivalent of three hours output from the tar-sands and leaving it there just attracts more dust and grit into the chain and you end up with what is essentially rubbing compound inbetween the links.  So just get it out before you start lubing the chain all over again.

Plus, keeping it clean is going to cut down on the number of Cat5 tattoos we’re seeing all over the place; and if there’s one thing that’s going to mark you out as a numpty it’s not QRs on opposite sides of the bike, misaligned tyre-markings or a missed bit of wrapping behind the ‘hoods, it’s the impression of your chain from malleolus to  gastrocnemius.

Thank-you for your attention to this matter!

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The first thing that an athlete should consider is what they actually need in transition and setting up their stall so that they can transition as efficiently as possible; if ones goal is to get in and out as quickly as possible, keeping extra gear to a minimum is crucially important.  In the picture, you will see a transition area for an Olympic distance race; for the bike leg, shoes are attached to the pedals and the helmet is on the bars with sunglasses open inside.  For this athlete, they need to simply strip off their wetsuit, put on their glasses and helmet, grab their bike and go.  For the run leg, shoes are sitting on top of a running hat with race number and belt tucked inside; T2 is simply racking bike, helmet off, shoes on, grab hat and go.  Then while on the run they can get their race belt and hat on while running away from their competition.

With the preparation of transition out of the way, it is time to practice how you will approach T1 and T2.  Whether you plan to have your shoes attached to the bike throughout and use a flying mount and dismount or put your shoes on in T1 and run to the mount line doesn’t really matter as much as being efficient at how you move through transition.  If you can spare thirty minutes a week to work on transitions, it will be time well invested in your race day performance.

I suggest that athletes swim a short distance (200-400m) at about race effort, exit the water and practice getting their wetsuit to their waist and cap and goggles off while running to their bike.  Once at their bike, get your sunglasses and helmet on (and shoes), and run with your bike to a mount line; once you are over, get on your bike and settle into race effort.  Ride for a short distance (~5km) and return to transition, practice your dismount and run to your transition space.  Helmet off, shoes on and head out for about 1km at race effort.  Take a few minutes, get your transition space setup for another run through and do it again (and again, and again, and …).  The more times you can run through your transition routine prior to race day, the more easily it will be to move efficiently through transition and get out on the bike or run course in short order. 

To throw some numbers out, I looked at some results from a race that posted transition times and here’s what I found.  The fastest athlete spent a total of 1:45 in transition while there were others who spent more than six minutes in transition!  One of these athletes finished in the 2:3X range and if they had spent half the time in transition, would have moved up five spots in their overall ranking and two spots in their age group.

Now, consider what this means to an athlete trying to go from the swim start to the finish line as quickly as possible; obviously one consideration is to get out and log the sbr miles but there are areas, like transition, were time can be saved with zero fitness improvement.  For our 2:3X athlete, to take three minutes off any of their other splits would have required:

Swim – 12s faster per 100m
Bike – 1.5km/h faster
Run – 18s faster per km

All of these improvements would be the result of a fairly significant fitness improvement but for the same athlete, with a little practice they could knock three minutes off in their next race!

Attention to detail in the weeks leading up to the race as well as prior to the race can easily shave minutes off of your time; don’t let that time slip away in the pursuit of your next PB!