Last year, due to lingering injury and related rehab in the spring I competed in only two indoor triathlons - the first in March and the second in November. Between those two events I learned more about what this relatively old body of mine can and can't handle. In the process I worked on several ways to improve on my March performance:
1 - Race management. Expended too much energy during the bike phase in the March race. Not much left in the tank entering the run. Saddle sores and sideways rocking motion caused in part by seat position being too high probably contributed. Tried to dial it back a little this time around. Also experimented with lower seat position in practice and that seemed to help.
2 - Stretching. Found out the hard way that I need to spend several additional minutes following each run and weightlifting session on some key stretches involving hamstrings, iliotibial bands, achilles tendons and quadriceps.
3 - Weight management. Some subtle changes in diet combined with a resumption of full training in the late summer allowed me to shed an additional six pounds over the summer. According to Joe Friel in his excellent book, Triathlete's Training Bible, a loss of one pound means an average improvement in pace of 2 seconds per mile, everything else being equal.
4 - Biomechanics. It didn't occur to me until last spring how running form can impact speed and risk of injury. But Friel's book motivated me to reexamine my technique. Discovered that my foot strike was heel to toe - a gait that places more load on the knees and thus a setup for some even bigger knee problems down the road. So I changed to a midfoot strike and practiced landing closer to the ball of the foot. That combined with a reduction in ground contact/support time and bent knee landing below my center of gravity allowed for a higher cadence. (More on this in a post to follow).
5 - Resistance training. The net effect of the above form changes reduces the chance of knee injury but places more burden on the calf muscles. Find myself spending more time in the weight room doing leg curls and other lower leg work as a result. That seems to have helped - but also have since found that I need to be more careful about timing, intensity and frequency of this activity. Also have done alot of core work since last March.
6 - Combine endurance with speed work. Similar to what I'd been doing in the pool, began doing mile repeat and other workouts suggested by Friel.
Those changes enabled me to improve my mile pace for the 20 minute timed run portion of the indoor triathlon from 7:26 in March to 6:51 in November - a 35 second improvement. Scored PRs in all three phases but saw the biggest improvement by far in the run.
New challenges lie ahead. I'm looking to take on a couple of outdoor tris this coming summer, maybe including one at the Olympic distance. And my 22 year old daughters and I have been talking about running a half marathon together in the early fall. But perhaps the biggest task will be risk management in the run phase and not trying to push things too fast. I've yet to discover a lasting solution for the calf strain problems which have surfaced over the last couple of months so taking care of that issue is job one for now.
