Updated: Jul 5th 2011 4:41 PM UTC by Matt Fitzgerald
Sixteen men have won the Hawaii Ironman World Championship. None of them has weighed more than Chris “Macca” McCormack did when he won his first title in 2007 at 177 pounds. Macca is living proof that you don’t have to be a natural-born whippet to excel in long-distance triathlons.
But he’s also living proof that a careful and committed approach to weight management is needed to excel in longer races, especially if you are naturally bigger. McCormack’s normal weight—the weight he returns to when he’s not actively seeking his racing weight—is 185 pounds. When he claimed his second Ironman World Championship victory last October, he was just 175 pounds.
Nobody has more experience-based knowledge of how to manage weight for maximum triathlon performance than Macca. Here are his top five tips.
Experiment
McCormack failed to even finish his first attempt at the Hawaii Ironman in 2002, discovering the hard way that his size made it very difficult to handle the oppressive heat. He lost four more times before finally winning in 2007. “It took me some time to find my perfect Kona race weight,” he says.
McCormack learned that losing too much weight weakened him, causing his performance to suffer despite his greater leanness. Realizing he could only get so far by dropping pounds, McCormack began to look at changing how he raced Ironman to make the most of his strength advantage and to minimize the effects of his weight disadvantage.
“I just had to find a way to get as light as I possibly could without losing my strength and then build a racing plan that suited the conditions and my issues in them,” he says.
In the end McCormack learned that a racing weight of 175–177 pounds gave him the ideal balance of leanness and strength, and that being aggressive on the bike and more cautious on the run was the best Kona racing strategy for a big fella.
Let form follow function
Getting lighter is not an end in itself. Getting faster is the goal. There are different ways to get leaner, and not all of them will make you faster. McCormack saw that the best way to get faster through weight loss was to go fast in training.
“I added a lot more speed to my Kona training block last year,” he says. “This really thinned out my core and gave me a tighter build over the hips.”
Dial in your race nutrition
“It’s no secret that the bigger you are, the more difficult dealing with heat and water loss is,” McCormack says. So if you’re a larger athlete, make an extra effort to develop the best race fueling and heat management strategy for you.
McCormack’s formula for success, which took years to develop, includes racing primarily on liquids and gels instead of solid foods, using salt tablets, drinking cola during the marathon, and not forcing in nutrition when his stomach seems unable to tolerate it.
Don’t go overboard
As Macca found out, it’s possible to become too light, losing not only extra pounds but also essential pounds that you need to perform your best. It is also possible to reach the “right” weight the wrong way by under-fueling your body.
“My first few years in Kona I was petrified of the heat and was racing at 171 pounds,” McCormack says. “I would starve myself to get my weight down to the realms I thought were necessary for a bigger guy to deal with the heat.”
Keep your weight-loss goals practical.
Have fun with it
“I really enjoy the game of managing weight and speed and monitoring my body’s feel at different weights,” McCormack says.
No matter your size, improving over the long term in triathlon is like solving a puzzle. You need to figure out what’s holding you back and experiment with various possible solutions. If you embrace this challenge, it can be half the fun!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Learn From A Pro: 10 Cycling Tips From An Olympic Hopeful
• 1. Time In The Saddle
• 2. Join A Group Ride
• 3. Follow The Roadie Rules
• 4. Ride With Faster People
• 5. Keep Up Your Run Speedwork
• 6. Do Strength Work
• 7. Ride Eeasy During The Winter
• 8. Do Brick Workouts
• 9. Practice Descending And Cornering
• 10. Don't Be Afraid To Back Off
Jillian Petersen is one of the strongest cyclists on the ITU and non-draft short course circuits, often turning in the fastest or nearly the fastest bike split in races such as the Miami International Triathlon, St. Anthony’s Triathlon and the Chicago Triathlon. (In fact, she’s been known to out-bike Sarah Haskins, one of the strongest cyclists in the sport.) But Petersen didn’t start her triathlon career as a great cyclist. A runner and swimmer in high school, Petersen ran cross-country and track at the University of Missouri and only started biking in late 2005.
Rule No. 1: The best way to get fast on the bike is spend time in the saddle.
There are no real shortcuts to becoming a better cyclist—you simply have to get your bum on the saddle. “The longer I spent on the bike, the faster I got,” Petersen said. But don’t think that your cycling strength is going to materialize overnight. “It took me, I want to say, at least two full years to really get a good handle on the strength side of cycling,” Petersen said.
Rule No. 2: Join a group ride
When Petersen first started out in the sport, she did at least one group ride a week, which not only helped her improve her fitness but also helped her improve her bike handling skills. In fact, group rides are one of the only ways that you can improve your bike handling skills, something that can save you upwards of 90 seconds on a technical 40K course, Petersen estimates. “Just getting the experience and being around people and having those quick movements gets you more comfortable,” Petersen said. Group rides also help you get used to riding at speeds that you could never reach by yourself without the help of a draft.
Rule No. 3: When you do join a group ride, follow the rules of the roadies.
Cyclists are known to have a less-than-friendly attitude toward triathletes, which means if you want to seamlessly join a group of roadies, you have to follow their rules. This especially means that you should never show up to a group ride with your tri bike, which is more difficult to handle than a road bike and can be dangerous in large groups.
Once you get the hang of the unspoken rules of the roadies, remember to have fun (most cyclists are actually nice) and ignore the more surly ones. “Every now and then I’d have a breakthrough day and make the front group for an extremely hard finish of the ride and then get yelled at,” Petersen said. “ [They’d say,] ‘This wasn’t hard—that’s why she stayed with us.’ But take it with a grain of salt and brush those guys off.”
Rule No. 4: Ride with people who are faster than you.
Petersen quickly improved her cycling by riding several times a week with a few guys who were speedier than she was. “They would go on these very difficult, hilly, technical rides,” Petersen said, and she would have to ride her best just to stay up with them. These rides would last anywhere from about two to three hours.
Rule No. 5: Keep the speedwork up on your run while you focus on the bike.
Spending more time on the bike inevitably means you’ll have to back off on your run, which can ultimately hurt your run split. Petersen says that focusing your limited running time on speedwork will help you keep your running legs underneath you while you work to improve your cycling. “Speedwork would help, because you’re getting so much endurance from the bike,” Petersen said.
Rule No. 6: Do strength work on your hamstrings
Cyclists can develop big quads and this can create an imbalance with your hamstrings, so Petersen recommends that you focus on doing strength work on your hamstrings to limit this asymmetry. She does many of her hamstring exercises with a physio ball—a large rubber inflatable ball often seen in physical therapy offices.
Rule No. 7: Ride easy in the winter months
During the winter months, don’t go crazy with your riding. “Just go out and ride, and you’re going to be fine,” Petersen said.
Rule No. 8: Don’t be afraid to get in some brick workouts
Petersen will sometimes bring her trainer to the pool deck and do a hard 500M followed by 3 minutes hard on her bike. (She’ll do this three or four times in a row.) Or, she’ll do a bike-to-run workout where she’ll ride eight-to-10 minutes hard and then run a hard 1K off the bike, repeating this three to four times.
Rule No. 9: Practice your descending and cornering skills
“I’ll go on some difficult descents and practice cornering and leaning,” Petersen said. She does this on her own, away from a group.
Rule No. 10: Don’t be afraid to back off once your cycling is where you want it to be.
“I definitely do less riding than I used to,” Petersen said. “I think it’s because I got a couple of good years of a lot more riding.” Currently, she rides about five times a week, with two of the days being hard (one being a tempo workout and one being a VO2-max workout, generally on hills) and one of these days being long (usually about three hours.) The other two days are just easy 1.5-hour rides.
• 2. Join A Group Ride
• 3. Follow The Roadie Rules
• 4. Ride With Faster People
• 5. Keep Up Your Run Speedwork
• 6. Do Strength Work
• 7. Ride Eeasy During The Winter
• 8. Do Brick Workouts
• 9. Practice Descending And Cornering
• 10. Don't Be Afraid To Back Off
Jillian Petersen is one of the strongest cyclists on the ITU and non-draft short course circuits, often turning in the fastest or nearly the fastest bike split in races such as the Miami International Triathlon, St. Anthony’s Triathlon and the Chicago Triathlon. (In fact, she’s been known to out-bike Sarah Haskins, one of the strongest cyclists in the sport.) But Petersen didn’t start her triathlon career as a great cyclist. A runner and swimmer in high school, Petersen ran cross-country and track at the University of Missouri and only started biking in late 2005.
Rule No. 1: The best way to get fast on the bike is spend time in the saddle.
There are no real shortcuts to becoming a better cyclist—you simply have to get your bum on the saddle. “The longer I spent on the bike, the faster I got,” Petersen said. But don’t think that your cycling strength is going to materialize overnight. “It took me, I want to say, at least two full years to really get a good handle on the strength side of cycling,” Petersen said.
Rule No. 2: Join a group ride
When Petersen first started out in the sport, she did at least one group ride a week, which not only helped her improve her fitness but also helped her improve her bike handling skills. In fact, group rides are one of the only ways that you can improve your bike handling skills, something that can save you upwards of 90 seconds on a technical 40K course, Petersen estimates. “Just getting the experience and being around people and having those quick movements gets you more comfortable,” Petersen said. Group rides also help you get used to riding at speeds that you could never reach by yourself without the help of a draft.
Rule No. 3: When you do join a group ride, follow the rules of the roadies.
Cyclists are known to have a less-than-friendly attitude toward triathletes, which means if you want to seamlessly join a group of roadies, you have to follow their rules. This especially means that you should never show up to a group ride with your tri bike, which is more difficult to handle than a road bike and can be dangerous in large groups.
Once you get the hang of the unspoken rules of the roadies, remember to have fun (most cyclists are actually nice) and ignore the more surly ones. “Every now and then I’d have a breakthrough day and make the front group for an extremely hard finish of the ride and then get yelled at,” Petersen said. “ [They’d say,] ‘This wasn’t hard—that’s why she stayed with us.’ But take it with a grain of salt and brush those guys off.”
Rule No. 4: Ride with people who are faster than you.
Petersen quickly improved her cycling by riding several times a week with a few guys who were speedier than she was. “They would go on these very difficult, hilly, technical rides,” Petersen said, and she would have to ride her best just to stay up with them. These rides would last anywhere from about two to three hours.
Rule No. 5: Keep the speedwork up on your run while you focus on the bike.
Spending more time on the bike inevitably means you’ll have to back off on your run, which can ultimately hurt your run split. Petersen says that focusing your limited running time on speedwork will help you keep your running legs underneath you while you work to improve your cycling. “Speedwork would help, because you’re getting so much endurance from the bike,” Petersen said.
Rule No. 6: Do strength work on your hamstrings
Cyclists can develop big quads and this can create an imbalance with your hamstrings, so Petersen recommends that you focus on doing strength work on your hamstrings to limit this asymmetry. She does many of her hamstring exercises with a physio ball—a large rubber inflatable ball often seen in physical therapy offices.
Rule No. 7: Ride easy in the winter months
During the winter months, don’t go crazy with your riding. “Just go out and ride, and you’re going to be fine,” Petersen said.
Rule No. 8: Don’t be afraid to get in some brick workouts
Petersen will sometimes bring her trainer to the pool deck and do a hard 500M followed by 3 minutes hard on her bike. (She’ll do this three or four times in a row.) Or, she’ll do a bike-to-run workout where she’ll ride eight-to-10 minutes hard and then run a hard 1K off the bike, repeating this three to four times.
Rule No. 9: Practice your descending and cornering skills
“I’ll go on some difficult descents and practice cornering and leaning,” Petersen said. She does this on her own, away from a group.
Rule No. 10: Don’t be afraid to back off once your cycling is where you want it to be.
“I definitely do less riding than I used to,” Petersen said. “I think it’s because I got a couple of good years of a lot more riding.” Currently, she rides about five times a week, with two of the days being hard (one being a tempo workout and one being a VO2-max workout, generally on hills) and one of these days being long (usually about three hours.) The other two days are just easy 1.5-hour rides.
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