An Introduction to Triathlon Training

& Racing with Power

An Introduction to Triathlon Training & Racing with Power
By EnduranceNation.us

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We are a virtual triathlon team with over 400 members. We focus exclusively on the needs of age-
group athletes training for the full and half Ironman distances. Our plans and advice are focused on
Return On Investment (R.O.I.), making sure that you spend your time on the work that yields the
greatest impact. From training time, to technique, to where you spend your money, we want you to
get the biggest bang for your buck.

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create a FREE 30-day trial to Endurance Nation. We will begin coaching you, for free, plugging you
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Copyright © 2008 Endurance Nation

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Training With Power

Endurance Nation Presents: An Introduction to
Triathlon Training & Racing with Power Webinar
On December 14, 2008, Endurance Nation coaches Rich and Patrick held a live webinar event to

discuss our triathlon training and racing with power concepts. If you missed this event, don't

worry! We have included all of the slides from the presentation at the end of this eBook as well as

a link to the audio file. If you are interesting in participating in future live learning events orga-

nized by Endurance Nation, please become an EN Fan on FaceBook so we can keep

you up-to-date.

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What is Training with Power?
Endurance Nation is a virtual triathlon team for long
course athletes. Experiencing phenomenal growth
in 2008, from 0 to 400 athletes, Endurance Nation has
also become known as THE place for power-training
and racing triathletes. About 70% of Endurance
Nation athletes train and race with power.
The coaches and founders of Endurance Nation, Rich
Strauss and Patrick McCrann, have been coaching,
training, and racing with power since 2002. They
present here a series on power training and racing,
light on the geek-speak, to give you an introduction
to this hot topic. They begin with:
What is Training with Power?
It's Not About The Bike
Really, it isn't. The concept of training with power is
best explained by thinking outside of the bike for a
minute. Most of us are familiar with weight training.
You go to the gym for an hour, put weights on the
bar, and lift them. Curls, bench, squats, X weight on
the bar lifted Y reps in one hour. You keep a log of
the exercises, reps, weight, and at the end of the
session can say "at Gold's Gym between 6 and 7pm I
put a total weight of 10,000lbs on the bar and lifted
it." If we wanted to totally geek, we could track the
vertical distance you made the weight travel, the
speed of the lift, etc, and attach some more precise
physics numbers to our session, but this is good for
now.
Now To The Bike
Maintaining this same simplicity, we want you to
imagine your bicycle is a lightweight, carbon,
human-powered piece of gym equipment. When you
pedal the bike, you push down on the pedals with X
force and turn the cranks at Y rpms. If you press
harder on the pedals (and shift up in the gears to
maintain the same cadence) what happens? The bike
goes faster and you cover more distance in your one
hour ride. More importantly, you've moved the mass
of you + your bike further down the road. For the
purposes of our conversation here, I want you to
consider that going faster/riding farther in the same
amount of time is the same as lifting 10,000 total
pounds vs 9,500 pounds in the gym.
So What's A Powermeter?
A powermeter is a device you mount on your bike
that gives you all of the information above, in real
time. You are riding down the road, pedaling at
90rpm and pressing down on the pedals with force
of x. Geek-speak aside, the product of this, RPM x
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Training With Power
Force = Power, is what you see on the display as
watts. This is a real time measurement of the work
you performing right now.
Going back to our weight room analogy, this is
similar to the 180lb on the benchpress. You ride,
ride, ride and when you finish, you have some more
numbers. You have average watts (the average
weight you had on the bar across all of your exer-
cises). And you have kilojoules, the total work
performed across the entire ride (or the 10,000
pounds you lifted in the gym).
Now We Can Dig Deeper
"Training with Power" simply means that you are
training with a device that gives you this numbers
stuff above, in real time. Your powermeter simply
distills all the factors that go into moving a bike
down the road into very simple terms. You, the work
you are doing, the terrain you are riding on, the
conditions in which you are riding -- all gets spit out
as watts and other metrics based off of those watts.
Once we have those numbers, we can do a LOT of
cool stuff to improve your fitness, your pacing, and
how you approach training...all of which will be
covered in next articles of this series.
Why Train with Power?
Now that we've introduced you to the concept of
training with power, let's discuss why you should
consider adding a powermeter to your personal tool
kit. Don't worry...we're not about to bludgeon you
with techie terms in attempt to seem really smart.
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Since powermeters make your training so much
simpler, we'll attempt to do the same. The top three
reasons Endurance Nation thinks you need a power-
meter are:
1. It will save you time.
2. It will redefine your limits.
3. It will make you into a race execution ninja.
Time Efficiency
This is without a doubt the most compelling reason
any age-group triathlete should consider a power-
meter. A powermeter allows you to get more bang
for your buck from every workout. On a micro-level,
having a powermeter eliminates the guesswork from
all of your bike training. You know what watts you
should ride at. Toss your leg over the bike, flick on
your PM, push the watts for the prescribe time, done.
We will talk more about how we train with power in
our next installment.
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Redefined Limitations
Everyone enters triathlon with a preconceived notion
of who they are and where they fit in. Some folks
assume they will always be "slow" while others look
at their training buddies and figure they are going to
be pretty darn fast. A powermeter cuts right to the
heart of the matter because it doesn't care who you
are, what your sport background is. Power training
athletes learn very quickly that there is no magic to
getting faster. Just as getting stronger in the gym is
as simple as putting more and more weight on the
bar and lifting it, training with power is no different:
becoming faster is simply a matter of pushing the
watts up and up. All athletes, regardless of back-
ground and ability, push the watts, see the numbers
go up over time, and learn one very important
lesson: work is speed entering the body. No magic,
no arcane science...it's just work.
Race Execution Ninja
Let's create a new sport, Liftathlon. We will lift
weights in the gym for 6hrs and then run a mara-
thon. I know exactly how much weight is on my bar
at all time. I know exactly how much and how quickly
I should be lifting. You, with only heart rate, can only
guess. Yes, it can be an educated guess and we're not
saying you should toss the heart rate monitor. But is
the weight on your bar 100 or 200lb? What should
the weight even be? You don't know. In a game that
lasts for hours and hours, success is often defined by
who makes few mistakes. You can eaisly see that my
constant access to objective information
(watts/weight) allows me to make better decisions.
Over time I make fewer pacing mistakes than you.
The net is that a powermeter is an invaluable tool for
long course racing. We will talk more about racing
with power in our next installment.
Before we move on to our next installment, Racing
with Power, we would be remiss if we didn't discuss
why some of you should not train with power. Very
simply, any powermeter is only as good as the
investment you make in learning how to use it. This
investment takes the form of learning what buttons
to push on the monitor, downloading and analyzing
your data, and listening to guys like us who can teach
you how to use it. Yes, it does take time and it does
take some work between the ears. Be honest with
yourself and if you feel you won't be able to make
these gray matter investments, for whatever reasons,
then perhaps training with power is not for you. And
that's cool! Hopefully you've avoided making an
expensive mistake we've seen others make: purchas-
ing a $1500-3500 powermeter and using it as noth-
ing more than a $35 Cateye!
5 | Endurance Nation Keep Reading to View the Slides and Listen to the Audio from this Webinar!
Training With Power
Racing with Power
We are going to make up a new sport, Liftathlon.
You and Timmy will go to the gym, lift weights for
5-6 hours, then run a marathon. Timmy knows
exactly how much weight is on his bar, all the time,
in real time. He's know how much weight should be
on the bar, given any situation. He knows how
quickly he should lift each weight and he knows
much total weight he can lift and still run well off the
bench. Your weights come in all shapes, sizes, and
none of them are marked. Are you benching 100 or
200lb? You think/feel/take your heart rate and have a
pretty good idea...but you don't know. You don't
know how much you are, could, or even should be
lifting right now, much less your optimum total
across the day. Who is gonna win?
My money is on Timmy, the guy with more informa-
tion and the knowledge of how to use it. It's easy to
understand that in an event lasting in many cases
well over 10 hours, success is often a function of
making fewer mistakes than the other guy. You don't
out-fitness your competition, you out-execute them.
In our experience, the objective, real time informa-
tion of power, coupled with the knowledge of how
to use it, is an incredibly powerful race day tool.
Racing with power is a simple three step process:
Step One: Measure your current fitness and deter-
mine what is the best pacing strategy and total work
output for you on race day. We have proven tools to
help you.
Step Two: Ride the bike and look at the meter.
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Assess what you are doing now against what you
know are supposed to do.
Step Three: If you are being stoopid and making a
mistake, STOP DOING THAT!! Gain confidence in the
fact that you are doing the opposite of everyone
else. We tell our team that only about 10% of the
field knows how to execute. If they are doing the
opposite of the everyone else, they are definitely
doing it the right way.
Powermeter = Stupidometer
"I am being stoopid, I will stop doing that now."
"They are being stupid...I will not do that."
To the non-power racing athlete it's often difficult to
explain just how...powerful...it is to have power on
race day, particular in long course triathlon. When
combined with the knowledge of how to use it
effectively, it is a huge, huge advantage that we
almost cannot overstate.
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Training With Power

Team closes to new members on May 1, 2009!

Please click here to listen to the preview audio file directly

from the web or download the file to your computer.

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Training With Power

Team closes to new members on May 1, 2009!

An Introduction to Triathlon Training & Racing with Power

“Work is SPEED Entering the Body”

Endurance Nation is a global network of triathletes committed to achieving

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their personal best, all connected and coached via an affordable online com-
munity.

Live Webinar Held on 12/14/2008

Fan us on Facebook here to get future webinar slides and audio as FREE downloads!

Click here to track upcoming events!

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Training With Power

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Team EN Focus Powermeters on the Market

* Ironman and Half Iron/70.3 Events * Powertap - Rear Hub

* Age Group Triathletes of All Ability Levels * SRM - Crank

* Effective, Manageable Training Protocols * Quarq - Crank

* Education and Learning * iBike - Handlebar Mount

* The Community * Polar - Chain

Power Training Power is Not for Everyone

* 450+ athletes training and racing inside EN * Patience

* 50/50 breakdown on Power/Pace vs HR * Willingness to Learn

* It's not the training tools you use that make you * Desire to Work Harder
an EN athlete....
Any powermeter is only as good as the investment
* ...it's how you use them, understanding the YOU make in learning how to operate it, how to train
objective of each session, what's going on inside with it, and how to race with it.
your body, etc.
Why Train with Power?
Webinar Contents
1. Time Efficiency
1. What is Power?
2. Redefine Your Perspective
2. How do we train and race with Power?
3. Race Execution Ninja

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3. What devices are on the market now?
4. Terms, additional resources & other assorted
geekage.
What is Power?
Training with Power
Step 1: Identify Functional Threshold Power (FTP)
* Average watts from a 60' time trial
* EN Functional Threshold Test (FTT) = 2 x 20' (2')

In Bike-Speak, Power = RPM x Force What FTP means for the EN athlete:

* Measurement of the workrate you are
performing, in real time.
* Objective vs Subjective
* Fitness = Ability to perform work
* Benchmark against which we measure everything
* The effort at which I am recruiting MANY of all
flavors of muscle fibers and can do so for a long
time, forcing them to adapt.
* Where I get/build FAST!

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Training With Power

Team closes to new members on May 1, 2009!

Training with Power Racing with Power

Step 2: Determine Training Zones Powermeter = Stupidometer

* Easy: 65-70% * Success on race day is often a function of who

makes fewer mistakes.
* Work: 80-85%
* Superhuman ability to focus on critical indicators.
* Hard: 95-100%
* Racing is a re-creation of training exercise.
* Very Hard: 120+%

Training with Power Team EN Mantras

Step 3: Ride and Analyze
Work is Speed Entering the Body
Training Stress Score (TSS)

Goals of typical EN ride:

Work WORKS
1. Optimize TSS/HR.
2. Use targeted power zones to target the particular ROI, Always
training adaptation we want.
3. Learn how to ride in "3D."

Sample Training Ride

WU: 20-30' @ 65-70%

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MS: 2 x 15' (5') @ FT, 10' Easy - Get Faster
3 x 15' (2') @ 80-85%* - Increase TSS

Remainder of ride time is @75-80%, in the aerobars,

practicing steady riding: no surges, constant power,
etc. - Race Specific

CD: 10' Easy spin.

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Training With Power

Team closes to new members on May 1, 2009!

We hope that you have enjoyed this ebook. In fact, feel free to pass it on to a friend or training
partner!

Interested in learning more about power training and racing?

The Endurance Nation Power Training and Racing, for Multisport, Webinar Series
With over 4hrs of audio, presentations slides, and additional written content, this is THE most
comprehensive power training tool on the market for triathletes.
Use code ENPower09 to save $20!

We are so confident in the quality and effectiveness of our coaching solution that we invite you to
create a FREE 30-day trial to Endurance Nation. We will begin coaching you, for free, plugging you

Endurance Nation presents

into our training plans, resources and community!

But hurry! Our team doors close on May 1. If you do not join the Team by May 1, you will not be
able to join Endurance Nation until the Fall. Create your FREE 30-day trial now and see why over
400 long course athletes have decided to join our team for the 2009 season!

Thanks again, we'll see you at the races!

Rich Strauss and Patrick McCrann

10 | Endurance Nation