The journey to be a triathlete.
It’s official. I’ve registered for my first 5k - the Baldwin Park Pride of the Valley 5k Run. I was going to wait till I was hitting the 20min mark before entering an actual race, but I needed some motivation in my training. The race description says it’s a fast flat track and the race is sanctioned and monitored by USAT&F so we’ll see how well I do on my very first officially timed 5k!
Triathlete Magazine has a great article on drills to improve 5k speed for sprint-triathlons:
Strides: Do a set of strides before and after each run. If possible, do them on dirt or grass. Run for 20 seconds as fast as you can while maintaining smooth form, and then rest 30 seconds. Do a total of four strides.
Skipping: Once a week, find some grass or a dirt trail and start skipping. If it’s been two decades since you last skipped, start with 2 x (3 x 30 seconds) with an easy one-minute jog after each of the three reps and three-minute jog between the two sets. As you progress, work up to two sets of six repetitions and cut the recovery time in half.
Brick: Because of the importance of the neuromuscular transition from the bike to the run, I like to see people do—at a minimum—one brick a week throughout their training for a sprint event. Two bricks a week is even better. Your run shouldn’t last longer than 20 minutes and should follow this format: Take two minutes to find your legs and then do six 30-second fartleks at 5K race pace with one minute of jogging recovery after each. Use the remaining time to run easy and cool down.
Core: Start in a modified push-up position where you’re resting on your forearms. Keeping your legs, torso and head in a straight line, push your body up off the ground and hold the pose for 30 seconds. Repeat four times. Work up to holding the pose for one minute. Do the plank exercise every other day, year round.
I’m definitely going to start doing planks and side-planks every other day - starting tonight.
Eric Paskel (of XFlowsion fame) is back in town and Heather and I have started taking his class every Sunday at Your Neighborhood Studio in Culver City. It’s been a while since we’ve done XFlowsion, but I’ve been running 5k’s so I thought his class would be a good supplement to my training routine. What I didn’t realize is how much his class would kick my ass. It’s now been 2 days since class and my entire body is still sore! Heather and I walked a 7k last night to help stretch out our muscles but I really wanted to get in a 5k run today, but I’m too sore to attempt it. So today I’ve been researching muscle recovery strategies for athletes. I’ve always known that some athletes do ice baths, but I didn’t know the exact reason why they did it. So I did some research on google and found a good article from the BBC: “Why Sports Stars Love Ice Baths“. The article says that ice baths drain blood and lactic acid from the veins because the veins constrict in the cold and when you emerge from the ice bath “new” blood rushes through your veins with oxygen to help muscle cells function better. Runner’s World also has a how-to article called “The Big Chill” that explains how to take an ice bath and the benefits from it. I’ll definitely have to try one.
There are also nutrition/supplement strategies for optimum muscle recovery. I found a pretty thorough article on Washington Running Report that outlines nutrition for optimum muscle recovery. At the end of the article they endorse a product called Endurox R4 which is a combination of electrolytes, protein, glutamine and other vitaimins - nothing too exotic. I might have to check it out.