OutRival Racing Tampa Bay Area welcomes coach, Leo Briceno, to the coaching team!

In July of 2018, 4 of us stood in Lake Placid, NY, watching the Ironman and discussing a little race called “Wilderman”. I had never heard of Wilderman, but it sounded intriguing: an off-road iron distance race – 2.4 mile swim, 111 miles of mountain/gravel biking and a 27+ miles “on foot”.

Unsurprisingly, triathlon both creates strength imbalances, and exposes them. It creates imbalances because we’re doing the same motions over, and over, and over, and over, and over… And then it exposes strength imbalances in a couple ways: many injuries/pains are the result of muscle weakness/imbalance, and many performance limiters have their root in muscle strength/functionality.

We’ve all done it. We all fall into the trap. The summer months have arrived, and it takes every ounce of our being to not take to the open road, and launch into every workout full-blast, determined to sweat our hearts out in the summer sunshine. We do this willingly, visioning our dreams of completion, achievement, personal bests, and all the other race day feels. We want our friends on Strava, Garmin, and all forms of social media to see how fast we went. How strong we are. How far we went, how far we’ve come, how far we’ll go. But is it too much? Is it too hard? Will you reach that goal?

Headed to 70.3 Worlds in Nice, France (or any European Ironman event, for that matter), and wondering about on course nutrition and how it compares to what you might normally use? Read on!

The concept of a massive over-distance day is nothing new to endurance athletes and something many do during their overload block of training for their key race (Ironman, ultra-marathon run or ultra-distance bike race like The Dirty Kanza 200). Personally, as an athlete and as a coach I am a big fan of this for multiple reasons I’ll explain here. There’s both an equal part physical training stimulus and a mental fitness stimulus. If one has never done an extreme endurance activity it’s kind of its own rite of passage if you will – the endurance athlete’s rite of passage.

Coach Tim Snow started out writing a blog post called The Butterfly Affect, which ended up turning into something much more complex, and lengthy. It turned into something that could not really be most effectively shared in a blog-type setting. But, we wanted to make sure that it was made available to you in the typical way that you access our written content. To that end, please see, below, three different links, all of which will allow you to access the writing, in three different forms.

In order to swim, you must have the mental and physical capabilities to perform an elaborate physics experiment. No other sport, requires such a high demand of physical suppleness and awareness to engage properly with the environment to propel ones self forward. In cycling, you engage with the bike at 5 spots. This physical engagement propels you forward. In running, there are two points of contact with the solid earth, which through physical engagement will propel you forward. In swimming, we have the challenge of being face down in the water, trying to grab this liquid substance with a hand, with the goal of moving the body forward. What we often don’t realize is that the body moves past the hand and arm. Upon entry the catch is initialized, at this moment the hand and arm are now stationary in the water. The next process is what separates the efficient swimmer from the inefficient swimmer.

Triathlon training in anywhere other than the south, is not for the faint of heart. Based on the “spring” we’ve had so far up north, we are left wondering if we’ll EVER get outside to do some open water swims! While open water swimming is imperative to swimming confidently and strong in a triathlon, indoor swimming provides lots of benefits to prepare you for open water swims. Read on to learn how to make the most of your pool swims and you’ll be ready for a successful race season when warmer weather FINALLY arrives.

Heat training relates to the techniques directed to improve performance in warm climates, while heat acclimation is the process by which an athlete becomes accustomed to increased heat over a 4 to 14-day period. Putting these two things together, and you get acclimatization. Acclimatization, is the entire spectrum of heat training, including the initial acclimation period through the time frame, leading to race day.