Attended a fabulous workshop organized by Shem and conducted by Vinnie Santana, a master-coach based in Bangkok. Picked up many useful little tips on training and racing for triathlons across all distances - OD, 70.3, IM. The kind of tips that are Ah-Ha! lightbulb moments for an inexperienced amateur like me. Just listening to different race stories was rewarding in itself. Not earth-shattering, but little tricks and observations derived from experience. I was reminded of my perennial marathon tip that I kept sharing with people (after I suffered my first marathon) - trim those toe nails! Commen-sense, right? But nobody told me those trivial stuff when I first ran, and I lost my first couple of nails after that.
We had a whole day of lecture & practicals. Swim lecture, followed by a 20min pool dip to try out. Then a talk on bike & run training, and we headed out to the road for a 20min run drill. Excited with learning new stuff! Eg. cricket arm, a swim-flip to get around the sea buoy, a low cadence for tri-bike, etc.
All too often, triathletes train Swim. + Bike. + Run. In essence, triathlon is all about balancing the 3 disciplines- f(swim, bike, run). If we dissected an elite triathlete, and compared elite-for-elite, he would be a poor swimmer, bad rider, and lousy runner. (Well,.... although the top IMers still run 42km in sub-3h, which is far far better than many runners out there... champion marathoners do abt 2:10ish times.) But putting all 3 together, and the guy would ace it. That was somewhat comforting to me. Forever in a schizo phase of wanting to improve my run times, and wanting to experience triathlons. (Note the word 'complete', not timing.) And not knowing how to spread my time properly.
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