Ep. 3 Project ZENdurance: Heat Issues, Run Gains, Bagels, Galveston 70.3 and Nutrition Planning
April 25, 2015
Be sure to listen to episodes one & two of Project ZENdurance if you haven’t already!
Tawnee catches up with Brett of Zen and the Art of Triathlon before he tackles Galveston 70.3 this weekend.
Working recovery into the routine vs. a block of going hard and hoping to survive and recover in time; brett’s thoughts on interval-style workouts that allow you to assign rest as needed – aka if you see a drop off, scale back!
- How did the first long brick of 5.5hr on Sunday go for Brett?
- Heat woes.
- How was his recovery from the long weekend including Sunday?
- How is Brett recovering so fast? what new tricks is he using compared with before?
- Learn how MAF is working out for Brett!
- Mention of our recent podcast with Dr. Maffetone.
- Tawnee’s outlined rest-week rides and runs before Galveston
- Positive goal setting (and learning not to talk yourself down)
- Owning your strengths in setting realistic a race plan; visualization
- Talking 70.3 race plan and pacing goals
- Maffetone & anaerobic race prep; more from Phil on anaerobic training.
- Brett’s nutrition plan for 70.3 (breakfast ideas and fueling during the race) – to bagel or no bagel?
- UCAN+dextrose combo on bike
- Debating Gatorade vs. something like Skratch/Osmo/gels+water on the run course??
- Brett’s new relationship with carbs and the positive results he’s seeing!
Comments (2)
Brett- I think you’re making an error thinking about training for the heat by by running/training when it’s hot.
We all do know that physical adaptation to the heat is both possible and (relatively) quick. When I trained for Badwater a few years ago, there were two competing schools of thought of how to do it. School One (to which I don’t subscribe) is to train in the heat, doing things like running in really hot weather, in all your ski gear, or on a treadmill in a sauna, or with a dryer vent hooked up to a sweat suit on the treadmill or whatever. Yes, you will adapt to the heat this way, but your training suffers.
School Two is to do “passive” heat training. There’s a really good document buried in the heat training section of the Badwater website about how to do passive sauna training. It takes about 4-5 weeks of doing it every day (best) or at least 6 days/week. What you do is do your main training earlier in the day so that your training is good. Then at night, you do your sauna training which starts out at about 15 min/day at 140F, and you work your way up to 40/45 minutes at 160-180F.
It’s friggin’ amazing how quickly you adapt over time to this otherwise ridiculous amount of heat. But here’s the key: it really works. People (who haven’t tried it) say it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) work because you’re not in there long enough and it’s not training adaptation. They’re simply wrong. After 5 weeks of doing this, and I swear this wasn’t a placebo effect, my easy pace at my MAF HR dropped over :15/mile on the flats even at regular temps. Seriously. Meaning it works. Why does it work? You sweat more, faster, your body gets better at dumping heat, and your plasma levels increase.
Then, at Badwater which was 125 in the shade that year (there is no shade of course) it worked great for me. So well in fact that this year I’m doing a longer race in Greece at the end of the summer (hot, humid) and I’ll be doing the exact same passive heat training for that. It’s the best performance boost in the shortest amount of time, heat or not, that I’ve ever experienced.
I love ATC, Tawney, Lucho, Brock and Ben. I have tried listening to Zendurance before and did not care much for that. I decided I would give Brett another chance when I heard Tawney would be working with him. After 3 episodes I don’t think I can take another. He doesn’t listen to anyone but himself which makes this just another avenue for him to talk about himself. That’s unfortunate because there is alot of wisdom at EP and I’m sure he could benefit from that.
EP..keep up the great work!