It's All About The Base

Climbing Kaloko in Kona, HI. Picture - Paolina Allan

Ounce again, I'm putting the 30-Year-Base to the test. If you have been involved in an endurance sport (running, cycling or triathlon) for less than 5 years, with all due respect, skip right to the end of this post for the final good news.

It's at times like this that I'm thankful that I've been doing what I have for the last 30 plus years. You see, there is a huge advantage to having a massive base of aerobic fitness that you can tap into. You can do things and get away with things that the newer athlete can't.

In a few weeks we are off to Cuba again for some cycling with some pretty serious road cyclists. I'm really looking forward to it, and again, my goal is the same - don't get dropped!

Because of the big base of fitness that I have, over a relatively short period of time, I can elevate my regular fitness to a higher level reasonably "quickly". It's not easy, and it does not come without some genuine, hard and concentrated work, but I always surprise myself, how quickly the fitness does ramp up. I've been using several different sessions on the indoor trainer, coupled with steady state riding on the rollers on the "off-days". I dug into some old training logs, and also read up on "Sweet-Spot" intervals. As a classic "pursuit-style" rider my whole life, these are the kinds of sessions that I both "enjoy", if that's the right word,  have a high impact, and ramp up my fitness quickly. 

The other two sessions I've been doing are NOT so enjoyable (to be honest they are ugly, brutal and painful) - but are also high-impact: T-Max sets, as well as one minute All-Out bursts with almost full recovery - I've always been the, world's worst sprinter on the bike, but these sprint sessions forces me to activate and work this range and the five fast-witch muscle cells I have in my whole body!! Both these sessions have me on the trainer for 60 minutes or less. A painful, 60 minutes - but a productive, 60 minutes!

And it's all coming around - a month in and with just two weeks to go, I can feel the legs and the lungs coming around. I'm looking forward to the trip to Cuba, and fingers-crossed, not getting dropped from the main group.

The good story to end this with and for the newbies just joining back in now, THIS is one of the key up-sides and advantages to hanging in there for the long-haul with endurance sports. Once that serious, long-term aerobic base is established (roughly 5 years or more), you can whip yourself back into some pretty decent form over a relatively short period of time. 

The BIG base is helpful in other ways. When you have some down-time either by choice (vacation, taking a break etc , .) or by force (injury, sickness), the loss of fitness tends to be more minimized the bigger your overall fitness and aerobic base is, and the quicker you will return to good to great form!

Spring Training

The snow is still piling up on our front lawn, but the days are getting longer and spring is hopefully not too far away. For those winter-bound cyclists and triathletes like us, it may still seem like a long way away. It's the time of year when many take a vacation or holiday or a dedicated training trip away from where they are, to some place warmer and nicer. This has become a very popular thing to do for both serious and recreational triathletes and cyclists. It follows the tradition of Professional cyclists who would travel from their Northern European homes to the south of Spain, France or Italy in later winter to put some early season miles in.

Many triathlon and cycling coaches offer fully supported training camps now in Southern Europe as well as southern parts of North America. In fact, we are about to head off for 10 days of riding in Tucson, AZ starting this weekend - although there is a bit of business side in for me with Trifest going on. Tucson has become a bit of a go-to place for this sort of thing at this time of year. It's long, been the winter home of top triathletes and cyclists, but now more and more recreational triathletes are starting to take a week or so and head to Tucson for some warm weather training and an escape from snow, cold and wet weather.

So, what to do on these weeks away from home? My general suggestion is that for most, if they are coming from a place where the outdoor riding has been limited to non-existent for the last 2 - 3 months, that the best use of a week or more, where you can ride outdoors in nice weather, is to . . . . . just ride. Many get all hung up on what to do and what about running and swimming, but a 7+ day block of just cycling can really jump-start things for the spring, and start to lay down a decent base of cycling miles. Don't worry so much about time and pace - just get out the door every day and ride. If their are groups of others so much the better. Part of the challenge for more than a few with this, is that they are on their own proprietary training program. Nothing wrong with this, and I am not advocating not doing what a coach has said to do, but that push-pull dynamic of a good group can be hugely beneficial. A good coach will know this and give you the green light to ride as much as you want, or as much as is realistic or reasonable during such a time period.

Cycling is good for this sort of thing - unlike swimming or riding where it is much harder to really ramp up the training in a very short period of time. It's a much more pleasant environment to spend a lot of hours doing something and the overuse injuries typically, are minimal. That's not to say that you are not supposed to pay attention to how you feel day to day and that you need to know what a serious ache or pain is vs. the good ache or pain from good training is. If you have been doing a decent amount of indoor riding - quality oriented sessions of about an hour 2 - 4 times a week, it's realistic to think that you could get out and ride about 2 -3 hours every day for a week at a decent pace and maybe throw in a few longer rides to.

Don't want to take the bike or you are going on a more family oriented vacation - then think about doing a run focus week. The great thing about running is it's portability. You can do it anywhere. Also a good run takes up far less time than a good ride. You can be up at sunrise run for an hour each day for a week and no one would know about it. For most, that would be a solid week of running!

Happy holidays!

Sales & The Long Distance Endurance Athlete

The picture above is of the start of the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii this year. Are there similarities between what goes on here, and in the world of business and sales?

I have, for my whole working life, worked for very small businesses and companies that essentially lived or died, based on their Sales. If you did not sell anything, the company received no business and no money, and me, the salesperson received no money - or significantly less money! It's always been a pretty straightforward relationship. I have very often thought of the parallels between working in sales and being an endurance athlete. There are more than a few similarities.

Good salespeople need to look long term. So does the endurance athlete. It's not so much the training that you do today, that matters, it is the training you do over the course of six months to a year, and year over year, that's really key. It's the same in sales - you need to often keep at it for long periods of time, to see real results. It's rare to hit the home-run in business right away, and it's rare if not impossible to win a running race or a triathlon with little or no training.

Good salespeople need to get focused on a routine. So does the endurance athlete. Training for a marathon or a long triathlon is not rocket science. It's getting out the door and getting the training done. It's the same in sales - what you do is not that complicated, but you need to be focused on what you are doing and your routine every day and keep repeating it over and over and over and . . . . . you get the picture! Training for a marathon is not about the runs you did last week. It's about the 6 months to a year of steady run training you put in.

Good salespeople need to be able to deal with set-backs. Not everyone says, "Yes". In fact, more often, people say, "No". Even deals that you think, for-sure will happen, sometimes don't. Same for the endurance athlete. There will be days of training and races that are disastrous - where nothing will go as planned. Both the salesperson and the endurance athlete need to keep going, and know that it will get better. There will be bad patches. You need to deal with them and move on. It will get better.

Good salespeople know that they are often in a real race - a race with their competitors. Few companies operate completely in a vacuum, without competition. It's hard, because you rarely if ever see your competition, in business - you only hear about them. It's more or less the same for endurance athletes. If you are serious about your performance at some level, you know that on race day its . . . well . . . . . it's a race. It's a competition. The finish line is there for a reason. In training, you may never see your competition. You may only hear that they are training hard, or slacking off, or whatever. You don't know for sure. What you do know, that come race day, it's game-on, and it's going to be competitive!

Good sales people know that their are certain techniques and tools that can be very helpful - they know that other techniques and tools are not that helpful. The successful endurance athlete also knows that certain techniques of training really do help, and that some tools are good at advancing performance. However the athlete also knows, just like the salesperson that certain training techniques and tools are useless, and that others are much more effective in yielding good results over time.

Good salespeople know that technology will only help, and get you so far. It's the same with endurance sports training. There is some technology that is helpful, but really it's about getting the hours of training in. In sales, for example, there is a tendency to rely too much on modern communication technology. However, at it's roots business success is about relationships. At some point, you need to go beyond the Blackberry, the email and the phone, and really get to know who you want to work with. With endurance training, there are all kinds of fancy tools, like heart rate monitors, and power meters, and fancy training machines to help you with your training, but these only monitor your training, you still need to get out there and do it!

So there it is. The marathon runner and the salesperson - one and the same! Who would have thought. However, as someone who has experienced and lived deeply in both worlds I know the parallels and similarities well.