The
regional club championships will once again take part during the Loveland
Lake to Lake Triathlon, and the national club championship will once
again take part during the Boulder Peak Triathlon. Make sure you include
your club name when registering, and that your club is on the list
of current clubs. Only current USAT clubs within the Rocky Mountain
Region are eligible for awards at the regional championship, but any
current USAT club is eligible for awards at the national club championship.
RACE
RULES REVISITED
by
Charlie Crawford - Commissioner of Officials
Most
triathletes come to races with only a rudimentary understanding of the
rules of the sport. Indeed, few have ever read through the Competitive
Rules (which are available on the USA
Triathlon web site). In order to minimize violations on
race day, please read the following summary of position violations,
which you probably know as the drafting rules.
Rule
1: Ride on the right side of your lane
Rule
2: Keep three bike lengths between you and the cyclist in front of you
Rule
3: Pass on the left of the cyclist in front, never on the right.
Rule
4: Complete your pass within 15 seconds.
Rule
5: If passed,
you must drop completely out of the zone, to the rear, before attempting
to re-pass.
Remember you are racing in a USA Triathlon sanctioned event and there
are trained referees on the course to ensure fairness in the competition.
There will be NO WARNINGS if you commit a foul during competition. Triathlon
is an individual event and you must take personal responsibility to
understand the rules and avoid penalties. At the end of the race all
citations by the marshals are reviewed by the Head Referee who then
decides if a penalty should be assessed. Though Position Violations
carry a time penalty for each occurrence, if you are cited for three
violations, you will be disqualified. The Head Referee's ruling is final
in the case of position violations and there are no protests or appeals
of position penalties. Marshals commonly cite the following violations:
Illegal Position or Blocking - riding on the left side of the lane without
passing.
Illegal Pass - passing on the right.
Overtaken - failing to drop back three bike lengths after being passed
and before re-passing.
Drafting - following a leading cyclist closer than three bike lengths
and failing to pass within 15 seconds.
Always have your chinstrap securely fastened! The helmet and chinstrap
rule apply before, during, and after the event. The chinstrap rule is
the easiest to follow, but some folks always seem to forget - that's
a DQ!
Remember to treat other athletes, volunteers, and officials with courtesy
and consideration. Failure to do so is called Unsportsmanlike Conduct
and you will be disqualified.
All that being said, I hope you have a great race, lots of fun, and
achieve all your goals.
TRAINING
& SCIENCE: Common Training
Errors
by
Scott Poston
Some of the most
common training errors made by triathletes, beginner and elite alike,
are (1) overtraining, (2) using work-rate intensities that are not race
specific, and (3) failure to taper training prior to a competition.
Overtraining
may be a more significant problem for several reasons. First, overtraining
(workouts that are too long or too strenuous) may result in injury,
reduction in the athlete’s resistance to disease, decreased performance,
chronic fatigue, and many other physiological disorders. Further, overtraining
may result in psychological staleness, which can be identified by a
general lack of enthusiasm on the part of the athlete. The general symptoms
of overtraining include: (1) elevated resting heart rate, (2) loss of
appetite, (3) chronic fatigue, (4) amotivation, (5) multiple colds,
sore throats, or other illnesses, (6) a decrease in performance, (7)
injuries, and (8) irritability—to name a few. An overtrained athlete
may exhibit one or all of these symptoms. Athletes should be prepared
to reduce workloads when overtraining symptoms appear.
Another common mistake
in training is the failure to plan race-specific workouts. A triathlete
training for the ironman distance will benefit very little from sprint
workouts. And if you are training for sprint triathlons, then long,
slow workouts return modest results at best, especially during in-season
training. The law of specificity provides the best framework from which
to plan your training. Simply stated, training should enhance the energy
systems used in competition. For sprint triathletes, intervals which
involve 3-5 minutes of repeated hard efforts are very effective. These
workouts improve your maximum oxygen uptake (max VO2). For the half
ironman distance, workouts should stress your lactic acid threshold.
A pace that is slightly slower than the maximum VO2 pace would fall
under this category. Talk with a triathlon coach for assistance in designing
your program. Click
here to find a USAT-certified tri coach in your area.
Finally, failure
to reduce the intensity and volume of training prior to competition
is also a common training error. Achieving a peak athletic performance
requires a healthy blend of proper nutrition, training, and rest. Athletes
should reduce their training load for several days prior to competition;
this practice is called tapering. The goal of tapering is to provide
time for muscles to resynthesize glycogen to maximal levels and to allow
muscles to heal from training-induced damage. While the optimum length
of a taper period continues to be debated, a reduced training load for
3-21 days prior to competition has been used successfully in endurance
sports. Endurance athletes can reduce their training load by approximately
60% for up to 21 days without a reduction in performance.
Remember, the overall
objective of a tri-training program is to produce the maximum increase
in performance with the minimum increase in effort. Train smart.
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