Posse Ramón Martinez and Émile Chol both recently set PR’s! Ramón came in at California International Marathon with a time of 2:49:30 qualifying him for the Boston Marathon! Émile finished 70.3 Indian Wells/La Quinta with a time of 4:21:11 ending up 2nd in his age group. Nice work out there!
Here’s some good nutrition advice from Best in the West partner Steelhead PDX nutrition coach Remy Maguire with a quick tasty recipe to follow🤠
Should you switch up your nutrition plan for the winter? Probably. But how? Coach’s favorite answer: It depends! Now is the perfect time to reflect on last season and consider what changes you want to make to improve your nutrition for next year. Do you need to lean out and lose body fat? While your training load is down, keep carbohydrates lower too and fill up on less calorie-dense but super-nutritious fruits and veggies. 🥦🍎🍌🍠🌽🍆🥒 Want to gain some muscle to be more powerful? Be sure to fuel up after your strength sessions with a protein-rich meal or snack. 💪💪💪💪 Weary of sticking to a strict diet while in-season? Take a break over the holidays and enjoy your favorite treats! 🎂🍪🍫🥧🍾 For a protein-rich, energy-dense breakfast good for any season, try this recipe! You can reach Remy at remy@steelheadcoaching.com Grab-and-Go Yogurt Parfait. Ingredients 1/2 cup Greek yogurt drizzle of honey 1/4 cup frozen blueberries 1/2 cup oats or low-carb granola Handful of nuts Add chia seeds or hemp seeds for an even greater protein punch. Directions Mix this together the night before, grab it on your way to your workout or leave it in the car and eat it on the way home. Here's a great winter swim workout that develops aerobic capacity while still maintaining some race-specific strength. This Workout Wednesday comes to you courtesy of Steelhead Coaching and Personal Training in Portland, a BITW triathlon coaching partner. To learn more, visit www.steelheadcoaching.com.
2200 yards/meters total. Rest is in parenthesis. Warm Up: 200 free (30"). 200 kick no board in streamline (30"), 200 mix non-free (30") 8 X 25 (15") breath control - Breathe per 25 (3,2,1,0) Main Set: 300 pull with paddles steady aerobic (30") 6 X 50 free race pace (20") 200 pull with paddles steady aerobic (30") 4 X 50 free race pace (20") 100 pull with paddles aerobic pace (30") 2 X 50 free race pace (20") Cool Down: 200 choice Stronger swimmers should add: 400 pull with paddles steady aerobic (30") 8 X 50 free race pace (20") at the beginning of the main set to total 3000 yds/m. Here’s a Workout Wednesday from our friends, Coaches Jon Booth and Kristen Lipscomb of Pure Endurance
🚴♀️🚴♂️ This brick training session will help begin prepare your body for the challenge of moving between sports (bike and run) while minimizing a major drop in performance. Before you start your training session, set up your run gear so you can practice your transition from bike to run! BIKE Warm up; 15:00 minutes very easy (you can talk in full sentences) Pre main set: 4x 0:30 build from ez to strong effort (choice rpm) RI 1:30 ez spin Main set: 10:00 steady Z2 (Smooth/steady, not breathless) effort Into 3x (2:00 build rpm to 105-110 while maintaining good posture and no bouncing, 4:00 @ cadence of 60-70 rpm at strong sustainable effort or 80-85% of FTP, 4:00 smooth Z2 effort), for a total of 30 minutes. Cool down 10:00 decreasing intensity from Z2 to ez recovery spin RUN Immediately following the bike session, run at conversational pace for 20-30 minutes. For more advanced athletes, start the first 1-2 miles of the run at race pace. 🤠 If you have any questions, Jon and Kristen will be happy to answer! This weekend Ramón Martinez absolutely crushed the USA Triathlon Long Course Duathlon Nationals in Miami! With 18th overall, and 4th in his age group, Ramón secured a spot at the ITU world championships for duathlon in Switzerland next year!
Way to go Ramón! We’re proud to call you a friend. This week’s posse highlight is Melissa ‘Mel’ Norland!
Mel and her family have been frequent volunteers with us for 6 years! She grew up playing ball sports, primarily soccer, but always ran for fitness. She got involved with endurance sports when she met Clem LaCava, the race director and founder of a local ultramarathon, the McDonald Forest 50k. Running that race was one of the best crazy decisions she’s ever made because it introduced her to the very wide world of endurance sports! While her favorite leg of the triathlon changes year to year, she’s currently loving the swim because she’s the type of person who embraces her fears and weaknesses and does her best to overcome them. When she’s volunteering with us you’ll find her doing pretty much anything that needs to be done, but she loves being out on the paddle board as swim course safety. When the going gets tough in a race she focuses on keeping moving one stroke/step/pedal stroke at a time. She’s a full time stay at home parent for her two boys and she has two other part time jobs meaning she’s one busy person! Before a race, she likes to have oatmeal with fruit and nuts in it, but after a race she LOVES eggs. By far, her love for the triathlon community and the connection that she feels with the Best in the West Posse shines through when she volunteers with us. Raising her family around such a positive group of like-minded, hard working, and awesome people has been an immensely positive impact on her own life. If you see Mel before a race, stop and have a chat with her. You will find that your pre-race nerves will be eased and your attitude will swing dramatically in the positive direction! As endurance athletes, we burn a lot of calories. Living in the real world, we also don’t always have time to make elaborate meals and often need some quick nutritious calories on the go! These chocolate chip banana bread muffins are easy to make, quick, vegan, and packed full of good endurance fuel to replenish your energy after workouts. Check out this recipe:
Quick Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Muffins Ingredients: 4 medium-large ripe or over ripe bananas 1.5 cups whole wheat flour 1/2 cup coconut oil, melted 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder (optional) 2-3 pinches nutmeg powder (optional) 1.5 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 cup dark semisweet baking chocolate chips (optional) Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 355F 2. Mash bananas well (We find it’s easiest to do this with your hands) 3. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a medium bowl. 4. Combine melted coconut oil, brown sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. 5. Combine the flour mixture into the coconut oil mixture, one half at a time. 6. Add the mashed bananas and chocolate chips. 7. Grease a muffin tin or a rectangular cake pan (we prefer muffins!) with canola or coconut oil. 8. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tin, or the baking pan. 9. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out clean. Enjoy!!!! For this Workout Wednesday, the time for comfortably sunny outdoor riding is drawing to a close. Saddle up indoors and giddy up with a trainer ride! Although outdoor riding is spiritually freeing and lots of fun (just look at that picture OMG it’s gorgeous!), riding indoors has many benefits. First, there are no stop lights, angry drivers, and far fewer interruptions to steady riding. Your bike will experience far less wear and tear, especially since it isn’t being exposed to the winter road conditions. Since it is a workout wednesday, an indoor ride is the perfect place to do your low cadence intervals from last week's Pure Endurance workout without risk of interruption!
Tips from the Posse for indoor cycling: Have a fan pointed at you for air flow to prevent overheating. Indoor riding is a great time to have a good conversation with a buddy, catch up on your favorite tv series, or watch a movie to keep yourself entertained. Always remember to bring a towel and don’t forget to stay hydrated and properly fueled. This week's Workout Wednesday comes from our friends Jon Booth and Kristen Lipscomb who are both local multisport coaches at Pure Endurance.
If your season just ended in the past few weeks (~2-4 weeks) and you have not yet taken some time off from structured training, then do that first before proceeding with this structured type of training. If you have had some down time and unstructured training (last race ~ 6-8 weeks ago) and you are absolutely chomping at the bit to get after it again, this cycling training session will help prepare you for changing outdoor road conditions. (Note: If you are not chomping at the bit, you likely need to take some more time to just be active without specific structure.) Ready to roll? Here you go!
Any questions? Get in touch with Pure Endurance for clarification. They’re a wealth of knowledge! Jon is a USAT certified coach, Training Peaks certified coach, and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Kristen has a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and is both an Ironman certified coach and a RRCA certified coach. Check them out at @pure_endurance or at www.ndurancecoach.com Meet Quincy Gill, our bike course master, salad specialist, beer mile ace in the hole, and internationally respected “cone-oisseur”. He got involved with Best in the West Events in 2014 after working closely with Staci to coordinate the Beaver Freezer Triathlon. While his favorite leg of the triathlon is the bike, because picking off the faster swimmers is fun, his favorite race is Oregon Dunes Triathlon because of the epic run course! When he’s not hanging around a triathlon or educating the youth as an environmental science high school para-educator, he’s an avid mountain biker and trail runner. No matter how hard the times get, Quincy always keeps a positive perspective and lifts up those who are lucky enough to be around him. Stop and have a chat with Quincy next time you see him. You won’t regret it! PS: Quincy stresses the importance of exercising your right to vote! |