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Training By Perceived Effort...

Friday, 09 December 2016 23:10

By Mike Buenting (mike buenting.wordpress.com)

In today’s world of technology and gadgets so many people get focused on buying more gear and then focus training, racing and so on around the technical data things like power meters, heart rate monitors, GPS watches and so on produce. Now as a competitive athlete and coach yes of course I love these things and I love data and using the data to coach an athlete and help them improve. But not everyone can afford all of these things and not every athlete likes to wear monitors and gadgets of these sorts and that’s OK.

So as a coach I like to take things back to basics often times and teach athletes to train by perceived effort level. Cycling this can be really crucial because so many own a kinetic trainer which does not go by watts, and they don’t have power meter crank sets etc… so I can’t hardly prescribe them a workout based on FTP and watts. This is where I use a scale for perceived effort for them....

Race of the Year Voting Breakdown...

Wednesday, 07 December 2016 23:10

Photo - Timberman co-directors, Amy and Alan Dettmer

Recently, we received this email from Timberman co-director, Amy Dettmer:

Hi MTN Guys,

Great to see you at Gear West a couple of weeks ago! I may have missed it on MTN, so wondering if you have posted, or will post, the final tallies for the Race of the Year voting? Wondering how Timberman fared? Were we 2, 3, 4, or 5? Happy that Superior Man won Race of the Year. I like to see northern MN races do well!

Amy

We replied: ....

Erin's Best Season Ever...

Tuesday, 06 December 2016 23:10

Yesterday we discussed the selection of Junior of the Year, which we referred to as an "In-between" category, that is, one that is neither a slam dunk, nor controversial.

Today we'll talk about the women's Most Improved selection, which was also perceived to be a 'Tweener category.

The Selectors agreed that Erin Hyndman-Farrens (photo) and Diane Hankee were the two most viable MI candidates. Angela Kidd had raced well, but her volume was low and her ultimate Team MInnesota placement was in the 15th-16th area. Dani Vsetecka would have made Team Minnesota in 2015 had not her scorecard featured performances from 2014, thus her making the Team in 2016 was expected.

Hyndman-Farrens won the award because she made Team Minnesota (#7) for the first time, though she had come very close on two prior occasions. Low racing volume is what had kept her off in the past. Boosting her selection was the fact that she set personal bests in Olympic distance, half IM and full IM. Her 10:02:29 at Ironman Louisville was nominated for Performance of the Year....

Crowning Clayton...

Monday, 05 December 2016 23:10

A few weeks back we used the term "In Between" to designate the MMA categories that were neither slam dunks, nor all that controversial. They fell somewhere "in between" those designations. The three categories that we considered 'tweeners were Junior of the Year and both the male and female Most Improved.

Let's start with Junior of th Year, which was won by Mitchell Clayton, 19, of Forest Lake.

On the surface, Mitchell's selection seemed pretty slam dunky. He'd raced twelve times, which was more than the other three nominees combined. (We're only including non-draft-legal races here.) He won five of those events, which is an unprecedented number of victories in a single season by a Minnesota junior.

What bothered the Selectors somewhat about Clayton were his race choices. He excelled in what can be called the "companion" races, i.e. the sprint events that are historically less competitive than the longer events they accompany. By doing this, Mitchell never faced, thus could not be measured against, our state's best athletes (Team MInnesota guys etc.).

Still, when measured against his own performances of prior seasons, Clayton, a three-time JOY nominee, had definitely gotten faster....