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Important Stuff About Fatigue...

Friday, 22 February 2019 23:10

By Benjamin A. Hassan usatriathlon.org)

“I train regularly for triathlon. Why am I so tired?”
 
Fatigue occurs in triathletes. Endurance athletes are often driven in many aspects of their lives, including their athletic training and competition. They expect to have more energy than others, not less. Fatigue is not welcome.
 
Every now and then, the energy is simply not there. “Fatigue” can appear in triathletes as a loss of vigor for training, a change in our heart rate with training and racing, the need for more sleep, loss of motivation for our sport or for other things in life, sleepiness, or simply feeling drained or down all day.
 
My medical approach for evaluation of fatigue in triathletes is similar to the medical approach to fatigue for I perform for any adult or child. I start by taking a good history that includes focused questions and listening to the specific responses. Often the responses provide clues to the etiology of the fatigue. Is there a sleep issue? Is the athlete feeling ill? Is there significant new home or work stress? Is there a new baby? Are there additional symptoms that indicate a medical illness? Is there blood loss or other suggestions of anemia? Physical examination and additional testing, such as blood work when indicated, provides further data to help determine the cause of fatigue....

Record Numbers & Repeat Champions...

Tuesday, 19 February 2019 23:10

TRI-U-MAH - This has been our state's biggest indoor tri for a while now, and this year's turnout was by far the largest ever.

Typically about 200 athletes register and 160-180 ultimately show up and finish. This time, though, there were 179 individual finishers and 40 collegiate athletes. That's 219 line-crossers. Hopefully this marks a trend toward greater enrollment in outdoor races this summer. Fingers crossed.

Tri-U-Mah is not only our state's largest and longest (90 minutes broken into 30-minute segments) indoor swim-bike-run, it is also the most competitive. Leading the way for their respective genders were repeaters MICHAEL WEISSENBORN, who won here in 2017, and 2018 women's champ / future outdoor star PAIGE SCHULZ,  who was very impressive in two outdoor starts last summer and is the prohibitive favorite for Rookie of the Year in 2019.

Though Paige didn't match her 2018 distance total, she missed it by a almost neglible 1/100th of a mile.

Weissenborn, however, was able to better his 2017 distance by more than four tenths of a mile, thus his eventual margin of victory was huge: 1.09 miles. Michael had great bike and run splits, but it was in the water where he truly excelled. Only REED STEELE, who expects to be first out of the water in almost every multi he enters, touched more walls....

Big-Ass Bouncy Houses & Pseudo-Consistent Splits...

Monday, 18 February 2019 23:10

By Steve Stenzel (iwannagetphysical.blogspot.com)

Yesterday (Ed. February 10) was my first race of 2019: the Minneapolis YWCA Indoor Triathlon. I had signed up for the longest distance: 600 yard swim (in a 25 yard pool), 8 "miles" on a spin bike (NEW bikes where resistance matters!), and a 5K on a 200 yard track (25 laps).

The evening before, we went out to my wife's aunt's house for a skating/taco party. I ate lots of crap, and the boys played out on the ice even though it was -2 with -15 windchill.

The ONLY (and tiniest) bit of pre-race drama took place regarding my goggles. After getting back from Mexico, they started leaking a bit. On Friday's swim, they were just gushing water. I think the little "tabs" that hold the goggle straps as tight as you set it got loose from me playing around with them as I kept loosening/tightening them while playing in the pool in Mexico. They don't hold them as tight as I'd like anymore. And being I still felt like these goggles were "new," I didn't have a back-up pair. So I ...

Stenzel Strikes Again!

Friday, 15 February 2019 23:10

Photo - This pic of Sookie's nails (Sookie is the YWCA's Indoor Tris race director) has nothing to do with this story. It's posted because we think it's cool, and we were unable to get a shot from the race.

YWCA INDOOR TRI #2 - Usual suspects galore, plus enough adventurous newbies, conspired  to push attendance to record levels. This event had 79 finishers in 2018. Very good numbers, eh? Last Sunday, 92 athletes went the distance. Very cool.

Glancing at the results, several things stood out, most notably that masters and grand masters rocked most of the top spots. How cool is it that 61-year-old NICK KOSZEWSKI, pronounced "Koz -shef -ski," we think, won the Sprint race? We tried to find stuff about Nick on the Inter Web and didn't find much, unless he's a biomedical scientist at Iowa State University. If so, he's incredibly accomplished, looks decades younger than his real age, has great hair and speaks German.

Another sixty-genarian, RICHARD DANAHER, turned in the fastest men's time in the Mini, which placed him 4th overall in that event. He finished 5th overall/4th male in last year's February Mini....