Mental Sticker

Over the past month and a half I been fighting a crazy battle with the cold and this week I finally got a knockout punch from Mister Cold (yes cold, you are the winner this time and I am not planning on fighting you anymore!!).

Last week I started to feel the signs that I was getting a cold for probably the third time in this year, but again, I choose to take some cold medicine, get some good sleep a few nights in a row and then on Saturday I went out and did the local House of Pain bike ride. The hard intensity of the ride was the perfect combination to get my immune system weak and allow this time for the sickness to really sink in. Today is a Thursday and I have been sick for the entire week and I have done a total of a one hour of exercise that probably just took me a few steps back into my recovery from this crazy cold. Trying to take this cold in a positive way, I can only look back into my last 15 weeks of training and feel very confident that I have built the best aerobic base that I have ever built in my entire life. Doing the House of Pain ride on Saturday I felt really strong and confident that the base I built is right there and it should last me this time for the entire season. By no means I should feel in a rush to go get more workouts feeling this sick. It’s only February and my “A” race is not until September. Is time for me to take my recovery as serious as possible and let myself feel back to 100% before I put the running shoes on again.

In the meantime, I am enjoying doing my work, staying dry, having a great time with my family and trying to be in bed by no later than 9:00pm every night. This time I can feel my battery charging up with very good energy.

If you listen to your body you will learn so much about yourself. This time my body is telling me to slow down, rest, be confident in all the work I have put on and let this sickness go out for good this time.

Trying to keep myself away from thinking about doing another workout I choose today to write another post in my blog and having so many topics to choose from, I want to go with something that happened to me yesterday when I went to the store and on my way out I saw a guy trying to collect money for a homeless foundation. I choose to help the cause and after I provided him with my donation the guy on a very friendly gesture said to me: “Have a good day and don’t let anyone take that away from you”. These words stayed on my head during my way back home to the point that I had to write the phrase down on a piece of paper. Today when I saw the phrase again I decided to share it in this blog.

As a coach, I found myself constantly learning from the people around me. Is crazy how much knowledge one person can provide you when you learn how to listen to the information they are sharing with you. With time I have learned to see each person as a unique individual that provides me with constant information. Is up to me if I want to use the information in a positive or negative way. For most of the times, I choose to learn from what they are telling me and use it in my life for my advantage. They constantly shape my life with direction if I can keep myself humble and with a positive attitude. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when no matter how positive you want to be, there is no way you can absorb information in a positive way, but if you let time go by, later you can find that this “negative” information can turn it into something positive for your life.

How many times you find yourself starting your day with the right attitude and feeling like you are conquering your dreams/goals in life and then for some crazy reason, someone or something happens and your day totally changes. Then, next thing you know, is that the entire day goes by and your spirit of a warrior is lost somewhere in those 24 hours that just went by. Have you ever experience something similar? If so, here is a mental sticker to place on your brain:

“HAVE A GOOD DAY AND DON’T LET ANYONE TAKE THAT AWAY FROM YOU”

Early Season Training and "A" Race Preparation for Triathlon by Team Fitness Evolution

 

Today I had a few requests from people to post this article we presented a few weeks ago at a triathlon meeting. I know I said I was not going to be using my blog to talk only about “training”, but I want to share this information before we are to late in the season.

Hope you guys find this useful.

The number one thing to do in order to have a successful race season is to figure out your schedule of races and what race(s) is going to be your “A” race or top priority race(s) of the season. We recommend a time period of 8 to 12 weeks in between “A” races during the season in order to peak at these specific events. Before you start thinking about your training, grab a calendar and figure out what races you are planning on doing during your season.

There are 10 key components that you need to have in order to have a successful race season (assuming your “A” races are 12 weeks apart):

1) Start your season with a solid foundation of BASE training (aerobic training). This can be anywhere from 8 to 16 weeks. Focus on building endurance and technique with easy, steady-paced workouts and a light mix of strength workouts.

2) The next step is to spend about 8 weeks building your top-end speed with intense intervals and tempo workouts.

3) Finally, two weeks to a month before your event, cut your training time in half, but continue to hone in on your speed (Taper).

4) You are ready to race.

5) Follow your first “A” race with easy/aerobic short workouts for 2 weeks (Recovery).

6) For the next 3 to 4 weeks, build your speed.

7) Follow this with 1 week with lower intensity workouts (Recovery).

8) Next add 2 more weeks of speed training.

9) Finally taper for 2 to 3 weeks.

10) You are ready to race again.

For questions or comments, please feel free to email me at luis@teamfitnessevolution.com

The "White Shark" of all Gels

I wanted to talk about gels on my first blog post, but I figure giving away my million dollar ceviche receipt (according to my friend Oscar) will be better than talking about boring gels.

Anyway, the truth is that gels are out there in so many different variations of brands and flavors. Been a Sports Basement (SB) employee, when I first started working there I felt like a kid in a candy store. As a long distance endurance athlete and having access to all this different options of nutritional supplements was like a dream come true. In a matter of a few years I have trained for a few marathons, some half marathons, a few half Ironmans, one Ironman and I have tried every single product you can find at the SB floor.

For a while I was sold in the idea of having gels with a high calorie content, I really liked the E gels and they provided me with enough calories for my long bike rides when I was training for my last ironman. I was used to consume about two E gels and drink some Carbo Pro with electrolyte during each hour spent on the bike to have an average of 350 to 400 calories/per hour. This combination worked great during training. The problem came on race day at my last Ironman (New Zealand 2010), I was feeling great and the combination of Egels and Carbo Pro was working great until mile 70 of the bike, when on a panic attack, I forgot to eat for about 30 to 45 minutes and I ate about 400 calories in a matter of 10 minutes to try to compensate the lack of calories during that last hour spent on the bike. The result: BIG MISTAKE!!!.....my stomach shot down and after throwing up a few times, I was totally racing an Ironman on empty and my body could not take food any more. The rest of the story, I leave to you guys imagination, just picture yourself trying to run a full marathon feeling like you had a full bottle of cheap tequila the night before and you also forgot to eat breakfast before you went on your 26.2 mile run adventure….simply INSANE! Somehow I managed to survive the hardest day of racing I have ever done in 15 years of competitive racing.

I learned my lesson the hard way! Developing your nutritional plan is a science, there is not one mold or one receipt that works for all, everyone is different and what works for some does not mean will work for you. The best you can do in preparation for your next race, is make sure you try different products and test those on different types of workouts and different types of weather. The time, money and effort you will spend figuring out your nutritional plan is one of the best investments you can do for you next event.

I still keep my love for the gels very open. Gels for me are like restaurants, I like to have different options when it comes to eating during my training/racing and I just don’t stick to just one option. I still do E gels on some of my long training days, just because they are higher on calorie content. I have eaten for several years GU gels, they were the original inventors of the “Gel” and they really know what they are doing in the gel world. I also like the Clif Shot gels, but I have to mention that Clif recently re-invented their entire gel line and WOW, this gels are for sure in a different category. The taste is simply amazing, the chocolate flavor tastes like chocolate frosting, my favorite flavor is the Citrus one, but I have to talk here about the White Shark of all gels, the “Double Espresso Clif Shot” is like a grenade of pure energy. Talk about real energy booster!!! Just in the last week, I literally was able to rescue two of my friends and Team Fitness Evolution members from crashing the wall big time when doing bike rides. In both occasions, the guys where running on empty and super low on energy, with still about 20 to 25 miles left to go. For their luck, I packed with me extra grenades and I was caring Double Espresso Shots with me. The result in both cases was incredible to witness. In just a matter of a few minutes after handing the gels to them, both guys where hammering the bike again like if they were just in the first few miles of the ride. I just couldn’t believe it!!

I want to share part of an email I got from one of them last night. His name is Sean and he refers to the Double Espresso Shot as “The Miracle Gel” on the subject of his email:

Luis,

You should really write a letter to Clif Bar, that is too funny how both Oscar and I benefitted so much from one gel, and then went to bought a bunch of them after the ride. 

I look forward to seeing you Thursday morning at the track!

Thanks,

Sean

Welcome to my Blog - Luis's Ceviche

Hello everyone!

My name is Luis Leonardo, I am originally from Guatemala and English is not my first language, but I do enjoy writing in it, even when I been told in the past by people that know me in person, that sometimes they can hear my accent when they read through my awesome English writing skills. So, for those that are looking for a laid back, not very sophisticated or perfectly written blog, you came to the right place and excuse me in advance if you can sense how English is not my first language but I hope you enjoy reading my blog posts.

A little bit about me and my awesome family. My wife, Angela and I move to Walnut Creek, California in October 2007 all the way from Minnesota, where Angela is from. In April 2010, our son, Noah, was born on Earth’s day and he has filled my life with the most amazing love I could ever experience.

Walnut Creek has become a great place to live, meet great people, make real friends (some that I consider my family away from my family) and start chasing some of my BIG dreams.

Last year, with the help and motivation of one of my friends, Kyle Leto, who is a professional triathlete. We decided to take our passion for the sports that we love and we develop a very unique concept called "Team Fitness Evolution". I figure that with Kyle’s knowledge of the sport and me been a former member of the Guatemalan triathlon team, we could join forces and offer people an alternative in coaching using our own experiences in the sport of triathlon (swim-bike-run). Now, about a year ago later, with the help of the great people that believed in us from the beginning and with the help of our team sponsors: Sports Basement, Clif Bar, Sport Stars Magazine, Inner Action Chiro, Mizuno and Club Sport we have something very cool going on with Team Fitness Evolution.  This is just the beginning or the tip of the iceberg for Team Fitness Evolution. I am confident that when you are fallowing your passion, you enjoy to the fullest what you are doing and you surround yourself with great people, the sky is the limit. With the right mix of hard work, motivation and direction I know there are great things coming and I am willing to break the mold and keep doing things in the way that I know and I believe at one hundred percent.

I want to keep this blog very laid back and I hope people that read it will understand that this is something I want to keep very fun, fresh and use it to share some of the things I love in life. By any means I want to have this blog be something that I keep just to talk about one kind of stuff “training” or become something that will drive me crazy because I need to make sure all I am writing is in perfect manner and making full sense all the time. This blog is one way for me to say “welcome to my life”, I’ll be myself and I will do my best to keep this fun and entertaining.

Ok, with all that been said. I can’t think of a better way to break the ice with some of you and share my own and original recipe to make what I consider one of the best ceviche’s in the world. I figure I only have so many things in common with some of you, non runners or non triathletes, but everyone loves good food and what a better way to use my first post to share with you guys a very healthy recipe for one of my favorite recovery foods. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do!!

Luis’s Ceviche:

Ingredients:

1 lbs of white fish fillets (corvina, halibut, sea bass, tilapia, sole), cut into small square pieces

1lbs of shrimp, cut in halfs
6 Roma tomatoes, cut into small square pieces
10 to 12 limes

1 white, yellow or red onion, cut into small square pieces
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped as finely as possible
2-3 tbs olive oil

1 or 1/2 small can of V8 juice

3 tbs of ketchup

1 tbs of Chicken Consome powder (instant soup/seasoning mix)
Salt to taste

Preparation:

1.    Place the raw fish and shrimp pieces in a dish and cover it with salt, 3 to 4 a tablespoon of chopped cilantro, 1 whole chopped onion and lime juice from about 10 to 12 limes, the fish and shrimp should be completely covered by lime juice.

2.    Cover the dish with plastic wrap, put it in the fridge and chill, let the fish/shrimp cook itself in the lime juice for at least 4 hours.

3.    Combine the fish with the tomatoes, V8, ketchup and Chicken Consome powder, mix well and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving.

4.    Serve with chips, feel free to add some good hot sauce and ENJOY!!