Triathlon and the Super League (2)

We wrote a previous post regarding the Super League.  Comments to Macca by the ITU President deserves a second look at the Super League:

1)   The ITU and its Federations have controlled triathlon and triathletes but contrary to what she says:  They hamper the development of triathlon and triathletes.

International competition is limited by Federations depending on criteria outside of competing in triathlon.  The Mexican Federation does not allow triathletes to compete internationally if they do not comply with what they call “marcas mínimas.”  Swimming and running, 400 meters and a 1.5 kilometers respectively for juniors; 1,500 meters and 5k for elites.  The Personal Best of Richard Murray swimming would put him outside of the Mexican Team and unable to compete internationally (taken in 2015).

https://kiwamitriathlon.com/e-shop/en/content/10-richard-murray

INDIVIDUAL RECORDS IN THE 1500M SWIM AND 10KM RUN :
1500m swim in 18'18"
10000m run in 29'34"

Marisol Casado speaks of discrimination because the Super League did not have a female counterpart in this occasion.  How will she call this violation of Human Rights by the Mexican Federation when she is aware of the proceeding of the Mexican Federation?  Spots are available but the Mexican Federation does not allow triathletes to use them.

The Super League would allow our athletes to develop internationally competing against the best.  Entries are not done by Federations.  How bad can it be if the Federation get involved? The Spanish Federation tried to hold Javier Gomez back with bad luck. We know the story of his supposed heart condition.  Good for Javi!

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Some thoughts about the Super League Triathlon held this past weekend in Australia

The Super League Triathlon, last weekend in Australia, generated lots of good coverage and images for our sport.  It also brought back good memories of the successful Formula 1 Series hosted by the Australian Triathlon Federation in the 1990’s.  This innovative format had a positive impact on the evolution of Triathlon.

We, in ITU, have always worked for the development and growth of our sport.  We also embrace change and innovation, so we followed the three days of competition in Hamilton Island closely.  We are happy, as were many athletes, to see the extensive media coverage that our athletes and the sport attracted, with the different formats showcased in the Super League event.

As an International Federation, with gender balance at the core of our DNA, the absence of a women’s event concerned us greatly.  To have a competition, like the Super League, launched without a women’s event is a huge step backwards for us.  ITU stands out from other sporting organisations as one of the best for gender equality and it has been this way since our inception.  Equality is with the men’s and women’s competitions, as well as prize money and media exposure.

http://marisolcasado.blogspot.mx/2017/03/some-thoughts-about-superleague_23.html

There is a respond by Macca in the slowtwich.com forum:
And Macca responded in the classy, business-professional way we'd expect from him. Thankfully he can take critique and is not at all thin skinned, otherwise this series would self-destruct, as no reasonable sponsors or athletes would want to be associated with it. 

We will continue with number 2), mainly for researchers, in our next post.

Triathlon and the Super League

We have spoken about training and resistance to speed.  The Super League format let us know that speed is the first thing to acquire and resistance to speed comes later.  Jacob Birtwhistle(21) and Mathew Hauser(18) were within the first 15 athletes the third day; Britwhistle finished third at the end of the day.  The old dudes like Javier Gómez, Cameron Dye and Brent McMahon had problems keeping up with the speed.  Gómez has been working on his speed but it appears that the speed training is not enough to compete with the young ones. The ones practicing long distance triathlon were on detraining mode, including Alistair Brownlee.

26 févr. 2014

TRIATHLON AND DETRAINING EFFECT II

A post was written trying to explain the effects of detraining but we stayed short of what happens to elite athletes with high volume, high intensity training.  The effects mentioned in the previous post are for age-groupers but detraining has implications on technique and the effect of gene inductions that take place when training for years, i.e., the gene induced that helps us to go fast shut down after certain time and we need at least the same level of intensity to induce them again.  This is an empirical observation, of course, but it is backed up after looking at athletes that try to come back.  Technique does not come back as fast as we would like to, and it is like learning to walk back again after a cast in one of our lower extremities.

Swimming 200 meters at the same speed that the elite swimmer used to, takes at least two years, if we decide to work on coming back conscientiously.  The longer the swim the longer it takes to come back to the same speed per distance.  This is the reason why ironman distance elite competitors are unable to perform well at Olympic distance triathlons.  They suffer from detraining at the end, even though they swim, bike and run.

6 juin 2013

TRIATHLON AND DETRAINING EFFECT

I first heard this more formally from Paul Bergen who mentioned that he told Inge de Bruijn that she was not going to compete in 200 meters crawl because she stopped months without formal training and could not have enough training to compete in 200 meters; it was a year and half before the Athens’ Olympics.  Inge was trained for 50 meters and 100 meters and medaled in the Olympics.  Also, we know that Ian Thorpe stayed too far from being competitive after he tried to come back. Triathlon is the same thing or even worse.  I remembered Vanessa Fernandes being lapped at Huatulco when she was trying to come back.  Paula Findley did not finish at Madrid (2013) and it does not look that she is coming back.  Detraining is a reversible condition but there is a limited time in life, and the world is getting faster. Technique has improved and what somebody has as technique is obsolete even if retrained.

RECOVERING TRAINED STATES TAKES MUCH LONGER THAN IT DOES TO LOSE THEM

Hsu, K. M., & Hsu, T. G. (1999). The effects of detraining and retraining on swimming propulsive force and blood lactate. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 31(5), Supplement abstract 1400.

The effects of detraining and retraining on 50 and 400-m performance, arm stroke propulsive power, lactate, and lactate dehydrogenase in crawl stroke swimming were investigated. Male college swimmers (N = 18) detrained for 85 days by not performing any swimming. Retraining consisted of covering between 3,500-6,000 m per day for 91 days.

After detraining 50-m times regressed 3.4% and 400-m times regressed by 7%. Arm stroke propulsive power regressed by 12%. Peak lactate for the 400 swim was 22% lower. After retraining, 50-m times and arm-stroke propulsive power had not returned to the levels exhibited before detraining. Lactate dehydrogenase was unaltered by either detraining or retraining.

It was concluded that recovering lost training effects takes much longer than the period of time in which they were lost.

Implication. Recovering training effects takes much longer than losing them through detraining. It would be wise to avoid detraining.

There is another form of detraining I have seen in athletes who try to come back after practicing another sport like ironman. Macca had years of detraining when trying to come back to Olympic distance triathlon.  It looks that “cross training” is useless when competing at a high level and detraining exists significantly when comparing through performance.  Training is very specific for the sport we practice.  There is an interesting article written that deals with the gross physiological variables of detraining, but there are more subtle differences at the cells as enzymes. WE CAN SEE THE RESULTS WHEN SOMEBODY TRIES TO COME BACK FROM AN INJURY OR AFTER STOPPING:

The Super League is the best show in triathlon; the young Frenchman were the ones missing it.  They have responsibility with their clubs at the French Grand Prix and this competition rivals the Grand Prix.  The Super League is a long way from ITU triathlon.  We need to see it to believe it.

Triathlon and Abu Dhabi Race

Hopefully we are looking at a new way of competing format.  The bike was for good cyclists; this is a “real triathlon.”  The bicycle circuit was designed well to have a fair competition; they needed to know how to ride the bike if they wanted to be competitive.  It was not a matter of climber against sprinter or timetrialist.  It was about how to maneuver a bicycle in a peloton where the road was not straight; how to stay away from the wind and turn the corners.  It was a race for athletes able to plan ahead and execute according to the plan.

Planning and executing according to the plan is what we obtain with a “good education;” nothing else.  One should plan according to what one learned from experience: “learning to learn” is called.  One executes every fine detail from the plan if one has a “good education.”

“Learning to learn” is a phrase misused and abuse by psedopoliticians.  It is the first stage to reach if one wants to improve performance; we need to learn from our experience.  Unfortunately, the frames used by many do not help to learn from our experience, such frames are given at home, by family members or by society.  At least we should know where our frames of refence come from in order to learn.

Zuheir Altamimi

Reference Frames for science and society and the fundamental contribution of Satellite Laser Ranging to the ITRF.

Continuous Earth observation is fundamental to quantifying and understanding changes that affect our Earth system. Global space geodesy is the key science that measures and quantify the Earth changes in space and time, and the only science that provides the standard reference, or the global terrestrial reference frame, against which these changes are properly referenced and quantified. One of the key requirements of a reference frame is the stability overtime of its defining parameters, at a level at least two times higher than the uncertainty of the measured quantities. The International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), developed over the past three decades, relies on the availability of continuous geodetic data and products of the four techniques (SLR, VLBI, GNSS, DORIS), but also core co-location sites where multiple geodetic instruments are operated. SLR is the unique technique that is used to define the long-term origin of the ITRF with respect to the Earth Center of Mass, and in combination with VLBI, its long-term scale. The long-term stability of these two ITRF defining parameters are highly critical for Earth science applications, so that any bias in these parameters would contaminate the geodetic observations that rely on the ITRF usage. After illustrating the importance of reference frames for science and society, the paper will critically address the fundamental contribution of satellite laser ranging to the ITRF, through the results of ITRF2014. 

https://cddis.nasa.gov/lw20/docs/2016/abstracts/04-Altamini_abstract.pdf

Our frames of reference limit our ability to learn from our experience.  Thanks to our encyclopedea (our knowledege of concepts) we can improve our frames of reference knowing that everything is relative; except that we can improve performance in triathlon by improving our frames of reference.