Triathlon Hamburg

The Hamburg Triathlon has many things to teach; it is like many things in Europe. Hamburg Triathlon is a subject to study because we can have a longitudinal study in real life.  As researchers we do not want to accept that these real life longitudinal studies give more information than the ones done in a laboratory. Knowledgeable researchers are needed to know the variables and the importance of the variables on performance.  We are in the game and we are pretty sure about the variables.

Are our triathletes improving after they turned 18?  I think so, but not to the degree that people want to believe: and it is more difficult to improve for females.  Alistair Brownlee and Mario Mola have improved after they turned 18 based on increasing mileage running and biking when training.  Gwen Jorgensen is the exception as female triathlete; she improved her biking and automatically improved her running ability after improving her biking, very fast.  Alistair and Gwen were similar in that regard.  Ashleigh Gentle is a good example of what happens to triathletes practicing triathlon as a sport.  Since the age of 16 her swimming ability is quite similar.  Her running ability improved a little as well as her biking; the bicycle course is different now than 10 years back in Hamburg. 

Ashleigh is the only one left from the 2007 junior championship where she was second.  Flora Duffy has the same progression athletically since she was second in 2006 at the Junior World Championship; the rest of the field from that time is gone.  Nicola Spirig is in the same situation; her running ability was similar since she was 18, her biking improved over the years and her running stayed almost the same.  Persistence and tactics have made the different for these females athletes. 

Ashleigh during the Junior World Championship in Hamburg:

1      Hollie       Avil  1990 GBR 56   00:59:43  

00:09:38   00:00:42    00:32:29    00:00:30   00:16:17

2      Ashleigh   Gentle      1991 AUS 53    00:59:54

00:09:57     00:00:47   00:32:14     00:00:24         00:16:30

3      Rebecca   Robisch    1988 GER         01:00:10

00:10:01     00:00:45    00:32:08        00:00:23         00:16:51

10 years later:

1      Flora Duffy        1987 BER 5      00:59:00  

00:09:25   00:00:41   00:31:57   00:00:27   00:16:32

2      Ashleigh   Gentle      1991 AUS 3      00:59:31

00:09:51   00:00:42   00:32:28   00:00:24   00:16:10

3     Laura      Lindemann     1996       GER       33   00:59:41

00:09:28 00:00:46 00:32:47 00:00:23 00:16:22

What is the moral of this research? If we want a top elite triathlete, we need triathletes who can learn from experience tactics and be persistence accumulating mileage biking and running until the others leave.  Podium as juniors is important to be at the elite podium ten years later.  Researchers would be reluctant to accept this fact but it is not a “fake news.”  We, as coaches, should believe in what we see and work on it.  Bob Bowman said regarding Michael Phelps:  “if the swimmer is not at the top ten when appears at the international scenes, chances are that he/she is never going to be a champion.”  It is not "physical" at the end; persistance and experience (ability to learn and tactics) make the difference.  Are you looking for talent?  Look for somebody who can learn from experience and could last learning for ten years at least.

Triathlon: Neural Pathways versus Oxygen Delivery

It is interesting the way we “read” information.  It depends on the state of our knowledge; it could be dangerous but there is information in any kind of research as the one previously described in the last post and the one below.  This is the way fake news work on people, conclusions are made with a limited knowledge.  The same way that Homer Simpson does:

By now, you’ve seen the headlines: “EPO Doesn’t Boost Performance.” That’s right: In the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, researchers reported that “there is no scientific basis to conclude rHuEPO has performance enhancing properties in elite cyclists.” But should you believe them?...

“This thing is nuts,” he says. “It’s correct about only one thing: There are essentially no studies on really, really elite people.” In other words: Don’t go reinstating Lance Armstrong into the pantheon just yet. 

So where did the study go wrong? It goes back to basic exercise physiology and the science of how races are won, Joyner says. The researchers don’t understand the relationship between VO2 max—your body’s maximum ability to consume oxygen, or your “performance ceiling”—and other metrics like lactate threshold, a key predictor of endurance performance, Joyner says.

(In the context of cycling, a five-minute-long pursuit would best correspond to a VO2 max effort, while a 60-minute time trial would closely match your lactate threshold.)

After reviewing the existing literature on EPO, the researchers found that a doping regimen can lead to between a 7 and 9.7 percent increase in VO2 max, with an “increase in performance estimated by a time-to-exhaustion test of ... 9.4 percent (versus 1.5 percent in placebo-treated subjects) and 16.6 percent in trained subjects.”

https://www.outsideonline.com/1912226/power-epo-debunking-flawed-british-journal-study

We have mentioned that the researchers should be knowledgeable about sports in order to understand how to do research and where the flows in our thoughts could exist.  Common sense is another thing to take into account; if we see it and anecdotally it is said that exist, we should continue to look for flows in our research or the way we think about the problem.  But let’s take a look at the findings.

We also mentioned that increasing the VO2max does not improve our speed (triathlon needs speed) because our technique is limiting us; practicing technique with speed could help to make the difference.  In other words, you can deliver oxygen but the neural pathways are not there.  Sorry, wrong address!