This week marked a milestone in the young life of Austin Triathlon Club. Our club has surpassed the 100 member threshold!

In the 5 months since our first happy hour, Austin Triathlon Club has grown to a thriving community of triathletes dedicated to a common purpose – working together to provide a fun, welcoming, and supportive home for triathletes of all abilities. Our passion is to support each other, whether you're training for your first triathlon or your fiftieth, whether you’re young or old, whether you’re big or small, whether you’re LGBT or straight, whether you train with this team or that team. We’re Austin, and we’re all in this together.
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We launched Austin Triathlon Club because we love triathlon. We believe that triathletes have so much to offer each other and our communities. Whether you’re a mentor, a volunteer, a coach, a rookie, a retiree, a runner, a swimmer, or a biker, we can all pay it forward to those who share our love for health and fitness.

If you’re already a member of Austin Triathlon Club, THANK YOU. Thank you for volunteering, mentoring, sharing advice, leading workouts, and being such a fun group of folks. Thank you for taking a chance on us and coming together to create something special!

If you’re a supporting partner of Austin Triathlon Club, THANK YOU. Thank you for your support, especially in these early days of the club. We know that when we started this club, a lot of people didn’t really know what to expect. Thank you for believing in this club.

Finally, Austin Triathlon Club is all-volunteer and member-run, meaning that everyone has the opportunity to leave their fingerprints on the club. If you’re a triathlete in Austin, we hope that you will consider getting involved.  We want Austin Triathlon Club not only to be a fun and welcoming place for all Austin area triathletes, but we want this club to serve as one of the very best community triathlon clubs in the country. With your help, we can make it happen!

Cheers to the next 5 months of Austin Triathlon Club. Now let's start race season!

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Austin Triathlon Club promotes triathlon across the Austin area while fostering a sense of unity, fun and a healthy lifestyle. Our members include triathletes of all abilities, from beginners to experienced Ironman athletes. We are a welcoming and inclusive club, meaning that you can be a member of Austin Tri Club, and still be a part of another team or train with a personal coach. The Club is an all-volunteer, member-run community.  For more information and to join, please check our our membership page.

Triathlon training

Training for 3 sports at once requires a bit of a different mindset, but follows some of the same methodologies used in other training regimes.   Most people utilize training plans, which layout out daily workouts over the course of the several weeks leading up to a race.  They will normally will range from 12 to 16 weeks, and often require you to do two workouts a day at some point.  This will not only work your body, but your mental toughness as well which, I believe, is an often-overlooked aspect of training.

If you’ve trained for races like marathons, you are probably familiar with periodization training.  Not to be confused with training periodically mind you.  This is the methodology of breaking down a training plan weekly into 4 distinct periods or phases which are Base, Build, Peak, and Taper.  Each has a different goal and approach with the overall goal of getting you to the peak of fitness just in time for your goal race.  Note that some plans have more distinct phases and that’s fine, there is a lot of variability in training and this is meant as a general overview to get started.
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When training for triathlons, a common type of training you’ll probably see is referred to as the “Brick”.  This is often where you’ll have a bike ride followed immediately by a short run.  From what I’ve been told, these are called “Bricks” as your feet will often feel like bricks when you start to run.  This kind of training I feel is important as it gets you used to moving from one sport to another.    Training moving from swimming to biking would also be good, but you’ll see less of it as it is much harder to coordinate.

And while we are on the subject, transition training is a good thing to work in at some point before the race.  Often referred to as the 4th discipline, time spent in transition is time you aren’t biking or running.  The transition between swim and bike is often referred to at T1 and the transition between bike and run is referred to at T2.  For example, improving your T1 + T2 time by 45 seconds each is like running your 5k on a sprint triathlon about 30 seconds per mile faster.  And you’d be surprised how long you can take in transition if not prepared.  Not all transitions are done the same way, so research how your goal race does them and have a plan and practice the plan before the race.

Phases of Training

Base

The goal of this is to have fun, build your aerobic endurance, improve technique, and build strength.  As the name suggests, this lays the foundation for training.  Think of it as the baseline of where you want to start from when you start building towards your peak.  Like climbing steps so that when you jump, you reach higher.  In general, I regard any time between specific race training, to be “base” training.  This includes the “off season” as I believe consistency in training leads to an ever improving fitness and faster racing.

Generally this has a lower volume of workouts, but is the best time to hit the gym, to work on that swim stroke, and enjoy a bit of cross training like yoga, that will help reduce the chance of injury when you start increasing the intensity during the next phases.

Build

Training during this phase/period should grow in volume, intensity, and become more specific.  The workouts should also be increasingly more like the your goal race. Often, you’ll have a few build weeks followed by a “Easy” week where volume and intensity go down.
You’ll be pushing your mind and body harder and harder during these weeks, so you should pay extra attention to take good care of your body.  Nutrition is very important to help your body recover from the hard workouts.  This is a great time to schedule massages and to foam roll. 

Peak

Volume and intensity of training grows once again.  Emphasis on aerobic endurance and a decrease on drills.  Training here should be very close to the distances and intensity you’ll see and do on race day and, depending on the goals and race type, may exceed it. 

Mental and physical demands will be at their highest at this point and so should be your attention to recovery and nutrition.
 
Taper/Race

You’ve done your longest and hardest swims, runs, and bikes, but it’s still one to two weeks away from your race?  This period is called the Taper and, for some, it’s one of the hardest parts of training.
This doesn’t mean you stop training and start eating badly.  Maintaining your diet and continue to train with the goal of maintaining the fitness you’ve built, along with recovering psychologically.
Volume and intensity is usually dialed back so your body and mind will be fully repaired and ready for race day.  Usually training will switch to short intense workouts that don’t exhaust you, but still keep your body sharp and ready for race day.
 
Other considerations:

Coaches

Static plans, like the above sample plans, can be found online and in several books.  Joe Friel and Matt Fitzgerald are great sources.  But those plans and books don’t know you, they don’t know your strengths and weaknesses.  The static plans can’t see you run nor see you swim.  How do you adjust the plan if something goes wrong, like a sickness, that throws a wrench into the plan?  This is where coaches come in.
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Having a coach helps not only be able to adjust your plan and make it more dynamic, but they can help with your form and give you advice that comes from years of training, racing, and experience.   For years, I did my own training plans and they worked out well, but I decided to employ a coach when I wanted to take it to the next step.
 
Recovery and Rest
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Rest Days and Sleep are just as important as Long Runs in building fitness and endurance.  The importance of this increases with age.  Training puts stress on your body, but it doesn’t make you stronger or faster.  Your body rebuilding itself makes you stronger and faster, but it only does this during rest periods.  So it’s a good idea to have in your plan the ability to get a good night's sleep and has at least one rest day.

Also important is recovery after your race.  Depending on the demands of the race, having a plan to take some time off and/or slowly start back into light training, building back towards your base training is a good idea.  Be sure to plan for this however and stick to it as 1 or 2 weeks off can easily turn into 6 months as I can personally attest to.

Injuries

Nothing will impact your racing more than injuries.  I used to race a friend who was much younger than me, but I would routinely beat him in races.  He was much fitter and faster than me though so it frustrated him greatly.  One day, I let him in on a little secret, I was wiser than him.  You see, the reason I beat him was because he was always injured on race day.  He would push so hard in training, that he’d hurt himself.   I was older and listened to my body while training as to avoid injury as much as possible, so I was able to race at my fullest on race day.  Needless to say, he listened to my advice and started training smarter and I never came close to beating him again. 

Moral of the story is to learn to listen to your body.  This is a big part of where the mental part of triathlon comes into play.  Another friend of mine was told he needed to learn to run uncomfortably, which is true.  Your body will hurt when training and training, but it is up to you to learn if it’s a discomfort that can be ignored, or a pain you need to take notice of.   Pay attention and listen to your body.  Everyone has limits and pushing to them and not beyond them is the goal.
 
Sample Sprint Plans
http://www.triradar.com/training-advice/sprint-triathlon-training-plans/
http://www.triathlete.com/2017/09/training/12-week-super-simple-sprint-triathlon-training-plan_306300
https://www.active.com/triathlon/articles/a-12-week-triathlon-training-plan-for-beginners?clckmp=activecom_global_mostpopulararticles_pos1&page=2
http://www.lifetimetri.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Sprint-LT-Tri-Training-Plan.pdf
http://ironman.timex.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/12-week-beginner-sprint-triathlon-Timex-BD.pdf?cid=TPN
 
Other References:
http://triathlon.mit.edu/documents/recovery_importance.pdf
http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2017/12/sleep-part-1.html
https://www.active.com/triathlon/articles/when-to-push-past-the-pain-in-triathlon-training?page=1

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About the Author - Larry is a long-time triathlete who has completed every distance of triathlon, including three Iron-distance triathlons. Larry recently qualified for the 2018 USAT Olympic-Distance Age Group National Championships in Ohio. Larry is currently serving as Austin Tri Club's Director of Training and Group Workouts. To read more about Larry and the rest of the Austin Tri Club board, check out our Club Leadership page.

When Club President Daniel first proposed starting Austin Triathlon Club the first thing that came into my head was NCC... I love NCC! 

NCC is the USAT National Challenge Competition: a triathlon club team competition where club members log swim, bike and run miles to collect points for their team. Triathlon clubs across the country compete to become NCC champions. Throughout the competition athletes can log miles in any discipline, but prizes are given for teams logging the most swim miles in December, bike miles in January, and run miles in February.

I did my first NCC in the 2013-2014 off-season and while I was a little sluggish in swim month and bike month (DC is cold!), when run month came I decided it was mine for the taking. In my previous on-season I had done an Ironman and an ultra marathon, so my legs were capable of doing a lot of miles. And when I saw that I could help DC Tri win the competition, and that I had a teammate on my heels racking up points at the same rate as I was, that was motivation to not miss a day. 

In my 2014 season, I was supposed to be not taking it and just racing for fun, but even without trying very hard I got a PR in practically every distance - marathon, half marathon, 70.3, Olympic... The friendly competition of NCC had been enough to get out there and build the base for my best season ever and led me to meet some really great people - including husband Club President Daniel, who chased me around the pool as he tried to figure out how to ask me out.

Since then, every year I get excited about NCC - even though I'm not in the same shape I was that first NCC year, it's great motivation to keep me training and not give in to the winter. In 2017, I'm excited about the prospect of entering an Austin Triathlon Club team. With the amazing community of triathletes and the resources we have for winter training - not least the weather - I'm convinced that Austin can be up there competing with DC Tri, Salt Lake, and San Diego.

The best part of NCC is that it doesn't matter how fast you run the miles or swim the laps, it's the taking part (or the points) that count!

Meghann Jones
​Vice President, Austin Triathlon Club

My name is Daniel Riegel, and I’m one of the founding members of the Austin Triathlon Club. We created Austin Triathlon Club because we believe Austin is the best city in America for triathlon. Here are a few of our reasons why we think Austin is the perfect city for triathletes.

1) Barton Springs. The heart and soul of Austin. Barton Springs is a natural springs pool that is more than 200 meters from one end to the other. The pool is perfect open water swimming practice for beginners and experienced triathletes, alike. Water temperature is always ~ 68 degrees, meaning we can train year-around and practice in a wetsuit whenever we want.

2) Deep Eddy. Spring fed lap lanes, slightly warmer than Barton Springs. Deep Eddy overlooks the Colorado River and is #2 on our list of favorite swimming holes. Each pool length is 33 1/3 yards, so 53 lengths make a mile. Even when the pool is at its busiest, you usually only need to wait a few minutes to find a spot in a split or circle-swim lane. Deep Eddy is also the oldest swimming pool in Texas.

3) Bike Night at COTA. There is no other experience like this in the country. Every Tuesday night from April to October, cyclists can ride the Formula One race track in Southeast Austin. The world-class track is 3.4 miles with 20 turns. We love the beer garden afterwards and the general vibe.

4) Townlake (aka the Butler Hike and Bike Trail). Our favorite place to run anywhere. The 10 mile loop provides beautiful views of Lady Bird Lake and downtown Austin. The soft surface -- mostly dirt and gravel -- is forgiving, and there are plenty of water fountains and restrooms. The addition of the boardwalk a few years ago made the run even nicer.

5) Weather. The weather means that there is no off-season for triathletes in Austin. Setting aside our one week of “winter”, we can swim, bike, and run year-around, outside, every day.

6) Races. The Rookie Triathlon, Cap Tex Tri, Lake Pflugerville Tri, Marble Falls Tri, Jack's Generic, Ironman Austin 70.3, Kerrville Triathlon, all in our backyard. Not to mention, the Cap 2K, Pure Austin Open Water Race Series, Splash n Dashes, Deep Eddy Mile, Lake Travis Relay, Highland Lakes Challenge, the Driveway Series, and the Austin Distance Challenge. The list goes on and on.

7) Coaches. Austin is home to 35 USAT-certified triathlon coaches and dozens more highly qualified coaches, trainers, and instructors. Walk into your neighborhood YMCA, and your swim instructor just might be a former professional triathlete turned swim coaching savant.

8) Facilities. Austin has over twenty public lap pools, including three outdoor 50-meter pools, a bike veloway, a state-of-the-art triathlon training center, a gym with its own lake, and over 100 miles of urban trails to run, bike, and play.

9) Community. Austin has a long history of triathlon. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Austin had one of the largest and most talented triathlon clubs in the country – the Austin Triathletes. That club spawned scores of professional triathletes, coaches, trainers, and leaders in Austin’s triathlon community. Our goal is that Austin Triathlon Club can once again provide Austin with a community-based triathlon club, one that welcomes Austin area triathletes of all abilities. We encourage everyone who is a triathlete, or who is just trying to complete their first triathlon, to join the Club.

10) Austin. Austin is home. The people, the music, the food, the weather, the outdoors, the laid-back attitude. We can’t imagine a better place to live and to be a triathlete.

Whether or not you agree that Austin is the best triathlon city in the country, we hope you'll agree that Austin is a pretty great place to swim, bike, and run. We love it here, and hope you do too.
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​Daniel,
Austin Triathlon Club President
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Austin Triathlon Club was launched on October 8, 2017. Austin Triathlon Club is an all-volunteer, member-run community welcoming triathletes of all abilities. We encourage you to learn more about the Club by checking out our Mission and Values, the Club Leadership, and how you can get involved.

We would also love to see you at our Kick-Off happy hour on November 6th at the Ginger Man in downtown Austin. For more details and to RSVP, see our facebook event page.