Mike McCormack has been instrumental in getting me to perform better than ever before. I highly recommend his training at M2: Triathloncoach.com.
His general philosophy is one of quality versus quantity, and judicious use of periodization and interval training to improve fitness and performance. Amazingly, most of his bike training is indoors on a computrainer which allows controlled and measurable improvement, versus junk miles on the road. Even the treadmill is a useful tool to train hills versus finding the exact right hills to run up and down outside.
Given that it’s winter in northern California, this is critical to have training resources indoors, especially given the monsoons that we’ve been experiencing lately.

In 2002, I got into triathlons with Team in Training. Since then I have been racing continuously every year.
What a necessary component in my life! Going through all my life changes, I needed a way to release stress and to be able to “void” my brain for long periods of time.
Training was perfect for that. It let me blow off steam, keep healthy, and to rest my brain from all the crap that was going through it every day.
It also was very different than the weight lifting I used to do. Doing one type of training was getting monotonous, however much I did like weight training.
But getting into swimming, biking and running really allowed me to discover many new things about me and my body.
First, each one of these sports is highly technical…more technical than I thought. Yeah we can all go out there and thrash around in the water, pedal, or just jog. But what I didn’t know was that there are highly evolved ways of doing all three of these sports to maximize performance and minimize injury.
Learning these new skills has been a fantastic experience! It really stressed my brain and my nervous system in different ways! And it made a huge difference in how fast I was moving in all three sports! I was really impressed by how much science has gone into all of these.
Way back when I started running, I really messed up my knees. But now looking back, I could see how screwy my running was, and how the technology, ie. my sneakers, were so primitive compared to now.
Second, it really tested my body. Not having been athletic in my youth, I had to reactivate all these muscles that have lain dormant for..oh…about 30+ years now. Now they are getting awakened and I am doing things I never thought I could do physically.
But also, there have been many doubters in my life with respect to athletics. They have constantly said, “Don’t hurt yourself, you might get hurt, better not overdo it, you’re older now…gotta watch out…” I say “fuck em” because I’m swimming, biking, and running faster than ever before and I’m heading for Ironman New Zealand in March this year and with little or no injury at all.
Watch out world, countdown to Ironman T-7 weeks!