0 Tour De France For Dummies: The Busy Athlete's Guide For Cycling Beginners

If you are not a cycling tragic like I am, you may find the terminology of the Tour De France (or cycling in general) a bit confusing, if not downright baffling.  Terms like peloton, echelon, gruppetto and maillot jaune are an impenetrable code to the unitiated.   So that there are a few less people in the world to stare at me blankly when I talk about cycling, here is the Busy Athlete's Guide to Le Tour. The Jerseys: What are all the different jerseys about?  Yellow (Maillot Jaune) - The jersey worn by the overall race leader Polka Dot - The jersey worn by the King of the Mountains.  The rider who collects the...

0 Le Tour De France 2012: An Australian Fan's Survival Guide

The Tour de France.  An epic, three week test of endurance.  The battle of iron will over the screaming fatigue of an exhausted body.  And then there is the bike race. As an Australian, I count myself lucky to live in a beautiful, relatively uncrowded land of startling beauty.  We have wonderful food, beautiful beaches and generally pretty good weather compared to much of the Northern hemisphere.  What sucks is the fact that we live in a VERY unfriendly timezone for watching European sports.  I can't count the number of nights sleep that I've missed because of Football, Cycling and Ironman races over the years,...

0 Kettlebells: The Busy Athlete's Guide

I have to admit, I don't really like working out in the gym.  There's something about the repetitive, mechanical nature of gym equipment that just doesn't sit right with me.  I would much rather be outdoors, running or riding my bike, or even (in warmer weather) swimming.  I really enjoy the freedom or running a trail or riding a quiet road, and find that I have to really psych myself up to go to the gym. If I'm honest with myself, I probably don't like the gym because I suck at lifting weights.  I've neglected the strength elements of my training for too long, in favour of building cardiovascular fitness and endurance. ...

0 CrossFit For Triathletes: Get Stronger and Faster

Like it or not, us triathletes operate in a fairly narrow, specialised range.  Our training is designed to move us through the swim, run and ride in the most efficient way possible.  If you're training for Ironman 70.3 or Ironman events, you may not even be worried about how fast you cover the ground, concentrating on just building the endurance necessary to simply survive 12 or so hours of torture. An unfortunate side effect of this concentration on covering miles and building volume is the loss of speed, and in some cases strength.  No matter how far you run or ride, you may very well finding your performance plateauing as...

0 Bradley Wiggins: The Winner of the 2012 Tour De France?

Based on early form, the cycling world is afire with talk of Bradly Wiggins and his chances of finally winning the Tour De France in 2012.  More to the point, there is talk of whether anyone has a chance of taking the race away from the apparently bulletproof Team Sky, with Cadel Evans seemingly being the only likely fly in the ointment. With a deep list of in-form riders including Mark Cavendish, Edvald Boassen Hagen, Geraint Thomas and Richie Porte, Team Sky appear to be the dominant "Superteam" of the moment.  But it's Wiggins who is carrying the weight of expectation going into the Tour De France.  A high altitude...

0 Lance Armstrong wins Hawaii 70.3 by a mile!

The man's a freak!!  Smashed it on the bike then ran strong for the win.  Lance Armstrong just won the 2012 Hawaii Ironman 70.3 Triathlon and looks like he could be a real threat in full Ironman distance races.  Considering he was still training hard this week (a long run only a couple of days ago plus track work), it's obvious that he has some more improvement in his 40 year old legs.   It will be interesting to see what happens at Ironman France when Lance races his first full Ironman distance triathlon. I wonder if there are some "contenders" for the Ironman World Championship who are starting to pay close...

0 Review: Fuelbelt Revenge R20

I need to be honest about something up-front.  I used to laugh at people that wear hydration belts when they are running.  I thought they looked silly and served no real purpose.  Then I started to run further.  Now I just think they look silly. When I started running more than 10k for my long runs, I found that I often got halfway through my workout and was desperate for a drink of water.  I found myself plotting my route to ensure that I passed near a drinking fountain at regular intervals.  Obviously this severely limited any sort of variation to my weekly runs, and certainly didn't allow for any spontaneity. ...