Catriona took her third win in 3 races at the Texas Ironman

There are athletes, and then there are athletes.

I have had the good fortune of working with some of the best athletes in the world. At Cat’s level, you get all sorts. There are the athletes for whom every setback represents a catastrophe, and those who tough things out besides discomfort or injury. And then you have Cat. I once joked that Cat is the sort of athlete who could suffer an amputation mid-race, and would call me afterwards and say, very calmly:  ‘Yeah Phil, my foot fell off halfway through the run, but I tied it off with a bit of shoelace and kept running on the bloody stump.’

Catriona has had an amazing season so far. She had great wins at the Texas 70.3, a hat-trick at St. Croix, and now this. There are all sorts of lessons to take from our approach to training and racing. The most important is the benefit of a calm mind and a rational approach. Two weeks before this latest race, Cat emailed me pictures of an outrageous blister on her foot. In all honesty, it was one of the worst I have seen in my medical career. It wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to see when an athlete is trying to get in their last big workouts before one of their biggest races of the season.

The thing is, nobody freaked out. Cat, though a bit nervous, was basically calm where other athletes have called me in similar situations in hysterics. I assured her that this was no big deal, that there was plenty of training in the bank, and with a bit of adjustment of the taper using RaceDay Apollo, she would still smash the Ironman, which she did. There was no attempt to train through the injury, and there was no panic-fueled attempt to squeeze in extra training at the last minute afterwards. We simply decided it was a non-issue, and that recovery needed to be the main priority if we were still going to race well. We used the data we have carefully recorded to adjust the plan going forward to account for this setback. Problem solved.

Maintaining a calm outlook is also of great importance while in the thick of the race. Cat and I were both trained as scientists. The beauty of this is that we are able to dispassionately review and evaluate data. By keeping careful track of her training and racing, we know exactly how hard she can ride, and how long she can ride that hard for. We know how she will run after riding at different power outputs. This knowledge lends a certain amount of security. The other competitors in the race become a non-issue. People rode past Cat with their hair on fire, and we were happy to let them go. We had a rational plan and we stuck to it because was  supported by data, not the emotional reaction to what others are doing. You can see the results every time Cat walks up that podium.

The take home message is this: Learn to separate your emotions from the situation you find yourself in. The best athletes, firefighters, doctors, or soldiers succeed under pressure because they are able to dispassionately assess very stressful situations and then act accordingly. This is a learned skill. Get out there and practice it 🙂

Madame Pele Giveth, and she Taketh Away...

As always, Volcano Goddess Madame Pele giveth and she taketh away…

Winning her AG at Oceanside 70.3 earlier this year, PhysFarm athlete Colleen Capper was looking for the race of her life in Kona: a podium slot, and the coveted wooden bowl trophy. We trained, and devised the plan down to the watt and minute per mile. Colleen swam 1:34 and biked an impressive 6:04, but it really all came together on the run. She held back and ran steadily for the first 17 miles of the run, allowing her competition to beat themselves up in the heat. Then, she put the hammer down, dropping her pace by almost 1.5 minute per mile. No one was able to answer her, and Collen crossed the line with a 3:51 marathon. It was not only a Kona PR, and not just a marathon PR: Colleen ran faster than any of her previous stand-alone marathons save one. Colleen finished 5th in her age group, collecting the magic wooden bowl. She’ll be eating her Wheaties out of that from now on. Or possibly drinking her mai-tais from it…

Colleen is pretty hard-core. No, seriously. I know you think you’re tough and all that, but check this out: Colleen broke her wrist in a crash in the middle of September. Undaunted, she got a gore-tex cast that she could swim with, made some adjustments to her aerobars to accommodate the cast, and just kept training. The cast came off three days before the race. Unreal.

PhysFarm athlete (and BPC Coach) Joe Donahue also had a fantastic race. Last year, after a rough bike leg, I watched he and Pele duke it out to a painful 11:18. This year, he was looking for something more, and asked me to coach him to the finish he knew he was capable of. Once again, it all came down to the run, but this year Joe came out swinging. Joe swam 1:05, and rode a strong 5:31 before setting out on the run. Joe hung tough for a 3:45 marathon in the Kona heat, which was good for about a 45 minute PR!

Unfortunately, Pele was not so kind to some of the other competitors. An obnoxious head cold was making the rounds, most notably taking out Kona Queen Chrissie Wellington, but also PhysFarm athlete and podium hopeful Catriona Morrison. Cat was feeling well enough to toe the line on race day, and was able to execute the plan through mile 80 of the bike, but there just wasn’t enough left in the tank to throw down her storied run. She was forced to abandon shortly after the bike leg. It was a tough pill to swallow, after picking up the Swine Flu on the plane to Kona last year, but doubtless she will be back next year to look Madame Pele in the eye once again.

Catriona Morrison: 2010 ITU Duathlon World Champion

Congrats to Catriona Morrison, who won her first short course Duathlon World Championship on her home turf of Edinburgh, Scotland! Read Dr. Phil’s eyewitness account of the race by clicking here.

Catriona Takes the Win!

I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong.

Cat’s day in Lanzarote started well enough. She had a good swim, and was quickly away on the bike, moving towards what I imagined would be a crushing victory. Cat was extending her lead with every pedal stroke, and her training data indicated that she would almost certainly break Paula Newby-Fraser’s course record by a considerable margin…

…except it didn’t go down that way at all.

You see, there was the small matter of a broken chain and the lack of the proper tool to fix it.

We, of course, didn’t know this. Her husband Richard and I saw her drop off the race radar, and then word came over race radio that she was out of the running. We frantically exchanged text messages. Had she crashed? Had she gone off course?

The reality was far more surreal. One third of the way through the race, Cat was sitting under some trees having a drink and hoping that the neutral service car would show up soon. She would wait almost fifty minutes, according to her SRM bike computer.

We were much relieved to learn that she was ok, and was back on course. Word on the street was that she was going to drop out, however.

It’s a good thing text messages are slow going from Lanzarote, Spain to the People’s Republic of New Jersey. Richard sent me a message from T2: Should Cat run, or take a pass, save her legs, and race in a few weeks time. I called him immediately. “It’s too big a risk, Richard.” I said, “Tell her to bag it.”

“Yeah, Phil.” He said, “We’ll, here’s the thing. She’s already up the road. Said she’s just going to take a wee jog.”

I raced to the computer, brought up the splits online, and started plotting in Excel. What was it going to take for her to podium? I plotted her competitors speed, and how quickly they were slowing down. I plotted a best case scenario from Cat’s training data. Richard continually gave me updates from the road, and I worked on the model. By 10k, she’d already taken a few minutes out of the women up the road. “Tell her to keep going!” I said, “By my calculations, she can still podium!”

Cat Salutes The Crowd

Then, things started to get even more surreal. The splits kept coming. She made up 10 minutes. Then twelve. Then more. It was like watching a cheetah run down gazelles. I called Richard, “Look, mathematically, she can now win this. If trends continue as they are, she should catch the leader somewhere between 3k and 1k to go.”

Richard was quiet long enough that I thought the call had been dropped. “Let’s just hope for the podium, shall we?”

“When you see her next,” I said, “Tell her I said to haul ass!”

The rest is history. Cat took the lead with less than a mile to go, winning the race and setting a new benchmark for what we thought was possible in long course triathlon.

When I finally got Cat on the phone, she was beside herself with laughter, “So what do you think about that, then?”

I replied, “I think you need a new coach, Cat. I told Richard my advice was to bag it!”

“Har har!” she sad, “You know me better than that!”