If you’re a bit fatigued from a long season of training and racing, maybe it’s time to put up your feet and relax, or to go on a vacation that doesn’t include swimming, cycling or running.

Taking a break after a long season of training and racing is crucial, especially from a running perspective. It can help your body get over nagging injuries that are accentuated by the high-impact pounding of long runs and speed workouts. It can give your body a clean slate to start retooling for next year, especially when it comes to rebuilding your aerobic base. And, perhaps best of all, it can help you clear your mind of any excess baggage from your recently completed season so that you can focus on new goals for next year.

Here are a handful of insights from seasoned triathletes on what you can do this off-season to make yourself a better runner next year.

RELATED: Running Vs. Triathlon Running

Photo: Xterra

Written by: Brian Metzler

Do you train and train but never seem to improve your running splits? If so, you’re not alone. Even if you’re a good runner, fatigue from hard efforts in the water and on the bike can slow you on the run. Here are five ways to change things up in training to stimulate better results.

Written by: Brian Metzler

With as much time as he spent nursing a foot injury last spring, Ethan Brown could have gotten pretty bummed out. Or pretty out of shape.

But neither thing happened. In fact, the 24-year-old third-year pro turned in a pretty solid first half of his season, with a runner-up finish at an ITU Continental Cup race in Mexico and a sixth-place showing at the ITU Pan-Am Championships in Oklahoma City. He also fared pretty well against the big boys, finishing a respectable 34^th in the ITU HyVee World Cup on June 28 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Not bad considering he started the season on a down note because of foot pain that was eventually diagnosed as an irritated joint in his left big toe. He missed his first race of the season but wound up maintaining his fitness pretty well thanks to getting the chance to train on an AlterG anti-gravity treadmill at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif.

What is an anti-gravity treadmill? It’s a machine that essentially allows an athlete to run at less than his full body weight, thus reducing the pounding on joints, ligaments, tendons and muscles. It creates a sealed chamber below the waist—the runner is zipped into a pair of neoprene shorts with a closure similar to that of a whitewater kayak—and lifts the runner slightly with upward air pressure.

An anti-gravity treadmill looks likes a compact personal spaceship ready for orbit. It’s only coincidence that the 750-pound machines utilize technology that was first proposed for use on a space station. Once accessible only to pro athletes, they’re starting to pop up in health clubs and rehab centers where age-groupers can use them. Running on one produces an incredible feeling of weightlessness, even though you’re still running with your normal gait.

Brown’s injury wasn’t getting any better by running on it, so, instead of taking time completely off his feet or running in the pool—blech!—he logged copious miles on an AlterG positioned in front of a large flat-screen TV for about a month and a half.

“It’s not as good as being outside and really running, but it’s pretty cool,” says Brown, a two-time U-23 national champion. “I didn’t seem to lose a whole lot of fitness and had some strong early-season races.”

At first, the AlterG apparatuses were seen primarily as rehab machines. A 144-pound athlete like Brown could run with a simulated weight of 72 pounds or even much less and be able to reduce the stress on an injury while still maintaining or even increasing fitness. You can run sub-5:30-mile pace while carrying on a conversation or rev your heart rate to the moon and, as Brown found out, still be gentle to your ailing big toe because your footsteps are much lighter than they would ever be in the real world.

But lately, elite coaches are seeing those high-tech treadmills as a supplemental training tool for healthy athletes.

Former U.S. marathon great Alberto Salazar has most of his world-class runners in the Nike Oregon Project train on them on a regular basis. Those athletes include half marathon world championship bronze medalist Dathan Ritzenhein, U.S. mile recordholder Alan Webb and rising marathon star Kara Goucher.

Salazar uses Alter-G’s to increase training volume while reducing the chance for injury and shortening the time it takes to recover from hard workouts. The machines can also allow for low-intensity interval training, overspeed training and hill training up to a 15-percent incline. Back-to-back high-intensity workouts and even backwards hill training are possible.

AlterG machines have been around for a couple of years, but not many non-pro runners and triathletes have gotten the chance to use them. At $75,000 apiece, it is a tool only pro sports teams, top-tier rehab facilities and Olympic training centers can afford.

In the last year and a half, AlterG’s have started appearing at a handful of training clubs around the country, where they are available to those willing to pay a hefty per-hour use fee. Elite age-grouper Peter Russo first benefitted from time on an AlterG by using it to get over shin splits and a stress reaction, but then he continued to use one to supplement his training once he was healthy.

Russo, a five-time, sub-10-hour Ironman finisher, ran on one three days a week at Foundation Performance in Pawtucket, R.I., and within a few months placed fifth in the 40-44 age group and 53^rd overall in 9:29:11 at Ironman Arizona.

Foundation Performance co-owner Michael Silva, a physical therapist, exercise physiologist and conditioning coach, says running on an AlterG is more effective than aqua jogging, mostly because you can’t attain normal mechanics in the water because of the resistance and, in deep-water jogging, the feet never touch the ground.

“Peter started using the AlterG just after he was diagnosed, and we had him running at 30 percent of his body weight,” Silva says. “His feet were barely touching the ground and we had him run 90 minutes at a time a couple of days a week. As his facture was healing, we slowly increased the weight. He came back strong after that. He’s one of our biggest success stories.”

Foundation Performance is one of a growing number of clubs around the country that offer time on an AlterG for healthy runners. Foundation charges $25 for a 30-minute stint, but also offers bulk discounts. Two clubs in New York City are charging $50 for half-hour sessions.

Last fall, AlterG unveiled a lower-priced model called the M320. It costs $24,500—still out of the price range of most, but worth the hit to the wallet in the view of many. It works out to about $550 a month for five years, or about the price of a mid-range car. Silva thinks every collegiate and pro sports training room will have one within the next three years and won’t be surprised if more top age-groupers and pros buy their own.

What makes an AlterG especially useful for healthy athletes is the training protocol developed at the University of Colorado Department of Integrative Physiology. It’s a spreadsheet that takes a runner’s weight into account and ultimately determines how fast he or she needs to run at a simulated weight on an AlterG to get the metabolic equivalent of running on the roads.

“A lot of people worry that they’re not going to be as fit if they’re on the AlterG, but we explain to them that we can be if we play around the intensity of the run and ultimately give them the same workout,” Silva says. “We have healthy runners and triathletes, people using it to get extra mileage and build their pace, shaving a few percentage points off to ease the stress on their joints. There’s nothing else that can do what this machine can. You can have normal gait mechanics at a reduced body weight. It’s phenomenal.”

Click here to get a first-hand look at the Alter-G anti-gravity treadmill.

Boulder-based writer, runner and part-time coach Brian Metzler is the senior editor of Running Times.

Written by: Brian Metzler
Photos by: Nils Nilsen

One of the most effective ways to improve your running technique is through form drills that accentuate specific aspects of good form and train your body to repeat those specific movements while you are running, according to Boulder-based triathlon coach and running form guru Bobby McGee.

“By being able to critically evaluate your own mechanics and then being able to habituate effective alterations through form drills,” McGee says, “you will solve a large piece of the puzzle that is great running in triathlon.”

Most drills take one or more aspects of good form—a compact arm swing, soft level footstrikes under your center of mass, quick leg turnover, an upright posture with a slight forward lean at the ankles—and accentuate them through repetitive motion that trains the body to be comfortable with that movement when inserted into your typical running mechanics.

Taking an extra five to 15 minutes several times a week to do the five form drills detailed here can help you become more fluid, more efficient and faster for both short and long distances. That’s a pretty good return on your investment, one you’ll appreciate most in the last half of a race when you’re suffering from all-encompassing fatigue.

1) Ankling

Why: This drill teaches correct footstrike mechanics and increases stride rate.

How: Using a quick and very short stride, strike the ground at the forefoot and fold the foot down to the surface from toe to heel, with the heel reclining to the ground momentarily before popping up to start a new stride. Take small steps with minimal knee lift and minimal time spent on the ground, as if the surface below you is very hot.

2) Ankle Springs

Why: Ankle springs improve footstrike mechanics and create a bouncier stride.

How: Using a short stride, jog forward with a lightly bouncy movement that emphasizes landing near the ball of the foot with a level footstrike. Make sure you’re leaning forward slightly from the ankles and that your feet are striking the ground underneath your center of mass. Your short steps should create a light springing effect, not a forceful pushing sensation, and that momentum will carry you forward.

3) Arm Pull-Backs
Why: Arm pull-backs develop a compact arm swing and help create the tempo and rhythm of a high running cadence.

How: With a level head, level shoulders and a straight and slightly forward-leaning posture, jog forward while alternately pushing your arms backward as they are held at 90 degrees (or less). Concentrate on pulling your upper arm backward by contracting the muscles around the shoulder blades. Keep your arms swinging in a plane parallel to your torso and do not rotate your body to assist the movement.

4) High Knees
Why: This drill teaches powerful and efficient forward leg drive and a bouncier footstrike.

How: With a slight forward lean from the ankles, alternate pushing off the ground with one leg and thrusting the knee of the other leg upward and forward until your lifted thigh is parallel to the ground. Be sure to focus on soft, flat footstrikes near the ball of your foot while using your core to lower your leg down slowly instead of letting it crash to the ground.

5) Butt Kicks
Why: Butt kicks accentuate the recovery portion of the running gait phase and improve leg turnover cadence.

How: Run in place with your thighs more or less locked in a neutral position and try to kick yourself in the glute with your heel on each stride. If you’re not making contact, you need to improve your dynamic range of motion.

Brian Metzler is a running coach, age-group triathlete and senior editor at Running Times.

Written by: Brian Metzler

It’s a sunny afternoon on the outskirts of Tucson, Ariz., and Rebeccah Wassner has her Cervelo S2 road bike moving at a good clip up Mount Lemmon Highway.

At 5-foot-2 and 105 pounds, she’s built for climbing, and she’s on top of her pedals as she hammers up the 26-mile climb to the top of one of Tucson’s iconic peaks. It’s not a race, but starting last among the women in coach Cliff English’s elite training camp, the diminutive Wassner efficiently spins her way past fellow pros Samantha McGlone, Kim Loeffler, Amanda Lovato and her twin sister Laurel Wassner. She hangs onto Ironman pro T.J. Tollakson for about four miles before finally falling off his wheel and cranking the rest of the way to the top on her own.

Although slowed by a foot injury over the winter, Rebeccah is starting to show the form that made her the 2009 USA Triathlon Athlete of the Year in the non-drafting category, helped her secure a come-from-behind victory at St. Anthony’s Triathlon and win big races in Philadelphia and New York City.

“It’s probably the highlight of the year as far as training goes,” Rebeccah says of the 5,689-foot climb to the summit. “Being around other professionals who are here to work out hard and get fast is  inspiring.”

Laurel reaches the top about 15 minutes later, and Rebeccah is the first to congratulate her. Although overwhelmed by the more seasoned pros on this day—something that would repeat itself several times during the three-week training camp—Laurel is not defeated.

Entering her third year as a pro, she’s made enormous strides since taking up the sport in earnest in 2007. She was inspired to become a triathlete after watching her sister excel for many years, and if it weren’t for a bout with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Laurel might be right on her sister’s wheel.

Last year at the elite training camp, Laurel made it only to Windy Point, about halfway up the mountain.

“I’m definitely a lot less experienced than everyone else out there and am still learning,” she says. “I can’t really compare myself to other people who have been riding for 10 years. Sometimes I’m frustrated that I’m not as fast as those people, but then I just remind myself that this is new for me, and if I can be better than last year, I’m happy.”

The Wassner sisters have been on an extraordinary run the past two years, and if their early season training is any indication, each could have her best year yet in 2010. Rebeccah won six races in 2008 and six more last year—including an ITU victory in Ecuador last spring—by vastly improving her ability to run off the bike.

With 35-minute 10K run splits becoming commonplace last year (and a blazing 34:36 split at the New York City Triathlon), she finally started to engage and maximize the natural running speed that made her a four-time high school state champion and a record-setting collegiate runner at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md.

English thinks Rebeccah could ultimately be a strong contender at the Ironman 70.3 World Championships. She entered it last year after two solid half-Ironman races (second at both Rev3 and Muskoka), but didn’t start because of a plantar fascia injury.

“Bec is really strong in all three disciplines,” says English, who began working with Rebeccah in 2006 when he was a USAT staff coach. “Physically, she has very little weakness, and she’s quite competitive. She’s always been a great runner, but it takes a couple of years to be able to run well off the bike. She really came into her own last year, and I think she’ll continue to build on that this year.”

Laurel, meanwhile, continued the momentum of her 2008 USAT Pro Rookie of the Year campaign. She was a consistent top-10 finisher in some of the biggest domestic races last year, often not far back from Rebeccah, and also did her first two 70.3 races. She’s still improving in all three disciplines, but there are plenty of signs that show she’ll soon be fast on Rebeccah’s heels.

Obviously, as twins, they have comparable makeups—Rebeccah is 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, Laurel’s 5-foot-3, 110. But they also have a similar competitive spirit and relentless work ethic, initially developed as adolescent swimmers and furthered the last several years as primary training partners in New York City and New Paltz, N.Y., where Rebeccah and her husband, John Heppolette, built a home in 2008.

Rebeccah is a better runner, thanks to her competitive background in the sport, while Laurel, who swam competitively for George Washington University, is potentially the better swimmer, although she admits she needs more open-water experience. Interestingly, Laurel matched her sister’s rookie of the year award (something that Rebeccah predicted a year before it happened) and she’s equaled or surpassed some of Rebeccah’s race times at the same points in their careers.

For example, Rebeccah clocked at 2:10:32 at St. Anthony’s Triathlon as a first-year pro in 2004, while Laurel turned in a 2:10:59 during her rookie season two years ago. It’s hard to compare year-to-year times or placings (Rebeccah was ninth in 2004, Laurel was 17th in 2008), but what’s poignant is that Laurel’s swim, her strongest skill, was considerably slower than Rebeccah’s 2004 split, but her bike and run, her weaker disciplines, were much faster.

Furthermore, in winning St. Anthony’s in 2009, Rebeccah dropped 30 seconds off her overall time of a year earlier, while Laurel, who finished 14th, dropped 3.5 minutes. English believes Laurel will continue on her fast upward curve as she gets more experience, improves her time-trial cycling and warms up to the ITU style of racing that allows drafting and encourages tactical, high-energy racing.

“Even during races we’re in together, I always wonder how she’s doing,” Laurel says. “I want her to succeed, just as much as she wants me to do well, and that’s pretty cool. We’re competitive, but we’re not trying to beat each other too much. It’s pretty cool that I get to work out with one of the best triathletes in the world every day, and it definitely helped when I started. I think it helped elevate her game as well.”

A year after graduating from college, Laurel moved to New York City to start adulthood in earnest. The self-motivated competitor in her, thinking her background as a collegiate swimmer and undeveloped talent as a runner might benefit her, quickly veered toward triathlon.

She bought a $400 bike, started running with a group in Central Park and was really enjoying her new fitness. Her first triathlon, though, wasn’t really a triathlon but more of a contrived Rollerblade/bike/run event around Prospect Park in Brooklyn. She raced well for a newbie, but made the novice move of wearing a heavyweight cotton sweatshirt. And it poured.

“It was 50 pounds by the time I finished,” she says with a laugh. “I had no idea about performance clothing back then and no idea what I was doing. I think I managed to do pretty well, but I had this giant, heavy sweatshirt holding me back.”

Despite the awkwardness of that first race, that could have been the start of a flourishing triathlon career. She would have soon upgraded her bike, fallen in step with a group of serious triathletes in the city, gotten direction from a top coach and probably snagged some sponsors. And that would have sent her on a path that would have quickly led her up the pro ranks.

But that’s not how life turned out for Laurel. She would eventually become a successful pro, but in a roundabout way.

One morning while enjoying a summer weekend with friends on the Jersey Shore, she woke up with a sore neck. She thought it was just the kind of stiffness one would expect from sleeping on the floor, or at least lingering stiffness from running, swimming and training so much. But when she finally went to a doctor a few weeks later, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“It came out of the blue,” she recalls. “It was really hard to hear that I had cancer and that I was going to have to go through chemo. I remember walking down into the subway after I had been diagnosed, and thinking ‘Wait, I’m just starting out. I just got to New York. I’m healthy. How can this be happening to me?’ And that’s when it sank in. I knew I had a totally different life all of a sudden.”

The fact that Laurel and Rebeccah were, in the fall of 1998, living apart for the first time in their young lives was a bit strange for them to say the least. They’d been together, or at least in close proximity to one another, their entire lives—in the womb, as toddlers, on numerous youth softball and basketball teams coached by their dad, Irving, for 12 years as teammates on a YMCA swim team, on their middle school cross country team, on their high school swim team, and virtually every single day through their graduation from Watkins Mill High School in 1993.

Sure, they went to different colleges, Rebeccah to Mount St. Mary’s and Laurel to George Washington, but even then they were only a 90-minute drive apart and would often visit each other on weekends or wind up back at their parents’ house in Gaithersburg, Md., when time permitted.

“We were always close when we were young, but when we got out of college and started working, we were kind of going our own ways,” Rebeccah recalls.

Still, when Rebeccah got the call, it was surreal. A million thoughts of their childhood flashed in front of her, and she knew that she had to move to New York to be with Laurel.

“I called my supervisor [at Deloitte, where she was working as a CPA], and he said, ‘OK, we’ll transfer you to New York,’” Rebeccah recalls. “I didn’t realize until later what a big deal that was and that there were people who had been waiting for years to get into the group they transferred me into. But I knew right away there was nothing more important than being with her.”

Within days, Rebeccah was on her way to New York, to reunite with Laurel and start her new job at the World Financial Center. They found a basement apartment on 12th Street in the West Village, only a couple of doors down from their older sister, Aliza. Together again, they were about to face the biggest obstacle of their young lives.

“Even though we talked all the time and were still close, having her move to New York to be with me meant everything to me. It made us a lot closer,” Laurel says. “I don’t think she ever questioned it, and I don’t think I ever asked her to move. She just did it.”

Not long after Rebeccah and Laurel were reunited in New York, a friend Laurel had met in a New York Road Runners training group called and said she’d heard about something called Team in Training. She wanted to know if Laurel would join with her to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society while training to run the London Marathon the following spring.

“I had to say, ‘Well, um, I didn’t tell you this yet, but I actually have lymphoma,’” Laurel recalls. “That was difficult, but it was a perfect situation for Bec, and she signed up immediately.”

Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a type of cancer that originates from white blood cells. The survival rate is about 90 percent or higher when it’s detected early, as it was with Laurel, making it one of the most curable forms of cancer. But it’s still cancer, and vigorous chemotherapy or radiation treatment is necessary to beat it.

So juxtaposed against Rebeccah training for her first marathon to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Laurel was beginning what would be six months of chemotherapy. As Rebeccah was doing hard interval workouts and tempo runs in Central Park, Laurel was getting crushed by heavy doses of potent chemicals every other Tuesday. As Rebeccah was increasing her long runs, Laurel was losing her hair. As Rebeccah was hanging out with other healthy young people who were energized about life and their upcoming races, Laurel was getting treatments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center with other patients much older than her—she never saw anyone her own age at the hospital. And as Rebeccah was starting to get super-fit and discovering her latent endurance prowess, the mostly bald and very weak Laurel was increasingly feeling the debilitating effects of the noxious chemicals in her body.

But as with everything else in their young lives, the Wassner twins endured it together.

“I worked out with a group every Tuesday night in Central Park, the same day Laurel went in for her chemo treatments,” Rebeccah recalls. “I knew if I was out there working hard and came home exhausted, maybe that would somehow inspire her.”

It did, but what also inspired Laurel was that Rebeccah was there for her every waking moment. She made meals for her, did laundry for her, cried with her and sometimes just sat next to her without saying a word. Jointly, they organized a letter-writing campaign and raised more than $10,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

As fate would have it, Laurel’s last chemo treatment fell on the Tuesday before Rebeccah was going to run London. Their mother and grandmother were planning to go, however doctors told Laurel she shouldn’t fly. But she wouldn’t have missed it for anything. So, despite not feeling great, she got on the plane. “I had to be there,” Laurel recalls. “There was no way I wasn’t going.”

Rebeccah put in a strong effort with a 2:58 in her first marathon. In a roundabout way, it would serve as the launching point for her pro triathlon career, but the entire experience would also be the first of many inspiring cornerstones in Laurel’s long road to recovery and even longer road back to athleticism.

Chemotherapy beat Laurel’s Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but it took several years for her to feel healthy and want to exercise regularly. There were countless doctor visits, more medicine and an ongoing lethargy that made her diet suffer. Her grandfather felt strongly about helping Laurel return to athletics and helped her with the cost of membership to Chelsea Piers Sports Center, where she worked out a little. But most days she just didn’t feel up to it, and when she did, she didn’t have much stamina.

Rebeccah, meanwhile, had been on the marathon fast track, lowering her PR to 2:55:32 at the 2001 New York City Marathon while part of the FILA Discovery USA training team. But she eventually switched to triathlon and found even more success, placing second at the New York City Triathlon in 2002 and 2003, winning a USAT 25 to 29 age group national championship in 2003 and being highlighted in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” section.

In 2004, she turned pro and quit working to focus as much time as possible on training. After a first successful first season, she was named USAT’s Elite Rookie of the Year in 2004.

Naturally, Laurel was one of her biggest fans. She went to as many of her races as possible, but athletes, friends and fans would always ask why she wasn’t doing triathlons. She never told her story, usually just politely deflecting the conversation toward Rebeccah’s success. But deep down, she wanted to compete.

“I didn’t really have the confidence in my body, and I didn’t know if my body could handle it,” she says. “I still wasn’t feeling that great because I was tired for so long. I went through years of being nauseated. I couldn’t run for more than 40 minutes.”

Just for fun and without much training, she jumped into a sprint triathlon in 2005 and did OK, but it wasn’t until after a clean bill of health at her five-year check-up the following year that she felt ready to train.

Rebeccah helped design a modest training plan and pick a few initial races and, although her results were modest at first, Laurel was finally a competitor again.
“When I went in and heard the doctor say, ‘You’re done,’ it was like a huge weight off my shoulders,” she says. “That coincided with traveling to see Bec compete in the 2006 ITU World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was really exciting to see the sport at such a high level. I had never seen such a competitive triathlon. I thought, ‘Wow, I can do this.’ That made me want to get into shape.”

In the spring of 1999, as Laurel was finishing her treatment, her older sister Aliza told her about a cyclist who had come back from cancer and was going to ride in the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong would become a beacon of hope for Laurel, a bright shining example of a 20-something who not only beat cancer but returned to competition and pursued his dreams.

Not only did Laurel not have any 20-something role models who were fighting cancer, but the screaming desires of her inner athlete were being muffled to silence.
“When I was sick, to know that Lance got back on his bike and started winning races again, that was inspirational to me,” Laurel says. “It definitely helps to have an example, but I didn’t really have any. Everyone I met who was going through the same thing or the same diseases, they were older or had already been married or had already had a good job. I felt like I hadn’t gotten to do that kind of stuff yet, so that was hard to deal with. But really, I didn’t have anyone as a mentor that was my age.”

“What I went through is hard to put into words,” says Laurel, the first cancer survivor to earn a USAT elite pro license. “It was bad. You’re always thinking that you’re never going to be able to do anything that you want to do again. I had great support from my family and friends, and that helped me get through it, but not everybody has that.”

And that’s one of the reasons Laurel and Rebeccah got involved with the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults in 2007. Started in 1997 by Doug Ulman, now the chief executive officer of Armstrong’s LiveStrong organization, it’s a non-profit that provides support, education and resources to young adults, their families and friends who are affected by cancer. Ulman has survived three bouts of cancer, the first of which was while he was a freshman soccer player at Brown University.

In the past 3.5 years, Laurel and Rebeccah have used their status and exposure as professional triathletes on behalf of the Ulman Cancer Fund’s initiatives. They race for Team Fight, which raises money for the organization, connect with young cancer patients whenever possible and often speak to groups of young adults about cancer.
The twins were also featured in a multi-segment LiveStrong campaign that aired on major networks during last summer’s Tour de France. Last winter, Laurel was highlighted in a LiveStrong print ad campaign with Armstrong, Boston Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester and dogsledder Lance Mackey, all cancer survivors.

“To be able to influence and help so many people out there is really important to me after what I went through,” Laurel says. “Not everyone who is a cancer survivor is going to be inspired to do a triathlon, but maybe they’re going to turn their life around and go after their dreams some other way.”

Rebeccah and Laurel left Tucson with a bevy of workouts under their belts and optimistic about the upcoming season. Rebeccah will continue to energize Laurel, and as Laurel continues to improve and gain experience, she’ll be able to push Rebeccah in their daily workouts. And their mutual inspiration and admiration will stoke their fires even more.

“It’s going to keep Bec honest to have Laurel chasing her,” English says. “And for Laurel, to see her sister win the major races she has, you can’t really ask for more of a motivator than that. She’s going to see that she’s really close to Bec, and in some workouts beating her. And that’s going to be good for her confidence when she’s racing.”

Rebeccah wants to keep moving up the ITU ranks and has her sights set on the qualifying process for the yet-to-be-announced 2012 Olympic trials races. Laurel is hoping to keep dropping time in all three disciplines and eventually race some longer races.

Their unique sister act has created an enormous amount of momentum, a unique and considerable asset their peers can’t reproduce. Training, traveling, racing and sometimes living together has made them good friends. Surviving Laurel’s cancer has made them almost invincible and nearly  unstoppable.
“It will always be a positive for me, and it will be for Bec, too,” Laurel says. “We’ll definitely always be stronger for what we’ve gone through.”

This article appeared in the May/June issue of Inside Triathlon. To subscribe to Inside Triathlon click here.

For more information about Team Fight and the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults go to Ulmandfund.org.

Running is simple. Just throw on a shirt and some shorts, lace up your kicks and head out the door. But somehow it’s never that easy when you’re a triathlete. For starters, you’ve got other disciplines to consider and other workouts that might take precedence, and you have to deal with fatigue on a regular basis.

Here are a few tricks (or treats) you might be able to implement into your busy regimen.

1) Give Yourself A Break

Long runs can be a drag, even if you’re a good runner. But if you’re tired or putting in high volume on the bike or in the pool, it can make getting through a 90-minute to two-hour jaunt a real chore and that can lead to a mental and physical downward spiral.

Seth Wealing, the 2006 XTERRA USA Champion and two-time ITU World Cup top-five finisher, typically runs no more than 105 minutes in his long runs. Although he has a college track background, he says even those runs can become burdensome. So Wealing will often run 15 minutes, then walk at a moderate pace for a minute to recover ever so briefly before running for 15 more minutes. Using that system, he might walk six times during a long run, but he’s refreshed when he’s finished.

“It releases everything that is built up in your hips and knees and flushes everything out,” he says. “Your heart rate doesn’t really get any lower; you just rejuvenate yourself and you can keep going. Ultimately, you don’t fade at all at the end of your run because you’re not dragging.”

2) Work On Your Weaknesses

Learning what type of runner you are can help you improve on your weaknesses. Photo: John Segesta

Just as all triathletes have stronger and weaker disciplines, so too do they have strengths and weaknesses within each discipline. As a runner, a triathlete might be a speed freak, an endurance fiend or somewhere in between. The in-between part is ideal because it allows someone to be versatile enough to train and race at short and long distances and at all speeds. The key is figuring out which type you are by answering some simple questions: Do you really enjoy logging copious mileage or longer fartlek workouts? Or are you more inclined to run fast for short distances such as a 5K race or 800-meter repeats on a track?

Once you’ve determined what kind of runner you are, work on your weaknesses first and then focus on your strengths, says Flagstaff, Ariz., elite running coach Greg McMillan. In other words, do what you like to do least in the early part of your training block and then focus on the thing you enjoy (and presumably do well) in the second half of your program.

But, he says, workouts that focus on your weaknesses take a greater toll on you than the ones that work your strengths. “So insert only small doses of these workouts into your plan and space them out by several days,” he says. Later in your program, you’ll want to include heavier doses of workouts that focus on your strengths. For example, if you’re an endurance fiend, sprinkle in a few short and fast reps early on, but then be sure to load up your mileage with long runs later in your training cycle.

3) Don’t Follow Convention

It’s long been commonplace for triathletes to “run on tired legs” in training to mimic conditions in a race. That’s why we do so many bricks, where we’re running immediately following a bike workout or the day after a long ride or high-volume day. But that might not be the best approach, says Scott Fliegelman, founder and head coach of Boulder-based FastForward Sports, which trains hundreds of runners and triathletes every year.

“That approach may indeed be helpful psychologically, but those athletes are short-changing their ability to make significant improvement in their running speed, strength and endurance by doing their run workouts in a mostly unrecovered state—and that leads to an inability to run hard, steady, or long enough to challenge the body to make desired physiological adaptations,” says Fliegelman, a 10:20 Ironman finisher. “Our Ironman athletes, during their key specificity phase leading to peak conditioning, do their long swim/bike workouts on Sundays, and their long run on Wednesday evenings. Not only does this allow ample recovery between key workouts, but doing the run after a day at work mimics the time of day that most athletes will be running 26.2 on Ironman day.”

4) Don’t Destroy Yourself

Craig Alexander, the 2008 Ironman world champion, is human, just like the rest of us. He was reminded of that on July 19 at the Vineman Ironman 70.3 in Guerneville, Calif. Although he had a good swim, a decent bike and started the run in second place, he knew he didn’t have his “A” game that day. He had a stomach bug that forced him to make several unplanned pit stops.

He could have kept hammering away at sub-six-minute pace and still probably finished in the top three. But he knew he’d be better off by backing off the intensity so as not to put himself in a big hole when his Ironman training block began two weeks later. He slowed to 6:30-6:45 pace, completed the run leg in 1:24:07 and finished eighth overall.

“I could have finished on the podium, but who knows what state I would have been in after that and what my energy levels would have been to start my training for Kona?” he says. “We all like to do as well as we can in every race and every workout. But you just can’t tear yourself apart. Five years ago, I would have tried to battle on, and had I not won, it probably would have rocked me mentally a little bit. But these days, I’ve learned to be smarter about it.”