2014 Update

After a long delay, I will just dive in with a 2014 update. Our elite team has grown and you can see an updated roster at Innovativeendurance.com. We are sad that some athletes have moved on and gone back to school, but we are excited that we have some great new athletes. This year I secured two condos in Las Vegas for a 3 month training environment to be sure that the team had access to every resource they needed while also enjoying a bit nicer weather. LV didn’t let us down, after 3 years of exploring the US, I found our spot. The weather is consistently in the 60’s and we have everything we need here. You can follow our adventure @teamietriathlon twitter. We have 6 full time pros living in Vegas and we have seen profound improvement from everyone. It is that day to day environment and being face to face with your coach that has proven to make the difference.

Our elite team raced through October which meant a November break and then right back to rebuilding base. This year our elite team is working with Erg Video which you can find at http://www.ergvideo.com/default.aspx#/Home. ErgVideo is completely different to other video training simulations. Rather than simulate just a course profile, it presents the actual power profile of the riders shown in the video. You configure the difficulty of the ride by entering their unique threshold power (FTP). Each rider in a group session will set a different FTP.  The CompuTrainer automatically adjusts the load presented by each unit, so that all riders will execute the same workout at the same time, watching the same video display. Each rider feels like the hero in the video, the point-of-view cameraman. This coupled with our full computrainer system has proven to be the difference. Several of our guys were riding as many as 12 hours a week indoors with this system. After a few easy rides to understand the system we hit our first 20 min test. This gave us our actual FTP or individual fitness so we could calculate specific zones. From there you enter the zones into the software and it implements your workout by creating appropriate resistance against you. This allows you to focus on smooth pedaling and it “forces” you to do that workout. The quality of the video is amazing and the choices for world-wide courses are very cool. We climbed mountains in Switzerland, and time trialed in Canada. It added to the experience, entertainment and quality of workout. The most important piece was that we were able to show up in the mountains of Vegas and have fitness to get actual work done. If you have never experienced this video system, I highly suggest that you contact us through the website and stop by one of classes to see what it is all about.

With January coming to a close the athletes are finally getting into the specifics of race preparation. We have 6 pros racing in Florida the first week of March, and then 4 more races in March in Florida, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. Time goes by fast out here and we have a saying that every day is Saturday. I guess because everyone is doing what they love every day. We look forward to working with Profile Design, Champions Systems and Cobb saddles again in 2014. Thanks for keeping up with the team!

Coach G