Wildflower—Bjorn Andersson Interview

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• April 30, 2010

Bike strongman Bjorn Andersson talks equipment choices and tactics leading into the 28th Avia Wildflower Triathlon.

Wildflower—Linsey Corbin Interview

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• April 30, 2010

Linsey Corbin explains her approach to the 2010 Avia Wildflower Triathlon at Lake San Antonio, California.

Wildflower—Virginia Berasategui Interview

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• April 30, 2010

Defending Avia Wildflower champion, Virginia Berasategui, gives Competitor.com the inside scoop on her training and fitness, and her recent cycling accident.

TYR & Chrissie Wellington Extend Sponsorship Deal

by Liz Hichens

• April 30, 2010

Three-time Ironman World Champion Chrissie Wellington has decided to stay with TYR for the rest of her career and beyond. Wellington has been sponsored by TYR ever since she won her first Ironman World Championship in 2007. One change is that Wellington was released from her BlueSeventy wetsuit contract, and will now be racing in a signature TYR wetsuit.

Look Back On Last Year’s Wildflower Festival

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• April 30, 2010

Heading to participate in the Wildflower Triathlon Festival this weekend for the first time? Check out these photo galleries and videos from last year’s events to get an idea of what you’re getting yourself into.

Returning Champs Highlight Escape From Alcatraz Field

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• April 30, 2010

Americans Andy Potts and Mary Beth Ellis will be returning to San Francisco this weekend with hopes of reclaiming their Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon titles from last year.

2010 Avia Wildflower Water Temperature, Weather

by Mario Fraioli

• April 30, 2010

Triathletes began the migration to the campground at Lake San Antonio today for what many consider the kick-off to the North American triathlon season—the Wildflower Triathlon.

2010 Wildflower Triathlon Will Be A “Tough, Tough Race,” Says Llanos

by Kurt Hoy

• April 30, 2010

Avia athlete Eneko Llanos arrived in Central California on Tuesday evening in preparation for the 2010 Avia Wildflower Triathlon. Llanos, a professional triathlete from the Basque Country, won both the 2009 Xterra World Championship and finished second to Andy Potts at last year’s Wildflower long course triathlon.

The Real Threshold

by Matt Fitzgerald

• April 30, 2010

This man is a chicken. Photo: Giancarlo Colombo@Photo Run

There is a performance threshold in running, but it’s not the lactate threshold.

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

One of the most widely believed myths in endurance sports is the notion that fatigue occurs much faster at exercise intensities slightly above the lactate threshold than it does at exercise intensities just below the lactate threshold. Not true. At any given submaximal running speed up to a near sprint, a slight increase in speed only slightly reduces the duration that speed can be sustained. The speed associated with the lactate threshold is no exception to this pattern.

To make the point more concretely, the duration you can sustain your lactate threshold speed plus, say, 0.25 mph will be only slightly less than the duration you can sustain your lactate threshold speed. You won’t suddenly fall off a cliff, as even many running coaches believe. The reduction in time to exhaustion associated with accelerating from lactate threshold speed to lactate threshold speed plus 0.25 mph is equivalent to the reduction in time to exhaustion associated with accelerating from any slower speed by an equal amount. There is simply no performance threshold at the lactate threshold.

Looking Back And Forward With Justin Gatlin

by Matt Fitzgerald

• April 30, 2010

Justin Gatlin in happier times. Photo: PhotoRun.net

His doping ban ends in July. Can he come back? Can he restore his good name?

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

Four years ago I began working on a book entitled Winning Clean: How to Build Speed, Strength and Endurance without Drugs. It was intended to instill in young athletes the belief that they could realize their full athletic potential without resorting to unethical shortcuts. In addition to providing expert guidance on training, nutrition, recovery, and so forth, it would present short profiles of role model athletes who had reached the pinnacle of their respective sports without cheating. One of the athletes I chose to include was the Olympic and world champion American sprinter Justin Gatlin.

I figured Gatlin had to be clean because of the anti-doping advocacy work he himself did with young athletes, and because he was such a nice guy. One month after I interviewed Gatlin for the book he failed a drug test and three months after that he was banned from the sport for four years. I took this as a sign and abandoned my book. Thus, that interview never saw the light of day–until now. On the eve of the end of Gatlin’s suspension and return to competitive sprinting, I thought it would be fun to share our conversation here. Enjoy.

Armstrong and Hansen expecting child

by VeloNews.com

• April 29, 2010

Armstrong and Hansen expecting child

Choosing The Right Bike For A Hilly Race

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• April 29, 2010

A triathlon bike is better suited than a road bike for solo riding. But the geometry and componentry of a road bike is preferable for hilly, twisty roads.  So which bike is best for a hilly race like Ironman St. George, Escape From Alcatraz or Wildflower?

Wildflower Triathlon Explained

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• April 29, 2010

Wildflower Triathlon director, Terry Davis, dives into the event’s history and more during a recent interview with Competitor’s Bob Babbitt.

Armstrong assesses his form and his competitors’ strength at the Gila

by Neal Rogers

• April 29, 2010

With the Tour de France just nine weeks away, a windblown Lance Armstrong was candid about his condition at the SRAM Tour of the Gila. It’s not great, but it’s coming around, he said.

“Yesterday I did not have a good day; I was off,” Armstrong told VeloNews. “Today I felt better.”

Armstrong spent much of Thursday’s 80-mile road stage at or near the front of the peloton, both to protect his Mellow Johnny’s teammate, race leader Levi Leipheimer, and to stay out of trouble as the peloton was blasted with 55mph wind gusts.

“I don’t know that I’ve seen wind like that in a race,” Armstrong said. “You have to stay at the front, that’s it. You could sit back a little bit, but there’s nothing good at the back. You have to stay out of trouble, just stay with your team, just stay at the front.”

It was the second consecutive hard day of racing at the Tour of the Gila, following Wednesday’s summit finish that saw Armstrong dropped on the steep ramps of the final Mogollon climb, finishing 22^nd, 1:46 behind Leipheimer — and also behind riders such as Chris Baldwin (UnitedHealthcare-Maxxis) and Floyd Landis (OUCH-Bahati Foundation.)

One year ago Armstrong came to Silver City, New Mexico, looking for race miles after a broken collarbone derailed his spring campaign. On his way to the Giro d’Italia, Armstrong also came to last year’s Gila with the hopes of registering the first win of his comeback season. That fell through however, when Fly V Australia’s Phil Zajicek came around Leipheimer and Armstrong in the final meters of the final stage — a summit finish atop the race’s signature Gila Monster climb.

In 2010 Armstrong finds himself in a somewhat similar situation — behind in his fitness and looking for race miles. Though not as severe as broken clavicle, Armstrong was sidelined by an intestinal virus earlier this month following a strong showing at the Tour of Flanders.

That illness — the worst stomach bug Armstrong said he’d ever battled — forced him to abandon the Circuit de la Sarthe and cancel his plans of racing the Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Instead, Armstrong returned home to the U.S., where he is racing Gila in preparation of May’s Amgen Tour of California. He has not yet decided on his June Tour de France preparation race, either the Dauphiné Libéré or the Tour of Switzerland.

All eyes were on Armstrong on the final, steep slopes of Wednesday’s Mogollon climb, yet the seven-time Tour champ struggled and lost contact with the lead group, forfeiting any chance at contending for the general classification.

With Leipheimer in the race lead and ProTour teams limited to three-man teams per UCI rules, Armstrong had no choice Thursday but to put his face into the dangerous wind that left riders sandblasted and wind burnt.

“It’s probably a good thing,” Armstrong said about his time spent in the wind. “I’m definitely missing race days. So this is an opportunity not only for race days but also to do some work and compensate for the days that I’ve missed.  We can look back at the year so far, and just between bad luck and illnesses I’ve pulled out of a few races. Now is the time to make up for that.”

Armstrong also dismissed the notion that the national-level NRC stage race was easy, compared to ProTour races.

“People say what they want about this being [just] a domestic race… I don’t think that’s necessarily accurate,” he said. “This field is fast. American pros are strong. Another key thing here is that it’s at altitude. You have guys that live at altitude. It’s not a big adjustment for them, but us lowlanders come up here and we definitely pay the price.”

With three stages remaining, Armstrong’s chances of leaving Gila with a stage win are dwindling; remaining stages include Friday’s 16.1-mile out-and-back time trial, Saturday’s downtown criterium and Sunday’s Gila Monster summit finish.

Asked about his chances in the time trial, Armstrong was realistic. “I had hoped for a good performance (in the time trial), but yesterday was not a good indication,” he said. “Today was a little better. I’ll warm up properly and do my best, although I’ll probably be a little tired after today. We all know the main goal of the year, so we just have to build up to that, step by step. This race is important, California is important, and whatever we pick in June will be the most important, in terms of preparation. And then, the Tour.”

RUN: The Mind-Body Method Of Running By Feel

by Matt Fitzgerald

• April 29, 2010

This book will blow your mind, and then empower it like never before.

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

One of the cool things about my job is that I get to talk to and learn from brilliant exercise scientists who are on the frontier of understanding how the human body produces and responds to exercise performance–running in particular. I am most interested in the relatively new line of research focusing on how the brain regulates and responds to exercise. Recent discoveries in this line of research have radically transformed our understanding of exercise performance and revealed that the mind plays a much bigger role in it than scientists previously recognized (while merely confirming the huge role that athletes have always known the mind plays).