“I believe in redemption.” – Inside Out

I generally don’t care much about single sport events. it’s not what I do per se. But one running race is the exception to the rule: the Block Island Shad Bloom 10k. It’s epic without being silly. Dirt roads, fields, steep climbs, a few stone walls to leap and a good field of athletes make it a classic.

For two of the last 3 years me and local stud Steve Brightman have battled with me nipping him by a single second once, a by a handful of seconds at most the other time. Last year I missed the race to be support in Utah for my coach and Steve went on to smash the course record. Who would win was a pretty interesting question.

Steve later told me his strategy was to take it out fast and surge because he knew that as a long course Tri guy I don’t do a lot of track work. If “not a lot” you mean I haven’t seen a track in 3 years, then yes

He took the first uphill-into-the-wind-mile out in about 5:30, and followed it up with another. I was ok and happy to follow but at mile 2 he started surging and picking it up. Another athlete was also with us. I hung in for the first few efforts but cracked real hard after that. Once the rubber snapped it was over and I found myself 5k into 10k alone in 3rd. If you have ever been dropped you know how it goes: 10m becomes 50m becomes 100m becomes looking over your shoulder and strolling it in. I kept it honest enough to keep my podium spot but it was 2-3 minutes off my best for that course though I wasn’t sore and got to train Sunday. any time I podium in a non Tri event I can’t complain.

Congrats to Steve on smashing it and for being the cover of New England Runner this month; this was one of many wins for him this season.

Also HUGE congrats to Christine on a top finish taking second over all! She lost by 10 seconds in a sprint in the last 500m! What a sick season she is having!

I am hosting a ton of mostly free events all year round and have listed them here: http://johnhirsch.org/?page_id=229

Please come out for some great training, on hands coaching and to hang with a great group of people. You do not have to be on the ERC Cycling team, the CREW or part of Team Continuum to train with us. We just want what you want; great workouts with cool people. So come out!

Here is what’s on the page:

Calendar of Free Group Workouts and Camps

December:

Strong Like Bull Training Prep rides. Each Saturdays 9am 50-100 miles, base effort, no drop. This event is free.

January:

Strong Like Bull Training Prep rides. Each Saturday 9am 50-100 miles, base effort, no drop. This event is free.

www.zentriathlon.com Base and Nutrition Camp. 4 days of training, yoga, movement and form work along with nutrition talks, cooking classes and more. Help over Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. This event is not free.

February:

Strong Like Bull Training Prep rides. Each Saturday 9am 50-100 miles, base effort, no drop. This event is free.

Strong Like Bull Training Camp. Southern Spain. www.stronglikebulltraining.com Train with pros, age groupers and have the adventure of a life time. All inclusive camp including food, transportation within Spain, sag wagon, yoga instructor and more! This is the highlight of the year! Camp fees apply.

March:

ERC Bike Racing Team. Join us for some local and regional bike races! Joining the team is free.

June:

CREWAPALLOZA: CREW, ERC Road Team, and SLB athletes get together in Vermont for a sick FREE training camp. Amazing place people and training! Famed 5 Mountain challenge, open water swimming and trail running all set in a gem of New England. This event is free.

June 17th, Open Water Swim an clinic. Coney Island, Brooklyn NY. 9am.

July:

Weekly group runs in Central Park. Every Wednesday night at 6:30 and Saturday Mornings at 8:30. Run in conjunction with Team Contninuum each week features a long run on Saturday with water, gels, give-aways, a bag watcher and more! The group has everyone from pro runners who go 2:21 to “in it to finish” athletes. Come out and run with us. Event is free.

November:

ERC-CREW’s: Hour of Pure Evil. Join health fitness and strength training coach Kate Hirsch for a hour of BRUTAL cross training, strength training and stretching, you will cry. Time / Date TBD. Donations suggested.

I wanted to not write this at first; and just put the day behind me. But i think its good to tell people about the bad days as well as the good ones because uou cant have one without the other. If fact if you get emotionally hung up on every bad workout you will be crippled with doubt.

If you race, have thick skin and let the sunset on failure quickly and move on. There is always another workout, another race, another chance and sometimes it’s just not your day.

I have been on the wrong side of over training since mid April. My prep for Bassman ended early with myself feeling weak, exhausted and cooked. What can be called “over trained” though that term has different meaning to different people. I had been killing it with hard efforts and a ton of races since going to www.stronglikebulltraining.com with the goal of peaking for Nevis which bad off great; everything after that is bonus.

By the time race day came I felt the extra rest might have pulled me out of the hole I had dug. One thing about less training that I don’t love is less swimming. Unlike cycling or running For my swimming to be on I need to be swimming a lot. So I was really pleased when I found myself swimming in 3rd and dropped two guys that were with me including the defending champ. I went it alone thinking it was key to put time into the champ David Holley because he is damn fast on the bike and run. I also knew Brandon who is a sick duathlete was behind me and I needed to gap him too. Plus attacking is fun.

Out of T2 I was 3rd and the legs felt good. The course is flat and fast and I just found a good effort and tried to keep it hard. If it an’t rough it an’t right. At the end of lap one I had been passed by the guy who would win, and was battling for 2nd with a strong rider. I was fast and my Evil Racing Cult Wheels with 88mm rims are dirty fast.

At mile 45 a pro featured in Lava this month came up on me and passed me dropping me to 3rd and he came of the bike a touch ahead. I had sold out on the bike and road very hard. I had picked this race because it’s flat and both Rev3 Cedar Point and Beach 2 Battleship are flat and I wanted some more experience with that kind of riding since I normally shy away from it but since it’s where I am racing my big races I wanted some experience going fast and drilling it.

But it turned out I drilled it too hard on the bike and out in the run I felt dead. The world was spinning and I came unglued. I know pain and fight through suffering but this was different. This was me staggering around confused and dazed. I wasn’t right and so I pulled the plug on the day. The good news is I had raced hard for over three hours and felt good; making me think I am coming out of the hole I was in.

Huge thanks to City Tri for putting on this race. Amazing course, super pretty and safe. Low traffic, well marked and in a great Forrest. Add this to your “to-do” list.

Huge congrats to the CREW that raced and to Steve Ryan who took 2nd in the LC Du in only his second multisport race ever with a sub 1:20 half marathon (see photo)

I am told that actual useful information makes for a good blog post; so while I would prefer to just show photos of skull graffiti I figured I owed you something that might in fact help you.

So here are five tips to good bike form. Everyone thinks about swim form and everyone pretends to care about run form but cycling form gets shafted. So here i am once again fighting for those who get the shaft.

1) core core core. Strong core is huge. You need to have amazing core because its what the legs push off against. Without strong core one rocks and loses the power in the leg muscles. Make that core rock solid so that power isn’t lost! To make sure you aren’t rocking video tape yourself or check out yourself in the mirror. This is best deep into a ride with a hard effort. Everyone can fake this for a bit.

Rollers will also correct any rocking by causing you to crash the shit out of yourself in your living room you can also try to ride on the white line of the road (only do when dry as they can be slippery!) this will show you how much left-right movement you have

2) circles vs squares. A nice “spin” is balanced. A compu-trainer spin scan wi show this. But the key is to make your you ate pulling up and “scraping off” your heels at the top.

3) Also the right cadence is key here. To slow and your mashing. Too fast and your not gonna but out enough power. Finding your ideal cadence is personal so using a heart rate and power meter and pace can help you get close but really the key for triathletes is making sure you can also run afterwards.

4) one leg drills will also help you pedal circles and that’s also the idea behind power cranks. Spin ups also do this (high cadence intervals).

5) I also work on my downhill riding: good form here is putting your weight on the outside leg of the turn. View the line where you want to go , NOT what your trying not to crash into. Hit turns at the apex as well.

(Phil wearing his ERC Kit. ERC Road Team Is Evil! Wanna race with us? Info at evilracingcult dot com)

Hope this helps!

This is the best mosh up yet! Checkout the first big race of the year over on you tube.

Want an Evil Racing Cult Bike? Check out the link in the banner header!

Don’t forget we you can still get into the NYC Tri. Join www.teamcontinuum.net and gain entry, coaching and more!

Deadline is April 30th!

(photo: the team fund raiser at the famous Friar’s club in NYC)

“mistakes I have put behind me, casts shadows to remind me.” Wu Tang Clan

There are two types of big races in my mind. Big events with big names, big money, big noise, big buzz and a big result is something you can make a big deal of. Then there are big races because everyone close to you knows about it, and it’s a big deal to them and this you. For example I can go top 10 at ironman Lake Placid, a big race but the BIG race is 6 days later on Block Island where my family, coach, friends and most importantly my mom is. My mom will hear about ironman, but she will SEE the block island Tri.

The Brooklyn Bike – Run aka BUN is one of those races. Hosted with my title sponsor, and the charity team I coach www.teamconintuum.net it’s a BIG deal. All my friends, the CREW, and locals are there. They heard I was 3rd at Nevis but how I did hear was what they would see.

These type of races are hard in that you don’t prepare for them. You don’t taper or peak for them and you kinda need to win them. For example The Bike -Run is a super short Du of sorts and I am a ultra distance triathlete, and that doesn’t matter to anyone. And on some level it shouldn’t after all excuses kinda suck.

The race itself is put on by Pacific Sports who put on the LA Tri and other big events. They had the same quality to this event which tripled in size from the first year. I also think the format of a time trial start and just a bike then run is great. Most people are triathletes and we like the order of bike run. Run-bike-run the traditional format is cool but it’s very different than what people are use too and can cause serious pain for people on that second run.

I started in the back of the TT line and road by lots of great people. I got to squeeze Scott the owner of Champion Systems ass as I went by. I also did this to the women’s over all winner Christine my girl friend!

I road well and had good legs and was really going fast but since it was a TT I had no idea what place I was in. The ride was 4 laps of Prospect Park. The run was one, each lape 3.3 miles. The run felt good and I really drove my arms.

After I crossed the line It was a long wait to see who won. Turns out I was 3rd and within 2 minutes of the winner and 1 minute behind 2nd. I went way faster than last year so that was good and it was my 3rd podium in 3 races. Hard to hate on that, but I still kinda want a freaking win in 2012! After all, while Nevis was huge for me, it was just something people heard about

Congrats to my awesome girl friend on her PB on that course by like 10 minutes and for taking 6 minutes off the bike on her new www.evilracingcult.com bike en route to her over all win! You can read about that at www.liveandeatbetter.com

Also congrats on the CREW we got a lot of awards! Go Super couple Augie and Mar on the AG wins! And big thanks to everyone that signed up via Team Continuum as we raised a lot of money which will go to fund the non medical needs of people fighting cancer!
C

2013 brought an important change for me. I am now running in Brooks. When I first started, back in the day, I got Brooks because I was told by my coach that “real runners” wear Brooks. Come to think of it he named his daughter Brook.

For me the choice was easy: they have amazing shoes and really care about and support athletes and sport. I spent some time with my coach Jim Ortel who had carried Brooks at his shop the www.blockislandaport.com and Christine Lynch who went to Shoe Fit College. We decided that my feet work best in either a neutral shoe or a shoe with a small amount of support.

After testing every shoe, I was convinced all of them would work. But then I settled on 4 for me and here is the break down:

Glycerine: this is the work horse of my quiver. I “run heavy” and like a little extra cushioning. Also with my fat pad in my heel not exactly there anymore the extra cushioning does me good. But this shoe is anything but a clunker. It’s light enough to feel fast, as the upper part of the shoe is light, well vented and looks bad ass. It’s a true neutral shoe.

Ravenna: This shoe wants to go fast and yet is a trainer. Light enough to race, but tough enough for daily use. I am gonna beat on these and the Glycerin until I decide which I like better for the daily miles. The toe is different then any other I have known and has what we surfers call a “rocker” tip. It’s sick and I love it. The shoe has some support but isn’t overwhelming.

Cascadia: I haven’t had a true trail runner in a decade. This seemed stupid to me since I do 99 percent of my running on trails. I used these most of the winter and loved the warm water resistance upper, and the grip of the sole that kept me glued to snow covered rocks on Bear Mountain and in Vermont. The shoe has a touch more lateral support that most people need but isn’t overwhelming and most people can rock these from neutral runners to people needing some stability. They are also a favorite of people as kicks because of the fashion, daily functionality and durability. Even if you don’t trail run, grab a pair of these for winter and use them the rest of the year for bumping around.

ST Racers: The formula 1 of shoes! We love racing flats don’t we? These are light, fast, drain great, are sexy ass hell and scream “SPEED!” I picked the ST Racers because it had a little bit of support and I find that I need it for longer races like ironman but I used these in 5k, 10k, 15k and 13.1 and they felt plenty fast and bad ass. I think this is THE racing shoe for most people.

Check out two videos from www.stronglikebulltraining.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wQ1gwai9w&context=C4de9032ADvjVQa1PpcFPBb1mXYWpcoj_66gGCloTYvpLUrM8rSjs=

A mosh up of different shot set to music,

Also check out this flowing piece of video of us riding off the famed El Torcal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnDDIAUCO2k

DON’T FORGET TO TO SIGN UP FOR SLB HERE: https://www.bikereg.com/Net/15676 early reg ends 4/7/12!

We extended early reg until 4/7/12!

You have only this week to sign up before the price change for Strong Like Bull Training Camps! It’s 200 off and $985 dollars with only 300 due as a deposit! That includes all food, transportation within Spain, housing, coaching, pool fees, a follow van and gilded riding! Lock in your Spain training camp for next year here:

https://www.bikereg.com/Net/15676