Adventure Sports
January 2004

GEAR AND LACTIC ACID IN LAS VEGAS
My Time with the Speed Freaks

By Andrew John Ignatius Vontz

As I sped away from Los Angeles out across the Mojave late on a Thursday night, my focus bested that of a spec-ops mercenary about to disembowel his prey. I was certain of it. Slamming the accelerator to the floor in Goldrush, my trusty ’02 Ford Explorer, I exulted in the sound of the V-8 guzzling another $2.50 gallon of gas as I closed in on my bogey: Endurance Films and Wes Hobson’s Triathlon Fantasy Camp in Las Vegas.

After fifteen years of riding, racing, and clowning around on road and mountain bikes, adventure racing and the X-Terra captured my attention but I had no idea how to train for adventure racing. Solution: I was going to camp!

THE TANGERINE-COLORED, CANDY-FLAKE BANANA SLING BABY
For the next four days I would sweat alongside 5-time ITU World Triathlon Champ and Hawaii Ironman newcomer Simon Lessing, Mr. Hobson, uber-coach Joe Friel, Ironman powerhouse Ryan Bolton, and more than a dozen campers eager to gleam the cube with these deities of endurance. I glanced around Goldrush’s plush Corinthian leather interior and panic overcame me. No piece of gear gets left behind—but where was my psychedelic Speedo? I reached back and fished a piece of fabric not much larger than a wet nap out of my CamelBak. Pay dirt. My trunks were with me, but good God—had my sporting life really hit a point where I was ready to don a micro-mini, tangerine-colored, candy-flake banana sling that wasn’t fit to cover a Chippendale’s privates in the name of greater fitness and age group glory?

Indeed, it had.

I dialed fellow camper Dr. Cummings, a pediatrician/X-Terra competitor who was waiting for me in Vegas at the Venetian, the camp’s gilded host hotel. 6’4” with a strong swimming background, Dr. Cummings would be a hell of a racer if he wasn’t lugging around 10-15 pounds of excess upper body musculature that he prized for its ability to fill out the shiny silver shirts that were a staple of his wardrobe.

“Cummings, I need you to pick something up for me,” I said.

“What is it little buddy?” Dr. Cummings replied.

“Don’t call me little buddy. Have you thought about losing that ten to fifteen pounds of excess upper body musculature you’re always lugging around?

“I only weigh 190. I don’t think it would be healthy for me to be much thinner.”

“Where are you?”

“Target. As in the department store.”

“Wow. I need a Norelco Lady Shave. Can you have one waiting for me?”

“Seriously?”

“Do I sound like I’m fucking kidding?” Where I’m from—Kansas City, Missouri—purchasing a rechargeable razor for full-body defoliation is not something to be joked about unless you want someone to put two in your head.

“You’ve got it kiddo.”

LADY SHAVE OVERDRIVE
Upon arriving Dr. Cummings insisted we hit Bikini’s, a bar over at the Rio. Great idea. Steroidally swollen Chippendale imitators in Daisy Dukes that looked like they’d been torn from the pages of Lake Havasu Spring Break Illustrated greeted us at the door. Equipped with bandoliers loaded with shooters, their aesthetic was nothing short of horrifying. Their surgically enhanced female palindromes were similarly equipped and dozens of these pornobots worked the floor hard in search of revelers in need of a dram of rotgut. Capping it all off was a tall, skinny woman in a black bikini thrashing around in a giant plexiglas bathtub in the club’s back room. She took extra care to dunk her head in the water repeatedly as she gyrated. A crowd of dozens of overweight, mustachioed men accoutered in the latest homo-erotically-charged fashions from Abercrombie and Fitch stood at the periphery of the dance floor directly in front of the tub nodding their heads.

“Vontz, this is awesome,” Dr. Cummings said.

I departed shortly leaving Dr. Cummings to lay waste to Bikini’s on his own but before I went to bed I had to take care of my hairy legs and so at 2 a.m. I stood in front of the mirror in my suite running the Lady Shave over my dry gams. This was my maiden voyage into electric shaving. The results—bleeding, abraded, severely chafed legs—were suboptimal. The Lady Shave had three settings: armpit, bikini line, and legs. But how would it work on my face? Poorly it turns out. Blood gushed from my chin but once you’ve shaved a stripe out of the middle of a rugged, thick beard in the mid-cheek area, you’re committed to finishing the job.

UNDERWATER LOVE
Fast-forward to 9 a.m. at the Desert Springs Aquatic Center where a group of geriatrics bounced in unison doing water aerobics in an outsized hot tub next to the 50-meter pool. I strutted purposefully to the far lanes where the other campers were already turning laps under the watchful eyes of Lessing, Hobson, Friel, Bolton, and the rest. The Speedo was in full effect—I looked stunning. Eric Feller, the mastermind behind the camp and Endurance Films—creators of such smash hits as Open Water Swimming and In the Eyes of the Elite, a gripping documentary about the run-up to the inaugural Olympic triathlon in 2000—stood poolside in the far lane wielding a boom-mounted video camera that he plunged underwater to tape the stroke of a camper for later analysis.

Looking tough as hell with my razor burned chest, I strutted to the pool’s edge and jumped in straight away. Hobson directed me to join the ‘porpoise’ group. The B team. Fair enough. The chlorine burned like mustard gas on a WWI GI’s lungs as it attacked the innumerable open wounds up and down my legs and chest and across my face. Still, there was no way in hell I was going to show my pain in front of my co-campers, a rough and tumble crew of sixteen age groupers from across the country hell bent on glory, a group that included surgeons, physicians, lawyers, IT geeks, real estate magnates, and one extremely dedicated grocery store stocker.

I engaged my afterburners and jetted across the pool like an SR-71 Blackbird arcing beyond the stratosphere at Mach 2. “What the hell are you doing?” I heard someone say in a thick South African accent as I lifted my head for another perfectly executed bilateral breath. I halted my furiously windmilling arms and turned to see former World Champ Lessing laughing at me. “Is that razor burn on your chest?” He sent me down the lane and swam underneath me to take a look at my stroke. Shortly he provided several simple recommendations that immediately and markedly improved my swimming. Some years earlier I’d gone swimming with Dr. Cummings and he’d given me abundant stroke advice. Turns out everything he knew was wrong. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening—would you listen to a guy with 10-15 pounds of excess upper body musculature predisposed to wearing shiny silver shirts? After listening to Lessing, I powered through a 600-meter time trial that helped me pinpoint my sublactic threshold race pace. Ah, there’s nothing better than breathing so hard you think you’re going to pass out while sticking your face in water over and over. Next I turned a few laps in front of the underwater camera and then we were off to Red Rock Canyon for some work on the bike.

TECHNICOLOR SPLENDOR AT 6,000 FEET
The Red Rock canyon scenic loop is a one-way road fifteen miles outside of Vegas that winds up through a spectacular swathe of desert ringed on two sides by jagged rocky peaks and on the third side by a bulbous slickrock formation that looks like it oozed out of a giant tube of red toothpaste. The slickrock bit is a popular rock climbing destination, but we were in the canyon to practice cornering, descending, and pedaling technique. After enduring torturous razor burn and humiliation at the pool it was time to turn on the intensity like the babe from Bikini’s in the lucite bathtub had done the night before and get busy.

We spun for two miles and then I sat on Lessing’s wheel and started to pant as the deceptively steep road rose through the canyon. My sporting disposition more closely resembles that of Boris Becker than say, John McEnroe. I like to intimidate, dominate, and destroy as much as the next guy but I’ll lend you a hand and pick you up when you eat shit on a clay court. I wish I could say I was jumping the net to high-five Lessing at the top of the six-mile climb, but I wasn’t. He’d pulled twenty-five yards in front of me with the grocery store stocker and as they disappeared around a hairpin and headed towards the summit I thought I burped. Instead, a Clif bar-laced stream of projectile vomit shot out of my mouth. Still, I dropped the hammer and regained contact with Lessing and John.

”We’re going to do four laps, Andrew. Is that cool with you?” Lessing said.

“Sounds awesome,” I said licking a peanut chunk off the inside of my teeth.

“Feeling good?”

My legs felt like the cut-up Michelin Axial pros sitting in the back of my closet with 8,000 miles on them. Wasted.

“Oh yeah.”

As we neared the summit on the second lap Lessing pulled alongside me again. I was giving it my all and ‘keeping up,’ but it was clear that this was an easy training ride for him. He wasn’t even winded.

“We’re only doing two laps,” Lessing said. “I was taking the piss. You’ve slowed down quite a bit. Is your brake rubbing your wheel?”

My heart rate was pegged at 185 and we were at 6,000 feet, but when was I going to have a chance to try to stick it to Simon Lessing again?

I hammered over the top like Stallone and rocketed down the backside of the loop pulling away briefly when the stunning scenery caught my eye midway through a hairpin. My moment of hesitation sent me directly towards the cactus-riddled desert at 35 mph. As I flew off the pavement I yelled, “Sayonara, Lessing. I’ll see you in hell, cowboy.” Somehow I kept it upright and didn’t even flat. That’s the kind of badass I am. I mean, I’d made an error, but it’s an error that even the great ones make. Armstrong flew off the road during the Tour that one year. Granted, he was going 65 and the tar had melted on the road, but I think any reasonable human being can see the obvious similarities between our situations.

BUILDING A BRIGHTER TOMORROW TODAY
When camp was over four days later, I laid poolside at the Venetian trying to avoid the glare off of Dr. Cummings’ outsized, oiled chest and dreamed of a future where I would put everything I had learned into action, a future where I wouldn’t fly off the road at 35 mph while trying to outride a pro triathlete who was kicking my ass without trying, a future where Dr. Cummings would lose the ten to fifteen pounds of excess musculature on his upper body in the name of speed and sport, a future where my brand new Norelco Lady Shave would flow smoothly across my legs and leave me with a nick-free shave. It was a beautiful place, a sunshine tomorrow bri

For more information about the Endurance Films/Wes Hobson Las Vegas Fantasy Triathlon Camp and other Camps,
call 1-888-246-0856 or visit www.endurancefilms.com or www.weshobsonperformance.com. For more information about Joe Friel’s training programs visit www.ultrafit.com.



INTERVIEWS:

EUREKA! Hitting the Training Wisdom Motherload with some of the Greatest Minds in the Game

Q&A with bike fit expert Rob Kaplan

What are the general problems campers are having with bike fit?

It’s been fairly random. We had one woman who had been fit at a bike shop and was extremely misfit, a real worst case scenario. Her saddle was sticking straight-up, too stretched out and too far forward.

Ouch. What area was the saddle protruding into?

That would be the interior portion of the private parts.

Doesn’t Castelli make a special short for that type of saddle position?
It’s extra cutaway for sure. In general what I see with bike positioning is that people tend to buy a bike and they go with what people tell them should feel good. It’s really easy to tell when a bike is too stretched out for you in a road position but not when it’s too short. And when it’s too short people tend to make it even shorter still so they’re sitting almost upright.

How should adventure racers and people doing X-Terra’s set up their mountain bikes?

You’re going to try to set up 45% over the front, 55% over the rear. You want a little more stretched out position for the upper body and you want your leg extension to be closer to a roadie type of fit because you’re doing a longer distance and you don’t necessarily have to jump off of things on your bike.

What’s the best way to determine that position?

I don’t use formulas because if you try to measure from a specific body landmark and then plug it into a formula and you’re a couple of millimeters off of that body landmark, it’s going to get multiplied. I go for the greater trochanter and lateral bony landmarks on the femur and then down to the ankle and use a goniometer, a device that measures the angle of a limb. You’re looking for 30 to 35 on a road or triathlon bike and closer to 40 for a mountain bike because you have to get out of the saddle and move around more and you need that clearance to be able to get off the back of the saddle and get back on without catching your crotch.

Again, genital mutilation is never fun. You also use a level. What do you do with that?

It determines the fore and aft position of the saddle. For a triathlete

I take the level and put it against the outside of the crank arm when it’s parallel with the ground and bring it straight up perpendicular with the ground and see where the outside of the patella is positioned. For a road bike, the outside of the crankarm and the outside of the patella should be in the exact same plane as that level. For a triathlete or time trialist the knee is going to be forward of that and how much forward depends on how large the person is. A smaller person might be a little farther forward, people taller than 6’ will start to slide back into a road position. The reason you want to be forward in that position is you want to get as much mechanical advantage out of that crank arm as you possibly can. When you go down into the aero position you’re closing up your hip angle so one of the ways to open up that hip angle so you can regain the power you’ve lost is sliding the seat forward. It also tends to use a nice balance of quad, hamstring, and glutes so that when you get off the bike no single muscle group is fried.

How did you arrive at these generalizations about fit?

I worked at the Morgul-Bismarck bike shop in Boulder and Andy Pruitt would come over and give us incredibly detailed seminars on bike fitting. I wound up opening my own bike shop and had a lot of pro triathletes and cyclists come in and I would fit them and then go ride with them. I’d get tons of feedback from that. My other favorite trick is to take my own bike and shove the saddle way forward or way back or too high or too low or mess around with my stem so that when people would come in and say ‘my back hurts’ I would get it and I would know why their back hurt.

It’s like Thomas Keller going out and slaughtering animals to be a better chef.

That’s right. You’ve gotta get dirty sometimes.

What do you recommend people do to get a good fit?

You have to do your due diligence and find a bike shop that has a reputation for doing good bike fitting. It’s not that expensive. At the shop I work at we charge $100 to do a complete bike fit using a Serotta size cycle. It can basically create any bike underneath you and it’s dictated by your body rather than trying to measure your body, put it into a formula, and send it into some mailorder place—that’s a real crapshoot. I recommend searching out those bike shops, getting a bike fit before you get a bike, understanding how bike fit works and why you’re in certain positions and also understand how to measure the bike because some are measured differently. Some bikes are measured center-to-top, some are measured center-to-center and you need to learn how they measure their bikes and how they make you ride differently.

Do you have any shoutouts for your homeys who’ve died in gun battles?

I did grow up in Gary, Indiana and had a couple go down but I don’t remember their names. That was a long time ago.


BIGGER, BADDER, AND WITH BETTER HAIR

The Magic of Trail Running, a Q&A with Olympian and Ironman athlete Ryan Bolton

What’s the importance of trail running in a multi-sport training program?

It’s funny because a bunch of people I’m hanging out with in Scottsdale where I’m training right now are doing a 50k trail race this weekend. Most of them don’t come from a strong running background and one of the guys asked me why I run on trails. I spend 85% of the time on trails because a. it’s easier on your legs and b. it’s a lot more fun and challenging, you get to see neater terrain and c. it helps develop in a big way strength running. As an Ironman athlete speed isn’t an important function. Strength is more of an important function and when you’re running on trails you’re working more heart rate and more strength because you’re going up, down. It’s also beneficial because right now I’m working on core strength and hip strength. For the past twenty years I’ve been working on moving in a linear direction and when you’re trail running you have to do a lot more side-to-side, more agility type motion. I think it develops those muscles more.

To be successful in adventure racing, triathlons, the Ironman, and other types of multisport racing you have to be extremely mentally disciplined and tough so you can pull yourself out of a nosedive when things start to go south. How does nutritional management and avoiding bonking help you keep your mind focused when you’re racing?

In adventure sports or ultradistance racing—anything that lasts longer than three hours—it’s critical because without it you’re fucked. For Ironman racing as an athlete I want to plan it out as much as I possibly can. In adventure racing you can do that and in ultra distance racing you can do that. You know pretty much how many calories you’re spending per hour and you also know how many . For example, if you’re racing an Ironman at threshhold, most people process around 300 to 600 calories an hour. You know those numbers and put them together and you can calculate what you should be taking in. Nutrition in those races is critical. We’re getting into a different realm right now because adventure races are becoming more popular. Before, especially coming from a running background, most people knew nothing. If you ask a runner who’s going on a two hour run what they’re taking with them they’d probably say absolutely nothing. But now there are so many people doing fifty mile runs, hundred mile runs and if you don’t eat something your race is absolutely ruined. Eating something and getting something in and figuring out the best way to do that is a critical part of the race. You’re not going to win a 100-mile running race without knowing exactly what your nutritional plan is going to be. It’s part of the race. It’s as big a part of the race as putting one foot in front of the other.

How do you stay mentally tough during a race?

In long races, break it into segments. If you try to tackle a race that’s four hours long to four days long, you need to live in the moment. It’s very zen-like. You want to be where you are at that exact time because if you start thinking about what you have to do in four hours or two days it can be daunting and overwhelming. A big thing is living in the moment, doing exactly what you need to be doing at that time, and tackle it one step at a time. The contrast to that is, don’t think of it that way. Don’t think, oh, this is one step at a time and this race consists of twenty-two million steps—that’s an awful lot of steps! Think about the future of the race and plan ahead but live for the moment. In adventure sports and ultradistance sports, 95% of the races take place in spectacular places. I’m a proponent of taking it all in. Even an 8-hour long race like the Hawaii Ironman, it’s an intense race, but every now and then out in the lava fields you have to look up and say, wow, this is pretty fucking cool. It’s a great environment. I’m amazed. You’ve gotta take that in. That’s what makes all of that fun. You’re in a neat place at a neat time and you’re really serene. It’s calming and there aren’t very many times in your life when you’re out there and it’s just you and you.

What are common points of mental weakness and how can you deal with them?

The main thing you can anticipate is that they’re going to happen. If you’re doing a multi-day adventure race there’s one big thing to do to mentally prepare yourself going into the race is to tell yourself that some time during this race—actually not some time but multiple times—you’re going to say what the fuck am I doing? At some point you’ll think, why am I doing this? This is a really stupid concept and what was I doing when I started training for this? Expect the unexpected but expect that also. When you start having negative mental thoughts or things aren’t going right, you can say I knew that was going to happen. I can guarantee you in every race that lasts over a four-hour period there’s going to be stuff that happens and there are going to be thoughts in your mind that are negative and detrimental. And knowing that, have something mentally prepared ahead of time to get you through that whether it’s a mantra or you space out for a while and think about some hot girl you dated in high school or whatever. Do anything. Those periods are normally brief and you know they’re going to happen but you know also that you’re going to get through them. So you work your way through. 

How to be a Speed Freak

Q&A With Joe Friel of www.ultrafit.com, author of the Cyclist’s Training Bible, the Triathlete’s Training Bible, and King of All Endurance Sport Training Programs. . .

You’re a big proponent of athletes training their ‘speed skills’—that is, isolating each component of the movements involved in a sport and training them to be as biomechnically efficient as possible—in addition to training fitness. Given that riding mountain bikes is a component of the X-Terra and most adventure races, how should athletes train for riding in their races?

If you’re riding mountain bikes speed skills become really critical. For a lot of athletes, that’s the challenge of the sport, all of the stuff you’ve gotta be able to go over, around, and through. For someone who’s a novice at mountain bike racing or pure adventure racing, they can probably improve dramatically by working on their skills. They’ll get better at being able to hop things, jump things, deal with mud. It’s probably more effective for them than getting more fitness. They’ll save more time just being able to ride over that kind of stuff than they will by doing intervals and developing more fitness. The more advanced they become the less critical skills become because their skills are improving all the time. It depends on the athlete. If I had an athlete who needed to improve skills on a mountain bike, at least twice a week we’d just work on skills. If it’s early season, the base or prep period, I might have them take their bike to the park, some place where we can control the environment very easily, and ride over curbs and put your water bottle down and jump over it and try to make tight S-turns on the parking lot, learn to balance the bike in a stopped position. We’d work on a lot of skills in a very controlled environment where not a lot of things are going to mess you up. From there we’d progress to an environment that’s like what they’ll be racing on. Eventually we’ll take the bike into easy trails and progress until finally they can handle the challenges that will be in the race they’re doing. Eventually by the time we get down to a few weeks before the race we should have the skills established and they can cut it back to once a week or even combine it with another workout.

Many high-level mountain bike racers train exclusively on the road. How is that beneficial?

Whenever you’re working on endurance for a mountain biker they’re better off being on the road because we can then focus on endurance. The base period for an athlete who doesn’t have to work on skills is spent almost entirely on the road. As they get closer to the race they need to do things more like the race. In that case we spend more time off road on a mountain bike and begin simulating the conditions and what they’ll have to experience in the race.

Athletes participating at a recreational level often face challenges in adventure races that they’re not going to be able to simulate in training—things like obstacle courses or kayaking. How can athletes train for these components of a race?
It’s still endurance, force, and speed skills. If you can’t actually do the sport in one or all three of those areas then you’re obviously at a disadvantage. Anything you can do that comes close would be good. If you can replicate the movement by lifting weights and build strength that way you’ll probably improve your performance.

For people jumping into trail running, mountain biking, and other sports that are skill intensive, do you advocate that they get out with groups or people who are more skilled?

The novice at any sport is best off seeing someone do it right. They’ll pick it up faster that way than if they’re simply getting oral instruction. Any time you can see a skilled athlete doing something can be helpful. If you’re mountain biking and you can ride behind a skilled rider who’s descending well you can see what line they take and how he or she handles obstacles and then try to replicate it. Trying to do it from scratch is a much longer process because you have to figure out how it’s done right and then you have to start practicing to do it right. If you can see it done right then you already know what it looks like and all you have to do is replicate that.

Are ultra-athletes more psychotic than normal endurance athletes? Do you want to talk about the latent masochism inherent in all of this?

They’re more driven than those of us who do shorter distance events. I once went to a talk by a guy who was an ultrarunner. He had won Western States several times back in the early 80’s. It’s obvious during the talk that he didn’t have any life. He would get up in the morning, go for a run, go to work, come home from work, change his clothes and go run until it was time to go to bed. Weekends he’d be gone the entire weekend running. Finally somebody holds up their hand and says, what happened to your lifestyle and life with all of this? When you win that race they give you this huge belt buckle. He starts answering the question but he starts taking his belt buckle off at the same time as he’s answering the question. He says, you know my wife divorced me, I lost my job, I don’t have any friends, my kids don’t even know who I am—he finally gets the belt buckle off and holds it up—but you know what, it was all worth it.

To read more about Joe Friel’s training methods, visit www.ultrafit.com.