By Collin Snyder, Team OAM Now Cyclist

We all know the basics: ride a lot, eat right, pay attention, and success comes with hard work. However, there are some things in racing that can only be learned through years of trial and error. After seeing a new Team OAM Now racer lose a race after a small error on the first lap, I put together a cheat sheet to help young racers succeed. If you find any of this useful, share the love and share this on Facebook!

Gloves: Racing is inherently dangerous and accidents happens. While I rarely use gloves when I’m out on a solo training ride, I always wear them while racing. Back in 2008, I crashed hard in a Cat 4 race going about 30mph. Making a 4 hour drive home with hands that looked like I had exfoliated them with a cheese grater made me think twice about clothing choices. Ever since then, when I race, it’s with full-finger MTB gloves. I’ve seen others take it one step further and wear Craftsman Mechanics gloves or, in Rich Stark of AAVC’s case, bright orange gardening gloves.

Pin Your Number down: One thing that will instantly identify you as a noob is not pinning your number correctly. In running races, it really doesn’t matter all that much. Use 4 safety pins, put them through the 4 little holes on the number and place it wherever you see fit on your jersey. Do this in road racing, and your guaranteed a number that acts like a parachute and tells others “Stay away from me. I don’t know how to put a number on, so don’t count on me making it through this next corner.” Instead, use the steering wheel on your car to stretch the jersey out a bit, and go to town. The more pins the better. You want to let as little air as possible get behind the number. Do not use the holes. If it’s a race that requires 2 numbers, insure you can still use your pockets. Place the edge of the number along the top edge of the pocket. Again, pin away.

Wheel Pit/Truck: In most crits and road races, there is either a wheel pit (crits) or a follow vehicle (RR), where you can throw a spare set of wheels in should the unfortunate situation arise when you may need them. If you’re just starting out and don’t have the random collection gathered over time collecting dust (anyone want to buy a wheelset off me?), find yourself a cheap, non-fancy wheelset and the accoutrements that go with it (tires, skewers, cassette). No need to spend thousands of dollars on a fancy pair of Zipps. If you luck out, you may never touch them the whole season. For the backup set, make sure that the cassette has the same number of teeth your race setup has, and your tires are inflated to the proper pressure for the conditions.

Know thy Pressure: Sidewall says Max pressure: 135PSI. Pump them up to that and your good to go right? WRONG. Terry Ritter wrote an article about the science of pressure back in November. For a quick synopsis, rock hard tires will not deform, thus they will not grip in corners. I’m 160ish lbs and for racing, I find right around 85-105 psi is ideal. When it’s raining or it may rain halfway through the race, I will drop my pressure even more to around 75ish psi for extra grip. This is one reason why most higher end racers use tubular tires because they allow you to run lower pressure without the risk of pinch flatting. Make sure your tires in the wheel pit are the same pressure. I remember a buddy who flatted in a wet crit, took his free lap and forgot he pumped his spares to 120psi; he crashed on the next corner. Get the pressure right on both sets of tires.

Free Laps are a beautiful thing. In most crits, free laps are available to racers when something out of their control happens during a race. These mishaps include mechanicals such as a flat tire or broken spoke, or a crash.  When you have a situation like this, get to the pits right away (don’t ride backwards on the course) and find an official to tell them you need a free lap and why. They will check you or your bike over and either say yes or no to the free lap. If you show up with a poorly maintained bike and your mechanical issue occurs because you forgot to tighten your handlebars, or did a poor glue job on your tubulars, the ref will deny your free lap and you’ll be left to chase or DNF. If he says okay, the ref will place you where you were in the race. If you happen to be in the breakaway, they will place you there. If you were in that groupetto struggling in the back, don’t expect to be placed in the main field. Have your bike in a smaller gear that will allow you to accelerate quickly. When the field comes around, get up to speed and gracefully flow into the field.

Know When free laps end: At the beginning of the race, the ref will give their normal speech. One key detail to listen to is when the free laps end. All good things must end, and free laps are no different. To avoid someone intentionally crashing with 3 laps to go, sitting out lap 2, and jumping into the field all fresh with 1 to go, the ref will put a limit on free laps. They might say free laps end with 5 laps to go, 10 minutes, etc.. If you do end up crashing towards the end of the race, know what lap you’re on to make sure the free laps are not over. If you do get a flat with 2 to go, you can still enter the pits and change out your wheel, you’ll just have to chase after that replacement like I did, a few years back, in the picture to the left.

Tagaderm: Crashes happen. Back in the day, it was buy a Costco size tube of Neosporin and a ton of gauze and practice your mummy costume. These days, first aid products have gotten much better and allow you to race virtually pain free the next day. Tagaderm is a product that looks like high tech cellophane wrap, originally developed for burn victims to act as a second skin. These days, it’s a life saver for treating road rash. To use it, clean the area up, disinfect using some no sting antiseptic spray, then dry the wound and area around it. Apply the Tagaderm, and you’re good to go. I tend to replace it every 24 hours. One pro tip is to always have it on hand. If you buy it from a medical supply shop or Amazon, you can buy a generic brand for under $1 per sheet. I tend to go for the 4×4.75” sheets as they are perfect for your typical road rash on the hip.

Skin suit with no pockets: No problem. For most races over 90 minutes, I like to eat a gel at about minute 50. The question is where do you put your gels? The mountain biker way to do it is tape it to your top tube, but that’s messy and looks ugly. I’ve always put them in the leg band. This way they are easily accessible and are pretty secure. This only works if you have a nicely fitting (read tight) skin suit. On a previous team, I had a skin suit that was a little on the big side, so when I stood up, on more than one occasion, I dropped my gel.

Watch out for Strawberries: Here is one more thing to panic about when it comes to racing in the rain: Street Paint. When dry, the images looks harmless and act as normal pavement, but add water or rain and street paintings might as well as be ice. Over the years, I’ve done a race down in Troy, Ohio, home of the strawberry festival. The town embraced the strawberry fest so much that they painted car-sized strawberries all over the main street. The last year I raced it, the rain started midway through the race. After the 4^th person had his front wheel slip out from him on a deadly strawberry, a collective battle cry of “WATCH OUT FOR THE STRAWBERRIES!” came from the field. The solution is simple: try to stay off painted areas. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, so if you have to ride over them, do it without leaning on your bike too much, and be ready for some slippage.

FREE CLINIC: Want to learn more secrets of racing? Show sign up for our racer clinic this Friday.  We will be hosting FREE racer clinics (pre-registration required) for both men and women on July 10^th which will include instructions from Frankie Andreu and Team OAM Now’s Elite Men’s race team. Pre-register here for the men’s clinic or here for the women’s clinic.

The post Trade Secrets: Things They Don’t Teach You About Racing appeared first on Team Athletic Mentors.

By Elaine Sheikh, Team OAM Now Triathlete

I’m sure everyone is sick of reading about wet, cold triathlons this season. So far, I am 3 for 3 for triathlons in the rain. When I woke up Saturday June 27th at 4:50 am for the Gull Lake Triathlon and heard rain pattering on my roof, my heart sank. I had checked the weather at 11:30 pm the night before, and there had only been a 30% chance of rain at 11 am for the next day. However, here we were, with a steady stream of rain coming down all morning. As I arrived at the race site, I felt an impending sense of doom. Here I was, about to race my first triathlon since my injury , and it was 57 degrees and raining. Not ideal conditions for a stellar race. To make things even better, by the time I walked fifteen minutes from parking to the race site, I realized that I had left my goggles in my car. Luckily, coach Mark Olson came to the rescue with a pair of goggles I could use! In addition, Cheryl Sherwood had been awesome enough to come set up the Team OAM Now tent, where we could huddle out of the rain while getting into our wetsuits.

The swim started out with rapid-fire waves, one minute apart each. The olympic swimmers were off quickly and soon the sprint waves were starting. There was a two-minute gap between the men over 45 and the women 44 and under, which was my wave. For once, I actually started off in the front of the swim and was able to sprint strong off the front. I soon realized that was unnecessary for securing a clear position though — by 150 yards into the swim, only me and one other woman were off the front of the pack. Soon she slowed, so I swam around her and started catching up to the men. Fortunately, because of the two minute gap, by the time I reached the men, they were fairly spread out and I had no problem swimming around them. I exited the water feeling strong, confirmed by someone who announced I was the first woman out of the water. I had a little trouble getting out of my wetsuit, but soon was on the bike and pedaling through the wind and the rain. Unfortunately, the weather took its toll on the bike. Although I was less cold than I had feared I would be, my pace was 1.5 mph under what I had projected.You know it’s bad when you ride slower for ten miles than you did in a half-iron two weeks prior! Everyone else was suffering the same conditions, though, and an out-and-back course allowed me to see that there was a considerable gap between the next woman and me. I did my best to finish the bike strong, even though I knew my pace would be far below what I had hoped. I was more worried about the run. Visions of having crippling pelvic pain again and being put out for the rest of the season kept creeping into my mind and I tried to shut them out.

I hopped off the bike rather clumsily, slipping on the wet pavement and wet pedals. Then, in transition, I realized I forgot how to do an efficient T2! That’s something I need to practice, for sure. I tried to sprint out of transition, but kept slipping on the wet grass and had to slow down. Once I exited the transition area and hit the pavement, though, it was showtime. My watch had frozen, so I had no idea what my pace was. I just focused on picking off the men ahead of me one at a time. Finally, my watch started working and I saw that I was holding around 6:30 min/mile. I had been hoping for between 6:20 and 6:30 for this race, so I was right on pace. There were fewer and fewer people ahead of me and I was starting to have a lonely run. Then, just before the turnaround, I caught up to a guy who picked up the pace as we headed back towards the finish. Trying to stick with him helped me hold pace and he started shouting back encouragement to me when I slowed down a bit. I was just so happy to finally be running in a race again!

I didn’t see another woman until I hit mile 2. That meant I had a mile on her, which would be impossible to make up unless I decided to completely stop moving. I was happy to see Teammate Kathy Braginton as the second place woman! She had a solid gap on the woman behind her, so I felt confident she would maintain her position until the finish. I finished strong and couldn’t stop smiling for hours, despite the fact that I was shivering uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering. I asked if I had time to walk to my car and change before awards, but I think the volunteer forgot to account for how far away the cars were.

I finally got dried off and changed, and came back to the race site…. just in time to see people walking away with their awards. I won first woman overall, and second place overall (only one guy beat me!), and yet, I missed the award ceremony while getting changed. Luckily, I had been chatting with the photographer beforehand so he happily had me stand on a tree stump with my award and took my photo for the gallery. It was a great day despite the weather — now, I just need all of the huge blisters on both of my feet to heal!

Team OAM Now rocked the stage once again, with Kathy Braginton as first overall for the masters women division in the sprint, Paul Raynes as 2nd for his age group in the sprint, and Michelle Dalton had first for her age group in the olympic. A shout-out goes to Brian Reynolds who braved the dreary weather to come out and volunteer at packet pickup as well. June was a solid month for Team OAM Now multisport athletes — here’s to a great month in July with some non-rainy race mornings!

The post Sheikh’s Triumphant Return to Tri Garners 1st Women’s, 2nd Overall at Gull Lake Tri appeared first on Team Athletic Mentors.

By Roxane Kippen, Team OAM Now Triathlete

Team OAM NOW Multisport athletes have been reeling in the podium finishes this year and are on track for another phenomenal season of performances.  However, not every race goal involves standing atop a set of steps.  Sometimes we race just for fun and sometimes we race to train.  The T Rex 10 Miler and Wimpy 8K Trail Run on 4^th of July was a combination of both fun and training for five of our multisport ladies.

Training plans include some high intensity days that can, oftentimes, be substituted with a race. For me, it is definitely easier to go out and do a hard run with a group rather than by myself or just one or two others.  Choosing to do a race in place of a hard training day allows an athlete to focus on the training without all the stress of race day.  It also gives an opportunity to test one’s limits…how much of a gap can I close in the last mile of a run? How hard can I push on climbs and still maintain decent speed on downhills and flats? If I go out hard, how long can I hold that pace?  You’d be surprised by the things you can learn from doing B & C (lower priority) races that you can work to improve for A races.

There are a growing number of events available from which to chose, especially for running, so it is not hard to find a lower key race to mix up your training venue.  The T Rex 10 Miler and Wimpy 8K Trail Run is held at Fallasburg Park in Lowell, MI every 4^th of July.  It is a pretty challenging course with some technical single track trail and some big gravel road climbs.  Course signage, with T Rex cutouts, were a reminder not to take things too seriously though.

I chose to race the Wimpy 8K (just under 5 miles) to help teach my body to run fast on tired legs.  The day before the race, I rode 30 miles of trail on my mountain bike which left me a bit fatigued.  Amy Kimber, Cheryl Sherwood, Erin Young and Raquel Torres all ran the T Rex 10 Mile race.  Amy decided to do the race the night before, Cheryl had ridden 100+ miles the day before, Erin is training for a 100 miler while still regaining her fitness after having a baby a few months ago, and Raquel was just wrapping up a very hard week of training.  Clearly, winning was not the name of the game.

Our goal was to have fun and get in a quality training day and we all accomplished our mission.  While I did end up walking part of a huge climb on a gravel road (this same climb is one of the first on the Lowell 50 course), I did push to close the gap on a female runner ahead of me on the return route to the finish.  I’d say it took me a half mile to close the gap, up and down the gravel road, but then I really struggled to stay with her for the last mile in the trail and my legs just didn’t have what it took to pass.

Trail running is a great alternative to the constant pounding of pavement.  It also builds hip and ankle stability and leg strength.  Although, it does take a bit of concentration to maneuver around trees, over rocks and roots and up sandy hills.  Raquel is a new trail runner and said the obstacles were definitely a challenge for her, but she is looking to improve her run and focusing on adding some running races to her training.

The T Rex was a very well-run event with no fancy chip timing and, in turn, no crazy expensive race entry fees. Post race refreshments included a make your own snow cone station along with a giant table full of raffle prizes.  I’ll definitely be back for this one.  Mid-July the multisport team kicks it back up a notch with several Michigan races.  Keep an eye out for us at Tri del Sol, Clark Lake Triathlon, Little Traverse Triathlon, Caseville Triathlon and Tri Allegan.

The post Racing Isn’t Always About the Results appeared first on Team Athletic Mentors.

By Brian Reynolds, Team OAM Now Triathlete

After Fifth Third, I developed peroneal tendonitis in my left foot which meant I had to reduce my running significantly.  Fortunately, I was able to swim and bike just fine. I found my foot injury to be a blessing in disguise because I was able to focus on my biking which was lacking at the time. Mark had to modify my training to include a several longer rides of 2 hours or more. In a 6 week span, I increased my Functional Threshold Power by 8% which is significant improvement in a short amount of time. During that span, I had some of my best bike workouts ever. My body was craving cycling. The more I rode, the more my body responded to the challenge. These long rides also gave me the opportunity to work on my nutrition which was the biggest unknown to me because I’ve never raced a Half Ironman before, let alone competed for over 4 hours.

One week before the race, I did the GR tri practice swim where I picked up my new Aquaman wetsuit. The wetsuit uses Metal Cell technology which enables the neoprene to stay close to the skin to help keep you warm by allowing less water to get into the suit. People like me, who have very little body fat, find this extra warmth beneficial because it means I’m burning less energy in the water. In addition, the expected water temp on race day was 66 degs F so the suit would come in handy.  After swim practice, I rode the course on my TT racing bike to do a pre-race workout. The workout was to go easy the first hour, then ride at race pace effort the last hour.  Overall, I felt good throughout the ride, but in in the last ten minutes of the ride, I was uncomfortable, as if I was running out of energy.  After the ride I did an hour run.  During the run, I felt okay for the first mile, but then I began to feel terrible during the 2nd and 3rd miles.  I recognized this “terrible feeling” as being low on glucose, so I started to take in calories until I started to feel better.  The calories helped and I began to run more normal again. This was an important discovery a week before the race because it made me realize that I needed to take in more calories on the bike. Before I started the bike leg, I would have already burned through glucose during the swim; thus, I would have to make up for the glucose loss on the bike.

On race day, I woke up at 4:20am to rain and scattered thunderstorms, so I wasn’t sure if the race would even start. When I arrived at the race site, there was a light drizzle and everything was soaked. In fact, I had to pin my number to my bike because it wouldn’t stick otherwise. In the transition area, I placed my running equipment in a large plastic bag to keep it dry. After setting up transition, it was time to get my wetsuit on and head towards the start.

The race directors let us into the water about 5 minutes before my wave start. With minimal fog over the water, I knew sighting would be a much easier task for the swim. Still, there was not much time to warm up, so I just jumped up and down in the water to get my breathing in check and move my arms around. There were at least a 100 people in my wave. When the race started, the first 150 yards were very congested; I was getting hit on my side and legs. At about 300 yards, the field started to spread out, but with several swimmers around me, it was easy to find a body to draft behind. At .4 miles I found a strong swimmer to draft behind for the rest of the swim, making this leg much easier. I felt strong and smooth. I could have pushed harder, but thought I’d save it for the bike.

T1 was fast and smooth. The cycling roads were wet with several puddles requiring navigation, but with no rain falling, it was workable. I went easy for the first 5 minutes, and then I started to target my goal race pace wattage. While I only passed 3 people, I was feeling good through 15 miles.  After 15, my legs were a little fatigued, evident from my high cadence riding.  When I got to Saranac, the top 4 riders of the race caught me. We rode as a group over the hilly sections from miles 16-18.  When we turned right and started to head south, I lost contact. My wattage was gradually dropping throughout the race, so I switched my focus on spinning and getting calories in my system. Luckily, on the way back, I had a tailwind to help with my average speed. I took a few extra calories on the bike to make sure I had enough energy for the run. The last 10 miles of the ride, I looked forward to the run as it is my strongest discipline.

After a tough bike leg, I slipped on my dry shoes and exited the transition area quickly. I was able to get into a running rhythm very quickly. When I saw that my first mile split was a 5:42, I knew I would be all right, assuming I continued to take in calories throughout the run.  The uphill sections were tough, but I was able to get back on pace on the downhills. I maintained a consistent pace and passed about 8 people during the run. The last 100 yards of the race was my favorite because I saw the clock read 4:10:??, and I knew I would achieve my time goal.  After the finish, my legs were super sore. I had to sit down and drink Mountain Dew to recover. After 20 minutes I felt much better.

Overall, I am very happy with my results. I finished 4th overall and won my age group. My official time was 4:10:40 which was under my 4:15 time goal. I would like to thank Mark Olson and Kalamazoo Masters for setting me up for success. I want to thank the Grand Rapids Triathlon organizers for putting on a great event. Congrats to my OAM Now teammates who competed as well. I plan on doing this event again next year.