Once more into the breach

I am the editor of Triathlete Magazine and I have a confession: While I can boast about having posted some decent running results in my life, as a triathlete I've pretty much been a hack. As a runner in the early to mid-1990s, I was extremely disciplined and focused in my training, my lone obstacle being the occasional injury (some light, some not so light) that would derail me. During that time, I worked with several coaches, and under their direction knocked out a series of decent PRs over a wide range of distances, from a 4:06 1500-meter run (as a 30-year-old) to a 2:38 marathon.

I started with Triathlete in 1996, and while I'd survived a number of races, from Wildflower to Escape From Alcatraz, I had never truly applied myself the way I had as a runner. And as I submersed myself in the sport as an editor, my training and racing was far more scattershot. It's now late 2007, and while I have to my credit five Ironman finishes, I have yet to work with a good coach, and I have yet to apply myself with the sort of discipline and energy I know I'm capable of. To sum up my five Ironmans: it was more about the beer after the race than anything.

And now, feeling a beat up and very out of shape at the age of 44, six-foot tall and cracking 200 lbs on my Tanita scale, my desire is to do see what working under a good coach and within a good program can do.

Right now I feel the following: overweight, stiff and with lower back and right knee grumblings. I feel tired, and after a long season of covering the sport of triathlon, I ironically feel the distant from the sport, farther away from feeling any bit of fitness than I have in some time.

In the past few months I've made two visits to the Cadence Cycling and Multisport center in New York City. It's one of the most remarkable creations I've come upon: I was expecting to see a high end bike shop, but what I in fact saw was a training center, open to triathletes of all levels, that one would expect would only be open to world-class athletes. Professional-level coaching, cutting-edge technology and a no-holds-barred approach to coaching and developing an athlete regardless of talent or age. Their services are expensive, for sure, but not surprising considering the quality and comprehensiveness they package.

A few days before the Hawaii Ironman, I met with Brian Walton, the head of Cadence coaching and a former elite cyclist from Canada. In a questionairre I had told Walton about the true state of my rock-bottom fitness level, and my desire to try and overhaul myself into a true Ironman triathlete. Not just a guy who goofs around with his training and serves up enough teeth-gritting to get through an Ironman, but to actually follow the Cadence program and see what I can come up with.

In addition to see what a high-quality triathlon program and the modern-day technologies that allow a coach like Walton to work with me from a long distance (Walton works out of the Philadelphia Cadence store; I live and work in San Diego), I hope to shed some insight on the process that the six winners of the Cadence Kona Challenge will be experiencing as they spend their training year's shooting for success in a North American Ironman competition (Triathlete Mag will be following their progress starting with an introduction in the January issue).

In this blog I will be reporting to you on the Cadence system, with all the high, hard-science and coaching experience that they'll mow through me with, and also the details of how this attempt at overhauling a junker goes.