JULIA CREEK TRIATHLON CLUB FEATURES IN THE NORTH WEST STAR

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Mid Winter Aquathon

Six members of the Julia Creek Triathlon Club celebrated the winter solstice by competing in an Aquathon on Sunday. The Aquathon course was a quick 25m swim followed by a 3km run and a final dash over 25min the Julia Creek Swimming Pool. 

A chilly wind blowing and a temperature of only 4 degrees wasn’t enough to deter this group of hardy McKinlay Shire residents. From the outset Matt Simmons who drove over 80km to get to the start line and Ben Smith went head to head challenging each other all the way to the finish line. Matt eventually overpowered Ben in the final swim leg winning by the barest margin. A terrific effort by Ben who is only 10 years old!

This mid winter Aquathon is part of the Julia Creek Triathlon Club’s winter adventure series. The club holds one event a month from May through to October; the next club undertaking is an orienteering event on bikes.

Results

Male Division

1^st Matt Simmons

2^nd Ben Smith

3^rd Peter Wilson

Female Division

1^st Naomi Smith

2^nd Debbie Godier

Night moves - the benefits to running after dark

DARKNESS falls over suburbia and while many people are settling down in front of the television, there's a group of runners pulling on their trainers and heading for the door.

For them, night is the most convenient time for exercise. The mornings are full of lunch boxes, last-minute homework or looking over work emails

It's time to put on the reflective gear, stretch the muscles and get out among the, owls, dunnarts and kangaroos

A wide variety of scientific research reveals that running at night may actually be better for you.

While detailed analysis is still patchy, the benefits appear to include everything from sleeping better at night, completing multi-kilometre circuits up to a minute faster, better lung function by up to 6 per cent and more rhythmic running.

In two recent studies at the University of South Carolina, volunteers exercised at a moderate to high intensity for between one and three hours and were able to drift off to a deep, relaxing sleep a mere half-hour later.

Athletes may benefit from evening workouts, ne contributing factor is body temperature, which tends to be higher later in the day and has been linked to increased strength and reaction time.

Another is the release of two hormones important for energy metabolism, cortisol and thyrotropin, which are at their highest levels in the evening.

"Running at night definitely alters your sensory perception. During the day your vision more strongly controls how you run," says Damian Farrow, professor of sports science at Victoria University in Melbourne

"At night you rely more on your lower level control, what we call your proprioceptive skills. Your feel for the pavement or roadway or trail is heightened."

Proprioceptive skills are the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and the strength of effort being employed in movement. It might sound a little quirky or overly scientific, but it basically means your sense of locomotion.

"So potentially you might run more effectively in that respect because running is best when you are in a fairly automatic state rather than a controlled and conscious state," Farrow says.

"It allows your body to react quite reflexively to a pothole or some uneven concrete. You react a little more effectively than you would if you were consciously trying to control your skill.

"The other sensation you tend to experience at night is that you feel like you're moving faster."

Ahhh, the moonlight and romance that night-time runners are enjoying. Care to join the night time runners club

TIPS FOR RUNNING AFTER DARK

FOLLOW COMMON SENSE

No isolated, pitch-black, remote trails or roads, especially for women.

WEAR REFLECTIVE APPAREL

Most running shoes have strips on them but someone in a car coming over a hill or around a corner will see your upper body before your feet. There are plenty of wrist-arm bands, hats, socks and singlets from sports, outdoors and cycle stores allowing you to "glow" in the dark.

LEAVE THE iPOD AT HOME

Or at least turn it down so low you can hear your feet pounding, and a car approaching from behind

CARRY A MOBILE PHONE

Pot holes, cracked footpaths, lamp posts that jump out might injure you enough that you need help hobbling home

LET SOMEONE KNOW

When you're leaving, where you're going and what time you expect to be back.

BEFORE YOU GO RUNNING

Ø  Don't eat a big meal

As blood flows to your gut to help digestion, so your breathing and core muscles - the running muscles - are deprived. You can feel sick or get "a stitch" (cramp in the diaphragm muscle between stomach/lungs).

Ø  If you are starving when you get home from work ...

Have a sports drink or energy bar or something with some carbohydrate or protein in it, such as a banana, jam sandwich or a small bowl of porridge. Leave 45 minutes to an hour so the light snack clears your gut.

AFTER YOU RUN

Ø  Replenish

Elite athletes will often down a protein-carbohydrate shake first thing after getting home, or a handful or raisins, almonds or another banana to replenish the body.

Ø  Cool down

Make sure you cool down and shower before you have your evening meal. It's better for your digestion if you eat when your core temperature is back to normal.

Ø  Portion control

Size or volume is important. So have a small, well-balanced meal of meat, fish with vegetables, some rice, pasta or potatoes. Dessert should be fruit. And drink plenty of water.

JULIA CREEK TRIATHLON CLUB

DUATHLON

SUNDAY 26^THMAY

MEET @ THE CSA BUILDING @ 10.30AM

1KM TRAIL RUN –5KM TRAIL BIKE 2KM TRAIL RUN

ALL WELCOME –FREE ENTRY

Bring your Mountain Bike and Runners

RACE DAY NUTRITION IS SUCH A BIG PART OF PERFORMING YOUR BEST – BUT!

I found this article and summarised it for you to read – don’t make any drastic changes at this late stage. If you need any further information email me your query.

You have about a 2hr gas tank

Very generally speaking, a well trained endurance athlete has about 1500-2000 calories of glycogen stored in their body and available as the fire in which to burn fat, our primary fuel during exercise. In our experience, this glycogen store is good for about 1:45-2.5hrs of exercise for a well-trained endurance athlete. Hold that thought...

Less is More
"Hey, Body, I want you swim very hard, bike very hard, then run very hard. Oh, and while you're at it, I want you to also eat and process this fancy sports food I'm shoving down your neck."

The key verb in that sentence above is process. Right now, sitting on the couch, your body can easily process that pizza on the coffee table because you're not asking it to do anything other continue sitting on the couch. But the harder and harder you exercise, resources available for processing food become more and more scarce, as blood is shunted from the stomach to the limbs, hard at work doing the triathlon racing thing.

The lesson here is that the fewer calories you eat and ask your body to process during a race, the more resources your body has available to continue to swim, bike, and run very hard. When we combine the Two Hour Gas Tank with our "Less is More" guidance above, we find that the best nutrition strategy for short course racing is a minimalist, take-in-as-few-calories-as-I-can-get-away-with strategy.

Now that we've set the stage for you, here is our nutrition plan for short course triathlon racing:

Pre-Race
The conditions you are trying to create before your wave hits the water at 9:30am on Saturday are:

• You are well-hydrated
• If it's going to be a hot race, you've pre-loaded your body a bit with sodium.
• You've topped off your glycogen stores, ie, you have a full tank of gas
• Your stomach and digestive tract is relatively empty -- you are now in complete control of everything that goes into it.

Day Before the Race:

• Lunch: your largest meal of the day. No need to go crazy or eat anything special (a sandwich or pasta is fine), but eat a bigger lunch so you can have a lighter dinner, giving your body time to do its thing (see clean digestive tract above). Lightly salt your food. Drink water all day or, if tomorrow's race is going to be hot, drink a sports drink instead of water. Don't go crazy, no need to drink gallons of Powerade!
• Dinner: light, high in carbs, easy to digest.

Race Morning:
While you sleep your body will burn about 800 calories, tapping into that gas tank. Also, it's likely that your stomach will be doing flip flops as you deal with race day nerves. This will slow down your digestion. So we need to top off your gas tank, but give your body enough time to process your food so you can start the race with a relatively empty stomach and clean digestive tract.

HIGHLY recommend you do this by waking up at 5am and having a very easily digestible breakfast of 600-800 calories. A liquid fruit smoothie is a good example. Then simply go back to sleep and wake up at your normal time or take time to relax and rest up. That is a plan that thousands of our athletes have followed. Wake up, eat, go back to sleep, it WORKS!!

From Wake Up #2 to Race Start
You've got a full tank of gas and you filled it up early enough so that everything should be out of your stomach by that 9:30am wave start. We suggest you eat VERY lightly. Maybe a sports bar while you drive to the race, drink a bottle of sports drink while setting up your transition, maybe pop a gel and slug some water about 30 minutes before your wave. That's all you need, if that...less is more.

Sprint Nutrition:
Armed with your Two Hour Gas Tank, you don't really need to take in any calories for a sprint. You've got enough fuel to last through the entire race and, more importantly, the fewer calories you take in, the harder you can race. But if you feel you may want to some calories with you, just in case:

• On your bike: a bottle of sports drink, about 150 calories for the bottle, BUT you'll be lucky to drink maybe half of it during the race...you're riding that hard.
• On the run: have a gel tucked into the leg of your shorts. Maybe pop the gel coming out of T2, grabbing a cup of water, and sip it for the first half mile as a tool to help you rein in the horses during the first half mile (see our short course pacing article here). Or grab a cup of sports drink at the first aid station. The simple fact is that with a 5km run, by the time that gel has a chance to do anything for you...you're likely 1 – 2km from the finish anyway.

Bottom line is you just don't "need" to take in any calories, at all, during a sprint triathlon and the fewer you take in the harder you can race...or you can fuel yourself with "maybe" 100-200 calories across the whole event, just in case.

 

JULIA CREEK TRIATHLETES ENTER ISA RATS RACE TO THE CREEK RACE 3

Belinda, Debbie & Linda will be flying the flag for the ‘Creek’ in Mt Isa this weekend.

Prepare Well – Enjoy - Good Luck!