Scott Molina’s
(Ex Iron Man World Champion)

Scott Autobiography reads:
Scott was born February 29, 1960 in Pittburg, California, where he grew up one of seven children. As a professional triathlete (1982-'95, excluding '93), Scott claimed 104 professional victories including six USA professional championships, 50 USTS triathlons, two "World's Toughest Triathlon" titles, Ultraman World Championships, 1991 Zofingen Duathlon, 1988 Hawaii Ironman World Championships and 46 podium finishes of either 2nd or 3rd place.

In 1990, Scott married fellow professional triathlete Erin Baker. Residing in Christchurch, New Zealand since 1994, Scott and Erin now have three children: Jennifer, Miguel and Tandia. His hobbies include training, multisport, reading about sport, health and nutrition, yard and house work, golf, grocery shopping, and lying on beaches.

Scott currrently works as a coach and camp counsellor.
Scott is a regular visitor to Phuket and has promised at some point in the future to come back and hopefully compete in one of our races. Scott will be writing an article for us each month with training and also motivational tips. Motivation is great for us all as we all have days when we just want to have that extra 5 mins in bed, but then we all have that Triathlon bug in us, so to get better we require self motivation to achieve this.

SCOTT's CORNER!

Moving from Sprint Distance to Olympic Distance

Just because you are doubling your race distance when going from Sprint to Oly Distance doesn't mean you need to double your training. 

  You do need to make some changes to make the transition successful though and there are a lot of ways to go about it.

  Here I'll prioritize the changes in your training I think you should make going from most important to least important and I'll expand on each point.

• 1) You need to be able to comfortably swim 1500meters in open water and sometimes that means rough open water. Almost anyone can fake a 700m swim, but almost no one can fake a tough 1500. Drowning is a real drag! J So if you've never swan 1500m non-stop make sure you swim at least 2km non-stop at least twice in the pool and hopefully once in open water before trying to do it in a race. For most of you reading this you'll have wonderful access to great open water just about year-round so there's no excuse not to try it. Just bring along a very good swimmer to keep an eye on you if you're not that confident.

• 2) For beginner runners training more on the run involves pain and risk of injury so you need to build that part up slowly. The key is to plan your longer runs beginning well enough in advance that you can slowly build them up. I suggest you start with a 5km run at least 8 weeks out from your first Oly Race and add 1km per week to your longer runs to get up to 13-14km 2 weeks out from your race. Those should be easy but non-stop. Consistency is the key to keep from getting injured. Big increases or more than 5 days off from running will increase your chance of injury

• 3) Riding more is the safest way to build endurance for triathlons of all distances. Not only will you ride faster in the race with more cycling training you'll also run better as the bike will take less out of you. Unfortunately its also the most time-consuming discipline to improve significantly so there's quite a commitment and life-change that needs to take place in order to ride more. In order to comfortably complete an Oly Distance race I suggest in the month preceding you schedule in at least 3 rides of 2-3 hours at a decent pace to ensure you'll come off the bike in adequate shape to run. Longer is definitely better when it comes to cycling.

A typical schedule for a beginner who wants to do an Oly Race would look like this for 4-6 weeks preceding the race followed by one week tapering off to rest up:

Saturday - Long moderate paced ride of 2-3 hours followed by an easy 20-minute run off the bike.

Sunday - easy longer run of 10-14km

Monday - swim mostly continuous 2-3km in pool or open water.

Tuesday - Ride 60-90 minutes including 4 x 6-8 minutes at race effort with an easy 2-4 minutes between reps.  If the race has any significant hills then you really should do some significant hills!

Wednesday - swim 1500m including some faster repeats like 6 x 200m at race pace or faster, 20 seconds rest after each.. Run easy 40 minutes.

Thursday - Same ride session as Tuesday

Friday - off or swim similar to Wednesday

If this looks like a lot of training to you then keep in mind that most people are going to take over 3 hours to complete an Oly Race and a lot of that will be in very warm weather.  It's a significant challenge and its better to be prepared than not! 

If you can get out to train with other more experienced triathletes occasionally then you'll have plenty of opportunity to learn from them to discuss all the finer details like what to wear, what to eat and drink, etc. If there's one area I know most experienced triathletes are really experts in its regarding eating and drinking! J

Cheers,

Scott