In search for the holy grail of sports performance, Irish National Team ITU member, Gavin Noble (Dublin Triathlon Champion this past weekend) cranks out the Watts in the lab. This kind of lab testing will give Gav and his coach all kinds of numbers they can play with in training. Tests will be repeated often, charts plotted and if all goes well, high fives given.

These delicious little numbers makes the guy in the sweater with the clip board’s toes curl. Race times can be projected, tactics formulated and athletes can be compared to each other even before the starters’ gun bangs.

Read more about Gavin and Aleksandar and my swim sets on Igor’s blog.

Our other TriathlonTeam.org team mate, Will Clarke (British ITU Triathlon member and National Champion) really winds it up on the track. Looks like fellow GB Team mate and Chicago Tri winner, Stuart Hayes hanging on for dear life.

Bigger than you can imagine group track sessions typically forms the mainstay of their training. (they train up to 40hrs a week) These are blood and guts sessions. Coaches needs to be impressed, fellow athletes intimidated, but most of all, the times they do around the carefully measured 400m serves as building blocks of confidence and self belief to be drawn upon at the next race.

Enter The Caveman.

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I started XTERRA training at 4 years old when single speed and white tires were all the rage.

I’m in Maui, Hawaii. It has been my birthday for almost 24 hrs and, it will keep going for at least another 20 hrs. Thanks to Facebook, I have been getting birthday wishes from folks in Australasia almost a full day early, and as the earth turned, and the sun fell on Africa, wishes came flooding in last night from South Africa and Europe, and then today (the 23rd- my actual birthday) the North and South Americans checked in. This time thing is weird in many ways.

I’m still in bed, watching the ocean, the palm trees, Kahoolawe island (the one the Navy ruined with “target bombing”) I

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Libby , I think this is our 10th year of working together. Almost a 3rd of my lifetime!

Thanks for your commitment to excellence, passion, patience and especially, friendship.

Click here for Libby’s blog

I just added my first page! All by myself. Of course it is about my coach Libby Burrell. It is not finished yet, but go to”pages” click, and take a peek.

Here is a short story by Mari Rabie, South Africa’s great hope for the Beijing Olympics. Visit her excellent blog at MariRabie.com.

I was quite unaware of the inspiration, but am very touched by this story…

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