A few thoughts from Craig Alexander
Thanks to Bill McKee and his wife Deidre, I had the unique experience of meeting Craig "Crowie" Alexander on Monday morning, the day after Ironmen 70.3 Racine. The meeting took place in the office of one of his sponsors, Core Power, which happens to be just a few blocks from my own office in downtown Chicago. I'll post separately on the topic of Core Power – I got a bunch of product samples when I visited and am still in the process of trying them out.
We covered several topics over the course of 45 minutes or so, and some of what he said would be interesting to the team. Please bear in mind this was a casual conversation...I am not a reporter writing an article so please do not re-post this anywhere outside of EN.
After running a 1:30 half marathon and finishing Racine in 13th place he clearly was keeping some powder dry, so I started by asking him a bit about his race and how he approached it. Something similar happened in Racine last year when he finished 8th. He was pretty candid and drew a distinction between the races. Last year he was 2 weeks out of Ironman CDA and at Racine was looking purely to validate his slot (as a previous world champion that's all he needed to do). This year he went into Racine fully intending to go for the win, but after a strong swim he got on the bike and felt very flat and really just didn't get it going. When he hit the run he figured he had to run a 1:15 to go for the win, and very quickly got to the point where jogging to the finish was the sensible thing to do. I didn't ask him if he considered a DNF but people must have been asking him about that a lot since he proactively said that he wouldn't do that for a whole boatload of reasons. He attributed the flatness to a number of factors, not the least of which was a substantial number of public appearances and obligations to his sponsors on race week.
Perhaps the more relevant topic for our team that we covered was around what us age-groupers can learn from the Crowie and from the pros more generally. Obviously the pros lead very different lives than we do, but I was interested in what amateurs can take from Crowie's bag of tricks to enhance performance. In a similar vein, I was interested in what mistakes amateurs typically make that pros would never make. Truthfully, Crowie didn't answer the question very directly. But I did take away 3 interesting points:
1. Crowie spends a lot of energy on time management. Obviously he has handlers who deal with a lot of the stuff that we would have to deal with ourselves as amateurs, but he has a ton of calls on his time from sponsors, ghost writers for his book, etc. When he moves house from Australia to Boulder it sounds as though it's just as disruptive as when we move house (clearly this was a sore spot for him…he talked about it quite a bit). So he needs to make a lot of the tradeoffs we do…perhaps his Racine race week schedule was a good example of that. I guess the takeaway here is (a) think about your time and all the tradeoffs you need to make in a very systematic and thorough way, and (b) outsource what you can afford to outsource…Crowie clearly delegates a lot.
2. In Crowie's view, most amateurs substantially under-invest in preparation. He didn't mean training, but 'preparation'. For example, allocating the time to do the proper reconnaissance of a race course before a race. He gave a bunch of examples where in his early days (i.e. before he was rich and famous) he invested time and substantial money into traveling to courses for training. He also used the Lance Armstrong examples with which you are probably already familiar. Personally I'm not sure he fully appreciates the limitations most of us have – traveling to a course to train is pretty difficult for many of us – but the point is very well-taken and I think there are a lot of things we could all do differently if we approached each race in a more professional and proactive way. How many of us materially tailor our training based on the specific race we're training for? I know I certainly under-value preparation when I think about the time I spend on race-specific prep vs. simply getting all of my training done.
3. We talked about the importance of recovery and nutrition, mostly as it related to Core Power. I'll include comments about that in a post about Core Power.
I wanted to go into some of the race execution and specific training aspects of what amateurs can learn from Crowie, but we were running low on time and needed to cover some other things so didn't quite get there.
Overall it was a really unique experience to spend some time with the current Ironman and 70.3 world champion. Crowie will certainly be a legend in our sport and it was kind of him (via Core Power) to share his time. When I see EN teammates at races I'm more than happy to fill you in on all the topics we covered, as well as share my general observations about interacting with Crowie.
Cheers,
Matt
0
Comments
Unlike other professional athletes, I just don't see Crowie or Rinny bringing a handgun to the transition area. Or walking into a nightclub and having a gun go off in their wRmup pants. Plus can someone explain to me why a guy that is in the NFL that is 6'5" and 300 pounds even needs a handgun? They could just sit on me and put a big hurt on me.
The willingness of the pros to interact with the amateurs, and the sincerity of that interaction is one of the reasons I love this sport. The pros know how hard the training and racing is for them as a full time job, and really seem to appreciate those of us who do it for fun. They seem to go out of their way to share their experiences and knowledge.
Sorry for the semi-hijack!
In addition to Matt's great notes here is a second writeup from another Triathlete that also met Craig Alexander after his Racine 70.3 race like Matt did…I thought it worth forwarding because it has some tips that second what Matt said and which stress Crowie's mental focus and how very seriously he takes recovery. Really useful for us Age Groupers.
Elizabeth Waterstraat is a well-known triathlete in Chicago. She is a 5 time National Champion (Du and Tri) and 3 time Kona qualifier and she also coaches and writes a great Tri blog. She was also a Pro triathlete for a year which gave her some great insights into racing...
http://elizabethfedofsky.blogspot.com/2012/07/interview-with-champion.html
For your ease, here are links to some of the resources she mentions in her article:
Dave Scott Webinar: "Mental Training Tactics and Race Day Strategies of World Champions"
Dave Scott on importance of intensity and Core Strength (ie EN way) esp as we age (per Al T and others in EN's Boomer forum)
http://blog.trainingpeaks.com/posts/2012/6/22/video-dave-scotts-triathlon-training-methodology.html
Mat Steinmetz is an advisor to Crowie. In this IM Talk podcast, starting at 36:30, "He shares lots of great insights about what the top level guys look at when they are trying to find more speed."
http://www.imtalk.me/home/2012/5/28/imtalk-episode-313-mat-steinmetz.html
===
As Matt said, my wife helped coordinate some of Craig Alexander's interviews in Chicago after Racine70.3. After spending a very long day with him, at CorePower headquarters all the way up through his radio appearance on WGN at 9pm, she cannot say enough about what a gracious good guy he is. He is a worthy champion for our sport.
Thanks to Matt and I hope you also find Liz's notes as interesting as I did!