Information Overload!!

There are five gigantic books laying around my living room, all about running, swimming, biking, or triathlon in general. They're big. They're intimidating. They look like college textbooks. All I want to do is leave them alone (or trade them in for beer money) but I know I gotta crack 'em open and get to learning.

In endurance sports, you're going to get out of your races what you put into your workouts. I get that. However, I never dreamed that there would be so much information published about the OTHER factors that go into athletic performance, training, and racing. Nutrition, recovery time, and running economy are just a few that come to mind. It's a lot to take in.

Oh and did I mention? There are websites. About 11,600,000 websites (Google NEVER lies) about something running, swimming, and/or biking related. Don't forget magazines, coaches, and friends. All manner of opinions on training, nutrition, race-planning, tapering, periodization, spandex, aerodynamics, body position, how many times to go to the bathroom, etc. 

And how to not get kicked in the face.

What's a budding athlete to do with all this? Well, calming down is the first step. It doesn't all apply to you, at least not all at the same time. For example, after reading the first few chapters of The Triathlete's Training Bible, its evident that a lot of the principles of training will occur to you naturally the more you workout. Training becomes intuitive. All of the info at your fingertips is stuff you can figure out. You just now know exactly what causes that one day of mind-blowing pace or those really tired and heavy legs and can define it. More importantly, you can interpret all this information and use it to make you a better athlete.

The moral of the story is: it's all reference material. In this case, it's better to look at the trees as a beginner instead of the whole forest. Need to find a specific workout? Look it up. You want a workout plan? You can look it up. Wondering why your legs feel like there's a hot poker in them? Look it up. After a while, all those separate trees will come together to form the forest that is you as a smarter, more improved, and hopefully injury free athlete.