As part of our continuous support of athletes and athletic endeavors at every level, Zappos.com is proud to be the presenting sponsor of the 2012 World Championship 70.3 Ironman Village.

The race will start at beautiful Lake Las Vegas then finish in Zappos’ backyard at the Henderson Pavillion.  The Zappos.com Ironman Village is also home to the Athlete Expo and the bike-to-run transition.  With several athletes using this race as a tune up for Kona, this promises to be one of the most competitive 70.3 races in history!  

The wait is over. TYR’s top-secret, highly-anticipated, top-of-the-line Hurricane Freak of Nature wetsuit is here. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Wow, that’s a hefty price tag for a wetsuit!”  A quick rundown of the Hurricane Freak of Nature’s state-of-the-art engineering, along with all the extra bells and whistles, and you’ll see what all the fuss is about!

 First off, the Hurricane Freak of Nature is constructed solely out of Yamamoto’s extremely flexible #40 neoprene—hailed by TYR as “the fastest rubber on the planet”. This gives the Freak of Nature 40% more stretch than their Category 5 wetsuit.

This Ferrari of a wetsuit also boasts a 0.17 specific gravity which promises superior body position in the water. On top of that, there are strategically-placed segments of aerated neoprene on the chest, hips and thighs to maximize buoyancy.

The top-shelf Hurricane Freak of Nature also comes with an exclusive matching cap, a complete wetsuit care kit, its own serial number (yes, it’s that legit!), and it comes packaged in a James Bond-esque silver metal briefcase.

We can’t think of a better holiday present for the triathlon athlete in your life—even if that athlete happens to be you!

During this exclusive early launch, be one of the first to get your hands on the Hurricane Freak of Nature wetsuit before it becomes available in Spring 2012.

Countless people join the sport of triathlon each year. Many become severely addicted and grow into everyday trainers with long-range goals. Others, however, struggle and fail, competing in only one before selling their bikes and using their swim goggles for protective eyewear on home improvement projects. Any person who has ever been involved in a triathlon can understand why people become attached, but the harder concept to comprehend is why some quit so early. A good possibility is that they simply did not plan well at the beginning, thus setting themselves up for failure.

To plan properly, that is once you have decided to go all in and actually do a race , whether it is a sprint, Olympic, Half Iron or Full Iron, you must select the best time frame for training. To begin, pick a race that is at least twelve weeks away. Anything closer will cramp your training and prevent your body from being totally prepared. Race day then will be a nightmare, for attempting a triathlon when being undertrained rarely results in that warm, fuzzy feeling needed to come back again and again.

Next, generate a training pace that allows your body to adjust. Throwing yourself into a massive workout will hurt your body, which again sours the experience. Ease into a pattern that has logical, safe increments. This will give your body time to rest, recover, and progress, and it will let you feel more accomplished and confident as the race date grows closer.

Finally, when scheduling your workouts, plan all of your swims first. Time in the water, either in the pool or open water, is the most difficult to attain, so make swimming your planning priority. Training for the running and the biking can be done just about any place at any time, so fill those in once you have mapped out your aquatic times.

If you begin early and establish a realistic plan that takes into consideration both time and patience, you stand a far better chance of enjoying the actual race. The goal of a triathlon is to get you to come back and be a true member of the sport, so plan well and you can change your life in ways you previously didn’t think you could.

Although some beginning triathletes perceive the bike to be the easiest portion of a triathlon, casually viewing it as a restful period between a tough swim and difficult run, nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact is that you can entirely alter your race performance with a strong bike; conversely, you can seriously hinder the outcome with a poor cycling section. Truthfully, when it comes to triathlon training, nothing beats time in the saddle.

But, spending training hours on your bike does not always equate with success. Just jumping on and turning those pedals incessantly will not guarantee individual improvement; in fact, unless you pay close attention to how you are riding, you probably won’t see the type of progress you deserve.

So, how do you cycle better? First, understand that most people have a dominant cycling leg, as they push harder with one over the other, which creates an imbalance in the pedal stroke. Using one-legged drills on stationary bikes helps to eliminate this problem, so make sure the training you complete addresses the issue of balance in the stroke to maximize your output.

Second, train for the race you intend to ride. Too many people think they need to log endless miles, which is not the case if you plan on doing a sprint triathlon. Likewise, don’t focus on speed alone when training for the 180 km of an Ironman. Specify your efforts to reflect what the end result will be.

Finally, address your form on the bike. You must get into the most consistently aerodynamic position as possible while still being able to maximize power. For longer rides , a more upright position is needed to give you better comfort over a long distance, whereas in a shorter time trial you can use the aerobar position to streamline your body and, despite the reduced comfort, decrease the time spent on the bike.

If you work to analyze how you are cycling rather than simply getting out and riding, you will discover that your potential is certainly greater than you imagined. Training isn’t always about the time invested, but more about quality injected. Be specific and reflective in your approach, and it will pay off on race day.

Triathletes, especially new ones, often find off-season training to be difficult and less intense. While clearly you cannot be as aggressive in your workouts during the off-season, as you are not searching to peak then for a particular race or time period, you can generate a training schedule that permits you to establish a motivated approach that will strengthen your weakest points and help you to avoid the dreaded plateau.

Implementing focus months can allow you to place all of your emphasis on a given discipline. For example, if you struggle with the swim and find yourself to be more proficient on the bike and on the run, spend a dedicated two months perfecting your abilities in the water. Swimming five to six days a week, rather than rotating each day like in a normal in-season workout cycle, will help you make greater gains in both strength and form. While you can do other workouts to maintain your run and bike, the majority of your efforts should be in the pool.

To do so, train hard for two weeks in the given sport, then schedule in an easy week of rest and reflection. Keep repeating this cycle for up to two months, and then turn your sights to one of the two other disciplines. After a six-month off-season, you will have had two focus months for each sport, and your overall proficiency in each will have improved without question. Then, as the triathlon season approaches, begin the normal rotational schedule that will permit you to peak in time for the races in which you will compete.

Sacrificing time on two to work on one may seem like odd advice, but it is sound and logical, especially during the off-season. Getting over that mental block so many triathletes have, the one that drives you to work on everything all the time, represents the first obstacle. The second hurdle to clear is training the right way. If you want to improve the swim, study quick swimmers. Watch their form and their habits, and do what you can to mimic them. Immerse yourself in the culture of the sport in which you need to improve.

If you try this approach in a diligent and dedicated manner, you will find that the gains you make set up your later triathlon season better than your old training methods. In your next off-season, give monthly rotations a try. I think you’ll love the results.

As triathletes begin training, they inevitably hope to tackle as much as possible, generating workouts designed to push them to the limits of their own potentials. Yet, wrapped within the need to extend beyond what they previously thought was impossible, triathletes must remember to provide ample time for the fourth event in training: sleep.

Sleep deprivation impacts countless Americans each night, as chronic sleep issues have reached an almost epidemic rate across much of Western society. Most people in industrialized, competitive-based countries sleep far less than the standard minimum of eight hours per night. This downward spiraling pattern within our culture will have its influence in the sport of triathlon if athletes do not take clear steps to prevent its long-reaching problems.

If the regular American who does not participate in triathlons suffers from sleep deprivation, then how does a triathlete , who in all probability works a similarly structured job, train endless hours and get the required sleep? Seems near impossible, right? The answer, however, comes in the form of decision making. Consider all the needless minutes and hours each day spent doing next to nothing, and then think about what life would be like if you used that extra time to extend your night’s sleep by 30 to 60 minutes, or if you elected to take a nap during the day. Without a doubt, with the increased rest you would see your recovery from training improve, your intensity during workouts would double, and your overall vitality in life would be dramatically enhanced.

So, when sitting down to structure a plan for training, make sure you consider not just the need to rest, but also the need to sleep. Make the best decisions in your life to allow your body that unadulterated down time to refuel and regenerate. Not only will your experience with triathlon improve, but also, and more importantly, your daily life will become better and better.

Unless you are among the elite triathletes in the world, you probably approach the sport with goals and desires that do not revolve around winning. Instead, in all likelihood, you started the sport to challenge yourself, to prove something to yourself, to replace other sports you can no longer compete in, or to simply stay involved in a competitive manner. If so, then we all must admit that we train for different yet similar reasons, and, although we will go about our daily workouts differently, two very distinct commonalities do, and must, exist.

First, we each have a disciplined approach that seeks to get the most from our training. Whether we create a schedule based on what we want or we follow a delineated breakdown borrowed from someone more experienced, each of us has a daily goal designed to get us to the end. The work rate we invest begins as a struggle but will quickly alter into an addiction, once we see and feel the results of our efforts. Thus, we portion off a small piece, although how small varies person to person, of our lives to this sport, and within that time period we push and drive ourselves like we never have before.

Yet, despite our greatest desires to succeed, we all must realize the power of reality, which brings about the second, although slightly contradictory, commonality. Within the discipline rests a guilt that can eat a triathlete up: letting life happen instead of training. Many people experience an overwhelming sense of guilt if they eat wrong or miss a workout. Nothing could be more detrimental to your mental training stability than permitting yourself to feel this guilt. Life will happen, sicknesses will occur, so understand that although you see training as imperative, other parts of life have more value.

In the end, train really hard, but live life too. If you miss a workout, move on and don’t try to compensate. Let your world continue because triathlon is about improving life and self-esteem, not making it more difficult and stressful. Relax and enjoy a sport than can change who you are.

So many new triathletes begin their training by seeing the actual race as three separate events with small respites in between, called transitions. However, no matter how long you spend in a transition zone, whether it is a rapid change or leisurely switch, you will find that the events are anything but separate. Instead, you need to perceive the race as a flowing endurance test that has three key alterations, and you must, without question, create moments in your training that reflect the transitioning nature of a triathlon.

Incorporating the brick, when one event in training is immediately followed by another, will not only simulate what it takes to organizationally get yourself from one stage to the next, but it will also more importantly get your body comfortable with the psychological and physiological alterations you must endure. Generally speaking, the change between the swim and the bike is a relatively simple one. The primary muscles used in the swim are not the major muscle groups required to get moving on the bike; therefore, the body does not experience tremendous stress in this situation, so the need to practice this change is minimal in regards to the transition between the bike and the run.

Using a brick format to train for the switch from biking to running represents a critical aspect to any person’s triathlon preparation. While both disciplines clearly focus on the legs, both use the muscles differently. The circular motion involved in biking contrasts with the more linear movements performed in running. Often times when triathletes jump off the bike and begin the run, their legs grow wobbly and weak, as the muscles take time to shake out and redefine their job. Without practicing this change, you are setting yourself up for failure in transition number two. Yet, if you integrate a quality brick workout into your regimen once a week, your body will reward you with a more seamless, pain-free transition.

So, make time to put in a solid ride immediately followed by a decent run. Start small and build the bricks as your endurance base improves. You’ll feel the difference come race day.