Triathlon training and performance for elite and age-group athletes with Barb Lindquist | EP#168

Barb Lindquist is a US Olympian and the World #1 ranked triathlete from 2003-2004. After retiring from professional racing, she turned to coaching, and also started working for USA Triathlon on the Collegiate Recruitment Program. We discuss training and overall performance in triathlon from both an elite and age-group perspective.

• Setting up the world-renowned collegiate recruitment program and the reasons for its success.
• High performance triathlon now and then - what has changed in the last 15-20 years in training and racing?
• Long-term athletic development for elite athletes and for age-group athletes.
• Things that age-groupers tend to underestimate, and on the flipside, over-value.
• Fitting triathlon into life, and not life around triathlon for age-group triathletes. 

0:47  -

• Barb has 33 professional triathlon victories to her name, from Sprint to Ironman distance. 
• She was the number 1 ranked female athlete in the world from 2003-2004.
• Barb represented the United States in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where she came 9th. 
• In 2010 she was inducted into the USAT hall of fame.
• She retired from racing in 2005, and began to coach athletes and work for USA triathlon.
  
  She set up the collegiate recruitment programme which is how athletes like Gwen Jorgensen were brought into triathlon. 

3:50 -

• The collegiate recruitment programme was started in 2009.
• After I retired from racing in 2005 I started working for USA triathlon as the elite development coach. 
  
  One of my yearly goals was if someone wanted to methodically recruit collegiate runners and swimmers into triathlon, how would you do it? 
• My boss at the time liked the idea and made it my job! 
• I look for collegiate runners and swimmers so when they are done with their NC20 careers they can come over to triathlon, and we transfer that single sport talent into multi sport. 
• At the time, all of our US olympians either swan or ran in college, and all except Hunter Kemper came over to triathlon after college. 
• Interestingly the women had swimming backgrounds and the men had running backgrounds, except Andy Potts, who swam at the University of Michigan. 
• The key parts to starting the programme was getting the word out and marketing the programme. 
  
  We also had to come up with standardised testing and time standards. 
  
  The third factor was what to do with the athletes when we found them and how are we going to support them?
• The programme has morphed so for example when Gwen Jorgensen came in in 2010 we didn't have a resident programme. I set her up with a local coach and then mentored them as she went along in her career. 
  
  She did most of that training in her home base, not with a squad. 
• In 2013 we realised we needed a place for athletes to go, so we started a resident programme in Colorado Springs at the Olympic training centre, we had a coach and all athletes came to that coach. 
  
  We realised that being at altitude was too hard, so it then moved down to Scottsdale Arizona, and then to San Diego. 
• Now, we don't have a resident programme but we support athletes with the collegiate recruitment scholarship. 
  
  The athletes that we identify, we give them a scholarship and they can go to any approved programme with a coach, and we support them. 
  
  They get to choose the coach from the approved selection so they can be sure they'll work for them. 
• In terms of testing, we test them in their primary sport, but predominantly their opposite - so runners we test their swim, and vice versa. 
• We have a simple swimming test: 100 yards free, then rest, then 500 yards. 
• For the run test we do 1600m on the track.
• We video tape both tests as there can sometimes be easy technique changes that may improve their score. 
• At the start of the programme our A standard for a runner was 15:15 for a 5K, and now it's 14 minutes. We've really tightened it up, which is partly the demands of competition, but also realising we need to invest in medallists who need to run fast. 
• For the swim a (running) athlete may do a cold turkey test, then send me the video and I offer some technique changes, then they test again in a month or two.
  
  For a male if they can do 58 seconds for the 100 yards, and 5:45 for the 500 yards, then we start to invest more resources into them.
  
  To obtain the scholarship, to train as a full time triathlete, for the male they need 56seconds for the 100 yards, and 5:25 seconds for the 500 yards. 
  
  This is roughly 1:07/1:08 for 100m, and 6:15-6:25 for 500m. 
• The athletes have to have swum before. Swimming is a sport where if you don't do it as a kid it's really hard to do it as an adult.
  
  All of these athletes will likely use the pool for cross training even though they are runners, or swam as a child. 
• If they've never done any swimming, it would likely be a lot longer journey than we are able to invest in. This is the world class level though.
• In the US, the women we've found who have gone onto running in college, generally have a deeper depth of swimming background than the guys do. 

15:29 -

• I think Gwen Jorgensen is our most famous collegiate recruitment grab! 
  
  She swam first at the University of Wisconsin, and then transferred to running during college. ​
  
  She won gold in Rio. 
• Katie Zaferes was also on the team in Rio, and she ended up ranked 2nd in the WTS series this year. 
  
  She ran steeple chase at Syracuse University but grew up as a swimmer as well. Katie is a strength athlete so she's transferred to triathlon really well. 
• Renee Tomlin and Kirstin Casper both ran at George Town. Kirsten was ranked 4th in the WTS series in the last two years as well. 
• On the male side we haven't had as much success, but Morgan Pierson had his first racing year last year and he had a great year.
  
  He ran at the University of Colorado and was a 13:35 5K runner. He grew up on the shore in New Jersey and did some surf life saving so was comfortable with the water. 
• We have a couple of theories for why we've been more successful on the female side so far:
  
  The women in the US seem to have more depth of swimming time. If you look at USA swimming, men/boys start to drop off in their teen years and there are so many other sports available. The runners that we do have seem to have less of a swim background that females. 
  
  The depth of men on the WTS field is deeper too so it's harder for new people to break through. 
  
  I also think it's harder for a guy to break into a sport where they may be beaten all the time, compared to when they were running and being at the front a lot. I think it's harder for anybody to have that longer path, but more so for males. 

19:10 - 

• Triathlon has become more Eurocentric - when I was racing it was the Australian's to beat. This is why I went for 8 winters to Australia to race their formula 1 series. 
• I only raced 5 times in Europe during my career and one of them was Athens, but now athletes can race this many times in Europe in one season. 
• I think the federations are supporting athletes better. What we can provide for elites now versus what I received is very different. 
  
  In the US we have more support from the Olympic committee and the high performance centre has more resources available to help athletes. I imagine this is true across the major countries too. 
• When I raced, I came from a swimming background and I came into the sport at the same time as 2-3 other women who were great swimmers. 
  
  We could get out of the swim together with a lead of 20 seconds, and turn this into a lead of 3 minutes by the start of the run. 
  
  I sometimes hypothesise if this would be the same if we were racing now, or has the level of the swim improved for everyone across the world so that small gap might not be there. 
• I wasn't a big numbers and science person when I trained. My husband was my coach and he didn't have a sports science background.
  
  I think it's a lot more science oriented now - more science than art. 

28:20 - 

• I've always heard that after 7 years in the sport you've reached your peak, but I don't know how true it is!
• In my career I do think I was running my best at around 7 years, and I raced for 10 years. 
• Our goal with the collegiate recruitment programme is to speed that up! Especially with Olympic cycles, you want more than one peaked shot at an Olympic team. 
• With professionals I don't know how long it takes, but it's definitely a quicker move than with age groupers. 
  
  Age groupers take longer because it's not their primary job, and they're often older when they start. 
• I don't think it's a bad thing that it takes them longer though, because it means you're constantly improving which is super exciting! 
• I think part of the coaches role is putting that in the big picture for age groupers - they need to have more patience. 
• Even professionals can't really work on a weakness, and work on a strength, and maintain all the other disciplines all at once. 
  
  You need to spend time working on a weakness and maybe your strength is just maintained, not improved. 
• Age groupers need to be okay with training weaknesses and racing strengths sometimes - this is the low hanging fruit.
  
  You're only as fast as your slowest piece. 
• Having a multiyear, long term approach to it can be really helpful. E.g. focusing on the bike for one year and just maintaining the run. I think this is the coaches job. 

• Barb's website
• Tri Swim Coach podcast - Seiler’s Hierarchy of Swim Training Needs with Mikael Eriksson
• Endurance Hour #286 - Polarised Training with Mikael Eriksson
  

Connect with Barb Lindquist

Connect with host Mikael Eriksson

Hi! I'm your host Mikael,

I am a full-time triathlon coach and an ambitious age-group triathlete. My goal is podium at the Finnish national championships within the next few years.

I first started the website Scientific Triathlon in autumn 2015 as a passion project to share my learnings with a larger triathlon audience. Later on, in early 2017 I started the podcast That Triathlon Show. 

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