|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
ontri.com Newsletter - Volume 1 - July 22, 2004
Welcome to the first edition of the ontri.com newsletter. We’ve been very busy since our launch in May, responding to your questions and suggestions and making continuous improvements to the software to make ontri.com as fun, as easy to use and as powerful as possible. ontri was designed to be a community of triathletes, runners, cyclists, swimmers and fitness enthusiasts and we greatly appreciate all your input as we continue to grow and make ontri a place that will help you improve your fitness and more importantly add some fun to your training. It has been great to watch the “superstars of the month” competitions grow in the public clubs and we are ecstatic to see how many of our members post questions that then get answered by other members right away. This is truly a community!
10% off gear from trivillage.com We’ve recently worked out a summer deal with trivillage.com, an online store which offers a great selection of swimming, cycling and running gear including several lines of apparel for men and women. All ontri members receive 10% off their purchases from trivillage by entering a coupon code during the checkout process: The coupon code can be found at www.ontri.com/gear.html -- trivillage offers free shipping on all purchases over $75 so this is a great time to pick up a new wetsuit to help make the swim a breeze, a set of aerobars to improve your cycling performance or even a new outfit so that you’ll look and feel great on race day. trivillage.com recently added Pearl Izumi running shoes to its line and offers great deals if you are looking for a new pair of top of the line shoes at a bargain price.
Athens 2004 Triathlon… This year’s summer games in Athens will feature Men’s and Women’s triathlon events for the second time in Olympic history. Not surprisingly this will be an “Olympic Distance” event beginning with a 1500 meter swim at the famous Oceanida beach, followed by a 40K bike ride through some mountainous terrain in Vouliagmeni and finishing with a 10K run. Fifty men and fifty women will compete in their respective races. At the 2000 summer games in Sydney the outcomes of both races were determined by seconds. Canadian Simon Whitfield took the men’s gold in Sydney passing Germany’s Stephan Vuckovich in the final 200 meters of the run and Brigitte McMahon of Switzerland took the women’s gold with a time of 2:00:40 just seconds ahead of Michellie Jones of Australia. Athens should prove to be equally exciting with Whitfield returning to defend his gold. The bike stage in Athens allows for drafting which is different from most typical triathlons where drafting is strictly prohibited. This adds importance to the swim stage in that swimmers who are not out of the water with the leaders will have a tough time catching the lead peleton. With this format, seconds will count and athletes will speed through transition in under 30 seconds to maintain their position. Watch for U.S. athletes Hunter Kemper currently ranked 11th in the world among male triathletes and Sheila Taormina of the U.S. women’s team. Taormina won Olympic gold in Atlanta in the 4x 200 freestyle swimming event so look for her to come out of the water ahead of the pack. The Women’s race will take place on Wednesday August 25th at 10 AM Athens time, the Men’s race will follow on the 26th also at 10 AM. NBC has yet to post their television coverage schedule but check the ontri.com web site prior to the start of the summer games for details on NBC’s coverage of these events.
Superstars of the month… Race season is in high gear and with that membership to ontri.com is growing fast. We’ve added over 2,000 new members since our launch in May and with nearly 50 new members a day that number is likely to double by the end of August. In addition, 50 triathlon teams, running clubs, groups of training buddies and even a few families have created private ontri.com clubs to share thoughts, schedules, photos, race results and compete with each other in the virtual training competition. My training group has had a lot of fun over the last few months with the competition, leapfrogging each other daily on the “superstars of the month” board and of course posting the occasional taunt to the team water cooler. One team member even went out for a late 80 mile ride on the last day of June to solidify his position at the top of superstars board for the month and the battle is now heating up for July. Several people have commented that they’ve added miles specifically with the virtual competition in mind, which is exactly what we had hoped when we designed the site. It really has been fun for our club and if any of our members are interested in starting their own private ontri.com club to compete with their friends, simply send an e-mail to clubs@ontri.com and we will gladly help you get started – it’s free!
Congratulations to Doug D. from Newton, MA for winning the ontri.com training competition in June running 51.75 miles, cycling 434.4 miles and swimming 8.3 miles for a total of 25,871 calories according to our calorie estimating algorithm. Doug was awarded a carbon water bottle cage, compliments of ontri.com, for his winning efforts in June which as I understand shaved a solid 30 grams off the weight of his bike and that, along with the superb training effort, helped him complete his first Olympic Distance triathlon on July 11. Way to go Doug! There are other competitions being planned for the coming months so keep logging your miles. In addition to great health and fitness there will be prizes awarded as well.
Training programs for triathletes, runners and cyclists … For those of you training for specific races, we offer 6 different training programs designed specifically for ontri.com by our USAT certified coach, Katherine Schwab. Coach Katherine has created training programs for sprint distance triathlons, Olympic distance and half ironman triathlons as well as half marathons, marathons and century bike rides. You can set up one of these training programs by logging into ontri, clicking on the trainer tab and then clicking on the ‘change my training plan’ link. Then simply select the training program you wish to use and the date of the race you are training for and your training calendar will be automatically populated with suggested workouts. Complete training definitions are available on www.ontri.com/news.html
Thanks for your support of ontri.com and please do keep the suggestions and feedback coming. We are listening!
Happy training! ontri.com - triathlon training for the rest of us
|
|||
| Triathlon Training Marathon Training Health and Fitness | |||
 |
