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Recovery Pump Review

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

One of the biggest trends in triathlon products is recovery devices. From massage sticks to foam rollers to compression socks, athletes are paying much more attention to recovering from their training and paying for a lot of products to help them do it.

This triathlon season I have had the opportunity to use and test one of the latest additions to the endurance sports recovery market, Recovery Pump. The inflatable compression boots have been used for years in Physical Therapy and rehab clinics for patients with circulatory conditions, but only recently began offering products to the athlete community.

What it does:

Your body is extremely efficient at getting oxygen-rich blood through your arteries and into your muscles, but is less efficient at clearing the metabolic waste that comes from anaerobic exercise (lactic acid, CO2 and a laundry list of other waste) out of your blood stream and into your kidneys to clean out. This metabolic waste is a significant obstacle to increasing your VO2 max and Lactate Threshold, two major determining factors for performance in endurance events.

The thigh-high boots each have four separate chambers and are connected to an adjustable compressor through a series of hoses. Each chamber progressively inflates from your feet up, applying pressure sequentially to your feet and legs. This facilitates your body’s natural cleansing of metabolic waste. The compression helps actively move metabolic waste from your muscles, just like a long easy walk with compression tights would, but without the demand for additional fuel from your muscles – making it much more effective.

The boots can be used for as little as 10 minutes before a workout to help warm up or even longer (I usually go from 1-2 hours) after an intense training session to promote recovery and be better prepared to tackle your next workout.

If you are interested in more information on the science behind Recovery Pump, they have a great list of studies and abstracts here: http://recoverypump.com/Page/Science

Does It Work?

After using it extensively over the whole 2011 triathlon season, I can confidently say that it does what it is supposed to. I first used the Recovery Pump boots in March after a hard day of spring skiing in heavy melting snow that destroyed my legs. I spent 90 minutes in the boots to prepare for a long ride on the bike trainer the next day. I was incredibly surprised how fresh my bike legs felt the next day considering how I was practically limping the day before. I thought it may have been a fluke, but with consistent use over the rest of the season, quality time with my Recovery Pump boots became a staple in my training plan.

The one caveat worth noting is that while it does help flush out plenty of metabolic waste, it doesn’t completely repair all your muscle damage from high-intensity workouts. That your body has to do on its own. But you can get there faster with good nutrition and recovery.

Also, there may be a little sticker shock for anyone considering purchasing their own pair. At $1,195 they aren’t a bargain product, but are MUCH more affordable than some other competing products and will undoubtedly have a bigger impact on your finishing time than the $2,000 carbon disc wheel that you only use on race day. Add up all of the massages you get throughout the year and think about having your own in-home recovery device that you can use every single day. It starts to make a lot more sense then.

Plus, because the science behind Recovery Pump is so solid you can even use your FSA, HSA or HRA to pay for it. When was the last time you were able to use those accounts to save some money on triathlon gear?

If you are seriously invested in better performance and want to make the most out of your training and recovery, Recovery Pump is definitely worth some investigation.

Disclaimer: Recovery Pump is a sponsor through Team Trakkers/Rev3, but in no way contributed to the content of this review.

Tags: compression boots, compression recovery, normatec mvp, recovery pump, triathlon recovery, triathlon training | Posted in Reviews, Triathlon, Videos | 1 Comment »

USA Triathlon Age Group Championship Highlight Video

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

I made the USAT AG Nationals highlight reel! Check out my own little shoutout at 3:40.

Apparently complimenting someone on their “gregarious spirit” is a nice away of saying “this guy clearly isn’t competing for a top spot.” But hey, I’ll take it! (and they were right on both counts and I had a blast.

Tags: Triathlon, triathlon video, usat age group nationals | Posted in Triathlon, Videos | 2 Comments »

USAT Age Group Nationals Race Report

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

After a nice easy real week filled with massage, stretching, fruits and veggies and extra sleep, I could actally feel my quads again and was feeling like I might actually be able to have a solid race. And I didn’t go crazy or get sick either!

Sam and I drove up to Vermont early on Friday morning, hit up registration, some free samples at the vendor booths and made or way to our hotel. I decided to skip the host hotel and go for one MUCH closer to the actual race. We didn’t need our car all weekend and I could see the whole swim course from my window. It was pretty sweet.

The swim course and the Adirondack mountains on the other side of Lake Champlain.

And yes, the sun looked EXACTLY like that streaming through the clouds in real life. Pretty cool, eh?

RACE MORNING
I was up and at ‘em at 5:30. I dressed, drank some EFS and took down a banana and some yogurt before heading over to transition. My swim wave went off an hour after the first wave and transition didn’t close until late, so I was in no rush. There was a lot of waiting around and sitting on the dock with Sam as we watched the other waves go off, but no real stress.

The minutes leading up to my swim wave is usually when the butterflies start kicking in, but nother this time. Despite being my biggest and last triathlon of the year, I was pretty relaxed. We watched about 5 or 10 waves go off before I even put on my wetsuit. I drank a flask of First Endurance Pre Race then lubed up my neck, shoulders, arms and legs with Tri Slide and I gathered with the rest of my age group to dive on in.

SWIM

We only had a few minutes to warm up in the water before our wave went off. Just enough to get the shoulders loose and do any last minute wetsuit adjustments before lining up for the gun. I warmed up the interior of my wetsuit, and just floated until they sent us off. Despite being in a pretty wide start line where our group was probably only 2-3 people deep at any one point, it was a pretty aggressive start. Elbows and feet were flying everywhere. I did my best to push through ‘em and keep on some fast feet without taking a heel to my eye or fist to the back of my head.

It worked, I managed to stay out of any brawls with other adrenaline fueled athletes and still push the pace. The course made a hard right turn. Due east and right into the sun. UGH. I couldn’t see a damn thing except for a group of splashing feet and elbows about 25 meters ahead of me. I followed them until they realized they were WAY off course and took a hard turn to get back on. Frustrating. While the water was pretty calm in the protected harbor, I think some of the waves in one section where there was a gap in the barriers helped throw me off course too. After some more diligent sighting, I was back on course, hugging the buoys and out of the water.

Going into the race, I knew that I had the fitness to set an Oly swim course PR as long as I stayed on course. I was right. Poor sighting and no PR. Frustrating. Oh well. Onward and upward.

Time: 28:27

Pace: 1:54/100m

Bike

After a respectable, but not blazing fast T1 (1:33) I was off on the bike. The first third of the bike had some decent (short) climbs and was into a headwind. I kept pushing to try to catch up to some faster swimmers, but going uphill into a headwinds S-U-C-K-S. I felt like my brakes were dragging or something. If it wasn’t for catching up to people in earlier waves, it would have been easy to get down on myself, but everyone was stuck facing the same conditions.

Fortunately, on the back half was treating me much better and I fell into a good rhythm. Nice rollers, pushing hard and a little tail wind sent me home 3.5 minutes faster than my last bike course PR. Big smile on my face. Nutrition wise, I just took one 2oo calorie bottle of EFS.

Time: 1:07:39 (22 mph)

Run

What I did NOT know is that they were live streaming video from the race. My mom, Rachelle and Jill were all watching and cheering for me as one of the cameras caught me coming into T2. If I had known, maybe I would have picked it up a little because they were NOT very impressed with my speediness through transition. Then Jill and Rachelle proceed to heckle me over Twitter. Gotta love teammate support.

Out of transition and onto the course was the only real hill on the whole course, but it was a biggie. Half of the people were walking! Seriously people? Walking in the first 1/4 mile of Nationals? Let’s get this thing done!

I had a pretty slow first mile because of the hill (around 8:00) but after that I kept ticking off each mile at around 7:25-7:35. I kept chugging along and feeding off of everyone’s energy. People were laying it all out there and destroying their bodies just to get to the finish line, way more than any other race I’d been in. It was awesome to be around.

My final time was 46:19, which was 40 seconds faster than the stand alone 10k that I did at Beach to Beacon two weeks ago! Not too shabby, eh?

Edit: Rumor is that the run course may have been a little short, but I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that.

Total Time: 2:25:28

Yes people, that is a HUGE 15 minute PR. I had never even broken 2:40 before. A good day, eh? I feel like this was the race where I was finally able to pull off the race performance that I was capable off. Other than a little zig zagging on the swim, it was just the race I wanted.

And I had expected some fierce competition, but NOTHING like what actually showed up. If I had been lucky enough to PR by only 8 minutes, I would have been dead last. I lucked out big time with not ending up DFL!

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying local beers, burritos the size of my face, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sundaes and laying in my hotel bed with Sam watching awful movies on TV. I can’t imagine a better weekend.

Enjoying the post-race beer garden. Cheap beers AND they didn’t need my ID. They just looked at my calf. Kinda awesome.

Chipotle burrito from Bueno y Sano

Big B&J Sundae

One of my favorite beers: Switchback Ale

And It only took me about 12 hours to think “Damn that was a fast race! I wonder how much faster I can go next year?!”

I think I already have a goal for the 2012 season…

Tags: burlington vermont, Triathlon, usat age group nationals | Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon, Videos | 9 Comments »

Beach to Beacon 10k Race Report

Sunday, August 7th, 2011

Yesterday I crawled out of bed at 4am and was on the road at 4:30 to drive 2 hours up to Cape Elizabeth Maine for a 10k. Seems like a lot for a 6.2 mile race? Yeah. It is. Let’s just say s*it happens. What was supposed to be a weekend spent up in Portland enjoying lobster, beer and some time in the ocean, turned into a short visit without any lobster or beer. There was a little time spent floating in the ocean tho.

I rolled into Cape Elizabeth around 6:30, and hopped on a bus from one of the remote parking lots to take me to the race start. The bus driver had the heat BLASTING which only made the bus full of nasty nervous pre-race farts even worse! The bus was like I was in a giant fart oven. Not an awesome way to start the morning.

The only reason I’m smiling in this picture is because it is BEFORE everyone’s pre-race farts started.

A 2 hour drive, a bus ride, and a half mile walk to the start line and I was finally there. I grabbed my number, ran into some old friends that were racing and moved out of Boston, warmed up, peed in the woods and waited for the gun to go off.

Waiting at the starting line

The race itself was fun pretty uneventful. I lined up somewhere just behind the 7:00 minute pace marker and waited for the gun to go off. I didn’t taper for this and the plan was just to train through it and test out my pacing strategy for nationals.

In the end, I was REALLY happy with how consistent my pacing was. Except for a hilly second mile, I held pretty steady 7:30 miles. I would have liked to be a little faster, but since my legs weren’t 100% fresh, I was fine with it. One thing I did notice is that compared to the average runner that was holding a 7:30 pace, I’m WAY better at running hills. At the start of even the slightest hill, every pack that I was running with seemed to slowly fade back as I kept a steady effort. I don’t think this is unique to me, but probably a triathlete thing. Looks like my cycling quads aren’t just dead weight on the run after all!

Does anyone else notice this when doing stand alone running races?

My final time was 47:03. Since I can’t remember the last time I did a stand alone 10k (at least 10 years ago?) I’m calling this a PR. Here are my mile splits:

Splits:
1 – 7:27
2 – 8:03
3 – 7:38
4 – 7:33
5 – 7:30
6 -7:23

After the race, I headed through through the food tent to suck down some chocolate milk, watermelon, and a fist full of mini snickers bars. They were hiding all the good stuff (chocolate and candy) at the END of the food line! Very sneaky.Then I hit up the massage tent, something I’ve never done post-race. Usually I’m busy regrouping with Sam after she spent the morning cheering me on. Since I was flying solo this time around, I took advantage of it and made some friends in the massage line before getting my butt rubbed.

Then, it was on to the beach for a soak! There was a little rocky beach just passed the finish line and only a few other runners took advantage of it for a cold soak. I was surprised more people didn’t dive in for a little cool down, but was happy to have it (almost) to myself.

I tried doing a video race report, and almost got got knocked over by a ninja wave that came out of nowhere….

As for the race itself, I was a little hesitant because I usually hate gigantic races. This one had more than 5,000 runners and sold out in seven minutes. In MARCH. For a TEN K! Fortunately, it was super casual and really well run. There were a TON of spectators lining the course and you can tell how proud the locals were of the race. Super well run, GREAT volunteers, aid stations and finisher’s area. If you can get in, I’d definitely recommend this race. Plus, Portland is a pretty cool little city to hang out in if you’ve got some time to kill after the race.

One more week of hard training then it is time to taper for what I’ve been building my whole season around – Age Group Nationals!

Tags: beach 2 beacon, beach to beacon, cape elizabeth, maine | Posted in Race Reports, Running, Training Log, Triathlon, Videos | 5 Comments »