Friday Tri: The Sky is the Limit

Exercise science is still really in its infancy. The more data we get, the more realize that our previous assumptions were completely wrong. Remember when everyone talked about how VO2 max was so important, and the fact that Lance Armstrong had such a high VO2 max was why he was a great athlete? Well, it turns out there are lots of people with quite mediocre VO2 max levels who are great athletes. Dean Karnazes is one of them. Remember when in high school your coach told you how important it was to cool down after a workout because it reduced the lactate in your system? Well, it turns out it doesn't reduce lactate and no one is actually sure if you want to reduce lactate, what lactate is for, and if it has anything to do with muscle fatigue.

There does still seem to be something to the idea that you need glucose to fuel your muscles and that if you don't get it, you will bonk. But this may be entirely due to your brain, and not your actual muscles. The latest studies show that if you put a real sugar liquid in your mouth and then spit it out, your body will respond in exactly the same way as if you swallowed the liquid. But if it's a fake sugar, your brain reacts the same as if you drink plain water.

Another study done recently, where people were tested to find out what their maximum sprinting pace was for a five minute test, on two separate occasions, and then told that they were racing a computer in a controlled environment against their previous pace, showed that being lied to can make you work harder. Every single athlete beat their supposed avatar's best time. And every one of them was lied to. Their avatar was going 1% faster than they had ever gone before, and they surpassed that when they believed they could. So the brain has a huge affect on what people can and can't do athletically.

I'm not saying that repeating a mantra like "I think I can" will turn you into Lance Armstrong. But it also seems like it would be a good idea.

When the first man broke the 4 minute mile, suddenly a ton of other people did the same thing the same year. When they saw it could be done, and believed it, they did it, too. The same effect happens in group training. If you see your teammate making a time, you work really hard to keep up. Training camps are revolutionizing American running and swimming as we speak. I heard last night while watching the Olympic trials that some of the best female swimmers are now swimming with the men's college swim teams. And this pushes them harder and makes them faster. It's not so much about competition as it is about believing it can be done, seeing it being done, and possibly analyzing how it is being done.

This makes me consider what it is that still divides men and women athletically. Sure, we think we *know* that men will always be faster and stronger than women. We have a bunch of science that supports this. But will it be blown out of the water at some point in the future? Women's times in marathon records and Ironman are getting closer and closer to men. Chrissie Wellington, one of my heroes, ran the fastest marathon time in her recent Kona World Championship of men AND women. She has placed second overall on the bike in certain races, including the men. She is smoking fast, and not just for a *gurl* either.

And what if we used the same technique in schools? What it someone told a bunch of test case kids who actually scored low on standardized tests that they had scored the best in their class? What if we took them out and put them in a special class and told them they were smart? How much would that change their actual performance? I think my parents believing in me had a huge impact in my life, the expectation that I would do well. Yes, I had advantages at home like books and parents who cared about my schooling. But I also had a father who expected the same things from his daughters as his sons. And he got it.