The last four years, you've started your season with a half-Ironman followed by an Olympic-distance race. In 2010, St. Anthony's comes only a month after Ironman 70.3 California. Both are early-season races, but with different distances. Is there a big shift in training between the two?
Andy Potts: Between those two, no, there's not. If you're going to do an early-season Ironman, yes, there definitely is. But for the way that I train, I have enough power to go in-between the two distances. I would train the same if I'm opening up with a half-Ironman or with an Olympic-distance race.
Potts crosses the line to wine the 2009 St. Anthony's Triathlon. - Photo: Robert Murphy
Even given the speed that St. Anthony's is noted for?
Andy Potts: Yeah. Not one thing changes for me. But that's my physiology, that's the program that I work with. I don't have a shortage of speed. It's more the longer stuff that I have to work for.
Do you have any workouts that you use to train specifically for an Olympic-distance race like St. Anthony's?
Andy Potts: There's no one workout that I'm married to or come back to as a test set. I use my racing as an evaluation. This biggest thing for me is about consistency and weekly/monthly volumes. It's not about how fast I can go or how much I can do in one single day; it's what the cumulative effect of what a week does, and then a month. That's where I get a lot of my strength from.
I think it really helps with people's consistency when they can come back the next day and put in a good workout and a good effort, and it doesn't take you four or five days to recover from one workout. Racing is different. Racing is a test, a challenge. Whereas working out is about preparation.
I did a race with my uncle earlier this year. The day before the race, I asked him if he wanted to go out and ride. He had to wait for me after about three miles. He's going, "Are you OK? Is everything OK?" And I'm like, "Yup. Payday is tomorrow. Nobody is getting paid today." He wanted to ride hard with me. I just wanted to feel good, because racing doesn't always feel good when you go fast.
It sounds like your training is geared so that you can do another workout tomorrow, as opposed to killing yourself one day and then having to recover.
Andy Potts: I certainly push very hard, but my ability to recover makes it so I can do the same thing tomorrow that I did today. I think that's a really important thing. If you get so zonked from a workout that you can't move the next day, you went over the edge. It's not helping you to improve and train for your race. It's breaking you down too much so you can't train the next day.
We focus on the training aspect of things instead of the testing aspect of things. Every day is a test, but it's not a test set. What I feel that does for an age-group triathlete is that it makes the sport more enjoyable because you're able to do any given task on any given day, instead of just being so zonked from the day before. It keeps the fun in the game.
You live in Colorado. How do you prepare for early-season, warm-weather racing when you train in such a cold climate? Do you take time to acclimate beforehand?
Andy Potts: No, I don't. My climatization is based off of layering. I really enjoy sweating it out. I'll put on an extra layer, even if the weather and conditions don't call for it. I like to be warm. With St. Anthony's, because it's an early-season race and it's early in the day, unless you're in one of the last waves you're not overheating.
How about the mentality you bring to an early-season race. Is it different from how you would approach a race later in the year?
Andy Potts: The way that I'm wired is different from what I would tell other some people to work on. This is what I do. I want it to matter and I want it count. I'm not showing up to a race just to show up. I'm going there to make something happen. It doesn't matter when the race falls for me; I want to get out of the gates fast, I want to stay fast in the middle of the race, and if I'm closing out the season, I want to continue to be fast. That is more of the professional in me.
However, I recently got both of my parents hooked on the sport of triathlon. What I would tell them is, "Hey, listen, if you guys want to come do St. Anthony's..." They live in Colorado as well, and this would be kind of the carrot to get them through the colder months in the winter. It's kind of the light at the end of the tunnel, saying, "There's a reason to go to the gym instead of bundling up under a blanket." I would tell my mom and dad, "You've got to be ready for St. Anthony's, and some of that preparation starts now. It will make the race more enjoyable for you if you're more prepared to do it."
My friends who do triathlon, their most memorable race experiences are when they are physically prepared to endure, whether it's conditions or the race or the atmosphere. Whatever the race may throw at you, they're ready for it.
Some of their more miserable experiences are because they've signed up for a race and then just said, "I don't need to do anything, I'll just be ready when it comes around." And then it comes up too fast on them and they're not ready. Not only is the race not enjoyable, but they kind of dread it. They don't have any good anticipation.