In coordination with Lowery's Multisport Races and the city of Henderson, six-time Ironman World Champion Dave Scott hosted a training camp June 9-11 at the Henderson Multigenerational Center for 30 of the heartiest souls in the Las Vegas Valley.
Although all of the campers had already participated in a triathlon, the attendees jumped at the opportunity to learn some of the little things from Scott, renowned as the most recognized athlete and coach in the sport.
Like budding young scientists listening to Albert Einstein, the campers, ranging in age from 13 to 60, listened intently as the 52-year-old Scott talked about all the elements that can end up making a big difference in a triathlon, such as calorie deficits, bike seat angles, heart-rate monitoring, hand, feet and head positions on the bike and most importantly, mental strategy.
After a morning run and a discussion on the swimming leg of the triathlon, which focused on technique and interval sets, the campers sat down to a healthy lunch with Scott, who addressed the importance of dietary intake and when food is consumed.
"Nutrition's big," said Scott, who talked to the campers about replacing calories after working out to give the body what it needs to help repair itself. "But there's a lot of misinformation on nutrition. You've got to know what you're putting into your tank while you're exercising."
Scott said there's a good reason why triathletes have little extra body fat.
"Carrying too much weight is simply a deterrent for performance," he said, citing a study that indicates 70 percent of calories in the U.S. are taken in after 7 p.m. "You just can't run fast being heavy."
Next up for the participants was a lesson on bike fitting, another element where the smallest change can end up making a big difference for the triathlete.
"Move it (the bike seat) incrementally a tiny bit and it makes a big difference," Scott told the campers as he used a centimeter tape measure to check out one camper's pedal strokes. "A couple of degrees can make a world of a difference."
Scott stressed that the seat angle, location and other small variables can make the ride on the bike a choppy proposition or give it a machine-like flow.
"You want the glutes (gluteus maximus muscle) to be the primary driver of pushing that bike forward," he said.
Scott, who grew up in Davis, Calif., where he was a star water polo player for Davis High School and the University of California, Davis, said many triathletes reach a performance plateau and then level off. He said trying to perfect the timing of workouts, and gauging and setting specific goals of one's progress are keys to improvement.
"I think a lot of them ending up doing sessions that are sort of on a whim," Scott said. "They follow a groove. 'Oh that was kind of hard, I think I'll do that again.' And over two or three years, they improve because they've never done it before.
"But a lot of the people in here have done half-Ironman and Ironman races and are pretty experienced. So it's about integrating key sessions at key times of the year so that they can kind of mark their progress."
Scott, who is married, has three children and lives in Boulder, Colo., said the psychological aspect of a triathlon can be just as hard, if not more challenging, than the physical part of the race. He said many participants fail to think and relax enough during the endurance event.
"A lot of them have a tendency to kind of dwell on what hurts right at the moment, and in a race, that sort of overcomes their feeling. 'I can override this, it's just a little blip,' " Scott said. "Everyone always asks me, 'How do you handle the pain?' It's not pain. Pain is when you're out of shape. It's discomfort. How do you handle the different barometers of discomfort? You ratchet up that discomfort to a certain level and say 'Alright, I can tolerate this, I can handle this.'
"But if you sort of give yourself that physical inventory and you relax your arms, and relax your legs and relax your stomach and start thinking about your breathing, that has a calming effect. But in a race, people just throw that out the window. They get one little blip and it hurts and they think, 'I can't do this.' "
Among the participants in the camp, which costs $285 to attend, was 49-year-old Gary Shreave, a veteran of seven triathlons.
Shreave said the chance to train with someone like Scott was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.
"It's kind of awe-inspiring, actually," Shreave said. "That's one of the big reasons that I decided to do it is I saw the advertisement saying 'Dave Scott, The Man, six-time Ironman champion.' That was a big incentive."
Shreave thought the detail and the amount of information provided by Scott was invaluable.
"It's almost been overwhelming," he said. "He's been giving us so much information. It's been great."
The guy responsible for bringing Scott, the first inductee into the Ironman Hall of Fame, to Las Vegas is Frank Lowery, the creator of Lowery's Multi-Sport races and last year's inaugural Silverman triathlon.
"I think it's fantastic," Lowery said. "There is no other person better suited to host a triathlon training camp than Dave Scott."
Scott earned his nickname "The Man" when in 1993, he came out of retirement at the age of 40 and finished second in the Ironman -- the Super Bowl of triathlons held annually in Hawaii -- against a field of professional athletes mostly in their 20s, some five years after participating in his last triathlon.
Lowery, who has been involved in triathlons for 22 years, said he could have sold the camp out many times over.
"We sold this camp out in less than two days and all I did was kind of spread the word through e-mail," Lowery said. "And within two days, everything was gone."
Lowery said several attendees already signed up to help train for the second Silverman, slated for Nov. 12.
"There's quite a large percentage already," he said. "There are about six to eight participants already signed up that are in this group that really came in here specifically to talk to Dave about the Ironman training and get that kind of knowledge."
Scott, who deemed the Silverman course as "the toughest in America," said that despite the hills and heat that the participants in the local triathlon have to endure, it's still not as bad as trying to compete on a course with high humidity.
"Your conditions are severe here and the heat index is extraordinarily high so people try to get acclimated to it," Scott said. "However, the conditions here, as hot as Las Vegas is, are not as oppressive as the deep South, where the humidity is 90 percent. When I go to Shreveport, La., and we run out there, you wring out your shoes."
Anyone interested in testing their mettle in the Silverman, which will feature a 2.4-mile swim in Lake Mead, a 112-mile bike ride that includes more than 9,700 feet of climbing and a 26.2-mile run, can sign up at www.silvermannv.com. The Las Vegas Triathlon Club's Web site is located at www.sntriclub.com.
Lowery also offers triathlon training for children and has information for interested parents at his Lowery's Multisport Web site, www.lowerysmultisport.com. The next event on tap for youngsters is the Splash and Dash No. 2, a 300-yard swim, 2-mile run and 500-yard swim set for July 8. Lowery's Splash and Dash No. 3 is slated for Aug. 5, with Splash and Dash No. 4 scheduled for Sept. 9.
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