Getting There Faster

Local coaches share their top speed workouts.

Cycling

Mentor Scott Flanders, Flanders - MBRC

Rotating the lead person: Start by riding at a comfortable pace to warm up. Have riders line up behind one another, rotating the lead person. As the person comes from the back position, they have to go hard to get to the front and then draft for the rest of the group.

Triathlon

Coach Derek Lindstrom, Beyond Performance

Improve your times in the triathlon by practicing you transition from one leg of the race to the next.

T1: Remove wetsuit and goggles, put on helmet and shades and go. This is all you have to do if your shoes are on your bike. If not, shoes or shoes/socks will add time.

T2:  After a dismount, with your cycling shoes attached to your bike, run with your bike, helmet off, run shoes and race belt on.   

Practice these tasks until you feel confident and smooth through your transition.

Running

Coach Barb Leininger, Club Run

Favorite speed workout for a marathon: Yasso 800s. Take your marathon goal time and convert it to minutes and seconds. For example, if you are training to run a marathon in 3 hours and 30 minutes, you should be able to run an 800 in 3 minutes and 30 seconds. This is a little slower than 5K pace. For stronger runners, use your 5K pace. Start with five 800s and work up to ten, doing the workout every other week.

Swimming

Coach David Cameron, MN Tri Masters

Broken swim: Pick the distance you want to race and break it into four pieces. Swim them hard. Then add up the four times. The resulting time is the time you should shoot for at the end of the season when swimming the entire distance at once. The more you can simulate races, the better. Use blocks, times, and regular starts.

Rasa Troup, Runner

Olympic-bound Rasa (Michniovaite) Troup, doesn’t think of herself as fast, yet watch her fly over the hurdles in the 3000m steeplechase and her lighting-fast feet prove otherwise. 

The Lithuania native, who lives in Minneapolis with her husband and one-year-old daughter, will compete in the Beijing Olympics wearing the colors of her homeland.  In June, she ran the Olympic A Standard in the 3000m steeplechase.

Troup, who started the 2008 season off by winning the Human Race 8K in St. Paul, likes to reserve the word “fast” for sprinters. “I do not consider myself fast. I do not have the blazing speed of a sprinter.  In my event, I need to be able to maintain pace for nine to ten minutes.  Thus, I am far away from speedy,” she says.

Even so, her talent on the track was noticed at an early age.  She started competing at 11.  Troup’s mom (an athlete herself) coached her in high school.  Since both of her parents are former athletes and physical education teachers, Troup says being active was a family affair while growing up.  In 1998, she was recruited by the University of Minnesota.  Her accomplishments include winning the Roy Griak Invitational and earning all-American honors in 1998. 

Troup likes pushing herself to see how fast she can go.  “I like that feeling at the end of the race that I left everything on the track,” she says.  “I am also curious about exploring how fast my body can go.”

To build speed, Troup puts in 2-4 hard workouts a week and a long run mixed in with easy days.  Her favorite speed session is 60-100 meter sprints up a hill, which gives her enough speed to maintain a strong effort during her event.  Besides her running workouts, Troup also does core body exercises three times a week using a balance ball to help her get faster.

Unlike many athletes of her caliber, Troup has to work her training goals around a career and a family.  She is a dietitian for the University of Minnesota Women’s Track and Field and Cross Country teams and a clinical dietitian for Methodist Hospital. 

Teresa Moriarty, Cyclist

Reaching top speeds of 40 miles per hour, Teresa Moriarty is one of the fastest things you’ll see on two wheels in the Twin Cities. No motor necessary, just pure human power.

Perhaps it was her experience as an elementary school teacher or her 20-mile commute to and from work each day that primed her for cycling success. Ten years ago she made the jump from simply commuting on her bike, to also racing.

 In 1999, she entered her first competitive race, finishing impressively in second place. That’s when she caught the bug and found she had a real need for speed. Now, Moriarty can’t get enough of cycling. She continues to commute 40 miles each day, getting in training time during the school year despite icy roads and sub-zero temperatures in the winter.

In addition to being named Minnesota Women’s Rider of the Year five times, she has also won Minnesota state championships in road, time trials, and criteriums. At the national level she won a silver in the women’s criterium. She continues to roll, ride, and climb up through the ranks of the cycling world as part of the Flanders-MBRC Elite Team.

As for Moriarty’s favorite speed workouts, she likes to “use mother nature” by riding into the wind. She explains that by remaining in higher gears, this workout “builds muscle strength and trains the body to hunker down in an aero position over a long period of time.” She generally does this windy ride for one to two hours, stopping half way through and heading home with the wind on her side.

What is so thrilling about going fast? Moriarty says, “It’s an adrenaline rush. It’s very freeing and exciting. It’s a fine balancing act.” Judging by her mounting success in the saddle, she’s established equilibrium.