Check out our inventory of races in the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and buy your scorecard today. If your favorite race isn’t there yet, just review our calendar and request your event to help us prioritize our efforts.

We look forward to enabling your success in the 2011 season. Stay with us as we work with race directors to improve the quality of your post-race results. If you are a race director in the US Northeast or Mid-Atlantic interested in improving your athlete’s experience, please contact us for more information.

We have a very simple business model which makes our value proposition a ‘no-brainer’ at no cost to the event organizer:

• We give you the material for you to promote the performance scorecard online (web, e-mail, etc.) direct to your registrants.
• You provide us with the results soon after the race completes.
• We transform those results into a Performance Scorecard for each finisher.
• The athletes pay to access their scorecard ($9.95 retail value), and then can share this with their friends and pour over their performance metrics for weeks-on-end

We offer different bundles/promotional discounts on the Performance Scorecard for events that meet certain critera.

If you are interested in entering into a partnership with Fitness Intelligence to bring the Performance Scorecard to your event, please submit your race information and we will contact you with next steps.

We learned heaps from our debut race at the 10th anniversary of the NYC Triathlon.  In particular, the enthusiasm expressed by our customers on Facebook and Twitter helped solidfy our resolve.  Our team plans to ’go long’ and sign on many, many, many new races in the 2011 season.  If you’re interested, we’d love your help!  Just contact the director of your favorite race and suggest he/she submit the race results to our analysis engine and we’ll make your detailed performance scorecards available to you.

If you haven’t yet, please ‘Like’ Fitness Intelligence on Facebook so you can stay tuned as we announce forthcoming races and product enhancements.  We want to help you with the tedious analytics stuff so you can focus your efforts and precious time on performance improvement.

Also, we’d like to thank the race organizers John Korff and Hunter Manchack for their partnership, professionalism, and trust as we launched our venture on the 10th anniversary of the Nautica NYC Triathlon.  The race was an fantastic experience and you are masters of your art.

Finally we want to extend our deep appreciation for the wisdom and guidance offered by the coaches at R2R who authored the performance tips to help our athletes discover ways to grow stronger and faster at this sport.  This has been a very popular component of the insights we offered to finishing athletes and we look forward to enhancing this feature as we mature.

All the best with your future races, we hope to see you there.

We are now VERY busy generating your 2010 scorecards.  If you haven’t yet done so, register for your scorecard at www.mytriscore.com.  Performance Scorecard registration is included within your race registration fee for all 2010 NYC Triathlon finishers.  If you have already registered, you can expect to receive an e-mail shortly with details on how to access your personalized scorecard.  We hope you will be delighted and we welcome any and all feedback so we can keep improving our product.

…and best wishes for the remainder of your 2010 triathlon season!

Mary DeLaney, PT

Triathlon cycling is basically time trial cycling, with the exception of that little run at the end. Reasons for a weak bike leg in triathlon are diverse.   What follows is in rough order of importance:

• There is no substitute for seat time on your bike. To improve your speed and endurance, you must ride hills, or do intervals or both. Also, if you are serious, you should do strength workouts for your legs and buttocks.
• Many athletes need to work on flexibility and possibly change their bike position to allow them to spend at least 95% of the average triathlon bike leg in their aero bars. The trend in recent years has been toward more aggressive positions, with progressive lowering of aero bars and arm rests below the seat level. A very aggressive position and the most aerodynamic bike in the world is of no use if you can’t spend a significant portion of your ride in your bars.  Most of the limitation to your bike speed is air resistance and 80%+ of air resistance is due to the rider, not the bike. So stretch out your hamstrings, do your core exercises, and change out your stem if you must, to a 45° riser stem so you can stay in the aero bars.  This is easily worth 3-5 minutes off a 40 km bike leg.
• Get a bike computer with cadence and if you are not already keeping cadence between 90 and 100 RPMS, work on that. Most of us have a natural cycling cadence in the 70s.  Raising your cadence will increase your heart rate, but you will eventually be faster. Also, higher cycling cadences allow a faster first 5 km run off the bike!
• Cycling with a group or friends that are faster than you will help you train harder, and get faster on the race course. Just remember that you will likely be racing in non-drafting races, so spend time in any group ride feeling the wind.  Take your turn pulling.
• Since most of the wind resistance is due to the cyclist, get an aero helmet if you can sustain 18 or more mph. That alone is worth another 30 seconds to a minute over 40 km.
• If you are overweight, lose it. Weight means little until the road turns up. Then even 3-5 pounds can make a difference.  Hill climbing ability is clearly related to weight and your power-to-weight ratio. And you will also run faster.
• Do our favorite speed workout, named by pro Chris “Macca” McCormack.  “Maccas” are guaranteed to improve your speed. Find a track. Take bike, trainer, heart rate monitor, mat, several bottles of fluid, bike and run shoes. Set up the trainer and bike in a convenient corner of the track, such as the 100 meter start. Each set consists of 8 minutes on the bike, leap off, practice your T2, jump into your run shoes, then run 4 laps. A typical workout is one set slow to warm up. Then cycle at 90+% of your max HR and transition to a run as quickly as possible, then run 4 laps at the fastest pace you can sustain well into the 4^th lap. Then repeat. At the end, do another set slow to cool down.Two hard sets will be plenty for most of us to start. Six hard sets will put many flat on their backs by the end. This workout should not be attempted until you have trained consistently for a year. Any sooner than that and your risk of injury is high.  In each micro cycle, we advise this as a once weekly workout once “Build” cycles start 
• Find a clear road or trail close to home with no interruptions for about 8-10 miles. Keep records, and test yourself once every 6 weeks or so over this course. The objective is to cycle at the highest speed (highest heart rate) that you can sustain through the last several miles. The time to cover this course will serve as a marker of your fitness. Even after a year or so of consistent training, most triathletes simply do not know how hard they can ride and still come off and put in a good run.  Expect some heart rate creep over the last several miles. Your Olympic triathlon bike heart rate goal will then be 2-4 BPM less than your average HR over the last 5-6 miles of this repeat time trial course, so reset your HRM at about mile 3 into the ride to get this number.
• Use “over-distance” cycling training. For example, cycle up to 3 hours,30 minutes if you are training for Olympic distance racing. You will also want to do “Bricks” up to about 2 hours 30 minutes on the bike, followed closely by a 30 minute run.

For further information contact us at: coaches@rehabtoracing.com

Mary DeLaney, PT

Transitions are the fourth sport in triathlon. Training for them is often omitted early in a triathlete’s progression from beginner to experienced triathlete. Transition training is also one way to take several minutes off your time almost free. In general order of importance the following will lead you to pro style transitions:

1. IF your T1 is less than 1:30 (wetsuit swim) or less than 1:00 for a non-wetsuit swim and your T2 is less than 45 seconds, then your room for improvement here is marginal. Take these numbers into consideration only in light of the distances involved in T1 and T2. If there are long runs in either place, then your times will be longer.
2. When you exit the water, strip off your cap and goggles while still running out of the water. (Of course, you swam hard until your finger tips touched the bottom 2-3 times before standing up. Right?) Then when your feet hit the ground, keep your eyes ahead on your path to T1 and begin to strip the top off your wet suit down to the waist. Occasionally, there will be volunteer “wetsuit strippers” near the water exit. Observe their procedure briefly, get your arms out of your suit, and take advantage of the service. Usually you must simply lie down and lift your legs into the air. They grab your suit at your waist and bingo, you are free in 5 seconds. Jump to your feet, grab your suit. Remember to say “thanks!” Off to the bike racks.
3. Run to your bike rack, do not walk. If you have tender feet, or if the surface is rough, then you will need semi-disposable shoes or flip-flops that can be pre-positioned near the barriers on either side of the water exit.
4. Prior to the race, you must rehearse your path from water exit to your bike rack several times. Concentrate on this task, count the number of racks and turns to your bike. Take note of any landmarks (a tree or lamp post) that will help you identify your rack.   Memorize the pathway looking forward and backward. 
5. Sometimes you will see others marking their rack with a balloon or ribbon. According to the rules, however, this is taking an action giving one competitor an advantage over other competitors, and is forbidden. Beware if you see this, that an official may remove the landmark before you return and you could be penalized.  It is best to stay honest, and memorize the route to your bike.
6. This is the most important recommendation other than the need to practice transitions before racing. ALWAYS set your transition site up the same way!  As you go to various races, especially very large or important ones like a national championship, you may well find that the space allotted to you seems to get much smaller than in small local races.So, you must develop a very compact method of laying your gear out that takes up no more than about 2 sq ft. A real aid is to have a mat for your gear.  We recommend a piece of outdoor rug runner available at major home improvement stores. This should be about 3-5’ long. It can be tightly rolled, tied with a strap and then carried with your tri bag from your car to transition. Place this pad so it is under your rear bike wheel, and projects into the path between racks about 2 ft behind your bike. The mat should be on the side from which you will mount the bike as you face the rack.Put your run stuff farthest toward the rack, hat on top (bottom side up), shoes opened ready to don on the bottom, number belt, bottle belt or anything you are going to carry on the bottom. Next in order is your helmet upside down, straps to the outside, glasses resting inside the helmet. On the bottom are the bike shoes, powdered, straps loosened, (coffee covers on the cleats if the transition area is muddy.)  Unless you have practiced the maneuver over and over, do not have your shoes clipped into the pedals and plan to get into the shoes while on the bike.  The same advice applies to the bike dismount.
7. As you approach your bike from the swim, fold your wet suit (if it was stripped) stuff goggles and cap inside, and upon reaching your bike, dump the suit toward the rack so that it is directly under the rack and out of the way.  If you still have your wet suit on up to your waist, then grab it with both hands stripping it in one motion all the way down till your hands touch the ground. Stand, grab your bike seat for support, and step quickly on first one pile of wetsuit near one ankle, pull up with the other foot, repeat on the other side. Always lubricate your leg with a non-petroleum lube like Body Glide, to make this easier. PAM and similar products will destroy your wetsuit in as little as a year or so.
8. Put your sunglasses on, helmet on, BUCKLE UP. Then scuff one barefoot at a time on the pad to remove most dirt and grass, pull on one shoe, then the other, tightening straps as you go. Lift your bike off the rack, head up!  Always look when you intend to go, then RUN for the bike exit (which you have rehearsed 2-3 times, right?)
9. Run to the bike exit.  As you advance in experience, you may want to pre-attach your bike shoes to the cleats, string a rubber band from each to the back axle to keep the shoes of the ground, then simply run barefoot to the bike mounting line, leap onto your bike, put your feet on top of your shoes, then pedal away to a less crowded part of the road, and get into one shoe at a time while still riding. This process requires a lot of practice, and very advanced bike handling skills. It is a lot harder than it looks. Until you have practiced this maneuver at least 50 times by yourself, put your bike shoes on at the rack and run your bike to the bike mounting line. Always run at least 5-10 yd past the bike mount line and to the side of the road to mount your bike.
10. Upon returning and sighting the bike dismount line for T2, you should spin up your cadence, and loosen up your legs.   Then either uncleat on one side, swing your preferred leg over the back of the seat and coast to a stop standing on the other pedal. With practice, you can now literally take the step forward, uncleating the remaining shoe and transition in 1-2 steps into a run back to your bike rack position guiding your bike with a hand upon the stem. (Again, you have rehearsed this path also 2-3 time pre-race, right?)  Or, you can simply stop, uncleat both shoes and get off the bike.  Then run to your rack.
11. Upon reaching your rack position, rack your bike. Then remove one bike shoe, and the other, toss them toward the wet suit, and remove your helmet placing it under the bike. Pull on your shoes. This assumes you’ve invested in lace locks (see tip 13), or some other easy lace system, so you don’t have to tie your shoes.
    Grab your number/bottle belt and hat as you stand to run toward the exit, keep your head up, and always look where you intend to go. Sprint to the run exit, while putting on your belt and hat (if your number belt wasn’t already on for the bike).
12. Make eye contact with staff and volunteers at the run exit, and call out your number to anyone with a quizzical look on their face. Be sure to run over the mat if you are wearing a chip.  Thank the volunteers!
13. Get elastic laces but avoid getting them too tight. Tying your shoes takes about twice as long as pulling them on with elastic laces. Always powder your shoes with talcum powder as it makes them easier to slide on if you are not wearing socks.
14. Toughen up your feet. With practice, and time, most triathletes can at least race Olympic, and many ½ IM distances with no socks and no blisters. We lose our socks when the snow melts, always train without socks, and are compulsive about shoe lube with Glide and talcum powder. Paint any spot that ever got sore on your feet with tincture of iodine nightly to toughen them up. Successfully transitioning to no socks will save 15-45 sec in T1.
15. Practice transitions! You can do this in your drive way, or in an empty parking lot with friends. Time, take video, and critique each other. It can be a lot of fun! 
16. If the air temperature is above about 65°F, don’t waste time toweling off, you will warm up within 10 minutes of starting to bike. Below 65°, many smaller competitors will become hypothermic without, at least, arm warmers or a long sleeved top. Tops require drying off, as otherwise pull-over types are almost impossible to put on.
17. If the swim is in salt water, take an old water bottle full of fresh water to transition in your pre-race kit. You will want to pour this over you as a first step upon reaching your bike in T1. The salt from an ocean swim will dramatically increase chaffing as it dries. The 5 second pour of fresh water is well worth the time. Check things out pre-race. This problem is well recognized, and many salt water swim races will have a fresh water spray wash near the swim exit.

IGNORE most of the above IF you are doing an IM distance race. You will want to change into dry bike clothes, and possibly change again to run-specific clothes prior to the marathon. You will need to wear socks to run the marathon.  You may want to put dry socks in your “Special Needs Bag.”

For further information contact us at: coaches@rehabtoracing.com