COACH CYNDEE

Tigger, Daisy and Spec's Christmas presents! I am so thankful for all the Christmas gifts my clients got me and my dogs. Yesterday one of my clients Jamie gave me these really great stuffed animals for my dogs. They were so cute, soft, and pretty that I didn't want to give them to my dogs. Especially Tigger ....he is part chow/lab and gets frenzied with stuffed toys. He is like a crazed beast getting the stuffing out. These were so cute I had a hard time giving it to them but I did! I kept telling Tigger to be nice. He went crazy! Daisy guarded the one that was a monkey. She kept it close by and growled when anyone came close! She acted like it was a steak but did not eat it just protected it! I have a video below of the spectacle! Don't mind the bike on the trainer in the living room! That is pretty normal I guess in a triathletes house. FYI - it is not always there it just happened to be there because I did a ride that day on my trainer and wanted to watch the Criminal ...

The best part of 2009 I able able to train people, and make a living doing it! When I decided to leave the corporate world and train people full time, I was very nervous! It was very hard at first in 2008. 2009 has been much better. I really do have a great time training and coaching people. Not many people can say that about their job. I am very thankful that I can do this! I have several clients that made really great strides over the past year. I have clients that are a lot of fun to train. I have clients that give me grief for the entire hour I train them. It is all really fun and a challenge. I talked about Annette one of my clients in one of my first blogs. Annette lost around 25lbs and looks amazing. She has not trained with me for a few months but is still maintaining the weight loss. Below is a picture of her before and after. She looks great! I just returned from the gym training several clients. Karla and Sandra both train with me and have become workout partners. They are a...

I had to add this picture of my dogs. I walk my dogs almost everyday. I tell my clients I don't consider walking them exercise it is just a bonus. I have a client that will tell me she exercised because she walks her baby in the stroller. I told her that is bonus and not exercise! I walk my dogs because they love it and because I owe it to them as their owner. The bigger one in the picture sitting up is the best running partner! She will easily do a 5-7 mile run with me and then walk with the others a few miles. My dogs are the greatest! If you have dogs, don't take them to the dog park and let them run around the park while you stand around. Why not take them for a walk and get the bonus (exercise) I get everyday! Dog parks seem great in theory but they are contributing to making the population FAT! I don't need the walk, I am not trying to lose weight but I still make time to do it. I train people who are very fit (triathletes and runners) and I also train people in the g...

Have you ever heard of a 23 mile marathon. Read on and you will hear about my version of one! December 6 th was the inaugural R&R Las Vegas Half and Full Marathon. I had a number of clients doing both distances and I was doing the Full. I will recap my day and then let you know how all my clients did! The morning was very cold in the 30's. This years course was new and actually went right in front of my housing complex on Hacienda. This proved to be a critical factor in my overall performance! I was getting a ride to the marathon because I only live about 3 miles from the start. I planned on taking a cab home after the race. My goal was to finish in a PR of 3:35. My best time in a marathon was 3:39. Even though I wanted to PR, I did not have as many long runs as I would have liked. I did have a ton of base from running a lot this year. I completed a 50-mile in August and another marathon in May. I knew the part of the course going from the strip to Durango was goi...

Next weekend is the Rock N Roll Vegas Marathon. I waited until today to finalize my registration. I must say this year has been a great year that included a lot of running! Even though I did not train exactly as I should have for the Vegas marathon I have a ton of mileage for the year under my belt. I did my first 50-mile run in August. You can read all about it in one of my first blog posts. I started the year training for Boston but ended up not doing it because of an injury and running the R&R Marathon in San Diego instead. 2011 will be my Boston year! I hope to finish the Vegas Marathon in 3:35 which is 4 minutes faster than my PR. Four minutes seems like nothing but it really would be amazing if I could pull it off. I plan to go see my friend Dr. Satterlee at Biomechanics of Las Vegas - www.biomechlv.com for some last minute tune ups! He does a thing called ART (Active Release Therapy) on me that is amazing. I have a few issues in my hip and it has been very benef...

If you are planning on doing Ironman St. George in May 2010 then read on............... Thursday 11/14/09, I left Vegas and drove to St. George Utah for the weekend. I am signed up to do Ironman St. George in May of next year. I am already thinking about how my training will be planned out for this race. When I saw they were having a weekend training camp, I couldn't pass it up. I arrived in the evening and met everyone that will be at the weekend camp. I am was not so excited to ride the course in the cold weather. I am a true wimp when it comes to cold weather. I would rather go for a 4 hour run then ride the course on Saturday. I do want to see the course so I will have to just buddle up! It will be so beneficial to ride on the course prior to racing it. I plan to come up here several times to ride this course before the actual event. It will be a huge advantage in this race. If anyone is interested in riding in Utah over the next 6 months then make sure you email me ( trai...

Today was the Silverman Triathlon in Las Vegas. Congratulations to all the finishers. It was a great race day and Frank Lowery always puts on an amazing race. Nancy Dickenson who is a client of mine and a trainer for Real Results Fitness had a great performance. She finished 8 th overall for females in something like 5:30 ish . The exact results are not in yet. Finally the end of the 2009 Triathlon season. Most of the races for 2009 are over and it is now time to take it easy for a few weeks if you don't have an upcoming event. If you recently just had your last race, take a few easy weeks. Then it is a great time to build your base. That means long slow training. It is also a great time to add another day of strength training into your program. Off season is the perfect time to try and put back the little muscle you may have lost during the triathlon season. As a coach one of the toughest things is getting through to people that less is better. That goes for training ...

Today I did the hardest workout in a long time and it wasn't even planned! Some of the best workouts catch me by surprise . I was finishing with a client expecting another client in about 30 minutes. So I told Michelle, the client I was with at the time, that I would do a little cardio with her. I said let's start by doing the revolving stair climber (most gyms have these big beasts) for one minute then run one lap. Then we would work our way up the ladder, 2 minutes, 2 laps, 3 minutes, 3 laps etc . The shorter intervals like 1 and 2 minute were at higher intensity. Michelle was done at 3 minutes and 3 laps. I kept going, and as it turned out my client ended up not coming. I didn't have another client till 9:30 so this gave me some time. I ended up working up to doing 9 minutes and 9 laps. The total for the workout was 45 minutes on the stair climber and 45 laps (about 8 miles). When I got to the longer intervals I had to slow the pace for both the run and Stai...

A few weeks back I wrote about the things people do in the gym that annoy me. I need to expand on that post and talk about things in life that people do that annoy me. I decided today that I am no longer going to just ignore the stupid things people do. I am actually going to say something. I just finished a run with my dogs. I was coming from a side street near Jones and Russell. As I was getting to Jones this small dog came running across the street from an open garage. There was a guy in the garage moving stuff around. The dog ran across the street and when it saw me and my dogs it ran back to the garage. I thought to myself, how stupid this guy is that he just lets his dog run in the street with no regard for its safety. It could get hit by a car or worse eaten by my dog Daisy! Daisy is not the friendliest dog! Thankfully the dog did not approach us. So I debated for a second before saying anything. Then I couldn't help myself. I said, "You should not let...

Yesterday was the Pumpkinman triathlon in Las Vegas. We had really great weather for race day. I debated until the day before the race if I was going to do the Half. I was feeling sick all week with cold like symptoms. Friday morning I woke up and felt amazing. I checked to see if I could sign up at packet pick up on Friday. When I found out I could I was off to sign up! I got my race number and paid my $200 and was ready to go. I brought the wrong shoes to leave in transition but it was not a huge mistake. They were not my number one choice of Zoot shoes to wear for the race. I forgot to grab the ones I wanted so I had to leave the shoes I had on. After I picked up my packet I had a few more clients to train so I went back to the gym. Around 4pm I started to develop a cough. I was a little concerned because it seemed to be getting worse. On my way home I stopped and got some night time and day time cough medicine. I was thinking I would take some before bed and in the mor...

The Pumpkinman race is finally here. It will be this weekend in Las Vegas. I am still on the fence about doing the Half distance. I think I should decide soon! Fortunatly, I train pretty hard year around so if I do it, I will manage. I knew all along I would decide at the last minute. It is not an A race so I am not so concerned about my performance. I want to do it as a training day. I have not done a half in a few years because I was more focused on the full distance. I thought I would see how I felt and make a decision at that point. My training is consistantly enough to do a half at any time. I wanted to give some tips for this weekends race. Some things to keep in mind this weekend if it is your first triathlon: Dont try out anything new on race day! No new shoes, clothes, food, ect. Don't eat a ton of food the night before. Stay with foods you would normally eat. You don't want eat a lot of food the night before for a sprint anyway! It really is not necessary...

I recently purchased a new Cervelo P3! I rode it for the first time last week and love it. I am now selling my old tri bike. I bought it in 2004 for $5,500. It is a Quintana Roo Tyhpoon . I am selling it for $1,900. It is a 56 cm bike. It is titanium and has durace components. It has profile design bars and real design wheels. If you are interested please email me at trainwithcyndee@yahoo.com . I also have a set of 202 Zipp wheels I am thinking about selling. Here is a picture of my old bike. This week we will do the track workout at the Rainbow LVAC on Wednesday at 6pm. Meet in the stretch area if you are interested in coming. Thursday we will do the mini tri workout at the Rainbow LVAC . If you are interested in doing this then we will start at 5:30pm on Thursday in the pool area. Bring shoes and towel to the pool to transition directly to the bike.

I get most of the information to write about in this blog from my clients. In the past week two clients have mentioned to me about all the bad food that people bring to the workplace. I personally have not had many office jobs. From what I hear I would not ever want to have one. Apparently people bring into the office all kinds of really bad food to eat. This not good, but what makes it worse is most of the time working in an office means sitting on your butt all day. The combination of the two equal only one thing = an overweight person. So if your office is like this then you need an office intervention. Someone needs to tell whoever brings in all the crap to stop doing it. Maybe it is multiple people bringing in crap. Then tell them all! Sitting at a desk and eating crap is not only horrible for your body but what about your brain. Lets face it office jobs require more work for you mind then body and believe it or not food affects your brain. If talking to your coworkers about bring...

Today was the Las Vegas Triathlon. There were several athletes that I coach that did great! I don't have the final numbers in but I want to congratulate Earl and Tracey for both completing their first triathlon. Denny, Adan and Toshie also finished the race and looked great at the end. Once again good job to everyone. It was a lot of fun being a spectator and cheering everyone on. While watching everyone I noticed a lot of things that you should NOT do in a triathlon. Some of these were done by my clients and some were random people I don't know. Getting to the race on time, leaving yourself plenty of time to get settled BUT not getting there too early. Some of you know Denny (he is a Real Results Trainer). He is also a really great triathlete. I think he was like 6 or 7 th overall today. He had to be the first person setting up in transition this morning. He must have gotten there like at 5am (too early). Earl on the other hand, the client I mentioned that finished his fi...

I have mentioned before, that I do personal training and triathlon coaching. It is so much fun to see someone complete their first Triathlon, Ironman , or Marathon. All of these are huge accomplishments . The average person couldn't even think about running 26.2 miles or better yet, running that far after a 112 mile bike ride AND 2.4 mile swim. As amazing as that may seem, I see even more amazing things everyday when I train people in the gym. Let me expand on this statement. Last week I had three pretty amazing things that I witnessed at the gym. The first was when a client came in and said she was below 150lbs for the first time in a very long time. This was a big deal for her and I was extremely happy for her. She feels and looks amazing. The second great thing that happened last week, happened to a client of mine named Andrea. She has lost a considerable amount of weight (before I started training her so I can't take credit for that). She was overweight most of ...

I just wanted to take a quick moment to wish everyone luck this weekend at the Mountain Man Event at Lake Mead! I swam with Earl and Tracey today and they felt like Michael Phelps in their wetsuit! This week is Interbike in Las Vegas so I am lucky to be able to go look at all the new stuff! There is a cyclocross event at Dessert Breeze Park Wednesday night so we will not have a scheduled track workout. If you are free I would encourage you to come to the cyclocross event. I heard last year it was pretty cool to watch . I will post a track workout here and if anyone wants to complete it on their own they can. We will do the hill repeat workout next Wednesday! We will still do the mini triathlon in the gym on Thursday night. It was a lot of fun last weekend so I encourage everyone who works out at LVAC Rainbow to come (well not everyone because that would be too many, but you know what I mean). If you are doing the race this weekend we will have a short version and you can us...

I want to talk about a few things that really bug me! I guess you could call it gym etiquette. I am a trainer at LVAC ( Las Vegas Athletic Club) as well as a triathlon coach. It amazes me every day how rude, inconsiderate and just plain stupid people are in the gym. I am going to list some things that you should NOT do at the gym. These are basic things that I would think most people know, but let me tell you everyday, I see idiots doing these things. Lift weights right in front of the dumbbell rack. People do this all the time. Then, when I need to get a dumbbell they look at me like I am bothering them. STEP BACK ABOUT 6 STEPS! Remove your weight from machines after using them. I am amazed that some guys put 100's of pounds on leg press and other machines and then walk away from the machine without taking the weight off. If you put 10 lb's or 500 lb's on a machine, take it off when your done! Carry a towel and wipe off your sweat from machines. Come on, this is real...

Today was a tough workout. I did a 50 mile ride that included the Red Rock loop (which is pretty hilly) and then had to teach spin class. I took way too much time off the bike this last year and I am trying hard to get my endurance back. The bike is my strength of the three events in the triathlon and I am usually strong on hills. A good bike fit is so important. I really need to go and get fit on both my bikes again. I have sent several of my clients to the Bicycle Ranch in Scottsdale AZ. They are the BEST when it comes to getting a good fit. They will give you good recommendations for the right type of bike for your body. There website is http://www.bicycleranch.com/ . I had a client that purchased a Cervelo P2 and went to the Bicycle Ranch to get fit. This client is very tall and his bike was a 61 (I think). When he got there the guy working named Chris, told him he had the wrong bike for him to properly fit. In fact it was impossible to fit him right on this bike. He could do a ...