10 Performance Tips from Chrissie Wellington

There's a great article over on Active.com that has 10 performance tips from Chrissie Wellington. I wonder if they wrote this before or after she pulled out of Kona this year. They may have to add on one more tip, #11 - Stay healthy and try not to get the flu before your major A-race of the year! :P Kidding of course, I love Chrissie and was disappointed that she was unable to defend her title this year.

Here are my favorite tips from her list:

Performance tip #1: Passion gets you further than gear.
"You've really got to be passionate and enjoy the sport and never lose sight of that. Amateurs sometimes get caught up in the minutia. You've got to have the latest bike and this, that and the other thing. You have to keep the love for the sport in mind."

Amen to this, too many people get caught up in the latest gear and forget what got them interested in triathlon in the first place.

Performance tip #2: More isn't always better.
"There's always a tendency to think that more is better, especially with regard to Ironman training. People think, 'I have my log book and I have to be a slave to it and log as many hours as I can.' Whereas for me, people are always surprised that I don't do as much volume as they think. Don't get me wrong; I work incredibly hard. But always err on the side of quality rather than quantity."

Quality over quantity, that's my motto.

Performance tip #8: Develop a deep understanding of your own body.
"People say how do you know how fast to go? I've trained at that pace I know I can sustain for X number of hours. Whether you train with a power tap or heart rate monitor or another device, that's all well and good, but you need to be able to control your own effort and your own intensity and internalize that race pace so when you get onto the course you know what pace you can sustain. When everything's hurting 30K into the marathon, no heart rate monitor is going to help you."

Knowing how hard and how long you can go is key to race success.

You can read the full article over on Active.com.