Joe Friel’s Blog

“Training is principally an act of faith.” –Franz Stampfl For serious athletes, the purpose of training is to improve performance relative to a specific event – an A-priority race. Throughout the Base … [Read more...] about That Which Is Measured Improves

I spoke at a cycling camp offered by Aspen Sports Performance this past weekend in Moab, Utah. The riding was spectacular and the athletes were all quite impressive, especially given that it was the … [Read more...] about Seriously?

I’m often asked where I’ll be doing clinics and camps. Here’s my current schedule for the next few months. Some are subject to change. Click on the event link to find more details. Moab, Utah - Nov … [Read more...] about My Clinics, Camps, and Talks

Question Hi, I thought I would contact you via email since you are unable to answer on your blog page. I have a couple questions and am hoping you can help me with your expertise. I have to share I … [Read more...] about How Can I Do a Faster Ironman?

Question Hello Joe, I am a 58 year old male cyclist and recently took part in a Vo2 max testing, my question is how reliable are these test? My question to you is, does the test differ from type of … [Read more...] about Question: Is Testing Reliable?

I've got a new book out – The Power Meter Handbook. I wrote it this past spring and it just hit the shelves. Here is a sample from it. This is Chapter 3 along with the Table of Contents and the … [Read more...] about A Sample from My Newest Book

The readers of this blog always manage to get to the heart of the issue. I received this question by email a few days ago. It’s a good one which many aging athletes ponder, I'm sure. The … [Read more...] about The Aging Athlete – The Key Question

For the last 30-some years of the 68 I've been on the planet my training has been pretty consistent. There have been the usual breaks of a week or two due to illness or other normal lifestyle … [Read more...] about The Aging Athlete – More About Me

(The following first appeared in my interview with Performance Conditioning for Cycling Newsletter.) Old athletes are old for many diverse reasons. But the primary one is due to their relatively slow … [Read more...] about The Aging Athlete – Getting Older, Getting Faster

Defining the “aging athlete” is difficult, especially in the conventional way with a number representing age. But more importantly, this is a highly personal matter--when am I going to be an old … [Read more...] about The Aging Athlete – My First 68 Years

I was recently asked how it is that athletes can drag themselves through unrelenting physical and mental suffering in events such as the mountain stages in the Tour de France. This topic came up when … [Read more...] about Mental Toughness

In my last blog post I offered the observation that all of the experienced triathletes I've coached over the years typically had lower cadences in Ironman-distance than in Olympic-distance … [Read more...] about Research on Bike Cadence and Run Pace in Triathlon

The two accompanying charts are the cadence distributions for a pro triathlete I once coached (click to enlarge). As labelled, one is from an Ironman and the other from an Olympic-distance race. … [Read more...] about Bike Cadence and Triathlon Race Distance

The Tour de France is just starting. I’m often asked how hard this race is. One way to answer that question is by examining the workload (intensity, duration, and frequency) of the riders. Heart rate … [Read more...] about How Hard Is the Tour de France?

My recent post on altitude resulted in several questions. The common theme of many of these questions had to do with how to prepare for a race at high altitude when you live at a low altitude. There … [Read more...] about Misconceptions About Altitude

A while back I was asked in an interview for a magazine about how to prepare for an event at a high altitude if the athlete is from a much lower location. Good question. I experience this myself every … [Read more...] about Questions About Altitude. Answer: It hurts!

As you have more than likely figured out by now, I’m quite focused on recovery this past few days. My last three posts have been on this topic. It’s the one area that I have found athletes understand … [Read more...] about More on Recovery on Demand

In the last few days I posted a couple of tweets about the recovery week and got some good questions back. One of them was about how a recovery week should be designed. I'll get to that shortly, … [Read more...] about Recovery Week Design

It's that time of year when the risk of overtraining increases for many athletes due to the warmer weather and the rapidly approaching race season. This is not something to be taken lightly. … [Read more...] about Recovery and Overtraining

I recently answered this question for a German magazine. It's an issue that is seldom discussed and often taken for granted--recovery. Question: Why are recovery days so essential? What happens to … [Read more...] about Why Recovery Days?

On Sunday I returned from two weeks in Italy. The first week was a vacation and in the second I put on a training camp in Riccione on the Adriatic coast.  During the first week temperatures were … [Read more...] about Training and Racing in the Heat

I've recently revised my book, Your First Triathlon. The Intro and Chapter 1 are available here for you to read. Just click on the link. It's one of the book projects I mentioned below which … [Read more...] about Chapter 1 from Your First Triathlon

I've gotten a lot of emails asking if there's something wrong. It's been a long time since my last post. No, I'm not dead. Nor have I stopped blogging. I've been as busy as … [Read more...] about I’m still around