2011 Goggle Review

Zoggs Predator Flex, $34.99

Nosepiece
The Predator Flex boasts the best nosepiece we have tried this year. It is a flexible rubber bridge with a hard plastic support in the middle. The soft rubber allows the lenses to move independently in any direction, which helps them conform to the wearer’s face and creates a reliable seal. Several nosepieces offer this degree of malleability, but the hard plastic piece gives the Predator Flex both strength and flexibility while preventing it from stretching out after dozens of trips to the pool.
Seal
The gaskets sit on the outer portion of the eye socket, which relieves pressure on the face and keeps it comfortable into the second hour in the pool. This gasket wasn’t the softest in the test, but it stands up to repeated use and the free-moving lenses help the gaskets form a strong seal.
View
The dark mirrored lenses provide good sun protection during an early morning race, but they don’t completely block out glare and they are still light enough to use in a pool. The lenses wrap far around the side of the head and allow for full peripheral vision.

Aqua Sphere Kaiman, $19.95

Fit
The Kaiman has a soft, non-adjustable nosepiece that twists and bends to lay the gaskets flush against the face. The stretchy material allows the lenses to pull far apart from each other, so the Kaiman is best suited for a swimmer with a wider gap between the eyes. Aqua Sphere also offers the Kaiman Small Fit for those with narrow faces.
Seal
The Kaiman’s supple lenses and frame let the goggles wrap around the outside of the face and create an incredible seal at all points. The gaskets themselves are equally malleable, which again strengthens the connection between the goggle and the swimmer’s face. The soft nose bridge stretches slightly over time, which eventually affects the seal next to the nose.
Value
The Kaiman’s soft and supple rubber doesn’t last forever, but a fresh pair swims better than goggles twice its price. They are the most comfortable goggles we tested for this review.

Tyr Nest Pro, $20

Fit
The Nest Pro offers swimmers a comfortable fit, with a tight nosepiece that stretches for those who need more room. The straps are easy to adjust and the goggles don’t have to be worn too tightly to prevent leaks, allowing you to get out of the pool without noticeable goggle lines around your eyes.
View
The Nest Pro has a wider lens than traditional goggles, allowing for greater peripheral vision and making them handy for open-water swimming. Because there is a lot of goggle in between each lens, your direct line of sight is a bit impaired, making the black line at the bottom of the pool fuzzier than normal. The lenses are UV protected and have anti-fog properties, as well.
Value
If you’re looking for a pair of goggles to aid in open-water swimming, the Nest Pro’s comfort, tight seal and gift of greater peripheral vision make it a bargain at $20. But if you’re looking for a pair to drag with you to the pool every day, you’d probably be better off with a more traditional style.

Blueseventy Hydra-Vision, $22

Fit
The Hydra-Vision is a soft, supple goggle with a tight seal. Like most goggles built for open-water swimming, its nosepiece is nonadjustable, which means that if you have a wider nose, the goggles might not fit correctly. Given this, it’s best to try them on before purchasing.
View
Compared to traditional goggles, the Hydra-Visions provide swimmers with increased peripheral view, which is great for open-water swimming. They are also effective in the pool, as the sleekly designed nosepiece provides swimmers with an unimpeded direct line of sight. The tinted lenses also help reduce the sun’s glare.
Value
While the Hydra-Vision goggles were the most stylish in this review, at $22, we found them a little on the expensive side.

10 Commandments of Endurance Training

By Vic Brown

1. Rest and recover.

Include rest days in your training plan by taking a complete break from training both physically and mentally. Get off your feet, rest your mind, rest your body for the day. I recommend training no more than two weeks consecutively without resting. Novice and/or masters athletes may require “off” days more frequently. Recovery weeks, typically fewer hours spent exercising or less miles trained, should be included every third to fifth week. Recovery days, easy non-intense training, should follow hard training days.

2. Incorporate recovery techniques

There are a number of ways to incorporate recovery into your routine. Biofoam rollers and massage sticks help sore, achy or stiff muscles recover from exercise. Watching movies, spending time with family, reading, listening to music or socializing with friends can all be effective relaxation strategies that allow you to disassociate from physical exercise and reduce tension while developing positive mood states of happiness and calmness.

3. Sleep

Essential for physiological growth and repair, routinely physically active individuals are encouraged to aspire for 8 to 9 1/2 hours of sleep each night. Cardiovascular performance can be compromised by up to 20 percent with sleep deprivation, which also reduces reaction time, the ability to process information and emotional stability. Naps are always icing on the cake.

4. Consumer post-exercise fuel

The goal of post-exercise nutrition is to restore muscle and liver glycogen stores, improve hydration and repair muscle tissue. You should eat 15 to 30 minutes after exercise, preferably as soon as possible, when the muscles are most receptive to fuel. Muscle replenishment and tissue repair can be accelerated if you combine carbohydrates and protein together in a ratio of 4 to 1.
Weigh yourself before and after exhaustive exercise to determine how much water you lost. Stay hydrated by consuming at least 24 ounces per pound of body weight lost within six hours after exercise. Performance begins to decrease after only a two percent loss in body water. Include electrolytes to eliminate the risk of hyponatremia if engaging in activity for more than four hours.

5. Warm up and cool down

A proper warmup is a key component to preparing the body for the demands of any training session or competition. Developing a pre-race warmup is unique to each individual. Performing a warmup will elevate heart rate and VO2, and increase blood flow to the connective tissue and local muscles to be trained. This in turn will raise muscle temperature and help decrease joint and muscle stiffness, therefore improving range of motion.
Warm-up periods of five to 15 minutes are recommended with the effects lasting up to 45 minutes. After 45 minutes of inactivity, re-warming may be needed. On the other side of the coin, the recovery process and preparation for the next day’s training begins with a proper cool down. Low-intensity aerobic exercise, such as aquatic-based training, light jogging or cycling, are effective cooldown activities for clearing lactic acid and lessening the severity of muscle soreness.

6. Integrate strength training

Strength training is essential for preparing the body for the rigors of training and racing. It facilitates bone health and enhances injury resistance, including factors that contribute to overuse injuries. It can boost lactate tolerance, and assist with delaying fatigue.

7. Use proper equipment

Correct equipment minimizes unwanted stress. A bike should fit you, not you fit the bike. Cycling posture and position is individualistic for maximizing aerodynamics, power, efficiency and comfort while minimizing injury potential and discomfort.

8. Follow the 10-percent rule

Increase annual training hours, or training volume, by ten percent or less. If you are training according to time, for example, and your triathlon program called for 15 hours of training this week, it’s recommended training hours not exceed 16.5 hours the next week.

9. Interval train

Proper interval training can improve VO2 and anaerobic threshold. Intervals allow your body to adapt to and eventually race at greater speeds.

10. Know that more is always better

Recovery allows your body to adapt to training loads. Conditioning should be specific to the event you are training for. Training volume can be defined as the combinations of how often you work out (frequency) and how long you train (duration).

What is the best time of day to run?

Written by: Mario Fraioli

A couple weeks ago I rolled out of bed on an uneventful Thursday morning and went for an easy 6-mile run from home. I covered my usual out-and-back route in 45 minutes, which seems to be par for the course when I lace up the sneaks before noontime on a weekday. Four days later, in the early evening on Monday, I ran the exact same route at an equally easy effort and the watch read a few ticks over 42 minutes.
It was nearly a 3-minute improvement over the same course in similar conditions just a few days later, with the only discernible difference being the time of day I headed out for my run. Afterward, I stood in my driveway for a second wondering, “Did my fitness really improve that much over the weekend or are my workouts simply more effective later in the day?”
Of course, it’s highly unlikely that I became 7 percent fitter in just four days – especially since I haven’t been doing anything in the way of hard workouts lately – but there is probable cause and research to show that running later in the day may very well contribute to improved performance.
Looking back to the morning I hit the roads roughly half an hour after waking up, the most salient thing I remember was how long it took me to get going. Initially I couldn’t move much faster than a crawl, but by 2 miles into the run I had seemingly woken up and established some sort of rhythm. When I headed out on the same route a few days later, however, I found my stride almost immediately and was amazed by the ease of my effort and how much life I had in my legs. It was like night and day, literally.
Aside from my own observations, a March 2009 article published in the New York Times says that various studies by scientists have shown that athletes tend to perform better in workouts that occur between the hours of 4 and 8 PM, which is when body temperature and performance-relevant hormones are at optimal levels to support exertion. One of those studies, conducted in the Department of Kinesiology at the College of William and Mary, concluded that, “the data demonstrated significant chronobiological oscillation in peak torque, average power, maximal work in a single repetition, and total work per set…these data suggest that maximal muscle performance does vary within the segment of the day when exercise typically occurs.”
What does this mean? Quite simply, time of day does have some effect on power and performance. In most cases, the more time you give your body to warm up and get loose, the better it will run. In this respect your body is like a car parked outdoors. When you go to start it up first thing on a cool morning, you might have a hard time turning the engine over, and once you finally do, it putters down the street for a bit until the internal temperature reaches an optimal level. Later in the day, however, you’ll notice the same car starts up a lot quicker and runs more efficiently than it did earlier in the day. The human body works in much the same way.
For many people, however, life doesn’t always allow for late-morning, afternoon or evening workouts. Sometimes it just has to get done first thing in the morning, and fortunately for you early risers there is research that shows a correlation between circadian rhythms and the time of day during which someone works out. A 1989 study on “Circadian Specificity in Exercise Training” by Hill, Curetan and Collins concluded that “subjects who trained in the morning had relatively higher post-training thresholds in the morning, while subjects who trained in the afternoon had relatively higher values in the afternoon (p less than 0.05). This is evidence of circadian specificity in training and supports the notion of planning physical preparation to coincide with the time of day at which one’s critical performance is scheduled.”
So whether you’re an early bird or a night owl, your workouts are going to be most effective at your habitual workout time. While muscles are certainly stiffer and energy levels are lower first thing in the morning, if that’s when you’re used to running then it’s worth sticking to your schedule and allowing your body to maintain its regular rhythm. But if you’re looking to enhance your energy levels a bit and get going a little faster than you ordinarily would, try running a little later in the day if you can make it happen. A little variety never hurt anyone, either.
So, what time will I run tomorrow? The answer is easy: whenever I can find the time!