Top 9 Triathlon Training Secrets From Top Coaches

TRAIN YOUR MIND RIGHT
1. Let the water clear. The biggest mistake triathletes make, says Scott Berlinger, founder of Full Throttle Endurance, is “training too hard all the time. We call it muddying the water. And if you keep the water muddy, you won’t perform well.” Respect your rest weeks and, he says, “stay within the confines of your workout.” Yes, even when your archrival passes you in the park. Remember, he may be doing speedwork, you may be doing distance.

2. Focus on the process, not the outcome. “Micro goals help you achieve success,” says Paul Weiss, PhD, founder of Asphalt Green Triathlon Club. So instead of fixating on winning, turn your attention to the process – staying aero, keeping your cadence up, getting your nutrition right and all the other little pieces you need to put together to have a top race. That keeps you in the zone. “Achieving process goals cumulatively results in macro goal achievement.” In other words, do what you need to do and the successes will add up.

3. Train what’s behind you. “A strong butt is the key to a happy life when it comes to running.” That’s straight from Jordan D. Metzl, MD, sports medicine physician at NYC’s Hospital for Special Surgery and Triathlete contributor. How so? Strength in the glutes keeps the pelvis from tilting from side to side (among other things) and has the potential to eliminate some classic running injuries including IT band friction syndrome. Work with a coach or physical therapist to determine which strengthening exercises are exactly right for you.

4. Keep your feet under you. Should you run on the forefoot? Midfoot? Barefoot? Among the spectrum of sometimes heated opinions on the issue, nobody’s debating one point: “What’s important is where your foot falls underneath you,” says Rob Maschi, PT,  DPT, of NYC’s Hospital for Special Surgery. It should fall directly under your center of mass, not in front of it, or you’re basically braking with every step.

5. Drop some drills. “You don’t need to do 1,642 swimming drills to become a better swimmer. You can do a few drills that have a very specific purpose and become a better swimmer,” says Earl Walton, head coach for TriLife Coaching, NYC. The one drill everybody needs? Side lying kick drill. “If you’re a bad swimmer, you’re killing your momentum,” he says. “You need to get comfortable in the water and get your body position correct.” This drill is an essential way to do that. It’s not the only drill you need to do, but if it’s not in your repertoire, it’s worth putting there, he says.

 

6. Don’t strength train to become strong. “When you’re an Olympic weightlifter, the point is to move weight from point A to point B to demonstrate your strength.” To do that, you might need to hold your breath, arch your back, or use momentum. “For any other athlete, your reason for strength training isn’t to demonstrate strength. It’s to gain strength,” says Jonathan Cane, exercise physiologist and head coach at City Coach Multisport. That means doing your weight work with excellent form and letting your muscles, not your ego, get stronger.

7. Keep it simple. Sometimes when you do crazy complicated exercises, “your brain gets better at doing them, not necessarily your muscles,” Cane says. So you’ll be better at doing one-legged tractor tire balances, rather than at swimming, biking, and running. Keep your workout simple and focus on the big muscles as well as the muscles that stabilize you. And don’t stress about whether you should be using free weights, resistance bands, kettlebells or something else. “Your muscles aren’t that smart. They only know if they’re working or not. And if you get the muscle to fire, you’ll get stronger,” he says.

8. Stretch for speed. Stretching helps you maintain your range of motion, and poor range of motion means poorer power, says Marisa D’Adamo, PT, former physical therapy coordinator for the ING NYC marathon. “Stretching helps you get faster without speedwork. You can’t work on your power or strength when your joint doesn’t have the range of motion it needs.”

9. Determine what’s made of glass. Douglas Schwartz, coach at Multi-Sport Partners, asks his athletes to imagine balls made of three materials: marble, rubber, and glass. They have to label the balls according to what they’re juggling – for instance, friends, family, work – and say why each is labeled that way. You see where this is going: The most precious one is the glass ball. Each athlete needs to figure out what in their life is made of glass and how not to drop it. Glass equals family for you? Schwartz suggests a way to make your training more efficient so you can spend more time with family: On your next road trip, have your significant other drop you off 30 minutes away from home and run the rest of the way.

The Myth of Sustained Energy In Sports Drinks

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

You’re at your local running specialty shop, trying to choose between two sports drinks. One contains complex carbohydrates and not much sugar, which, according to the packaging, provides “sustained energy” during exercise. The other sports drink contains a lot more sugar and says nothing about sustained energy. Which sports drink should you buy?
The answer might surprise you. The sports drink with more sugar and no promises of sustained energy will have a significantly greater positive effect on your running performance than the other product. Now, if you were choosing a sports drink for everyday nutrition—perhaps to consume as a snack, while sitting at your desk at work—the product with complex carbs and little sugar would be the better choice. But the rules of nutrition and the realities of metabolism are completely different during exercise than at rest.
A surprisingly large number of sports drinks and other sports nutrition products are formulated and marketed under the false assumption that the rules of everyday nutrition also apply to exercise nutrition, and all too many runners fall for this marketing. Underneath the false assumption that the rules don’t change at the start of exercise are several specific errors concerning exercise metabolism. Following are three important facts that are masked by these errors.
1. It’s not how long an energy source lasts that matters. It’s how fast it gets to your muscles.
All ingested carbohydrates are broken down to glucose before they enter the bloodstream. Some carbohydrates are absorbed and metabolized relatively slowly.  Consequently, they make energy available to the muscles, brain, and other organs and tissues at a relatively low rate for a relatively long period of time. Other carbs are absorbed and metabolized very quickly. They make energy available to the muscles, etc. at a relatively high rate for a relatively short period of time.
The important thing to understand here is that a carbohydrate can only provide “sustained energy” by providing energy slowly. Sustained energy equals slow energy. Now, slow energy is fine when you’re sitting at your computer and your muscles are using and demanding little energy. But when you start running, your muscles’ rate of energy consumption may increase as much as twenty-fold. Suddenly, slow energy means not enough energy.
During intense exercise, the muscles burn carbohydrate faster that you can possibly absorb fresh carbs from any kind of sports drink. No matter what you do, there’s an ever-increasing deficit. You must minimize this deficit to maximize performance. The two things you can do to minimize your carbohydrate deficit during exercise are 1) to consume as much carbohydrate as your GI system can tolerate and 2) to consume the fastest (that is, the most rapidly absorbed) types of carbohydrate. It’s important to understand that there is no difference between slow, complex carbs and fast, simple sugars in terms of the total amount of energy each provides. Your stomach can’t tolerate any more complex carbs during running than it can simple sugars. The only difference between the two types of carbs is how quickly they get to your muscles from your stomach. Consuming slow, complex carbohydrates instead of fast, simple sugars will only compound your carbohydrate deficit. Your muscles are crying out for fuel. Whereas simple sugars rush quickly to the muscles’ aid, complex carbs sit around in your stomach and/or liver, taking their sweet time.
Imagine you were in the market to buy a racecar and a certain racecar salesman told you, “The great thing about this here racecar is that it really makes fuel last. It does this by only providing enough fuel to the engine to go 20 miles per hour. Even when you press on the accelerator and try to go 150 miles per hour, the rate of fuel supply to the engine doesn’t change, so the fuel really lasts.” Of course, you’re going to look at this salesman like he’s crazy because what he’s just told you is that  his racecar cannot ever go faster than 20 miles per hour.
As crazy as this illustration seems, it represents exactly the same logic that makers of sports drinks touting their sustained (i.e. slow) energy supply are feeding you.
2. Exercise fatigue is not caused by blood sugar crashes.
In boasting of their complex carbohydrate formulas and sustained energy provision, the makers of certain sports drinks and other sports nutrition products never fail to mention that their products spare you from the “insulin spikes” and  “blood sugar crashes” that high-sugar sports drinks cause. This argument is based on total ignorance of how insulin and blood glucose are regulated during exercise.
During exercise, the body enters a physiological stress state where blood glucose levels are very tightly controlled. Research has shown that “reactive hypoglycemia” simply does not occur during exercise. The same sugars that, when consumed at rest, cause a quick spike of blood glucose, followed by a quick spike of insulin, followed by a blood sugar crash, cause only a moderate, sustained elevation in blood glucose and insulin during exercise.
The only circumstance in which hypoglycemia does occur during exercise is when a person starts exercise in a fasted state, consumes no carbohydrate during exercise, and continues until the liver runs out of glycogen with which to replenish the blood glucose supply.
3. It’s not the carbs you get from you sports drink that need to last. It’s the carbs already in your muscles.
One of the most dangerously misleading ideas hidden in the notion that sources of “sustained energy” are preferable during exercise is the idea that bonking occurs when the supply of carbs you’ve consumed in your sports drink run out. Basically, the argument goes like this: If you drink a sports drink containing fast, simple sugars, these sugars will race through your body and be used up in a hurry, and when they’re used up, you bonk.
But that’s not what happens at all. In prolonged exercise, bonking typically occurs when the supply of glycogen in the working muscles is depleted. In other words, glycogen in the working muscles is your limiting energy source. When it’s gone, you bonk. Therefore, the longer you can make your muscle glycogen stores last, the longer you will go before you bonk. So you want to spare muscle glycogen in any way you can—except by slowing down (which is a very effective way of sparing glycogen but not exactly helpful for performance).
Now, which do you think does a better job of sparing muscle glycogen: a sports drink containing slow, complex carbs, or one containing fast, simple sugars? Clearly, the latter. Here’s why: Let’s suppose that your working muscles must burn 100 grams of carbohydrate per hour to sustain a given pace. Your sustained-energy sports drink supplies carbs at a rate of 45 grams per hour. Your sugary sports drink provides carbs at a rate of 60 grams per hour. Both drinks leave a balance that your muscles have to get from another source—namely, its own muscle glycogen supply. But the sustained-energy sports drink leaves a much larger balance (55 grams per hour versus 40 grams). Therefore it does a much worse job of sparing glycogen and hastens glycogen depletion and bonking compared to the sugary sports drink.
A Case in Point
One thing you’ll notice if you pay attention is that the makers of sustained-energy sports drinks love to talk about the physiological reasons for the superiority of their products but never point to studies that simply compare the effects of their products to the effects of simple sugar-based sports drinks on performance. And there’s a reason for this, which I will reveal by example.
A number of years ago there existed a sports drink called GPush. Like many sports drinks that came along before it and many other that came along after it, GPush was touted as superior to other sports drinks because it was formulated to provide sustained energy. GPush contained a carbohydrate called galactose, which is technically a simple sugar but is a vey low-glycemic (i.e. slow) sugar because it has to be processed by the liver before entering the bloodstream, unlike other sugars, such as sucrose, which is broken down to glucose in the stomach and intestine.
A few studies comparing galactose-based sports drinks and fast-sugar-based sports drinks were performed. Incredibly, even some exercise physiologists knew little enough about exercise metabolism to think that the slower formulation might enhance endurance more by providing sustained energy. In fact, it did exactly the opposite.
For example, a 2009 study by New Zealand researchers “tested the hypothesis that supplementation with galactose before and during endurance exercise would spare carbohydrate (CHO), optimize fat utilization and improve performance compared with a typical sports drink formulation.”
A galactose-only formulation was compared to a 50 percent galactose/50 percent glucose formulation and an 80 percent glucose/20 percent fructose formulation (with all three formulations containing the same total amount of carbohydrate) in a stationary cycling workout. The galactose-only formulation did everything it was supposed to do physiologically. When subjects used it their insulin levels were lower and they burned more fat. But they also performed worse—much worse. Average power output was significantly higher when the subjects drank the fast-sugar sports drinks than they did when they consumed the sustained-energy sports drink.

Draft Legal Races

American Jarrod Shoemaker is leading a charge to make draft-legal triathlons available to more triathletes in the United States. He’s starting with The Draft Legal Challenge triathlon for amateurs on March 3 in Clermont, Florida. Triathlete.com chatted with Shoemaker about the importance of instituting draft-legal races, some of the challenges of the format and what else he has planned for the 2011 season.

Shoemaker: It’s been something that I’ve had in the back of my mind. Nothing is available in the U.S. for age groupers. I’ve been pushing USAT to make draft-legal races available to what I call “the in-betweeners.” There’s a group of post-Junior athletes that haven’t turned pro yet. Then there’s a fact that age groupers never get to try draft-legal racing. I thought it’d be fun to give them the opportunity to give it a try.
Triathlete.com: One of the main reasons these races don’t exist right now is the concern for safety. What are some of the possible safety issues and how are they being addressed?
Shoemaker: I think safety is the number one priority. It’s the biggest thing in any race I go to, including races outside of the country. I’ve done several unsafe races. Now, I always look at safety. The first thing that has to be available for draft-legal racing is closed roads. You can do it in non-drafting races. If you’re going to have packs of people on the bike, there’s just no room for error. We did a race on an open course one time and it was a disaster. That was one of the first things we looked at. I knew the venue in Clermont would be perfect. There will be very minimal traffic. We also wanted to make sure the road conditions would be very good. There’s less time to react to potholes and other problems. The other big safety thing is that anyone who is racing has to be on a road bike. There is so much less reaction time on TT bars. Everyone will be using road bikes.
Triathlete.com: Do you expect a field of more experienced age groupers?
Shoemaker: I definitely think it’s a race for experienced age groupers. We’ve ended up with a field that includes several post-collegiate athletes. A huge chunk of the athletes are in the age range of 21-25 years old. We also have some in their 30s, 40s and 50s. They’ve been wanting to try this for a long time. I think the younger athletes are racing because they’re trying to get into the Olympic side of the sport and may be a professional one day. The older athletes are excited to have to chance to try the format.

Triathlete.com: The field size is necessarily limited in size. How can this be turned into a series with such limited numbers of participants?
Shoemaker: That is a great business question. It’s tough. I think 75 is really the limit of racers that we can have. The way we have this race formatted is the way to do it. It’s a draft-legal race, but there’s also a non-drafting race, a pro race and a junior race. It has to be tied into another event. It’s tough to get anything done if you have four draft-legal races throughout the day; it just takes so much time. It’s really tough to figure out those mathematics. I think it’s something for people who want a chance. We’ve talked to other people about adding the format to other races and USAT is open to the idea. I hope we can do more.
Triathlete.com: Do you think the ability for age groupers to race in a draft-legal setting will help them to better relate to the pros that compete in ITU?
Shoemaker: I definitely think that that will be the case. It’s one of those things where age groupers never get the chance to experience it. If you look at all the other major sports like baseball, football and basketball, the fans have had the chance to compete in the same format. In triathlon very few age groupers every have the chance to race in the same format as the Olympic side of triathlon. I think people are wary of if the bike really is hard. I think it will shed light on why this format is fun and tough.
Triathlete.com: When we talked to you last year you were concerned about the fact that many American triathletes have to go into non-drafting races to develop and often don’t find their way back into draft-legal racing. Is this a step in preventing that from happening?
Shoemaker: That’s one of my side agendas. Last year we had two elite development races. They went very well. This is the next step in that. You’re offering the ability to let anyone race the format. It’s not limited to the USAT system. The availability of these races is so important. If we keep adding a couple more and a couple more here and there, we’ll give athletes opportunities that they didn’t have before.
Triathlete.com: There’s also the Elite race that weekend. Are you excited to kick off your 2011 season?
Shoemaker: We’ll have the U.S. Sprint National Championships there. I’m very excited. This is where I raced my second-ever triathlon in 2004. It’s right down the street from where we do winter training. We have almost 70 guys including a lot of the top U.S. guys. Guys like Mark Fretta, Cameron Dye and Brian Fleischmann are all racing. We also just heard that Bevan Docherty will use this race as his season opener. It will be fast for a March race.

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!