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March 2017 View this email in your browser Table of Contents -- Announcements, Jenn Rentch at IM Worlds, DM's All-Americans, Race Report: Havana 70.3,Coach's Corner, Get to Know Your Teammates DM Team Training Camp July 21-26, 2017New for 2017, District Multisport will have a team training camp! Join 10 of your teammates for a five-day triathlon camp in Bethany Beach, DE. Arriving in the afternoon/evening on Friday, July 21st, the camp will be an excellent opportunity to gain valuable cycling volume for your late season 70.3 or 140.6, help bridge the mid-summer racing lull, and to spend 5 days training, learning, and relaxing at the beach with your teammates. Cost: $500 Deadline to Sign up: March 12, 2017 Sign up via the Google Doc If you have any questions about the camp, feel free to email Nate (training@districtmultisport.com) or Jon Ryder (jpryder@gmail.com) Join the Strava District Multisport Group Have you joined the District Multisport Strava Group? If not, what are you waiting for? Join your friends and teammates for a little friendly competition and workout inspiration. Just follow the link and ask to join. https://www.strava.com/clubs/1000 Rose's Physical Therapy Launches Women's History Month Series If you haven't yet seen some of the fantastic videos that Rose's has produced, check them out on their YouTube Channel. They are also hosting a Women's History Month get together March 26th that includes a musician from Kennedy Center, food, debut of one video at the event itself, screening of all the videos, and a lot of awesome people who were in the movies Clean Sport Collective As a team, we've decided to support the Clean Sport Collective, a non-profit organization dedicated to keeping racing clean and to funding organizations that don't have the funds to properly execute testing. It's free to take the pledge as a team or an amateur athlete, and you can decide to make a donation to them if you wish (they have trucker hats...just saying). We have signed the pledge on behalf of the team and we hope you'll all join us as individuals in doing the same and making the commitment to racing clean! Volunteer and Social: March 11: Rock and Roll Marathon / Half Marathon Volunteer at the DM Waterstop March 16: Monthly Happy Hour at Solly's Upcoming Races: These are races in which teammates are participating and that are on the team calendar of events. April 1 Cooper River Bridge Run April 1 Zion Half Marathon April 2 Cherry Blossom 10-Miler April 2 Knoxville Half Marathon April 29-30 North Face Endurance Festival (Team Event) May 13-14 Kinetic Half and Sprint (Team Event) June 3 Rock Hall Oly (Team Event and Regional Club Champs) The full Team Race schedule and Race Tracker are on the website. The team has organized team houses for Kinetic and Rock Hall. Stay tuned for details and thank you to the volunteers who will be organizing the details of the houses. Jenn Rentch Invited to Race 2017 Worlds with Women for Tri! District Multisport congratulates Jenn Rentch, who was invited to race the 2017 Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Chattanooga, Tennessee as part of Women for Tri! Women for Tri is a program of the IRONMAN Foundation that seeks to encourage and increase female participation in the sport. According to IRONMAN, the 200 slots in Chattanooga were allocated to “top performing female triathletes based on the athlete’s total 2016 IRONMAN 70.3 Age Group Ranking points." Revenue from their race registrations will go toward the Women for Tri’s collegiate and athlete grants. After racing for ten years and consistently placing in her age group, Jenn is excited that she and other women frequently “in the mix” will get a chance to race on the world stage. “It’s nice to see the appreciation of the IM foundation for some of us that have come so close so often," she said. Jenn is also excited about Chattanooga’s new format this year. For the first time in IRONMAN history, the race will be split over two days to separate male and female professional and age group athletes. In addition to increased participation, perhaps this means better female positioning in the swim and some more breathing room in the transition area? We’ll have to see come September 9th and 10th! District Multisport Boasts Five USA Triathlon All-Americans! Congratulations to Lauren Lipsey, Mack Yates, Darren Rentch, Jon Ryder and Scott Yates for earning USA Triathlon All-American status! Achieving All-American in overall rankings means these resident bad-asses finished in the top 10 percent of their age group in at least three USA Triathlon-sanctioned events. If you compete in more than the minimum number of required events, USA Triathlon averages your top three scores to calculate your final ranking. For the number nerds that want to dive even deeper into the ranking mechanics, read about it here. Overall, the Mid-Atlantic region boasts 206 women and 325 men All-American athletes! See the full listing of Mid-Atlantic rankings for women and men. This award tells us what we all already know. These guys and gals are in the top of their field, inspiring both fear and respect in their competitors. Way to go! Race Report: Havana 70.3 Jennifer Walrath is a member of District Multisport, originally from Nebraska and can sheer a sheep (fun fact). She shared her experience of getting a podium spot at the Havana 70.3 event held February 25, 2017. Ah, Cuba. I had been meaning to go for some time and finally pulled the trigger - and I loved it! It is a beautiful country with good rum, fun fruits, and tasty pork and fish dishes. And thanks to Chris, we stayed in a casa with a great view of the ocean. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the country, though, were the Cuban people. They were friendly and helpful, and no one laughed at me as I practiced my Spanish. On the flip side, as Chris said many a time before we left, one does need to pack patience when traveling to Cuba. There is a lack of certain amenities and some dysfunctionality at times. Race wise, before the swim, for example, race officials waffled back and forth more than once about whether the swim would be wetsuit legal. Ultimately, it was, but many a person got lots of practice donning and removing their wetsuit. Along similar lines, it was not easy to find suitable pre-race food (hence Marcie's pre-race breakfast of seafood pizza), and there were only two pre-race port-a-johns for approximately 600 racers (definitely NOT a good situation). All of that said, I would go back to Cuba in a heartbeat, and if you can, you should, too! For those keen to read more, on to the race... Coach's Corner: Aero-bang For Your Buck I was recently asked by a fellow DM’er about whether he should shell out the big bucks for a new set of deep rim aero wheels. My reply was long and winding, carefully weighing the pros versus the cons and delving ever so gently into the politics of triathlon and marriage. In the end, I think the short answer came out something pointing towards no, or “maybe, ask your wife." The question, however, started me thinking about all the awesome tri-gear to which we multisport athletes have access and the even awesomer amount of money that can be shelled out.
If you listen to the bike industry, every new wheel, helmet, bike, etc that comes out is the fastest! And for the low, low price of umpty-hundred dollars, this new thing will guarantee that you have the best race of your life. However, if you look at the test data on which this assertion is based, the best results may yield savings of a few seconds or minutes over the course of 30-112 miles. For those at the pointy end of the spear, the <5% of the race field, this can mean the difference between being on the podium or watching the awards ceremony from the crowd. For the rest of the field, the advantages that these new products provide are often minimized or negated by other factors such as life stress, poor nutrition/sleep or sub-optimal training. Even at the highest levels of the sport, the majority of performance gains have not come from advances in equipment technology but through advances in training science. Now, I am not saying that you shouldn’t aim to have the best equipment that you can afford or that a set of Zipp 808s won’t make your bike look super slick while hanging in transition. Simply keep in mind when you are drooling over the next high-dollar aero widget that there is really only one true way to get faster: hard work. If there are any questions on gear selection, cost/benefit, form/function, etc. post them to the team forum and I will be happy to answer. Jon Ryder is a member of District Multisport, the owner, and operator of RPM Coaching. Jon is a USA Cycling and USA Triathlon certified coach and offers a wide variety of coaching options, including bike fitting. Jon was named to USA Triathlon's All-American for his achievements in triathlon in 2016. He and his wife, Katie, live in Takoma Park, MD with their two sons. Get To Know Your Teammates Katie Egger Makris How did you first get interested in multisport? I originally started as a runner, because it seemed like a reasonable thing to start doing and it got me outside. As most of our stories go, I became crazy and increasingly interested in the longest thing I could do and eventually worked up to a Marathon, and got bored with running. So when our teammate, Rebecca Szatkowski and I met at a bar (seriously) and realized we had some mutual connections, one drunken evening I committed to joining her family's team for Bike MS, bought a bike, and rode my first metric century that summer. I then decided I would channel my 13 year old self, get back in the pool, and sign up for my first Oly - The Mountaineer Triathlon. Which sport do you enjoy the most? This is tough. My heart really belongs to running because it's where I found my tribe first when I moved back to DC. But I love, love, love the bike. I love a long day of riding with good friends, and I love all the nerdy aspects of biking...like gear and data :) Any embarrassing stories you'd like to share? Generally, in life? Yeah, I've got a ton of those. Luckily, I'm now pretty hard to embarrass. As it pertains to racing? Probably puking at the finish line of the MCM 10k one year after trying to act like I was a fast runner. My finish photo, which I wish I had saved, was actually of me throwing up. And I didn't even cross the line first, so it delayed my time even further. What is your most triumphant moment during a multisport event? This sounds cliché, but finishing Ironman Canada. It was my second IM, but It was the first race I've ever done where I actually had solid doubts for a while that I was going to finish. (You know, that point where that three letter acronym, DNF, keeps bouncing around in your head like a pinball?) When I got off the bike, I knew right away I couldn't run the marathon I planned, and knew I was capable of any other day. It was incredibly defeating after a hard year both personally and race wise. Digging myself out of that dark place every second of that 5 hour run was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in a race, which made crossing that finish line mean more to me than any other one had. (And I managed to eek out a 2 minute PR!) Tell us something that most people don't know about you. I used to call in sick every time we had to run the mile in PE class. I hated running. I grew up a dancer and a gymnast and even had a brief stint with diving because I thought swimming was so dreadfully boring. When I played soccer, I actually became a really solid goalie because I figured out early on if I became a good goalie I could run much less during the game. You guys, I despised it, and I would come up with about anything not to have to do it. When I graduated college and kicked my dancing career away, strangely, the first thing I turned to - was running.
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