An Interview with National Champ “Fast Freddie”

By Kat Hunter

Frederick Ferraro has been saying he’ll race “one more year” for so long that no one believes him. “My friends just look at me and shake their heads and laugh,” he tells me. “But my body’s had enough. I’d like to move to Florida and start a harem.”

2014 National Championships

Both of us are on speakerphone, and I pause a beat, thinking maybe I’ve misheard, but no, Freddie’s just got a sense of humor. And maybe a fair bit of confidence.

“If you’re going to race at this level, you’re a single guy,” he explains. “You don’t have much of a life outside of triathlon. So I thought, lots of single women over in Florida.”

Everyone in the triathlon community calls this dapper 65 year old “Fast Freddie.” Retired from a career in advertising, Freddie has devoted most of his time and energy the last 12 years to triathlon. He currently lives in Southwest Austin (though he’ll be moving to Dallas in a few weeks) with his two cats Thomas and Grayson, who have offered companionship without complaint throughout what he refers to as the “triathlon era.”

On August 9, Freddie won the USAT 64-69 age group Olympic distance national championship in Milwaukee with a time of 2:16:57. Previous years at nationals he’d placed second, fifth, eighth, and ninth, but had never crossed the line first; this win, the culmination of years of hard work, came on the heels of many frustrations and disappointments.

Freddie suffers from Atrial Fibrillation (often referred to as AF or AFib), an irregular heartbeat that can lead to other complications, including stroke and heart failure. The condition is fairly common among veteran male endurance athletes, and some studies point to a causal link. Freddie has been involved in athletic competition for most of his life. He swam on a scholarship at the University of Texas in Arlington, and in 1985, he won a national championship in Hobie Catamaran racing. Over the years he also qualified for nationals in swimming and judo.

In all the sports he competed in, however, Freddie says triathlon was where he showed the most natural talent. In 2002, at 52 years old, he fell headlong into the sport, focusing on sprint and Olympic distances. He quickly hired a coach; for the last nine years, he’s worked with cogniTRI’s Stephan Schwarze. In 2005, Freddie had his first experience with AFib at the world championships in Hawaii, but he thought he might just be feeling the effects of dehydration. When it happened again at nationals the following year, he went to the doctor and found out about his heart condition.

The irony is, of course, that the habits of the life-long athlete—which likely led to the condition in the first place—don’t die any easier when the diagnosis is made. Freddie continued racing, though he says in recent years he starting going by “Not-So-Fast Freddie.” The condition and prescribed medications significantly hampered his ability to compete.

In 2007, he had an ablation, a type of surgery that destroys or isolates the structures responsible for triggering abnormal electrical signals in the heart. Unfortunately, as is common with this type of procedure, the arrhythmia reoccurred about a year and a half later, and he was back to square one. Afterward, he raced for two more years taking pills designed to keep his heart from going into AFib, but knew they were affecting his performance. He also felt that his heart was being pulled dangerously in two different directions during race efforts—the pills slowing it down while his body was trying to push it to its limits. In September 2013, he had a second ablation, and this time the treatment worked. On the same course and under roughly the same conditions, he was able to finish five minutes faster at nationals in 2014 than he had the previous year when he was still taking the pills.

Often the venue for nationals changes each year, but 2015 will be the third year in a row that Milwaukee will host the event. Freddie says of all the nationals he’s been to over the past 11 years, this is his favorite venue. Though the swim often becomes congested as competitors pass beneath a narrow bridge, the hilly bike course suits him, and Freddie says the city “rolls out the red carpet” for race participants. He plans to return to nationals again next year. One more time, he says.

Last year was supposed to be the finale, but his good result at nationals was tempered with an equally bad experience at the August 27 world championships in Edmonton, Canada. He came out of the water first in the swim, but then his body locked up in the cold temperatures, which hovered somewhere between 41 and 45 degrees. Cold and miserable, he didn’t finish the race. He decided he couldn’t go out on that note.

Freddie moved from Oregon to Austin in 2002 for the training opportunities and the warmer weather. He’s been a customer and friend of ATC shop owners Don and Missy Ruthven for more than a decade. “He trains like a pro,” Missy says. “Whatever he tackles, he tackles in full force.”

A common descriptor used for athletes—triathletes in particular—is “intense.” I used to worry when meeting someone for the first time who had been described in this way. I would imagine a recovering drug addict with the shakes, or one of those perpetually angry people who can’t drive a quarter mile without a road rage incident. When used for a triathlete, however, “intense” seems to describe a unique and admirable brand of overboard, a characteristic that’s essentially a prerequisite if an athlete plans to pursue the sport at an elite level. To be successful, you have to obsess about aero details and training plans; your day and your workouts must be fanatically regimented. For Freddie, triathlon has long been a full-time job.

What’s interesting about Freddie, maybe even a little refreshing, is that he doesn’t wax on about how wonderful the sport is. I think anyone who takes any type of activity to the highest possible level, whether it’s cake-making or multisport training, and can still love it day in and day out...well, good on them, but my guess is that they’re not pursuing it to the degree they could be, or they’re just plain crazy.

“It’s nothing but pain and train,” Freddie says of triathlon. “I can’t say I’m going to miss anything about this sport except the friends I’ve made and the people who’ve supported me through the years.”

I don’t know Freddie well, but I’m not sure I believe him. It’s true that at a certain point there’s more labor than love in competition, but when you devote years to a sport, it’s impossible to separate yourself from it without a little nostalgia. It’s a part of who you were, and in many ways, who you always will be.

Of course, with Freddie, the first question is whether he’ll even stop competing. If I was one of those lovely Florida ladies in contention, I think I’d jump the gun and meet him at the finish line in Milwaukee.

From “Fat Kid” to State TT ChampionA Profile of Nate Sheetz

By Kat Hunter

http://jahicks.zenfolio.com/

The average American seems to think of weight loss, or fitness in general, as a kind of destination—“There, I made it!” The truth is, of course, much harder. If there is a path to success, it looks sort of like the yellow brick road after an earthquake. There are ups and downs, bridges out, potholes as big as swimming pools. And there’s no end. If you make it to where you want to be and find yourself a nice, relaxing spot on the couch, you’ll wake up half a mile back down the road.

Eight years ago, Nate Sheetz, who stands about 5-foot-8, weighed more than 400 pounds. Last June, at 30 years old, he finished the 40K TT in 54 minutes and 44 seconds as the Cat 3 Texas State Time Trial Champion.

Nate’s path, particularly fraught with difficulty, is inspiring not only because of his accomplishment, but because of the unique patience and grace with which he weathered the worst obstacles along the way. Cycling is his passion, but not his job. A more ordinary person, after getting hit by a car—twice—and breaking almost as many ribs as are found in the human body, might have begun shopping for a new hobby.

In the Saddle

Most roadies get into the sport because they think they’re fast. In bike racing, the peloton already represents a talented segment of the cycling population; then there are those who stand out from that group, the riders who consistently do more than just hang on, who out-train and outperform the competition. Nate is one of those people, a natural, the kind of guy who can just put his head down and go hard forever.

When I ask him whether he had any indication of this aerobic talent growing up, Nate just says, “No, not really.”

Knowing what I do about Nate’s background, I'm expecting an emotional interview. Fat kid turned athlete? Accident victim back on the bike still wearing a neck brace? What hardship, what transformation! But what I soon realize is that I don’t really know Nate at all.

Every answer he gives me is to the point, matter of fact. I never get the sense that Nate is impressed by himself, which is strange even apart from his life story—the typical roadie is an irrepressible peacock. Nate has always been public with his quest to lose or maintain a certain weight, but he doesn’t wear his history like a badge or a chip on his shoulder.

Nate played team sports in YMCA programs as a young child, and then baseball and football in middle school. Outside of PE, however, that was the entirety of his experience in athletic competition before he began cycling. He was essentially sedentary after 10th grade. “I gained the weight steadily through my entire life,” he says. “I was a little bit of a fat kid and just got fatter and fatter for 25 years.”

“What I’ve often said about the entire weight loss project,” he says, “was the hard thing was deciding to do it.”

He began by counting calories and doing light physical activity, like walking up and down stairs. Some months later, he started lifting weights at the gym, followed by half an hour of cardio on the machines. He found the elliptical trainers tedious, however, and that’s when he began substituting time on the bike. He rode to and from the gym, adding on to make it a total of 8 or 10 miles.

It all spiraled from there, he says. Living and working in Berkeley, California, at the time, he began riding with a local group called Grizzly Peak Cyclists. “I found that I enjoyed cycling for fun, never mind the exercise,” he says.

Tour das Hugel 2012

Nate works as an ASIC design engineer at NVIDIA. About six months after he started riding as his main physical activity, he transferred within the company to take a job in Austin. He commuted to work by bike and went on rides with the Austin Cycling Association. Then, in 2010, he got bit by the Driveway bug.

When he heard about the Driveway Series, he told himself some day when he was faster he would think about racing it, but friends convinced him to bite the bullet. His first race was the Driveway 4/5 crit late that summer. He got dropped the first three weeks but found himself enjoying it, and eventually he began to hang on for the duration of the 30-minute race.

By 2011, he was somewhere between 200 and 230 pounds and was still steadily losing weight, but was working very hard to balance his diet with what he needed to fuel his workouts. He says his training at that point consisted mostly of group rides and riding around with people who were faster than him.

He tried a couple of different diets—for about five years, high protein, high fiber, and low fat being the key—but for the most part he was still counting calories. “That’s really the beginning and end of it,” he says. “You figure out what to eat that keeps you from being hungry all the time, while eating as few calories as you need to be able to lose weight.”

“Once I got to what would for a normal, non-insane person be a healthy weight and wanted to get down to race weight, that wasn’t working anymore,” he says. “I was just hungry all of the time.” Eating more carbs helped him feel better on the bike. By spring 2012, he’d hit a low of 168 pounds, and give or take a few pounds, was managing to stay there.

In the Hospital
Early on in his training, just after he’d moved to Austin, Nate had his first serious bike accident.  In September 2009, when he was commuting to work, a car turned left in front of him. With no time to stop, he smashed into the side of the car, breaking his left collar bone and completely rupturing the left AC joint. His injuries required surgery, which kept him off the road for three or four months. The recovery period undid much of his hard work.

“I gained a lot of weight,” he says. “I’d dialed back the food, but not enough.”

Eventually, however, he got back to where he was and then some. Training hard at the beginning of 2013, he was looking forward to the early season stage races and was as slim as he’d ever been. From his conversations with my husband, I knew that he was also hitting some of the best power numbers he’d ever seen. Having once gone on an incredibly tough 100-mile ride with Nate that had become 120 miles after a wrong turn, I knew what that meant. I felt sorry for the guys who’d be chasing him.

And then in February, he was on a training ride, going downhill on Veteran’s Drive toward the pedestrian bridge when a car pulled out of a parallel parking spot directly in front of him. In an instant, he went from roughly 25 mph to zero.

"Poster Child for Rule #5," February 2013

He was lucky to be alive. He had 14 broken ribs—12 on the right and 2 on the left—as well as a punctured lung, several broken vertebrae in his neck, and some minor back fractures. He was hospitalized for a week and a half and was put in a neck brace.

I ask him what it felt like to have gone from the best shape in his life to that state. In his typical, somewhat terse fashion, Nate says, “It sucked.”

But with a little prodding, he elaborates, talking about how he'd moved on. “I find it pretty easy to take an attitude of not crying over spilled milk,” he says. “I laid in the hospital and I knew my plans for the year needed to be radically altered, and I was pretty much at peace with it. I’m in the hospital one for two days thinking, you know, I bet I have time to be ready for the State TT if I just don’t worry about anything else before that.”

I was pregnant at the time of his accident, my due date about four months away. I remember thinking, given the extent of Nate’s injuries, that he was going to be back on the bike around the same time as me, and probably in worse shape. But one or two weeks after he went home from the hospital, Nate was on the trainer in his neck brace. He started with a 15-minute spin the first day, and then 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and so on, ramping very quickly back up to real workouts. When the collar was off in mid-April, he immediately got back on the road. His first ride outside was the 8.2-mile AllSports Mopac Time Trial, with a very respectable road bike time of 19:13 (25.6 mph). He returned to racing at the Driveway the following week. He was also at an all-time low of 160 pounds.

Most people would probably say he was crazy, but for Nate, the training was instinctive. “It’s not like I was pushing myself to get back on the bike,” he says. “It was like, ‘I need to start riding again or I’m going to go insane.’ I couldn’t wait to get back on the bike, and I couldn’t wait to start racing again once I was back on the road.”

Even the “sharp object lessons” in how badly he could get hurt didn’t change his desire to return to competition, he says.

Now that his injuries have healed and his surgeries are complete (he recently had a metal plate in his shoulder removed from the 2009 crash), he says there are no lasting effects post-accident that impact his riding. That is, with the exception of a slight difference in the depth of one side of his rib cage versus the other.  In true aeronerd fashion, he finds this annoying because he’s a centimeter higher in his TT position than he would otherwise be.

The State TT

Driveway Series 4/5, August 2012: 2nd Nate Sheetz, 3rd Vince Dietsch

Following the accident in February, Nate’s training goals were simple. He just needed to put in a lot of steady miles. He did plenty of that, but he also mixed in some fast-paced races and group rides.

“I went to the Driveway because it was fun,” he says. “I went to VOP because it’s fun. One thing I realized over the summer, when I was in Minnesota, is that I’ve decided it’s much better to have a 90% optimal training program that’s fun, versus a 100% optimal training program that’s no fun and you want to give up bike racing.” For a few months when he was in Minnesota, his home state, he spent much more time than he would have liked riding by himself on flat terrain.

He had more success at the end of the 2013 season than he’d ever had before. Racing for Austinbikes/Revenant in the cat 3 field, he won the Mineral Wells Time Trial on June 15, took second at Hotter’N Hell on August 24, and had his first mass-start win on September 8 at the Chappell Hill Road Race with a breakaway. But his result at the State TT on June 29 was the consummation of months of targeted hard work.

His intent going into the State TT was, of course, to win, but in the back of his mind, he was thinking a more realistic goal was to make the podium. However, after a refit on his TT bike from Sol Frost, he was more than a mile an hour faster having done nothing more than change his position. His confidence grew.

On race day, Nate viewed his biggest competition as Vince Dietsch (Austinbikes/Revenant), Ryan Coover (ENVE/Firefly Bicycles Racing), and Matt DeMartino (Team Yacht Club). Matt had missed the start time, Vince was his minute man, and Ryan Coover started just behind. Ryan passed him as early as 10K into the race, so was a concern, but Nate was holding him at a steady distance after, hoping to make a move at the end if Ryan didn’t blow up first. Then Ryan had a flat around 25K. At the halfway point, Nate could see that he’d made up some ground on Vince. Still behind Vince at the 5K mark, he hadn’t caught him, but it wasn’t a minute gap anymore. He knew he had it.

With a very fast time of 54 minutes and 44 seconds (27.2 mph), the State TT was Nate’s first major win (the breakaway at the Chappell Hill Road Race would come about three months later). His time stacked up well against some of the big names in Texas cycling. He would have been second in the cat 2s, only about 23 seconds off of Paul Carty (Austinbikes/Mobil 1); in the cat 1s, he would have been in sixth behind Gray Skinner (Big Sexy Racing).

Moving On
This year Nate is riding for VooDoo Racing, in quest of a final four points for his cat 2 upgrade, and is being coached by David Wenger.

Nate’s weight loss goals have varied over the years— “race weight” is a horse of another color, to be sure. Would he have lost the weight without cycling? Would he have taken it quite so far?

“The gym was always a chore for me,” he says. “Without finding a sport to get passionate about, I don’t know where I would have been. I probably would have kept it up, but not had much fun with it.” He certainly wouldn’t have pushed himself to lose as much of the weight, he says.  

For the bulk of the year, on top of his full-time job, Nate estimates he spends 20 or more hours a week cycling or doing bike-related activities. I ask him if all the time and effort he’s devoted and continues to devote to cycling seem worth it, if he ever has doubts.

“I love riding my bike,” he says, “and there’s a real sense of fulfillment and satisfaction in just trying to better yourself in general.” He says racing is the proof and the fruit of training, but the training itself, that process of striving to improve, is what he finds the most meaningful.

Everyone has their reasons for participating in a sport. Cycling is considered an unattractive pursuit by some because it’s time consuming, expensive, dangerous at times. It’s also very painful—day in and day out, whether it’s training intervals or the field sprint, you meet the weakest and strongest parts of yourself, the sane voice that screams for you to stop and the other one, the darker voice, that convinces you to keep going. But I think people do it because it’s that hard, because they think they can do something other people can’t, because those challenges become a part of who they are and how they see themselves. And that’s the thrill of it, more than the adrenaline rush—you’ve conquered yourself, molded yourself.  

I admire Nate a lot. No, he’s not a pro tour rider, or even a cat 1. His weight is still a constant struggle. But his work ethic is something that I think anyone, athlete or no, can esteem to. It takes a lot of courage to do what he did, changing everything about one’s life and body, and in his case, doing it in the unforgiving realm of skintight lycra and coldblooded competition.

Nate’s story makes me wonder how many other people in the world have it in them and just don’t know, hiding huge aerobic engines that would put the skinny kids to shame. What I sincerely hope for them is, someday soon, an opportunity to get on a bike, as well as the ability to recognize and embrace the potential for more.

Real Life of the Pros: ITU Triathlete Colin O’Brady

by Kat Hunter

2013 Osaka ITU Sprint Triathlon Asian Cup

Lying in a hospital bed in Thailand, his legs atrophied to the point that they were the size of his wrists, 22-year-old Colin O’Brady told his mother that when he was healthy again he would race his first triathlon. She humored him, wanting to believe it was possible, all the while hoping for a more modest goal: that her son would walk again.

A talented athlete and native of Portland, Oregon, O’Brady had been recruited after high school for both Division 1 soccer and swimming. He chose swimming and was a member of Yale’s varsity team for four years, competing in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke. After graduating in 2006, he had no plans to continue the sport seriously. He worked and saved up his money, and the following spring, he began what was meant to be a year-long backpacking trip around the world. The trip ended abruptly on January 14, 2008, on a fire-lit beach on the island of Koh Tao. 

O’Brady had joined other tourists in a hotel’s fire games on the beach, jumping over a 20-foot rope soaked in kerosene and set ablaze. At the time, the game seemed innocent and simple. But he tripped on the rope, wrapping it around his legs and splattering the kerosene over the rest of his body. One second he was skipping rope, and the next he was facedown in the sand engulfed head to toe in flames. An immediate, instinctive sprint into the ocean extinguished the flames and perhaps saved his life, but the damage had been done. Blackened skin hung in ribbons down his bloody legs. He’d suffered second- and third-degree burns to 22% of his body, primarily his legs and feet.

Koh Tao, a small island off the southwest coast of Thailand, had only a basic nursing station. Given penicillin and morphine, O’Brady waited for 12 hours before he could be transported by pickup truck and the morning boat to nearby Koh Samui, a larger island. The hospital on Koh Samui was similarly ill-equipped for serious burn injuries, and after about a week, he was transferred to a larger hospital in Bangkok. There, a month passed before he took a single step, and doctors told him he might never regain the full range of motion in his legs. At his bedside, his mother kept him busy talking and thinking about what he would do when he went home. O’Brady focused on the idea of his first triathlon, visualizing himself whole again.

The First Step

6 weeks post accident

After his return to the U.S., O’Brady took a job in Chicago as a commodities trader. For roughly a year following the accident, he focused on rehabilitation and learning how to walk again. Scar tissue had formed over his joints, and the muscles in his legs had all but disappeared after the extended bedrest. The new, fragile skin couldn’t be exposed to the sun, and any impact would cause it to break open.

“That first year, from January 2008 to January 2009, literally walking down the block or even a short five or ten minute jog would have been a big event,” O’Brady says. “The first year was just getting back to being able to do normal life things.”

In the winter of 2009, he joined a nearby gym and set his sights on the Chicago Triathlon that August. His goal was simply to finish the race as best as he could. He started his post-accident training with casual jogs and spin classes. Though his soccer and swimming background worked in his favor, all-out 10ks and 1500-meter open water swims were another can of worms, and he’d never raced a bike before.

In May, he transitioned to more serious and specific triathlon workouts, and two months later, on a borrowed time trial bike, he won overall amateur at a small sprint-distance tri in Racine, Wisconsin. The race, meant as prep for the Chicago Tri, qualified him for age-group nationals. Taking advantage of the unforeseen opportunity, he competed in the 2009 age-group nationals in Tuscaloosa, and his placing there qualified him for a spot on Team USA to compete at the 2010 world championships in Budapest. A week after racing in Alabama, he won the overall amateur title at the prestigious Chicago Triathlon.

The immediate and unexpected success was both satisfaction and a taste of something more, a new and tempting possibility.

Competing as a Pro  

Before the string of wins, O’Brady had been talking to his mentor Brian Gelber, who runs a large trading firm in Chicago, about other jobs in trading and finance. But after the Chicago Tri, Gelber asked O’Brady whether he was considering professional triathlon.

“In the early stage of any pro career, you need someone to believe in you from the beginning, and Brian was that guy for me,” O’Brady says.

Encouraging O’Brady to train full-time, Gelber became his sponsor. Within a month of winning the Chicago Triathlon, O’Brady was moving to Australia for a six-month training block in the Southern Hemisphere.

Growing up, O’Brady had often dreamed of the Olympic Games.  But for O’Brady, like many student athletes in the U.S., the end of college seemed to signal the end of the road for his athletic career. In some ways, after so many practices and laps in the pool, it was a welcome one. Triathlon, with its three different disciplines, made training fresh and exciting again, and also rekindled his childhood dream of competing in the Olympics. ITU, or draft-legal, triathlon was the natural choice of discipline within the sport.  

ITU triathlon is another world, a world many amateur triathletes never see. In the U.S., draft-legal races for amateurs are very rare, and the ITU series is limited to professionals. The general format of ITU may be the familiar Olympic distance (1500-meter swim/40K bike/10K run), but in most other respects, it’s very different from non-drafting triathlon, rewarding a separate skill set.

ITU Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic

“The amount of time spent swimming in a non-drafting race is a very small percentage of the whole race,” O’Brady says. “So if you’re a great swimmer but not so good of a biker, the strong biker has more time to actually use their strength than the swimmer, for example, whereas in ITU you have to be a very strong swimmer. With my background, I think that suits me.”

A good swim time is crucial because an athlete must make the front group on the bike to contend for the win. A speedy transition is also important. Make a mistake at any time—drop your chain, fumble with your helmet or shoes, botch a mount or dismount—and those few seconds can mean the difference between 4th and 40th place.  Typically, riders work together in a rotating paceline for the 40K bike, keeping speeds high, especially when a known threat doesn’t make it out of the water fast enough. From the bike, the front group starts head to head for the 10K run.

Unlike draft-legal racing, in ITU an athlete doesn’t have the luxury of following a specific race plan. “It’s more like you have to have plan A, B, C, D, E,” O’Brady says. “You’re adjusting in real time to what’s going to happen.”

On the bike, tactics often depend on who’s who in the front group and how you fared in the swim. If necessary, you have to be ready to do a 5- or 10-minute time trial to get back to the group, and you also need to have 5-second power for turns at the front. “So you’ve got to work a lot of different energy systems and be just very mentally focused throughout the race, rather than just going against the clock,” O’Brady says. “To me, both sports are great. I think that they’re just two separate challenges.”

ITU is an international circuit. Athletes represent their countries, wearing their national jerseys, and the maximum number at the start line is 75. With the small number of competitors racing together in every remote corner of the globe, O’Brady says the ITU scene is a kind of “traveling circus.” Your competitors are your travel companions and your friends, but at the end of the day, you also want to beat them.  

ITU athletes are ranked by a complicated points system, one that even the pros don’t always fully understand. There are three levels of the professional circuit, and to race at each higher level, an athlete must have earned the correct number of qualifying points at lower levels. In turn, races at the higher levels are worth more points, which means that the top athletes in the world focus on the highest of them, the World Triathlon Series. Points carry over for 12 months, and overall ranking determines an athlete’s eligibility for the Olympics. Unlike swimming or track and field, in which a time standard might qualify an athlete for the Olympic trials, in triathlon the Olympic trials are races in the World Triathlon Series; an athlete must have the points necessary to be one of the six or so Americans on the start line.  It’s a system that rewards consistency above any one breakthrough performance.

Working one’s way up the ITU ladder can take several seasons. O’Brady is currently racing a mixture of Continental Cup and World Cup races, with the goal of primarily racing the World Triathlon Series in 2015 and 2016, and qualifying for the 2016 Olympic Games.  

The Pursuit of Happiness

Three and half years after O’Brady’s headlong dive into triathlon, Brian Gelber remains his primary sponsor and personal mentor, and O’Brady says he finds Gelber’s advice invaluable. The psychology of trading and the psychology of trying to succeed in sport offer a surprising number of parallels, O’Brady says. In many ways, it’s the same competitive, cutthroat environment.

ITU Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic

There’s no “clocking out” at the end of the day, however. “Everything you do outside of the actual swimming, biking, and running still has an impact on your performance and your job,” O’Brady says. “It’s something that, over the few years now that I’ve been doing this, that I’ve adjusted to and am used to, but I remember the very strong difference when I was trading energy futures, for example, and the market would close at 4 o’clock.

At 4 o’clock, whether I made a ton of money that day, lost a bunch of money, or nothing happened in the market that day, I couldn’t do anything until the next morning when it opened up again and the light switched back on essentially. So the feeling of the exact opposite of that, not only Monday to Friday but seven days a week having to be very conscious of what you’re doing the whole time, it’s challenging.”  

ITU triathletes have to train as hard as pro athletes from any other sport, but without the three to nine figure salary. Though athletes race for their individual country, the level of support varies. USA Triathlon sponsors only a small selection of the top athletes, and most competitors rely on personal sponsors to fund living expenses and travel.

Palembang, Indonesia

Triathletes who focus on non-drafting events can do very well racing domestically, but for ITU athletes, as few as four races a year are on U.S. soil, not enough to advance in world ranking. The majority of races are an expensive international plane ticket away. In addition to being a significant barrier for entry to the sport, the financial burden makes it a constant and very stressful gamble, where carefully laid, expensive plans are easily laid waste by random events.   

“My first pro season, for example, I flew all the way to Subic Bay in the Philippines, which is this very obscure place, feeling ready to race, and got food poisoning,” O’Brady says. “I was throwing up on the start line and had to withdraw. There goes, with the flight and travel and all that stuff, probably $2,000. And I didn’t even really race. I did the swim and got on my bike and rode back to my hotel room.”

But the globetrotting is also part of the attraction for O’Brady. “I love the lifestyle,” he says. “I’ve been able in my two years as a pro to race on every continent in the world, other than Antarctica, of course. And most of those continents several times. You get to see the world, and to me that’s amazing.”

O’Brady often travels with his girlfriend and manager, Jenna Besaw, taking advantage of homestays when possible. “From the end of June of last year through the first of this year, I think we’ve slept in 55 different beds, be that hotel rooms or different places,” he says.

He credits the larger triathlon community, the people willing to open up their homes to them, for making his career possible. “With endurance sports, I think as a pro that’s been one of the greatest things, the people I’ve met, not only the community of the athletes I’ve raced with, but even more so the larger community of just people who are interested in the sport or just do it recreationally that help you out along the way,” he says. “Because honestly, without that existing, I’m not sure I would be able to make it work.”

O’Brady says he still considers himself to be in the developmental curve of his professional career in triathlon, and learning to focus on what works for him versus what works for another athlete has been key. Though it’s difficult to avoid in an environment where everyone’s looking at everyone else’s training plan to find the magic ticket for success, trying to keep up stride for stride in training volume can quickly lead to injury and overtraining.

“In terms of volume, I think it’s a personal thing,” he says. “For me, I’ve found that somewhere between 20 and 25 hours a week, I’m getting maximum effort and building toward my fitness and strength without pushing myself over that edge. For other people, that number could be higher or lower. I don’t think that there’s a magic number out there that works for everyone.”

O’Brady says his philosophy on what’s important in training and competition, and life in general, has changed since his start in triathlon. “If you’d have interviewed me three years ago and asked the same question, I would not have had the same answer,” he says. “I would have said success, at the elite level of sport or business, requires 100 percent focus, and it is the same answer, and I do think it requires 100 percent focus, but it’s finding what that right focus is.”

Striving for happiness as well as accomplishment is key, he says. For O’Brady, that meant changing the way he treated his personal relationships. Jenna has been on the road with him for a little over a year, and he says that’s been a game changer. “I feel healthier, stronger, more balanced emotionally, than ever, and my recommendation to any pro athlete or any age grouper or really anybody who’s super focused on pursuing any level of success in any career, would be to really figure out the balance, really figure out what makes you stable. For me that is having a super positive relationship with my girlfriend and my family even though I’m traveling all the time.”

Colin & Jenna at the start line in Chengdu, China

“That would be my recommendation to any age grouper, whoever,” he says. “It’s awesome that you want to finish your first Ironman or sprint triathlon, or it’s awesome that you want to qualify for Kona... All those things are totally worthy goals, but not at the expense of forgetting the other things that make you happy. At the end of the day, if you cross that line in Kona and you have your family there that loved and supported you, and you’ve done that with them the whole way, that’s to me an amazing feeling. But if you cross that finish line and you go, ‘Well, in order to get here, me and my wife stopped talking to each other, and I didn’t get to see my kid’s soccer game.  I didn’t this or that...’ I think people will find pretty quickly that it’s very empty.”

Wintering in Austin

This year, O’Brady and Besaw were in Austin from January to June. The previous two years, O’Brady trained in Australia, where it was summer. Similar to Boulder, Colorado, in the North American summer, Australia is often the “who’s who” of triathlon that time of year, O’Brady says, and the local race scene is in full swing. He says he was looking for something different—a place with good facilities, weather, and athletes, but where he could be more relaxed and self-contained before the crux of the season began.

Winter training was a success, and O’Brady and Besaw say they’ll be coming back next year. They offered special thanks to Brian Lieb (and his awesome dog, Bode) for sharing his home with them, and to Pure Austin for their support, as well as other current sponsors Gelber Group, Primal Wear, MegaFood, Kiwami, Swiftwick, Athlete’s Lounge, and Upper Echelon.

Pure Austin Quarry Lake

O’Brady said he especially enjoyed the swimming options in town—from Pure Austin’s open water facility at Quarry Lake to the UT Masters swim workouts coached by Olympic gold medalist Whitney Hedgepeth—and the Lady Bird Lake trail. ATC’s Saturday ride was another highlight, he said, and Kendal Jacobson was the best sports massage therapist he’s ever had.  

Escaping Austin’s notoriously hot summer months, O’Brady is currently training in Kauai, Hawaii, and racing all over the world. Upcoming races include the Brazil Continental Cup (Sept. 29), Mexico World Cup (Oct. 6), and Puerto Rico Continental Cup (Oct. 13). Read more about his adventures on his website and blog, http://colinobrady.com/.   

   

An Interview With Pro Triathlete Matty Reed

by Kat Hunter

Triathlon might not be particularly high profile in the U.S., but in many ways, the lack of recognition and the size and intimacy of the tri community make the professional side of the sport more meaningful for the everyman. It’s a sport where you can still walk up and shake Dave Scott’s hand or, through some random event or lucky mutual acquaintance, go on a training ride with Chrissie Wellington or Andy Potts. You can still ask someone like Matty Reed for an interview.

It’s a little intimidating to sit down to talk with one of the top pros in the U.S.—though sitting is less intimidating than standing in Matty’s case, since he’s 6-foot-5.

Matty was in Austin over Memorial Day weekend for the Capital of Texas Triathlon, also making an appearance on Saturday at Austin Tri-Cyclist to talk with local athletes about Fuji’s new time trial bike, the Norcom Straight. For him, Captex was a test, a way to tell whether the speedwork he’s been doing in training has paid off and what type of race he wants to focus on in coming months. The 2013 World Championship 70.3 in Las Vegas is definitely on his radar, he says, and he hopes to qualify for Kona at the IRONMAN North American Championship Mont-Tremblant in August.

Born in New Zealand, Matty spent most of his childhood in Australia. Matty’s long history in triathlon—22 years to date—began with his first race on his 15th birthday. From that point on, he says, he knew triathlon was the career he wanted to pursue, and after high school, he began racing professionally. He became a U.S. citizen in 2007, and currently lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Kelly, a former pro triathete and PR and marketing guru, and their three children. After this past year’s brutal and lingering winter in Boulder, the Reed family may be moving soon, possibly to northern California.

Focusing primarily on ITU races for most of his career, Matty switched gears after the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to dabble in Olympic-distance, 70.3, and Iron-distance races. Though he’s been successful with both short course and long course in recent years, he admits he’s struggling to find the right balance and may have to decide on a particular focus soon.

Matty introducing the Norcom Straight at ATC Barton Springs

Non-drafting races offer an athlete like Matty, a strong cyclist, a number of advantages compared to ITU. From start to finish, a draft-legal race is a battle for position, he says, and one wrong move can ruin an entire day. The contenders tend to stay together on the bike leg. Matty says he prefers the non-drafting format because it allows him to do his own kind of race.

An outlier among professional triathletes, Matty is taller than most people would consider optimal for the sport. But he doesn’t see it as a limitation, pointing to his role model, five-time world champion Simon Lessing, who is 6-foot-3. Staying lean is more important as a tall athlete, Matty says, but at a certain weight, the extra height provides an edge on the competition. “I’ve always believed that triathlon is a strength sport, so being tall is not a disadvantage,” he says.

Twenty-two years is a long time to be in any career, but perhaps especially that of a professional triathlete, a person who makes a living from a sport that started as recently as the 1970s. Matty has seen change sweep through the sport, from the advent and development of organizations like the WTC and Rev 3 to a year-round race calendar and increasingly high-tech bikes and equipment.

“I’ve seen the money come in waves,” he says. “You’ll have a few years of really good money, and now we’re on the decline for professionals, I feel. I am proud of my long standing contracts with my sponsors.” The economy isn’t as strong as it was in previous years, and sponsorship dollars are harder to come by for many athletes. Unlike in many other professional sports, corporate sponsors outside of the triathlon industry are still very rare, narrowing the sources and scope of sponsorship.

Matty says that what has changed the most for him physically over the years is his ability to recover. Though perhaps also attributable to racing short course versus long, he was able to train much harder when he was younger, he says.

“It’s really hard to continue doing what I used to do, which is the quality,” he says. “I’ve had to slow it down a lot, which I don’t like. This year, I’ve tried to do the quality a little bit more and do the long stuff as well. We’re going to see how that works in my racing. Over the last couple of years I’ve definitely slowed down. I just know that with some of the sessions I do, I know my times, and I know I’m close to where I used to be, but I’m not quite there. It’s coming.”

The most important goal of his career, Matty says, has been consistency. As a younger athlete, he would win a race one weekend and place 40th the next. Though last year wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped, from 2008 to 2011 he felt he’d accomplished his goal of getting on the podium at nearly every race.

When I ask him if the life of a professional triathlete feels like a job and what keeps him motivated to do it, his answer is quick. “Oh yeah, it 100 percent feels like a job,” he says. “It’s hard work. I love to win so the motivation to get to my best and try to win races is definitely the main reason why I do it.”

Though many would say that Matty has “made it” as a professional triathlete, and he has a number of top sponsors, including Fuji, Rudy Project, Asics, Muscle Milk, and Champion System, an athlete never truly receives tenure. To keep his relationship with sponsors, he has to race well, and to earn bonus money, he has to win.

“It’s frustrating for me the last few years to not race as good as I know I can,” he says. “So my big goal right now is to get back to winning some races and thank my sponsors for sticking by me.”

Matty’s three children—two, five, and seven years old—add another element to his training. “It’s definitely tough, because I like to spend a lot of time with my kids, and I like to play with my kids,” he says. “I hate the fact that I’m out doing a long ride when my kids are at home and I should be playing with them, but I know it’s got to be done sometimes, and a lot of times I schedule my training around what they do, like their school.” With Ironman training, however, it’s nearly impossible to get everything done in time to be finished when they come home.

“But it’s my job,” he says, “and I’ve got make the most of it because I’ve only got probably four good racing years left in the sport.” When he retires from competition, Matty sees himself working for a sponsor and hosting triathlon camps, but for now, he’s putting everything into his training.

Serious triathletes—professionals and elite age groupers alike—are among the most driven and focused individuals in the world, taking every aspect of training and racing to an extreme level. They do have their playful side, though.

Matty, like most Kiwi and Aussie triathletes, has a well-known nickname. When I ask where “Boom Boom” came from, he tells me two stories. The true origin of the name was a 1000-meter time trial when he still lived in Australia. He was neck and neck with a friend, but then suddenly accelerated and dropped him, taking the win. The friend said, “Man, when you got to 500 meters you just went ‘Boom.’”

But Matty says the more interesting story is the one Chris McCormack told Matty’s future wife at their first meeting. Macca, a training partner at the time, introduced Matty to Kelly at a dinner in San Diego. As Matty was walking up, Kelly asked Macca about the meaning of the nickname. He told her, “Ah, he’s got really big privates. They go ‘boom boom.’” Five seconds later, a little flustered, Kelly shook Matty’s hand.

Matty Reed may be one of the world’s top endurance athletes, but he’s no prima donna. At ATC's meet-and-greet with Austin athletes and fans, he seemed friendly and down to earth, happy to answer questions and listen in turn. Pro triathletes are often a nice reminder that people with superhuman athletic abilities can still be human.

Training tips:

Matty says that in his own training, recovery sessions have been key. Rest days add up—one day a week becomes four days a month, which is around 50 days a year. “That’s nearly two months you’ve taken off in a year from just taking one day off a week, so I don’t believe in taking a day off a week,” he says. “I believe in recovery sessions.” A coach can also help a lot, he says, primarily with doing the workouts that you don’t want to do.

For age groupers working full-time jobs, he says quality is the most important aspect of training. “You only have a certain amount of time to get sessions in, so you don’t want to waste your time doing easy sessions,” he says. “Whenever you get the chance to get out there, you make the most of it. You get your heart rate up and train hard.” He says joining a masters’ group often helps, providing companionship and additional motivation.

Matty’s bike setup

Since early May, Matty has been on Fuji’s newly minted, top-of-the-line time trial bike, the Norcom Straight. He says the bike’s slogan—“Fit comes first”—says it all.

Previously, he rode Fuji’s D-6. “I was kind of sad to see that go, but also excited for the new one because I knew it had better technology and was more aerodynamic and stiffer than the D6,” he says. He said he noticed the improvement in fit and stiffness immediately.

Many of the top TT bikes currently on the market have custom, non-standard front ends with limited adjustability. The Norcom Straight solves the problem of combining an integrated, aerodynamic front end with greater flexibility in seat height, stack, and reach. Any regular stem can be used, but the Norcom Straight also offers a wide range of custom stem sizes for a fully integrated, aerodynamic stem setup, with a total of 24 possible positions. The bike comes standard with the UCI-compliant Oval Concepts 960 aerobar, but you’re free to use any aerobar you want.

Wind-tunnel designed and tested, the Norcom Straight is 18% faster across the most common yaw angles than its predecessor, the D-6. The bike supports fully internal mechanical or electric cable routing, and other features include integrated aerodynamic brakes, electric shifting battery mounts on the seat tube, and horizontally adjustable vertical dropouts that make wheel changes a piece of cake. Five frame sizes are available: S (49cm), M (51cm), M/L (53cm), L (55cm), and XL (57cm). Matty, of course, rides the XL.

Gruppo – Campagnolo EPS

The Electronic Power Shift is Campy’s latest production electronic gruppo, 11-speed and similar to the Durace Di2 in many of its features. The Super Record model is the lightest electronic gruppo currently on the market.

Wheels - Lightweight Fernweg

Top dollar, these are the lightest deep aero wheels in the world.

Saddle – Dash Cycles Tri.7

This ultra lightweight saddle looks like something out of Star Trek, but its cutout and unique shape make it popular for TT positions.

Aerobars - Oval Concepts 960 aerobars

These UCI-legal aerobars come standard on the Norcom Straight.

Crankset – Campagnolo Bora Ultra

Campy’s attractive and aerodynamic crankset, 55T.

Pedals – Keywin pedals

Made by a company in New Zealand, these lesser-known pedals are very adjustable; riders can easily adjust the length of the axle and the float.

For more info on Matty Reed, check out http://www.mattyreed.com

Read other ATC Blogger interviews:

Colin O’Brady, pro ITU triathlete (coming soon)
Brandon & Amy Marsh, pro triathletes
Tristan Uhl, pro mountain biker
Jeff Symonds, pro triathlete (before his podium at Las Vegas Worlds in 2011)

Cat 1 Couple Sheri & Stefan Rothe

by Kat Hunter

The cycling scene in Austin is both large and small. On the one hand, while there are hundreds of people competing at different skill levels and venues, when the "six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon" game is applied to any individual cyclist in town, the game is over faster than a 25-meter sprint.

Sheri and Stefan Rothe, both category 1 cyclists and Austin residents since 2008, are somewhere near the center of this interconnected web. Sheri, wearing the pink and blue of the Austin Flyers, is easy to spot in the pack with her long braid, and Stefan is rarely far from the spotlight, both in his racing and coaching.

But there's a lot more to a person than what can be gathered from race results or the community grapevine. After all, a cat 1 cyclist doesn't happen overnight. Rather than emerging fully formed, most competitive athletes develop in a way that is painstakingly slow and surprisingly human.

Starting Out

When Stefan was 11 years old, following a doctor's recommendation that he pick up low-weight-bearing sports to prevent potential leg problems, his parents gave him the option of cycling or swimming. He joined a cycling club in his hometown of Dresden, Germany, and cycling, of course, quickly became the preferred activity. After a year of keeping up with a Junior/U23 training group of road cyclists on his "way too heavy" mountain bike, he got his first real road bike, which sported a steel frame and pedal cages for his tennis shoes.

His talent for cycling was something that developed over years of training, Stefan says, although he did come in second at his first race. (It was a lesson that immediately educated him in the dangers of leading out a sprint too early.)

In the spring of 2003, after one year of college in Germany, Stefan came to the US on a cycling scholarship to attend Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls. MSU is where he and Sheri met. They had a computer class together, where Sheri says she first knew him as "the cute German guy."

Not a cyclist at the time, Sheri played defense on the university's soccer team. After a foot injury that put her on the sidelines, Sheri signed up for Hotter'n Hell on a road bike that she'd ridden once before. She had intended to do the 25-mile ride, but missed a turn, so did a sweltering 70 miles as her official introduction to cycling instead. Although she says this wasn't a good first experience, ultimately she decided she liked cycling better than soccer and joined the MSU women's cycling team.

Sheri and Stefan were married in 2007 in Dresden, with family and friends from both Texas and Germany in attendance. And no, there were no bikes with tin cans tied to the handlebars, or a honeymoon ascending the French Alps. Stefan says he didn't ride his bike for 10 days, and then returned to Texas three days before the Hotter'n Hell 100. "It was very painful, and me and a buddy called it a day after 80 miles," he says.

Coaching & Competing

When I asked Sheri, who works full-time and is currently pursuing a teaching certification, if she considered cycling a hobby, she laughed. "It's too all-consuming to be a hobby," she says. "It's more of a lifestyle."

And Austin suits that lifestyle well. "It's a cycling-friendly town, a very fit and athletic city in general, and a lot of professional athletes call it home," Stefan says. "It's a good vibe. Same goes for the cycling community, which has a lot of creative individuals and business owners who support the sport, from kiddie races to Pro/1 races."

Stefan w/ the "Most Aggressive Rider" Mohawk

Stefan has owned his own cycling coaching and consulting business, ROTHE Training, since 2008. "I'm proud to say that I really work with everyone," he says. "From true beginner or 14-year-old junior to experienced cat 1 racer – that's the core of my business idea: to cater towards the general recreational riders and amateur or master racers rather than elite-level athletes only." He currently coaches 25 athletes, men and women ranging from 14 to 65 years old.

In addition to coaching, Stefan is a member of the Tulsa Tough Elite Cycling Team and competes in many regional races, as well as a number of National Calendar Races. Although he strives to keep his coaching and own competition separate in order to focus on the task at hand, he says that his racing helps him relate with what coached athletes are experiencing.

"The best reward is when a client achieves his or her goals, be it a certain workout they were able to finish or a race they always wanted to win," he says. "Watching an athlete win a race, it feels almost the same as winning myself."

"And it actually takes pressure off of me, too. I try to be a good bike racer, but ultimately people judge your ability as a coach by the accomplishments of your athletes and not your own results. Fact is, the best bike racers will never be the best coaches. Some of the best cycling coaches out there were just mediocre athletes themselves."

Stefan brings to the table 18 years of racing experience. The races he considers his biggest career accomplishments include a third-place stage finish at the UCI-ranked Tour of Malaysia, the "Most Aggressive Rider" award at the week-long Vuelta a El Salvador, and a fifth place at the University World Championships Road Race in Belgium a few years ago.

His philosophy on cycling is based mostly on what he calls "mental strength." "You can be the most gifted and talented rider in the world but if you have no drive or desire and mental strength to do well then you'll never succeed," he says. "I've seen really great cyclists or athletes get beaten by less talented and physically disadvantaged riders because they didn't focus enough or just didn't believe in themselves. If you have a plan, you've got to follow it even if it hurts."

Perhaps the most unique aspect of Stefan's coaching business is the attitude he takes toward its expansion. These days, it seems common for large and small businesses alike to take a sky's-the-limit approach, always striving to double or triple or quadruple sales, often before they're fully prepared or have the resources to do so. But Stefan seems content to keep ROTHE Training on a small scale, at least for now, and organizes his schedule in a way that allows him to also get in enough training time to stay competitive himself.

At Austin Tri-Cyclist, Stefan conducts lactate-threshold testing and bike fits. And apart from monthly coaching services, he also offers skills sessions, one-on-one training consultations, and power meter installation. In short, between managing ROTHE Training and racing, he often has his hands full.

At the end of the day...

Given the challenge of combining work, racing, and the day-to-day, being a cat 1 couple isn't always as glamorous as it seems, but both Sheri and Stefan say that it's helpful to be with someone who understands and appreciates the demands of the sport. They don't often go on training rides together, but they attend many of the same races and are both very active in the cycling community. Sheri is race team coordinator for the Austin Flyers, and ROTHE Training helps sponsor local events and organizations like the Driveway Race Series, the Tour of Austin, and the 787 Racing Team.

So now that the 2011 season is winding down, what's next for the Rothes? A return to their old stomping grounds for Hotter'n Hell, of course, and maybe a few more local and NRC races for Stefan. "And in the off-season, there's always a chance for a cycling trip to an exotic country," Stefan says. "We'll see."

Right, so sometimes the life of an elite cyclist is as glamorous as it seems.