Mark Allen

As an endurance athlete, it's important to make sure you get enough protein and good oils, as well as antioxidants and phytonutrients from colored fruits and vegetables.
 
Transcript: "There are a few things that I really focus on in my diet. One is making sure that I get enough protein to rebuild the muscle that I break down when I'm training. This is super important as an endurance athlete. You, as an endurance athlete, need more protein on a daily basis than weightlifters. The second thing that I really focus on is getting good oils-- olive oil, avocado, nuts. When you have that, the hormones in your body also stay healthy. And that is super important because when you're pushing your body athletically, especially with endurance, your hormone levels can drop. So you want to make sure that you give them the basic building blocks that they need to be healthy. Also, every cell membrane in your body is made from fat from oils. And so you need to have those on a really good level also. And then the third thing is to really make sure that I get a lot of those good phytonutrients, which are the small things that are in fruits, and in deep green leafy vegetables, colored vegetables. Those really help with antioxidants and a whole bunch of other stuff. So it's pretty simple. It's what I eat also for a healthy lifestyle. But in terms of endurance, you're just eating a little bit more than the average person."

The biggest difference between indoor and outdoor cycling is that on a trainer, there is more load throughout the entire pedal stroke and it can be less enjoyable due to the lack of distraction. However, it can be an efficient ride as you don't have to stop for anything and it can be used for drills such as one-legged pedaling. To make sure you don’t go “wacko”, make sure to entertain yourself during your ride.
 
Transcript: "The biggest difference between indoor and outdoor cycling. Is that on a trainer? You don't have the momentum of you moving across ground, to keep your speed up, to keep your your Cadence up. And so there's just a slightly larger amount of load throughout the entire pedal stroke on a trainer then there is out on the road. So it's actually a super efficient way to gain Fitness on the bike. You can also do some interesting drills on a trainer. You can pedal with one leg to really get that full spin. Called developed in each of the legs, put your leg one leg spinning. The other one on a block or a chair to stabilize, do it for a couple minutes, switch to the other one, do the other leg. So you can actually, you can actually spend a little bit less time on a trainer and still get the same Fitness gains. The second thing though, is it? You got to make sure that you are not going brain-dead sitting there for hours on a trainer. If you spend a lot of time on a trainer, obviously, Do something like Swift where you have a certain amount of entertainment, watch a movie have music stuff, that sort of distracts you a little bit from just this pure boredom that goes on. But the other side of that is that you can really focus on relaxing your your body as you're doing your trainer ride in a different way than you can when you're out on the road and having to worry about cars and potholes and stoplights. The other thing that's actually really good about it trainer is that it can be nonstop. You don't have to stop for anything. And so again it Can be a super efficient ride. However, make sure, make sure that you kind of entertain yourself a little bit so that you don't go wacko."

When doing weights, I aim for sets of 12-15 reps so that the load is heavy enough to give me a strength response when I recover.
 
Transcript: "Greg, you shouldn't be asking these questions in between your sets, you're breathing too hard, man. Hey, anyway, I do heavier weights. When I do weights, I want it to be a real load on the muscle, because I do plenty of endurance work, meaning if I do sets of 20 or 30 reps, that's more of an endurance move. When I do weights, I really want it to be something that's going to give me a strength response when I recover from it. So sets of 12 to 15, not totally too fatigue. Rarely do I do totally too fatigue, but I definitely go to the point where, at the end, I'm like, OK, that was enough now."

I was in my final Iron Man in 1995 and came off the bike 13 and a half minutes behind the leader. I was so tired and my mind was telling me to quit, but I knew if I quit there would be no way of realizing my dream. So I kept going and ended up winning the race.
 
Transcript: "My make-or-break Moment came in my final Iron Man in 1995. I came off the bike 13 and a half minutes behind the leader. Thomas, hell Regal, he was 13 years younger than me. He was 24. I was 37. A couple miles into the marathon. I was so tired that I just didn't even know that if I could finish or not. And as I was thinking, I don't need this. I've won five of these. I don't need to complete this Marathon. There's no way I can catch. That guy is no way. I can win it. I saw the hotel entrance where I was staying. It was only a couple hundred yards up the road and my mind was going, I should just quit. Fortunately, I didn't quit because I knew if I quit there was no way of realizing the dream that I had which was to have one more great race there. If I quit. I knew there was no way that I would honor the the support of family and friends and training partners and experts in so many fields who would help me get ready for that race. And so that was a make-or-break moment. Do I quit or do I keep going? Even though at this point? I don't even know if I can finish. Fortunately. I found a way to keep Going, I ended up winning that Sixth and final Ironman that day."

Whether to take a rest day or not really depends on the intensity and volume of training, but it is okay to do an active recovery like swimming. Generally, when competing, I didn't take many days off but made sure that my easy days were very easy.
 
Transcript: "Whether to take a rest day or not, really depends on how intently or intensely or the volume of training that you're doing throughout a week. So for example, if somebody is training a lot of volume a lot of intensity for sure, you're going to need some kind of rest and whether whether they has to be a complete day off or not, is really going to be somewhat personal for sure. It's okay to do swimming as a recovery active recovery. Meaning you're going very easy in a sport. That actually seems to speed the recovery process faster than if you just do nothing in sit around. So, but It ultimately depends on how fatigued or how exhausted you're getting on. The other days when you are training. Personally, when I was, when I was competing. I didn't actually take many days, completely off for rest. However, I made sure that on my easy days that they were very, very, very easy."

To become a professional triathlete, one must build their fitness, experience and race results. One should also get local sponsorship and support to have more time to train, as well as surround themselves with people who know about the sport such as other top athletes or coaches. Additionally, one must stay injury free and be patient.
 
Transcript: "If you are hoping to be a pro triathlete, there's a few things you have to kind of keep in mind one. It's a process that just slowly builds, you know, build your Fitness, build your experience, build your race results. Go to places where you can show that. Yeah. I have the potential to be one of the top people in the world, get some local sponsorship, some local support. Whoever that might be, it might even be your family might be a relative, but something so that you can start to devote more of your time to your actual training and less. I'm to anything else. That would be distracting you from being your best. And then hopefully over time you'll see that the sponsorships are going to be something that can be there to support that. The other thing that's really important to do two things, really one is don't get injured, you know, take your time, be patient. If you're, if you're injured and you're not training, you're not getting better. The second thing is to surround yourself with people who know about the sport, maybe move to a place where there are. Are our other top pro athletes. So that you have a community of support that is at the level that you want to be at in the sport and threw. That one, you'll gain a lot of just, those subtle pieces of knowledge that you can never get anywhere else. You probably be exposed to a number of coaches that can help you out. And also, you'll have a really good training group that you can you can tap into and that's really, really important for getting better."