1. Climbing hills, none of the tri courses I ride are dead flat, they all have hills on the course.  Mountain biking often has a LOT of hills and during a race, climbing hills more efficiently and faster than others is one place where you can make up time where a lot of people lose it. 
2. It's a lot like an interval workout.  You go hard for a while and then get a recovery period on the downhills.  So often during my road bike rides I just sit and spin with a very constant/steady cadence, no peaking of my heart rate, no letting myself recover. I know I SHOULD do intervals on the bike, but I think I have a mental block on the road of doing that and mountain biking gives me that workout naturally.

1. I strengthens your stabilizer muscles and ligaments around your angle and knees.  
2. The trails I run have a LOT of uphill, which I think helps in a couple ways by itself... the most obvious, when there's a hill on a road course during the run it's rarely ever as steep as what the trails I've run are, so they seem "easy".  I read an article in Runners World once about a study done comparing the biomechanics of walking up an 8% grade on a treadmill and sprinting, the two were bio-mechanically identical.  Walking (or better yet, running) uphill puts you on your toes, makes you lift your knees higher, and relative to the ground, you're leaning forwards... which is exactly what you do when you're sprinting.  So it's like a sprint workout bio-mechanically.  Even though you're going a LOT slower, your heart rate is still high when you're doing it as well.  
3. It teaches you to be able to run faster downhill and let gravity do the work.  This is something I realized 4 months ago that I was weak on.  I'd fall slowly behind groups on uphills, I'd be faster than them on flat sections, but then when a downhill came, they'd fly past me again like I was standing still.  I was fighting gravity going both uphill and downhill.  Since running these trails I've learned to let gravity do more of the work, I now run faster downhill than I used to AND my heart rate is lower than it used to be while doing it.

Kath2163 - 2010-06-26 5:27 PM First 75 miles in the books.  I took this picture this morning at the start.  I was so amazed by the lack of people, lines... everything that I had to take a picture.Three years ago I would never have thought that a  row of empty port-a-potties at the beginning of a race or other sporting event would excite me.

This would bring a tear to bob stocks eye!

Nice riding today Kathy, have a great time tomorrow!

One of my few bricks for this training plan (there were more, I just seperated them).  62 miles on the bike with the group and five plus miles on the run.  Legs felt good, the heat made it a mental challenge!

phxphotog - 2010-06-27 3:09 PM Got up this morning for my weekly 1 1/2 hour ride and everything was going fine. Did my neighborhood loop to warm up and did the bike mountain hill to the North of us. I was about 40 minutes into my ride when I ran over some rocks and blew my back tire. No problem, I've changed a few tires so I'm sort of a pro (that's a joke). I tooke the punctured one out and put the new one in. I thought I could get it done quickly so I could get back on the road. I went to inflate it with my co2 cartridge and pop. I didn't check to make sure that the tube was seated in the tire and not pinched. Well let's just write that up as a learning experience. I had several bikers pass me that offered me tubes but I didn't want to take their spares. I called my wife and she came and got me. It was the ride of shame home with my bike in the back of the car. I didn't even realize that I still had my helmet on when I got out of the car at home. I'm such a dork.

Well, I'll be finishing up the weeks workout later. 45 more minutes on the stationary bike at the gym and an hour run outside tonight.

This next week is vacation so I should be able to get my workouts in pretty easily.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and did well at their races. I can tell a lot of you are at your high points in your IM training cause you aren't on as much. I'll spend some time this week looking at people's logs.

I had to call for the ride home just a couple of weeks ago.  Went through my tube, used the tube my friend had, and when the 3rd flat came I was 2 miles from home so called the rescue wagon!  Only the first flat was my fault, pulled a little hard on the stem airing it up.  The other 2 were from road junk.  I have had pincher flats though.  Fred's check list is on the mark!!

PennState - 2010-06-27 5:47 PM Yes, take your time changing a flat. 1. Take off the tire and blown tube 2. Check the tires on the inside VERY carefully for glass or cuts 3. Only take off one side of the tire, this allows you to take the tube off without completely taking off the tire 4. Insert partially inflated tube into the tire 5. Pinch the tire around the tube 6. THEN check VERY carefully for pinches. Pull the tire and tube up to alleviate any pinches. 7. Inflate! BTW, check out my logs, serious ironman training going on

Great work Fred!!!

I was going to brag about my totals until I saw yours!  But then I don't start IM training for another couple of weeks!

Body of triathlete recovered and identified

By Maya Rao and Chris Melchiorre

INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Derek Valentino, a mail carrier and father of two, had worked hard in preparation for his first triathlon.

He never really got the chance to compete.

Sunday night, almost 34 hours after Valentino entered the water for the swim leg of an amateur sprint triathlon, police recovered his body in the Schuykill River.

Valentino, 40, of Prospect Park, "worked very hard for his family," said a friend, Samantha Savukinas. He was the father of two boys, ages 15 and 17, and had been avidly training for Saturday's event.

"He tried very hard for the triathlon, and he's very loved and will be missed," said Savukinas.

The search for Valentino's body consumed most of the day yesterday and canceled the swim leg of Sunday's Philadelphia Insurance Triathlon, the main event on a weekend that drew scores of triathletes to the city. Competitors instead ran two legs of the race and biked the third.

"We did it out of respect for the man's family," Richard Adler, race director, said of the change in plans. "The competitors were very understanding."

Valentino worked for the U.S. Postal Service for about 20 years, said Savukinas. He went into the water about 8:22 a.m. Saturday with a wave of about 100 swimmers in the 40- to 44-year-old age bracket.

The swimmers entered on the Martin Luther King Drive side of the Schuylkill, not far from Montgomery Avenue. They swam to Columbia Avenue bridge and returned to the spot where they had started, a distance of about a half mile. The police department's marine unit recovered the body in the river at 1500 Martin Luther King Drive, authorities said.

A search was launched for the missing athlete after he failed to emerge by 9:40 a.m. Adler said that between lifeguards, kayaks, and marine boats, there were at least 20 people watching the water at that time, but that no one saw anything unusual.

"I think that we are probably considered one of the safest races out there," Adler said. "But I think that this is, by nature, a dangerous sport. And I think the athletes know that going in. So we will absolutely take a look at what we did, but I truly believe we were very well covered out there, as we have been for the past six years."

In a statement, Adler said all those involved in the triathlon "want to extend our sincere and deepest sympathy to the participant's family. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this difficult time."

From a competition standpoint, many athletes said that taking the swim out of the triathlon not only changed the playing field, but made it more difficult to deal with the persistent humidity Sunday.

None, however, questioned the decision to change the race from an Olympic-distance triathlon to a duathalon - which consists of a 10 kilometer run, a 20K cycle, and finally another 5K run.

"It was definitely the call they had to make," said Bevan Docherty, the two-time Olympic medalist who took home the men's title Sunday.

Never good when this happens.  What a tragedy.