The Other Joe

Joe Friel is giving a presentation in Phase IV in Santa Monica. As a reminder, this is the guy who wrote The Triathlete Training Bible, the must-have book for all triathletes. This is a rare chance to see THE triathlon training guru in person, in a small setting. I bet he would sign my copy of his book.

The problem is, I hate Joe Friel. He's a crazy person and I don't understand how any normal human being can follow his training methods. For example: if you want to set up an Ironman training schedule, Mr. Friel asks you to figure out how many hours you want to spend training during the year, then go to a chart to see what the weekly breakdown should be. Isn't that bass-ackwards? Can ANYONE tell me how many free hours they have in a year? Here's a better idea: figure out the maximum number of hours you can train in a single week, lock that in as your peak training week, and then read the chart from there. No-brainer. And there are all sorts of weird stuff like that in Mr. Friel's book. The book is just hard to read and it makes my head hurt.

So am I gonna drive completely across Los Angeles to listen to a guy talk about things that will make absolutely no sense to me? You're probably thinking I'm going to say "yes" because hey, I'm a sell-out and Triathlon Royalty is Triathlon Royalty. And this DOES sound like something I would do. But I'm going to give this one a pass. Sorry Joe.