Ask A Pro: An Open Forum With Dr. Alex McDonald

I received a really exciting email yesterday from my friends over at Timex about Dr. Alex McDonald. Dr. McDonald is  professional triathlete and a Timex Multisport Team member. The team members—made up of 50 elite and amateur athletes from U.S., Australia,India,Ukraine, Mexico, Czech Republic, Estonia, Canadaand the United Kingdom—just took part in the team's preseason training camp at the Timex Performance Center in East Rutherford New Jersey. The camp—which took place Thursday 18- Sunday 21, February—featured state-of-the-art performance evaluation and analysis. Each athlete was afforded the opportunity to gain in-depthknowledge about their individual performance indicators: biomechanical testing analysis, VO2 Max testing andMELT Method training, under the direction of a collaborative team of sports medicine and training experts led by New York Giants VP of Medical Services Ronnie Barnes and Polly de Mille of the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Timex Multisport Team member Alex McDonald, MD, a professional triathlete and medicaldoctor from Durham, NC, participated in a unique dual role - as both a participating athleteand member of the medical counsel led by Barnes.  


Now the really cool part: Dr. McDonald is going to answer our questions about training and sport performance. Of course, I have a sleuth of questions I could fire away about all things triathlon, but I want to give all of you the opportunity to respond to this with any training questions of your own. Think about it. How many times will be able to fire questions to a professional triathlete AND medical doctor? Unless you have cell phone numbers for Craig Alexander, Chrissy Wellington, and Dr. Oz, the opportunities for a professional athlete to make themselves accessible are often quite rare for amateurs like many of us. If any of you have questions regarding all things triathlon, please submit a question to this blog post. I will compile a list of question and answers in a future post. 


Update: I just started week 10 of training and it did not go so well. I completely bonked today in the pool. I am not sure why. Well, I have an idea. After two great swims in North Carolina. I went for a forty minute swim today, but I could only get through about half of it. I could not get my heart rate under control. Turns out, I am still really tired from my week in NC, and I was very dehydrated when I got in the pool this afternoon. Oh, and Clif Builder Bars—although the greatest post-workout bar— is really not an adequate substitute for lunch. Hoping to get back on track tomorrow. 


Interview: I am still writing my post on race entry fees following my interview with Jeff Henderson, race director of the Musselman Half, Portland Triathlon. and Fly By Night Du. More soon. Happy Training everyone!