What does it take to train for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii? Follow our four-part series about Suunto athlete Åsa Lundström as she prepares and find out! For Swedish triathlete Åsa Lundström the next few weeks are everything. Over the last month, the 30-year-old medical student and professional athlete has been preparing for the approaching Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii on October 10th, 2015. It’s the legendary Ironman that every triathlete dreams of competing in. That dream is about to become a reality for Åsa. “Every sport has tales to tell of battles on the race course,” she says. “And with Ironman, we all hear stories of the legendary clashes of the triathlon titans at Kona. “The best part is that we now have the opportunity to become one of those stories.” Click here to read more about Åsa, the unlikely Swedish triathlete Like all big projects, Åsa's road to Kona begins with the most important step: careful planning. She works closely with her professional triathlete coach, Cliff English, for this. When to intensify, where to train and when to go to Hawaii have all been planned well in advance. Cliff updates Åsa’s training schedule week-by-week, always trying to find the right balance between the intensity and volume of her training and ensuring she gets enough recovery time. “I’m constantly monitoring her sessions, looking at objective measurements, such as pace and power, as well as her subjective feedback on each session and on other factors including sleep quality, muscle soreness and freshness,” Cliff says. During a normal training week, Åsa puts in between 20 and 25 hours. For Kona, that jumps to 35 hours every week. Her life becomes structured around training. In one week, she swims five or six times, cycles four or five times, runs five to six times and does strength and core training three times. “Åsa typically trains two to three times per day,” Cliff says. “Some of the sessions are separate with a morning session then a midday session and typically a lighter active recovery session later in the day. “I tend to prescribe one key session per day, however I also include combo sessions that include bike and run that are typically executed at race efforts.” All this training might sound austere, like Åsa has no life, but she enjoys the process. “When I have a big goal to work towards, it feels natural to focus on that, and to make choices adjusted to it,” Åsa says. “I don’t believe being disciplined means life cannot be fun at the same time.” To keep things fun and to plan in a short term training goal, Åsa recently competed in the Tjörn Triathlon in Sweden and won the women’s division. “It was a great boost,” she says, “and gave me proof that my training is going in the right direction.” That’s important because she says it’s not always easy to tell if her build up is going well. “When you are in a big training period, you feel tired and worn, and it’s hard to tell sometimes,” she explains. “However, when you feel tired, and you somehow manage to make the body do what you ask, then this is a good sign, especially if you were able to push yourself to a required pace or effort you didn’t think you could do.” Åsa recently travelled to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands to begin her final preparations. The warmer conditions are more similar to Hawaii than in Sweden, making it a good training ground.  Check out the second step, progress, of our four part series about Åsa as she continues on the road to the Ironman World Championship in Kona.

Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps and cycling around it offers mind-blowing views. Press play on the video below and experience what it's like to ride through this incredible landscape! Alpinists and ice climbers Matthias Scherer and Tanja Schmitt can’t get enough of the mountains. Whether, it’s winter or summer, their lives revolve around preparing for and going on big adventures. To help them physically and mentally prepare for the coming winter, they cycled around Mont Blanc in less than 24 hours. Below, Tanja Schmitt recounts their big day out pedalling. By Tanja Schmitt The Tour du Mont Blanc climbs more than 8050 vertical meters over a total distance of 340 km. The route goes through some of the most beautiful alpine passes in the Alps and some of the most spectacular parts of Italy, Switzerland and France. It offers stunning views of the snow-covered flanks of the mighty Mont Blanc (4810m), the highest peak in the Alps. As mountaineers and ice climbers, the psychological part of our sport has a big impact and the physical demands are also high. Next to basic strength training, regular rock-climbing and dry tooling, endurance training plays a major role in our overall training. For this reason, over summer Matthias and I do a lot of vertical ascent training through mountain running and biking. The idea of cycling non-stop around Mont Blanc was born from the logical step of connecting the passes and roads we’ve gotten to know so well through our training and traveling over the years. And on Sunday, August 30th the time had finally come to take action. Click here to read more about Matthias Scherer and Tanja Schmitt With bright headlamps and equipped with several Clif Shot Gels, Clif Shot Bloks and Clif Bars, together with salt-tablets and water, we hit the road at Aymaville and cycled along the empty roads of Aosta towards Grand St. Bernard. Our heartbeat was regular and we cycled in a steady rhythm. Our route lead us from the Col du Gr. St.Bernard over Champex to Martigny. Then over the Col de la Forclaz and on to Chamonix, Le Fayet and St. Gervais to Megève. From there we gained 750 vertical meters to les Saisies and further on to Beaufort. Temperatures during the day went to over 30° C and, correspondingly, the cycling became tougher. On the Cormet de Roselend, I began to suffer from the heat due to an agitating dry cough. But as the evening freshness came on, we got our strength back and enjoyed rolling down the long descent to Bourge-St-Maurice. The challenge to organize water refills became an unexpected issue. However, after a nerve-racking 30-minute wait in the queue of a nearby McDonalds, we rehydrated and furthermore equipped ourselves with an ice-filled cola! The last verticals up the road of Petit St-Bernard were tackled at dawn. Then the end was in sight and after a spectacular ride down the Col to Prè-St-Didier, we felt like we were flying on the last flat kilometers on the SS26 to Aymaville. On arriving back in Aymaville, our Suunto Ambits showed a time of 19h55min. A wonderful training day in the mountains had come to an end.

It’s 7000 m of elevation gain and 300 km and ice climbers and alpinists Matthias Scherer and partner Tanja Schmitt aim to cover their Tour Mont Blanc in less than 24 hours. It’s the highest mountain in the Alps and cycling around the base of Mont Blanc takes most people around five days. Matthias Scherer and Tanja Schmitt aim cycle it on racing bikes in less than 24 hours this Sunday. © Matthias Scherer They’ve been climbing mountains and frozen waterfalls for over 15 years together and for them Mont Blanc – with its stunning ice channels and snow covered flanks – is a symbol of their shared passion.“Mont Blanc for me is something like a church,” Matthias says. “When I see it, it reminds me there’s something higher and more important in life to long for than numbers and training.”The unsupported tour will be the ultimate test of their bodies and minds before autumn arrives and their ice-climbing season begins. The most challenging part, however, will be staying focused and fueled.“You have to be extremely concentrated the whole time,” Matthias says. “The descents are very tricky, the roads aren’t always good, as they have holes. “You have to stay fueled if you want to keep a rhythm.” © Matthias Scherer They’ll be drinking water every 10 minutes, taking electrolytes every 13 minutes, eating energy blocks every 20 minutes and sandwiches before each long downhill to allow enough rest time for digestion. Another challenge is making sure they don’t push too hard too early on in the tour. “At the beginning of a big tour like this it’s common to be a little bit euphoric and to push too hard,” Matthias explains. To avoid this, they will use their Ambit3 Peak watches to ensure they keep their heart rates at 70 per cent of their maximum. They’ll also use their watches to record their elevation gain and for GPS tracking to navigate the few stages of the tour they’re less familiar with.“It’s going to be a long training day for us, but I don’t expect to be broken,” Matthias says. “I plan to go climbing right away on Monday.”

We all know proper recovery is an essential part of any training regime, but what exactly happens in our bodies while we rest, how does it impact our performance and how can new recovery features released to Ambit3 watches support our recovery? To get the answers on the science of recovery, we talked with Tero Myllymäki, who leads the physiological analytics development at Firstbeat Technologies. Tero, can you talk us through how recovery impacts our performance? The role of recovery is not only crucial to an athlete’s development, but to overall health and wellness; without sufficient recovery, it is impossible to build one’s endurance and stamina. In sports, the whole exercise philosophy is based on the fact that while exercising, body balance, so called homeostasis, is placed in a state of imbalance which lowers our body’s performance level. By taking the time to rest (referred to as “recovery”), this performance level is gained back, and, thanks to this recovery process, it is possible to gain a higher performance level. What about the role of a good night’s sleep? A really important fact in recovery is the need for a good night’s sleep. Sleeping well at night is really crucial to recovery, since it is a repetitive, long period of time, during which all body functions can relax. If recovery is successful, all the stress caused by strenuous exercising, along with other factors in your daily life, is reset at night (while you rest), and the body’s resources are replenished. Body stress and recovery can be compared to batteries: you can only use them or charge them once in a while. Suunto Ambit3 watch offers two tests for measuring my recovery level, but what are the tests measuring in practise? Recovery is analyzed by measuring the body’s autonomic regulation balance through heart rate variance. At night, one would expect the parasympathetic (so-called relaxing body function) to be powerful and thorough enough to activate the body’s recovery processes. Recovery measurement tests determine how calm a person’s body is during sleep. How does this information benefit an athlete? Monitoring this recovery can make the time used in exercising more efficient, because it is good to know when you can exercise on full speed, and when you should take it more slowly and simply let your body recover. Recovery measurement tests will also tell you when you are training too hard, or when you should work harder, so that an athlete can measure the risk of exercising too hard, or not exercising at all. Recovery monitoring is a learning process for you; it enables an athlete to reflect on how he/she is feeling. What about muscle pain or flue, will the recovery test recognize these? Even though the autonomic regulation has regained normal levels, intense or abnormal exercises done by an athlete might cause muscle damage, as well as risk to the overall body energy levels. These situations cannot be monitored via autonomic regulation tests. Weakened muscle level recovery can be seen during the exercise, although you wouldn’t be able to see it in the recovery tests. Instead, the effect of diseases such as fever which affect the overall body regulation system, can be seen in the autonomic regulation activity, and, consequently, from the recovery test data. Can I analyze my sleep quality with the test? Sleeping badly, and/or waking up during the night can be regarded as a side-effect of the body refusing to slow down, and the heart’s autonomic regulation and/or parasympathetic regulations are weak. This also lowers the recovery levels. The quality of your sleep is influenced by many different factors, and sometimes it may indicate how a person feels about his/her sleep; other times, it may be a direct result of the electrical impulses in the brain which measure sleep phases. Recovery measurements won’t directly measure these sleep phases, but it can reflect on it by measuring autonomic regulation (how relaxed the body is).   Read more about the features: Tutorial Tuesday: Learn how to use Ambit3's recovery features   Tero Myllymäki, M.Sc., Physiology Research, Firstbeat TechnologiesMr. Myllymäki is responsible for physiological analytics development and research collaboration at Firstbeat. He possesses an academic background, and previously worked as a researcher in several multidisciplinary expert teams, combining physiology, psychology, and technology. His goal is to seek innovative solutions for providing meaningful and actionable feedback on well-being, lifestyle, and performance in daily life. Mr. Myllymäki has a Master’s Degree in exercise physiology from the University of Jyväskylä.   Get to know your recovery status with Ambit3 watchSuunto Ambit3 watch offers two ways to follow your recovery. The quick recovery test and the sleep recovery test both measure your heart rate variability to give you an indication of your recovery status in percent. The higher the percentage, the more recovered you are. The tests require a Bluetooth Smart compatible heart rate sensor that measures heart rate variability (R-R interval), such as Suunto Smart Sensor.   The quick recovery test is performed by wearing the Smart Sensor belt for three minutes and then checking the recovery percentage from the Suunto Ambit3 watch. Alternatively, you can run the sleep recovery test which measures your heart rate variability through the night to give you an accurate indication of your recovery status in the morning when you wake up.    

Seven-time world triathlon champion Conrad Stoltz, aka Caveman, says having a lot of hobbies has helped him stay mentally fresh as an athlete. One of those hobbies is riding his Fatboy fatbike to hard-to-get-to places. A fatbike is a bicycle with over-sized tires designed for riding on soft, unstable terrain, such as snow and sand. Conrad's fatbike is a Specialized Fatboy Pro with 4.6inch (12cm) wide tyres, at super low pressure so he can ride just about wherever he likes! Conrad tearing up dust on his fatbike. © Conrad Stoltz“A fatbike is so amazingly capable, you don't need a road or a path to ride,” Conrad says. “As long as there’s not too much vegetation, you can ride almost anywhere. "Whether it's rocks or sand or gravel or whatever it is, you can just ride. “I love it because it satisfies my sense of adventure and being the Caveman wanting to see what's around the next corner and wanting to see if I can ride over big rocks, domes and dunes and find really cool places.” Conrad likes his fatbike so much that he sometimes struggles to make himself train on his standard mountain bike “Once I'm less focused on training for performance and more just making it a lifestyle, I will definitely be doing more fatbiking,” he says. Check out Conrad’s video of a fatbike adventure he did while attending a sporting festival on South Africa’s south coast. Main image: ©lighttrapper.co.uk

What is the best way to recover after a race, adventure or just a hard effort on your own? We asked our ambassadors how they do it. From eating pancakes to paragliding, from secret smoothie recipes to stretching, their answers will help you get back on form more quickly. KILIAN JORNET Stay fresh by doing other sports I like to do some mountaineering activities to feel different feelings than just running. I ran less than 200 km in the build up to Hardrock because I was climbing instead. I was keeping myself fit through mountaineering so when I came to the race I was mentally fresh and physically prepared. Kilian stretches ©jordo canamerasAvoid over-trainingIf you focus too hard on one thing for too long you can get tired of it. You see people who are doing a lot of long races and who keep this up for one or two years and then, boom, they’re down and injured. It’s important to never do too many long races every year because after one, two or three years it can be really hard to recover. For me, 200 or 300 miles a year is the limit. Kilian Jornet is a multiple record breaking trail runner, endurance athlete and world champion ski mountaineer. EMELIE FORSBERG Rest! Normally I rest the day after or if it is an ultra at least. If I do a 2-4 hour race I normally go for a small run just to get the circulation going. I also like to treat myself after a race, like foot bath, compex [electrostimulation] take time for yoga, things that are easy and good for the body. Then my mind feels recovered and is soon ready for another hard training week or racing. I think the mind is very important for recovering. Emelie likes to practise yoga and eat pancakes. ©Emelie Forsberg Eat pancakesAfter an ultra, where you empty your body quite a lot and also eat chocolate or gels, I like to eat fresh and healthy, at least the first and second day. But pancakes is a standard the morning after, and yes I think pancakes can be pretty healthy..! Specially if I make banana pancakes :) Emelie Forsberg is a European and world Skyrunning champion CONRAD STOLTZ Forget ice baths I don’t go in for compression or ice baths. I used to jump in a cold rivers after training but I'm over it! Compression socks don’t fit well and science hasn’t really proven that ice baths work. Old school fan: Conrad Stoltz doesn't go in for ice baths or compression. ©zooom.at/markus berger Refuel properlyBut there are things that are proven to make a difference, fueling and rehydrating properly. Within the first half an hour of training you need to have so many grams of carbs and so much protein to start the recovery. [Advice varies but many sports nutritionists recommend following the for 3:1 carbs to protein ratio.] Conrad Stoltz is a four-time XTERRA World Champion triathlete ÅSA LUNDSTRÖM Easy rideGo on a very easy bike ride. It helps the circulation going and speeds up the recovery. If the weather is bad or biking is too much trouble (mentally), I sometimes go for an easy walk or stroll. © Åsa LundströmMassage In big blocks of training, a massage every now and then is very good for recovery, muscle relaxation and preventing injury. It can also be considered a treat for your body after some hard work and helping you relax. I get the massage after a big day of training, as the thing of the day. UELI STECK ElectrostimulationI use compex electrostimulstion and try to stretch a lot. Rest days are also good. I just had a rest day so I ran easy the vertical km up to Brevant in Chamonix. I had a drink with a friend then went paragliding. Ueli Steck during his mission to climb all 82, 4000 m mountains. ©PatitucciPhotoWarm down after exercise I move between 7 and 14 h per day. You start easy the first 30 min and you end the same way. So you have your warm-up and cool down. If possible I try to get my feet in a cold stream. MATTHIAS SCHERER Respect your body I really have to say that in the adventure world at the moment recovery and nutrition is not taken seriously. People are strange about hydration. They wear a Suunto Ambit, have the best equipment and then they drink snow water and don’t take things like this seriously! Take electrolyte capsules with minerals to rehydrate properly. Matthias front lifting weights. ©Tanja SchmittAvoid processed foodsTry to go as long as you can on normal food and then you can start to eat energy bars etc. People push the limits of eating concentrated food which can cause stomach problems. Eat a peanut butter sandwich. Bring it down slowlyFor recovery it’s important not to stop right away after an ice climbing season. I used to become ill in April when I stopped. Now I continue with skiing and in June and July I keep going to the mountains. I've found cycling helps me to mentally digest everything I've done over the winter. In a week I try to do at least 20 hours on the bike. I work on my films. That's my way of recovery. Matthias Scherer is a professional ice climber GREG HILL Smooth operatorAs a ritual I always have a smoothie after my sporting activities. As quick as I can I am at my blender mixing in my ingredients. Bananas, blueberries, protein mix, raw cacao, milk. That is the base for the majority of my shakes, each food is strong in its own way, combining for a strength building, body recovery, tasty beverage. Greg making a smoothie at home ©zooom.at/Markus Berger Cross TrainingAnother bit about an ageing body is balance. If over the course of your life you have created imbalances, they become more problematic in later years. To counter act I have been going to the gym to create an overall body fitness not just one designed for peddling a bike or skinning up mountains. Back problems, IT-band issues, all come from unbalance, so cross training is key. Take some time outAlso to truly have days off. Not partial days off. But couch surfing, suntanning, doing nothing days. You can get away with just one but at least every two weeks to take 2-3 days completely off. This truly helps my body as well as my mind. I come back and feel so much better than if I had pushed through on that extra day of exercise. Greg Hill is a pro skier. In March 2014 he skied 100,000m in a month WILLIAM TRUBRIDGE Sleep and eat right “Recovery is as equally important as training. In freediving when you hold your breath it generates a huge amount of carbon dioxide which makes your body very acidic and means all those free radicals cruising around doing damage. Being able to target that with diet that's very rich in antioxidants and making sure you're sleeping right is important.” Drink this: Will Trubridge's recovery smoothie My go-to recovery drink after deep training is a green smoothie, with the following ingredients: 1 frozen banana (makes the smoothie cold and creamy) 1 cup almond milk + water added to get the right consistency 2 tbsp Manitoba hemp protein (the best vegetal protein source) 1 tbsp cacao powder (great antioxidant qualities) 1 tbsp Hawaiian spirulina (nature's multivitamin, with many other superfood ingredients like chlorophyll, omega 3,6,9 fatty acids and more) 1 tsp beetroot extract powder (great for blood-building)Everything is blended together, and topped with a dusting of granulated bee pollen. Will Trubridge is a multiple record breaking freediver Still need tips on how to recover? Well go explore the recovery options available with the Ambit3