Interviews

Jodi Thomson: Brains, beauty, and a bike named Mike Honcho

Jodi Thomson is a force with which to be reckoned. She’s spent the last 25 of her 29 years in the classroom. After the obligatory high school diploma, this Wisconsin native attended the University of Wisconsin where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and was then accepted into the prestigious Case Western University School of Medicine where she is earning not only her medical degree, but also a Ph.D in pharmacology.

Outside of academia, Thomson has begun her climb to the podium in triathlon. In 2008, she completed the Kinetic Half Ironman, DeSoto Triple T, Musselman Half Ironman, Steelhead 70.3, and more recently, the Elephant Man intermediate distance triathlon (1 mile swim, 26.5-mile bike, 6-mile run) where she captured fifth overall and first in her age group (30-34).

As this age group athlete profile goes to press, Thomson is preparing to work the medical tent for the Big Show: the Ironman World Championships in Kona.

Question: How did you first get involved in triathlon?

Thomson: When I was a kid, my dad did a couple of sprint triathlons. Like most little girls, my dad was, and is, my own personal Superman so I thought it was the most amazing accomplishment in the world and only dreamed about doing one myself.

In the first year of my Ph.D. program I went to Melbourne, Australia for six months to do malaria research. One of the first weekends that I was there I saw the Ironman World Championships on TV. It was one of the years that Team Hoyt finished the race. I sat there glued to my television and when they finished I was speechless with tears streaming down my face.

Dr. Jodi Thomson ready to attend a conference on something
very complex looking.

The next day in the lab I found some people who were doing a triathlon the following month and I decided to go for it. I had an old rusted mountain bike that had been in a leaky shed for two years, a swimming suit, and a pair of sneakers so I figured had no reason not to.

Question: What attracted you to the sport initially ? Is that same attraction still there, or have you discovered another aspect of triathlon that keeps you in the sport?

Thomson: It was a couple years after my first triathlon that I decided to get back into the sport. Honestly, my motivation at that point was to get out and meet some new people. I am in a program that combines medical school and graduate school. The first two years we cover all of our medical and graduate school classroom work before we join our labs for 3-5 years to complete our thesis.  After receiving our Ph.D., we then rejoin another medical school class to finish clinical rotations.

As I was busy growing bacteria in a laboratory, my medical school friends were graduating and moving away for residency. Cleveland has an active multisport community, so on a whim I joined the triathlon club and a masters swimming group. It was the single best decision I have ever made.

The fact that I have made dozens of friends in the sport is definitely a motivating factor that keeps me training and racing. It’s impossible to convey how thankful I am to have met the people that I train and race with, both locally and internationally. But I also stay in the sport because it challenges me more than any other aspect of my life. Triathlon is really a constant test of discipline and mental toughness. I’ve learned things about myself in the middle of a hard workout or at the breaking point in a race that help me in all other facets of my life. The sport has given me a confidence in myself as well as an awareness of my motivations that I never had before.

Question: How did you learn to train for triathlons? Did you turn to books? Hire a coach?

Thomson: When I first started I bought every book I could find, but they all came off as overly complex and more long-winded than my attention span could tolerate. So I did what every newbie does and went out way too hard and way too much!

I grew up swimming, which has turned out to be a huge bonus. One of the first things tht I did was join a masters swimming team and I’ve been practicing with them ever since. After battling numerous overuse injuries, I did hire a coach when I registered for Ironman. She really helped me keep things under control and I worked with her for 10 months leading up to the race.

For cycling, I was fortunate enough to be welcomed into a group of roadie guys who were all WAY better than me. The dragged me, a newbie triathlete with no bike handling skills, around the hills of northeastern Ohio and turned me into a cyclist. They are now among my very best friends and local training partners for the swim, bike and run.

During that year I also stumbled across Jonathan Caron and Paulo Sousa (Note: You can learn more about Paulo in an interview I did last year) on Slowtwitch and they welcomed me into their squad. Paulo coaches the greatest group of athletes I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. I’ve just completed my third training camp with them and it was I had expected: Ten tough days in the desert, but also a camp filled with laughter and camaraderie.

The past season I’ve leaned on the advice of Paulo and his athletes to improve. They have taught me that training for triathlon is simple and is based on three things: consistency, consistency, consistency. There is no magic bullet to racing faster. When someone (usually Paulo) gives me a workout I do it every week for six weeks or until it’s too easy. I push myself harder in the off season than most people think is necessary, but I truly believe that racing in the summer is won or lost in the winter. Needless to say, living in Cleveland my bike trainer gets more mileage than I’d like to admit.

Question: With all of the time requirements of your academic workload, how many races do you do a year and how do you find time to train?

Crossing the finish line at the infamous Triple T.

Thomson: This year was a big race year for me. I did the Kinetic Half Iron, DeSoto Triple T (Super Sprint, 2 Olympic distance races and a Half Iron), Musselman Half Iron, Steelhead Half Iron, a local Olympic distance, and the Elephant Man intermediate distance. I also have some running races lined up.

Finding time to train and race has been difficult this year. With school, I have some flexibility with my schedule, so I tried to give myself a really solid training block in the winter and then a couple of flexible clinical rotations for racing in the summer. The winter was the absolute key to my success this summer. I had about eight weeks of 8-10 hour reliable work days with Christmas break thrown in. For six straight weeks I did two workouts every single day, one of which was a run. The only other solid training block that I had was the annual training camp with the pstriathlon crew in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I let those two blocks carry me through the whole year and it worked. My training this summer was miserable but my racing was awesome. But by the end of the summer the races definitely started to hurt more though!

Question: It also appears that your schedule is not your own during clinical rotations. How do you reconcile this lifestyle with triathlon?

Thomson: One thing that I definitely had to learn this year was to let go of my training when I needed to. There were entire months when I didn’t touch the water and did little to no running. I had to trust in my base and get the work done at school. It really boils down to becoming less type A when I’m doing important and demanding rotations, and on the flip side becoming a training machine when I have light rotations. Take advantage of every second! Getting rid of my TV helped too.

Question: You have a rather interesting history with the bikes in your life, particularly your latest carbon fiber pony.

Thomson: For starters, the mountain bike wasn’t mine. The funniest part of the story of the Black Fox (the mountain bike that I rode in Australia) is that it got so rusty that at the end I had to start braking Flintstones style. Then one day I went out to go to work and someone had stolen it! I was crushed, but I realized that Karma was NOT going to be on the thief’s side when he was sprinting away from the scene of the crime and realized that he couldn’t brake!

When I got back home from the trip I went out and bought a Cannondale road bike. It was a lower end model on clearance with bottom of the line Shimano components. It did the job and I used it for commuting, training, and racing.

When I registered for Ironman I decided that I needed to either upgrade the components on my bike or buy a new one. The Cannondale was impossible to keep tuned and dropped chain and shifting problems were a regular occurrence. When I saw how reasonably priced the Cervelo Dual was I jumped on it. Unfortunately, three days after paying it off, on my very first group ride with the guys, I was hit by a car and my baby was wrecked. Thankfully the whole scene was witnessed by my new training friends, including an attorney, and I had a new Cervelo P2Sl in time for Ironman. I can’t say enough about the P2Sl. It’s not the lightest or fanciest bike, but it’s fast.

Meet Mike Honcho.

Question: I hear there’s some more to the Cervelo’s story…

Thomson: As soon as I picked up my bike I fell completely in love with it. I thought the anodized black finish was just dead sexy and once we tweaked it a bit at camp it fit me like a glove. So I got to thinking about names and thought that the sleek P2Sl deserved a name worthy of its bike porn status.

Well. my former roommate who shares a passion of stupid movies with me, would always watch Talladega Nights when he was one the trainer. We’re talking dozens of viewings of this ridiculous Will Farrel movie. So one of the trainer nights we were spinning and thinking of what we were going to name our bikes when the scene of the movie where Cal confesses that he did a spread for Playgirl magazine under the pseudonym Mike Honcho came on. BINGO! The Honch has been my trusted racing steed ever since.

Question: What’s your next big race and what are you doing, within the realm of your unbelievable work schedule, to successfully train for that?

Thomson: I just finished my last race of the season, the Elephant Man (1/26.5/6) and wrapped up the training camp in New Mexico. I’m in the middle of a light rotation right now so I’ve thrown myself back into the realm of lunacy and am training like an idiot. A few weeks ago, I spent 11 hours in the saddle and swam over 23,000 meters. The running is a bit of a problem because I’m attempting to heal some shin splints once and for all, so I’m taking it really light.

Dr. Jodi Thomson…Ironman.

Right now, I’m in Kona for 10 more days of training, fun, and learning — I’m attending a sports medicine conference while I’m here.

For 2009, my first race of the season will be the California 70.3 and I’m really going to try to do well out there. The big challenge for the off season is going to be travel. It’s interviewing season and I’m probably going to be traveling to 10 different cities in two months trying to decide where I want to spend the next 3-4 years of my life. I anticipate a lot of hotel treadmill runs!

Question: What advice do you wish you had when you started and that you would now give to a first-time triathlete?

Thomson: I think the best way to get into the sport is without much advice at all! Just go out and have fun. Before long you get hooked and obsessed with the stupid stuff like gadgets and forums and the fanciest new shoes and aero water bottles. The most important thing for a newbie is to love the process, the training, the people and racing. The first year isn’t about breaking land speed records, it’s about learning and having fun. Don’t let the people at races intimidate you with their tri-bikes and race wheels. They were new once too. And you just might kick their butt anyway!

Having been through a few seasons I think the best piece of advice for improving in the sport is to always train with people faster than you. Train consistently all year long and vary the intensity in all three disciplines. The beautiful thing about triathlon is that consistency will pay off with big dividends for several years.

To keep up with Dr. Jodi Thomson, you can follow her adventures on her blog at http://joditris.blogspot.com

Related posts:

1. Profile of a Coach: Mike Ricci If you’ve shopped around for a triathlon coach, or have...
2. Bike racing season put on hold Well, it looks like my bike reason season will end...
3. Age Group Profile: Jaakko Hiekkaranta Since reading about the lifestyles of the pros is usually...
4. Rachel Cosgrove: Mixing strength and endurance, part I Meet multisport athlete extraordinaire Rachel Cosgrove. Not only is she...
5. Kettlebells 102: Off-Season Basics with Mike Mahler February typically marks the end of the off-season for most...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.