I was asked to write this article, which was later published on Motorola's Wellness Center's July Newsletter:

Editor’s Note: Sergio has been with Motorola for the last 16.5 years. He has been a great, respected and admired health and fitness ambassador for TX14. He is too modest to write an article that highlights his many and impressive achievements as a runner and tri-athlete, not to mention passion for charity through exercise, so I make mention of that to honor his distinguished and talented achievements over the years.

We wish him only greatness as he moves on to his next station in life. The sun doesn’t set here – keep shining Serg.

Sergio Flores-Chavira

Senior Systems Engineer

CDMA Field Ops

Three Constants: Consistency, Periodization & Rest

Training, nutrition methods, the overall concept of fitness and what the human body is capable of in the world of sports and fitness – just some of the things that have changed substantially over the years.

Progress has been slow sometimes – it took the International Olympic Committee 88 years to finally add the women's marathon to the Olympic program, never mind that women had been officially allowed to run previous New York and Boston marathons.

More changes are certain to come in the future. However there are some aspects that we can be sure will remain unchanged:

Consistency: approach exercise and physical activity with a long-term perspective. Quick fix and sporadic efforts simply don't work. For example, unhealthy rapid and unsustainable weight , ramping up mileage excessively in a short period of time and not allowing the body enough recovery time are recipes for disaster, often leading to overuse injuries, burn out and weaken the immune system. Regardless of the sport or physical activity, a slow, gradual increase in volume and intensity allows the body to adapt itself to the stress placed upon it.

Periodization: Once a regular program of exercise has been well established (through consistency), it is important to vary the intensity and duration at regular intervals. Training at high intensity levels for long periods of time can lead to overuse injuries. For the average person, exercise at moderate to medium intensity for most of the time. As a general rule, you should feel tired but not exhausted at the end of any given session: there should be a feeling of Yes, I could do this workout all over again later today. Cross training is a good way to achieve this: if you are a runner, jump in the pool, ride your bike, play basketball, lift weights, etc. You get the idea!

Rest! Once the competitive bug bites you, it is hard to take days off. However, it is during rest days that the body repairs itself. Rest may mean cross training - an alternate exercise can provide rest to muscles used in your main form of exercise; an active form of resting that allows the body to recover from strenuous effort while keeping one's fitness intact.

My First Trathlon, Part III (and last)

Once inside the water, more surprises and "learning" came. I'm not exactly light skinned, let's face it, water was murky (Lake Carolyn in Irving, not exactly pristine waters), maroon swim cap. Fear, which later became almost panick, took over, "what if I get tired?", "I can't touch the lake's bottom?", "where are the life guards in their kayaks?", "if I make it to the bottom of the lake, no one will find me, I'll drown!!!".

It was nearly impossible to keep the negative thoughts out of my mind. I kept thinking what the hell was I doing when I signed up for this?. Eventually, I had to swim to the shore with only a 100 yards to go to calm myself down and re-assure myself I could finish this. Eventually, after a couple of minutes I finally covered the last portion of the swim with no further incidents. Out of the water I went and the fun continued.

Out on my brand new bike I went and the first couple of miles felt pretty good, the bike was so light and fast I was really glad I stayed away from the Mountain bike. However, once again, lack of practice almost made me crash when reaching for the water bottle, I came close to hitting the curb really bad as I lost control of the bike. Trying to get into an "aero" psition also made it for an interesting race, getting me close to a fall a couple more times when trying to stay "aero" and shifting gears at the same time. What I never anticipated was how bad my "bottom" was going to feel like in the last third of the race. My buttocks were hurting so bad, the last 15 minutes of the ride were painful to say the least, had to stand up, sit down, push my body forward, then backwards on the seat, then stand up again, sit down, etc. in an infinite cycle.

To top the tri experience off, the running portion was no different from the swim and bike legs. Just as I was getting off the bike on T2, my heart started racing thanks to a non-dangerous condition -according to my doctor- called supra ventricular tachycardia. My rate went quickly from 130-140 bpm to above 195 in a matter of seconds, not dangerous but not good, as it gets me short of breath. It just becomes very annoying to try and keep the effort. I tried to play some old tricks to get the heart rate back under control to no avail; after a couple of minutes resting inside the transition area I decided to just walk the entire 5K.

People, spectators, always make road races and triathlons very enjoyable experiences. It's always encouraging to hear people cheer you up and clap their hands as you run past them. This case was no exception, everyone attending the race and sitting around the transition area cheered my up as I walked by and started walking. Even though my heart rate never really went under control, I recovered and rested enough during the walk to allow me to start joggin for the last couple of miles. Hearing the announcer say my name as I was getting close to the finish line was also a very neat experience "Sergio Flores, from Fort Worth, Texas, finishing uo strong..." Aftre 48 minutes, the 5K was over, total finish time must have been over 1 hour 30 minutes, overall winner finished in well under 1 hour. I was used to finishing in the top 50 overall in 5K races, this triathlon: 140th overall...

The after race party and awards ceremony is a part of the race experience many people don's stick around to enjoy. There's usually plenty of food, fruit, pizza, snacks, goodies and at certain races even beer, to make this a nice part to stay for, even for non medal winners.

Overall, this was far from the experience I was anticipating, it was tough, hard and even painful, but hey! as of this date, I've completed 6 other triathlons so far and under the right circumstances I will complete a half and a full Ironman in the future, it's not a matter or "if" but more like "when", will I be able to race a half in 2009? I hope so!