Pasquale Romano Holds the Key to Multisport Success as a Busy CEO
The Athlete:
Pasquale ‘Pat’ Romano is 56 years old and the CEO of Chargepoint, which operates the largest network of electric vehicle charging stations in the world. As you might expect, this is a busy job with long hours. Pat is also quite the IRONMAN distance triathlete, and loves his multisport training. If that is not enough, he has a hectic family life with a wife and four kids.
Pat’s primary motivation behind his sporting endeavors is to retain mental and physical resilience and develop healthy lifestyle habits that support longevity.
For the past decade, Pat has improved year over year without fail, despite getting older. However, 2019 posed a real challenge -- Pat’s company underwent a significant overhaul, and work threatened to take over life and sport. Pat, the committed athlete he is, decided he would back off IRONMAN distance racing due to limits on his time and high-stress levels and focus on 70.3, with the ultimate goal of qualifying for the World Championships. Nothing like a lofty athletic goal on top of significant life stress and change.
The Challenge:
As Pat gets older and busier, how can he get faster?
The motivation behind shifting Pat’s focus from the full IRONMAN distance was to ensure he could continue to be a successful athlete while remaining effective and present at work, despite the added stress 2019 had brought.
To keep the training prescription specific and focused, we honed in on three aspects of Pat’s athletic arsenal that, if dialed in, would yield the most significant performance improvement.
Nutrition and Hydration -- Pat was consistently slowing down later in the race. We assumed this was due to improper fueling, so we vowed to get into the nitty-gritty details of Pat’s biology and solve this.
Terrain Management --We wanted Pat to worry less about the numbers he saw on his watch or bike computer and instead learn to read the ups and downs of the course. After all, it’s all about speed. Move from Point A to Point B as fast as you can.
Heat Resilience --Pat has struggled with hotter race environments in the past, and we wanted to get to the bottom of this rather than shy away from warm weather race locations.
The Solution:
Pat’s unique challenges would require a two-pronged approach with both nutrition and training.
First, we brought in FuelIns’ elite nutritionist, Scott Tindal. FuelIns’ plan for Pat focused on getting him lean while not marginalizing his training performance.,
Over the subsequent months, Pat lost 10 pounds of fat. As a lighter and leaner athlete, Pat can better handle the heat and is quicker on his feet without losing strength on the bike. Scott also identified several nutritional deficiencies from Pat’s bio-markers, including Iron, B12, blood sugar, and D3. Using dietary and supplementary methods, these deficiencies were righted, and as a result, Pat felt an improvement in daily energy and sporting prowess.
The other big piece of the puzzle was Pat’s fueling strategy. After asking Pat to monitor what he consumed in carbs, water, and sodium in a race scenario, Scott had an idea as to how a better fueling plan could be devised. Scott drastically upped Pat’s sodium intake and asked that he switch from liquid calories to a more solid form of fuel, e.g., gels or bars. These methods prevented Pat from feeling sick, allowing him to hydrate better and fuel later in races.
To enhance and evolve his training, Pat was put on a steady diet of strength endurance sessions. These low cadence bike intervals are designed to increase muscular resilience, especially during long periods of work, and are a great way to work on pedaling form in the process. Next, we focused on building run volume, but very carefully by including frequent run sessions that were short and easy. In addition to this, there were a few very short, high-intensity run sessions aimed at building strength so that Pat’s legs would not fail him later in the race. Finally, the special sauce -- race simulation workouts. The object of these was to allow Pat to get comfortable at higher effort on the bike and run so that on race day, the claustrophobia was not as overwhelming. During these sessions, Pat avoided looking at real-time data, which facilitated racing by ‘feel’ rather than metrics.
The Results
We put Pat through the wringer this past year, and he came out a faster and slimmer athlete. Pat’s efforts were put to the test at Oregon 70.3. No surprise to us - Pat nailed it.
He improved his time for the 70.3 distance by over an hour with an absolutely blazing finish time of 4 hours 40 minutes. Additionally, he placed 3rd in his age group and earned a 70.3 Worlds qualification. Perhaps, most importantly, and despite significant work stressors, Pat reported increased daily energy and engagement in life and a renewed enthusiasm for the sport of triathlon.
Pat’s willingness to embrace the multi-pronged improvement strategy is what made this story so successful. By looking at the details, in both nutrition and training and rigorous self-testing, Pat experienced a breakthrough race. Some say that after 50, the best you can do is avoid the decline. We say train right, train smart, leverage the data, stay ambitious and consistent, and, you never know, you might just find yourself in Pasquale Romano’s shoes -- getting a lot faster with age.