Week 19 – Down Weeks and Time Trials

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First him

and now me…

I broke 8 minutes over a mile. I did a mile in  7:44.

Fine, it’s not quite the first man to break the 4 minute mile, but hey… it’s my personal record.

My best recollection of my best time ever was when I was 17. I think it was over 8 minutes. So at 40, I have run my best mile ever. Man was I out-of-shape for most of my life…

After two up weeks, this week was a down week.

Down weeks, when you’re training for a triathlon are ridiculous. You back off your usual 8-10 hours of exercise per week to a more sedate 5-6 hours of exercise.

The down week was nice, however. At the end of my second up-week, I was ready to crash and burn. My body was exhausted, my brain was exhausted, and my family was exhausted. So thank you down week.

During this down week, my coach asked me to do some time trials. The first was a swimming time trial and the second was a running time trial.

What is interesting is that although I have lost weight and improved my technique, my times didn’t improve that much. Weird.

But it was still a fun check in.

My first swim time trial, I felt like I was barely able to avoid drowning as my technique completely failed me. In my second time trial I was able to keep my technique through the entire 500 yards. In fact, in my second time trial, I wonder if my obsession with technique got in the way of going faster. I was so determined to swim properly that I forgot that the point of the activity was to go fast.

What is interesting is that I went crazy fast in my first 100 yards in the second time trial before I settled into a similar pace as my first time trial. Basically I shaved off 19 seconds from the first 100 yards. And then because we care about efficiency, I was about 10% more efficient in my strokes during the entire interval.

Similar story in my run time trial, covered the same distance, at the same heart rate, but the first mile was 20 seconds faster. Not quite as ridiculously faster as in swimming but my technique and fitness have not improved as much.

Sigh. Tomorrow, the pain and suffering continues.

 

Week 18 – Teaching the Kid

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After two up weeks, after Hawaii, I was exhausted. So exhausted I couldn’t come up with anything interesting to say.

And I was thinking – I am crossing some critical threshold of exhaustion?

And then my son did something incredibly cute. He started to swim freestyle in the bathtub. He was doing laps from one end to the other. Given our tub is about 4 feet long, they were short laps.

At first, I was like: what the hell is he doing? He was kicking his legs and throwing his arms over his head and moving his head from side to side…

Then I asked, and he said: Swimming like Daddy.

He was swimming freestyle (okay not really – but hopefully you get the point).

And then I realized, I am, I truly am working too much because my son is imitating my freestyle…

Hunger is funny

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Went with the wife and kid to the park.

Around lunch time I got hungry.

Since we were near Los Gatos, my brain became focused on going to Icing on the Cake. Which is weird. I don’t like eating pastries because it throws my training completely off.

Since we were with the kid we got lunch first. After a good lunch I no longer wanted to go to the pastry shop.

what had happened, I presume, is that i was so hungry that my body was looking for the highest concentration of calories it could find.

Week 17 – Why is there no cyclist high?

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cycling_highRunners High is this thing that runners talk about all the time. This perfect moment where running feels as natural as breathing.

You never hear about cyclists high. In fact if you do a Google search the number one hit for “cycling high” is an article about a different kind of high while cycling…

Cycling is this brutal, painful and annoying activity. Unlike running, cycling makes this promise that you’ll never injure yourself unless, you know, you hit a car or fall off.

After a week in Hawaii where I ran and swam, cycling was a pain in the ass. Literally. And my muscles felt horrible while cycling. And yet I was able to move faster and stronger than I had in a while. Which was confusing. Here I am making real progress in my ability and performance and simultaneously it feels worse.

What is going on?

Well the Scientific American has an awesome blog post on the topic. And if you read through the comments, you’ll find this theory:

Dulling the pain is only part of the evolutionary rationale, Scicurious. The main reason for runners’ high was to amply reward ancient long distance running hunters for engaging in this vital yet highly taxing pursuit. (Sex is so gratifying for precisely the same reason.) Many athletes who are both runners and cyclers/ swimmers (like myself) insist that while all sports can provide equally strenuous workout, nothing compares with the euphoria induced by running. If cycling and swimming had played similar role in our evolutionary history, they’d also produce comparable highs…

I like that. The reason is there is no such thing as cyclist’s high is that our ancestors believed in running not cycling.

So there you have it, runner’s high is an evolutionary response. Which means the reason Pheidippides ran the Marathon was because he was in a drug induced haze. And explains why the Ironman finishes with a run… we need that drug induced high to make it through the pain…

 

 

 

Week 16 – Back from Hawaii

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P1010082-XL

Last week I went to Kauai. And I trained. I really did train. I ran twice. I swam in the ocean and I swam in a pool.

The picture above is me between feats of exercise and tourism.

Yes, I really did exercise.

In fact my first run was epic. I ran up and down the hills with my heart rate monitor under-reporting my heart rate. And so I kept pushing my poor body harder and harder.

My swim in the ocean was awesome. I swam 1500 meters in open water. It was more like 150 meters one way followed by 150 meters the other way, but still awesome-ly epic. Nothing like pushing your body in the open water.

And then my last run was a thing of beauty. An excellent pace, awesome form – nothing but the best.

Of course, no one will ever see that data. Because my GPS, once again, failed to record my awesome great athletic performance while on vacation. First it was the Garmin in Greece and now it is another Garmin in Hawaii. Actually, the Garmin 910xt successfully captured the data, but then – possibly because of the salt from the sea, it was unable to recharge successfully. Following useless advice on the internet, I hard reset the Garmin  only to discover that I had also deleted all of my data.

Damn you Garmin. Damn you to hell.

So everyone will look at the picture and conclude that I am lying hiding behind the excellent robustness and stability of the Garmin GPS …

For those that care… The solution to the problem was rubbing alcohol. Since I had no rubbing alcohol I used vodka. Strongly recommend vodka as a better choice because you have something to drink after the rubbing.

Week 14 – Mental Focus

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A couple of weeks ago my coached asked me to do a swim sprint to get a read on my endurance swim rate. The sprint was an interesting experience. I learned that losing mental focus was actually a bigger drag on performance than my physical fitness. If you lose focus on what you are doing on every stroke, your form breaks and you’re losing speed with every stroke.

Which got me thinking about mental focus on the here and now.

When you start running there is this mindlessness to the activity. You move your body in a generic running style and calories get consumed.

Running requires so little thought, that the biggest challenge is  motivating yourself to be bored and hurt while training.

When I was training for my first marathon, the Athens Marathon, I endured this acute boredom. To relieve the boredom, I listened to a lot of music.

As a result of my new-found focus on training, I’ve noticed a dramatic shift in how I run. I no longer take my music with me. In fact, I find myself increasingly concentrating on what I am doing during the entire period of the exercise. That instead of being bored, I am exhausted from thinking.

That running, instead of being this mindless boring sport, is this very precise sport with very precise actions and objectives.

And if you think running is precise, cycling and then swimming take it to a completely different level.

I am finding that the sport of triathlon requires a lot of concentration. A lot of focus on what I am doing in the right here and now. That it is very easy to make small mistakes that over the long distances compound themselves catastrophically.

So I have to focus on what I am doing. Which is new.

For most of my life, my body hasn’t been something I thought too much about. I never really spent time thinking how it’s moving in space and time. Mostly I’ve been living in my head and the ideas in my head. This sport is forcing me to think about how I am moving in the real world.

And that is a wonderful blessing.

 

Week 13 – The Bike Fits

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BMW-and-Boeing-to-partner-up-on-carbon-fiber-research-including-recyclingIn 1998 I bought my first bike, a Trek 5200. It was, at the time, an extravagant purchase. The bike cost 2500$, (or 3570 in inflation adjusted dollars) which is a lot of money to spend on anything.

But I rode it on the streets during my test ride and fell in love with the smooth experience that is carbon fiber.

At the time carbon was an exotic material. There was a non-trivial amount of discussion about carbon bikes breaking spontaneously.Questions like these were not uncommon:

1998 Trek 5200 OCLV Bike?

I am very interested in buying this bike at a very good price…
Would the carbon frame be viable and stable still today?
I’m very worried that the frame would break down on me while riding.
Also how do the Shimano 600 Ultegra/ Dura Ace parts compare to parts today?

The metal bike manufacturers didn’t explicitly make that claim, but they certainly encouraged that belief.

I remembered my 5200 fondly as this smooth biking machine. And it served me well during my Death Ride where I rode it for 15+ hours.

By 2004, I had started to wonder if I wanted a new bike… I was suffering from Titanium envy. All the cool kids had Titanium bikes, and I wanted a new shiny Titanium bike. And then I did some research on exotic metals and wanted exotic metals…

Because in 2004, I had discovered the downside of carbon frames, the perfectly muted ride. The feeling of riding a wooden bicycle when you rode on smooth roads.

But after the Death Ride I stopped biking seriously, so it seemed like an extravagant purchase that I could not justify.

Fast forward to this year.

As part of my triathlon training I’ve had to get on my bike, again. And the first time was horrible.

I was convinced that something had fundamentally changed with the bike. After 6 years of collecting moth balls, the bike had broken … Because it’s a well-known fact that carbon warps and distorts after 6 years. I mean carbon is the basis of organic materials so of course it’s decomposed!

But I am cheap bastard when it comes to buying things (except laptops that can play games). And I hate spending money, so instead of immediately buying a new bike, I decided to give it some time.

And lo and behold, I’ve discovered a bunch of things

  1. It turns out that spending one hour and 45 minutes on a bike continuously spinning is a lot more strenuous than biking for one hour and 45 minutes on the roads.The lights offer these nice breaks every 5 to 20 minutes. 
  2. It turns out that the carbon doesn’t warp, but your weight and muscles can move the seat post down over time. A simple 15 minute adjustment can fix that.
  3. It turns out that the pedal you stuck onto your shoe in the middle of a bike ride might have been attached incorrectly. Attaching the pedal in the quiet of your garage where you have the time to test and test again results in a much better placement.
  4. It turns out that secondary muscles can be trained and not hurt. Things like your neck and shoulders and hands.
  5. And it turns out that you can learn to sit on your bike so you don’t get numb.

Which means that several weeks into my base building activity, I’ve discovered that the bike fits quite nicely.

Which is a bummer, because I’ve been wanting to buy a new bike for 8 years.

I guess I’ll have to admit that if I buy a new bike it’s not because I have to but because I want to, and I am such a cheap bastard…

But then I read that triathletes use these time trial bikes... And man are time trial bikes these awesome geeky things…

Week 12 – Not letting the dream go bad

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Last night I was very sad because some decided to blow up the Boston Marathon targeting amateur athletes who run for the joy of running and their families.

Was going to write something funny and entertaining this week about my training.

Then I was going to write something depressing.

Instead, I am going to say something in defiance of this death and despair. Because in the face of entropy we can only live.

Qualifying for the Boston Marathon is what I dream about when I run a fast 10 miles..

Well to the a-holes who blew up Boston, I am still going to dream. And maybe even qualify.

Week 11 – All your base are belong to us

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In 2000 a hysterically funny internet meme emerged known as “All your base”. The meme had an incomprehensible translation of a Japanese game set to a techno dance track where the key phrase was “All your base are belong to us”.

Starting with week 10, and ending on week 22, I am involved in another incomprehensible activity called “building your base”.

What the hell is a base?

Seriously go do some research on the topic. You’d think you were looking for information on how to build a nuclear weapon or a fallout shelter in anticipation of the North Korean nuclear war. Or maybe it’s about the opening moves in starcraft.

The phrase is incredibly cryptic and bizarre. But everyone knows what it means. I mean everyone. And the keep talking about it… You feel like this stupid kid in a room full of smart people talking about stuff you have no clue about. So you start going around saying things like: Yeah I am building my base, wondering if you are doing it properly.

Now, I’ll give my coach some credit,, when prompted he offered a rather complete and comprehensive explanation of the topic, breaking it down rather eloquently for me.

And it turns out that its short hand for a very complex process in our bodies…

So let me see if I can explain it English.

To complete an endurance event you need, well, endurance. Acquiring endurance is done through a series of systematic exercises that target your aerobic capacity. Building the base is the phrase the folks in the know use to describe the activities you perform to build up your endurance.

Why we couldn’t just call it build up your endurance? Probably for the same reason we computer people say all sorts of crazy shit…

wrong

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my wife is mocking triathlete obsession with good healthy eating. but this is an abomination.