Category Archives: training

Week 53 – Back on the saddle

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After almost two months of:

The training began for real for Vineman.

And on Saturday morning I felt like so:

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I was feeling like there was a meaningful difference between you know… just training and training.

Sleep was deeper. Hunger is broader. Physical pain is greater.

In general it sucks.

What sucks even more is the slow and painful realization of how much peak fitness was lost and has to be regained over the next six months.

And that brings me to the weight graph of this week thanks to Withings.com…

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Reasonable small amount of progress. Dark blue line is the trend. Scatter plots is my compulsive need to weigh myself every five minutes…

Week 52 – The end of downtime

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After I finished my epic Athens Marathon my body and spirit were broken.

I got sick. I was in so much pain and so tired that motion felt painful. The idea of gearing up for another go at it was just inconceivable.

My coach agreed that I was baked.

So I took a break. And in reality this month-and-a-half break was the longest break I have take in my training since I started training. Pretty much continuously from 2010 I have been training for some reason or another to achieve some objective.

But now I am ready to go. The battery of desire is recharged, the spirit is engaged and the mountain looks appealing.

The long term plan remains, an Ironman in 2015. After reading about some epic attempts from folks I know, the challenge is that much more daunting.

The midterm plan, for 2014, is to do Vineman Half Ironman and the Athens Marathon.

The weight loss goal is to lose 30 pounds this year before the Athens Marathon and 30 more pounds before next year’s Ironman. After the Athens Marathon it was clear my weight is the single biggest obstacle to me pulling this off.

And because I am told that sharing you weight plan with a wider group encourages you to be honest, my plan is to put my daily weight graph in this blog…

The basic outline of the training plan is the following for January:

 Mon     Bike (pm)
 Tue     Run
 Wed     Long Swim (prefer Tues)
 Thu     Long Bike
 Fri     Long Run
 Sat     Rest Day
 Sun     Swim

And for February:

 Mon     Run am / Bike pm 
 Tue     Long Swim 
 Wed     Bike/Run brick 
 Thu     Swim / Long Bike 
 Fri     Long Run 
 Sat     Rest Day 
 Sun     Swim

70.3 here I come…

This looks like it’s going to hurt…

 

Week 42 – down time

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freeimage-203844-highI owe the world a race report. But I wanted to spend a moment talking about down time.

After having finished my first year of serious athletics: three marathons (athens 2012, napa valley, athens 2013), one olympic triathlon, and one half marathon, it’s time for me to take a break.

And that is a good thing. Because after last week’s epic marathon, I am physically wiped out. And my body’s way of telling me that is that by calling in sick. I mean *cough*, *hack* and *wheeze* sick.

This is a big shift from last year when I finished the Athens Marathon and turned right around to train for the Nevada Marathon. I think I pushed myself harder and longer this year. In fact, towards the end I was feeling done. Not kinda-done, but done and baked.

I was supposed to do some amount of physical activity this week but just breathing has been a chore.

More to be discussed in my race report…

Oh and I am starting my new job at Juniper Networks.

Week 32 to 39 – I was a Job Hunting Zombie

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zombiecrawl

Over the last two months I’ve been stressed out about my next job. And I’ve felt like this zombie whose only thought was “JOBS”. My wife would ask me to take out the trash and I would respond “JOB”.

Much like real zombies, a Job Hunting Zombie is a terrifying beast. The Job Hunting Zombie can be heard moaning in every general direction:

Maybe this job is for me.

Maybe I shouldn’t be looking for a job

My interview sucked.

My interview went great but I’m not sure I liked the company

I didn’t get a call back.

And unlike the standard Zombie, the Job Hunting Zombie wants to eat your patience and your good humor… The Job Hunting Zombie will eat your desire to be a supportive friends with endless repetitions of the following questions:

Is this the right job for me?

Am I making the right decision?

What about this? And that and the other thing?

Is the salary good? Or bad?

 

And the worst part of the Job Hunting Zombie is the Job Hunting Zombie Fakeout. Cornered, and trapped, unable to escape your life energies sapped the Job Hunting Zombie will say:

I’ve decided to take job X

And you’ll rejoice, you’ll think you’ve been saved, that the redneck with the gun showed up just in time only to realize no decision has been made … He’s still in full on zombie mode….

And the Job Hunting Zombie will keep coming at you … And nothing but a clean shot to the head or a decision will stop the Job Hunting Zombie.

And Job Hunting Zombie is a really bad athlete. A Job Hunting Zombie eats whatever he finds in front of him. A Job Hunting Zombie half-asses his workouts. A Job Hunting Zombie is lethargic.

The good news is that I made a decision. And after my decision was made, I discovered that I was cured of Job Hunting Zombie disease. Although the damage done to my family and friends psyche was… well… not as readily cured.

The short version of the last 8 weeks is that I trained poorly. I ate poorly. And only when I finally made a decision was I able to focus on my training again.

The good new is that I recovered in time from my disease to be able to do a pretty fast half-marathon and not destroy my chance to do a faster than 5 hour Athens Marathon.

Week 27 – Done with the training…

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After what feels like an eternity, I am done with my last heavy week of training.

One light week, then taper crazies, and then the race.

To celebrate I am drinking some rum and coke – dark koloa rum from kauai, lemon juice from the lemons in my front yard, and coke from mexico – the stuff with sugar not the high fructose crap…

Because there is nothing like saying Cuba Libra after finishing your last 2 hour bike ride on a trainer late at night…

 

Week 26 – I love my wetsuit

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Last week I swam in the cold waters of Santa Cruz in my new wet suit.2013-07-25_0821

And boy was that fun.

One of the core challenges in swimming is keeping your posture correct. In particular, keeping those damn legs above your chest.

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If the legs are below your chest, then they act as a water break.

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So we have the endless drills where you push the buoy (your chest) down and try to keep those legs up…

But with the wet suit you get automatic correct posture. The buoyancy of the suit keeps your legs up, and your body floating on the top of the water… just right. And all you have to do is roll and pull…

And maybe it’s just the posture, but it feels like with every pull your body is moving faster than it ever did before…

In fact it’s so easy that I almost red-lined in the swim drill because I was pushing so hard…

Then later in the week I did my 2200 yard swim. And while I was dragging my sorry fat ass through the last 500 yards, I kept thing that this is sooooo much easier with a wet suit. And man, I want my wet suit. And can I please have my wet suit?

 

I love this sport

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Over the last month I’ve become increasingly tired of the training.

Last week I swam for 2200 yards in a pool. Backwards and forwards did I go. Like a goldfish encumbered with memory.

The experience was painful. And then there was the run. And the bike ride. And the strength exercises. And the… And man this video was too painful … Especially the parts about time and being full of energy and not knowing what body glide is…

Mech.

The whole adventure had this aura of pointlessness to it. I was almost ready to give up.

Today, I attended a triathlon clinic that included an outdoor swim at the venue.

And then I went for a swim, and I was like – woah… this is fun. And then we did a whole bunch of transition training with warnings about being *that* triathlete… And I was like … I can do this… I CAN do this…

And then when I swam… It was like… wow this whole swimming in open water is easy. A lifetime of swimming in Santorini means that sighting is easy, and dealing with people bumping into you is … easy.

The whole experience was exhilarating. I was bouncing off of walls because it was so much fun. There is this moment when you realize that you’re going through water,faster than you ever did before and then you’re going to be going on a bike, and you’re actually able to do this thing. And then there is this run, and all you can think about is when does the damn race start.

All this training makes it possible for me to do this insanely fun thing… How super-cool is that?

 

Week 25 – Left and then Right and then Left and then…

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One of the weirdest things about training is the asymmetry of technique.

First your entire technique is a mess. You’re doing everything wrong. And you’re too clueless to understand how wrong everything is.

Then you build up a certain amount of aerobic and technical base, and you become aware of flaws in your technique, so you start to work on improving them.

First you notice how you don’t breathe on your left side when you swim, so you work to fix that. And by the time you are done, you realize you breathe better on your left side than your right side, so you work on your right side and then you suddenly realize that your left side breathing is a mess… You’re like: woah I am out of balance, my head’s in the wrong position, my arm is flopping like a banana peel and…

So you start working on the left side again. And you know that you’ll be back to the right side.

And the same process holds true for both running and biking.

 

The net effect is that I am feeling like an awkward teenager with a body he has no control over that I am just barely able to move the way I want.

What’s really interesting in all of this process, is that every time I focus on improving technique on the offside, the offside overshoots the improvement. My theory is the following: At time T, because of my overall skill level I am able to affect an improvement of F, at time T+1, because of improvements in fitness and skill, I  am able to affect an improvement of 2F and as a result overshoot my desired improvement. I suspect at some point in time as my fitness level plateaus, my ability to get incremental improvements will diminish, but I am a long way from that point in time.