Living Life

Another outstanding training week

All great training sessions this week.  Most of it was long and steady trying to make the machine turn.  I got two steroid injections, one in the hip and one in the knee, and see the doc in two weeks about ankle issues.  I decided to test those injections by finishing the week with a higher intensity, Crossfit style session.

My treat this week was accidently meeting one of my Black Dog teammates in a pool session.

Speaking of Black Dogs, I can't stress enough how a team, coach, partner, or mentor can boost your training.  When you're alone, it's easy to slack off and take it easy when you shouldn't.  While there's nothing wrong with having a easy paced life, when you hook up with someone else, that drives a commitment to a name, a reputation, and most importantly, people.  That commitment has a high probably of significantly increasing your training input, and your performance output.

I'll be starting next week with a good swim at the lake tomorrow.

Last week's training

This last week has been full of victories.  I got some good base training in as well as one intense pool session which fatigued me more than I expected.  That suggests I was doing it right.

I met some great folks this week, a local tri club dubbed the Black Dog Tri Team.  A great group of folks with great character who want to help others with similar interests.  We did some good open water training this last weekend which was outstanding.

There are a few stressors I need to get better at overcoming in the water:

- the cold usually causes a tightening in the chest

- the wetsuit compresses my chest and tires my biceps out (few others seem to have the bicep issue)

- getting away from shore

- choppy water or other swimmers knocking me around

I'm finding the best way to overcome these stressors is to experience them as much as I can.  I can simulate a few of these in the pool, but there's nothing like getting out in the lake to complete the training.  I'm feeling very confident I'm on the right road.

I'm missing some weight and martial arts training; much of my effort is currently geared to tri's and I don't seem to have much energy for any other training.

This last weekend my wife and I had some great bike rides culminating in our participation in the Santa Fe Century (25 mile leg).  Part of the path was on the freeway; that was exciting...

Best wishes to all my training partners; it's a great life we live.

Tri Road, 2nd week of May

Had a great week of training last week, mostly base aerobic training, although I didn't get in as many sessions as I wanted.  I did manage some swim training in a nearby lake.

I'm noticing very good improvement with 2 weeks of base training, and I'm not feeling a general, overall ache that I used to feel with more intense weight training.  I'm going to add some intensity this week, but probably only one session.

I got to the cardiologist who surmised the arrhythmia I'm experiencing is likely due to an electrical crossover between the top and bottom of my heart, but nothing I need to worry about with the few times and short durations I experience.  Now just have to get some joints checked out to see how to finalize my training adjustments.

Triathlon 2011 road

Now that I've had nearly a month to think and plan about races this season, it's time to throw it out there to increase my accountability.

My first step was to pick my races which is tied closely to goal setting.  We're looking at April, Rio Rancho, a modified sprint pool tri.  June is Las Vegas (NM), an olympic lake.  July is Cochiti, another lake, sprint or olympic, and in Sept we're back to Rio Rancho for another modified sprint in the pool.  There's usually one in Elephant Butte as well, but that's not showing up on the calendar yet. (http://www.trifind.com/nm.html) 

For goal setting, all I want to do is make it to the end.  I'm not fast enough to set any records and my mental confidence in the water has waned.  My current times are 30 to 31 min for 1500 yd pool swim, 15 to 17 mph avg on the bike, and a 9:30 avg mile running.  With that, I just want a season of finishes.

Training for this involves alot of water time.  While I'm strong enough to easily complete the swim distances in a pool, I've lost alot of mental confidence I used to have for open water.  The mixture of the waves, people jostling, looking at a buoy and not feeling like you're getting closer, and a fear of getting too far from the shore to come back, all work against me.  My intent is to get lots of water time so that I feel strong when these stresses hit me.  I also want to duplicate stress in my training, so it's not such a shock in the race.  I'm doing this with mixing up and extending my breathing and swimming underwater.  When it warms up, probably around March, I plan to hit Cochiti lake alot and train there.

Biking and running are okay for me.  Getting better in those areas is just going to involve time on the road.

I still plan on lifting and doing karate which won't necessarily help my tri skills, but I love those endeavors and so will keep on them.

Finally, I get to deal with human weaknesses.  I developed a chronic pain in my hip about 5 months ago which I believe could be IT band syndrome, tendonitis, or arthritis.  This significantly retards running training, but the pain has subsided alot, so I think I'm on the right road. 

I've also developed a pain in my left shoulder which is likely arthritis, but could be tendonitis.  This only hurts in swimming, and I'm not yet ready to back that down.

In the end, I'll measure success by one data point.  Am I willing to get back into the next race and try again?

So now where do I go?

So,

With the water defeating me on my last tri, I'm figuring out what I need to do next.  The first thing is this is to be an exercise in not allowing negative self talk to take over, focusing on the present moment, and seeing the good in this setback.  I'm still healthy, still training hard, and even if I never get another tri done (but I will), I'm still living a good life.

But on to actually succeeding.  My first task will be to increase my strength in the water.  While I'm decent at distances in a pool, swimming open water with other people is quite a bit more challenging, so I need to be stronger.  I'm also going to do a few things in the pool to extend my breathing which will mimic stresses I feel in the open water and hopefully condition my brain to those stresses.  Finally, I'm going to see what open water is available.  What I know of in this area is only short distances, but even that could be of benefit.

It's all still a good road.

One week to go

With one week to go, today I went out and biked 24.5 miles and ran 6.1; those are my race distances.  I'm looking for that right bike pace that leaves me lots of energy on run, and I think I'm close, although, I admit that these are challenging distances for me no matter how much energy I have.

While I'm probably not as strong as I could have been had my practice been more diligent, I've gained in some great skills.  My swim time has dropped by 2 minutes and my run pace is down by 1 minute.  I've also learned a little more about pushing through some of the distances of the legs as well.  The one thing I haven't solved is how to not have to pee after the bike leg :).

If I've understood the course right, I'm predicting around a 3:30ish time; main goal is still to not be behind the last guy :).

Training thus far

With 4 weeks to go, I feel good about the journey that I'm on.  I'm still training with a base phase attitude, trying to get mastery over distances.  If I were to follow standard periodization, I'd be fully into tempo training with quite a bit of high intensity sprints, however I feel like I need more work on pace, distances, and confidence, so I'll stay where I'm at.  The race will be more of another workout for that week which I'm perfectly happy with at this time.

Along the way, I am reading alot of opinions on different things, some which make sense, others that don't.  I remember reading an article regarding swimming which opined not to reach out far ahead of you.  Reaching out causes you to expend energy with very little gain.  Then I read another article which suggested moving with as few strokes as possible was the most efficient; doing this would mean reaching out in front you as best as you can.  As with many things, most are opinions and there's a sweet spot to be found.

I also read another article about blading your body, meaning turning with each stroke so that your body takes on as much of a vertical position in the water as possible; this supposedly reduces drag.  When I analyze this with my less than educated brain, I get skeptical.  Drag in the water is created by how much surface area of your body (skin) contacts the water.  I believe this is controlled more by bouyancy than anything else.  If anything, blading your body would tend to have your back and front contact the water, whereas staying horizontal may leave most of your back out of the water.  It seems a swimmer may increase his drag with this blading technique. 

In the end, I think watching the technique of the Olympic 1500 swimmers is a good study pattern.  Their pace will be different, but their technique should be exactly what a triathlete needs.

I'm experimenting with nuts on the bike race, more to curb the hunger and calm the tongue than anything.  I read an interesting article about training the body to use more fat during events; intriguing proposition if the science is accurate. 

More to come on this outstanding road!

Mental training

My mind is getting set for the triathlon now.  More of my day is spent thinking about how to prepare.  I'm now starting routines that will match the time of the race as well as trying to have magazines, training logs, and other 'reminders' of the race within easy reach. 

Today's training

Good bike run brick today, 16 mi bike and 4 mi run.  Times were a little slow, but stamina was good.

Cochite Tri Training

Great swim intervals yesterday.  Had a challenging run today; conditions were less than good, time was slow, and I ran out of gas earlier than expected.  One of my coaches told me I needed to be thankful for every and any step I take.  He was right.