Living Life

Oct Wrapup

Last race of the season, I did another swim leg of a half ironman. This time it was the Austin 70.3.  As before, I was with great teammates Susan Pope and Melinda Wight. 

 

It was a beautiful race that I fully enjoyed, presenting a minute faster time for a 100m longer swim as compared to Galveston in April.  I was graced with some good fortune on this race.

For November I'm entering into a bit of an eclectic base phase.  Customarily I'd start my volume training now, but my brain is a bit mush from the lack of variety of training.  I intend to do one week rotations, keeping swimming as a base for all weeks, but rotating focus each week on weights, yoga, and biking.  The 4th week will be a bit random or used as a rest week.  I plan to do this for two or three months, then hit more traditional training in time for next race season.

All the best to everyone out there.

September Wrapup

September was an educational month for me.  Volume wise, I exceeded expectations in swimming (45k yards), but was under in biking miles (141mi).  However, I pulled multiple PR's in the pool this month and a PR on my hilly bike route.  Working with Nancy Rehm from Fortemultisport, I'm trying to focus more on quality of training vs volume, and I'm liking it.  I also incorporated a rest week this month, picking the last week to be a little lighter than the others.  Again, I'm also liking this training modality.

For Oct, I'm not focusing on volume, and therefore not writing down all my expectations for the month.  I'm in a good routine now and know what I plan to do every day, so I want to shift from "doing it" to "doing it well."  So, the points of doing it well are what I chose to write.

 

Aug Training update

August was another challenging month.  I had trouble with more fatigue issues and had some work travel, but didn't expect the overall impact I experienced.  I suspect I lost some focus along the way.  Here's how August played out:

 

My bike mileage was way off, somewhat due to some stormy weather.  That caused me to refocus on using my trainer, which resulted in some enjoyable stress workouts.  I also pulled out my swim trainer and incorporated it into my training and am seeing good results in the pool. 

I also determined that tracking yoga and weight training by number of sessions is not really productive.  The purpose and quality of each session feels more worthy to understand than the number of actual efforts. 

I also determined that I had too much focus on the volume of effort for biking and swimming and was not paying enough attention to the quality of each session.  Therefore, instead of calling my volume a goal, it's going to be more of just a number that I may or may not hit.  The more important number might be any improvement in time throughout the month.

So, speaking of improvement over time, but July and August have taught me that I'm probably not getting enough rest.  So for Sep I'm actually planning rest days.  Nancy Rehm from Forte Multisport has suggested building in a rest week as well.  While that's not on this chart yet, I expect to change somewhere within the month to a reduced level of effort, and call that my rest week.

When my body did force me to rest, in August, I had some good efforts.  While nothing peaked well in biking, I pulled a PR for a 1000 yard swim by nearly 30 seconds from a previous, best effort.  Now if only I didn't have to have a job so that I could sleep more each day...

Happy training everyone!

Good results

Working this machine, and with good coaching, swam 1000 yds today in training for PR of 20 seconds faster than last, best time. 

Haven't been working the machine that long, so I doubt it's had much impact yet.

 

Swimming videos

Here's some recent vids we took of swim strokes.  We do need some practice with the camera :).  The idea here is to review and figure out what to improve.

These two videos are at a controlled pace:

 

This one is at full speed:

And this is my butterfly:

The most telling one is this overhead as it shows my feet are way too far apart.  That's a very surprising revelation.  My coach has been telling me about this, but I didn't realize how bad it was :).

More videos coming.

Reporting in for June

So here's numbers for June.  Look at that abysmal bike mileage! 

Actually, June contained a significant amount of travel where I didn't have access to a pool or my bike.  Getting back into the routine after the body had been "off" for that long was also challenging.  Finally, I determined to address knee pain that I had ignored for two months.  Thankfully, x-rays show nothing significantly wrong with my knee, and the doc says I need to pay more attention to tracking and pick exercises that will promote aligned movement of the kneecap.  My foot does pronate significantly, so I'm not surprised the knee could be having this issue.

One nice discovery comes with improved yoga.  During traveling, yoga becomes an easy reach.  At the end of the month I experienced significant improvement in my one legged balance poses, feeling more solid and holding a balanced position much longer.  These are the achievements I look for in yoga as I think balance, strengthening hip flexors, etc, will serve me very well as I get older.

I've got an aggressive schedule planned for July.  I'm not sure I'll be able to hit these marks, but at this time, they do seem in reach.

 

 

Closing out February

So as I close out February, the 3d month of base training, I find myself happy with where things are going, but challenged by the negativity of not doing as well as I could have. 

 

I missed a couple of trainings that I could have made, so my volume could have been a little higher.  For some reason, that bothered me and overshadowed the fact that in this shortest month I had the most volume by far of any previous months.  So, while I should be happy at what I've gained, I find I'm a bit too fixated on what I didn't do.  I think for a healthy outlook, we need to stay focused on our accomplishments even if we could do more.

At the end of February I participated in a short course swim meet, choosing the same events of the same meet of the previous year.  All my times were improved from last year by a decent amount.  I attribute this increase to having a great coach and being on a great team.  There are folks faster than me that I'm trying to catch up to who have been helping me with technique.  There are also folks slightly slower than me that don't let me slack off.  Our coach is also very good at providing pointers and outstanding workouts. 

March is looking good.  While I will miss some days due to not having access to a pool and bike, I think I can put up some good numbers to finish out my base training phase.  The first major event of the season is on 2 Apr, the Galveston Tri where I'll be doing the swim leg of a relay.  I'll be seeing friends there that I haven't seen in over 20 years.

Keep living well, friends!

Base Training

I've always been interested in the mix between "base training," lower intensity, steady volume, presumed to build a base of fitness, and "speed training," which is more intense and designed to build raw power in muscles.  The theory of periodization says to spend months in the base training mode, then at an appropriate time, lower the volume in favor of some speed training.  Prior to a race, when you want to be at your best, you rest, do some light workouts, and hopefully your body grows and adapts to peak right at race time.

Unfortunately, about 90% of the writing I've read on this methodology only explains the concepts, but doesn't reference good studies nor creates a mathematical method to determine when to start shifting from one type of workout to another.  So I guess it'll be up to me to experiment :).

I started my base training in December with an intent to do 4 months of just pure volume.  In December I:

swam: 35,000 yards
biked: 220 miles

In January I:

swam: 36,700 yards
biked:  241 miles

During that two months I've lost approximately 6 pounds, but my body composition changes make me think there is likely an additional amount of fat that has been traded for muscle (probably not too much).  My swimming has measurably improved, but my biking times are actually a tiny bit slower than what I was riding in October of last year.

More to come on the experiment of the human body!

Hip Surgery Recovery

Well folks, it's time to get back on this thing.  Unreported here, I had a hip replacement in July.  The pain and then change in lifestyle post surgery had me down a bit, but I adjusted fairly quickly.  It's a good think I don't make a living off being an athlete :). 

 

 

Now, almost three months later, I'm back on the training train.  My biking and swimming are back to pre-surgery times (sometimes even a bit faster).  I have some challenges with lateral movements and hip flexibility, but I'm working those as well.  The biggest change I face now is the pounding of running is a big no no, so while I can run, I really have to watch it and have to pay attention to the increased wear and tear I put on the prosthetics plus my other hip.

My future triathlons are going to end up being either aquathons (just the swim and bike legs) or relays where I get someone else to do the run portion.  I have also started looking into race walking.  I'm thinking there might be a possibility of walking the run leg of a tri, and with my run times, it probably wouldn't be a whole lot different. :).

Best training for all out there.

Where are We at Now?

Lots of changes since I last wrote.  Hip surgery has taken me out of doing full triathlons, but I can still do aquabikes or relays.  I'm still in the game, so to speak :).

I revisited the Patriot Triathlon this weekend and reconnected with lots of old friends.  The following day I connected with more friends that resulted in a ride in a hot air balloon.  This made me realize that our connections with our friends are significant boons to our quality of life.  Who didn't know that, eh?

As I've mentioned, there are times I like to just go places and hang out, for no specific purpose other than to be.  One of the places I go often, I decided to engage with people there.  I'm happy being cool by myself, but sometimes the experience can really be enhanced by making those connections.  It was definitely so this weekend.

So on a couple of social networking sites, I like to write some very obscure words to some very deep meanings.  Usually I'm so obscure that only a few people that think like me understand what I mean. My old writing teachers would tell me I'm failing to communicate, and they would be right.  However, sometimes that obscurity becomes an avenue for others to share what the words mean to them, and that can have some outstanding results.  Here's an example:

I wrote the words "Dogs dig, it's what they do.  Think big."
 

This actually came from a discussion with my daughter who asked how she can get her dog to stop digging.  I gave her alot of silly answers before revealing my opinion that digging is just what dogs do; accept it because you can't change it.

I thought on those words a bit, at first because they just sounded cool.  But, I had to add the "think big" part because there's more to us than just cliche sayings.  Accepting that a dog will dig no matter what you do can be applied to the much larger universe of all things that we should learn to accept.  Using the "dog" metaphor helps to communicate that all those things we need to learn to accept, are probably pretty ok (because dogs are, right?).  Finally, "think big" by spending your time on those things that really can be changed or deserve your attention.

So a friend of mine reacts to these words in a way that expresses his love for his family and his opportunity to influence the environment that impacts his family.  It was very comforting to see his application of my obscure words to his world, and get an insight into his perspective.

What does all this rambling mean?  It means you're cool, so am I, and we're going to be ok.