07/19/07: Some quick swim reminders....

from Coach Carrie....

We worked a lot on form tonight. I just want to get these out of my head before I forget them:

Arms enter at 10 and 2 so they end up at 12

Elbow is out of the water before hand and stays in front

Hand enters index finger first

Suntan bottom of feet

3/4 front quadrant stroke

07/19/07: Now I know I've Lost It

How do I know I've truly lost my mind? I just signed up for the Hammerhead Ocean Marathon on Aug 4, a 2.5 mile ocean swim.

The good news: I'll get a preview of what it'll be like to swim 2.4 miles in the ironman. This should give me a lot of confidence if I'm able to swim it in a reasonable time without too many issues, especially since I know I'll have the benefit of a wetsuit in November. Based on my swimming at this point, I'd consider 1:45ish a reasonable time. If I'm able to do that, I'm in GREAT shape for the ironman.

The bad news? It's a 2.5 mile ocean swim....Lori wants me to wear a rubber ducky.....

To Carrie and "anonomous": What's a poor swimming triathlete to do? At least we know we're all suffering through the wonderful world of masters swimming together. Even with all of the drama, I've made TREMENDOUS swimming progress over the last couple of months, and there's no way I'd have taken 30 seconds per hundred off, while using significnantly less effort, swimming on my own. All in all, I think it's very positive.

Last night I made another deposit into my cycling account: 1:10 on the trainer, usual workout. 21 minute gearing pyramid as a warmup (19-13); 3x3 ilt; cadence drill (100x3; 110x2, 120x1); 21 min reverse gearing pyramid as a cooldown. I've noticed a massive improvement in the ilt drills - I guess it's working.

Woke up this morning to perfect running weather: 75 with 90% humidity. Who am I kidding? It's Florida in July - there is no perfect running weather. All of this training in the heat and humudity, even in the early morning, should set me up for a nice race in November, when hopefully it'll be a bit cooler and a lot less humid.

On the other hand, it was in the 80's and extremely humid for the Disney marathon in January, so you just never know. The ironman is going to be enough of a sufferfest on it's own, so hopefully the weather cooperates....

Anyway, this morning was an hour zone 2 form run. 10 minute warmup, 2 x 6x30 sec pickups with 10 minutes in-between. The rest of the run was all zone 2. Overall, I did just over 7 miles, which turned out to be a ~8:30 pace....a fantastic pace for a zone 2 run for me :)

Tonight's a group swim, followed by tomorrow's easy 1/2 hour recovery ride, setting me up for a weekend of training fun....

Live with purpose....Enjoy the adventure.....

07/18/07: Start of another training week....

Thanks again for all of the great comments!!

Yesterday was the beginning of another training week - the peak of base 2; actually, Monday was the beginning, and one of my favorite days....a rest day.

This week I planned 13.75 hours, consisting of 4.5 hours in the pool, 5.5 hours cycling and 3.75 hours running. As usual, about half of that will be on the weekend, with a long continuous swim (2500 + wu & cd), 3.5 hour bike ride and a 2 hour run. I'm once again fully stocked with Perpetuem, Lava Salts and gels......

I started things off yesterday with a swim with the masters group. I'm very happy to report that I graduated from the beginners lane. YEAH ME. Now I get to actually swim, instead of having to deal with drama queens who hold everyone up and then want to argue about it (and talk about how things were three years ago - see my earlier post if you missed out on the drama 07/08/07 Week In Review

Last night, after a quick warmup, there was a team meeting, mentioning that last Saturday was our coaches last day and that another local coach was interested in coaching us. As fate would have it, the other coach was the speaker at the tri club meeting last week, and seems extraordinarily knowledgeable about form, efficiency and coaching. Hopefully people will be able to stay out of their own way long enough for us to take him up on his offer to coach us....

Even with the meeting, we managed to get in 2200:

WU: 300 swim; 100 kick

900: 4x50; 2x100; 200; 100; 4x50 (I got lapped and had to skip one of the 100s. I'd MUCH rather be the slowest person in a faster lane than the fastest person in a slower lane.....)

100 easy swim

300: 25 kick, 25 swim

8x50

CD: 200 easy swim

I definitely seem to be making constant progress in the pool. With a bit of effort, I'm now maintaining 2:20 / 100m pace, and 2:30/100 with zero effort. HUGE HUGE progress from where I started, which was 3:00 / 100 with some effort.

If I can maintain a 2:30/100m pace in the ironman (which I should be able to do, especially with a wetsuit), I'm looking at a 1:35-1:45 swim. PERFECT! We'll see how that theory holds up (minus the wetsuit) in the 2.5 mile ocean swim on Aug 4th.

After the swim, I went for a 45 minute easy zone 2 run. Although I usually like to do my runs in the morning, I had an early dentist appt, so an evening run it was. It was a nice change of pace, running a bit tired after swimming.

My teeth are nice and clean, and my run went well :) Good start to the week......

Live with purpose...Enjoy the adventure......

07/16/07: OW Swimming vs Pool Swimming

Hey TriTurtl

Congrats on the sponsorship :)

Open water swimming is VERY different than swimming in the pool.

First, there's no little black line to follow, so sighting becomes important. To avoid zig-zagging during the whole swim, and thus swimming twice as far as you need to, you need to look up and sight on the buoys every 8-12 strokes or so. You can either practice a bunch and learn to look up on occassion right after you take a breath, or can simply stop and do the breast stroke for a few seconds while you get your bearings.

A trick I learned from one of the better local triathletes is to look up twice in quick succession, right after taking a breath: 1st time is to get the big picture and get a general idea of where the buoy is, 2nd time is to sight in on the buoy. The more straight you can swim, the shorter the distance = faster with less effort.

Second, even if there was a little black line to follow, you probably couldn't see it anyway, because the water clarity usually sucks, which is a technical term by the way. It definitely took me a while getting used to putting my face into water that I couldn't see in.

Third, I'd like to introduce a concept called positive pessimism. I learned this from someone who was an Everest expidition leader. Up on Everest, they used positive pessimism often, e.g. the climbing ropes are very old, but at least they're not very well maintained. How does this apply to open water swimming you ask?

Well, you can't see much and don't know where you're going, but at least it's really crowded and there's lots of other people around bumping into you. Put differently, open water swimming is a full contact sport.

Now that I've probably scared the hell out of you, here are some solutions:

1. Practice!!!!!! If there are any open water swims near you, try going at least a couple of times a month. If not, one alternative is to swim in the pool with your eyes closed (just remember to open them every so often so you don't hit the end of the pool).

2. Self seed in a race. Unless you're a really strong swimmer, there'e no need to get caught in the middle of the washing machine and have people unintentionally beating the hell out of you and swimming over you. Simply start towards the back and outside of the pack and you can avoid most of the melee.

3. If someone elbows you or kicks you, elbow or kick them back. :-)

Hope this helps

Andy

07/16/07: The Week in Review

First off, thanks for all of the comments! Even though I'm primarily writing most of this blog for me, it's nice to know some others are finding value in it.

As far as the swimming goes, keep in mind that everything's relative. In 2005 I could barely swim 100 yds without being totally exhausted. Now I can swim over 2000 yds faster with less effort, although still have a long way to go. What matters is that I'll be able to swim 2.4 miles in less than 2 hours and 20 minutes on Nov 3. Whether or not I'm better than I was a couple of years ago is irrelevant - the clock doesn't care.

This week I had planned for 4 hours of swimming, 5.25 biking and 2.75 running, for a total of 12 hours.

The actuals were 10.27 hours:

Swimming: 3.5 hours, totalling 4.4 miles. One swim got cut short because of a thunderstorm blowing through. Although I wanted to get in an ocean swim yesterday, the weather again had other plans, and I ended up inside at UNF. I did a 2x1000 plus and addition 500 after biking. I was REALLY happy with this swim, as I kept up a consistent pace after a 2 hour bike ride. Overall, a good swimming week.

Biking: 4.06 hours, totalling 74.45 miles. Strange happenings on the bike over the weekend.

On my recovery ride Friday afternoon, which I'm grateful I was able to squeeze in between storms, something flew into my helmet and bit or stung me. OUCH. I kept riding, and didn't notice it too much until I stopped. That's when it really started to hurt, and I started feeling not so great. After a couple of benedryl, a good nights sleep, very vivid dreams, the obligatory benedryl hangover the next morning, and Panera for breakfast (thanks Lori), I was good as new.

Next up on the bike was a bit of poor planning on my part. I ran out of Perpetuem and gels, and was going to stop by the bike shop on Saturday to re-stock, which didn't happen.

3 hour group ride + no food on bike = massive bonk; so, instead of doing the group ride on Sunday morning, I waited for the bike shop to open, got more perpetuem and gels, and was off on my bike at 12:30.

Afternoon ride in Florida + Summertime = Thunderstorm

About an hour into my ride, I had to duck into the Gate station on A1A to get out of the rain and lightening. After about a 1/2 hour, the storm was far enough away to ride back. Getting off the subject for just a moment, I'm always amazed by some people's brilliance. There's lightening everywhere, and I saw people going down to the beach with their fishing gear. Pure genius. Darwin at work.....

Anyway, by the time I was rode back to my car, another line of showers was blowing through, cutting my ride short by an hour. I definitely need to stick with riding in the mornings from now on. Overall, fair week of biking, cut short by an hour due to lack of planning on my part :(

Running: 2.71 hours, totalling 17.95 miles.

Saturday's weather made the afternoon perfect for grabbing a bite to eat and a movie. Note to self: chicken wings, fries, beer and movie popcorn is not ideal pre long-run nutrition!!

After the afternoon's indulgence, I put in a 1.75 hour, 11.29 mile run. The run was more of a challenge mentally than physically. After an hour I felt very lethargic - big surprise there.....I sucked it up and finished the run anyway.....Pretty good week of running, and I give myself bonus points for finishing Saturday's long run even though I didn't particularly want to; unfortunately, I have to subtract points for eating like crap Sat afternoon, knowing I had to run for 1.75 hours later in the day.

All in all, a fair training week.

A couple of things I did well:

1. Got in all three swims, even when the weather didn't cooperate
2. Finished long run, after afternoon indulgence
3. Salvaged 2 hours of planned bike ride

Lessons learned:

1. Plan better. It's not like I woke up Sun morning and suddenly realized I was out of perpetuem and gels. I could have picked them up at any time during the week and instead waited until the last minute.

2. Do bike rides in the mornings - see #1

3. Either run in the morning, or wait until after the run to indulge.

Live with purpose....Enjoy the adventure

07/13/07: Finally.....

A REALLY good swim workout....

I'll get to that in a minute. First, thanks for the great comments.

Karen - thinking about a 70.3? Go for it. I followed Gale Bernhardt's 13 week training plan in her book Training Plans for Multisport Athletes, and felt completely ready come race day.

Carrie - sleep? What's that? Actually, I've gotten VERY good at napping!

OK, last night's swim. I've been spending so much time working on form, which I've desperately needed, I haven't been getting in a whole lot of distance. Last night I considered skipping the group swim workout and doing a couple of 1000 yard sets on my own. I joined the group after all, and ironically enough, started out with a 1000 continuous warmup, followed by a couple more distance sets with some kicking thrown in. EXACTLY what I needed (other than the kicking) ;-)

Total for the night was 2,700:

1000 continuous warmup

500 swim, 200 kick, 400 pull

4x100 (50 kick, 50 swim)

200 cd

This weekend I am going to skip the group swim and do a ocean swim with the tri group for an hour or so. I decided to do the upcoming ocean marathon on August 4th, and am going to jump in the deep end: 2.5 miles!!

It'll be my longest ocean swim BY FAR. Since there's no time limit and plenty of safety kayakers, I'm positive I can finish, I just don't know how long it will take me. I've been consistently swimming 2:30 / 100m in the pool with very little effort, and should be able to maintain that in the ocean as well, since we'll be swimming point to point with the current. It'll be a great opportunity for me to see where I am and how far I need to go between now and Nov 3. That, and knowing that IM FL is a wetsuit swim has me feeling a lot more confident about 2.4 miles in the gulf on race day.

The rest of this weekend's training is a 1.75 hour run and a 3 hour ride. Fortunately temps are expected to be a little more reasonable over the weekend, with highs of only around 90 :)

07/11/07: Is it the love of the sport?

My dad said something intersesting: he said the training sounds gruesome, but I understand that you love the sport, which got me thinking. Is it really triathlon I love? What is it that gets so many of us hooked on this crazy sport? Why do we spend thousands and thousands of dollars on bikes, race fees, travel, nutrition, etc. Why do commit so much of something even more valuable, our time?

Is it for the fame and fortune? HAH - most people know virtually nothing about the sport and care even less; hell, even our family and friends think we're nuts. Is it so we can wake up at 5:30 in the morning to spend an hour or two suffering on the bike on a trainer, and then complaining about it afterwards? Certainly not - sleeping in sounds (and feels) SO much better. Is it so we can endure 5 hour rides and three hour runs in Florida's heat and humidity in the middle of summer? You've got to be kidding me.....Is it so we can wake up earlier on the weekends than we do during the week to avoid said humidity? Maybe it's the oh so attrective spandex tri shorts? Hang on a minute - I just made myself nauteous.....

Ok, I'm back....

So why is it we put ourselves, and those close to us, through this madness?

For me at least, it's more about the challenge than it is the sport. It's about turning something seemingly impossible into reality. It's about a massive change in perspective of what's possible. It's about taking a long term view of something in this short-term culture that we live in. And it's about doing something where commitment, consistency, determination and overcoming obstacles is the only way to the finish line.

No amount of money can get you across the finish line (although you may get there faster - nothing like a $2000 set of race wheels on a $4000 bike, which I don't have by the way). No help from family, friends, coaches, or anyone else gets you there, although you certainly don't have a chance in hell of getting there without their total support. Excuses? Try? Can't? Those words get left at the door. There is no try - you either do or don't do.

The only way you go 140.6 miles in under 17 hours on race day is with 100% commitment, focus and action, which brings me back to my question? Is it really the love of the sport?

No. It's about doing something that transcends the I want it now, fix it with a pill, distract ourselves with tv, food, drugs, I don't have the time, money, health, fill in the blank world in which we live. The fact is ironman has nothing to do with physical or athletic ability (come watch me swim sometime if you need proof) - anyone can do this sport, just ask Team Hoyt or Sister Madonna (the 76 year old nun).

It's about learning that what happens today doesn't really matter; instead, good or bad, you take it in stride, realizing that it's the cumulative effect of days stacked on days, weeks on weeks, month after month and year after year that makes the differece and gets you there.

It's not about any single race day, and it's not even about the swimming, biking and running. Lance Armstrong couldn't have been more accurate when he said it's not about the bike.

Instead, it's about who you become in the process, because that long-term perspective and the total commitment and focus needed for that perspective spills over into all the other areas of life: work, relationships, friends, finances, you name it.

Oh yeah, on top of all of this wonderful philosophical thinking, I actually got in some training.

The week kicked off yesterday with an easy 30 minute zone 2 run. My shorter zone 2 runs are now consistently sub-9 minute miles, which is a HUGE jump from where I was a year ago.

Last night I felt fortunate to be able to swim. A REALLY strong thunderstorm blew through about the time we were getting in the pool. Good news: it's Florida. 15 minutes later the sun was shining again and it was perfect weather to enjoy swimming some laps....scratch that....I almost never enjoy swimming laps......

Even after the delay, we managed to get in 2100 meters:

600 warmup (200 swim kick pull)

6x50 1/2 kick 1/2 swim

4 x 100 pull, 100 swim

200: 25 hard, 25 easy; 25 easy 25 hard; 50 easy; 50 hard

200 cd

Woke up this morning for an hour on the bike trainer:

21 min gearing pyramid (19-13), 2 x cadence drill (3 min 100, 2 min 110, 1 min 120), 21 min reverse gearing pyramid (13-19)

Live with purpose....Enjoy the adventure

Andy