Bah.

Just drove all the way across town to go for a swim and the gym was closing as I got there. 7 hours earlier than normal closing.

Thanks for posting the change to your hours on your website.

Went for a hike with the dogs instead. That doesn't get to go in the workout log though.

The sweet spot

It used to be that the difference between running too slow and too fast was pretty obvious, and the spread was about a minute per mile. Lately the sweet spot is really tightly confined. It's between about 9:20 and 9:40. What's up with that?

COLD

OK, cold for the Bay Area. Still. Muddy trail was frozen in places. Barely cracked the zipper on the windbreaker.

Not one other person on the trail tonight. Just the dog, the snow, an LED headlamp and This American Life on the iPod.

Beer o'clock soon.

Still running

Not spending much time on the world's least popular blog here though.

First time I've logged in in almost a month. Still getting used to how my regular computer tasks work on a Mac.

Ran tonight instead of bicycling because the weather was threatening. It is easier to cope with on foot than on a bike, given the terrain around here. It did rain, so it looked like the right choice was made. Plus the dog got to go along so he was happy.

First night ride of the season

Charged up the helmet mounted lamp. Didn't bring enough warm gear. Took it slow on the descents and said hello to all the deer on the sides of the road. Thought my fingers were cold until after the ride was over and it became obvious that my feet were the true leaders in coldness.

Still haven't uploaded the Forerunner data because the PC I normally used for that has a virus that is proving most resistant to killing. Bah.

Meh.

Not much going on lately. Have been working in some swims amongst the usual run and bike stuff. Trying to work out pretty much daily. I think overall I'll feel better, have more energy and be in a better mood, and be more relaxed when I want to relax.

Ran an extra mile tonight beyond what I planned, just to get full use out of a single episode of Car Talk. A surprisingly good run companion.

Finally over jet lag.

Took longer than I would have thought. Had a good run tonight at what felt like a normal match of pace and effort. Things have felt off for the last few weeks.

Pancakes for dinner was mighty fine after the run. Wooo.

Back from vacation

Did an epic amount of walking on the trip, but only got in two proper workouts. They felt good. Running just beats walking for feeling good afterward. Not sure why but it probably has to do with working up a good sweat.

And hey, now I can say I ran across an entire country in one go. Cuz the Isle of Man is technically a country unto itself.

Morning swim. Threat or menace?

Actually it went pretty well. Felt the same as any other. It was crowded though as they had 3 lanes blocked off for water aerobics.

Succeeded in getting in an effort that, it is hoped, will allow me to sleep on the 10 hr flight to London later today. Woo hoo. Not sure if I'll be posting from the UK and surrounding area, but will definitely be fitting some workouts into the trip.

Rain. Bah.

At about 4pm it was pretty obvious the Sunday night ride would be rained out. The pool closes at 4:30 on Sunday so that was out.

Will have to have a makeup workout tomorrow. The pool will probably be it. After taking a couple of weeks off while they closed it for maintenance, it was a bit rough getting back into it. It may be necessary to get one of those swim cadence beeper things, as I cannot resist the temptation to speed up whenever my stroke is a bit off, and that just makes it go farther off, and makes me tired faster.

WOJ shop ride. Thankfully a short one tonight.

Had a good grudge match climb to where Skyline meets Grizzly Peak. Usually around here on the climb to a given summit you are not in a position where you have enough gearing to be spinning a high cadence. This climb was flat enough though and it was high cadence for the win. Interesting that this let me tap into more heart rate. Garmin recorded 188, which is way above anything believable that has been tracked on the bike before.

Caffeine plus milk plus some sugar (cappuccino) about 30 minutes before the ride was a good fueling strategy.

Shop ride this week was a bit of an adventure.

New route. Good. Two riders with flats. Bad. Finishing in the cold and dark. Made the post ride curry that much better.



29.8 miles. 2600 feet of climb. 2hrs17min of moving time. 31 minutes of stopped time. Definitely not something I planned for.

See if you can spot the part where I tried to bridge a gap between the main group and a one guy who went off the front.

Hmm.

The bike ride on Sunday had a good result for what seemed like less effort than usual. Was it a fluke? Tonight's run was more of the same. Sub 9:00/mi trail run with a couple of 10% grade sections and a 15% one thrown in just to keep you honest.

Peak heart rate was 175. Average was 145, which is about 8bpm lower than usual for both, and pace was 30-40 seconds per mile faster. Not sure why. It was nice tonight but not the cool fog that usually allows me to push the pace a bit.

Biggest WOJ shop ride group yet.

7 people said "let's ride bikes," and we did.

Rocked the new blue jersey for the first time. Tried this one from Ibex. Would have gotten another Swobo as I really like the long sleeve I have from them already, but when I was ready to buy, they didn't have the short sleeved ones I like.



It must be said, the blue jersey was at the sharp end of the ride the whole way. Maybe it isn't just a myth.

Not sure if the longer than usual stops at the regroup points were the cause or if I was just better rested or more well fed this week, but it was a lot easier to climb the hills than it was a few weeks ago when we did this same route. (http://fastheartslowfeet.blogspot.com/2009/08/only-one-workout-today-woj-shop-ride-as.html) It was definitely cooler.

One rider asked what the grade was at the top of Pinehurst. Referring to the following picture, lets call the hairpin at top left point 1, hairpin at lower right point 2, and the stop sign limit line where Pinehurst meets Skyline as point 3. The "top" is between points 2 and 3.



According to the elevation correction plugin on sporttracks the altitude at those points is as follows:

Point 1 -- 880 ft
Point 2 -- 1018 ft
Point 3 -- 1238 ft

Distance 1->2 = .78 miles (4120 ft)
Distance 2->3 = .48 miles (2534 ft)

% grade from 1->2 = 3.3
% grade from 2->3 = 8.7

Seems about right. Steep, but not the steepest you can find around.

It was all a mighty fine appetizer to go home and grill some steaks, put some sauteed mushrooms on them and crack a beer or several.

Back to normal

Ran after work. Pretty easy. 40 minutes. It was nice to have a few days off, but it was time to get back to it. Was starting to feel tired at work.

Still have to find a next race to train for. The end of the season seems to be the same week already booked for vacation to the UK and nearby countries. Maybe there will be somewhere warm hosting a sprint or olympic while it is still cold and rainy around here.

Recovery ride

Did the Wheels of Justice shop ride again today. Good pace and a mostly new route for me. Lots of climbing, as always when the Oakland Hills are the playground.

25.4 miles, 2,100ft of climb. 1:47 of moving time for a moving average of 14.2mph. (13.2 overall if you count the 8 minutes of stopped time). Felt a bit better than yesterday morning, but still not 100%. There were a handful of places where it was really tempting to sit up.

The return leg of the loop back to the shop was supposed to look like the ride we did on July 5th.

http://fastheartslowfeet.blogspot.com/2009/07/another-good-wheels-of-justice-shop.html

Compare for yourself. [Click to embiggen]

7/5/2009


8/16/2009


At the end of the ride I noticed that the bike was a bit hard to push and saw that the front tire was rubbing on the inside of the fork again. After the triathlon yesterday the bike went in the back seat of the truck for safe keeping and the front wheel came off for the first time since the bike was new. At the shop before the ride the rubbing got noticed and we thought we fixed it. Afterwards Justice took a look at it and a flake of paint had gotten in between the fork leg and the hub on one side and that was just enough to cock the wheel the fraction of an inch it takes to touch the fork. The wheel is in there pretty tight even when straight. So, yeah, a 2 hour recovery ride with a bit of braking active the whole way. Sweet.

Had some curry and a beer when I got home.

Finished! The first of hopefully many triathlons...

The Tri for fun triathlon is billed as 400 meter swim, 11 mile bike, 3.1 mile run. After going through it, I think the swim and the bike (more like 10.4 miles) are short. They also kept referring to the swim as 400 yards on the PA system. My fellow Americans, yards are not the same as meters, they are shorter. But I think it was shorter even than that. The run was spot on. In a few ways the event challenged me more than I expected. The swim I expected would be hard, and it was, but not for the reason I had long feared. More on that later.

Here's the complete course showing all 3 sports. Click any pic for a larger version where you can see detail.



Expectations up front were

• 10-14 minute swim (plenty of time for a meltdown or two)
• 30-34 minute bike (18-20 mph)
• 27-31 minute run (9:00-10:00 min/mile)
• 3-5 minutes transition time
• 1hr10min-1hr20min total

Planned effort:

• 130-140 bpm swim (not sure what my max is in the swim but this is comfortable)
• 170 bpm bike (max on bike is 180, this should hurt a bit but is OK for 30 min)
• 180 bpm run (max on run is 195, this should hurt a bit but is OK for 30 min)

How it actually went down:

• Swim 9:54 (~40 min/mile)
• Transition 1 3:34
• Bike 31:04 (20 mph)
• Transition 2 1:59
• Run 29:44 (9:30 min/mile)

Today has been a long time coming.

The day began at 4:30 am. The alarm went off and I woke up without being too groggy, loaded up my gear and bike in the truck and drank some water and toasted a half bagel and topped it with some peanut butter. If I ate that on the drive I'd still have about 90 minutes to digest before the race. Mornings have never gotten along with me, and most of that is because my stomach takes a few hours more to wake up than the rest of me. Days when I have to eat right after getting up are pretty hit or miss. The bagel was less palatable with each bite and I never finished it. This is a short event so I wasn't too worried. Looking back it may have actually been better to not eat at all.

Aside from doing something amazingly impractical like adapting to a schedule where I go to sleep at 6pm and wake up and 2am, I have no idea how to address these stomach issues and reliably be able to do organized races, since they are always early in the morning.

Arriving at the park it was a pleasant surprise to see that the two lane entrance road, which would have to accommodate cars containing 1000 racers, families, friends, etc. between 5:30 and 6:30 or so had a short line. Parked up quick, got registered and body marked. Volunteers with magic markers put your race number on one arm and one leg, and your age on the back of one calf. The former makes it easy for them to identify your corpse floating in the lake. And the latter makes it easy for your competitors to judge whether or not they want to take it personally if you are in front of them. After that I started moving my stuff to a transition spot. The spots convenient for short trips through from one sport to the next were all taken immediately when the park opened so I took a nice out of the way spot at the end of a rack where there would in theory only be one neighbor to contend with. While preoccupied with getting set up, I forgot to get my event t-shirt. So sad for me.

So. There are three things that have a proven record of being able to cap my performance below normal levels. Heat, dehydration, and stomach problems. The race was starting about 15 minutes after sunrise and the forecast was mild so heat wouldn't be an issue. Water intake had been good for the previous 24 hours, so no problem there either. It would all come down to whether or not the stomach cooperated. This was still an open question at like 6:30. That bagel wasn't going down without a fight.

In June I came to this event as a spectator to see how it all goes together and to help myself mentally prepare. That was a good idea but I still managed to overthink what was going on around me and screw up getting in the right wave of swimmers at the start. The waves were 1) Elites, 2) Women 15-39, 3) Men 40+, etc. and went off at 5 minute intervals.

They were limiting waves to 150 people at a time, and I totally misread how this would affect the schedule. My plan was to get in the water and warm up when the elites started, which would give me 10 minutes to acclimate to the water and shed some nervousness. After the first timers meeting I got my swim cap, goggles and earplugs, and turned on the Garmin Forerunner 305 and tucked it up under the back of the cap where it would stay dry and be right on the surface of the water, thus making it possible to get a GPS plot of the full course including the swim. Only the heart rate data would be missing from the swim, as the monitor's signal isn't strong enough to pass through water.

From the vantage of the warmup area like they had more than 150 elites and had to split them into two groups. I was in the water on the beach as the first wave entered the course, but never saw what looked like wave 2 (which you'd think would look distinctive, i.e. a bunch of women and no men) go off. So I thought they had split wave one into several parts, separated by 5 minutes, pushing my wave back. Plus the warmup area was full of women with ages like 28, 35 etc. marked on them. So, yeah, you guessed it, the men 40+ wave went off and I wasn't in it. Another wave after the Men 40+ went off and it finally dawned on me I had screwed up. By now I'd been in the water for like 20 minutes and was getting cold. Suddenly the idea of using a wetsuit in a 400m swim in a 72 degree lake started to make sense. It would sure make the waiting around more comfortable.

The last wave (number 6) allowed anyone in who wanted to opt out of their age group wave for some reason, so I went over and got in line for that one. The warmup area if nothing else had been a good place to spectate and you could see that at least one person in each of the early waves (even the elites) had abandoned the swim and been ferried back to shore by boat. At the time I thought maybe it wasn't a bad thing I was moving back to a less competitive wave.

Let's Race!

25 minutes after the elites started, they sent us off. I pushed the start button on the 305 and jogged into the water until it was deep enough to swim, pushed off and started a crawl. It took about 5 strokes to run into someone's feet. I looked up and there was a wall of breaststrokers across the whole course. A few times I tried to shoot a gap but no one was swimming straight and folks were changing strokes. At the first buoy I nearly collided with a guy doing what looked like the dead man's float. So it was freestyle until I ran up on someone, then breaststroke to see where there was clear space. It was frustrating, I couldn't get into a rhythm at all and was not exhaling fully, which made it feel like I was holding my breath.

Honestly, all the swim practice I put in had made me a better swimmer than I needed to be. At least to finish. More practice is on order though, to build up enough extra ability to swim more aggressively around problems instead of getting stuck behind them. Coming out of the water I pulled off the goggles and cap and retrieved the 305 and was surprised to see the elapsed time still ticking in the 10th minute. That's why I think the swim is shorter than advertised. No way can I cover 400 meters in the pool in that time if I don't freestyle the whole way.

Here's the GPS track of the swim. The little pause symbols show where the roadblocks were extremely bad. The rectangular lines in the water are the recreational swim area that is a regular part of the park. For these events they put up temporary buoys farther out in the open water and have a flotilla of lifeguards on hand. Normally you aren't allowed to swim outside the roped in beach area.



This graph (click for larger version) you will see three times. Each with a different section highlighted. In this one, you don't see the heart rate during the swim, but as soon as I am up out of the water enough for the chest strap to be above water level it starts recording, and you can see high 160s bpm, which is way way too high for me for the swim. I think this is part of why I felt totally gassed for most of the rest of the race.



The transition area was completely blown up. Every other wave had already come through to get their bikes. After using a squirt bottle to wash my feet I put on socks and bike shoes, helmet, sunglasses and number belt, and popped the 305 into the bracket on the bike. Transition was a place where I expected I'd come out of the water a bit flushed, but could catch my breath for a minute and start the bike fresh. when I actually got there it didn't feel like there was much oxygen in the air, if you know what I mean. I was breathing hard and the simple T1 tasks seemed tiring. My stomach felt kind of sour and tight.

However, I'd survived the swim! We were past the part that had held me up in a holding pattern in training for so long and it was still less than 15 minutes into the race. Normally when I run and bike it can take that long for my heart and lungs to get going so it was on with the rest of the plan.

Here's the transition area. You run out of the water, get your bike, exit on the road to the left, ride a loop out around the entire park, come back in the way you went out, park your bike, then run out the lower left to the run course on the park trails, and finish at the red dot.



Jogging out of T1 and jumping onto the bike the 305 said 14 minutes and something. Where did the last 4 minutes go? There's a quick, steep hill on the park entrance road and man there were a lot of mountain bikes in front of me. Unlike when my friend John and I pre-rode the bike course, there was pretty much no wind at all. Spinning down Stanley it felt like I had no power. Ideally here you'd be in the drops and pushing hard in a high gear here as it is straight and flat. It just inflamed my gut to bend down like that and it seemed like I was moving pretty slow, but people were coming backwards at me continuously, so I kept the cadence at 90 or above and pushed the tallest gear I could manage. At the maximum effort I felt I could maintain for 30 minutes my heart rate was about 165-168, about 5bpm lower than the target. After passing what seemed like 200 mountain bikes I was starting to pass road bikes and tri bikes, and was seeing people who had started 10-15 minutes ahead of me.

There was still that burning reflux feeling in my stomach but the effort was holding. Coming around the back half of the course it seemed flatter than I remembered. When we had the tailwind before on the front of the course, we had a stout headwind on the back that made a flat road seem like a climb. Today I made better time on the back half. Standing on the pedals up the little hill behind the park hurt but I got to the top before I popped and although it took a block to put any power down after that we were on the big downhill and it was into the drops to take some free speed, gut be damned. It didn't feel like I had come anywhere close to the effort on the pre-ride, and it was tempting to try and sprint it home to finish the bike to try and salvage some honor, but I still had to run so I spun it in. This probably saved my run.

Here's the bike data:



Into transition the second time and it was chaos redoubled. The formerly clear lanes between the racks were littered with helmets and shoes and all kinds of gear. My spot as last bike in the end of the rack was taken, and yet another bike was leaning on the outside of the end of the rack with its rear wheel smack in the middle of my towel and gear. Nice. So I scrambled around and found a place to park my bike and grabbed the bottle and 305 off of it. Ditched the helmet and glasses, topped off the bike shoes and stepped into the run shoes, snapped the 305 into the quick release wrist strap and headed for the run course. Had only managed a few sips of the bottle on the bike and kept it in my hand in case I got dry throat.

Here's the zoom of the run course: That road below the parking lots that bisects the lakes (sort of) horizontally is built up like a levee, so wherever the trail crosses it there is a quick climb and descent. A lot of people were walking the climbs.



Coming out of T2 I saw a woman with 41 written on her calf and decided to take it personally that she was in front of me. She was running my pace and it hurt a little to keep up, but that became my new goal. As noted above, there are a handful of quick up and over hills on this course, and one gentle climb and descent that take a minute or so each. Each time we hit a downhill I'd up my cadence and freewheel a bit (can you call it that if you do it with feet instead of wheels?) and let gravity speed me up, and this would slingshot me past her. She definitely saw the 41 on my calf and decided to take it personally and in each flat section she'd come huffing past me again. After about the 3rd time I said "just keeping you honest"while going by down a hill. She laughed and motored past me again down the next trail.

About halfway through the run my breathing started to feel a little more familiar, like my pace was finally matching the effort I usually put into it, and I started sweating for what seemed like the first time all day. At this point I stopped worrying that I was going to crack before the end, although I knew if I went any faster a very short fuse would be lit.

Having pre-run the course I knew the last half mile was mostly downhill and even though my body had clearly been telling me that my anaerobic zone was off limits today I still thought I could turn it up down the last hill and hang on for grim death to the finish line. Freefooting (you know, freewheeling, but with feet) down the hill I passed my nemesis and said "it's all down to the home stretch", and then began legging it. For sure I thought there was an attack coming back. A minute later it was through the finish chute in the classic data-geek fashion, with a finger on the stop button on the 305. She came across the line a few moments later and I gave her a high five.

Was very pleasantly surprised to see 1hr15min elapsed time. Shocked, you might say. Looking at the data later was fun, as the bike actually turned out as well as I could have hoped with a 20mph average. I didn't see another person doing close to 20mph the whole way. There was no drafting and I did all that work myself. The mismatch there between perceived effort and actual pace was most likely due to the lack of wind today, since strong winds had made the fast parts of the course seem artificially fast in the pre-run.

The run was a little disappointing considering the course is fairly flat. For that heart rate on a flat course I should have been about 30-60 seconds per mile faster. Even better would have been to hit my target heart rate, and go about 90 seconds per mile faster, but that just wasn't available today.

Here's the run data:



As for the transitions, wow, I don't know where the time went. But this was all just a learning experience today, so it's all good. Even the big scratch on the top of my bike frame that happened while I was out running is just going into the battle scar category.

What I would do different:

• Be more assertive at the swim start. Go with my age group wave and start about mid pack. I think my experience at the pool that a lot of people are slower than me now was not a fluke.
• Maybe recruit a buddy to come and one of their primary duties would be guarding the transition spot! It would have been nice to have some pictures too. And someone to maybe point out impartially that I should probably get in my start wave on time.
• Try something easier to digest for breakfast. Cheese danish was one of the few things I could stomach in the mornings back when I raced motorcycles. It might be better than nothing for these kind of races.

What I'll do before next time:

• More swimming. There's still a lot of room for my technique to improve a lot. There's free speed out there. Plus I could be better at sighting and swimming around people by feel.
• More bricks -- aka multi sport workouts. I think the way today went was a bit of a fluke, with stomach issues being the culprit and not the swim-bike-run, but some multi sport training days will answer that pretty quick.

T minus 12 hours

The gear is all set out.

Swim cap
Goggles (with backup pair)
Tri shorts
Rash guard
Heart rate monitor*
Garmin Forerunner 305 (battery charged)*

*305 goes under the swim cap, HRM goes under the shirt, all of this before the start. This should mean a quicker T1, plus GPS and timing data for the whole race, plus heart rate going into the water and coming out, which should give a good idea how nervous I am to begin, and how much effort goes into the swim. This race is untimed by the organizers (they put up a finish clock and that is it) so with a 305 on the whole time you can use the satellite image to pick out the swim/bike/run times and the transition times.

Squirt bottle of water for washing the sand off my feet.
Towels
Number belt
Felt Z35 bicycle.
--All bolts checked. Saddle adjuster loctited.
--Spares kit checked.
--Quick connect mount for the 305. Cadence/speed sensors permanently on bike.
--Will pump the tires at the park.

Full 28 oz. bottle w/ gatorade on bike
Shorty socks, pre-rolled just a bit
Clipless shoes
Helmet (verified original stickers are there)
Sunglasses

Running shoes w/ Garmin footpod
A spare pair of shorty socks if needed for the run.
Quick connect wrist strap for 305

Still need to make an errand run and get a few easy to digest pre-race snacks. Will probably get up about 2.5 hours before race start (7:15 ish), so that gives my stomach an hour to wake up, some time to eat, and an hour to digest. For a long time the swim was my biggest worry, but now it is a toss up between over sleeping and feeling nauseous just because I am so not a morning person.

It's a quiet Friday night in, hanging with the dog and staying hydrated and hoping I'm able to get to bed at a decent hour. 4:30 am is going to come pretty early.

Last workout before the race.

This image shows pretty well how the normal Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday run/run/bike routine suddenly got crowded with cramming for the swim.

Today is the end of that cram session and there was one last trip to the pool. Swam 450 yards again. Crowding meant having to circle and even stop a few times which strangely led me to swim faster when I had a clear shot. The six beat kick seems to be here to stay. If I'd planned it, it sure wouldn't have been my intent to make a major change to my technique three days before the event, but it just sort of invited itself to the party.

Since I have a kick now, I figured why not try to use what free attention I have to focus on bringing the kick just up to the surface of the water like they say you should. This wasn't too hard and I had the sneaking feeling that it was speeding me up. I counted strokes and came up noticeably less than usual (25 vs low 30s normally -- and this is with no push off or flip turn). Like 20% less. And I was actually having to remind myself to glide a bit more so I could exhale better and get a good inhale when I was ready.

Really looking forward to getting this one in the record books.

Only 3 days to go.

Interesting swim tonight. Was circling 4 to a lane so had to stop a few times to make room. Passed all my lanemates but no one passed me. Hmm. Fast lane too. Still making no claims about being fast.

Out of nowhere came a 6 beat kick. Dunno if it was adding propulsion, but it kept my feet up. Also was getting good body rotation both directions. Realized why my rotation (up) to the right has been bad, which is why I could not breathe to the right, because I was not pushing my left shoulder down the same way I do my right shoulder when breathing left. Focusing on being symmetric (pushing both shoulders down the same) made the rotation better and it felt like it made the pull easier too. Very interesting. Too bad I didn't have clear space to see how fast I was going.

Will probably only swim tomorrow (450 yards) and then that will be it before the tri.

Doing way too good a job preparing for success in this event.

Went to the Shadow Cliffs park after work to attempt to pre-run the course. There are a few hills on it and I wanted to know how much to hold back if any to make sure I would be able to sustain a solid effort all the way through.

Googling for "pleasanton tri for fun gps" turned up this.



I printed it out and looked at it carefully to make sure I knew what was what in the sections where the loops overlap. During the run I checked the map every minute or two to be ready for the next turn, but I still took a few wrong ones. I should have noticed you can also view a satellite image version, like so.



That would have made it a little more clear which trail to take, as there are quite a few out there that run parallel to each other and at ground level the trees block your view of where they go. However, the run I did was essentially similar. The climbs were the same. The distance actually came out a bit long. 100 meters over a 5k is within the margin of error on the GPS anyway so I am not going to worry about it.

Here's what I actually did.



The real shocker was the pace. Unlike in the race, I wasn't warmed up already before the start, so as my heart rate picked up it felt like I started out too fast. But then I remembered this was going to be a much shorter run than usual so it should hurt a bit. Mostly the focus was on keeping up the cadence, remembering to breathe, and checking the map. Having decided to do the swim with a shirt already on (to avoid having to wrestle one on in T1) I did the run in my favorite rashguard. This also means I can put the heart rate monitor on before the swim and that's another thing not to have to do in T1.

Nearly 8:00 minutes flat per mile is pretty good for me. Heart rate was pretty stable low 170s once I warmed up. 180 is something I can maintain for about an hour, so if I push 170 on the bike I can probably up it to 180-185 for the run. That may mean a slightly better pace in the race. It is also possible I'll be more tired then and won't get the same speed for the effort. Or maybe I'll be lucky and a bit of fatigue will make me run looser. 25:50 was several minutes faster than I could have hoped.



Have I mentioned I'm looking forward to this?

Now all I need to do is practice putting socks on while my feet are wet.

Swam

That's it. Go into the gym, change, swim 450 yards, swim an extra 50 practicing sighting every 3rd stroke or so. Out. Done. Went and got some groceries and went home.

Probably will swim two more times before the event. It'll be interesting to see what kind of routine I settle into after the first tri is behind me. The pool is going to be closed for 10 days (Aug 22/Sep 1) for maintenance so that probably means no swimming for a couple of weeks.

Already looking to the future and trying to convince some other people to come do the Olympic (plus) distance event at Laguna Phuket in Thailand in 2010. That is my next goal.

Only one workout today, the WOJ shop ride as usual.

Kind of a mellow ride. One guy had a busted spoke and the pace dropped way down after that as he soldiered on back to the shop.

Put in what felt like a good effort on the climb up Pinehurst from Canyon. Averaged 171 bpm for almost 10 minutes on it. Not sure what my max HR on the bike is, but it was getting close there. Here's the detail graph with that climb highlighted. (Taller HR spikes are from crosstalk with the wheel speed sensor going down hill.)

Open water practice

Went to Lake Temescal today to swim (at least) 400 meters. The length of the lane isn't marked, probably because it isn't really constant. So there may have been a bit of erring on the conservative side. Putting the GPS unit under my swim cap worked pretty well and I was surprised when I uploaded the data that it said about 660m. Time was about 16 minutes. That projects out to about 10 minutes for a 400 meter swim. Not bad since I was sighting all by my lonesome and had to stop and turn around at the ropeline every 60 meters or so. In the race it will be a continuous swim with two left turns. Since I tend to drift left I think I'll start on the right, stay out of the way of the folks who think they need the inside line, and use them as a boundary to keep me going straight.

Used the tinted goggles for the first time and that was a good purchase for outdoor swimming. Also tried the earplugs again. No water in the ear this time. No wobbling around while exiting the water. All good.

18 swims in 3 weeks

Not bad. The only off days where when the pool was closed unexpectedly.

Pants aren't fitting anymore. Hmm.

The drawstring on my board shorts is pulled all the way taut and they still start sliding down as I'm running in them. That's a bummer. I really like these shorts.

Ran 4 miles with the dog. Then went to the gym to get in another 450y. Tried some earplugs for the first time. They worked. Messed around with gliding, to see if I could get more for less, and then tried again to find some way to have a productive kick. Can sort of one-beat when my left shoulder is high. Anything more than that doesn't seem to produce speed but it definitely demands more air.

++

Swam 450 straight again. Broke in some new goggles. TYR Nest Pro. Very nice. Easier to get a seal than the TYR Racetech. Those aren't bad, but you had to get them in one exact spot or they'd leak. Nest Pros you can just lob onto your face and go.

Breathing is not requiring all my attention now so I am poking around youtube looking at videos and picking things to practice. Today it was trying to get my forearms more vertical before pulling. Seemed to help. Yee haw. Now if my kicking felt like it was contributing to moving forward I might be on to something.

Repetition is a useful thing. Repetition is a useful thing.

This swimming every day stuff is helping immensely. Lapping in the pool is becoming easier, both more automatic and more sustainable. Even managed to fit in some straight-ahead sighting in this workout.

My outlook for the event is being upgraded from hoping to finish the swim without stopping (holding on to a kayak, or treading water/breast stroking, etc.), to maybe actually finishing with a mid pack time.

Wheels of Justice shop ride, yet again.

WOJ->Tunnel->Skyline->Redwood->Pinehurst->Sheperd's Canyon->WOJ

22.8 miles, 2hrs 4min. Forerunner says 24 minutes of "stopped time" but I think that's a bit much. 13.7 mph moving speed if that is to be believed.

Nice ride. Just cool enough for a long sleeve wool shirt to be about right. Wore my tri-shorts on the bike for the first time. No drama. Still not sure if I am going to do the event in them or just use the Jammers.



Always a fan of a nice satellite image.



Also got in an open water swim before going home and getting ready for the ride. Was a lot more confident today. All this practice is paying off. Was able to do a much better job of resisting the unproductive urge to speed up whenever I start to feel a bit short of air. Swam a lot straighter as a result of being more calm. All good.

Tri shorts, huh?

Hit the closest lake (Lake Temescal) and continued the campaign of desensitization to swimming in murky open water. Managed to swim straight this time if I had a ropeline to follow. Still hook to the left badly if I don't have something nearby to sight.

The pad in the tri shorts was dripping water profusely for like 20 minutes after I got out. This has me wondering if I should do the whole sprint tri in the Jammers instead.

Temescal is even closer to my house than the Y where I normally swim. I will hit it a few more times before the event.

No more drag chute.

For about 2 years worth of lap swimming the goal was just acclimatization so I just wore swim trunks. Yes, they even had a pocket on the back. You could feel it dragging like sticking your hand out the car window on the freeway.

Since I'll be wearing tri-shorts in the event, I wanted to practice in something similar. Jammers are essentially the same, but OK for repeated use in chlorinated pools. Got some. Tried them. Liked 'em fine. Can definitely feel the difference.

Ran and then swam tonight. Did call the gym first to make sure they hadn't had yet another emergency pool closure. The woman who answered actually laughed when I asked. The pool has been closed more than it has been open the last 2 weeks I think.

Another day, another swim.

Managed about 1/3 of the workout breathing on the right. Every breath is an adventure still. Just barely getting enough rotation to that side to be able to get my mouth clear of the water.

The upside of this is that my far from perfect left side technique is feeling more and more comfortable.

Double workout day

Gonna have these a plenty between now and tri day. 400 yard swim isn't really a workout to write home about. I just want to work on daily reinforcement of anything good I've learned.

It was 3 to a lane today because they were giving half the pool for kids swim lessons. (I'm guessing it was the same group that fouled the water yesterday and closed the pool for 18 hours, starting just as I was presenting my ID to go inside.)

I had to spot the guys in my lane a half-length lead or I'd catch them. So apparently I am ranked higher than third worst swimmer in the world at least. It was hard to get in a continuous steady effort. After I got in my distance I put in a few laps trying to breathe on the right side. The "superman" type drill (left arm straight forward, right arm by side, kick only, breathe on right when necessary by rotating) I could not do at all! I could only get my mouth above the water with my arms moving and generating some extra push. So I just did that and managed a length breathing on the right, every other stroke. Progress.

It was so much harder to do than breathing on the left it was comical. I realized that I was actually squinting because I was concentrating so hard, and the squint was making it impossible for the goggles to seal. Something else to look out for later. Keep that face relaxed.

Had a good, low-perceived effort run after I got home from the gym. Fast enough that the dog was heeling well by mile 2, and has been sleeping hard since we got home.

Last night's WOJ shop ride

We've done this route before. Tunnel is probably my favorite way up the hill. Unless someone decides to put in a big acceleration about 4.5 miles into it, spiking my heart rate. Moving speed was 14.2, which probably explains why the stop time was a bit higher than usual.

CO2 inflators

Just did a test to see whether I should carry one or two cylinders.

Each one added about 70 psi to a 700x25c tire. So, one will get you home, but two is what you want if you want to keep riding with normal pace and effort. And you need a gauge or you will be riding with 140 psi in your tire, or you'll be guessing at how much air to let out.

Yikes. In open water I swim in circles. Small ones. Hrm.

Went to the lake today. Figured it would be a good idea to get acclimated. Um, yeah. Good idea that.

It was hot (85) which it will not be on race morning. The sand burned your bare feet. Definitely didn't expect that. Reminded me of family vacations as a kid. The water seemed a bit cold at first but a quick plunge took care of that.

It took like 4 tries to get the goggles to seat properly which I attributed to be a bit more distracted than in the pool where I am somewhat at home now. There are lifeguards there that closely monitor the boundary line where the water gets deep enough that people can't stand on the bottom. The lap swim lane is about 20 yards out past that. When I inquired about the lane they said "overhand stroke or we'll call you back in" which seemed reasonable.

Sighting on the bottom of the lake was pretty useless. I thought I'd be able to get the rope on my left and parallel it but I kept turning into it. My trajectory would bounce off it every 4 or 5 strokes. Definitely need some work on that. Bilateral breathing is probably the best solution as I think the turning is a result of me overdoing something related to breathing.

I was also going too fast, again probably because the visual cues from the pool that let me check my speed are all gone. Maybe in a mass start I can just follow someone's feet. If they know where they are going, that would be nice.

Yikes. I think I can swim.

Did 400 yards at the pool tonight without having to stop to catch my breath at the ends along the way. Didn't think I'd leap straight to full distance from only being able to manage 50 yards a couple of days ago. Got into a good rhythm fairly quickly and got it under control the few times I started to speed up and run short of air.

It was even possible to spare a little focus for thinking about whether I could improve my form a bit here or there. It was nice to get in some success in the pool as tomorrow I'm heading to the lake where they hold the sprint tri to get some exposure to the open water conditions.

It took 10 minutes which is not fast at all, but should be just enough to avoid getting overrun by the next wave. They start the waves 5 minutes apart so it would take a nearly world record effort (~4 minutes) for someone in the next wave to catch a 10 minute slowpoke in the preceding wave.

I still have 4 weeks to improve and maybe if there's a draft effect in the mass start I may even do a respectable time.

Goals remaining:

Do 400 straight sans speeders (fins).
Be able to breathe on the right.

Nice to do but not required:

Be able to switch off sides on 3rd stroke instead of sticking to a side and breathing every 2nd stroke.

So I went on slowtwitch.com and searched on "swim panic"

Spent several evenings reading the threads that turned up as a result of that search. Quite useful. The main things I took away from it were to a) try and breathe out more completely with my face in the water and b) maybe experiment with how I am rotating my body.

Knowing my breathing was not working well, was not timed well, and was not providing me with as much oxygen as I needed was obvious. Having an idea for how to improve that is not hard. Actually putting that into action was iffy though. Perhaps I got lucky though because I stumbled on something that worked well enough for me.

Old:

1. Throw head up to the left while pulling left arm back.
2. Gulp air as left arm comes over.
3. Left hand enters, head faces straight down and locks there.
4. Hold breath (mostly) until blasting it out just prior to step 1.

New:

1. Turn head left and keep chin close to left shoulder and rotate body until mouth comes out of the water by the time left hand is farthest back.
2. Breathe in and recover left arm.
3. Breathe out through nose moderately as right arm pulls back and left arm enters.
4. Pause exhale at mid stroke.
5. Breathe out through nose moderately as left arm pulls. Head begins turning left again.

The big change is almost continuous exhale starting as soon as a new breath was taken in. Also the head is almost constantly in motion. Before I was trying to keep eyes on the bottom of the pool too much.

Right now I'm breathing every stroke, and only on the left. I tried applying what I learned to the right side, but I need to start from scratch there. Just wasn't getting my face out of the water enough.

This is enough that I can swim more than 25 yards at a time now. More practice will help reinforce the good stuff. Once I'm getting enough air and it is fairly automatic I can start working on other technique. Right now it is still iffy enough that if I divide my attention it falls apart really fast.

Tonight's run profile

7 miles

average cadence 83

pace 9:42/mi

climb/decend 660 ft (including one 1/3 mile climb at 10%)

Nothing earth shattering in the above, except that for me 9:40 is a great pace on a hilly trail and my max heart rate on this run was 170. Most of it was in the 160s. Percieved effort was very low. Legs felt like they had good spring in them and were nice and loose. It was definitely cooler out than it has been lately.

Very interesting comparing to other runs of this route in my log book. There were a few other examples I could find of similar (good, for me) times, but they were usually when I was deep into training for a marathon. Even then, although perceived effort was also low then, the measured effort (heart rate) was usually a bit higher on average, and peak was noticeably higher (5-10 bpm).

Panic is bad

Why is it that the more short of breath I get in the pool, the faster I turn over? Thereby working harder and needing to breathe more. Gah. I really need to practice that out of me.

At least I can successfully get my goggles to seal and stay sealed within the first few laps now. Never could do that as a kid and that was a big part of a lifelong aversion to sticking my face in the water.

I may have to head out to the lake at the Shadow Cliffs park this week and swim in it to see what it is like. The pool is extremely chlorinated and the chlorine burn in the nose is definitely one thing that triggers irrational reactions. Maybe the lake will be nicer and an easier place to relax. It'll also be good to not have to turn at a wall every 25 yards.

Worst blog ever, maybe, but not the worst swimmer ever apparently.

Got asked to move out of the slow lane at the Y yesterday and trade places with someone going too slow in the medium lane. I LOLed.

Running lately has been enjoyable in a way that I probably haven't felt in about a year. That's how long it has been since I was deep into the cycle of long run workouts leading up to the 2008 SF Marathon and my knees started to hurt all the time. The reduction in pain was gradual from then until a few months ago. Once I started taking glucosamine and chondroitin supplements the reduction sped up noticeably. Now I can still feel a bit of something in my right knee once in a while. Even discomfort is too strong a word for it. It is so nice to be able to bend my knees any way I want, any time I want, and not wince in pain anymore. Yee haw.

A good descent can do a lot for your average speed on a ride.

Did the same ride today from the Wheels of Justice shop that we did on May 31. Except for a small detour where I got lost. But the overall speed tonight was just over 1mph faster than that ride. So much for riding a "recovery" pace today after the effort yesterday.

Empiricism, I'm for it.

Went out with my friend John today to pre-ride the bike course that is part of the Tri for Fun in Pleasanton, CA. He can usually destroy me on flat terrain, so the plan was for me to lead one lap of the course and push my own air and see how fast I could go. Then he'd go out front and go faster, and I'd try and hang in his draft and see how much effort that would take compared to doing all the work myself. The results were pretty interesting.

Conclusions:

John is much faster than me on flat stuff (but I knew that already).
Drafting is less useful when you have a strong tail wind.
Drafting is immensely useful when you have a strong headwind.
If your Tri allows drafting you are giving up a lot by not doing it.
Pre-riding the course was a very good idea. Vineyard towards Bernal was very challenging. It is slightly uphill into the prevailing wind for a long way then has a short steep hill just long enough to run you down into granny gear.

One thing I would not have guessed after both loops without looking at the data is that my average heart rate would be only 1BPM lower when I was following versus when I was leading. But when you look at the data you can see that for part of the lap I was working harder to hang with him because he was going a lot faster than I could on my own, and the draft was weak. But once we got to where the draft was strong, my effort level dropped substantially. Plus the second lap was about 10% faster with John leading, so going faster but having a slightly lower heart rate at the same time is saying something.

Here's the course. It is mostly flat, with a quick climb where Old Vineyard meets Vineyard just below the park, with a long downhill from there to Bernal. The wind was coming from the top left of the image to the bottom right and was pretty strong. Forecast said 10-20mph.



Here it is in map form, so the point to point timings are more clear.



Here's the point to point comparison. It was hard to pull these from the logbook so there are some obvious rounding errors if you look at the data. Err on the side of John being faster.

start point to right turn at Stanley/Isabel

me 7:04 -- 20.6 mph
john 5:41 -- 24.6 mph


Stanley/Isabel to Isabel/Vineyard

me 4:55 -- 20.7 mph
john 4:46 -- 21.2 mph


Isabel/Vineyard to turnaround

me 3:13 -- 20.4 mph
john 3:04 -- 20.1 mph


turnaround to Isabel/Vineyard

me 3:23 -- 18.5 mph
john 3:13 -- 20.0 mph


Isabel/Vineyard to top of hill on Vineyard

me 7:31 -- 17.5 mph
john 6:25 -- 20.6 mph


top of hill on Vineyard to Vineyard/Bernal

me 2:37 -- 19.5 mph
john 2:40 -- 19.8 mph


Vineyard/Bernal to Bernal/Stanley

me 1:14 -- 19.3 mph
john 1:06 -- 20.7 mph


Bernal/Stanley to finish

me 2:27 -- 20.1 mph
john 2:30 -- 20.9 mph

Total

me 32:44 -- 19.4 mph
john 29.06 -- 21.4 mph




Here's the heart rate chart twice, with my lap highlighted on the first image, John's on the second.





You can clearly see from these that my heart rate was highest (for a while) while trying to stay in John's draft as he hammered it to start his loop. At the end of the loop when we had turned back into a strong headwind it was a lot easier for me and you can see my heart rate is much lower than the same part of the loop where I lead.

Pool success

No more "the goggles, they do nothing!" The new goggles actually worked pretty well. Didn't leak once. Swam about 25 minutes working on my breathing. Still having the occasional problem where I don't start taking a given breath early enough and wind up crossing over with my mouth still open, pulling my head out of the water to avoid inhaling a face full of water, and losing my rhythm for a moment.

Hopefully there will be no more snorkeling in the pool though. I thought swimming at lunch on a weekday would be less crowded than after work (it has been in the past) but it was 3 to a lane for a bit.

So the new goal is to sign up for the August sprint tri, and swim workouts will have the goal of using goggles only and swimming the 400 meter distance with (hopefully) fewer stops each time until I can do it comfortably and continuously.

How long does it take to grow back a big toe nail?

December 13, 2008 (http://fastheartslowfeet.blogspot.com/2008/12/runners-toe.html) to now. The thing is finally full length again. Almost 7 months. Let's see how long I can manage to keep a full set.

If my knees return to normal I may sign up for the Oakland marathon, which is scheduled to be reborn in March 2010.

Another good Wheels of Justice shop ride

Distance: 29.37 miles
Moving time: 2:06:22 (Stopped 03:26)
Average speed: 13.9 mph



Featuring plenty of hills.

Here's a breakdown of where the climbs required some effort, in increasing order.

Zone 2



Zone 3



Zone 4



Here's the heartrate vs cadence vs elevation bit:

Compare then to now.

The ride yesterday included a climb I knew I'd done a few times before. It felt like I was getting good pace for the effort, and I knew I'd given everything I had to get to the top on one of the previous ascents.

That's all it takes to motivate a bit of geeking out with sporttracks. Two previous runs up the same hill were found. Drilling in to the Pinehurst/Moraga intersection as the start and the stop sign limit line where Pinehurst meets Skyline as the finish allowed a direct comparison.

October 5, 2008 - 21:45
November 18, 2008 - 23:32
June 21, 2009 - 21:58

On the October ride I followed my friend John up and then sprinted to the top at the end for King of the Mountain honors. You can see from the graph that I spiked my heartrate up into Zone 5. That ride was the one time I've ever fallen over on this bike -- because I couldn't get my foot clicked out of the pedal while I was sucking wind at the top having just crossed the finish line.

Yesterday I hit the beginning of the climb and decided to keep spinning it up because I could hear the crunch of gravel from someone right behind me. If they were going, I was going. That turned out to be John again, and he dropped back near the end and I spun it in without any finish line kick.

The two graphs are both highlighting the same start/finish section from the two rides. Most noteworthy difference is the cadence. First time I tried to grind it up in as high a gear as I could hang onto. This time I spun lower gears trying to keep at 85-90 cadence, but eventually ran out of gears near the top where it gets steepest.

Before:



After:



And there would be less empirical fail if I a) remembered my heart rate strap on Sunday and b) had both graphs be over time, or distance, and not a mix of both.

WOJ shop ride again

Did the Wheels of Justice Sunday night ride again. Great night for it. Clear and warm. Not hot in the open, not cold in the shade.

Forgot my heartrate strap. Could tell from the breathing that it was mostly 160-170 when I was making power. Worked on keeping the cadence up above 85. Seemed to work pretty well. It is tempting to blame struggles on the last few rides with the seat slipping back out of adjustment before it got loose enough for me to notice and put it back where it belongs.

Went to see the local tri

The local Tri for Fun had the first of 3 summer events today. Went to spectate at this one thinking it would be good prep for signing up for one of the later ones. At this point I'll say hell yes it was a good idea.

Now I know that they will likely start 15 minutes late, that the run course is somewhat confusing and volunteers may be learning their jobs as they go, and I'd probably be best off starting in my AG wave (M 40+) than in the last wave (for people worried about the swim). Although the following pic is no doubt the spot where I will be the most angst-ridden when my turn comes.

First hot day in a while

High 80's. Trails were jammed with people out enjoying a nice evening after work. That meant lots of people to chase and pass. Did 4 miles of trail at about 9:20 pace. Last time I was running at that speed the heartrate required was about 10bpm more. Not sure if I can give the high cadence work the credit.

Tacos al Pastor

They're good. But they are probably not a good idea right before a run. Oh no.

Sleep monster

Went to bed at 3:30 last night. Threw the whole day out of whack. Lately Sundays have been bike days but went for a run. Normally the dog would be happier with that, but tonight at the end of the run he barfed. Poor kid. Just his usual empty-stomach issues.

What's the deal with breathing.

For pretty much all of the running I've done in the last 3-4 years it was two footfalls per exhale, two footfalls for inhale. Maybe 1:1 when on tough climbs and moving slowly.

One thing that seems to have just spontaneously happened lately now that I've been working on maintaining higher cadence is that it will be 4 footfalls per inhale and then per exhale. Weird. Off to do some googling on respiration rate and running. Not something I've seen mentioned in the many running articles read over the last few years.

Good run tonight! Musta been the mocha and peanut butter cookie at Farley's on the way home from work. http://www.farleyscoffee.com/ideas/index.html

Hmm. After a bit of google this turned up and not much else.

"If you wish to experiment with modifications in your breathing rate, however, do so during less important runs and workouts. Based on my own research and coaching experience, when running at about 75% maximal heart rate (MHR), most runners average 30 to 45 breaths per minute. Although there are limitations in the method, for a rough approximation of your MHR, you could subtract your age from 220, in your case 163 beats per minute (bpm). Seventy-five percent of this would be about 122 bpm. As the pace quickens from 75% MHR, a pattern of two steps to inhale and two to exhale will allow more oxygen. This is about 60 breaths per minute. For intervals, a kick at the end of a race, or races lasting less than three minutes, try a pattern of two steps to inhale and one step to exhale. Any faster than this can create a state similar to hyperventilating.

Greg Tymon, MEd, CSCS"

Kind of interesting as it fits personal experience. The other thing I forgot to mention is that with this new 4 steps situation the breaths seem deeper. On the inhale it is almost like I'm puffing my chest out.

In spite of the high workload this weekend, tonight's run was fairly fast, and low effort to boot. Sub 9:00 miles on hilly trail to start was pretty good for me. Finished at about 10:00. Tired the dog out for sure.

Motorbikes are good excercise

For example, pushing one across a gravel lot is a good way to elevate your heart rate. Today in about 30 seconds of pushing I hit 173 bpm from a resting rate. That was about 10 bpm more than anywhere else in an afternoon of riding offroad at Hollister OHV park.

It ain't just sitting on the cushy seat and twisting the throttle:



This was some fun riding.

Consider a donut and a mexican scramble before your next ride.

Snuck in a Saturday ride for scheduling convenience this week.





Will be dirt riding tomorrow. Woo.

Running after dinner is teh awesome

Ran a harder, alternate version off of one of the usual loops. It was good. Took a bit more edge off the dog than usual.