All because of a gear puller

About 10 years ago I woke up one morning, got my coffee (as usual) and started wandering the house, looking for my wife.  She was pregnant with our daughter at the time.  I found her standing at the open door to the garage, staring at my nifty 57 Chevy pickup… shaking her head.  I asked her what was wrong and in a very matter of fact way she said “We’re gonna need to get rid of that thing”, gesturing disgustedly at the truck.  And as big a blow to my manhood as that was, she was right and I knew it.  Room for 2 1/2, lap belts only, no airbags, etc.  Not exactly your family mover.  We sold it shortly thereafter.  And I have been slowly bleeding car specific tools ever since as well.

I have this horrible habit of choosing hobbies (and fitness pursuits) that work that way.  Here’s another example:

I have a woodshop.  No.  Not just a few tools.  Damn near everything one would need to be a true craftsman.  It has taken over 15 years to collect my tools, but I estimate I have about $30,000 worth of them in my little shop.  They have, in some cases, served me well.  I built my entire kitchen cabinets down there.  I did an OK job for never having built cabinets before.  In fact, many things in this house are from that shop.  About a year ago I decided to go down to my shop (read: black hole into which dad pours money) and turn a finial on my lathe.  With all the flatwork I have been doing (flatwork is cabinets, boxes, furniture, etc.) I realized that I hadn’t turned anything in over a year.  The finial should have taken about 45 minutes to turn.  But 4 hours later, after I had disassembled the lathe to fix a rusted shaft and then sharpened all of my tools so they would actually cut wood… I was done.  I walked away from the lathe and never turned another piece.  Why?  I just don’t have the time to devote to it that you need to be good at it.  I sold it in December and the thing that got me thinking about all of this was that, ironically enough, the guy that bought it ran into the same problem with it binding up and called me for help.  As I was looking for the gear puller I used so I could give it to him (he will need it more than me)  I found, buried deep in a tool chest, my steering wheel puller from the old truck.

This all kind of sent me into a spiral.  I thought a lot about that old truck, tools, my shop, my choices and a lot of other things.  I became very frustrated with myself.  Very disappointed.  My shop has been relegated to history.  Cobwebs cover a lot of it.  I can go months without ever going down there.  It used to be my sanctuary.  I loved being in it, turning stuff on the lathe, creating, planning…  dreaming.  But now it’s just a neglected tool storage shed.  Another waste of money.  The only reason all of my tools aren’t for sale now is simply because I have a few projects on the drawing board that may need them.

Granted, I derived great pleasure from creating things in that shop, for years.  But now I feel like spending days on end down there working on something is taking time away from my family and other things that I think are more important.  My priorities have changed.

See… I think that anybody can stick boards together and call it a shelf.  But it takes a long time to build something the right way.  Finishing a piece alone can take many weeks.  Painful little details that I only barely have patience for can make or break a project.  And, indeed, that is where most of the tools come in to play.  I have some tools I have only used once but have owned for 10 years.  They make a certain kind of cut or joint that can’t be done any other way.  I may never need them again… but if I do…

But the bottom line is I have too many hobbies and too much stuff.  I need to simplify.

I did this once before.  In 2004 I was playing roller hockey 2 nights a week, mountain biking 3 days a week, playing softball 2 nights a week, running 3 days a week… oh.  And I had a wife, kid and job… and we played in the SCA on the weekends.   I’ve always been one to try or play any sport or hobby.  And once I get hooked, I’m all in.  So you can imagine all the gear (and smell… hockey stuff and SCA fighting gear STINKS).  I had one pair of jeans but 3 pairs of baseball pants. Backwards?  Probably…

I was out of control.  Maybe I was desperate to stay in shape.  Maybe I wanted friends… I don’t know.  But between the fees, gear, gas and beer, I was never home and always broke.  I stopped playing hockey and softball and changed mountain biking courses so I could do it on the way home from work.  Eventually I even stopped mountain biking and just ran.  And then I stopped doing that too.

When we got here (CoMo) I decided to get back in shape and started with a clean slate.  I had my shop, yes, but no other hobbies.  We did not join back up with the SCA here so you would think my problems were solved.  But as I got hooked again on the running bug, my new friends were going farther and trying different types of races (offroad, etc.) and I wanted to keep up.  I started this whole triathlon thing and it comes with its own mileage goals and the junkies who push them.  I ran a marathon.  Several half marathons.  A sprint triathlon, then an olympic.  Some offroad events.  Long bike rides.  More gear (same jeans), more rides, swims, runs.

Until I finally realized, down in my shop, holding a gear puller for a truck I sold over 10 years ago…  That it was happening all over again.  Over the past 3 years I had been steadily increasing the mileages and races and stuff… to the point that I was completely overwhelmed with training.  I was burned out.  THAT is why I almost walked away from endurance sports after Redman.  That was why I had bailed on marathons, ultras, tri’s and the like.  I had so many conflicting goals that there was no way to train for them…  ANY of them.  You can’t train for a marathon AND triathlons (some people do, but not me).  You can’t train for a road marathon by running offroad or vice versa.  You can’t train for a 5K goal time while training for an ultra.

The key word there is “train”.  You can DO any or all of the above.  IF you are in good shape to start with AND you are genetically predisposed to endurance sports.  The rest of us slobs… not so much.  And the kicker is that the endurance crowd here in CoMo, lovable and supportive as they are, seem to be mostly made up of the genetically predisposed.  Trying to follow them around can be dangerous.  And frustrating.  Such was the condition I found myself in round about December.  The more I ran… the harder I pushed… the worse I got.

Why?  Well, to go round and round again… Let’s go back to woodworking.  I have a shop.  That doesn’t make me a craftsman.  I know how to use tools, that doesn’t make me an artist.  It makes me a tool collector.  To be good, first you need the basics.  An understanding of the craft.  Then you need time to practice.  Time to build lots of really bad pieces (AKA firewood) so that you can master the craft.

It’s the same way with fitness, triathlons, running, etc.  First you need a base.  You need to be in good shape (I am not).  I know how to run/bike/swim.  But that doesn’t make me a triathlete.  I can run a trail, but that doesn’t make me a trail runner.  I need to focus on the basics.  Get fit.  Build back up to a comfortable level and STAY THERE.  My limits are clearly defined.  Some, like distance, I know I can’t push.  Some, like speed, are based on fitness.  The more fit I am, the faster I go.  But ALL of them require time to FOCUS.  And I find that the only way I can be better at ANY of them is to not try to do a million different things.

So sitting down there in my shop with a steering wheel puller in my hand… I chose triathlons.  Sprint and olympic distance.  And NOT because it’s a sneaky way of overwhelming myself with 3 sports while calling it one.  I need fitness.  I also need to take care of my body while I am getting in shape.  Believe it or not, triathlons (for me) do just that.  There is no way I can pound myself with running 5 days a week because I have to train for the other two sports. And they are much low(er) impact.  They also work different muscle groups.  AND none of it takes that much time.  An hour and a half is my LONG day.  I used to push FIVE hours on my long day (and would spend the rest of that day resting).  Didn’t leave much time for yard work, eh?

What it really means more time for my family, more peace of mind for me, and, perhaps, a tiny bit more time in my shop?  …I never give up… do I…

GAWD that was rambling.  My apologies.  I just really needed to get that out of my head.

Today’s quote from Alice in Wonderland is to remind me to take the simple plan and stick to it:

“If you don’t know where you are going it really doesn’t matter which path you take.”

Week 2. A few adjustments

Just like when you start a new workout (or restart an old routine) and it’s not the day after the workout that hurts, but the day AFTER the day after that you are the most sore, I fully expected my second week on a dedicated plan of higher intensity workouts to be harder than the first.  Not as much physically as mentally.  When you are tired and hungry all the time and are having difficulty sleeping (an unfortunate side effect I have after hard workouts), it’s easy to get down.  The alarm noise is more cruel than usual.  You are still looking up at 8 weeks of hard training.  It’s normal to question your sanity.  Luckily I never had that in the first place so it was one less thing to question…

Of the 12 workouts I had scheduled this week, I made 10 of them.  Hill repeats night on Wednesday was 104 degrees.  Um… No.  I took my son to the gym and did 45 minutes of spinning.  Not the same intensity, but I’m just not that stupid.  The Saturday easy ride after the run didn’t happen either for a couple of reasons.  I was supposed to run 11 miles beforehand but ended up adding an extra mile so that was harder than it was supposed to be and I was tired.  The second reason was that traffic in town was a nightmare from city limit sign to city limit sign.  It would have just been a frustrating disaster.  Again… not that dedicated.

Although I am definitely tired, I keep waiting for the pain and muscle soreness that used to accompany my long runs (15+) but for the most part it is just not there.  I see that as a big positive.  One less thing to bring me down!  I will say that it seems to be taking me a lot longer to get warmed up though.  I didn’t feel comfortable on my long run until I was 5 miles in!

When you train this much (and yes, I consider TWELVE workouts a week a LOT), one thing you have to consider that I had not given enough attention to is preparation.  Not of the workout itself (because my workouts are not that complicated) or even nutrition (which just has to be a constant), but just making sure you are ready.  I have filled more water bottles, mixed more Gatorade, cleaned more workout gear and done more maintenance than I think I ever have.  And it’s not just making sure you have the right stuff at the right time.  I find that the only way to fight the excuse demons is to prepare for the next workout completely before I go to bed.  This means having clothes, shoes, towels, bikes, goggles, etc. in a neat pile and ready to stumble into first thing in the morning.  If I am doing two workouts in the same day, this also means prepping for both.  If I run in the morning, go to work and then ride in the afternoon, I have to have both workouts stuff ready to go.  This is especially challenging since I don’t have 10 pairs of tri shorts or shoes so I have to make sure those are clean and dry (in the case of my shoes) and ready.  If I forget, I’m screwed.  And nothing will ruin your groove quicker than running in wet shoes or forgetting something (like your helmet).

Because of this, my car has become afflicted with triathlonoma.  Smelly, cancerous growths of old clothes and shoes I forgot to get out yesterday so they sat in the hot sun all day.  As well as various empty water bottles, Gu packets, old towels and other unidentifiable pieces of race swag, crumpled numbers, sunscreen and chain lube.  I knew it was stinky when the 8 year old begged to roll the windows down in the 100+ temps last week.  I have also discovered that the smelliest piece of equipment I have seems to be one of the smallest… My bike gloves REEK!!  But, hey, with that much crap in my (very tiny) car, when the zombie apocalypse comes at least I’ll be ready.  I’m not sure what for… but I’ll be ready.

So for week three I am making a few adjustments.  I am definitely taking Mondays off from now on.  I’m also not sure about doing back to back bricks on Saturday and Sunday.  Oh, I’m sure it is the right thing to do… I just don’t know if I can do it.  Especially riding 25 miles after a 12-14 mile run on Saturday.  There is a reason they do the run last… and after I finish that long run, I’m pooped.  I might do a few of them, but not every week.  I think it’s just a bit too much for me right now.

Next week will be a challenge as I am in Los Angeles all week.  I do have one VERY long run planned at my favorite place out there called Sycamore Canyon State Park.  It’s an out and back that goes from Newbury Park down to the ocean.  It’s about 17.5 miles and the back half is all up hill!  The last 3 miles are HELL, with one 3/4 mile stretch rising 800 feet!  Anyway, the goal is to run down to the ocean,  splash about a bit and then run back up.  Kinda like my own Hood to Coast…   Anyway, it will be my longest run since I ran the Kansas City Marathon in 2007!

Got it!

Well, that’s that!  The final weigh in for the Biggest Loser Competition with my local triathlon club was today for me.  I lost another 3 pounds which put me definitively below the 190 mark at 188lb.  That was my only real goal for the contest and I got it!  Total weight lost since January 3 is 25lb.  I am 18lb away from my final goal of 170lb and feel pretty confident I can make that goal by this September for club nationals.  I’m really happy with the start to this year and have a lot of momentum already to achieve some pretty big goals.  But I’m trying to temper my enthusiasm with some reality.  I’m very excited with the progress so far but I need to stick to my original plan.

So here is what I’m looking at:

I said that I wouldn’t sign up for any races until I was under 190, so the door is open now.  I signed up for a half marathon at the end of this month and will probably do my first 5K in over a year this weekend to celebrate St. Paddy’s day.

My first multisport race will be April 7 at the MaxTrax Duathlon.

My first offroad event will be April 21 with the Amphibian race (3mi kayak, 3mi mtb, 3mi run)

My first triathlon of the year will be May 6 (yes, a pool swim) TriZou (sprint)

But from there, the tempering begins.  I want/need to do at least one olympic distance (preferrably 3-4) but I won’t sign up for one until I am under 180lb.

I want to do my first half Iron distance triathlon at Redman in Oklahoma this fall, but I won’t sign up for it until I am under 175lb.

The other goal I have for this year is not to get distracted by all the bright, shiny races going on around me.  I will consider an offroad event or adventure race, but that is all the new stuff I’m interested in.  If I want to do a half Iron, I need to TRAIN for it.  No distraction races like last year.  Between now and September I need to do a lot of bike run bricks and get on a PLAN this summer.  I can’t just keep going to every event or group training session if they don’t line up with my goals.  As much as I like the people in the club, I need to focus.

So here goes!

Weight: 188lb

Pity? Party of one?

OK.  Let’s get back on track here.  My one man pity party is done.  I think it’s just good to get those things out sometimes.  Not trying to bring anybody down.

Got lots of workouts in and made some progress toward a work goal.  Still a long way to go in both areas, but a step is a step.

I think what started it all for me is that I’m really worried about things that I have no control over and when something else comes up I think that must be the other shoe dropping and the wheels are about to come off.  It’s just a pattern of behavior and thinking with me.  I don’t seem to be able to just let good enough be… well… you know.  So when tiny things started happening that were bad… a bad week of nutrition because I was at conferences, my equipment starting to fail (goggles broke, interrupting a swim.  Bike shorts sprouted holes X 3 in the same week) and lingering frustration at not losing more weight all sent me back into that spiral of negative thinking which always used to end up with me hiding in the dark eating a whole pizza and drinking a six pack.  My mind said “Oh boy, here we go again.”  When it was really nothing.

I started repairing the ship shortly after I posted my tale of woe yesterday by giving myself a “suck it up” talking to.  The food at conference was nobody’s fault but my own.  I CHOSE the food I ate even when I knew better.  My goggles were 2 years old and ready to be replaced.  My bike shorts were (yes all of them) older than my children (and my son is 14!).  It’s amazing they lasted that long. My wife is feeling better again.  It’s cool.  It’s all good.

Then I decided to go finish some of what I had started.  I put in an hour of spinning on the trainer and made a few adjustments to the bike.  The interrupted swim got finished with my backup goggles.  I ran 5.5 at Rock bridge this morning and it was a comfortable, beautiful run with good company.  And it was 15 seconds per mile faster than usual.  I did a group workout where we ran all of the stairs at 9 of the parking garages downtown.  It felt really good, even after the Rock Bridge run.  And I lost a pound and a half so I’m down to 191.  I have one week to lose slightly more than one pound so that I can meet my biggest loser goal of getting below 190 during the BL competition.

See.  It’s all good.

Yes, those feelings about food are still there.  They always will be.  But like any feeling, it’s all about how I choose to react to them.  Can I say that I will always eat good for the rest of my life and never have another beloved Guinness?  No.  Will that be a failure?  It depends.  In some ways yes because I really don’t need it and it’s a crutch when I am weak.  But it could also be a reward for accomplishing something.  A half marathon?  An olympic distance tri?  A half iron?  Another marathon?  An ultra?  All on my radar.  Maybe a pizza and a Guinness is my carrot…  It’s cheaper than a new car…

Race nutrition is a mystery.

I’m at a point now, at least with running, where I’m starting to see the old times coming back.  But, more importantly, I FEEL better about running than I have in almost a year.  I feel like I am running faster, but easier than I have in a long time.  For instance, today’s run, which included two hills of 1/4 to 1/2 mile each was completed at 51:03 for 6.1mi or 8:23/mi.  It wasn’t 3 weeks ago I was struggling to maintain a 9 minute pace.  Other than the hill miles (8:44, 8:53) I actually averaged 8:12 this morning.  And I think I could have gone faster.  I was talking through most of the first 3 miles.  My legs felt fresh and my turnover was high.  All good signs, especially after a heavy weekend of workouts.

My weekly run training has kind of fallen into a 4 day per week routine.  Tuesday is hills, Thursday is intervals, Saturday is long and Sunday is trails.  This really seems to work for me.  Especially the way I have my swims set up.  I swim Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning and this low impact workout on the days following my runs makes my body really happy!

The problem is, as always, where do the bike miles fit in?  Getting in bike miles really forces me to do multiple workouts per day.  I just don’t have a choice.  So far it has been a day or two a week on the trainer, or a day or two a week on the MTB with an occasional road ride if possible.  However, as the season wears on I will need to really increase this if I have any hope at all of getting enough miles in to do a half ironman someplace.  More than likely I will have to change my Saturday/Sunday runs to bricks and then add Thursday evening intervals to the mix.  I will also need at least one day a week on the trainer or an exercise bike at the gym.

My goal for all of this is to really try to NOT be undertrained on the bike this year.  I don’t feel that in the 3 years I have been doing triathlons I have gotten the right amount of bike miles yet.  Experienced triathletes will say you can NEVER get enough bike miles in and I believe that, to a degree.  Especially if you do longer races.  I may yet have to switch to a REAL half Ironman training plan from someplace in order to keep it all straight.

I was talking with a friend this morning on the run and asked me what I was afraid of about doing a half iron.  I told him it was mostly the bad experiences I have had doing long bike rides and then trying to run.  I have done it a dozen times or more and have cramped HORRIBLY every time.  Yes, that’s nutrition/hydration, but when the bomb goes off it doesn’t really matter why.  It still affects you and makes you worry about it.  I’m “hoping” that if I can really lose weight for the rest of the spring and stretch my mileages slowly, I can overcome the block and find the right nutrition for me.  It’s definitely something I need to research.

I think I know what I need, I just don’t know the best delivery system for it.  I sweat more than most people.  So I’m not only losing fluids, I’m losing salt as well.  I have to start factoring that into my nutrition.  Most gels don’t have enough sodium for me.  Believe it or not, the cheapy Power Gels are the highest sodium of the bunch (that I am aware of).  I just don’t know about the liquids.  There are so many choices it’s kind of overwhelming.  I can’t drink a lot of anything sweet or I get sick so Gatorade and the like are out.  I have tried the Hammer products and a few others but still don’t feel like it’s enough.  I either overdrink and have to pee during the race and STILL dehydrate (weird…  I know), or don’t drink enough and blow up.  This is one of my biggest challenges.  It will take some time to figure out.

It’s a mindset thing.

My three day weekend consisted of 8 miles on the mountain bike, 8. 5 miles of trail running, a 6 mile road run and 3 gym sessions (light cardio and weightlifting).  I think that’s enough.  I feel good and I’m not tired.  I ran 6 hilly miles this morning and felt good there too.  I think I might finally be getting back into it!  A month ago 3 days like that would have had me hobbling up stairs for the rest of the week.  But I feel really good.  If I keep up that kind of routine and just be careful with my food, I can’t see how I could possibly NOT lose weight.

Here’s a mindset for you.  Train hard, focus on getting the workouts in, have fun and DON’T worry about the scale.  I really am enjoying the freedom of just moving under my own power now without the stress of hitting constant mileage/time goals that I realized that even though I am in this (friendly) competition to lose weight, I’m still only weighing myself about twice a week.  I’m more interested in beating the weather and getting back into pants that haven’t fit in 6 months than I am about anything else.

I just think people put too much emphasis on the scale.  Yes, it is the final judge, I get that.  But just like working and trying over and over to hit that mileage/time mark and coming up a few seconds under, or worse, right at or a few seconds over your goal.  You can get so obsessed about the numbers that you forget everything else.  For me, this leads to frustration which usually ends up DE-motivating me.  Heck, I forgot my watch this morning and after that old habit pang of “oh crap, how am I going to know how I’m doing?”, I stopped myself and laughed.  Who cares?  I will KNOW how I am doing by how I feel.  I’ve been doing this long enough to know what good effort feels like.  Besides, the only important stat for me on my watch is what my average pace is and (warning: old guy admission ahead) I can’t even see the stupid numbers because they are too small on the watch…   Which, of course is CLEARLY the fault of the watch, not my eyes…

Yes, there will come a day when all of this stuff will matter more.  But not now.  I need to get back to the day when my weight will realistically let me “train” for something.  I have a training plan for a half Ironman.  But I’m not even going to start on it until my weight is at a point where it is realistic and SAFE to train for those distances.  Like I’ve said, I can DO the distances, individually, right now and I could probably slog my way through a half Iron, just to say I did it.  But that’s not what I want.  I want to do it right, and I want to do it well.  This starts with being at the right weight.  Correction, this starts with not being at the WRONG weight.  That is where I am now.  I won’t know what the right weight is until I get there.  I’ll let you know.

I do know what would happen at this weight…  Slow swim, dizzy T1, 3 hr bike ride (falling further behind on nutrition the entire way), nauseating T2, dehydrated, cramp filled 13 mile run.  Why would I want to do this?  I know this is what would happen because any time I have tried to compete heavy in any race (or even train for one) this is the result.  Packing an extra 25-30lb is just dangerous.  Heat affects me more.  If I don’t hit all of my nutrition marks I cramp horribly but I just can’t take in enough fluids/calories to support packing the extra weight around the course.  If I hydrate and eat the way I should, I get sick because I’ve got too much in my stomach.  See the vicious cycle?

Look, this is just me and my body.  Everybody is different.  I’ve seen and talked to several multi Ironman finishers who are heavy.  I have tried their suggestions but I just can’t make them work.

This is not me feeling sorry for myself either.  It is just the way things are.  It’s all a learning curve.  My friend Betsy once said to me that it takes 7 years to get completely comfortable with triathlons.  And things still go wrong.  I’m cool with that.  I just know the first thing on the list to get me “comfortable” is weight loss.  Oh, and the whole “losing weight will help me with everything else in life” thing is pretty cool too…

Weight: 198lb.  Down 2lb.

Ponderings in the pool

Great swim today.  2000 yards with no tightness, fatigue or cramping.  I’m really enjoying swimming right now (especially since it’s 20 degrees outside…!).

One thing I don’t need to do when I’m swimming (or anytime for that matter) is math.  I can barely count my laps right but for some reason today I insisted on thinking about, of all things, what I would need to do to get my time down below 1:15:00 at TriZou.  Of all the stupid things.  First, I don’t like pool swim races so I probably won’t even do the race.  Second, I want to go longer on my races this year so… I probably won’t even do the race.

…but I really wanna do the race. *sigh*

Anyway, I think I can safely knock at least a minute off my swim time.  Probably more but I went with a minute.  Then I started trying to figure out how much time a mile an hour increase on the bike would give me and damn near drowned trying to work it all out.  I’m a mathematical moron on a good day.  I need to focus more on my swim technique and less on stupid stuff.  No wonder I lose my lap count.

I had to laugh (which is never good while swimming) when I came to the decision that if I ever wrote a book about my journey through losing weight and triathons, I would call it “The Littlest Clydesdale”.  Whaddya think?  Pretty good, eh?  For those that don’t get it, The “Clydesdale division” is reserved for, umm… men of substance.  You have to weight AT LEAST 200 lb to get in.  The VAST majority of clydesdale participants are 6 feet or over.  Most are ex football players, etc.  Putting me in a lineup with them is like Gimli on the wall with the elves.  …If you don’t get that reference, watch Lord of the Rings.  Let’s just say my frame is a bit compact to be carrying the same amount of weight…

So I’m hoping to achieve my first real goal by the weigh in this Sunday.  To get OUT of the clydesdale division.  And stay out.  Permanently.

The one thing I will never be able to escape is all the weightlifting I did when I played baseball.  My legs are like tree stumps.  My calves are more cow like.  I can still bench 200lb.  No matter what I do, unless I lie in a bed for a year and completely atrophy, I am always going to be what the government calls “overweight”.  Even if I get down to 10% body fat.  I was talking with a coworker about ideal weight and race weight, etc.  I think even if all I did was train all day, my ideal weight would still be around 170 and my race weight would be around 165.  At 5’7″, most triathletes are around 150 at ideal weight and 147 race weight according to what I read.  Not only do I not think I could ever get down to that weight, I think it would be unhealthy for me.

In short races, this really doesn’t mean anything.  If I were ever to hit my ideal weight, I could easily run 6 minute miles.  I was running just under 7 minute miles at 180lb.  I think my bike times would come down because I would climb better.  I think my swim times would be faster too.  I think where the extra weight would start to affect me negatively would be anything over an olympic distance.  I just don’t think I could ever physically do an Ironman.  Not that I even want to, but I think I would tear myself apart trying to.  Just too much pounding on an old, used up frame.  And too much weight, even at race weight.  I tore myself up just trying to do a marathon and was out for a year.

Anyway, I have to get out of the clydesdale division first…

Weight: unchanged at 200lb. (come on weekend workouts…!)

Keeping count

First day in a week with only one workout…  I’m feeling guilty…

Strange.  Even though I work hard in the pool, I actually look forward to it as an easy day.  The pool relaxes me and it’s totally non weight bearing exercise so I huff and puff, but I’m not beating my legs up.  After a 10 mile brick at Rock Bridge yesterday, I needed to take my substantial load off of my legs for a day.  Got about a mile in of mixed drills.  Mostly 200′s with the main set being 200 swim/200 paddles/200 pull X 2.  The paddles are still really hard work and I have to be careful I don’t over

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fatigue my shoulders.  But I can already feel the difference and I’ve only been using them for a month.

My nemesis in the pool is thinking.  Oh, no… Not about technique or anything important like that.  No.  I start to daydream and forget what the hell I’m doing.  Nothing like getting 500 yards into a 1000 yard main set and forgetting what lap you are on because you are thinking about your compost…  I’m sure I could be 10 seconds faster per hundred if I could just stay focused long enough to count to 2 laps.  *sigh*

Speaking of swimming, one of the bloggers I follow (DC Rainmaker) just took a trip to Bora Bora.  He posted pictures and for the first time I found myself saying “Man… I would love to swim there…”  What the hell is wrong with me?  Am I becoming a swimmer?  Don’t I know there are sharks and jelly fish and…  But it sure is beautiful… No?  I’m not even the kind that likes tropical islands but a swim with the fishes in Bora Bora would be pretty amazing.  Still, for me to associate swimming with anything other than dread marks a radical shift.

The whole weight loss thing still has me a little worried.  I’m hoping I don’t bounce and gain weight this week.  I’m being careful and I’m slowly trying to decrease my intake a little more (although tonight’s turkey sausage gumbo was hard to say no to) each day.  I “think” I’m down to about 2500 calories a day now.  With the amount I’m working out, that puts me negative on most days.  I really want to work it so that I eat about the same every day.  I don’t believe in carbo loading that much and feel that if I can get my body used to a certain intake then it will be most efficient at that intake level and I won’t need to load up.  I also wonder just how much pre race carb loading or eating big after a long workout actually helps.  I’ve read studies and articles on both sides.  As with everything I believe in life, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  It’s all personal anyway.  I have to find what works for me.  You would think I would know what that is by now…  meh… maybe when I grow up…

Weight: 200lb

 

Fresh Ideas Triathlon Race Report

The last month has been a blur.  We were moving our offices at work, several events came and passed, I really ramped up my training hours and started doing two workouts on most days (you know, kinda like I was supposed to do all along…!).  It’s been a mess.  Sorry for the silence.  I guess I was too busy living life to write about it…

A quick summary up to this past weekend would simply be:

I never made it to the starting line for the KC Triathlon.  My camping stuff got blown into the woods by a severe thunderstorm at my campsite and I spent the next two hours retrieving it and trying to out drive the storm.  By the time I got away from it I noticed two things.  First, I was nearly all the way back home (about 80 miles driven to avoid the weather) and second, it was nearly 2am.  Transition opened at 4:30 and the race was at 7:30.  I just went home…

The Sedalia duathlon was a fun, small event.  It was hot and I wasn’t quite used to it yet so my splits went horrifically wrong.  I averaged 7:09 for the first 2 mile run, went a shade under 20 average on the bike and then blew up on the second run.  I walked, complained, whimpered and generally felt miserable as I limped to a 10:39 average for the second run.  It was ugly.  The race is fun though.  Not difficult, but the ride is more hilly than you think.  The run is a mix of grass, Katy trail and a local (lightly traveled but open to traffic) road.  A good training race and great practice.  There is one in the fall as well and I will be doing that one too.  Hopefully with a better second run split!

The workouts are going better than I could expect for the most part.  I am feeling more and more confident on the swim (if only a little faster…) and my bike splits for intervals are surprising.  On a relatively flat course my averages are between 22 and 23 and that is mostly alone or drafting with one other person.  I have discovered over the past two years, though, that my run splits just suffer in the heat.  As much as I bitch about running in the cold… I run better in the cold.  I melt in the heat and sweat so profusely that it is almost impossible to keep enough fluids on board to prevent cramps.  Ahh well.  Can’t have it all I guess.

Last weekend was the Fresh Ideas Octomax Triathlon by Ultramax.  Always a great event with a challenging course.  I did this two years ago and remembered that there were hills everywhere (yes, even the swim) but that’s what I liked about it.  Believe it or not, this was my first real triathlon of the year… and it’s almost JULY!  Sad…

I just drove the hour and a half to the race site that morning.  I always sleep lightly/poorly the day before races anyway so it didn’t matter that I had to get up at 3:30 anyway.  We set up by race number so it really didn’t matter that I got there early.  They made the old guys run the farthest with our bikes.  I guess they thought having us lean on our bikes might help keep us from falling on the grass and breaking a hip or something…  Transition was short enough that it really didn’t matter though.

As I said before, the course is gorgeous, challenging and even a tiny bit technical on the bike (until you get out of the resort) but the roads, for the most part, are in good shape.  The drivers are usually cordial, if occasionally a bit confused about what the heck is going on.  It seems every year somebody bounces off a car that just decides to stop in the middle of the course or something.  This year it was an ambulance that did the damage!  He decided it would be a good idea to pass another ambulance that had stopped and pulled right into oncoming racers.  Genius…

The water was BARELY wetsuit legal and I think we of the poor swimming sort have the race director to thank for that.  He may have had to take a few samples in order to get one under the minimum…   No matter.  The lake is beautiful and a good swim.  Easy to follow and well supported.  We went off in waves and I swear each one could have been it’s own event.  I don’t know the numbers but there were over 230 in the short race.  My group (40+ male) was pretty big.  When the gun went off  we ran in from the beach and were off.  After the initial 15 seconds of being in the blender were over I felt surprisingly calm.  My heart rate usually shoots up but not this day.  I felt completely in control.  I knew where I was and where everyone else was.  I bumped and banged a little but it actually felt good.  I was in it again, finally!

The buoys were set up for left turns which is opposite of the way I breathe so I had to keep checking as I got closer to them but even at the turns there was minimal carnage.  I chose to swim in a wetsuit for comfort and confidence.  It was warm but tolerable to swim in it.  I don’t want to say a swim felt “good” but this one… well…  It kinda did…!  Since I never got that sense of panic I just relaxed, thought about things a bit, tried to concentrate on a few key points and just relaxed.  And then my hand hit bottom and it was over.  I hope all my swims go that well!

The “transition” for this race includes a couple hundred yards of uphill running to the transition area.  Not conducive to those 45 second transitions I am used to but everybody had to run it so there was no advantage.  I got to transition and got out of my suit pretty quickly.  The rest of transition went smoothly and I was out and on the bike pretty quickly.

The bike portion of this race WENT a lot better than it FELT.  I couldn’t get completely into my shoes for over 2 miles.  The left one kept getting rolled under my heel.  But since you are in hills and turns immediately I didn’t think it was a good idea to screw with it in traffic.  I just tried to get my heart rate down and futz with it as I had time.  If you had told me during the ride that I was going to average just over 19 I would have said you were nuts.  I felt so incredibly slow.  The only indicator that I was actually going faster that I thought was that the only people to pass me were the same 2 guys (we traded paint the entire ride) over and over again.  I would catch them on the flats and downs and they would run me down again on the bigger ups.  NOTE TO SELF:  1.  Do more hills, 2. Lose some F*@&in weight… (sigh).

Back in from the ride to T2 I felt decent off the bike but I knew that I wasn’t going to run fast.  I’m just in really poor shape right now so all I could do was give it everything I had left and hope I didn’t fall apart.  I think that, even as short as these races are, I still need to take in calories and fluids at a higher rate than I do now.  I really needed water and I felt thirsty off the bike.  Not good.  T2 was faster but I decided to put on socks (I usually run without them) due to some lingering blisters from the last run I did without socks.  It maybe added 15 seconds to my overall time, but it felt MUCH better.

The run course is a rolling first mile, uphill second mile and a rolling to downhill last mile.  Unfortunately, I forgot the whole second mile part…  Brutal.  I know that mile had to have been 10:30 or worse.  So when it was all over and I finally went to check I was actually pleasantly surprised at the 8:45 average.  This SUX by the way, but it’s better than I thought I did.  Anyway, the run was tough.  Thank goodness the temps were moderate.  I don’t know how they did it last year when the temps were 20 degrees hotter!  It is a fun course in that when you come down the hill to the finish, the road opens up so that you can see the entire finish area, hear the music and the announcer.  It’s really cool.  One of my favorite finishes.

For a first triathlon of the year this was a good one.  I didn’t forget anything.  I didn’t do anything stupid.  I didn’t burn out or blow up.  I’m ready to do it again at the next one.  I just need to run in the heat a little more…!

Coming to the Dark Side…

Darth Bob…  Has a nice ring to it… no?

After many years of training seriously for distance events, I have succumbed to the dark side.  For years I would pat my trusty Timex Ironman watch and scoff at the techno runner boys and girls fussing with their GPS units before every run, waddling around trying to get a signal or getting dropped halfway through a run.  I used to say it was just one more level of crap to manage and I loved the simplicity of just running, biking etc. without obsessing about times, splits, etc.  Especially once I started training for and competing in triathlons, which add levels of crap to manage on par or above any other sport, I used to think that I couldn’t possibly handle anything else.  Hell I usually forgot to set my watch during races…

But I have slowly warmed to GPS units over the last couple of years.  Not because I’m a stat monkey, but because, especially since the first of the year, I want to get serious about “training”.  Since I don’t have a coach to be my stat monkey, I need to track my training better than I have in the past.  I also need to track more/different stats than I have in the past as well.  Things like bike cadence, interval splits, heart rate, that weren’t important before are now some of the more important indicators of training progress.  But I had no way to track them.  So after some thought (and an admission that I was going to catch hell for finally gettiing one) I decided to upgrade from my trusty Timex.

In looking at what was important to me I came up with a few criteria.  The watch had to be durable, waterproof (swimming), and track the stats I needed.  Software and battery life were also considerations as was the all important price.  I knew I was pricing myself up the food chain when I said the word “waterproof”, but it’s what I needed so my choices came down to the Garmin 310XT and the Timex Ironman GPS.  In reading about both of them they are both big, clunky, feature rich tools that are designed well.  Garmin is the big boy on the block and has been in the GPS market the longest.  Timex has had their watch on the market for just over a year.  The reviews of the Timex, early on, told of a watch that didn’t work very well.  Inaccurate and prone to lose signal (or just not find one), it didn’t seem like a good choice.  That and it was only about $50 less than the Garmin.  But I read a couple of recent reviews by pro triathletes that recently switched to the Timex and spent some time working with the guys at Timex to make the watch better.  Their take was that, yes, when the watch first came out, it wasn’t so good, but the firmware upgrades Timex has made over the past year have made the watch MUCH better.

I tried on both watches and they are, indeed, HUGE.  They make my mens Timex Ironman watch look like a womens watch.  And they are heavy.  I had to make a choice so I decided to be a homey and stick with my brand and I bought the Timex (the $50 rebate also helped… heh.).

My review… so far.

After reading about all the features and incredible configurability of this watch for twenty minutes or so I realized that I was drooling and very close to blacking out, so I just decided to set up the watch basics first and add new features a few at a time.  I’m not going to go in to every little detail, you can read about that elsewhere.  Let’s talk setup and usability.

First, download the manual from Timex’s website.  The one that comes with the watch was written by tiny little elves and is impossible to read.  My big, fat hands can’t even hold the book, much less turn the pages.  Speaking of downloads, I also downloaded the software for the watch, which is pretty decent and I have as yet to fully explore it, AND download the firmware update for the watch.  By all accounts it improves the accuracy and functionality of the watch A LOT.  For example, my first run with the watch was with a friend who has a Garmin.  His watch and my watch were within 2 hundredths of each other on mileage.  The rub on early versions of this watch was that it measured short.  If mine does, so does the Garmin.

Once I got a manual that was actually made for human beings to read, I discovered the source of my only setup irritation.  The big boy manual stated clearly (in a font size larger than 4 points…  I have 44 year old eyes… please…) that the watch would AUTOMATICALLY set the time (which I had been trying to set manually for a half hour and was feeling REEEEALLY stupid for not figuring out) once it synced up to a satellite for the first time.  Since I was playing with setup while buried in the bowels of my house, the watch couldn’t get a signal.  So I walked outside with it and after about 15 seconds it found a satellite and solved my time issue.

The watch has a “Performance” mode that tracks one sport at a time and allows you to toggle between workout types and even set up custom workout types.  This is the standard mode and the one I use the most.  It also has a “Multisport” mode, which you can configure to track a triathlon or duathlon, including transitions, with the touch of a button.  I really like this feature BUT, the one issue I have with the watch makes this mode a button fumbling challenge in the delirium of a race.  My only real problem with the watch so far is the placement of the buttons.  Where the Garmin has the start and lap buttons on the face of the watch, the Timex kept the old design where the start/lap button is on top but the stop (and in the case of multisport)/next event button is on the side.  While this doesn’t seem like a big deal, it is.  The button is too easily pushed by accident during the mad scramble of transition or even just moving around on the bike or run.  The end result in my first race (a duathlon) was a useless event recording because, apparently, I had accidentally bumped the next event button at about .5 miles into the race and ended up with one of the longer transitions in history.

The fix for this is pressing and holding the Enter button for a couple of seconds to lock the buttons, thus eliminating long transitions, etc.  BUT, while this is great for single sports (and worked perfectly the next weekend at a 5K), having to press and hold to lock (while swimming…?), then press and hold to unlock (while trying to run into transition from the water), then press the next event button, then not bumping the button accidentally in transition, then pressing the next event button while running with or mounting your bike, then pressing the Lock button and holding for a few seconds while trying to RIDE your bike…. etc.  Get the picture?  It is either going to take a LOT of practice to get down, or I’m going to abandon it.  We’ll see.  It’s too bad you can’t configure the Start/Lap button to be the next event button so there is less chance of bumping it.

I went to my local MTB park and rode through the woods for an hour or so and never had the watch drop a satellite.  It measured my route and mileage accurately.  I ran the same route on the trail the next day and came up with the same mileage plus or minus a couple hundredths.  Good enough for me.

I played with the navigation functions of the watch which, by most accounts, are rudimentary, but fun.  I was easily able to plot points and then get back to them later.  It’s odd having a compass on your watch.  The watch will “map” your path, but it is pretty much meaningless.  Just a shape drawn on your watch or computer screen but there are no maps to overlay it on so it’s just a shape.  Still wondering if I’m missing something here…?

The battery life so far has been fine.  A full charge will power the watch for several days and has more than enough life to run through a single day endurance event.  I wore mine and set it to performance mode and left it running all day just to see what would happen.  I was at about 50% battery life after about 12 hours.  Since none of my races are more than 4 hours, I figure that is good enough

The software installed fine on my Windows Vista (yeah… I know…) home computer and my Windows 7 work machine.  Syncing is easy and automatic.  Training Peaks iPhone app is… OK.  It’s easy to enter data, but finding and reviewing workout details… not so much.  In it’s defense, I’m still playing with it and trying to figure it out so I can’t call myself qualified yet.  But I have seen better, more full featured (and, yes, free) apps for tracking and reviewing your workouts.  We’ll see how it goes.

In all, I’m excited about the tool.  Button fumbling aside, it works, it’s configurable to meet all of my workout needs and I have found it to be as accurate as any other GPS waatch when I compare with them after rides or runs.  I am looking for a heart rate monitor and cadence sensor to add to the mix.  Since the watch uses any ANT+ sensor I am free to use Timex, Garmin or any other I can find.  I will say it was disturbing to be in a crowd at the start of the duathlon and look down at my watch and see it picking somebody else’s heart rate.  Dunno who… but they were working WAY too hard.  RHR of 110  before the start?  Excited?