Giving It A Tri

Bicycle Law Blog

2010-05-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

I did a ride over the weekend and was riding two abreast in places so I could chat with some of the other riders. I was curious what the rules where for riding two abreast on a bike and came across with this post on the bicycle law blog. It's a great blog by the way and my first stop when researching bicycles and the law.

Shark sighting in Santa Monica Bay

2009-10-08T14:40:00.001-07:00

I used to swim here about once a week, just about all last year. I've seen lots of dolphins, but never a shark.

Shark sighting in Santa Monica Bay has surfers buzzing -- latimes.com

More info is available here.

Another Day, Another Hill

2009-07-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Cycling has been in my thoughts lately. That's partly because I've
been a bit frustrated with my running lately for several reasons that
I don't have time to go into right now, and also because the Tour has
been going on. I'm supposed to be tapering for the San Francisco
Marathon, but the mountains where calling me. I haven't done any
climbing for several months so this really hurt, but it was so worth
it. I was a bit discouraged at first at how hard it felt, but then I
realized that I didn't have my climbing cassette installed. My largest
cog was a 25. While that may be a climbing cassette for some people,
there is no way I could have done Angeles Crest with only a 25 even
just a year ago.

Excited about the Giro

2009-05-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

The Giro d'Italia (a bike stage race through Italy, second only to the Tour de France in stature) starts in just a few days, and I am getting very excited. It looks like there will be some very interesting stages this year. In keeping with the theme here are some videos of two of the best Giro riders ever. The first is of the legendary Fausto "Il Campionissimo" Coppi.

The second is of Marco "Al Pirata" Pantani.

Both riders were great climbers, both road for Bianchi and both died young. Actually my Bianchi road bike is in a way named for them. It is called the "9-2-8" which stands for the three years in which Bianchi riders won both the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France. Coppi won in '49 and '52 and Pantani in '98.

Progress

2009-04-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

I thought I would give a little progress report on my my marathon training. I have been biking and swimming as well, but only as additional time allows. For the last two months I have prioritized running, and here is what I have to show for it.

Weight

My most significant limiter when it comes to running and so I set out an ambitious goal to lose nearly 35 lbs before the marathon in July. I admit that this goal is pretty extreme, and a severe diet is not conducive to retaining your muscle strength, but I tried haphazardly to lose weight over winter and I just wasn't successful. Now that the pressure of the marathon is here I am hoping that it will provide that extra motivation that I need. Also, I don't need to worry too much about losing weight too quickly as the higher your body fat percentage the more you can loose without having bad side effects. I was starting out with a body fat percentage of 29% so I have plenty to lose. Here is a chart of my progress so far. The data has been smoothed by taking the rolling three day average.

As you can see, I started out losing a bit faster than expected and I got my hopes up a bit, but things have stabilized and pretty much I am losing weight on track to my goal. So that is the good news. I started out at 247.8lbs @29% body fat and was 235.6lbs this morning @26% body fat. So that means I have lost 10.6 lbs of fat and 1.6lbs of lean tissue. The small amount of lean lost was a happy surprise as I expected that I would lose more in what has been a pretty extreme diet.

Performance

So what effect has this had on my running. I certainly feel much faster and a very easy pace for me is an 11 minute mile rather than a 12 minute mile, and my tempo pace has gone from 10:30 to 9:50. I have also notice that my heart rate is generally lower for the type of run. This has forced me to readjust my perceived effort levels of exactly what hard is. So I am pushing myself a bit more, and going by pace in my workouts rather than heart rate. Many times I only look at the heart rate data after the run is over and I am actually surprised that my heart rate was lower than I thought because the run felt hard. This is all a sign of my threshold pace increasing which is all good.

My goal for San Francisco is to go 4:30. It still sounds a bit out of reach but there are a few signs that are making this goal more realistic. First, my training plan proscribes training paces based on "Planned Marathon Pace" and I can finally actually do these paces now where before I could not. That is the first great sign.

Second I did some Yasso 800s today and average 4 minutes and 24 seconds for 6 repetitions. Supposedly if you can hold a pace for 10 repetitions that pace is a reasonable estimate of what you can do in a marathon if you change the minutes to hours. So basically if I could have held that 4:24 pace for 10 full repetitions that would predict a 4:24 marathon. I probably couldn't have done 10, but I think I could have done 8, so I am getting there.

Lastly, I have been tracking my Polar running index. This index is calculated by my heart rate monitor by comparing my heart rate to my pace. It is a good predictor of VO2max and also running performance at various distances. Here is a chart showing the upward trend in my Polar running index.

It appears I am at about 45 right now. According to Polar that is on the cusp of "Average" and would predict a 4:15 marathon. That seems much too fast to me, but in any case it is another sign that at least I am going in the right direction.

Oh, to be Average

2009-02-18T21:41:00.001-08:00

I recently read this blog post by Matt Fitzgerald, a writer on running and triathlon training. He talks about the "running index" function on Polar heart rate monitors. Basically, the monitor takes some basic information, such as your heart rate and running pace and puts it together to get a number, and this number can be used to compare your run against other runs that you have done, or even against other people. The index is somewhat correlated to VO2max so it can track fitness over time and also can be used to predict performances at various distances similar to Jack Daniels VDOT pace tables. I have a Polar device and noticed the number, but up to this point I hadn't paid any attention to it. After reading the article, I wondered what my numbers were.

This is a chart of my running index numbers since January first. You can see that they slowly moved up to a 50 on 1/31/09. It was pretty consistent too, except for the poor run on 1/18/09 where I got a 32. That run was a trail run on an unfamiliar trail and I did a little bushwhacking, so it is to be expected that the run wasn't very good. You can also see that there is a big gap after 1/31 where I missed quite a few runs, and now my score is back down again. I can feel the fitness lost and here you can see it one the chart. Actually its pretty amazing. This running index thing might be more interesting than I originally thought.

In the user manual for my Polar device there is a chart that rates he running index number. 50 is in the "average" range. Wow, I have a hard time believing that I could be average at running. I think that is pretty incredible in itself. To think that I could be average at my worst sport. It also estimates a 4hr marathon time for someone who can average a 50 running index over time. That just happens to be my stretch goal for the San Francisco marathon, so that is great news. I just have to work on getting the running index number right back up there.

First PIG Session

2009-01-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would be increasing the intensity on my bike rides in an attempt to increase my sustained power output. This is harder than it sounds. Usually I just head down to the trainer in my garage and pop in a DVD, start riding. The DVD makes the trainer ride bearable, but also distracts me from what I am trying to accomplish in my workout.

I think to get the full benefit of these shorter workouts I really need to dial in my wattage targets, so what I really need is a plan that specifies particular wattage intervals and times and gives me a clear target. The problem is that it takes a lot of time to come up with a good plan, particularly coming up with specific wattage numbers. If you're lucky you have a coach who can create that for you, but that is something I can't afford.

But I think I have come up with the next best thing. The Computrainer PIG training plan. PIG stands for Performance Improvement Guarantee. Basically they guarantee that if you buy their product and follow their free program you will improve your functional threshold wattage by 10% (or something like that. I don't plan on buying a Computrainer.) However, you don't need a Computrainer to follow the program. You just need any type of powermeter. Theoretically you could even use speed so long as your trainer has a consistent speed/resistance curve that would allow you to translate power numbers into MPH.

The best part of the plan (other than that it is completely free) is that it downloads as an Excel file. You simply input you CP30 wattage (the highest wattage you can sustain for 30 minutes) and it calculates all your workouts with power targets for the next 5 weeks. Then you retest your CP30 and do it all over again.

I did a 30min time trial last Saturday and held an average of 195 watts over the 30 minutes. I think perhaps that is a little low because I felt I probably could have went a little harder, but it works as a starting point. My first session was today with a Tempo workout with 15 minutes of warmup and 45minutes at 166 watts. I definitely worked harder than normal, so I think this is going to work.

Ramping Up the Training

2009-01-26T15:56:00.000-08:00

I've been back on the training bandwagon for a full four weeks now and thought I would supply an update. I wanted to start slow and build steadily, and that is indeed what I have done. In fact, this has been the most consistent training I have done in many, many months. I think cutting back on the hours has actually allowed me to train more, because I am more willing to do a workout even if I don't have available the full time alotted. Before I would try to fit in these hour and a half trainer rides and then ditch it if my life only allowed 30 minutes. That's real growth as an athlete, people. Here is a nice chart showing the build over the last few weeks.

Last week was bit more hours than expected because I was able to go on a four hour ride with a friend due to the MLK holiday. I expect my swimming hours and time on the bike to stabilize where they are, but my average weekly run time will increase. I just added a fourth run day this past week, and will maintain that for a couple more weeks. After that I will add one more for a total of five runs a week. This much running is very new to me. Even in my marathon training last year I never did more than three runs a week, but I am hoping the increased volume will lead to some big gains and also help take off some weight.

I had a fantastic run yesterday in Hahamonga Watershed Park. I did two laps around the park (around 6.7 miles) without having to stop for a walk break once. Even on the hills. Yeah!

Total Immersion Swimming

2009-01-21T15:06:00.000-08:00

After attending a Triathletix swim clinic late last year, and seeing how helpful it was in improving my technique, I purchased the latest Total Immersion DVD titled Easy Freestyle. I made the purchase with the idea that it would help me perfect the drills necessary to fully ingrain proper swimming technique. I purchased the TI book a few years ago when I first took up swimming, but frankly it is really hard to understand the drills and how they are supposed to be done from a book, even a book full of drawings. Video is much better. Although I have to say that the video might be difficult for a novice. There were several things that were discussed in the video that I don't think I would have even understood except for the fact that I attended the swim clinic.

Here is a video taken off of the TI blog, featuring the author Terry Laughlin. The thing to notice is how little splash he makes as he swims. There is almost zero movement of the water. Incredible.

Training Lessons from 2008, Goals for 2009

2009-01-09T17:40:00.000-08:00

Planning my 2009 has to start with a look back at 2008. What was a success, and what was not. First the successes:

Increased threshold power on the bike by 10% over winter.
Finished my first marathon.
Completed my first 100 mile bike ride (with 11,000 feet of climbing no less).
Did more races/events than ever before.

Then the failures:
Did not complete training for marathon due to sickness.
Swim training never really got off the ground causing me to bail out on the Dwight Crum Pier to Pier Swim.
DNF the Grand Tour Double Metric by not being prepared (co2 is not enough on a century ride -- you need a pump, not just one tube and lots of patches).
Actually lost some threshold power on the bike training for the double metric century.

Looking back I think I tried to do too much. At the end of last year I realized that my triathlon training was unsustainable. I wanted to do longer and more challenging events, but could not realisticlly train for them with the time I have and still succeed in the other other areas of my life that are important to me. So instead I planned on doing single sport events so that I could focus on one sport at a time and let the others become crosstraining. Not a bad plan, but running a marathon turned into doing a marathon, a two mile swim and then a crazy long ride. Lots of people can do all these events, but apparently I am not one of them.

So my only stretch endurance event will be a marathon. Probably the SF Marathon. An because it will be my main endurance event for the year, it makes sense that I do it later in the year. I really would like to shoot for under 4.5 hours. I'm not really tested on the running front because last year's run training was devestated by a six week double occurance of the flu, but I think if I am to reach this goal, I need to really up the volume and frequency. So I am going to aim for 4-5 runs a week. That means more mixing in running with swimming and biking.

But I still want to do some other events. I think that I was able to significantly increase my power on the bike over the winter because I was doing short intense trainer rides and longer slower paced runs. Looking back I think that this mixture was effective because on the bike you can really build the muscle with intensity without your joints getting to beat up (unlike doing track repeats) and the long runs develop a metabolic endurance that passes over to your cycling. So I think that will be a combination that I will pursue again this year. No long rides over two hours. Just short, intense rides to boost power. My goal is to raise my threshold power on the bike to 250 watts.

I think that the fact that my swimming never really got off the ground was mostly due to frustration with not improving. To improve, I really need to focus on technique rather than volume. The clinic I went to late last year was a good start, but I need to drill, baby drill. As a result I don't plan on doing any swimming events this year. I will just do short swims where I can drill and maintain quality throughout the session. I plan on doing that 'til the marathon, at which point I will add in a bit of volume to prepare for a late season Olympic distance triathlon. I would like to get my thresold pace down to 2:00 per hundred meters.

Interesting Article on Recovery Sports Drinks

2009-01-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about nutrition lately. I am cutting calories to lose weight, but in my experience you also have to be careful in what you eat and the timing of the intake to get the full benefits of training and to minimize some of the negative effects of dieting. A good source of straight facts on nutrition and dieting, without the hype, is Lyle McDonald. Here is an interesting article from his site objectively comparing a commercially available recovery drink to chocolate milk.

An Objective Comparison of Chocolate Milk and Surge Recovery | BodyRecomposition - The Home of Lyle McDonald

Right now I happen to make my own recovery beverage out of whey protein powder, powdered Gatorade and some supplemental glutamine and branched chain amino acids. But my training secret is that sometimes I just substitute a caffe mocha from the local coffee bar. A caffe mocha has anti-oxidants from cocoa and coffee, sugar for glycogen replacement, both whey and casein proteins and a good dose of caffeine for heightened insulin sensitivity. It may be the best recovery drink out there.

New Year -- New Goals

2009-01-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

Ok, for a while I thought this blog was dead too. You see, here are the priorities -- spending time with the family, work, training and then at the very bottom of the list is blogging. But here's the deal. When I don't blog about my training most of it doesn't happen.

So here's to a new year, with new goals. Right now I am planning on doing the San Francisco Marathon in July. It's a beautiful city, and I usually visit relatives in the Bay Area in July anyways. The timing seems good for me as well in the sense that spring events (i.e. the LA Marathon or the Big Sur Marathon that one of my friends is doing) are usually foiled by winter illness, and training for a fall event means doing lots of running in the hot, hot August. So there you go. A summer marathon with a few short tri's thrown in for fun. I'm also thinking of doing a time trial series. I have to justify having my TT bike, right?

So the first order of business for me in training for a marathon is dropping some weight. I had some great success a few years ago with DietPower (a calorie counting software), going from 280 to 235. Since then I have fallen off the wagon, and even with lots and lots of training over the last two seasons my weight has hovered around 245-250. Right now it is 240 (I have lost 5 lbs eating junk over the holidays. Go figure.) So I'm back to calorie counting.

Currently I'm at 240 pounds with a body fat percentage around 30%. I want to get that down to a healthy range of around 15%. If I can retain the lean mass that would mean a total body weight of just under 200lbs. So that is my goal, hopefully with lots of run training I can do it before a July marathon.

Now I won't do just calorie counting, I also will focus on eating more Paleo (more meat, veggies and fruit) and less starchy carbs. I have found in the past that I feel better and have less binges when I eat Paleo, but I need the reality check and honesty of the numbers that DietPower provides.

I'll keep you posted.

Really.

I Can Finally See Myself Swim

2008-09-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

After three seasons of swimming I have stopped making any gains. I decided to seek out professional help and recently took a swim clinic offered by Triathletix. They also offer a swim DVD. While the DVD has the same drills and teaches the same techniques, I wouldn't recommend it. It is too short, has rather low production values and simply isn't worth the price. I think that the clinic on the other hand is definitely worth it. There just is no substitute for someone looking at you and pointing out what you need to work on. Also, it is very difficult to master the drills (and lets face it, the drills are useless unless you master them) if someone doesn't watch you and point out what you are doing wrong.

I think the most important thing I learned in the class was how to time the catch with the rotation of the hips. The Total Immersion books that I first learned from talk about this, but without someone actually demonstrating it, it is really hard to get. I still have a lot of work to do on this aspect, but at least I feel like I have the tools to get there.

On the last day of the clinic, we did some underwater filming so that we could see how we are implementing the techniques. Below is the result.

As a result of the clinic, I swim with more relaxation and ease but also go farther with each stroke. Before the clinic it took me 20 strokes to go 25 meters and after the clinic that was reduced to 16 strokes.

Gladstone Swim

2008-06-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about my tri club is large number of organized open water swims during the week. My two favorites are the "Speed Circuit" swim on Wednesday mornings in Ocean Park and the "Gladstone" swim on Friday mornings in Pacific Palisades. Last year I alternated between the two every other week. I'm going to be entering into a swim focus segment of my training so I probably will go back to doing that or maybe attend both every week. I think doing two open water swims would be fine so long as I do at least two pool sets during the week were I can do drills and intervals.

Last Friday was my first time at the Gladstone swim for the year. It's called Gladstone because we all meet in the parking lot next to the Gladstones For Fish restaurant. It is smaller group of people and more low key than the masses that show up for the Wednesday swim, but these guys are all really talented. It's actually pretty intimidating because I'm so slow compared to all these guys. Most of these guys regularly podium, in fact one of the guys I met at this particular swim was the silver medalist in his age group at ITU worlds. Pretty impressive.

Last year we would just jump in one side of the small "bay" and swim across to the other side, regroup and then swim back. At least that's what everyone else would do. I usually only made it halfway before I could see them coming back and so I would quickly turn around so that I could finish my swim in a reasonable time. This time was different. The workout leaders are trying to be more inclusive of differing abilities and also people who wish to train for different distances, so they set up buoys at various distances and we could do various courses depending on our goals. I went with the "Olympic Distance" group. Here is a Google Earth picture of the two loops we did.
The first loop is in red. We went out to the first buoy, around to the second buoy, swam back to the beach and then ran back to the start. The second time we went out around the two buoys and then back to the first and then in. You can see that the first loop I overshot the buoys and was farther out. The second time I was in the middle of the pack and was in a better position.

These tracks were recorded in an i-gotU GPS data logger. I have been playing with this thing for a while and enjoying the cool bike course profiles in can create, but it really shines when tracking open water swimming. The device is really tiny and light so it can easily fit under your swim cap. It has a one button operation so you can turn it on and off while it is under your cap and it is sealed and water proof. As far as I know it is the only way to get a good handle of your speed and distance while swimming in open water.

Tools, Toys and Trash: Scott Hand Wipes

2008-06-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

I want to start a new regular feature on this blog. I will review products that I think could be useful for a triathlete or other endurance athletes. Now I know that lots of blogs review products, and I'm not sure that we need another review of a tri bike, powermeter or the latest nutrition supplement. Perhaps I will review some of these types of items, but what I am really interested in are items that are not designed to serve the triathlete, and that these athletes might not know about, but still could be useful.

First off I want to say that unless otherwise stated I have not received any promotional consideration for any of the items I review unless I specifically state as such. I have purchased these items off the shelf just like anyone else.

My rating system will work like this. Every item is either ranked as a tool, toy or trash. Tools are useful items that help you get your workout done, help you get fitter, faster or more comfortable. These are the must have items.

The next rating is toy. These are the items that are fun, may have a motivational component and probably are all geeked up, but they won't get you across the finish line any faster.

The last rating is trash. This stuff is just no good or at least is not worth the price.

Ok. Simple enough. So what is the first item I am going to review . . . Scott Hand Wipes. What?! Hand wipes. Yes, hand wipes. These things rock!

If you work on your bike (and you should) you will get your hands greasy. It is just the reality of the triathlete's life that you are going to drop a chain or adjust that brake or derailer and get your hands covered in grease. Bike grease is usually horribly difficult to remove. With lots of scrubbing and ten minutes later you might get it all off in the sink. But Scotts Hand Wipes will take that grease off in seconds. It is amazing! These wipes are made for shop use and you can get them at your local hardware store in a tub of 30 pieces. Basically they are cloth wipes impregnated with what appears to be a citrus degreaser. It is mild on your hands but cuts through the grease immediately.

Another great use for these wipes is cleaning your handlebar tape. If you drop a chain during a ride or have to change a flat you probably will get grease on your hands and then get that grease onto your bar tape. If you have black tape you probably can't see it, but if you have a light colored bar tape like me then they don't stay light and quickly turn black. I have tried Simple Green and other degreasers on the bar tape and it works a bit, but not very well. The Scott Hand Wipes however takes it right off just like that.

Less time cleaning, more time riding. Definitely going to make you faster.

Scott Hand Wipes -- Rating: Tool

Epic Ride #1: Calabasas to Pacific Coast Highway via Mulholland

2008-06-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

So I have been preparing for the LA Wheelmen Grand Tour Double Metric Century Challenge and have been doing some incredible rides. I don't have time to do a very long ride every weekend, but I have been able to negotiate with my wife to get some long days in. I probably have done about 6 rides over 4 hours and feel pretty comfortable with doing the 200k next week.
Most of these rides were LA Wheelmen trainer rides, which they start in the spring with a new one each week. These ride slips are a great resource because I have really wanted to expand my list of available rides from the usual trek up Angeles Crest. Sometimes I am able to go on the regularly scheduled day, but usually I just print out the route slip from the webpage and go on my own.
The first ride I did with the LA Wheelman was a ride from Calabasas to the Pacific Coast through the Santa Monica Mountains. It was only my second chance to through these mountains. If you look at the profile of the route below, you'll see that the ride starts with a very steep but short climb in the very beginning. The climb is not very tough when you are fresh, but on the way back I was dreading that climb the entire way.

The first quarter of the ride was just beautiful. It was pleasantly cool with penty of shade through rolling hills with farms and ranches along the route. The next quarter of the ride started to get tougher. You had to climb up over the mountains to get to the ocean. I got a flat because there was slash in the sidewall of my tire. I felt pretty stupid about it because I had gotten a flat in the last ride I did and forgot to check the tire. I first tried to patch the tube, but it didn't hold. Then I felt really stupid because I should have just replaced the tube since I had one with me and now I only had one C02 cartridge to do it. It seemed like it took me forever, but I finally got it fixed by putting some cardboard separating the inside the tire and tube and replacing the tube. Now I had no CO2 left so I just crossed my fingers that I would make it through the rest of the ride with no more flats.

The climb was beautiful and there was still cool temperatures, but descending down to the ocean was just fantastic. It was incredible. You had to be careful to avoid stones in the road, but the views were spectacular.

Down along PCH the group stopped at a fish and chips joint for lunch, but I decided to press on back. First, it was only 10am and too early for me to eat lunch, but also I am slow and I figured I really needed that time to get back over the mountains, so I gobbled down a Balance bar and some Clif Shot Bloks and was off.

The way back was rough. First, it really started to heat up. It was probably around 85 degrees and I was pouring out sweat. Secondly, my bike keep ghost shifting out of my 29 cog onto my 27 cog. It was incredibly annoying. The route slip showed a different route on the way back. It was very steep, but incredibly beautiful. I wish I had my camera, as there was some incredible red rock formations and wildflowers out there.

The last fourth of the ride was just terribly painful. The ride had an assigned stop at the Rock Shop, and I should have stopped, but I was too concerned about making it home in the time I had told my wife I would be back. So I just pressed on. I guess I just took off more than I could chew with this one. I was stopping under every shade tree I could find. There was another rider that looked to be about 80 riding a hybrid and wearing sandals and I was doing everything I could just to try and keep up with him. It was so hot, and I ran out of water. I thought I was going to die so I stopped at a house, and when no one answered the door I just used their hose. I think I drank a whole bottle's worth of water right there.

I keep grinding slowly on, just dreading that last final climb. I don't know how many times I just thought of throwing in the towel and calling my wife to come pick my ass up. I knew that damn climb was coming up, and I just dreaded it. But I didn't call for the SAG wagon because I knew it would take forever for her to come get me, and I didn't want to wake up my four year old daughter from her afternoon nap. So I just pushed on.

Pretty soon I ached all over. My feet hurt. My hamstrings ached. My quads burned. My hands and shoulders were numb. But then something happened. I realized that I was at the peak of that very first climb. I was there and I didn't even know I was doing that last climb. I was so shocked and happy that I just powered down the last descent to my car with just a huge grin on my face. Sixty-four and a half miles done (GPS battery died on me so the profile above has the last few miles cut off), but how in the world was I going to finish 126 miles? I had a lot of work ahead.

Next time. . . the Terrible Tujungas!

2008 Redondo Beach Triathlon

2008-06-13T15:22:00.001-07:00

So I finally did my first triathlon for the year. There aren't too many early season races in Southern California. So unless you are doing the California Half-Iron, June is about as early as it gets, and it is about time. I enjoyed the Redondo Beach Triathlon last year and so I was looking forward to doing it again. But I didn't really train for it, because I have been training for the upcoming LA Wheelmen Grand Tour Double Metric Century Challenge. But it was a sprint race and a C race on my race schedule, so I figured putting my run and swim training on maintenance would be ok.

The good news is that I finished higher in the rankings than last year, but the bad news is that I was nearly two minutes slower this year, which to be frank was disappointing. In the end the difference nearly all came down to the run, and reveals that my run needs alot of work.

The Swim

At 1000 meters, the swim is a little long for a sprint triathlon, so the event favors good swimmers. I'm not a good swimmer, but pathetically enough it is my fastest sport of the three. Last year I had a problem moving too far the the left and then swinging wide as I went around the final buoy. This caused me to get caught in some kind of rip current near the pier, and I made very slow progress in the final exit from the water. So this year I was determined to stay close to the buoy's even if it meant going through the inevitable crush zones where all the athletes are vieing for the same inside lane around the buoy.

I was feeling comfortable and confident and I was really surprised that I basically found a group of guys and stuck with them for the entire swim course. This has never actually happened to me before. I did swing a little too wide in the first half of the swim, but got back on course for the second half. The water was very calm so getting out was like a breeze.

My time was just a few seconds slower than last year at 22:57 for the 1000 meters. That is about a 2:18/100meters (not including the run up the beach) which seems pretty fast for me. I rarely go that fast in the pool, but maybe the course was measured short or my wetsuit made me faster. What I think is most likely is that I was probably swimming slightly slower than last year, but I swam a shorter course by staying closer to the buoys. My swim definitely needs lots of work, but it was about what I expected.

T1

Going up that hill from the beach to the transition area is murder, and I had to walk at least half of it. The only problem I had in transition was getting my wetsuit off. I had a little difficulty, but did not sit down so I probably did better than last year at 1 minute and 56 seconds, but I really should be able to get that down to around a minute to a minute and a quarter. That will be a goal for me for my upcoming events.

The Bike

I put on my bike shoes during the bike leg. I did that last year and had issues because another guy closed my bike shoes. Why didn't I learn?! I closed them this year. I thought I was closing them in such a way that they would be wide open, but no such luck. I must have taken at least two minutes to finally get those damn shoes on. I probably should have practiced more, as I haven't practiced since last year.

After getting my shoes on I kept the bike at around 220 watts for nearly the entire course. My lactate threshold is around 190 so I figured for such a short course 220 would be a good pace. People were staying to the right more than last year, but there still were alot of kids, and they had a tendency to weave back and forth right in front of you.

The best part of the course is a fast downhill loop followed by a short but steep hill. I did my best to pass as many people as possible on that downhill because I know they were going to get some distance from me on that uphill. Actually I had an advantage in my road bike on that downhill because I could stay aero in the drops and still maintain good control going around the loop, whereas alot of the people on tri-bikes had to get up on the hoods and slowdown to maintain control.

I had no problem getting out of my tri shoes as I was coming into T2. Now if only I could do a flying dismount. . .

So I did the six miles in 20 minutes and 42 seconds, which averages out to about 17.4 miles per hour. With all the bike training I have been doing I was hoping for better. I guess this just goes to show that specificity is the name of the game. I have been doing lots of bike training, but it has nearly all been long distance endurance training. I need to do those intervals!

T2

T2 was pretty fast at 1 minute and 24 seconds. I put on my running shoes without socks, which made it a bit easier. I was risking blisters, but I figured how could I possibly get blisters over only two miles. I also put on body Glide on my feed earlier, but I have no idea how much remained after the swim and running up the beach in bare feet. But it worked out ok, as I didn't get any blisters.

The Run

Here is where it gets ugly. My legs felt like lead. I haven't done a brick in several months. Boy, did it show. I was really working hard, but I was barely moving. My Polar RS800 was telling me that I was doing about a 12:30 pace. Ugh!

My legs started to feel a little better about a third of the way into the run, but by then my heart rate was really high. I'm not sure how high it was because my HRM lost the signal during the swim and so I didn't have any heart rate readings for the first half of the run. I finally remembered how to get it to find the signal later, but by that time the race was nearly over. I kinda miss my my S625x for races for this reason. It could keep the signal in the swim and I would have a heart rate for the entire event.

For the final hill I dug deep and ran the whole way with a final strong sprint at the end. I finished the two miles in 22 minutes and 7 seconds. That would be around an 11 minutes per miles pace, but probably the course was short. That was still nearly two minutes longer than last year, so my run has really slipped up.

My running has been really inconsistent since the LA Marathon. That's partly because I have been focused on my bike training, but also because I tend to want to run long and don't do much speed work or tempo running. This just trains you to run slow. So now I definitely know that I need to focus on short, fast running for the next few months.

My overall time was 1 hour, 9 minutes and 6 seconds placing 9th (out of 22) in the Clydesdale division (last year I was 22nd out of 41) so that was definitely an improvement.

How to destroy your bike

2008-05-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

I've been riding quite a bit lately. I'm building up for a the LA Wheelmen Grand Tour Double Metric Century Challenge (whew, that's a mouthful!) in late June. So that means lots of long epic rides and mostly in the mountains. I have gone farther than I have ever imagined and still the longest ride I have done has been only about 75 miles, which is still a long ways off from reaching at least a century ride before the double metric century (about 126 miles.)

So I have a long ways to go, but I have a sprint triathlon coming up next week so I thought I would get a little more experience in the flats on my triathlon bike. Yesterday I took my Raleigh out for a spin along the San Gabriel River Trail. I started in Duarte and the idea was to go hard and fast to the ocean and back. Instead I destroyed my bike. Ok, maybe that is an overstatement, but I completely ripped the rear derailer off. The rear hub may be damaged, the cassette may be toast and the front big chainring may be bent as well.

So what happened? To understand how this could happen I have to explain about rear derailer cage capacity. The cage is the arm that hangs down from the derailer and holds the two pullys that the chain runs through. The job of the cage is to direct the chain onto the proper cog, but also it functions to take up the slack in the chain. The longer the cage the more slack it can take up and the more "capacity" it has. For the drivetrain to run properly the chain needs to be long enough to wrap around the two largest gears (the big chainring in front and the largest cog in back) and also have a cage that can take up the slack while the chain is in the two smallest gears (small chainring, small cog). The larger the difference between the rings in either the font or the back will increase the difference in chain lengths required in these two positions and thus will require a greater cage capacity. Campy rear derailers come in either short, medium or long cage. The longer the cage, the greater capacity, but also the greater weight and slightly slower shifting response. Generally people who are concerned with performance go with the lowest cage length required.

On my road bike I have a compact crank which requires an increased capacity and also I tend to run a 13-29 cassette for climbing, which also requires a greater capacity, so on my road bike I have a medium cage rear derailer. A medium cage will handle just about anything short of a triple crank with no problems. I wanted to get a medium cage for my tri bike as well, but when I ordered my parts I forgot to specify that I wanted a medium cage and was instead sent the more common short cage. The short cage will work for a standard crank and any cassette with the lagest cog of up to 27 teeth. I didn't want to do through the hassle of sending the thing back and I have a standard crank on the bike and don't plan on using it for climbing so I figured a shart cage would be fine.

Generally it is fine, unless I use my climbing 13-29 cassette. When I use that cassette the chain will jam when I am in the big chain ring in front and the large cog in back (every other combination shifts fine), but since I wasn't planning on using the tri bike for climbing why would I need to use that cassette. And if I did use that cassette then I just need to stay out of the big/big combo. I'm not supposed to shift into that combo anyways because it is cross chaining and bad for wear and tear on your bike anyways. So every time I ride the bike I either put on a 12-25 cassette or just be careful to not shift into the big/big combo.

So now it should be obvious what happened. I was too lazy to swap cassettes when I moved my powertap wheel from my road bike to my tri bike. Then about an hour into my ride I was powering along on the flats in my big chain ring when I can across a short steap hill. I didn't shift soon enough because I thought my momentum would carry me up most of the hill, but I misjudged how steep it was. Then I had to quickly downshift and while I was specifically trying to avoid shifting it into the largest cog I accidently shifted it one gear too many. There was his horrible metal crushing sound and the bike stopped instantly. I was fortunately able to clip out in time, but the bike was really messed up. The rear derailer hanger had been torn in two and my beautiful carbon chorus derailer was bent and mangled and jammed on top of the cassette. I was able to remove the rear wheel and pull the mangled bits out, but that was the end of that ride.

It looked like I was going to have to walk over 15 miles bake to my car barefoot, but fortunately my wonderful wife was able to pick up my sorry ass on her way to work. Looks like I'm riding my road bike in the triathlon next weekend.

Great White Shark Attack!

2008-04-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

When you swim in the ocean you never can totally get the possibility of a shark attack out of your mind. A few times I have been totally freaked out in the water when I saw a nearby Seal or Dolphin. Last week some friends of mine saw a humpback whale. I don't think I'll be swimming in the ocean for a few weeks.

SOLANA BEACH, Calif. - A shark believed to be a great white killed a 66-year-old swimmer with a single, giant bite across both legs Friday as the man trained with a group of triathletes, authorities and witnesses said.

Dave Martin, a retired veterinarian from Solana Beach, was attacked at San Diego County's Tide Beach around 7 a.m., authorities and family friend Rob Hill said.

Martin was taken to a lifeguard station for emergency treatment but was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a statement on the Solana Beach city Web site. His injuries crossed both thighs, San Diego County sheriff's Sgt. Randy Webb said in a news release.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography shark expert Richard Rosenblatt says the shark was probably a great white between 12 and 17 feet long.

"It looks like the shark came up, bit him, and swam away," said Dismas Abelman, the Solana Beach deputy fire chief.

There was a single bite across both of Martin's legs, Abelman said.

The attack took place about 150 yards offshore. Several swimmers wearing wetsuits were in a group when the shark attacked, lifeguard Craig Miller said. Two swimmers were about 20 yards ahead of the man when they heard him scream for help. They turned around and dragged him back to shore.

For more of this article click here.

Fortunately Shark attacks are rare in Southern California. The last attack in So. Cal. dates back to 2004. Most Shark attacks in California are in Northern California where there are plenty of seals and sea lions to snack on.

Conquering the Big Tujunga Loop

2008-04-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was up before dawn on my way to Angeles Crest for an epic ride. I road with the LA Tri Club up Angeles Crest to Clear Creak. Then we went north down Angeles Forest Highway. This is the route along which the final stage of the Tour of California took place this year (going in the opposite direction). There is a dark tunnel along the route and I am glad I had my blinkers, because it would be really easy to be taken out by a car in the dark. I heard that in the Tour there was a serious bike crash in this tunnel.

Then we turned onto Upper Big Tujunga. This was the best part of the route. There was some beautiful rollers along a pleasant forested stream. It was nice to have the rollers because when you ride in this area it is usually just up, up, up. There were two serious climbs though. They were not too long, but very steep. I was putting out 250 watts and it seemed like I was barely moving. Here is a elevation profile of the route.

On the way down I got a flat on my rear wheel. This is my second flat on the Angeles Crest Highway, were I never had a flat all last year. It seems that there is more rocks and gravel on the sides of the roads, perhaps because of the recent rains. It took me a while to fix the flat because it has been so long since I last used my CO2 inflator that I forgot how to use it. I finally figured out how to get it to work, but I could not inflate the tire to full pressure because I had used some of the CO2 to just get the tube partially inflated so I could install it. I had another CO2 cartridge, but I always like to have one in reserve in case I get another flat. I guess it would be smart to have small a backup pump for the time where you run out of CO2. Either that, or just hope you can beg a Co2 cartridge off another ride zipping by.

The total distance for the ride was just over 47 miles with over 5000 feet of vertical climbing. It took almost 5 hours to complete. Here is a Google Earth map.

Strangely enough I'm not that sore yet today.

King of the Mountain

2008-03-15T15:14:00.000-07:00

At least that is how I feel. This morning I met up with a few members of my tri club to go for a bike ride up Angeles Crest. I went up many time last year, each time getting a little farther and farther. My goal was to eventually reach the top of Mt. Wilson. Here is what the profile looks like.

It is just up and up and up. I wasn't sure how far I wanted to go up this morning because this is only the third ride I have done outdoors this year. I basically spent all winter on the trainer and let the bike really slide in favor of my marathon training. I had allocated a three hour ride for today on my training plan, and frankly I wasn't sure if I could go for that long on these hills.

It was still dark when we started out a 6:15am. I don't usually ride in the dark, but there is very little traffic on highway two that early in the morning and I was with a group so I felt ok about it. I also brought along a high visibility jacket, red blinkers and a high intensity blinking LED headlight. Some of the others had no blinkers, no reflectors, no nothing -- and to make it worse they were riding in the middle of the road. Let's give ourselves a fighting chance here people!

Around 7:00am the sun finally came out and I started to sweat so I took my jacket off. Getting the right mix of clothing when cycling in cold weather has taken my a while and I still have alot to learn. I was wearing a Craft Windstopper base layer which I really like. It keeps you warm, but I never feel hot in it, and the windstopper material is great for the descents when it gets really, really cold. I was also wearing a pair of Castelli Primo bib knicker shorts. They have a fleece interior which really helps keep in warmth, but they are not full length so when the sun does come out you are not roasting. Other than that it was just a team jersey and armwarmers.

As I went farther up though it got colder and colder. There is actually snow up there. In fact, I was just up there last week for snow play with the family. We did some sledging and built a snowman. So it is definitely cold, at least in the shade. You went from being quit comfortable in the sun and then once you moved into shadow there would be this chill that just crept down into you bones. I quickly put my jacket back on. It helped, but it would make me sweat when I was in the sun.

This is a photo taken about an hour and a half in. You can see the road where I came up and in the distance you can make out the Los Angeles basin. At this point I was doing betting than expected, and so I decided that I would go for another hour and turn around, which would allow me to finish up in about 3.2 hours. I passed Clear Creek which is where I usually turn around and I felt really strong. A thought passed into my mind that maybe I could make it all the way to Mt. Wilson today.

Here is the view at about 2.25 hours. That is the way I came up. It is pretty spectacular in person. I decided that I was going to just keep going and see if I could make it to Mt. Wilson. I was not pressed for time which is unusual. This was because I had left extra early, and because I was not expected back until noon. So I thought why not. Let's go for it. I finally got to Mt. Wilson road and became very excited. It looked like it was going to happen. Mt. Wilson road is a little different than highway two. It is steeper in parts, but then has a few downhills and flat sections mixed in rather than just straight up.

This is the view about two miles from the top. There was lots of snow everywhere and it was getting colder and colder the higher I got. I finally got to the top at exactly three hours. That's 19.7 miles and over 5,200 feet of vertical climbing. Unfortunately the observatory pavilion was closed so I didn't get to see the view of the entire San Gabriel and Los Angeles valleys. It opens in April first so I guess I'll have to go back. But I do have proof that I made it to the top.

The way down was painful. Painful for my face and fingers. It was very cold and I was going about 30-35 mph. I had to keep my mouth closed or felt like my teeth were going to freeze and pop out. Every so often I had to stop and rub my hands vigorously to get some feeling back. I was pretty stupid to not bring my wind gloves. But I made it back. I got a flat a couple miles from my car. I was just thinking about how I had been up here many times and that I had never gotten a flat even with all the gravel. If you ever have those thoughts, stop! Here is a view of the path I took courtesy of Google Earth.

Details, Details!

2008-03-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

My modus operandi is to get up early, pack my gym bag with my work clothes and then head to the gym wearing my workout clothes. This inevitably will lead to problems. Once I forgot my dress socks. Another time I forgot my belt. I have forgotten my underwear. I thought that I had done just about everything, and each time I learned an important lesson to be more careful and not make that mistake again. It has been a while, but today I broke new ground.

I guess that on my way out of the house I grabbed two dress shoes that don't match. In my defense, they look pretty similar from the back and are a similar color. At least I also was successful in getting a left and right shoe. So what to do? Wear my workout footwear to work? Flip-flops don't go with my suit too well.

Oh well, live and learn.

Precious Daylight

2008-03-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

I was really looking forward to spring when I could ditch the trainer and ride outdoors. Here in sunny California weather is not usually an issue so what keeps me on the trainer is the amount of daylight. Due to my schedule I usually can only fit in a ride early in the morning, and I refuse to ride in the dark. I just don't think it is safe to share the road with groggy morning commuters in the dark.

So I was very excited to be out and about this Spring, but this year's earlier daylight savings time has put a serious kink into my plans. Looks like there's going to be another month of trainer rides at least.

This morning I did something a little different. I made my usual trip to the gym near my work, but took my bike. Instead of running, swimming, or using a spin bike at the gym I just got in a ride, and because I put my commute before my ride instead of after it I could ride just as the sun was coming up. It was alot of hassle getting all my bike gear packed up, and I always worry about someone breaking into my car and stealing my bike, so I don't know how often I will do this, but I really enjoyed it this morning.

Today I also decided to take the opportunity to do an outdoor Lactate Threshold test on the Ballona Creek bike path. It was the longest time I have ever spent in the drops. I think I may have spent perhaps a maximum if five minutes in the drops before, but this time I spent the entire 30 minutes of the test in the drops!

I never know how much credence to put into the results, but here they are. My new LT is 194 watts (a big jump up from 174). That actually seems about right to me just based on 30 min power historical bests I have recorded in the last few months, but the LT heart rate seems way too high at 164bpm. That is up from 146 and ten beats higher than my last running LT test. I'm skeptical of that number, but if it holds up that is an amazing increase.

Pasadena Triathlon

2008-03-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

I didn't do this event, because I it was only a week after the LA Marathon, but it is a local race for me. I had actually forgotten about it this year, but on my usual Saturday ride to the Rose Bowl on my way to Angeles Crest I came across the start.

This triathlon is interesting in that it is in reverse order. There is a running start then a transition to the bike and then a final swim finish in the nearby Rose Bowl Aquatics Center.

Looks like alot of fun. Maybe I'll try it next year.

New Sidebar Links

2008-03-08T15:21:00.000-08:00

I want to point out a couple new sidebar links on the right under my profile. The first is my Training Peaks training log. I'm going to be using Training Peaks this season, and it generates a nice little summary of weekly and year to date workout summaries. You can also explore deeper and see the actual workouts. I suspect few people actually care about my actual workouts so I'll spare people the details in my blog and leave that in separate place. If you don't use Training Peaks and are curious about what it can do, click on the link and you can get an example of the "public training log" it can generate.

The other link is to my profile on Athlinks. Athlinks is a social networking site similar to myspace, friendster or facebook, but it is for athletes. It collects the race results of thousands of races all over the world. If you collect your races you can have a really nice summary of your race results. You can also classify others as friends or rivals. Its fun. Check it out and put me down as a friend!

My New Toy

2008-03-07T17:14:00.000-08:00

I bought a new road bike last year, but I almost regretted not getting a triathlon bike. I always planned on getting one, but maybe two or three years down the line. Every time I saw a triathlon bike I would just love the look of the aero bars, the aggressive geometry and the aero tubing. Oh the aero tubing! How could I ever think of waiting that long. So I knew I had to keep the cost low so I knew I was looking at a used aluminium bike. I also knew that I wanted Campy components because my road bike is Campy and that makes it easy to swap wheels or cassettes. This is particularly important if you have a set of race wheels or a wheel integrated power meter like a Powertap, which I do. There aren’t too many Campy equipped Tri bikes out there. You see some on Ebay, but rarely in the size I would need. I have a long torso and short legs so standover height on bikes is a problem for me. I really like Cervelo frames but they have really high standovers. I would either need a bike with a long top tube for its size or something with a compact geometry.

I found this used Raleigh frame on Ebay for cheap. It has a really long top tube and just the right standover, so it works out great. It is a Kinesis frame made out of 7000 series heat treated aluminium. Very similar frames are sold under the brands of Kinesis UK, Jamis, K2, Schwinn, etc., but I have never seen one exactly like this one. Usually they have carbon seat stays, which this one does not or they have external cable routing. This one also has vertical dropouts while the Jamis Trilogy has horizontal dropouts. Any ways it’s a relatively low end frame, but what makes it cool is that it is a Raleigh. What’s cool about that you might ask? It has been a long time in the US since Raleigh was a cool brand. But I like the uniqueness of the bike, because Raleigh doesn’t make triathlon bikes. That’s right. They don’t make them. Well, Raleigh’s South African franchise makes one very similar to this with external cable routing called the 6000, but Raleigh USA does not make a triathlon bike. So how did this one come about? Raleigh sponsors a few cycling teams and made this one up custom for one of their teams. (Or more accurately ordered one from Kinesis in Taiwan and put their stickers on it.) I’m guess that it was made for the Recycled Cycling Team.

Another cool thing is that I think a Raleigh bike is the perfect companion to my Bianchi. These two companies are the two oldest bike manufacturers in the world and both have charted similar paths. Both made their mark in of cycling racing history, both have diluted their brand appeal by selling cheap mass market bikes and both have made a recent resurgence on the cycling scene as of late. They both also traditionally wear Campy. So there you go, a perfect match.

I built up the bike with new parts sourced from Ebay, ProBikeKit.com, Excel Sports and TriSports.com. let me just say that ProBikeKit is awesome. I went with Chorus components because I saved so much money on the frame I had extra money to put into the components. My favourite part of this bike is the crank. The new UltraTorque crank from Campy is so elegant in design that I just had to have it, even though plenty of traditional square taper cranks were available.

The hardest parts to find where the bar end shifters. It was not so much that you couldn’t find them, but more that you couldn’t find them for a reasonable price. They cost about three times the price of Dura Ace bar end shifters and for no reason other than they are less common.

For brakes I went with the Tektro R740. Lighter than Dura Ace or Campy Record. Another factor in the choice was that I wanted a quick release on the brake callipers because bar end brake levers never have quick releases. Campy brakes don’t have quick releases, and putting Shimano on a Campy bike is just weird – thus the Tektros. I also considered FSA brakes, but I found a great price on the R740s and couldn’t pass them up.

For the cockpit I wanted Vision. I never really considered anything else. It just looks so cool. I have always wanted Vision aerobars and now I’ve got them. The Vision carbon bars are not some much lighter than the aluminium ones so I just went aluminium with carbon armrests.

The wheelset is Zefiro K52 deep section carbon wheels. Nothing special here. A good solid wheelset that is a little heavy, but has an aluminium clincher rim so that I don’t have to swap out brake pads when I change wheels. They were also very cheap. I couldn’t even consider getting race wheels unless they were very cheap.

I tried a Profile Design Tri Strike saddle I had lying around, but there is no way I could get comfortable on that thing in aero position. In aero position you are crouched so far forward that you are basically sitting on your balls. I don’t know how anyone can do it with a regular saddle. I invested in an ISM saddle. It is basically the same shape as the Profile Design Tri Strike but with the nose cut off. That way my guys can hang free and I won’t suffer. It also has long rails so you can move the saddle forward or back as needed.

I love my new ride!

LA Marathon Photo Log

2008-03-04T05:51:00.000-08:00

Running Update

2008-02-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

I have this track record of doing a race and then taking forever of putting up my race reports. First I have to wait to get some photos. Then I have to write it up. By that time it is so late that I think I shouldn't even bother. Oh well. Here are a few photos of me running the Inuagural Rose Bowl Half Marathon in December.

I paced myself pretty well and gave it a good kick for the final 400 meters. I was fine for about 2 minutes after finishing and then the pain set in. The next day I could barely walk. My time was 2:19:27.

The LA Marathon is off. It was a hard choice. The Holidays messed up my training a bit, but I was getting back on track. I had a couple injuries, but I was dealing with them just fine, and then I got slamed with a chest infection and there went two weeks of training. When I started back up again I couldn't run more than 5 miles and even then my heart rate was going through the roof at even a very slow pace. I still worked at it and it is improving. but there is no way I will be ready by March 2 without really pushing myself to the extreme and risking a serious injury. So I have been trying to do more cycling lately and then my chest cold is back... I guess I should just forget early spring events from now on. My winter training just sucks!

However, I don't want to give up on the marathon goal just yet. Instead of the LA Marathon I'm thinking of doing a self supported (or rather family supported) event in April or May. That would give me enough time to get back on track and hopefully be injury and illness free.

FIRST Marathon Training Plan

2007-11-30T14:19:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm following the FIRST Marathon Training Plan. the plan I am following is for first time marathoners, but that is not why it is called FIRST. FIRST stands for the Furman Institute of Running & Scientific Training. The plan (as do all of them I believe) is based on the principles I described in post yesterday about the three intensity zones. Every week you have three run sessions and each session focuses on one of these zones. Other days of the week you do cross training. I think these plans are especially valuable for triathletes since we have so much crosstraining to do and rarely have time to run much more than three times a week. I also purchased the FIRST running book and I'll let you all know what I think.

Threshold Run Testing

2007-11-29T13:18:00.000-08:00

So a couple of months ago, when I got this crazy bug to do a marathon, I decided to do a running lactate threshold test. Last year I did one in the lab for the bike. In the lab it is a simple measure of blood samples taken when producing a progressively harder and harder power load. What did I learn? Mostly that I have a little strength but I am incredibly slow because of a poor power to weight ratio, but then again I already knew that. I am reminded of just how weak and slow I am on my weekly ride up Mt. Wilson. So what is the point?

The point is to train with the proper intensity so that I can make the maximum possible gains. I don't just want to finish the LA Marathon - I want to do it faster than I ever thought possible. A four hour marathon is probably unreasonable, but maybe four and a half hours is doable with the right training. Slow for some people but incredibly fast for me.

The goal of threshold testing is to find that level of effort (which is sport specific) at which your body no longer can supply its energy needs from the burning of fuel with oxygen (i.e. aerobically). Once you go above this level, the body can still supply additional energy but it will be without the use of oxygen (anaerobically) and will result in the acidic waste product lactate which is associated with fatigue. So theoretically the threshold is the maximum level of intensity that can be sustained over an extended period of time because only a small amount of lactate is produced.

Once equipped with your threshold you can tailor your training regimen to maximise the returns. There are three basic intensities at which to train, each of which have their own benefit. Sub-threshold training is at an easy pace, well below the threshold. This intensity level develops basic endurance and stimulates increased vascularization (i.e. more blood vessels and capillaries). Because the point of these workouts is endurance they are usually the longest you will do and also sometimes called Base miles or LSD for long slow distance.

The second level is Threshold training in which you train at or slightly above your threshold. This training is aimed at raising your threshold level, thus increasing the work that your body can perform on a sustained basis. The body responds to these workouts with increased efficiency in oxygen uptake, usually through an increase in the number of cellular mitochondria, as well as developing an increased ability to utilize or buffer lactate. So even when lactate is being produced at a high level it is also quickly being removed, avoiding the buildup of lactate and its associated fatigue. Tempo runs are a classic threshold workout, but there are others such as tempo intervals, cruise intervals, etc.

The last level is Supra Threshold training, also known as speed work or interval training. This training involves relatively short and intense efforts that greatly exceed the threshold level. because they exceed the threshold level they become anaerobic, but they still have benefits for aerobic performance. First by running faster you can learn the proper form and develop the proper neurological firing of the muscles. What is really being developed is efficiency. As these skills improve they will also improve the efficiency of slower running.

So there you have it. The three basic training levels. Here is a great resource by Greg McMillan listing the major types of runs that you can do which fit into each intensity level.

So finding your threshold level is good, but I didn't want to pay $200 to have it determined in the lab. If you have that kind of money to spend on these tests that is all well and good, but I would rather save the money for a time trial bike, thank you very much, and in any case you probably want to test yourself every month or so to measure your progress and keep your training plan up to date. So I did the threshold test advocated by Mike Ricci of D3 Multisport. Joe Friel also has a similar test in his book, The Triathlete's Training Bible (2nd Edition).

To do the test you need a heart rate monitor (but absent a heart rate monitor I suppose you could also just use your your pace if you had an easy way to measure it such as on a track and on the bike you can certainly use a power meter). I preprogramed my HRM with the various stages of the test, but you don't need to do this as the test is very simple. I started with a 15 minute warm up. After the warm up you do a 30 minute time trial. The idea is to go as fast as you can for thirty minutes such that at the end you feel that you could not have gone any faster, but not so fast that you have to slow down during the time trial. The pacing is a little tricky for a novice and the first time I did the test I had to slow down quite a bit right around half way through the time trial, which probably screwed up the test. The second time I did it, I was ok. So there is a little learning curve, but it's not too bad. During the time trial you want to press the lap button after ten minutes and then again at the end of the thirty minutes. This way the heart rate monitor will give you the average heart rate for the last 20 minutes of the time trial. This average is your threshold, and is exercise specific. That is, you need to test running and cycling separately. I recommend a cool down after the time trial, but for the purposes of the test this is optional.

I did the test yesterday and got the average of 161 beats per minute at a 9:58 pace. It was slower than I had hoped, but man was it an improvement over my last test. It was a whole 4 beats per minute greater after only 8 weeks of training, and my pace was about 32 seconds per mile faster. I can definitely live with that.

Back in the Saddle

2007-11-28T20:30:00.000-08:00

So I have been away for awhile. I decided that other areas of my life, such as my family and my career need more attention, so I scaled my training hours back severely and focused more on one sport, running, since it is my greatest weakness. A couple months ago I got the great idea to do the LA Marathon to give myself a goal, but I guess I could never really commit to it. I thought maybe it would be too much of a commitment given the fact that I am supposed to be focusing on other areas of my life right now. But I tried just "working out" for a few weeks and it was really hard. I just don't have the motivation to just burn calories -- I need a goal. So I signed up for the marathon. It's official!

I also have the Rose Bowl Half Marathon in two and a half weeks. Fortunately I have been running enough to still be prepared. I did a thirteen miler this past weekend and will be in taper mode for the next two weeks.

LA Triathlon Pics

2007-11-27T09:05:00.000-08:00

I did the Kaiser Permanente LA International triathlon back on September 9th and have long planned to write up a race report, but I have now given up on that idea. If it hasn't happened yet I ain't gonna happen. But here are a few photos.

Here is a photo of super triathlete Greg Bennett who was the overall men's winner. The LA Triathlon was one of the Lifetime Series and because Bennett won each event of the entire series he cashed in!

Here I am coming out of the water. It was a brutal swim. I had a severe side stich for about half the swim and got clobbered by two waves while coming in. Notice the pink swim cap. All the Clydesdales joined the older women and got to sport this fashionable piece of equipment.

Beginning to recover.

The bike ride was fast and was an excellent tour of some of the most famous parts of LA. The bike course was the best course I have ever done by far. I stayed in the drops for the most part. Here I am coming into T2.

The run was a long slog. I think I had pushed it a little too hard on the bike. I did run/walk thing.

Finally! It was a good race, but I need to work on pacing. I'll definately do it again.

Redondo Beach Race Report

2007-06-14T19:11:00.001-07:00

It feels like it has been a long time since my last race. I originally had not planned to do the Redondo Beach Triathlon, because I was more ambitious and wanted to do something a little harder, the Wildflower olympic distance triathlon. But illness and other unplanned events meant that training went very poorly and I simply wasn’t ready. I’m glad now that I made that choice because I was dying out there on this sprint with a very flat course. I do have an Olympic distance race coming up, the San Jose International Triathlon and so actually I thought that Redondo would be a good training event just in time to peak for San Jose two weeks later.

Because I treated the event as a training exercise it took most of the pressure off, but I was still a bit worried, partly because it seemed I had not had any good training over the winter, and because a stomach flu pretty much took me totally out the two weeks preceding the race. Just when I was supposed to be peaking I was in bed with a fever and couldn’t eat anything. I lost five pounds and when I did start up with training again I couldn’t do anything more than jog for 30 minutes.

I just told myself that it is all about pacing, and yet I also didn’t have my most important tool in pacing, my heart rate monitor. I recently purchased a Polar Power Sensor for my bike, but unfortunately I discovered that it does not communicate properly with my Polar heart rate monitor. All signs point to the power sensor and not my monitor as being the problem, but I sent them both to Polar so they could test them and find out what the deal is. So until I get them back I am without a heart rate monitor. So because of all this Redondo was a training event and a chance to learn some pacing by feel, which is probably very useful anyways.

When we arrived at the event the temperature was pretty cold and I wasn’t sure if my triskin was going to be warm enough. I had brought some arm warmers and an extra bike jersey, but ultimately I decided not to use them. In California the beach is always overcast in the mornings in the summer, but it burns up pretty quickly and so I gambled that I would be ok.

The Swim

The water was very calm. For such a short event the swim was actually pretty long at 1000 meters (about a half mile). Actually I think it may have been longer. It seemed on the long side. My group (clydes and old-timers) was pretty small so there was no real jostling for position. I got into a good groove pretty early and just kept an even pace. I was passing a few people and after a while I passed a few people in the earlier wave which made me pretty excited. My problem with open water swimming is that I tend to swim to the left and no matter how carefully I sight I seem to swim too wide of the buoys adding extra unnecessary yardage. This time it really hurt me because the swim exit was close to the pier and I thing there was a greater undertow near the pier. I was swimming and going nowhere. I saw people about ten yards to my right swimming right in, but it was like I was stuck. I picked up my pace and swam as hard as I could and still was not moving. I could look down and some plants growing on the bottom of the ocean and I wasn’t moving relative to them at all. So finally I swam sideways toward the other swimmers and then powered in to shore. The whole exercise probably added a whole 3-4 minutes to my time and left me barely able to stand as I pulled myself out of the water. My swim time was 22:10 which I was happy with, because it was at least 2.2 minutes per 100 meters and actually much faster when you consider running up the beach and swimming wide of the buoys.

T1

I was so tired and my heart was beating so fast from the swim that I was hyperventilating and couldn’t run. I had to sit down to get my wetsuit on. Actually I thing I just used that as an excuse to sit down. This time I was trying something different. I left my bike shoes on the bike and would put them on during the ride. One of considerations I was giving to which pedal to pick for my new bike was what type of cleat is best to run in during transition. There is no good answer for this. All bike shoes are pretty bad for running (or really just walking quickly). Then I got to thinking that I have triathlon bike shoes and really the only point of having such shoes is that you can put them on while on the bike. So I figured I would take the plunge and do that. For the last few weeks, every time I came in or went out from my house on my bike I would practice getting in and out of my shoes. In fact, the day before the race I spent an hour riding around my neighborhood, and all I was doing is getting in and out of my bike shoes as fast as I could. I actually am getting pretty good at getting in and out of the shoes, but I still cannot swing my leg over the bike to switch from running to biking. I just don’t have the right balance yet and am too afraid of laying down my nice new carbon Bianchi. So I just stopped, stepped over then then pedaled away, without a running start. I wasn’t about to learn this all on race day. Unfortunately I don’t have my transition times, because the timing company is not reporting them.

The Bike

Putting my shoes on during the bike would have worked fine, but one of the Velcro straps on my shoe was partially closed. I know how it happened. I saw one of the coaches of the racer next to me on the bike rack do it. It was supposedly to keep it from touching his bike. Well excuse me, I racked my bike there first, so he should just move his own bike and should keep his damn paws off my bike. That’s what I was thinking at the time, but I had to rush off and get body marked at the time so figured I would deal with it later and then forgot. But here I am on the ride trying to get my foot into my shoe and it is all closed up. I tried to reach down and unfasten the strap, but while the shoe hangs down from the pedal it is upside down and hard to reach. I finally got it, but it probably took at least 90 second of me fiddling with it. The whole time I kept thinking, “is this really saving time or am I just extending T1 into my bike.” I don’t know.
Here you can see me before I get my feet into my shoes.

The bike course was short and fast – a two 3 mile loop course. The first thing I notice is that it was crowded with people everywhere. USAT rules require that you leave space between you and the rider in front of you unless you are passing. And if you are passing you must complete the pass in something like 7 seconds. The passed person must fall back and have the required space before attempting a pass. When that is just a ridiculous rule when you have so many people going so many different speed. There was about five different lanes of “traffic” on the course and the slower people were not always, or even often, on the right. There were little kids on their cruisers swerving every which way right in front of fast guys on their Cervelos and it was just madness. I just tried to stay to the right when I could and tried to stay out of other people’s way. I just which others were doing the same.

There was a short downhill to a roundabout in front of the pier. That was really fun. I tucked down low to get as little wind resistance as possible and tried to take the turn as fast as possible. It was pretty thrilling. Then there was a short hill to get back up where we started. Here is a picture of my climbing the hill and working hard. The lady in front of my is looking pretty good, but I think she went a bit too fast in transition because she put her helmet on backwards.

Taking my shoes off on the bike as I came into transition went smoothly with no problems. Total cycling time: 24:35. Now I believe that figure includes my time for both T1 and T2, because the timing company didn’t break those out. If it didn’t include that time it would be a slow bike at 14.6 mph. But if you estimate around 5 minutes for T1 and T2, then it comes out to around 18.4 mph which is more my speed for such as short course.

T2

Not much to say here. Just grabbed my shoes, visor and put on my race belt. I probably went harder on the bike than I should have and my legs where feeling a bit rubbery. But I just told myself, “slow and steady” and headed out.

The Run

The run seemed to never end, even though it was only 2 miles. While a few people passed me on the bike it seemed that everyone was passing me on the run. Usually it is this time in the race that the elite women who started several waves back from me start to overtake me, and there certainly where those. But there were also the old men and even little children. Man, you know things are going bad when the little girls start whipping your butt. You go girl!

I finally made it across the finish line and was hurting pretty bad, but I was excited to have raced again and felt the rush. My run time was 20:30, which I do not believe included any transition time, because otherwise I would of have a very fast run (for me at least). As it is, it would mean 10:15 minute miles, which is on the high end for me and certainly much faster than it felt I was going. I thought I was going about 14 minute per mile pace.

Overall, I completed the event in 1:07:15. Compared to my last race I did about the same pace on the bike and the run, and improved a bit on the bike from an average speed of 17.2 mph at Malibu to about 18.4 mph (estimate). I hoped for a better improvement, but frankly I’ll take whatever I can get.

I happened to mention to another racer the fact that I will be doing an Olympic distance triathlon in two weeks and he shook his head and said, “good luck going long.” I never thought of the Olympic distance as being that long before, but after feeling how tired I was at this event, it put some fear in me and I only have one good week of training left before I have to taper, so I am making the most of it.

Special thanks to Dan Field for the race photos!

Daddy Goes Slow

2007-06-11T16:52:00.000-07:00

I did the Redondo Beach Triathlon yesterday. I'll have some photos and a race report up soon, but first I wanted to give you the perspective of my three year old daughter. She is a big fan of Finding Nemo and The Little Mermaid so she is fascinated by the ocean and was excited to go to the beach even though it was five o'clock in the morning as we left the house.

My wife carried her down to the car in a bundle as I gathered last minute stuff. We thought she would quickly go to sleep on the drive over, but her eyes were wide awake. She asked excitedly, "Are we going to the ocean?"

But she seemed most interested in the wildlife. Her one piece of advice to me was, "Watch out for the sharks, Daddy!" We all know how naughty those sharks can be!

When we got home, she drew this picture of me on my bicycle. I like the look on the face -- I look very determined. Not only that, but it looks like I am riding with no hands! I figured I must be going very fast with hair whipping about like that, so I asked her, "Is Daddy riding fast?"

"No. Daddy is riding slow."

Sigh.

Local Tri Club Featured on the Morning News

2007-06-11T09:17:00.001-07:00

I usually swim with my local tri club on Wednesday mornings. I didn't make it last week, but it looks like about 60 other people did and it made the morning newscast. Pretty cool.

Finding Your Motivation

2007-05-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

So why do we run exhausting mile after exhausting mile? After all most of us are never going to win a race or frankly even get close to winning. Many of the people out jogging or filling up the local gym are simply trying to lose a few pounds, look a little better and feel fit, and I don’t doubt that most of the burgeoning ranks of triathletes in this country are seeking the same thing – to feel better, to look better and perhaps live a little longer. But you know what? When these types of extrinsic motivators are your reason for getting moving it is unlikely that you will succeed in the long term. The reality is that most people start exercise programs all the time with great enthusiasm only to give up only a few months or even weeks later.

There is a great article by Tom McGrath in the latest issue of Men’s Health magazine that discusses this topic, and I thought I would pass on a few pieces of information that I thought were particularly useful. First off, external rewards are in the vast majority of cases simply not strong enough motivators to keep us working out. Why? Because exercise becomes drudgery or boring – namely it becomes just work. We work out day after day and it is the same thing over and over again. If working out just becomes work then there are too many activities (constructive or not) competing for our time for us to keep at it. If we want to succeed in the long term, we have to cultivate within us the intrinsic rewards of exercise. We have to enjoy the feeling of movement. We have to enjoy what we are doing, and most of all just have fun.

What will make us enjoy exercise? McGrath points to three factors: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy relate to an activity in that we choose to do it; it was not forced on us. If we are thinking that we have to do something, or are being forced then we lose our autonomy. If it seems that we are being forced and we naturally bridle against that. If we tell ourselves that we have to workout or we will gain a few pounds, that motivator is just working against us because it cuts into our sense of autonomy. The second factor, competence, relates to the skills that we build while doing the exercise. If we feel that we are doing well or at least improving we will feel good about our accomplishments and continue in our efforts. If we just go to the gym and put in our thirty minutes on the elliptical machine then this is not going to feed our desire for accomplishment. We need to always have new goals and look for progress. For long term success, probably the most important factor is the last, relatedness, which is how the activity connects you to others. Activities that bring you together with others are naturally going to be more intrinsically motivating. Plugging away on the treadmill with your iPod on is not bring you closer to anyone (well, sometimes a good Podcast can relate you to all kinds of people). Instead, find a group to train with, or even just one friend. It can really make the difference.

All of this makes complete sense to me. When I embarked on my triathlon journey it was to change my life and become a better person, but the question remains, why triathlon? Why not just go to the gym and slave away at a treadmill for a while and then call it a day? Why do I have to race, and in three separate sports no-less, and wear a funny outfit? Because it is fun. Getting up early in the morning to set up your gear in transition is exciting. Taking the first plunge into the ocean along with hundreds of others is exhilarating. Passing another cyclist as you make your way along the course makes you feel like a millions bucks, especially when the other guy is younger or has a faster bike. And there is nothing like crossing the finish line and erasing all the doubt of whether you were good enough or whether you could do it. In short it is a blast.

I knew then that starting an exercise program wasn’t enough. It had to be more, and that is probably the only reason I’m still out there, still doing it and still setting goals. Sure I have had my stumbles, but I have always come back. The only solution for continued motivation and improvement is to cultivate more intrinsic rewards in my training. I set my own schedule so that I know that I am choosing to train and no one is forcing me. I set goals and carefully measure my progress so that every time I PR or go a little farther I feel a surge of pride. I search out training locations and ways of training that I enjoy, like getting out of the musty gym and onto the mountain trails or into the ocean waves. And lastly, I find others to train with, so that every week I look forward to seeing my friends so that together we can get faster, stronger and little bit better.

Doing the Holger

2007-05-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

Since my ocean swim was cut rather short yesterday I tried going for a little longer run. I have been working on my speed lately and usually that means intervals. I do a good 5 to 10 minute warm up at a 12 minute per mile pace and then try to kick it up a notch to a 10 minute mile pace for around five minutes. My heart rate usually jumps up to 90% and then I rest by slowing back down to a 12 minute per mile pace for five minutes or so. Then I just repeat this over again for the rest of the session. So far this has been a success. I have noticed a decline in my heart race for relatively higher speeds. I can now run about an eleven minute pace at the same heart rate that I used to get from a twelve minute pace.

I also have to work on my form. As I increase my speed there are opportunities to improve my form. For example, a common drill that runners do is butt kicks. You run and try to get you legs to continue up past horizontal after each push-off until they touch you butt. This is really exhausting to do if you are running slowly, but as your speed increases these kinds of drills make more sense. If you are running slowly and have a proper cadence (around 90 steps per minute) then your stride is very short and it would take a whole lot of extra energy to push you legs back that far. All that extra energy is just wasted, but as you increase your speed your stride opens up and it becomes more natural. As speed increases raising your leg behind you actually becomes an energy saver in that it decreases the length of your leg as it swings forward with each stride. Why is this important? Because you leg acts as a pendulum when it swings forward, and the shorter the pendulum the quicker it will swing simply from the force of gravity, and it will require less work from your hip flexors. Essentially, you can move faster and use less energy, which is what running efficiency is all about.

Another aspect of form to pay attention to is the arms. Most runners keep their arms at about a ninety degree bend at the elbows. Ideally you pump the arms straight forward and back and minimize the movement of the shoulders and torso. Moving your arms takes much less energy that your shoulders or core. You may have noticed that some runners, as fatigue begins to set in, tighten the shoulders and raise their arms. All this does is cost the runner more energy. By decreasing the arm angle the arms are becoming shorter, and as short pendulums they require less energy to move, but unlike the legs this is not a good thing. This is because the movement of your arms is to counter balance the movement of your legs. Without a strong pumping of the arms the entire upper body and core will have to compensate by moving. Your shoulders will move back and forth and this is much more costly in energy terms than moving your arms.

I tried something out the other day that I call “Doing the Holger.” I mentioned Holder Beckmann before, another member of my tri club. He is a great athlete and a great guy, but he does have a unique running style. As you can see from the photo he keeps his arms almost straight as he runs. It looks a little unusual, but actually it is not that uncommon among endurance runners. My theory on this style is that by lengthening the arms he is creating large pendulums that can easily counter balance his legs without moving very much. Less movement means less energy expenditure and more efficiency.

So I tried it out. It definitely feels strange at first, but as I got into a groove I looked down at my Polar S625x heart rate monitor to check my speed, and I was going a whole mile per hour faster than my usual ten minute per mile pace with no noticeable increase in heart rate. It was really working! So I kept it up and averaged six point six miles per hour for the last third of my five and a half mile run. Another breakthrough.

More Opinions on Bike Lanes in Los Angeles

2007-05-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have to say I agree with them. . .

Wipeout

2007-05-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

My first open water swimming experience was with an LA Tri Club sponsored clinic called Ocean 101. The clinic was hosted by two really great guys, Tim Bomba and Steve Herbert, and they still do it every week for club members who want to become comfortable with swimming in the ocean. For me though, I was never uncomfortable with the ocean. It didn't scare me. Mostly, I think this was because I had never been in the ocean much in my entire life. I never surfed, and when my family went to the beach we mostly stayed out of the water because it was just too cold. But I had certainly heard the concerns of others and figured I would play it safe and learn something before just diving in.

And learn I did. The most important thing I learned that day, and something everyone who wants to swim in the ocean should know, is how to deal with crashing waves. Waves have tremendous power and large waves can be quite intimidating. If you screw up you can really get messed up bad.

So how do you deal with waves? You duck. The wave is caused by the collision of the surface water coming on to shore and the water from the previous wave that is receding back from shore. This collision causes the water to well up into a wall and then finally crash down as the wall of water tips over. The majority of all this movement is happening at the surface. Down below, just above the ground the water is calm. So have to time the wave, and just before it crashes, dive down to that calm water, slowly count to five and then resurface. If you have skills, you can do the dolphin kick and even make some good progress while you are down there. The counting is critical. If you surface too fast you will come up right into the torrent above you. If you come up too slowly, you may come up while the next wave is crashing.

So it is not so hard, but what about on the way back to shore. Here you have to really careful because if you don't pay attention to what is behind you, a wave can crash right over you. Today I was swimming back to shore and as I got closer I kept looking back to see any waves that might be coming. Then I saw a big one. If the wave is going to crest past you then you can try to ride it in. If the wave crests before you then watch out! I saw it starting to crest, and I had to think of what to do. I thought I was far enough behind me that I would catch the remnants and that it wouldn't be two bad, so I didn't duck. I thought I could ride it out, but instead, I got hit hard. I remained calm, and luckily I wasn't thrown against anything, so I wasn't hurt at all. But I did loose my swim goggles, and I damaged my pride. So my swim ended a little earlier than planned, and I went for a run. Hey, I needed new goggles anyways!

Tip: You can prevent the loss of you goggles by putting your swim cap on after your goggles. The cap helps to keep the straps in place and will prevent their loss if you get hit wave, or by another swimmer.

Interesting LA Times Article: More bike lanes? No thanks

2007-05-22T16:04:00.001-07:00

An opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times this weekend about how L.A. should treat cyclists as motorists' equals, not as pesky afterthoughts. Personally I agree that bicyclists should be able to use the roads along with cars, but I doubt by simply not painting bike lanes is going to help. What is needed is a motorist attitude change in LA, and I don't think that is going to occur until more cyclists take to the streets, and some simply won't ride their bikes without the illusion of safety offered by bike lanes.

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Swimming Time Trial PR

2007-05-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

I am very slow in the pool so whenever I can get even a little faster it makes me really happy. I have been down on swimming over the winter, because it is hard to get motivated to get out into that cold water in the early mornings. And it is not just the cold. The warm, smelly water of the indoor pool at my gym is not too pleasant either, and frankly swimming can be pretty boring if you are just going down the lane over and over again. Drills can help with the boredom, and swimming with others definitely helps, but my favorite way to swim is in the ocean. Sure its really, really cold. But you get the excitement of the crashing waves, the camaraderie of the other swimmers and most of all you are just out there in nature. You see the sun rise over the hills, fish swimming below you and even the occasional seal or dolphin. Sometimes you just stop look around and think to yourself, "this is just really cool." So I had my first ocean swim of the year last Wednesday and now I'm psyched up on swimming. I have my next ocean swim tomorrow, and I cannot wait.

But today I had to deal with my disgusting indoor pool, as the normal pool I go to on Tuesdays is closed for maintenance. My gym pool is rather small and filled with senior citizens having a social hour so it is hard to get any solid swimming in, but I decided to have a time trial because it has been a while since I tested myself. Result: I swam 2500 meters in 55 minutes. Still slow, but a solid improvement.

New Look Keo Sprint Pedals

2007-05-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

Summer came early to SoCal this year with record tempuratures in April, but things have definately cooled down the last couple weeks, and we even had a light rain last night. I missed my normal Saturday morning ride this past weekend because my bike was in the shop and I picked up a new club cycling jersey over the weekend so I was really looking forward to my ride this morning. When I opended the garage door and saw the wet drive, I was thinking, "who has been spraying down the drive?" Silly me. I guess it has been so long since it rained last, that I just wasn't expecting it. The rain wasn't enough to actually bring me indoors, in fact, if you lived almost anywhere else in the country you would probably have been embaressed to even call it rain -- more of a light sprinkling. But it still makes the roads slick, and so I was extra careful.

Over the weekend I also installed some new pedals. The just look spot on fantastic on my new bike. I have been using Shimano SPD pedals for a while now. These are the style of cleats commonly found on most mountain bikes, and they were probably a good choice originally because I did much of my riding on the spin bikes at my gym, and the SPD cleats are compatible with most spin bikes. But now I try to ride as much as possible on my actual bike and lately the shortcomings of the SPD system have become more and more apparent. First of all they are pain to engage because the cleat and the pedals themselves are so small. I have never been able to engage them easily because I have to get this tiny metal thing somewhere on the bottom of my shoe to engage with this tiny metal thing on the petal all without actually being able to see it. The cleats are also metal and so you can slip on them really easily when you walk and they will dig a hole in what ever they get near (like your bike!). I have some rubber "pontoons" on the sides to help with walking, but they sometimes interfere with the engagement of the petal. I also don't like how much float the cleats have. For those of you who don't know, float is the amount of movement your heal can move in or out without the cleat disengaging. The SPD pontoon cleats generally come in two forms, no float or about 7 degrees of float. I want some float, because it is better for your knees, but 7 degress is too much. Moving your heel out that far is very uncomfortable so usually I move my heal in, but then with that much float my heal hits my bike frame before the cleat will disengage. It is very annoying. So I figured with the new bike I should get some real road pedals.

There is actually a guy from my neck of the woods who has invented his own style of pedal that looks really interesting, but they are too rich for my blood. So my choice was between the traditional Look style pedals, Shimano SPD-R pedals or Speedplays. Shimanos are out because it is just too weird to have a campy bike with Shimano pedals. That is probably just silliness on my part, but it doesn't seem to me that Shimano offers anything more than a copy of the traditional Look pedal so really, why go there? I seriously considered Speedplays for a while, but a few drawbacks kept me away. First is the cost. They are definately more expensive for the quality of the pedal. They also are a little heavier. Most people think the Speedplays are really light because in the reported stats the Speedplay pedals are around half the weight of their competitors, but that is usually because the cleat that attaches to the pedal is not counted. The cleat on Speedplays is a large brass plate which is rather heavy, along with a three hole shoe adapter (unless you have four hole shoes, which are very rare). So the whole package is usually the same weight or more than a traditional Look pedal. Speedplays do have the advantage of dual sided entry, but the float is not adjustable except on the high end models, and I have heard of other triathletes complain that they slide around when trying to walk on their bike shoes with Speedplay cleats. So for all of these reasons I figured I should just go with the tried and true Look pedals. I was thinking of getting some cheap generic pedals through Bianchi that had the traditional Bianchi celeste blue (while it looks green to me, Italians call it blue -- traditional Italian biking lore has it that it is the color of the Milan sky) to match my bike. But then I was looking at the Look Keo website and I really liked the design of the new Keo pedals. They are similar to the traditional Look pedals, but have some design improvements, such as more contact between the cleat and pedal, shorter stack, more turning clearance, a lighter weight and ease of engagement. So I pulled the trigger and go a pair of Look Keo Sprints. (I did not know it at the time, but I also just found out that they received the 2006 Editors Choice award from Bicycling Magazine for petals under $200) I wasn't sure about the bright red color on my black, white and celeste Bianchi, but actually it really brings out the red decals on the wheels, and looks really cool. I'll have to post some photos. Edit: Photos Added

This morning was their first test, and if they continue to perform like they did today, I'll be estatic. They engage easily with a solid snap, and feel really solid. Disengaging is really fast and simple and the 4.5 degrees of float in the standard cleats is just perfect for me. It gives me the float that I want, but not so much that I have to over twist my leg. So far a great pedal.

On to New Challenges

2007-05-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

To say that it has been a while since my last post is an understatement. For a while there I think I slide off of the face of the earth. I actually wasn't sure if I was ever going to blog again. You see the first 4 months of this year were more about detraining than training. I was often sick with several nasty infections that my preschool age daughter brought home with her during the winter and then when I finally felt better it seemed that I could only get in a few days of training before some other crisis would occur and whip out another week of training. I was constantly starting my training and never building. I became so frustrated that I started to think that perhaps triathlon, and all three of its sports are perhaps too much for me to handle at this point in my life and that I should perhaps just focus on one or two.

The problem with this strategy is which sports to choose. As I got closer and closer to Wildflower my frustration built and I guess as a protection mechanism I decided to just not doWildflower. I needed a new goal. Something different and something realistic with the time I have available. So lately I have been focusing on cycling. My goal is to climb Mt. Wilson by the end of the year. Here is a nice 3D image of the over 5000ft climb.

(image courtesy of CalTech Velo)
And here is the elevation profile. Definitely an epic climb, but no extreme grades.

(image courtesy of CalTech Velo)

So far I have made it to about 3000ft. Other members of my tri club have been going up this route too, but I usually don't ride with them because I have to be back home at a reasonable hour (I couldn't keep up with them anyways), so I leave the house at five or six in the morning. The triple crankset on my Trek 1220 has been a life saver. I don't think I could move my 250lb body up this climb without a triple. I am usually in my lowest or next to lowest gear the entire way up. No standing, just spinning.

While I appreciate the triple I still am not happy with this bike. All this cycling has made me more sensitive to the fact that my bike just doesn't fit right. It is a 50cm frame which is the second to smallest frame they make and I am six feet tall. I bought a new seat post and toyed with the idea of a new stem and even a new fork, but in the end that would just be putting more money into a bike that will never be 100% right for me. This was hard to admit because I wanted my next bike to be a tribike. I also wanted to have a road bike in the stable, and at my level of skill a road bike is going to be more important than a tribike, because I am simply not fast enough to take full advantage of the aero position available on a tribike. So I started to look for a new road bike and pushed the idea of getting a tribike back for a few years. Who knows. Maybe I wouldn't be doing triathlons in a few years, but still cycling. Then I would really appreciate the choice of a new road bike. If I still am doing triathlons by then, then I know I have earned the tribike. At least that is what I keep telling myself. . .

So what to get. There are so many more options with road bikes than in tribikes, and I combed the magazines and internet for options. I was becoming obsessed. The problem is that no matter what bike you look at there is another "better" bike for a little more money. That is just the way it is. I did not want to regret that I could have gotten something better if I had just spent a little more money, and yet I have to cut it off somewhere. After struggling with the issue for a while I came up with a system. At the risk of revealing to everyone I am an incredible nerd I am going to share with you my system in case you have to make such a decision yourself.

First I selected the features that I cared most about, and ranked the factors. I then awarded each bike points based on how well they satisfied each factor. For me, I cared most about ride quality, because my Trek 1220 is just bone-crushingly stiff. The second factor was that I wanted a decent component group. I am a big guy so I need something that will work well and have good durability. The third factor was weight. It is not that important since I am rather heavy already, but for some illogical reason it mattered to me. The last was the brand name. I guess this makes me shallow, but the name Cervelo, Pinarello or Orbea it is worth something to me. Certainly less important than the other factors, but still worth something. I would be dishonest in my analysis if I left it out.

Now you may notice that I left fit out of the equation. Fit is really a do or die issue. Either it fits or it doesn't. Obviously I can't buy a bike that doesn't fit. But what I am doing here with a point system is really trying to establish a baseline of value, or at least the value to me of each model of bike. Then I go try them out.

So I ranked each factor and gave more points to higher ranked factors. 10 points available for factor one, 8 points available for factor two and so on. If the bike exceeded my requirements it got full points. If it met my requirements it got half points, and if it was deficient it got no points. For example, for ride quality I based it mostly on materials. Carbon, Scandium and Lightweight Steel bikes got full points, other steel bikes and lightweight aluminium got half points and regular aluminum bikes got none. Ultegra or Dura-Ace was full points, 105 was half and Sora or Tiagra no points. For weight, bike less than 18 pounds got full points, less than 20 half and greater than 20 nothing. Etc.

After adding up all the points I then divided each point total by the price of the bike. This gives me a value quotient or value for the money. Certain bikes came up as good values right way, particularly Felt, Jamis and Raleigh. They seemed to offer the best value for the money. But did I get any of them? Nope. This is what I got.

I found a great deal (40% off) at a local shop for a 2006 Bianchi 928 Carbon. It fits very well particularly because the size is 55cm which is actually a rare size. I have short legs relative to my height, and so I need the largest bike I can get while still having a tolerable standover. 55cm is the largest I can go with my legs. Most other brands offer a 54cm or a 56cm. A 56cm is too tall for me to standover comfortably and a 54cm will have a cockpit that is too short. Some compact geometry frames would also work, but they often have headtubes that are too tall, so this bike worked out perfectly.

The full carbon frame allows the ride to be really smooth. The component group is Campagnolo Veloce, which from all my research is very reliable and strong. I gather that the general concesus is that Veloce is between 105 and Ultegra in terms of quality, but that with Campy the lower end components share more in comon with the high end stuff than with Shimano, so it is difficult to compare the two. Really the only difference between component groups for Campy is weight so Veloce should be very durable. I was skeptical of the Campy system at first because I wasn't familiar with it, but after trying it out I like it much better than Shimano. The brifters fit my large hands better, and I like having two separate levers instead of one. I find that I can't mishift like I sometimes do on Shimano, and the cabling is much cleaner.

The bike is also just at 18 pounds. And the name . . . got to love it. I admit I go a little crazy over Italian stuff. It's not rational, I know. The bike was handmade in Bianchi's factory in Italy with Italian components and even Italian wheels. By the way, this is not true of most Bianchis, which are often made in Taiwan with Taimanese components. The bike got full points in every category and because of the closeout price, it was by far the best value of any other bike I considered. The only problem with the bike is that it doesn't have a triple like my Trek so going up Mt. Wilson my not be possible for me. It does have a compact crankset so I may be able to get the gearing I need by swapping out a cog or two in the cassette, so I am still considering what I want to do about that.

Now I have been riding this piece of art for a few weeks, and I am in cycling heaven. Now on mornings when I'm scheduled to ride I wake before my alarm goes off, and I haven't missed a single ride.

My Biggest Challenge

2007-02-17T22:45:00.000-08:00

The biggest triathlon challenge for me is training consistantly, and while there have been times where my training has lapsed from lagging motivation or work/family obligations these obsticles have usually only caused me to miss one or two days of training. Anyone who is familiar with my blog knows that my greatest barrier to consistent training has been frequent illness. Each time I come down with something it usually puts me out for at least a week.

Last week I thought I really had my act together and I put in a good solid week of training. I was on top of everthing, with my diet, taking my vitamins, getting rest and keeping my training moderate and within a well thought out plan . . . and yet I am sick again. It started out as a head cold and I trained through for two days. Then it moved down into my chest and have this horrid hacking cough. I'm finished for at least a few days, and frankly I'm pissed.

Inspiration from Harry S. Truman

2007-02-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

--Harry S. Truman

Another hump day, another struggle and another chance for success. I'm a bit tired, but also feeling pretty high in that I have just finished a whole week of training and didn't miss any workouts. I have this minor sinus thing going on that started yesterday afternoon, but it seems to be holding and not getting any worse so I am going to Press On!

It took me a while to come up with my new training schedule just because I was conflicted on whether I should use the spin bike at the gym or use my actual bike at home. I think using my actual bike prepares me better for an actual race where I will be using my bike, but it is difficult to come up with the time because of commuting issues. If I want to use my own bike I have to get up extra early. I am already getting up around five am, and would have to get up at least another extra half an hour earlier to fit in any decent time on my bike, and later in my training plan when I need more time on my bike I will need to probably get up at four in the morning. I don't really mind getting up that early. In fact I kind of like being up and about while everyone else is asleep. Everything is really calm and quiet and you get to see some beautiful sunrises.

But I am the type of person who really needs my sleep. I can survive on seven hours of sleep but I really need eight. During heavy weeks of training I could really use nine hours of sleep. When I don't get my sleep I am miserable the whole day and tend to come down with colds. The answer is to get to bed early, but of course, life being what it is, I can only go to bed so early. It is a struggle now to get to bed by nine and usually it is more like ten o'clock. But in the end I think I just plain enjoy being on my bike and am just going to have to suck it up, and just get used to being tired. I think this year it is all going to be about getting out side and try to avoid the gym with its treadmills, spin bikes and indoor pool as much as possible.

So here is the new schedule:
Monday: AM: Bike, PM: Swim
Tuesday: AM: Trail Run
Wednesday: AM: Long Swim
Thursday: AM: Bike, Transition Run
Friday: AM: Swim, PM: Run Track Work
Saturday: AM: Long Bike
Sunday: AM: Long Trail Run

I was happy with how everything is spread out during the week with recovery days between run and bike sessions, but you'll notice that I don't have a rest day. I think I'll try it out and see how it goes. I noticed that last year I would take a rest day and then one or two days later I would have to take a day off for one reason or another and then I really regretted taking the rest day. Rest days seem to happen magically one their own anyways regardless of our intentions. If I am actually able to complete a couple weeks of this schedule with no rest days then I'll allow myself to worry about it.

Trail Running in the Middle of Los Angeles

2007-02-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles, it goes without saying, is a large city, and while it is not known for the dense urbanism of Manhattan, Los Angeles is a very urban place. Much of Los Angeles is covered with block after block of three to four level condos and apartment buildings, so it is an urban landscape after all. But surprisingly enough in the middle of all this development there are some pretty good running trails.

One of these wilderness spots is the Kenneth Hahn State Recreational Area, a park owned by the State of California but operated by the County of Los Angeles. I have been tired of the treadmill lately and loving my weekend trail runs, so I have been trying to figure out how to incorporate trail runs into the middle of the week, and I thought I would check this park out. The park is a large swath of land atop some rather tall and steep hills. I believe they are called the Baldwin Hills which also refers to the greater surrounding area. The ruggedness of the terrain is part of the reason the area has not yet been developed. The other reason is the longstanding oil development. I ran by several operating oil wells.

At the top of the hill is a really spectacular view of the entire city of Los Angeles from Downtown high rises to Hollywood and even to Santa Monica. The view was especially beautiful this morning as the sun had just risen and the recent winter rain has cleared the sky of all the smog. It was truly a great way to start the day.

The park has about seven miles of trails, some of them paved with concrete or asphalt and others are plain earth. All the trails curve and intersect with each other in a rather complicated maze so I never really knew where I was going. I really like this feature because it means it will take me a while to learn all the ins and outs of the place which keeps things interesting. The trails are rather short, but because they all connect you can do loops and combine them in all different ways. Most of the terrain is shrubs and there are few trees in the "natural" part of the park, but there is also a waterfall, lotus pond and green lawns in the "artificial" portion of the park, so there really is something for everyone.

As I have said in previous posts I am always coming across Olympic history here in Los Angeles, and the Kenneth Hahn SRA is no different. Apparently it was the site of the Olympic Village for the 10th Olympiad in 1932, and in 1984 140 trees where planted here in remembrance of the 140 countries that participated in the 1984 games. The park also happens to be the site of the ill fated Baldwin Hills reservoir that collapsed in 1963 destroying many homes and killing 5 people. The former reservoir is now a lush glen of trees with a walking path around it.

So now I have my new Tuesday morning trail run spot. If you live in LA, check it out!

LA Times Article on Blood Lactate Testing

2007-02-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

This morning I was looking at the health section of the LA Times and came across this article on the blood lactate testing being done at a local gym. The gym is called Phase IV and is a place I know pretty well as I just had some lactate testing done there a few weeks back, along with a gait analysis. Jennifer Ischayek is the technitian who ran me through my paces with my bike on a trainer. She took blood samples and then used an andvanced looking device to analyze it all. You can see pictures of the what it all looks like in the LA Times article.

Bob Forster is the founder of Phase IV and is also a sponsor if my triathlon club. He is a great guy, and offers other great services for the endurance athlete such as strength trainig programs, stretching clinics, running gait analysis and much more. I'll post the results of my latate test in a few days, and when I get the video of my gait analysis I'll post that as well so you can see what it is all about.

As for actual training, I didn't get in my trail run this weekend because it was raining. Instead I did an hour and fifteen minutes of intervals on a treadmill. I ran between 4 and 6.3 miles per hour with inclines ranging between 0 and 6 percent. These new treadmills are pretty cool in that they automatically adjust to your heart rate to get you in the right spot. Not as fun as running in the hills, but still cool nonetheless.

A Cold and Gloomy River Ride

2007-02-10T16:11:00.000-08:00

This morning I went on my first long ride of the year. I decided to start slow with my training and limit it to 30 miles of flats, which made a river trail ride the optimum choice. I choose the Rio Hondo is the closest to my home and has the advantage that I can spend more time on the trail and less on the street getting to the trail. The trail is in pretty good shape with very few potholes, but there are large cracks in the pavement which can rattle an aluminum frame pretty hard.

Today's ride was thirty miles, and while it was cold and dark, my spirits were up. I am excited about training again, and excited about trying out new things. The new thing to try out today was winter bike clothing.

I still have not got my wardrobe down for this kind of winter riding. I have tried different combinations of things over the last two months and have made improvements, but I still have much to learn. I wore some heavy weight cycling tights, but they have no wind resistance. At speed I am really cold, but while stopped at a light I warm up. On top I wore a long sleeve base layer, a short sleeve jersey and a wind breaker. It was probably too much, because I was soaked with sweat when I got home. I wonder if leaving off the short sleeve jersey would work better, or perhaps I need a windbreaker that breathes more.

On my head I wore a windtex headband, and a fleece muffler around my neck. The muffler works great because you can move it up or down to give you more or less ventilation as needed, but the headband did not work too well. It certainly is good when you start out the ride, because it protects my sensitive ears from the the wind, but halfway through the ride my head was starting to pound from the cold. I took the headband off, and I was actually warmer. I think the headband was causing my head to sweat and the sweat was causing my head to freeze. Ugh. It hurts just to think about it.

Here is a picture of the Rio Hondo. As you can see there is actual water in the river, which is only the case in the middle of winter. The rest of the time it is just a big concrete ditch.

The clouds were coming in and I thought it would rain, but then they broke and the sun finally came out. This picture was taken just as dark clouds were starting to break up. It is spooky in the gloom from the clouds, but the pond is the prettiest spot along the trail. The wildlife included some geese and a few homeless people. In the background you can see the outline of Mt. Wilson. That is where I am going next week.

I've Finally Joined the iPod Nation

2007-02-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays I got a little gift for myself -- a 2nd Gen iPod Nano. I resisted the idea of getting a music player because I just don't listen to that much music. I am more of a talk radio fan. I'm totally hooked on podcasts, and even before there was such a thing as podcasts I would record streaming audio on my PC and download it to my PDA. But I had my PDA that could play music and do all these other things, so why would I want to buy a separate device that only plays music. The trend is to combine the functionality of multiple devices into one. If anything, I should get a new cell phone that takes over the duties of my PDA and plays music. And that is what I looked for, but there just isn't a really good MP3/PDA phone out there that is a reasonable size, at least until the new iPhone comes out (drool).

My PDA is showing its age. It takes forever to sync audio files. Sometimes I will put it in the dock when I get home in the evening and by the next morning it still would not be finished syncing. The controls are also barely usable as they require the use of a stylus. It is certainly not something I can do while driving.

Enter the iPod. I was considering getting an iPod shuffle just because it is so small and cheap, but I finally decided that I wanted a screen to select what tracks to listen to, and that it was worth another sixty dollars, so I went with the 2Gb Nano.

Now what do I think about it after using it for over a month? Awesome. First of all the controls are great. That touch wheel is even better than I though it would be. All the options you might want are in one simple control. I can change tracks, fast forward and change volume, all without even looking at the device. It has plenty of memory for podcasts. People might want more if they want more music selection on their device, but if you are going to listen to something and then delete it, 2Gb is really more than you need.

Did I mention that it syncs really fast ... yessiree! Download the audio files themselves can take a minute or two, but putting them on the iPod literally takes seconds! I boggles my mind how fast it is after enduring the slow downloads to my PDA. The battery life also seems really good

The device is really small. Almost too small. it can easily fit into a pocket, but is slick and it is easy to drop because it is so small. So I tried to find a protective case for it and nothing is really exactly what I want. The silicon skins are great because they protect from abrasion and moisture and also have a nice feel in your hand, but their drawback is the slip cases are hard to get on and off. I also wanted an armband to use the Nano while running and none of the armbands will fit the Nano with the silicon case. I would have to take the device out of the silicone skin to put it in the armband, and that is just too much of a pain. I hope it is just a matter of time before someone comes out with something to solve this problem. In the meantime I'll just have to use my pocket.

On the training front I cannot help but get excited because it has been three days of solid traing. I think I'm finally serious about getting faster. Today was 1800 meters in the pool followed by a 4.8 mile run. My legs even feel sore, and it has only been 12 hours. Awesome.

Starting Up Again

2007-02-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

I've been a very bad blogger. I gave myself the excuse that it was ok, becasue I was focusing more of my time on actual training, but I was just fooling myself. My training has been very inconsistent since November. I will do a good week and then not do any training at all for a week and a half. Repeat. I gained 10 lbs from my lowest weight in November, which would not be so bad except I was already trying to lose another 40 lbs by the end of this year. So I am basically starting from scratch.

This time it is going to be different. Why is that? Because I have Wildflower staring down at me at only 12 weeks away. Scary!

So this week I jumped back on the bandwagon. Gently. I did a spin/jog brick on wednesday and today I spent an hour and a half on the trainer at a moderate pace with a few drills thrown in. Tomorrow I plan on hitting the poll and running 4 miles. This weekend is a long bike and a trail run.

I have been doing some trail runs in the last two months, and I have to say that I really dig them. I probably look forward to them the most out of all the training I have been doing. I usually run on part of the Arroyo Trail that runs from South Pasadena up in to the Los Angeles National Forest. I don't run too far so I can vary the terran by just picking different locations to start from. the only problem is that it involves driving to the trail which costs time, a very precious commodity.

In other news, I was just informed that I was selected in the Escape to Alcatraz Triathlon lottery. I really want to do an event in the Bay Area and swiming the SF bay sounds really cool. I also don't know how hard it is to get a lottery spot. If I don't take this opportuntiy I'm not sure when it may come again, but I'm still not sure yet if I will do it or not. First there is the money. I think entry is almost three hundred right now. The second reason is also the money. A hotel room would probably cost another two hundred. The third reason is not money. It is the simple fact that I might not be able to make the cutoff time for the swim. The swim is 1.5 miles (2414 meters) in difficult conditions, and the cutoff time is at an hour. Right now I can swim about 2200 meters in the pool in an hour. I hopefully will get faster over the next couple months, but that is cutting it really close. It would be a real shame to go all that way, and spend all that money and not make the swim cutoff. I have until Feb. 28th to make up my mind.

I'm In!

2006-12-01T17:38:00.000-08:00

I just registered for my first "A" race of the year. Wildflower. I was a little torn between the Olympic distance and the half-iron distance that eveyone is familiar with. But frankly I don't think I could handle the half-iron. The course is really hilly and said by many to be equivalent in intensity to a full ironman distance event. Uhh. No. I haven't even done an olympic distance event yet. So I am doing the olympic, and it will still be very, very hard. Lots of hills. Lots. It is not easy to get my Clydesdale butt over hills.

The event is really one big triathlon party with thousands of people all camping out. There is a club competition too, and I was a little torn with who I should sign up with. I have been in the LA Tri club for a while, and as always they will be there in force. But the tri-blog world is also convening on wildflower as well. The tri-blog alliance will be their, and raceAthlete will be there as well, both of which I am proudly a part. It will be great to see all my fellow tri-bloggers, but which group should I pick? Well, I decided to just register as a LA Tri Club member because I have my race kit already, a Louis Garneau triskin. I just need to lose a few pounds to fit in it. So there you go . . .even more motivation.

As you may know, November was NaBloPoMo. That's National Blog Posting Month. The idea is that you should post to your blog at least once a day. Well, let's just say that I went in another direction. It means that I have lots to post about, and I will be catching you all up in the coming week. Mostly I have been keeping up with the training, but not this past week. Work just overwhelmed me and I fell off the wagon with not only my training, but my diet as well. But I am now back on track with my diet for the past few days and will do my first run in over a week tomorrow.

So in short. I'm back! The journey to Wildflower starts now.

Inspiration from Baron Pierre De Coubertin

2006-11-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

I was doing laps around the Veterans Memorial Park in Culver City, CA and came across a monument adorned with a plaque containing this quote:

"The most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
--Baron Pierre De Coubertin

After further research I found out that the quote is actually an excerpt of the Olympic Creed written by the Baron based on a speech of Bishop Ethelbert Talbot at a service for the Olympic Champions during the 1908 Olympic Games. The Baron was one of the key founders of the modern Olympic games. Los Angeles and nearby environs (such as Culver City) have many Olympic artifacts around town due to the fact that it is one of the few cities to have hosted the games twice. In fact my office building is located on Olympic Boulevard. I think the only other cities to have hosted the games twice are London and Athens. For more on the history of the Olympic games go here.

Relegated to the Garage

2006-11-01T17:29:00.000-08:00

When I first found out that I would be receiving a new CycleOps Fluid 2 bike trainer, I wanted to set it up in my living room so that I could ride my bike while watching DVDs. Biking on the trainer can get aweful boring and something to watch would certainly help. But now I realize that the living room is really not the right place (not that my wife would have stood for it anyways.) See, the living room isn't really my spot. It really isn't my wife's spot either, even though she decorated it to her specifications with a new leather couch and beautiful custom drapes. No, the living room is my daughter's. She has accumulated a broad array of accouterments and they all seem to end up in the living room. Basically the living room is her play area. I did not think it would be a good idea to put the trainer there because I don't want her fingers to get caught somewhere while she is having fun turning the wheels. So I put it down in the basement/garage.

There is a storage spot in the basement in front of where our cars park that I have basically converted to an office. I have a computer, bookshelves and a fridge for beer and wine. The only problem with it is that the ceiling is really low. I am six feet tall, and I have about a half an inch of clearance. In addition, right in the middle there is a large wooden support beam where I constantly hit my head.

Here is a photo of my setup. I had an old TV in the garage that has a distorted picture (everything in the top of the screen, like people's foreheads, are huge), but it will have to do. I'll get a cheap DVD player for $20 and be all set. Above it I have a fan to keep cool. On the left out of view is a large mirror, that I also had laying around. I can now use it to check my form and positioning. All in all, it is pretty sweet.

I was concerned that because of the low ceiling I would not have enough clearance, but actually I have enough room so long as I don't sit up. I guess that is just more incentive to stay aero.

In training news I ran 4 miles on Monday, swam 1500 meters Tuesday and today I biked for 32 miles today. I can tell that I have lost much of my biking fitness as my legs are very sore. Got to use that trainer!

Bike Fit

2006-10-31T14:25:00.000-08:00

So I have been playing around with my bike fit lately. I have a Trek 1220 from 1994. I have never really been that comfortable on it. I used to think that it was an issue of conditioning, but am learning that it just doesn't fit right.

When I bought my Trek I really knew nothing about bikes. I had two bikes as a child. The first on was a small single gear bike with a banana seat. I always felt pretty stupid in that bike because my older brother had a cool BMX bike, while mine had an embarrassing banana seat. Not only that, but it has these weird handlebars that consisted of an L shaped metal tube that fit into a bracket attached to the front fork. They would constantly get loose. I even crashed a few times because they would come off. My second bike was alot better. It was a french steel racing bike with 12 gears I think. I think it may have even had campy components too. In any case the top tube was too high, and I would hit myself in the crotch during dismount rather frequently. I also stored the bike outside (stupid kid) and so the bike would get rusty and the derailleurs were always out of alignment. It would cause me to drop the chain regularly. So my experience with bikes has not been good.

But back in 1996 when I was looking to do my first triathlon I picked up an issue of Triathlete magazine (I think it was April) and in the back it had an article on converting a road bike to a tri-bike by adding a new seat post and aero bars. I think the bike in the article was a Trek 1200 or 1220. I wish I still had that article. Anyways, I didn't have much money so I looked for a used road bike and came across an ad for a Trek 1220. I think it was the first bike I looked at. The fact that it was very similar to the bike in the Triathlete Magazine article influenced me and of course I was very interested. The owner lived in a trailer park and was incredibly thin. I suspected (but didn't ask) that he had some kind of disease and that was why he was selling his bike. The bike was relatively new and in great condition. The first thing I checked was the clearance between my legs, and I had a few inches. So it fit! I paid the man and road off in my new bike quite proud of myself.

But of course now I know better. After having it a while I first noticed that I couldn't get the seat high enough. No problem. I wanted to buy a new triathlon specific seat post anyways. I would just get a longer one. I found a nice Nitto 66 seat post and that is what I have been using all these years, but I now think that even it is too short. (In the photo below I think I have the height about right, but it is raised above the maximum level marked on the post.)

Part of the problem is that I have freakishly short legs. I am six feet tall, but only wear a 30 inch pant inseam. Normally a person my height would ride a 56cm or 58cm frame, but I measured my bike (seat tube center to center) and now know it is 50cm. Because on road bikes the top tube and the seat tube are proportional I have a really short top tube even though I have a relatively long torso. Fortunately on the smaller frames the Trek 1220's have proportionaly longer top tubes. Mine is 53cm, but it should probably be around 56cm or 58cm for a bike that fits me.

I put on some Profile Design aero bars, but as I have mentioned many times in this blog, I cannot hold an aero position for more than a few minutes. When I am in the aero bars I feel really compressed.

The pink line shows where I currently am. I moved the seat forward so I would not feel so compressed. But now the angle between my legs and torso is a little open. It should be around 90 degrees. Also the angle between my upper arm and torso is too tight. It also should be around 90 degrees. To get the proper position I think I should be where the green line is. That puts me quite a bit in front of the handlebars. I could put on a longer stem to extend the handle bars out farther, but not that far. The bike would have much too much weight over the front and the steering would be very unstable. I think I may be able to compromise with the position represented by the blue line. I would have to get a new stem and lower my handle bars, but it looks doable.

The other option is to just scratch the whole thing and try to get it back to a road bike position. I am not in a financial position to replace the bike right now, but I probably could get a more comfortable road position by getting a new seat post. Then I could just train in road position until I can eventually afford another bike, hopefully a tri-bike. Decisions, decisions.

If anyone has any ideas. . . now is the time.

My New Fluid Squared CycleOps Trainer

2006-10-29T20:51:00.000-08:00

I was excited to find my new CycleOps Fluid 2 trainer in the mail and thought I would give you some photos of me setting it up. My 2.5 year old daughter was my trusty assistant.

First off, I noticed that the box was pretty light-weight. I was surprised. I have discovered that CycleOps is very efficient in their design. Everything is very solid, but it doesn't weight very much at all. In the box was the frame with foldout legs, the resistance unit, some hardware and a CTS Time Trial DVD. My daughter wanted to pop that DVD in the player right away. She was pretty disappointed to find Chris Carmichael instead of Elmo, and gave it an overall review of "boring," but she still didn't want to turn it off. The TV is just that addictive.

The fist step in putting the trainer together is to place a pin in the welded tube of the frame. This pin will be used to tension the resistance unit.

The next step is to install a bolt to attach the resistance unit to frame. It is just one simple bolt. The head of the bolt recesses nicely in to the frame bracket to make it really easy to install.

It is so easy to install that I had my daughter do it!

The next step is to connect the pin on the frame to the resistance unit.

The bike is then placed on the frame. I found that the easiest way to do this was to first extend the right side, controleld by a lever, and place the right side of the rear wheel in it first.

Then tighten the left side. Remove the bike. Extend the left side a few more turns. Put the bike back on and then when the lever is extended it will make a nice tight fit.

The final step is to tighten the yellow handle on the resistance unit by rotating it until the resistance unit makes contact with the wheel.

When the wheel makes contact you lock the resistance unit in place by lifting the handle up.

I propped up the front wheel to make the bike level and gave it whirl. My daughter thought it was really cool.

The fluid in the resistance unit make progressively more resistance as the unit turns faster, so to increase the resistance all you have to do is adjust your gearing to get your wheels to turn faster relative to your crank speed. It is actually just like pedaling on flat terrain. If you want more resistance you just put the bike into a higher gear. Really cool.

My next step is to work on my bike fit. I still have hard time staying in the aerobars for more than a few minutes. I'm not sure why, but with the trainer it is really easy to change things around and try out new configurations while looking in a mirror or taking a photo. Goal number one for the pre-season is get aero!

PS: If anyone has an opinion on my bike position, speak now. I could use the input.

Ironman World Championships

2006-10-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

Now on to a different type of championship. Ironman. The big one. This is the one, the only -- Kona. Ironman, what many consider to be the pinnacle of Triathlon started in 1981 on the island of Kona with a handful of athletes doing what seeming simply crazy. Swim 2.4 miles in the ocean, cycle 112 miles along the windy and blistering hot hills, and then finish with a 26.2 mile run. The Ironman has since become an incredible icon in the world of endurance sports and now many thousands of athletes dream of their chance to go to Kona. Because of the huge demand, one can only race at Kona of one qualifies at another Ironman race or wins a precious lottery spot. The big event takes place this weekend!

I have mentioned before that I am a member of the Los Angeles Tri Club, the largest triathlon club in the US. You would expect that among the ranks of such a large club, would be quite a few athletes going to Kona, and you would be right. This year the club is sending an astounding eleven members to Kona. Seven members have qualified and four lucky souls received lottery spots.

Today I wanted to mention one of these athletes, whom I have had the pleasure of training with -- Holger Beckmann, bib number 856. This will not be the first trip to Kona for Holger. You can read about Holger's first journey to Kona here. Holger is an incredible force, and I have heard other club members literally lament that Holger will always be in his age group.

But more than just an incredible athlete, Holger is a great person. He is a regular at the LA Tri Club's "Gladstone Swim" in Pacific Palisades on Fridays. We usually swim in the ocean for just over a mile and then head up to the hills for a trail run, a great time had by all. Here I am, a total newbie who can barely run at all, and he is always encouraging and supportive with a kind word and good advice. He is very friendly and incredibly enthusiastic about the sport of triathlon. Fortunately the LA Tri Club is filled with such great people and why I love being a part of it.

Go Holger!

You can follow Holger and the other participants at Kona on race day at Ironman Live.

On a training note, I did a treadmill run for 50 minutes and 4.2 miles.

More on National Club Championships

2006-10-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, I promise this is my last post on the National Club Championships. I just wanted to point out this article on the event from Inside Triathlon. As you can see, the LA Tri Club got plenty of members to come. LA Tri Club members also placed well in the rankings, taking some of the top overall spots. Why did the LA Tri Club take second place? Because you will note that points are given for the distance each member has to travel to the event. Because, CMC members traveled all the way from Missouri they got extra points for just showing up.

That's fair, considering the cost of getting all your members across the country along with all the bike equipment. But just getting people to Las Vegas from Los Angeles is quite a task too, considering that every member needs a bike transport, a plane ticket and a place to stay. you add all that up and it is not much less costly that coming out from Missouri. How did CMC do it? They apparently raised over $32,000 to get their members to Nationals.

Next year Nationals will be in St. Louis in CMC's home turf. I'd say this is a great opportunity for the LA Tri Club because for every member we get to Nationals next year we will get extra points for the distance we have to travel. Come on LA, we can do it!

On a training note, today was my first day back in the pools for a few weeks. I did 1500 meters in about 35 minutes. 400m warm-up, 4x150m drills (3 stroke skate, fist swim then crawl 50m each), 4x100m descents, 2x50m sprints. Felt really good, and to top it off the gym pool wasn't even crowded. I hope this is what I can look forward to all winter.

Columbia Multisport takes the Title

2006-10-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Well, my tri club did not take the Division I National USAT Club Championship after all. That honor goes to Columbia Multisport, for the third time! We actually had a great of advantage of a numerically much larger club and we are not to far from the event in Las Vegas, but we just could not get all our members to the event. I am a perfect example. Another 130 club members did the Hermosa Beach Tri, so that was another hurddle for us. My hat is off to Columbia who got over a hundred participants out to Las Vegas all the way from Missuori, and by all accounts they are a great bunch of people. We'll see about next year!

I woke up too late to swim this morning, so instead I went for a bike ride to the Rose Bowl. This was my first bike ride in a month, and I could really feel the loss of fitness. I decided to be really relaxed and not worry about my heart rate or speed and just have fun. It was really too cold to be "fun." I was able to find my arm warmers that I had lost, but I didn't have anything to cover my legs, so I started to lose feeling in my knees halfway through the ride.

No, I'm not dead!

2006-10-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Today is my first day back training. I hadn't scheduled a break from training, but I got one anyways. I have been sick for the past few weeks, one thing right after another. The last one was really bad. My daughter had it, and we had to take her to either the doctor's office, urgent care or the emergency room for four days in a row. She was a trouper though. She didn't complain or cry. I was very impressed, and I know how bad it was because I came down with it a few days later. I was laid up in bed for five days, and basically couldn't eat anything for three days straight. I lost 10 pounds in those three days alone.

I finally feel normal again. This morning I went for an easy run on the treadmill for 40 minutes and 3.5 miles. Tommorrow I can try swimming.

In other news, my tri-club had a really good shot at the Division One USAT National Club Championships this year held yesterday just outside of Las Vegas. I was really bummed that I couldn't sign up, but I would not have been in any condition to race in any case. I have been waiting to hear how we did, and I still haven't heard. I can't take it any longer! Arggh!

Sponsorship from Cycleops!

2006-10-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

I am excited to announce that that I am the lucky recipient of a partial sponsorship from Cycleops Power through Team Race Athlete. This is very exciting for me! I will be receiving an awesome bike trainer called the CycleOps Fluid Squared. I can really use it, since winter is coming and it gets dark earlier. Now I will be able to train at night even after those long days at the office. Now I only have to convince my wife to let me keep it in the living room!

Thanks Cycleops and Race Athlete, you're awesome!

More great sponsorships will be selected over the coming weeks. Two very lucky people will be picked for full "race like a pro" sponsorships which include an incredible array of gear, including a BMC bike, Zipp race wheels, Cycleops Power tap, 2XU wetsuit and much more. For more information check out Race Athlete.com and sign up.

Got an Ich

2006-10-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have had my hands full lately. I have been recovering from the flu, but that hasn't slowed me down, I still have had a full plate, and I don't mean training. Work has been busy, I had a wedding to attend in Santa Barbara over the weekend, it was my mother-in-law's birthday, and we had relatives visiting from overseas. That's all done now, but there is still no rest for me. Sunday night my two year old daughter started throwing up, and my wife and I were up all night. She couldn't hold anything down all day, so I stayed home with her and tried to keep her as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. She was starting to look better last night, so hope she can eat something today.

Now that I am recovering, and can finally breath I have this increadible urge to get back to training. No luck today, because I don't have my gym bag with me. I was just too exhausted from going without sleep. But I went to bed early last night, and I should be able to do something tomorrow. That's going to feel awesome!

Flu

2006-09-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

I have the flu again. Some horrible strain has been going around, and it seems it is not just my family. I didn't have a fever or even feel that bad really, but you get a dry throaght, stuffiness, then a really, really bad cough. I can hear horrible hacking coughs in the hallways at the office. I swear it wasn't me that got everyone sick!

So no training till my lungs can clear all this fluid.

Weight Loss Tips

2006-09-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

I was recently invited to submit my weight-loss story to a new internet site called Weight Loss Tips. You can check out an interview with me one their site here. After looking at many of the stories on the site I don't find my weight loss all that remarkable, kind of slow actually. But like I have said all along, triathlon was not really about weight loss. It was about challenging myself to do something beyond my comfort zone and about changing my lifestyle. The weight loss was just a very happy result.

And I'm not done. I figure I'm only half-way there. I have been working on my plan for next season, and I'll post it when I figure it out.

Sorry, still no Malibu race report. I'll get to it soon. I promise!

It's Getting Harder

2006-09-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry, still no Malibu race report yet. I'm still waiting for some photos!

I have been pretty wiped-out since Sunday. I guess it took more out of me than I thought. More on that in a bit, but first I have to say that I don't consider my triathlon adventure over, not by a long shot. I am still considering whether I should do another local triathlon, or just wrap up the season and start planning for next year. I guess this is rather silly, but the main motivation for doing another this season is so that I will have done three USAT events. When you do three in one year you get a national ranking. Now, I have to admit that I am a little embarassed to admit this since I think it is rather shallow. But for some reason I think it is cool to have a national ranking, even if I am number one million!

But I don't think that I have the time to improve much more this season, and if I start now I can start working on a solid base for next year. For some reason the idea of building this base fitness sounds really appealing to me right now. I don't have next season mapped out, but I do have some ideas of what I want to work on over the winter. Mostly I think I need to work on my running. My swimming and biking both need a bunch of work too, but I think there is the most room for gain in my run, so I think that should be my focus. Secondly I should take the opportunity to throw in some exercise that I don't really have time for in the regular season such as weight training.

So that is my general plan. Either way I am not taking any significant time off. I ended up taking a week off after Santa Barbara and that was just too long. I took Monday off and was back training on Tuesday.

Actually an embarassing thing happened on Tuesday. I forgot my dress shoes. It would have taken me a few hours to go back home and get them, and I really wanted to do my swim workout, so I talked myself into the idea of going to a store and buying a pair after my workout. But after my workout I thought about it more, and the more I thought about it, the more I didn't like that idea. I am rather particular about what I wear, and I didn't want to have to spend my hard earned money on a pair of lousy shoes that I don't love. So I just wore my running shoes to the office. I was embarassed as my Asics really don't go with my pinstripe suit very well, but figured I would just hide in my office most of the day and perhaps no one would notice.

Uh -- No. The first thing that happens when I get in is that I get an e-mail from the law partner in charge of my department to come into his office for an assignment. Ugh. Well, he didn't say anything, and I know he is a runner, so perhaps he understands. We talked a bit about my doing triathlons and running, so I guess it was ok. Just a bit embarassing.

After work I did a spin class. I haven't done one of these in a while because there really is no substitute for getting on your bike, but I have been having to work later and the sun has been going down later so I figureed it would have to do. One thing I noticed is that my heart rate was relatively low, around 130-140 range (70-75%), but I was still really tired. I was ok with that because this is really a recovery week, and it is very natural for your heart rate to be lower when biking compared to running.

But then this morning I went for a treadmill run, and I had basically the same senario. My heart rate was only around 130-140, but I would get really tired. I had to start walking around 30 minutes, when I normally run for at least an hour. I guess I am just still recovering from Malibu and shouldn't worry too much about it. I'm just concerned that it is flagging motivation. A weak spirit concerns me much more than a weak body.

Malibu Rocked

2006-09-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to post a full race report yet, but I did want to post my race results from the Nautica Malibu Triathlon. I had a great time. I was worried because I have been so lax with training lately. I also had a bad cramp in my left calf when I went for an ocean swim on Friday. I was still tight and giving me problems on race day, so I was worried about that as well. But it didn't slow me down, I did much better than I thought I would. The event is a half mile swim, 18 mile bike and 4 mile run. My total time was two hours, seven minutes. I loved the bike course, but most of all I was really surprised with my run time. If the run was really four miles then I was doing 10.14 minute miles. For me, that is smokin'!

DietPower Update

2006-09-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

I has been a bit anticlimactic after my first triathlon. I'm not sure why but my enthusiasm has gone way down. I was actually expecting this. Is has been around six months since I started this journey, and I have often had difficulty in sustaining interest in any project for over six months. I have been frequently thinking of all the things that I have given up to participate in this sport, which does produce a bit of longing for the gold old days of sleeping in and having relaxing weekends.

this troubling new attitude, in combination with recent family issues and work issues I just haven't had the focus on training that I need. The Nautica Malibu tri is less than two weeks away which puts me right in the end of what should be my peak training period. Instead I went 6 days last week without any training at all. The week before that was really light, and the week before that was another 6 days straight with nearly no training. I could definitely feel the effects of the lack of training on the Santa Barbara Tri. While I did better than I expected I would, I could have done much better. Now I am looking at Malibu and just don't seem ready. The course apparently has a very hilly bike segment which really scares me. I haven't trained much on hills. I assumed the course would be pretty flat since the tri is near the ocean. I guess that will teach me.

So where is the bright side? While I am feeling a bit down on triathlon right now, I have to admit that it has changed my life. I feel much better. I look much better. My daughter was sick over the weekend and I didn't catch it! I have met some great people and have really enjoyed the time spent outdoors. I remind myself of this as much as I can.

Today, I wanted to check in on my weight loss progress. I have been using the DietPower weight and nutrition manager as a integral part of my training and I give it a lot of credit with my weight loss. I could train several hours a day and still not lose body fat if you don't pay attention to nutritional inputs. DietPower gives my tools to evaluate where I am in regards to water intake, calories, fat, sodium, etc. It doesn't do all the work for me. I still have to not eat the double cheeseburgers (or eat less of them), but without its guidance I don't think I would have gotten this far.

Here is a screenshot of my weight history. You can see a bump up a few months ago where I changed blood pressure medication. I got through that and now I am nearly back on track.

You can see that I have a ways to go. According to the chart I have lost 25.5 lbs, but if you count the fact that I was 280 lbs just late last year, I have lost 43.5 lbs! My goal is to lose another 46 pounds, which puts me at nearly the halfway point.

One of the effects of lagging training motivation is the difficulty in keeping to my nutritional plan. I find that under times of stress I will binge eat. You can see from next screenshot of my calorie history. There are some serious red spikes which is where I went through a period of over eating. You'll notice that often these times also show low training levels (dark purple lines along the bottom).

I had a spike yesterday. Ugh! I missed my spinning class and ate an extra 1000 calories. Not a good combo. Today has been much better. I still have over 700 calories left to eat and I am not hungry. Into the bank they go.

The next two weeks are critical. I need to kick up the training this week and next week do a reasonable taper, and I'll be ok.

I AM A TRIATHLETE!

2006-08-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

Santa Barbara Race Report

I did my first triathlon, and I had a blast. I think my adrenaline was pumping for at least an hour after finishing the race. It was hard to relax actually because I was just so pumped up. My wife valiantly fought her way around the course to take photos. In fact, I think her legs were more sore than mine. Thanks, Honey!

The race was up in Santa Barbara, about 2.5 hours north from where I live. Because I would have to be at the race site at around six in the morning, I decided to get a hotel, and because all the hotels required a two night minimum stay, we made a vacation weekend out of it. I was signed up for the sprint on Sunday, but there was a long course race on Saturday, so I looked forward to seeing that as well. I loaded up the car and secured my bike on my bike rack. We had to be really careful what we brought since my car does not have a lot of space, be we made it work.

Friday night we had dinner with a group from the LA Tri Club. They were all doing the long course the following day and were all in carbo-loading mode. Of course I just had to have the big bowl of pasta!

Saturday we watched the long course event and cheered on fellow LA Tri Clubbers. Two of the guys I swim with on Fridays in the Pacific Palisades won their divisions, so that was really cool. I was really surprised how long some of the racers took in transitions. Some would change out of their swimsuits or slather on sunscreen. Hello! This is a race. Race in tri-shorts, and put your sunscreen on before the swim. I was just surprised that so many participants did not seem to have very quick transitions in a race that probably does not attract many first timers. The long course is nearly half ironman in length, which is just too long for first timers.

That night I was very excited, so I didn’t sleep very well. I got up extra early and rode my bike down to the race site and arrived at 5:30am. It was dark and only a couple of other people were there yet. I set up all my gear and got numbered and then put my wetsuit on.

I debated for a long time whether I should even use my wetsuit. The water was cold, but not so cold that I couldn’t tolerate the short 500 yard swim. There also would not be any speed advantage to wearing the wetsuit, since any gain would be lost in the time it takes to take the suit off in transition. I was primarily concerned that my arms would get tired since the suit is rather tight in the shoulders, and I had difficulty getting the suit off quickly in the past. Ultimately I decided to wear it after all because I figured my time should not be a priority since I would be in the back of the pack anyways, and it would give me more practice in taking my suit off during race conditions.

For the start we lined up on the beach between two towers of balloons. I was in the first wave with the young, fast guys. I stayed to the back and to the left since we would be turning right at the buoy and I didn’t want to get crushed. Turns out that it happened anyways. After turning past the first buoy I was flanked on either side by swimmers going about the same speed as me. But as we went along the guy on my left kept moving right and the guy on my right kept moving left. I kept getting squashed between them. I mean really! It is a big ocean people! Here we were just three swimmers, and these two have to keep getting in my way. I just responded by trying to out swim them and give no quarter. The guy on my right pulled ahead after rounding the last buoy and the guy on my right overshot the last buoy and ended off course.

I think coming up out of the water was probably the hardest part of the triathlon. Coming out of the water, you feel a bit dizzy and weak, but it was not that bad. I credit my frequent open water swims with helping with that. What is hard is the fact that you have to run up a hill of sand, while at the same time taking your wetsuit off my upper body. It feels like you are just inching up the beach, but my heart rate monitor was showing my heart rate going sky high! I think my heart rate monitor captured a rate of 184 beats per minute. I didn’t even know that my heart rate went up that high!

My swim time for 500 yards (and running up the beach) was 13 minutes and 31 seconds, which was 173rd out of 294 participants (59 percentile).

By the time I made it to the transition area I was out of breath and felt really weak. Trying to get my wetsuit fully off was difficult because my legs felt too tired to hold up my body weight, and my arms were shaking and felt too tired to get the tight rubber wetsuit off of my wet legs. I thought to myself that I was really in trouble because the race had just started and I was so weak. But I just did my best and eventually got it done. next up was putting on my bike shoes and helmet. Getting my socks on was also difficult because I was trying to stand on one leg and my balance was off one. It seemed that T1 took a long time, but it wasn’t too bad. Total time was 2 minutes and 32 seconds.

I ran up to the street guiding my bike, and I was very fortunate that I had put the pontoons on my SPD cleats. These are just rubber bumpers on the side of the cleats that allow you to walk in the bike shoes. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but you really have to run quite a ways with the bike and without the pontoons I would likely slip. Unfortunately the pontoons make it difficult to engage the cleats into my pedals. I have Ultegra SPD pedals, which are designed specifically for the pontoons, but they still are a little tricky to engage. So when I first got on the bike I had difficulty engaging the right pedal. I had to pedal with only my left leg and was so focused on my right pedal that I almost crashed into a bike on the right shoulder of the road. Eventually I got it to engage solidly, and I was off.

I was breathing so heavily that my sunglasses kept fogging up, and I was going east into the sun so I couldn’t see anything and had to eventually hold my sunglasses as I pedaled. I passed a few people, but then it seemed like everyone was passing me. It made me feel good when a guy in a really tricked out tri bike would pass me because I figured, well, he must be an experienced triathlte and at least I beat him in the swim. I thought that until the 50 and 60 year old guys started to pass me. I could tell everyone's ages, because it was written in marker on everyone's calves. These older guys were in a later wave, and I had a 12 minute lead on them! Oh well. There was one guy who was obviously a newbie like me, and he was in my age group. It seemed like we kept passing each other. That was fun.

On the way back there was a short but steep hill. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but I did have to shift down to my granny gear. At the top of the hill I was just wiped. I was literally cheering myself on out loud. I stammered, “Paul, get it in gear! Come on! go! …” Luckily there was a down-hill and I love down-hills. Time to pass a bunch of people.

I was a pack up other riders as we came into the transition area again. There was one guy ahead of me and few behind me. I unclipped the right foot and placed it on the ground, but I couldn’t get the left foot unclipped. Anticipating unclipping my left foot, I had already began to shift my weight to the left. . . so I just feel right over. I almost took out the guy in front of me as well. Luckily, my wife was right there to document the embarrassing event.

Fortunately I was not hurt. I just bruised my hand and my thigh. I could hear people, particularly my wife, call out, “It’s ok. Just keep going!” So that is what I did. I didn’t look around. I just jumped up and ran into the transition area.

Total time for the bike portion was 22 minutes and 6 seconds. That was 182nd out of 294 participants (62 percentile).

T2 was lightning fast. I used lock laces on my shoes, so it was just a matter of taking my helmet and biking shoes off and putting my visor, race belt and running shoes on. Oh, and a quick swig of water. Total time was 1 minute and 23 seconds.

My heart rate was under control on the run, but I really felt tired. I just kept telling myself that I would let myself slow down, but not stop or walk. After the first half mile I was feeling better and tried to push up the pace. I just had to keep a consistent pace. There were some really fast woman who were passing me like I was standing still, but mostly I was back with the older guys. The run was a short two mile. On the way back I had to run through the transition area to get to the finish line, and I started to sprint as I entered the transition area. That was probably too soon, because the transition area was really long. I was dying as I approached the finish line and almost had to stop, but I just could not bear to stop so close. I finally crossed the finish line and was just elated. I was on top of the world!

Total run time for two miles was 21 minutes and 43 seconds, which was 241st out of 294 (82 percentile! Ugh, I really need to work on that run. But at least I wasn’t last!) Overall, I finished in 1 hour, 1 minute and 14 seconds which was 197th (67 percentile) and 24th out of 28 racers of my age group. That was actually better than I expected. My goal for this race was just to finish, but I did do a calculation of how long I thought it might take for me to finish, and I figured an hour would be a really great time for me. Well, I just about did it.

Here is the heart rate chart of the race. You can see that my rate during the swim was relatively low, but it went really high out of the water. My rate was mostly under control in the bike but would go crazy on the hills. I finally got it under control in the run, where it was nice and flat.

Looking Forward to My First Race

2006-08-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

My first race is this Sunday. I am not nervous about it at all, at least not finishing. I'll probably do something stupid like run out of T2 with my bike helmet on, but I can deal with that. My goal is just to finish, and I am already expecting to be last place. The race is really short and thus really fast. I have worked hard for the last six months on endurance, and while my speed has increased, I am still really slow. That's ok. This race is just about finishing and enjoying the experience. I have two more triathlons next month and those are the ones that will be more difficult, and the ones that I have essentially been tailoring my training towards.

I haven't done much of any training for the last week. It seems that things just come up and cause me to miss training for long stretches of time. This time, it was the wedding of a good friend of mine. I was the best man, so between preparing for the event and my work I just didn't have time to focus to train. And even now that I am back I haven't get back into training because I am still recovering from the trip. I'll probably get out and do an ocean swim tomorrow. It's something I really need to do, because I need to break in my new wetsuit if I am going to using it in the race this weekend. It is an Xterra Vortex wetsuit. I tried it out once, and it felt pretty good, but it still is pretty tight around the shoulders. Some fellow triclubbers gave me some tips for putting on so that it is more flexible around the shoulders, and I am looking forward to trying them out.

Week 24 Progress Report

2006-08-01T16:10:00.000-07:00

We just passed a big milestone folks! We have now had over 1000 visitors. Thanks to everyone for your support and advice. Blogging has been an incredible experience and has been an incredible source of motivation. So thanks!

This past was really great. I ended the week really tired and sore, so I must have done something right. Here's the breakdown.

Monday: Rest Day -- I didn't really need rest, but I had some business to attend to and just did not have the time to train. I am just thankful that this does not happen that often.
Tuesday: Missed my Technique Tuesdays workout in Culver City, but I was able to fit in a swim at my local gym in the AM (35 minutes - felt really good) and a PM Spin class. Way to recover!
Wednesday: Missed my ocean swim (seeing a pattern here?!), but I was able to get in an awesome run along the ocean. The good -- 7 miles in 93 minutes, the bad -- first experience with chaffing. Ouch! I have wounds on my chest, shoulders and underarms. I guess my triskin is too tight, so I have more incentive to loss weight. In the meantime, I will try some lube.
Thursday: Did 30 miles on my bike, up to the Rose Bowl and back. I was so nice to get back on the bike. Yes, my actual bike and not a spin class. I was even feeling fast.
Friday: Ocean swim for just short of a mile. More chaffing on my shoulders and neck from my triskin because I forgot the lube. I followed the swim with a trail run. It's a slow run, but a great workout for my legs.
Saturday: A well deserved rest day. I could barely walk, because my calves were so sore from the trail run. It was also a good time to rest because I wanted to have a long bike ride the following day.
Sunday: 50 miles in three hours on the bike, a new personal record both in distance and speed. I didn't even get monkey butt, just really sore legs. My HRM says I burned 2500 calories! Is that even possible?

My weight is finally going down again. I think this is a result of having better controlling my intake of nutrition and bumping up my activity level this week. I am now at 236.5 pounds (down from 264) and am at 28 percent body fat (down from 39 percent). That is 9.3 pounds of lean gained and 36.8 pounds of fat lost.

Now let's do it all over again!

Longer and Longer

2006-07-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

I swam with the LA Tri Club this morning in Pacific Palisades. We swam across the cove in front of Gladstone's restaurant. I was told the total distance is about 1.3 miles, but I only made it three quarters of the way before I saw everyone heading back so I think that I did just shy of a mile.

The conditions were pretty spectacular. The water was mostly warm with a few cold currents. There were a couple of dolphins that seemed to be enjoying themselves, and a seal came and checked me out while I was swimming. I noticed some dark movement on my right and thought it was another swimmer, so I lifted my head up to check it out. The seal was literally about four feet from me. He just peaked his head out of the water for a bit to check me out and then was off. I was startled at first, because I didn't expect it, but that was pretty cool.

After the swim we did a trail run. My legs were still sore from the long run on Wednesday and the bike ride on Thursday so I really had to push myself up the steep hills, and I had to slow down to a hike several times. The view at the top of the hill was incredible. I have to bring my camera one of these days.

I planned to go about 4.5 miles, so I turned around at 2.25 miles. But on the way back I missed one of the trail heads and basically got lost. I had to retrace my steps back up a steep fire road. That added another half a mile, so I did a total of 5 miles. I guess there is nothing like getting lost to add on the mileage.

So I had a longer swim and a longer run. Pretty intense. Tomorrow: Rest!

Back on the Bike

2006-07-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

This morning I finally got a good bike ride in. It is about time. I have not ridden my bike since July 9th. I have been able to do a few spin classes, but that just is not the same.

I have figured that about 100 miles per week is a good goal for me and I have been averaging about 13-16 mph depending on how much climbing I am doing, so that would be about 7 hours of riding per week. If I spread that over three rides, I figured I would two shorter rides during the week at about 30 miles each and then a longer 40+ mile ride on the weekend. So today I had the goal of doing 30 miles in about two hours. I figured a trip up to the Rose Bowl and a few laps would do it.

It was just before 6:00am when I left the house. The sun wasn't up yet, so it was still a little dark out, so I was extra careful about cars and had all my lights on.

One of my favorite sites along the way is when I go under the Arroyo Bridge in Pasadena. You can see the beautiful arches in the photo.

Through the arch you can make out the old Hotel Vista de Arroyo, which is currently the Southern California home of the Nineth Circuit Court of Appeals. I always imagine what it must be like to work there as I ride by.

I did six laps around the Rose Bowl of which the last one was pretty painful. The thing is I never let myself recover on the downhills. I actually work harder. The grade is not that steep, but it is enough that on the downhills I move into my highest gear, lower down into my aero bars or drops and just pump the pedals as fast and as hard as I can, usually getting up to 27-30 mph. My heart rate goes through the roof, but it is just a blast. I can understand why cycling can be so addiciting, when you can have thrills like that. Then I have to go up again, which is not as fun, but I was able to leave it in the big ring today, which made it extra tough, but it hurt in a good way.

The best part is that I made my goal and in good time. I did a total of 30.5 miles, ascending 1040 feet, in two hours and seven minutes. According to my HRM I burned 1573 calories!

Week 23 Progress Report

2006-07-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

Well, the bad news is that I did not get any training done over the weekend. This is especially troubling given the fact that I really needed a good long bike ride. I has just been too long since I have had a long spell on my bike.

On the other hand I did get to do some things this weekend that I just haven't done in a long time. I had the chance to watch a Sesame Street video with my daughter, and sleep in with my wife. These are truly special treats. Another thing that I haven't done in a long time is cook. I am usually too busy during the week to cook, but I try to cook at least a couple meals on the weekend. But the last few months I have been too busy to even go to the grocery store let alone whip up a meal. I have mostly resorted to sandwiches, canned soup, and take-out. Well, not this weekend. I used my barrel smoker to smoke 4 racks of spare ribs over hickory for 5 hours. My wife took the opportunity to invite a bunch of people, and we had a great big party. it was a lot of fun, but also meant that I spend the whole next day cleaning up. Oh well, it was worth it. But I made too much. I'm going to be eating ribs and bbq sauce all week.

Ok. So here is a breakdown of what I accomplished this week.
Monday: Rest Day
Tuesday: AM swim with LA Tri Club 1400 meters, PM Spin Class 1 hr. 20 min.
Wednesday: 20 min. run and Ocean Swim
Thursday: Rest Day
Friday: Swim 2000 meters
Saturday: Rest Day
Sunday: Rest Day

What can I say. It's pathetic. I got all the swimming done that I wanted, but only one short run and one spin class. Here is my plan for this week. Yes, today is a rest day too, due to the fact that I have a homeowners association meeting tonight. . .

Monday: Rest Day
Tuesday: AM swim with LA Tri Club, PM Spin Class
Wednesday: Run and Ocean Swim
Thursday: Bike Ride!
Friday: Swim/Run brick
Saturday: Long Bike
Sunday: Run

Now that is more like it. Here's to good intentions.

The results of my weighin this morning was 237.5 pounds and 32% body fat. I like the first number, but the second number is preposterous. I was reading 29% just a couple days ago. I'm going to chalk that one up to the fickleness of Tanita.

Inspiration from Thomas Jefferson

2006-07-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
--Thomas Jefferson

It has been a while since I have posted some inspiration so I thought a quote was due. Yesterday was an unplanned rest day. For some reason, when it comes to getting up early to go for a bike ride I have a hard time. Perhaps it's because I have been trying to go for longer rides, and it just becomes too daunting. Perhaps I should just scale back my expectations and then let myself go longer on the days that I feel good.

Up to this point in my training I have been doing spin classes during the week just because it is hard to schedule a 2-3 hour ride on my bike and still get to the office at a "reasonable" hour. But lately I have felt that the spin classes just aren't cutting it, and that I need more hours on my actual bike. To do this I just have to get up really early and just accept that I will be late for work. It's ok. I can be late for work once a week, right?

Today, I went to the Culver City Plunge again to work on my swimming. I have been told that my positioning in the water is ok, and I am rolling ok, but I need to work on my front quadrant swimming and on my hand positions. So that is what I did. I did a bunch of catch-up drills, some fist swimming, and focused my attention generally on my stroke. I am getting more comfortable with the timing clock and even did some intervals. Right now I am doing 100 meters in 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I hear that the cut off between a beginner and a good swimmer is around 2 minutes, so that is what I am working toward. Forty seconds is alot to shave off.

Total distance: 2000 meters

Tomorrow, I hope to get a 7.5 mile run in, and on Sunday, it is back on the bike.

Laps in the Ocean?

2006-07-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

Today I tried the "Ocean Speed Circuit" with the LA Tri Club. Basically it involves starting at point A on the beach, swimming out to a buoy, turning around and swimming to the beach at point B and then running on the beach to back to point A. It is pretty popular with at least 50 people braving the waves.

I got to the beach a little early, so I decided to go for a jog. I had 20 minutes to kill, so I ran for ten minutes down to Venice Beach and then 10 minutes back. I tried to keep a nice tempo pace, and am happy to report that I did two miles in 20 minutes. That's 10 minute miles, folks! When I started training, I was doing 14 minute miles and just a couple months ago I was really happy with 12 minute miles. So I started out the day really happy.

Then I quickly had to head out to the beach to catch the other club members. Here is a photo of the group heading toward the water.

The waves were rather mild, but there were a few "big" ones to watch out for. Here we are, really getting into the thick of things.

The water was choppy, but I am learning to deal with that pretty well. What I really seem to have a problem with is sighting. I have a tendency to go left, probably because I am left handed and my left arm is stronger. I need to constantly correct my direction or will never make it to the buoy. Sighting, while coming back to the beach is easier because you can pick a building or tree or whatever and aim towards that object, but when you are going out you only have the buoy itself or other swimmers and these are often obscured by swells.

Here is a photo of me rounding the corner, ready for my second lap. This photo makes me cringe. But hey, I am out there doing it, and this photo proves it!

I did two laps. I probably had another one in me, but I had to feed the meter. Next time I will definitely do three laps.

Thanks to Liz Oakes for the photos.

Week 22 Progress Report

2006-07-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Week 22 was a full week, which I haven't had for a while. My only two disappointments are that I was too tired to do my weekend bike ride, and I let my nutrition get out of control on the weekend. Otherwise I would say that I did pretty well.

Monday: AM: 1 hour treadmill run, PM: Masters Session
Tuesday: Spin/Run Brick -- 45 minutes on the Spin bike followed by a 20 minute run.
Wednesday: Xterra Ocean 101 (practiced sighting and avoiding waves)
Thursday: 1.25 hours on a Spin bike
Friday: Swim/Run brick -- Ocean swim for an hour followed by a trail run for an hour.
Saturday: Run at the park for 30 minutes
Sunday: Rest day

Today I was 239 pounds and 30 percent body fat. My weight is coming down, but not as fast as I would like. That is mostly because I am simply eating too much. My goal is to eat 2400 calories plus whatever I am burning in training. That usually totals around 2800 to 3400 calories. But I am doing 3500 to 4000 calories. I will still lose weight eating that much, but very slowly.

So far this week has not started off well. I took another rest day on Monday, even though I didn't train on Sunday. I could feel it too. I was moody and grumpy all day. But today I am going to make up for it. I had a great swim at the Culver City Plunge with the LA Tri Club. The pool is 50 meters, which is so much nicer that the 25 meter pool i Have been using at my gym. The longer length allows you to focus on drills and doing your own thing, without running into other people or stopping at the walls. Training with the club is also great because I think it makes me push myself more. I don't use my HRM when I swim so I need other gauges to measure my progress and to motivate myself. I also got some tips on how to improve my stroke, which is exactly what I needed. So I am feeling that there is some hope with my swim now, and will definately train with them again.

Today I did:
1 x 200 warmup
1 x 100
3 x 100 50 fist 50 swim
4 x 100 decending intervals
1 x 100 recover
1 x 100 critiqued swim
2 x 100 cool down
Total: 1400 meters

Tonight, I hit the gym for a spin class to burn off the Double Quarter Pounder I had yesterday (oh the shame!).

Ocean Swim and Hill Run

2006-07-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

Today I tried a real ocean swim with a wetsuit and all. I went with a group from the LA Tri Club, and was able to borrow a wetsuit from a generous club member. This was my first time with a wetsuit and I learned a few things, like how hard it can be to put one on. It was even more difficult to take it off and took what seemed like forever. I learned what chaffing from a wetsuit is (painful on my neck), and how a wetsuit can make your arms tired from being so tight around your shoulders. But I was warm and my legs floated very well.

I was also really humbled when I jumped into the ocean with the group and they just blasted away, leaving me far behind. I figured I was slow, but now I have a greater appreciation of just how slow. I got some great practice with sighting as I seemed to go left for some reason. I think part of the problem was that as swells passed me they would tend to turn me perpendicular to them. So I had to correct for this constantly. I went about half way and saw the main group coming back, so I figured I should turn around. Everyone passed me on the way back, and then I headed for the beach. Timing the waves was a bit tricky, but I managed to not get pounded.

After the swim a smaller group went for a short run up the Los Liones trial, a quick jog from the beach. The trail goes straight up into the hills so I had a hard time keeping my heart rate down, but it was fun to try trail running. It is a bit beyond my abilities, but it is always good to streach yourself. I ran for 4 miles and it took me just over an hour.

I had a great time, but I'm not sure I would do it again. The traffic coming back was brutal. It took about two hours to drive the 11.5 miles to my office. I could run faster than that, and I am a slow runner. Sometimes LA sucks!

Bigger Quads, Smaller Waist

2006-07-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

I went for an early spin class today, but the instructor never showed. That was probably for the best because I did not feel at all uncomfortable doing my own pace and my own distance. I have had some pretty intense training this week, and I know the rule of thumb is no more than five sessions of training that exceed 85% percent of your heart rate max per week, so I thought I would do long and moderate today. Of course, going long on a spin bike is just mind numbingly boring so I had to get off at and hour and a quarter, but all in all it was still a good solid session.

One thing I noticed is that my quads are getting huge. I have always had large upper legs, but they are starting to look like biker legs. Other parts of me are getting smaller. I still have a large gut, but when I press down on my stomach I can feel the hard abs underneath. That is kinda neat. I actually have something solid inside there! My arms are fairly lean and I can now wear a muscle shirt without embarrassment, and my neck has shrunk at least two inches.

This is all encouraging, but let's look at the numbers! At my peak I weighed roughly 280 lbs and according to the fickle Tanita I had 42% body fat. I did develop some better eating habits which helped to knock off a few pounds and I started on a diuretic for my blood pressure which knocked off another 7 pounds of water weight, pretty much instantly, which brought me down to 264 lbs and 39% body fat. That was were I was when I started this blog. Since then my weight has steadily dropped down to around 233 pounds. Three weeks ago I switched to a new blood pressure medication which made those seven pounds come back, so now I am at 240. I haven't been able to drop any more weight lately, which has been frustrating, but I think that the new blood pressure medication has actually helped with my training. Since it is not a diuretic I retain more water, my blood volume is up and I am better hydrated. I think this may be why I made a sudden .3 mph gain in my hour long runs.

But even though my weight has shot up, my fat percentage has dropped way down. The other day Tanita read 26%! Wow, that is just crazy talk. It seems slow close to breaking 20%. That would be incredible. But that reading seems to be a fluke. Normally I have been reading at around 29-30 percent, which is still great.

So what do all these numbers mean? At 280 pounds and 42% body fat I was at 162 pounds lean and 118 pounds fat. At 264 pounds and 39% body fat I was 161 pounds lean and 103 pounds fat. That is a 15 pound drop in fat, but with a one pound loss of lean. But now at 240 pounds and 30% body fat I am 168 pounds lean and 72 pounds fat. That is an incredible 46 pounds of fat lost, and a gain of 6 pounds lean mass. Probably most of that gain, if not all is water weight, because of the change in meds, but when you are losing that much weight and not losing muscle mass you know something is going right. So I may be plateauing at 240 pounds for now, but I know I am on the right path, and it can only get better so long as I keep it up.

First Ocean Swim

2006-07-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

Today was a blast. I attended a "introduction to the ocean" clinic hosted by the LA Tri Club and Acme Coaching. It took place at Ocean Park in Santa Monica. The conditions were rather mild, with small waves and warm water (around 70 degrees), perfect for an ocean swim.

Here is a photo of us as we proceed cautiously into the water. I'm the big flash of skin over on the right. I do not have a wetsuit, but I decided to go ahead and brave the elements anyways. Luckily it was not too bad. It was cold at first, but I quickly got used to the water. It also helped that I was pretty excited and was quickly thinking of other things like avoiding the waves and not how cold it was.

I was nver a surfer and never much of a beach person. It has probably been over twenty years since I have been in the ocean. I cannot remember ever actually swimming in the ocean, even as a kid, so this was all very new to me. I noticed that even without a wetsuit I was quite buoyant in the water, and I barely had to tread water at all. This is probably partly because of the salt content in the water. I was quickly reminded of the saltiness of seawater when I got hit with the first wave. But I admit my boyancy is also helped by the fact that I have a large belly and love handles to keep me afloat!

We did not do much actual swimming. Instead we first focused on how to approach the waves. We learned to time the waves and then dive under them when they crash. That was probably the most exciting part of the clinic. I did ok, but I did get hit pretty hard with one wave that almost removed my swimsuit!

After dealing with the waves we moved farther out and practiced sighting and swimming straight. The water was much less choppy than I was expecting, but then again the conditions were pretty mild, so it may not be very representative of what to expect in first Sprint in Santa Barbara. I did get a few mouthfulls of seawater, but nothing too bad.

After swimming around a bit we learned how to get back to the beach without getting crushed by the waves. It was the same basic deal of timing the waves and getting below them. We also practiced body surfing and letting the waves carry us in. That was great fun.

I think the clinic was a great experience. I never had a great fear of the ocean (more out of ignorance than anything else) but the strategies in dealing with the waves is something you might now learn on your own, or at least would have to the learn the hard way, so this was a great introduction.

The icing on the cake was that I won a raffle among the participants for $100 off an Xterra wetsuit. Seeing how I don't have a wetsuit and I have my first tri next month, it couldn't have come at a better time. Thanks to Xterra, Acme Coaching and the LA Tri CLub, you made my day!

Masters Swim

2006-07-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was pretty intense, which is exactly what I need at this stage in the game. My first tri is in August so I have just a few more weeks to kick the training up a notch and make some final performance gains. I did a treadmill run in the morning for an hour for a total distance of 5.3 miles. I wanted to go an hour and a quarter, but backed off from that because I need to leave something on the table for the masters swim in the afternoon.

The masters swim was at the Westwood Rec Center Pool which is not the greatest pool. It has plenty of lanes which is good, but they sure dump plenty of chlorine for an indoor pool. It started to make my skin burn after being in there for 45 minutes. Another thing that I noticed was that the pool is deep and that made following the lines on the bottom of the pool difficult. I keep bumping into the lane divider which was not fun.

This was my first masters swim ever, so I wasn't sure really what to expect. I have to say that something in me does respond rather well to having a coach. I think my natural tendency to try to please others gives me I higher level of motivation when the coach is giving out the routine and giving feedback. I worked really hard and was very tired, even though I did not do all that much meterage. I think I only completed around 1075 meters. At least 325 of that was with a kickboard without swim fins, so I was dying out there after having done the run in the morning. My kick has never been very good. I actually used to go backwards when I kicked with a kickboard. I am happy to report that now I actually do go forward, just very slowly.

Another good thing about the masters swim was that someone finally explained to me what some of the timing mumbo jumbo means. Now I kinda know what they are talking about and can read the clock. This is particularly important for me because I never had a way to time myself before, because I didn't really know how to use the clock.

All this being said, I'm not sure I will be going back. It is great to have someone give you a routine and to have the pacing of the other swimmers, but what I really need is some help with my technique. The coach didn't give any instruction at all on technique. Joining the masters club would be around 65 bucks a month, and I doubt I would be able to go more than twice a week. When you break that down to a per session rate it is expensive, especially when I am already paying for a gym membership (with a perfectly good pool), bike parts, etc. I really want to get a new bike next year, and 65 bucks a month for a year would really help towards a new bike. So I'm still trying to figure out what other options are out there.

I was pretty tired this morning, but still pulled though. I did a Spin/Run brick with 50 minutes on the spin bike with lots of hills and climbing and then followed it with a 30 minute run for 2.4 miles. I was soaking wet and oh so tired, but in a good way.

Week 21 Progress Update

2006-07-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

I lost a few weeks in there that will never make it to the blog. Things have just been too crazy. But I'm looking forward now and will put out there what I can. It has been a struggle to keep up the training lately. There always seems to be something that comes out of the woodwork to keep me from training. I think it also appears that as I become more experienced, my requirements for training grow. I want to run outside and not on a treadmill. I don't want to swim in the middle of the day, when I will get burned. I won't ride my bike at night where I risk getting hit by cars. The list goes on and on. These all add up to make getting the time in even more difficult. Sometimes you just have to let go.

So the bottom line is I am not where I want to be. Psychologically sometimes this is hard to take. I am not a natural athlete, I have to make myself go out there and do it. Because it does not come naturally to me, I have this constant voice in the back of my head that gets on my case when I'm not training. It's probably a good thing, but when I can't train, for whatever reason, it also causes me a lot of distress. I become grumpy and irritable. It's probably too much. There needs to be a balance between training and the rest of my life, but when I try to relax I usally will relax too much, because my natural tendency is to go sit on the couch and watch the boob tube. So I'm fighting my natural tendencies and trying to instill in myself some new habits, and yet at the same time not go overboard. This is really hard. I'm more of an overboard type of guy.

Over the Independence Day holiday, I went up to San Jose to visit with my parents, brothers and their families. It was a good trip, but I did not get done anywhere near the amount of training that I wanted. From Friday the thirtieth to Tuesday the fourth I only trained twice.

I had a really good run on Saturday the July first. I ran from my parents house to Vasona Park and back for a total of 6 miles, and I did it in just over an hour (1:06) which is really fast for me. I was encouraged to see a bunch of runners out there and other triathletes. It feels good to get out there early in the morning and see the other sloggers out there with you.

On the Fourth I had a pool swim for around 40 minutes. I lost track of the number of laps (again!) so I have no idea of how I was doing. Part of the problem was that I was annoyed the whole time because some teenagers kept hanging on the lane dividers and strolling in and out between the lanes without any courtesy to the lap swimmers. The sun was also really hot and I was concerned about getting sunburned. I did apply some sunscreen, but I have a distrust of sunscreens after being in a pool for any length of time. I didn't want to get burned so I bailed early.

On the Wednesday the fifth I tried to get back on track with my training. I did a spin/run brick with 45 minutes on the spin bike and 30 minutes on the treadmill. I seem to be getting fast (ok, relatively speaking!) on the run which is encouraging. I don't have any problem keeping a 11 minute mile pace anymore.

Thursday and Friday were a bust. I had grand plans to ramp up the training, but just could not crawl out of bed early enough. I guess that I just had not recovered from the weekend of very little sleep.

Saturday I tried to get on my bike, but turns out I had a flat front tire. I have been very lucky so far and have never had a flat tire before. Yeah, yeah, I'm one of those guys who are totally unprepared for a flat. Luckily the tire was flat at home and not out on the road. I was bummed, but when life gives you lemons you make lemonade. I figured I should use this as a training exercise to practice fixing the flat. I did not have a replacement tube (like I said, I'm one of those guys...) so I tried to use this patch kit that I had. I would never go for a ride on one of these patches, but it may do in a pinch in some race, so I went for it. I had a little difficulty getting the tire off the rim, but was finally able to get it off using a tire lever. The tire didn't have any holes, but the tube had a small hole. What is strange is the hole was on the inside of the wheel. I have no idea what caused it. I patched it up, got everything back together and pumped it up. I was feeling really proud of myself when all of a sudden I could hear the air rushing out of the tube. Time to head to the bike shop.

So I strapped the bike to my car and took it to my LBS. I got a set of new tires and tubes and had some new pedals installed. My tires didn't have all that many miles on them, but they were around four years old, so I figured it was time. I went with Continental Ultra Gatorskins, because where I train there is usually uneven pavement and gravel. These tires are a little wider and this is supposed to provide for less rolling resistance for a larger guy like me, at least that is what the guy at the shop said. I took the bike for a spin the next day, and I did go faster. I went 31.4 miles in two hours and seven minutes, which averages about .6 mph faster over the entire distance. But then again it could also be that I had three days rest!

This week I have a masters team swim scheduled with the Southern California Aquatic Masters Swim Club. I'm looking forward to trying them out, but I doubt that I will join just because of the cost. It is sixty-five dollars a month which is very reasonable if you can swim 4-5 times a week, but I probably couldn't attend a masters session more than twice a week. I think my money would be better spent on individual or small group lessons.

I also plan on doing my first ocean swim this week, so I'm scrambling to find a wetsuit. I'm certainly excited about that. I guess this week is going to be a swim week. About time!

Weak in the Heat

2006-06-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

I am just coming off a week in which I did no training or exercise whatsoever, so I was expecting to have lost some of my fitness, but I have been really disappointed in last two days. I had a 40 minute swim yesterday. I lost track of the number of laps, but I'm sure it was less than I normally do. I felt my legs just sinking and sinking. The other two swimmers in my lane were wearing zoomers and I had to work extra hard to keep up with them, so that might also have something to do with why I only lasted 40 minutes, but I didn't feel fast, and I was breathing really hard. I keep telling myself I need to get some serious help with my swimming technique, but I have yet to take any action. I am always too busy, so then I just force myself to do these grueling swim workouts even though I am not getting any better. At least my arms and shoulders are getting stronger. I can tell just by looking in the mirror.

I went running this morning. It was still early, around 8:45, but it was still hot. Hotter than I expected, at least. I have always done my runs in doors on a treadmill, or in the mornings and evenings when it was cool out. I ran at a good speed (for me) of 5.2mph but I was only able to go for 3.64 miles. I was just dying. I should have slowed it down to allow myself to last longer, but I guess I didn't factor in the heat.

So I'm a little disappointed, but It feels good to start training again. I am visiting family for the holiday weekend, and I hope I can still get some training done.

Still Alive, Still Training

2006-06-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

Wow. It has been a long time since my last post. I had gotten into a routine with my posts and then life hit me. My schedule has been constantly shifting over the past few weeks so, blogging kinda went by the wayside. I have still been training, though, except for last week. Last week I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. The week prior I had some really good workouts, particularly on the bike. One of the benefits of my schedule changing was that I could get in some longer bike rides during the week, and not just on the weekend. One ride in particular was notable. I went 46 miles in about three hours. There was lots of hills and it was longest I have ever ridden on my bike.

Now after a "rest week" (ok, really more of a sloth week) I need to get back into action. Alas, it will have to wait until tomorrow! This morning I took my daughter to the dentist, and tonight is the LA Tri Club meeting.

Here is my goal for the week -- sign up for swim lessons (my swim is just not improving as much as I would like.) I have been meaning to do this for what seems like for forever, but now I really have to do it.

Week 16 Progress Report

2006-06-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

On my last post I mentioned that I hurt my back. I was put out of commission until Monday, so I don't have much training to report. Tuesday I swam in the morning for an hour and then I did 70 minutes on a spin bike in the PM. Wednesday I had a shorter run of around 50 minutes, and then I hurt my back. I was not really concerned at first. I assumed it would resolve itself quickly and I would be back in business very soon. Every once in a while I will twist my back in the wrong way and be uncomfortable for about a day, so that is what I was expecting, but on Thursday I was actually worse.

By Friday morning, when I was still in significant discomfort I started to become concerned. Sure it was screwing up my training, but more important than that, I was concerned that I there was something more serious a foot than a pulled muscle. I thought about it for a while and could only think of three possibilities. The first was that the pain was a symptom of unstable angina. Given the fact that I had some strange heart rate effects in my training in the past, I get very nervous when it comes to my heart. I even did a Google search and found that my symptoms could be angina, and that some patients with back pain are sent home with some pain killers and then die from heart attacks. That freaked me out, but if it was angina it would not last three days, so that probably is not it.

Another possibility was that I pulled a muscle on my run. I did take a water bottle with me which I held in my right hand. I do not normally run with a large bottle filled with water and I may have pulled a muscle. But the thing is I do not remember any pain while running, or even shortly afterward on the walk home. If I pulled a muscle while running I think I would have felt it soon afterward. In fact, I do not remember a sudden onset at all. It kind of crept up on me.

The third possibility is that it is stress related. The muscle could be experiencing a spasm from too much tension. I was skeptical of this possibility at first because I am not a type A personality. I am very laid back and do not really reflect very much on the stress I experience every day. But I am the type of person who holds everything inside and can bottle up a lot of what I feel which must add to the stress.

I made an appointment with my doctor, who did not seem concerned in the least. He said that he experienced the same thing and that it was from sitting at a desk all day typing without proper support for my back. I mentioned the possibility of stress, and he pretty much laughed it off. He gave me a funky stretch to do (which btw does nothing for me) and then changed the subject to my blood pressure.

I have been under treatment for high blood pressure for a few years now. It was under control with diuretics at around 140 over 80 for the longest time. One of my goals with training and weight loss is to get off of the blood pressure medication. I have lost about 40 pounds since last year and as of a couple of weeks ago my blood pressure was down to 120 over 70. I was really excited about that and looking forward to getting off the drugs, but when my doctor took my blood pressure on Friday it was 150 over 90 which is really high. He wants to put me on a stronger drug now. That was really depressing.

Later, after more thought, I have come to the conclusion that the higher blood pressure reading seems to confirm the stress theory. Blood pressure, particularly after being under control for many months and significantly improving in the last four months does not just jump up on its own. There must be a trigger. I must be experiencing some significant stress that has made me really tense, so tense that it has cause my blood pressure to shoot up and made my back spasm.

After reflecting more, I do have to admit that it has been very stressful at work for me. It really isn't the work itself, it is more the fact that as the case I am working on comes to a close, it is not clear where my future leads. I am a contract attorney, so I go where the work goes. If the work dries up I move on. It is not such a bad thing in itself, but I have a wife and daughter to support and money is very tight right now. If I am out of a job, even for a short time, it will be a hardship, and I guess that even though I was not willing to admit that to myself consciously, I still had a lot of fear built up inside and my physical symptoms are just how thee feelings are manifesting themselves.

So what to do about it? A full weekend of R&R! Friday night, I went out with some old and very good friends for some great food and great conversation. You know the pain in my back just seemed to melt away. It seems to come back at night, but Saturday I played in the pool with my daughter. We had a great time. There is nothing like watching your child laugh and smile to make you feel ok with the world. The next day we went over a friend's house for a BBQ. We had some wine, some good food and even played some more in the pool. I played "keep away" with couple of other grown men, like we were just a bunch of adolescents. We had a blast and I did not have a care in the world.

By the end of the weekend my back was mostly back to normal. I sometimes get some discomfort at night (perhaps a new bed is in order) but I am back training. Yesterday, I did a bike/run brick of 20 minutes on the bike and 55 minutes on the treadmill, and today I swam for 45 minutes and then followed it with a 25 minute run.

I guess the moral to the story is to make time for training, but don't neglect friends and family. They are really what keep you going.

Inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi

2006-05-31T17:38:00.000-07:00

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory.
--Mahatma Gandhi

I think I'm in the drudgery stage. I went for a run this morning, and was fortunate to be able to run at the park rather than the usual treadmill. I was pretty slow, but feeling good the entire time. I ran for about 50 minutes and went 3.8 miles. If still felt good on the walk back from the park, showering and eating breakfast. But then it just happened. I got this kink in my neck which has now spread to my back. I'm really stiff and feel like a robot when I walk. It's painful to turn my head. Now the stiffness has now reached my chest muscles. I have been trying to stretch and use relaxation techniques, but so far I have not had any luck. It is not really painful, just really annoying, and I have no idea what caused it.

On a positive note, I am back on track with my nutrition. This morning I weighed 241 pounds (down from 264!). Yeah!

Week 15 Progress Report

2006-05-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Wow! Week 15 already. Originally my first triathlon was going to be the San Diego Triathlon which is on June 25th or week 20, but after adding in a decent taper I just felt I was not going to be prepared as I would like. I haven't yet done an open water swim, and haven't prepared for my transitions yet. So I signed up for the Santa Barbara Sprint, which gives me plenty of time. It takes place on August 27, at the end of week 28. That means I have about 11-12 weeks left to train and get ready. That does not seem like much to me, and I'm getting a little nervous.

Here is a rundown of last week's training.

Monday: Did a slow run for one hour. I only did 3.9 miles. I wanted to do more, but I was coming back from an entire week off and did not want to push it too much.

Tuesday: Swam 1800 meters in 45 minutes. Once again I limited my self to 45 minutes, because I was coming off of an entire week off. I was faster than normal though which was encouraging.

Wednesday: I did a hard 60 minutes on a spin bike. There was not a class at the time I was available, so I just put on some headphones and enjoyed an episode of Get Your Geek On! I think everyone was wondering who the guy laughing his ass off over on the spin bike was.

Thursday: I ran another 60 minutes on the treadmill and pushed a little more. I was able to do 4.5 miles.

Friday: I was a little burnt out on Friday, and did not sleep well. My daughter has been having sleep issues, so that means I have sleep issues. It is just hard enough to get out of bed at 5am when you get the full seven that I try to do. On just 5 hours sleep it is really a struggle. And when I don't get up early I hit traffic on the commute to work which really grinds you down. So I skipped my morning swim. I was feeling really guilty about it all day, so I left work early and headed to the gym. I was able to swim 2500 meters, which is the longest I have ever done, and I was able to do it in 63 minutes. I felt much better, especially because I knew that I would have little time to train over the holiday weekend with all the family outings.

Saturday and Sunday: relaxed and did no training.

Monday: Ok, Monday is really part of week 16, but I did the bike ride I had planned originally for Saturday, that I just didn't have time to do. So I'm going to include it here. I rode up to the Rose Bowl, did 5 laps and then rode back. My neighbor rides up to the Bowl on occasion too and gave me a new route to try. It is mostly back streets with few lights, but there is one log section on a main street with lots of lights. Here is a chart of the ride from my Polar S625x. I took out the heart rate info, because there were too many gaps. For some reason I have been having trouble with the heart rate data on my rides, but the speed and cadence sensors have been working great.

The red line is the altitude. You can see the five peaks on the chart. Those are the five laps at the bowl. I love the down-hills. I cannot stay in aero position for too long, but I do get down into aero on the down-hills. Then I just put it in the highest gear, and just jam down the hill. It is a blast! You can see the speed (blue line) just jumps way up on the downhill. Coming back on Arroyo is also great because no only is it downhill, but there are lots of curves as well. Carving the corners is a lot of fun.

I do have a hard time holding a line while in aero. I know that it is a skill that I need to work on, but I also think that the geometry of my bike is not helping. I have a road bike with a short top tube. This allows me to have a full set of aero bars, but also means that my weight is very far forward on the bike and the ride is a bit squirrelly. I always try to give other riders a wide berth.

Starbucks Rant

2006-05-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I promised some bitching about Starbucks so here goes. First I think I should give a little background. I was first introduced to espresso back in 1992 when I worked for a coffee shop during college. A grade school friend hooked me up with the job, even though I did not know a thing about coffee. But she taught me everything she knew, and I started to really get into it. I read several books on the subject and did a lot of experimentation. It has become another one of my obsessions.

While I worked at that shop, I happened to make a latte for the cousin of the owner one day. He thought it was so good that he started to pass it around to the rest of his family to taste, and the next morning I was made shift supervisor. I developed quite a following and had customers who keep track of my schedule and would insist that only I make their drinks. Since then I have continued to study the subject. To my wife’s chagrin I have seven espresso machines in my home. I buy raw coffee beans from Brazil and Ethiopia and roast them myself. I guess what I am saying is that I know at least a little bit about coffee.

I also have to admit I am a purist when it comes to coffee. So my comments only really apply to the traditional espresso drinks such as espresso, macchiato, cappuccino and latte. I won’t touch a frappuccino, caramel-thingamabobs or whatever else is on the menu. I do not drink the drip coffee either. I do not like to add flavors to my coffee, so I will drink only pure coffee and milk, perhaps with some sugar if I’m having espresso.

My first problem with Starbucks is the paper cups. When I worked at a coffee shop at least 80% of the drinks were served in porcelain, and I took pity on those who had to consume their beverage in their cars. It took me a while to get used to the idea of drinking espresso drinks out of a paper cup. Would you drink champagne from a paper cup? Would you foie gras off a paper plate with a plastic fork?! Paper cups are so rampant now that if you asked for a "regular cup" at a Starbucks, people just look at you like you are crazy. Unfortunately this attitude has spread throughout the industry and now it is hard to find a place that uses a real cup. I like to have an espresso mid-afternoon, so I will sometimes stop by a local independent shop near my office that makes good coffee, but I have to bring my own demitasse.

In the last few months I have taken up the unfortunate habit of drinking my morning coffee on the way to the gym in my car. Like everyone else I am pressed for time. It is unpleasant, but gets the job done. I find the milk has a good mix of carbs and protein to fuel a morning workout and the caffeine helps boost my energy. I used to make the coffee myself, but the pump on my machines are loud and will wake up my two year old daughter, so I am forced to go to buy my coffee. Unfortunately, where I live Starbucks is the only game in town.

The second problem with Starbucks is the poor quality of the coffee itself. Sure they can add enough sugar, chocolate or whipped cream to make drinks people will want to buy but, the basic espresso base to their drinks is just terrible. I will never order a simple espresso at Starbucks because frankly it is just disgusting. The beans are over roasted and the shots are too long (watery) with no crema (the beautiful golden cream that floats to the top of a perfectly drawn shot of espresso). Nowadays, the baristas don’t even make the coffee anymore. They just press a button and it comes out a spout, and frankly for all the money these machines must cost, they suck. I could make better coffee with a moka pot on a stove top. Not only that, they will serve the infernal concoction in a paper cup! It is no wonder the drinks are so laughably large. People have to dilute the coffee with a liter of milk just to mask all the bitterness. So I will usually order a latte which is mostly milk. It is the hardest drink to screw up. You just heat the milk up and throw the coffee in. How could you screw that up? Well, they burn the milk. They keep the milk out too long making it separate and get watery. They sometimes dilute the coffee with water. Yes! I actually saw a barista topping off the coffee with water before adding the milk!

If Starbucks cannot get the quality right, you think they could at least get consistency down. The one thing that Starbucks is supposed to have going for it is consistency. It is like the McDonalds of coffee. Sure the food can suck, but at least you know what you are getting, and you can go to any Starbucks and know exactly what to expect. Well that is the story at least. I always order the same thing from Starbucks, a tall double latte, and it never tastes the same. Sometimes it will taste ok and other times it is just horrible, and that is just from one location!

Ok, enough ranting about Starbucks. I feel better now.

Oh, and BTW, I ran for an hour this morning. I have to check my HRM again, but I think it was 4.2 miles total. Tomorrow is an hour swim.

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Inspiration from Marcus Aurelius Antonius

2006-05-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

"It is a shameful thing for the soul to faint while the body still perseveres." --Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

I have been having a hard time recovering from last week. Last week was a recovery week, so what am I talking about? Well, last week I not only blew off training for nearly the entire week, but I let myself eat anything. I was really bad, eating fast food, ice cream and just all kinds of junk. It was pretty scary, and even in the last two days I have let my self eat way too much. My target is 2500 calories, but I have been eating around 4000.

How did this come about? Mostly I think it was a combination of stress from work, lack of time to think about or prepare food at home, and the fact that my regular routine was disrupted by attending court.

One thing I know about myself is that I have a one track mind. I can really only maintain control in one area of my life. Once I focus on that one area I can accomplish amazing things, but everything else tends to fall apart. For the last three months I have maintained my focus and dedication on my triathlon goals, and I am proud of that. But in the back of my mind I have a concern because I do not know how long I can keep this up. Balance is really the key, and I think one of the benefits of training for a triathlon is learning how to manage your life more efficiently and learn the discipline it takes to balance the various life demands that we all have, but I know that real balance is an issue for me, and something that I really need to work on.

Work demanded my attention and focus last week. It really was a test for me. Could I maintain focus and put in the effort to do what I needed to do at work and still keep the rest of my life in order? Well, I got the answer, and it was a resounding no! So now I am going back to put my training back in order. I had a good run on Monday, a good swim on Tuesday, and today I hit the spin bike hard for an hour. So I am back in the game as far as the training goes, but my eating patterns are still out of control. It is really hard to get back onto the path of eating right after enjoying a week long binge. Actually enjoying is not the right word. It was actually suffering. Eating all that bad food made me feel really disgusting and gave me a lot of gas. Then why do I eat all that stuff? In stressful situations I just eat compulsively. It does not make any logical sense and is something lurking in my subconscious that comes out in stressful situations, like when I'm worried about my family or my job.

It is all mental. The body is ready, but the mind is weak. Shame on me!

Ok, enough ragging on myself. Starting today I'll do better. Tomorrow, I'll bitch about Starbucks.

LA Tri Club

2006-05-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

I have decided that I need to meet more triathletes, so I joined the Los Angeles Tri Club. I can really use some training advice, and I guess I feel I have trained enough to not be embarrassed to call myself a triathlete. I'm hoping to get out to some of their events soon, particularly an open water swim. That is definitely something that I would not want to try out on my own.

Speaking of swimming, today I had my first swim since last Monday. I had to share a lane with two strong swimmers. I was really working to try to keep up and this was probably exactly what I needed. Since it was my first workout in a while I kept it to forty-five minutes, but I was able to fit in 1800 meters. I am still pathetically slow, but making improvement.

After 15 minutes I noticed that there were a few guys there that seemed to be trying to race me. I had to restrain myself, because my workout will not last very long if I start sprinting. Sure, plenty of people in the pool are faster than me, but I can put in the time. After fifteen to twenty minutes these guys are getting out of the pool when I have already put in thirty minutes and will put in another fifteen. And that is a "short" workout for me.

I have been looking around for other swim venues to augment my training. SCAQ offers swim technique lessons and offers training sessions at some fifty meter pools, so I think I might take them up on their offer of a free training session.

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Week 14 Progress Report

2006-05-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

No progress! That's right I did nothing, absolutely nothing! OK, I did something. I did swim for 45 minutes on Monday morning. That seems like such a long time ago. It was supposed to be a "rest" week, but that is just pathetic. I could list a bunch of excuses, but instead I'm going to focus on jumping back on the wagon.

Today, I started right, with a nice 55 minute run. My weight is still around 244, so I have stalled somewhat, but I brought my meals to work today, and I am ready to go. As I mentioned last week I have actually signed up for some races, so now it is really firming up. Here is a short list of the basics I need to cover before my first race.

1.) Wetsuit. I need one. Do I rent or buy?
2.) Open water swim. Really this can be the scariest part of a triathlon so I should practice a few times. I'm hoping I can try it out at least three times before my first triathlon in August.
3.) Practice transitions. I have done some bricks, but I really haven't practiced laying out my stuff and the order of doing things.

So that is what I am thinking about. This week is going to be busy. Work is busy. Home is busy and now I have to keep busy with training. I am aiming at going back to running on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday; swimming on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday mornings; and biking on Tuesday and Thursday night and Saturday morning. If I get something in each day, then I will take Monday off. Wish me luck!

Week 13 Progress Report

2006-05-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since my last post. My work has overwhelmed my life lately and I has negatively impacted my training. Last week was supposed to be a heavy week, while this week is a recovery week. Unfortunately I didn't get the volume that I wanted last week and this week I have barely been able to train at all. Today, the court is dark so I can take a breather and catch up with the rest of my life. That means signing up for triathlons!

As you can see from the side bar, I have changed the triathlons that I am training for. I have taken the official plunge and signed up for three. Now that is one thing less to worry about. There is one problem. I did not realize that the Carpinteria race is only one week after the Nautica Malibu Triathlon. The Malibu course is only a sprint, but it is a longer sprint and I am just a beginner. I'm not sure I can recover from the race in just a week. But there are no refunds so I just have to go for it. Hopefully by September my conditioning will be sufficient to do it.

For the record, here is what I was able to accomplish in week 13!

Monday: Swam 45 minutes in the AM (1500 meters). Tried to run intervals in the evening, but I had problems which cut it short at 15 minutes, 1.4 miles.

Tuesday: Brick of spin class for 45 minutes followed by a run for 25 minutes (1.9 miles).

Wednesday: Brick of swimming for 37 minutes (1500 meters) followed by a run for 55 minutes (4 miles).

Thursday: Brick of spin class for 45 minutes followed by a run for 30 minutes (2.4 miles).

Friday: Rest day

Saturday: Run at the park for 1 hour (4.5 miles).

Sunday: Long bike ride. I rode from my home to the San Gabriel River Trail. Then I rode down to Pico Riviera and took the route connecting to the Rio Hondo Trail. I then took the Rio Hondo trail back to Arcadia and then back home. I must have seen at least a hundred rabbits out there. There were also clouds of gnats which are not fun to ride through.

Total miles 34.5
Total time: 2 hours, 32 minutes
Average cadence: 64
Ascent: 541 feet

I really was limping back from the bike trip. I probably was a bit over enthusiastic on the first part of the trip and I just did not have the energy in the second have of the route on the way back (up hill). I tried to spend more time in the aero bars, which helped me stay at around 20 mph on the first half of the route. However, I just cannot stay in aero position for very long. The steering is just too unstable. Also, the design of the Aero bars puts my weight in front of the handlebars. I have the bars as tightened as they will go, but even still the Aero bars tend to slide down. I almost totally lost control and ended up in a ditch because the aerobars gave way under my weight. I need to upgrade. I guess this is my next project.

Family Outing

2006-05-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

The wife was not too happy that last weekend, when I had to go into work both Saturday and Sunday, I spent my remaining time training instead of with her, or at least a good portion of it. So for my run today I brought the whole family along. We went to a local park where I ran around a fitness track, and my wife pushed the baby in a stroller. Every time I lapped them, my daughter would call out, "look Daddy!" So that was fun. I got a good run in, but I had a hard time keeping my heart rate down. The fitness track is a one mile figure eight that is positioned north-south. It is relatively flat but there is a shallow grade running south. When I went north I couldn't really feel the grade, but it would definitely show up on my monitor. My speed would drop about .5 mph and my heart rate would shoot up 15 bpm.

Tomorrow I have a bike ride. My daughter has come down with another cold, so I'll play it conservative and just go for two hours. I think I'll head down the Rio Hondo this time.

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Inspiration from Epictetus

2006-05-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. --Epictetus

I had another good workout this morning. I did 45 minutes on a spin bike and then a thirty minute run at 4.8 mph. The gym had some problem with their air conditioning system so it was hot. I mean really, really hot. I tend to get pretty sweaty on the spin bike anyways since there is no wind, but with no air it was brutal. Sweat was literaly pouring off of me. I think I drank about 48 oz of fluid and still felt thirsty. The locker room was even worse. I really hope they have it fixed by tomorrow.

The plan for tomorrow is a swim/bike brick, Saturday will be a long run and Sunday a long bike ride.

Back in the Game

2006-05-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I decided to regroup, and today I came back strong. I pigged out yesterday and ate almost 4000 calories. I also drank over 100 oz of water. I gained nearly a pound. This morning would be the test of whether this was going to be enough to get my body going again. I planned a swim/bike brick, but instead decided to do a swim/run since I haven't been able to get a decent run in lately and just had a spin class yesterday. I was not worried about the swim, because swimming just does not tax your cardiovascular system like running does, but I was concerned about the run.

I decided to do a straight 1500 meter swim and then run 4 miles. The swim went well. I think my time is actually improving. Normally it would take me around 45 minutes to do 1500 meters, but I finished in 37 minutes. Then I quickly toweled off, threw on a shirt and my shoes and ran upstairs to the treadmills. I ran the 4 miles in 55 minutes. I could have definitely gone faster, but I was concerned about having heart rate problems and wanted to keep my heart rate under 143 (80% of max). But I finished with no problems and felt really good. Now I'm ready for the rest of the week. I just need to keep eating enough and getting that water down.

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Let's Reconsider

2006-05-09T10:14:00.000-07:00

This week I hoped to ramp up my training and really move it to a next level, but I think I may have to scale back. Yesterday I had another discouraging experience while running. I had swam 45 minutes in the morning, which is shorter than the full 60 minutes I normally do. I did the shorter swim specifically because I wanted to leave some energy for a run in the PM.

After tucking in my daughter, I went over to the gym around 9:30pm. I don't like to run outside at night for safety reasons so I figured I would do some intervals on a treadmill. I set the treadmill for a heart rate interval with a max heart rate of 165 bpm. That is about 93% of max for me, and a good level for a hard interval. The max speed was set 7 mph (real speed is actually around 6.2). The warmup was ok, but the first interval was rough. My legs got tired faster than my heart could accelerate, but it is supposed to be hard. I just pushed for it. The speed was not enough to get the heart rate up pasted 160, so the incline bumped up to 3 percent. My heart rate finally got up to 165, but then the treadmill really took its time to slow down. I felt like I just could not take it anymore and was having a hard time breathing so I manually slowed down to a walking pace. When my heart rate recovered to 120, I went for my second interval, but every time my heart rate started to increase, I could feel this pressure in my chest and had a hard time breathing. I struggled for about another ten minutes and then called it quits.

Readers of this blog know this has happened before, and actually have a pending referral to a cardiologist about a prior incident. This is very discouraging, because I have only just started to ramp it up this week. Now it looks like I am going to have to take it easy.

This morning I went for an early spin class. I kept my heart rate mostly under 145. I wanted to do a brick, so I figured I would spin for 45 minutes and then run for 45 minutes. The spinning was fine other than the fact that I forgot to bring a water bottle and was dying of thirst. But I did not have any chest pains or anything. After 45 minutes I made a quick transition to a treadmill for the run. I did an easy 4.6 mph at around 140 - 146 bpm. After about ten minutes I started to feel some pressure so I backed it off. After another ten minutes I felt more pressure and backed off further. I was then going about 3.9 mph and had my heart rate at 130. After 5 more minutes I could start to feel more pressure in my chest and I just threw in the towel.

There very well could be something seriously wrong with me, but I suspect that it is just my body saying it is overtaxed. I had a long bike ride on Sunday, but did not really eat the calories needed to replace the energy stores. Then on Monday, I also had a significant calorie deficit and did not drink enough water. Sometimes, my office runs out of bottled water and I am too busy to run down to the convenience store to get more so I just do not drink enough. That is a bad mistake. I probably should have eaten something last night so I would have more energy reserves for this morning.

So today, I am going to pig out a little and give my body a break from all the calorie deficits and am going to make sure I drink at least 64 oz. of water.

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Week 12 Progress Report

2006-05-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

I was a slacker this week. I gave it a lot of effort, but just could not fit in the training that I wanted with the way work has been going. I was forced to choose between seeing my wife and daughter and training, and for the most part I picked the family. I say "for the most part" because I did take a long bike ride on Sunday, which meant that I did not see them much at all on Sunday because I had to go into the office for the rest of the day. My wife was pretty upset about that. In my mind, I have not been able to do even the minimum I set out for myself so I had to do the ride. I know it is hard for my family when I have to work so much, but it is just temporary, and I cannot let it derail all my progress. I have to keep going. Here is a summary of my pathetic week:

Monday: Rest day. Boy was that a mistake!

Tuesday: Swim my now classic 2000 meters. Missed my spin class.

Wednesday: Run 30 minutes. Ugh!

Thursday: Spin class for 60 minutes followed by a fifteen minute run. I tried to make up for the short run the day before with a little brick, but I could only afford 15 minutes, which is really nothing.

Friday: Nothing. Ugh! I felt like such a slacker.

Saturday: I ran 5 miles at a nearby park. I felt good and somewhat redeemed. The park has a rubberized running trail which is crowded with walkers, but it felt good on the legs and felt fast. I think I averaged 5 mph, which is very fast for me, and it was not even on a treadmill. Yeah!

Sunday: I decided to drive over to the Santa Fe Dam to ride the San Gabriel trial. I could ride there from my house, but that would be half the ride, and I wanted to see more of the upper San Gabriel so I rode out to Encanto Park in Duarte and started from there. At first I went north along the river, but I quickly came to a dead end in the bike trail. I saw some people heading up highway 39 into the Angeles National Forest, so maybe I'll try that sometime. I definitely could use the practice on the hills.

This time I went back done the San Gabriel River trail to El Monte and then back up to Duarte. It is about 30 miles round trip and took almost exactly 2 hours. There was water in the river for most of the way, and plenty of flowers in bloom. On the downside, there is an equestrian trail that parallels the bike path, and unfortunately some of the riders prefer to use the bike trail. I'm more than willing to share, but they do not clean up after their horses. The smell of horse dung is quite strong along most of the way.

On the way back up, you have to head up a steep hill to the top of the dam. It is not very long, but it is steep. I have never been able to ride the whole way up before, but I promised myself I would do it, and I did. My heart rate went up to 173. That is 98% of my max. I felt like I was going to die. At the top I had a long shallow downhill to cruise and recover. Overall, I would say it was a great ride.

On the weight front, I have good news to report. I am currently at 245 pounds (down from 264 pounds) and am have 32 percent body fat (down from 39%). I still have long way to go, but now I feel safely under 250. It seemed that after passing 250 the pounds just flew off.

This week is supposed to be an intense week. I am supposed to have been building for the past three weeks to this one. I am going to try my best to fit in as much as I can, but I still have all the scheduling problems of the past week. There is no way I was going to let myself have a rest day after what happened last Friday. Here is my schedule:

Monday: Swim 45 minutes; Run 45 minutes
Tuesday: Spin 60 minutes; Run 30 minutes
Wednesday: Swim 45 minutes; Spin 30 minutes
Thursday: Spin 60 minutes; Run 30 minutes
Friday: Swim 45 minutes; Run 30 minutes
Saturday: Bike 2.5 hours
Sunday: Swim 45 minutes; Run 45 minutes

Wow! I am scared just writing this. Let's see what happens.

Inspiration from George E. Allen

2006-05-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

"People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to." --George E. Allen

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been struggling lately with my training. Part of the problem is that a case I have been working on for the last few months has now gone to trial and that means more work and a change in scheduling. We work late to prepare for the following days witnesses, so for example, I missed my spin class on Tuesday. Coming home so late also means that I cannot reasonably get to the gym early in the morning, so it knocked out my morning run, yesterday. I did run a bit Wednesday evening, but only for 30 minutes.

This morning, I just decided that I will be late for work. I took a spin class this morning and followed it with a short run on the treadmill. It was my first brick of sorts. I really pushed on the spin class, so there was not much left of me on the treadmill, so I cannot really call it a real brick.

For those of you who do not know, a "brick" is a workout in two of the three triathlon sports back to back. The most common form is a bike/run, but you could do a swim/bike or even a swim/run.

I thought maybe I could get in a swim tonight, but it is already 8:30pm and I have not even had a chance to eat anything yet. Tomorrow and through next week my schedule should me more normal, so it is a swim tomorrow morning and a run tomorrow night.

Week 11 Progress Report

2006-05-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

I can only say that last week was an ok training week. I allowed myself some slack because I just came off of a recovery week and my intention is to ramp up each week for three weeks, before I have another recovery week, so I have to leave myself some room. Here is a rundown of my training for the week:

Monday: 5 mile run, 65 minutes.

Tuesday: Swam 2000 meters, 60 minutes; Spin 60 minutes

Wednesday: Ran 4.5 miles of intervals in 60 minutes around the neighborhood.

Thursday: Slept in and missed my swim. I also had to work late, so I missed my spin class. I felt like a total slacker!

Friday: Swim 2000 meters. I am getting a bit troubled by the fact that the distance I can cover in 60 minutes is not increasing. I feel like I am swimming better, but the clock is telling me that I am not swimming any faster. Either I need to take some classes and get some coaching, or perhaps I am just not pushing myself hard enough. I probably should add in more sprints. I do sprints, but probably not enough, as I have been focusing on long endurance sets.

Saturday: I felt pretty bad on my run. I only lasted 47 minutes and 3.5 miles. I think I have been lacking in the nutrition department. Lately I have been working more and have not been able to prepare meals for myself, which means that I stop off at the drive through. I do tend to make more healthy choices, but if you eat too much of that stuff, even the more healthy items will do a number on you.

Sunday: I had a great ride of about 26 miles in two hours. I could have gone longer, but like I said earlier, I have to leave some more room in the training plan to build intensity and length during the next few weeks.

My weight has been dropping rapidly in the last few days. As of Monday I was 246 pounds. I think it may have been the bike ride, but I also think it is mostly water, as my body fat percentage has actually increased to 35%. Today, I am actually 244 pounds.

I have already started week 12, but it has not gone so smoothly. I had a rest day on Monday even though I do not feel I deserved one. Since I ended up not training on last Thursday, I really should have run on Monday, but I am running out of things to wear. My suits are getting way too big around the waist, so I took four suits in to the tailor on Monday morning, so I would have something to wear to work.

Tuesday, I swam, but it was crowded. A bunch of "head bobbers" just jump into my lane. That is what I call these senior citizens who supposedly are swimming, but actually are just standing in the water socializing. They do not even stay to one side and fan their arms out when they tread water, taking up the whole lane. So I had to swim around and through them for almost the entire hour. No sprints were possible. I also had to miss my spin class, because I couldn't get away from work. Not only that, but because I did not get home till a few hours past my normal bedtime, I was too beat to get up and train this morning. I spent some time with my wife and daughter instead and hopefully can get in a run or something tonight. We will see.

Biking the Rose Bowl

2006-04-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

Today I thought I would try a different bike route for my "long" ride. I had heard that there were usually quite a few bikers up by the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. There is a road that circles the bowl which is around 3 miles. The Pasadena Triathlon Club has a weekly brick there on Wednesdays, so I thought I should check it out. I took Arroyo road up to the bowl, which was a nice choice. The route is mostly shaded, there is little cross traffic, and it is a nice shallow climb, which is good for a beginner like me.

When I got there at around 8:30AM I was surprised to see so many people. There were a few people on bikes, but mostly runners and walkers. There had to be a few hundred of them. It is really encouraging to see so many people getting into exercising. I did four laps around the bowl and then headed home. I was surprised that there were not that many bike out there, but perhaps it was not the right time. I did see few packs of bikers arriving as I was leaving. Total mileage: 26, time: 115 minutes.

I was excited to see that my speed and cadence sensors for my Polar S625x heart rate monitor were finally working, but then my speed sensor went out mid-route. I did find out what the problem was. The magnet that trips the sensor is mounted on a spoke and it is not very secure. When I would speed up, such as when I was going downhill the magnet would shift to the edge of the wheel, and move out of the range of the sensor, I need to tighten it, or try another magnet.

Training and Fuel Prices

2006-04-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

I skipped my swim workout this morning, because I overslept and hit traffic on the way to the gym. By the time I got there it was too late to workout. Heavy traffic does not usually occur that early like it did today. I have noticed that here in Los Angeles the traffic patterns shift when gas prices rise. When the price of gas is high, more people try to beat traffic and leave for work earlier. All this does of course is cause the traffic jams start earlier. It also means that traffic is lighter in the evening, because people are leaving work earlier. Used to be that the traffic on the Santa Monica freeway did not lighten up until at least 8:00pm. Now it is flowing pretty good at 7:30pm.

One of the side benefits of training has been saving at the pump. When I leave early, it means I spend less time on the freeway, and thus I burn less gas. It is spring now though, and I have probably made up the difference because I have been driving my BMW M Roadster exclusively. Not only does it take premium fuel, but it only gets around 20 miles to the gallon. When you spend a significant portion of your day commuting, you have to love what you drive. At the end of the month, when I see all the fuel charges I'll probably have to go back to driving my Sentra.

I got my USA Triathlon membership today. My plan is to do at least three triathlons this year, so the membership cost should be worth it. One cool thing is that if you complete at least three USAT sanctioned events in the year you get a national ranking at the end of the season. Sure, I may be the very last, but that is still cool!

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Inspiration from Samuel Johnson

2006-04-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." --Samuel Johnson

I had a tough run this morning. I had a killer spin class last night, where I pushed and pushed. It seemed like I was out of the saddle and doing sprints almost the whole hour. I burned a whopping 900 calories according to my heart rate monitor and was between 85% and 95% of my max heart rate for at least 30 minutes. The problem was that I wanted to rush home, so I could get home before my daughter goes to bed and read her a story, so I did not eat anything.

When I woke this morning, I was really sore. I headed out for a run, but I had very little energy. My glycogen stores were just shot from the day before and I did not even have breakfast. I was supposed to do interval, and I definitely tried, but I was really slow. I think the fastest I could go was only 7 mph, and I could only sustain that speed for about a minute. I did stick it out and just tried to go for as long as I could even if it was going to be slow. I actually lasted for an hour and went 4.5 miles, which is longer than I expected. I think the only reason I lasted that long is because I was a few miles out from home and still had to come back.