The need for speed

Going fast is fun!

Two nights ago I rode my typical 15 miles at the picnic loop in a 22.3 avg pace (no race wheels), not too far off of my PR. It was downright exhilarating. I'm pretty happy with that- if I could get two workouts a week in at that intensity, I'd be faster in no time.

Last night I ran two loops of the park; the first loop in 20:03, and the second in 20:06. The park loop is slightly less than 3 miles, so I figure my pace to have been around 6:50 min/mile. Not too shabby! We'll see what a couple of weeks of speed work will do...

Work has been pretty stressful this week, and I think having a massive need to burn off some steam has probably helped my performance. On the other hand, generating intensity has never really been my problem.

This week I've been sacrificing swimming for a little bit extra in the run and bike department. The plan is to shift into maintenance mode on the swimming (which should involve more than the zero swimming I've done this week), and to focus on getting my speed back (and then some) on the bike and run.

Health status update: the knee is OK (nothing like an Ironman to try it out). The plantar fasciitis is still bothersome, but isn't stopping me at this point. I stretch between 6 and 10 minutes a day these days (focusing on calves and hamstrings), pretty religiously, and I think that that helps. I'm also alternating shoes- Newton's for my shorter weekday runs, and a pair of Asics (more cushioning, better arch support) for the weekend long run (currently ~13 miles).

Jeff & Brede's Intergalactic Triathlon

I just competed in Jeff & Brede's Intergalactic Triathlon (a sprint tri), 3 weeks after the Ironman. For fun! I had been recovering pretty well, and so wasn't too worried about injuring myself. I have a particular affinity for this race, since it's the race in which I got my first age group place (and win) two years ago. The race is also put on my my triathlon club (Houston Racing), so the race competitors and volunteers are all friends and acquaintances.

It had been a long time since I'd done any cycling or running for speed, so I knew I wasn't going to be setting any records, but I also knew that it would be fun to compete and fun to hang out with the triathlon community.

My swim was pretty bad, though my time was pretty much identical to the last two years. I had some really awful turns, and was reminded that I really need to start doing turns in practice. After all of those years of water polo and open water swimming (neither of which require turns), the flip turn is not exactly second nature. True, the first couple always go OK, but once I'm tired everything devolves pretty quickly. On this day, that started around 200m into the swim, and I'm pretty sure the last couple of turns would have been much faster if I'd opted for an open turn instead of the tired, awkward, floundering, wall-missing, bottom-scraping monstrosities I was throwing in towards the end.
Swim: 4:35 for 300m, 1:32 pace


I had a flawless transition, and headed out on the bike. For some reason, I felt really slow. My speedometer showed between 22 and 23 mph for the whole ride, but I wasn't able to dig out any more speed, and was pretty actively frustrated by it. One guy in my age group, whom I had beaten in IMCDA, passed me about halfway through the bike, and seemed to be going easily 2mph faster than me (he's a better cyclist than me, but it shouldn't look that easy!). I made it back into transition wondering just how awful my run was going to be, very cognizant of how little actual running I've done in the last 8 months, not to mention even less speedwork.
Bike: 33:40 for 12 miles, 21.3 avg (all of the race results showed lower avg's than we actually raced, but this was still disappointing)

I had a flawless dismount, another great transition, and was out on the run. I had a great run! It took me about a mile to get enough breath to start getting my speed up, but I eventually did, and my last 2 miles felt pretty fast, and pretty good. I had a very strong finish (as always!). I would estimate that I ran the first mile at around 8 min/mile pace, and the last mile at around 6 min/mile pace. I had a pretty good kick, for not having run fast in such a ridiculously long time.
Run: 20:27 for 3 miles, 6:49 pace
Overall: 1:00:28, 5th place in age group (only 30 seconds slower than the year I won my AG)

Thoughts:
1) I need to start doing flip turns.
2) I need to continue to get stronger on the bike. I'm even or better with my competitors on the swim and the run, but tend to fall way short on the bike.
3) I need to get in some bricks. Somehow I need to improve my run speed coming out of transition; going 1 - 1.5 miles before I start feeling OK really slows me down.
4) It'll be fun to get back into doing some speedwork!
5) I have a couple more races this year against some of the same guys. Let's see who improves the most between now and then... :)

Ironman Coeur d'Alene

This is a placeholder for when I get time to actually write a race report. I hate to just half-arse it and not do it justice...

This is a pretty cool highlight video (my buddy William gets interviewed about 6 minutes in):


If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a couple-thousand word race report:

Results of Houston Racing Triathlon Club participants in Ironman Coeur d'Alene, as posted on the HRTC forum during the race (click to see a legible version):



Yup- that's me in first.

It was kind of neat to go back and see the results as they were being posted on the forum; it kind of gives little snapshots of my race, showing who passed whom and when:

Gulf Coast 1/2 Ironman

It seems a little silly to write a race report so egregiously ex post facto, but I'm afraid this year's chronology will suffer without it, so here it is:

On the weekend of May 9, a bunch of friends from Houston and I drove down to Panama City, Florida for the Gulf Coast 1/2 Ironman. I had signed up for the event some time in advance, hoping to be healthy, and, though I definitely was in no shape to run in a 1/2 Ironman (or run at all, for that matter), I couldn't stand the idea of missing out on all the fun, so I went anyway, resolved to do sort of an Aquabike. I had decided before the race that I wouldn't run (or that I'd run just a few easy miles out of transition), to minimize the risk of a setback so close to the Ironman, and, knowing that I wouldn't have to run afterwards, I resolved to really hammer the bike.

The conditions for the swim were pretty rough, and I had a good swim, but nothing exceptional. I came out on the water 10th in my age group, and then went out on the bike, and absolutely KILLED it.

I came out of the water 10th in my age group, and finished the bike still 10th in my age group. Read that again. (that never happens- at IMFL in 2006, I got passed by more than 900 people on the bike)

So, I didn't get passed too much on the bike, and passing other people was lots of fun! I finished with an average of 22.1 mph for the 56 miles, which is definitely a PR. I was pretty pumped coming into transition off of the bike, so I made sure to piddle around and waste time in transition so as to not be tempted to race the run. I took off my chip, and left it in transition (I was only going to run a couple of miles, anyway), and headed out on the run. Barely out on the course, I turned around and went back for my chip- who knows; maybe I would be able to finish. So I headed out on the run again. I ran very slowly and deliberately the whole time, focusing on the placement of my leg with every step. I decided to run until my knee hurt, and then to turn around and walk it in. At about mile 3, I decided that I wanted to finish. I couldn't stand the idea of my friends being out on the course suffering in the hot sun, with me having given up, relaxing in the shade. And I wanted a finisher's medal. So I decided that I'd run as far as I could, and planned to walk in the rest. I made it to the halfway point in the park still running, with no pain (but still running extremely slowly and deliberately), and I kept on going. I ran the whole race very focused, slow (10:40 pace average), and deliberate. Until the end. About a half mile from the finish a guy in my age group passed me (just as countless others had on the run), and I let him go (just as I had countless others). About two hundred yards from the finish, the guy was a hundred yards ahead of me, and I decided to give him a run for his money. So I broke into an all-out sprint, heading in to the finish at about twice the speed of the guy ahead of me (I was going fast, like the last 50m of a track workout). As I charged in towards the finish, a roar erupted from the crowd, and with 20m or so to go, the guy realized I was coming and accelerated into a sprint. But I caught him. With the crowd going absolutely crazy around us, we sprinted side by side the last 20m to the finish. It was fantastic! I finished with a huge smile on my face! I grabbed some ice for my knee, and settled in to watch my friends finish.

My overall time still wasn't that bad, even with my slow run; I came in under 5:30, which was good enough for first out of my group of friends. And I somehow ran the whole run, despite having entered the race with a 3 mile run having been the longest of the previous month. I was elated at my finish, but even happier not to have injured myself and jeopardized the upcoming Ironman.

A good weekend

So I had a good weekend. I got up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and went for a run in the pool. I haven't done that since I was preparing for IM Arizona (because it's mind-numbingly boring, and no sane person would do it unless they were desperate to rehabilitate on an extremely tight timeline), and I was a little nervous, since I wasn't sure how my knee would hold up. The knee seemed OK, so I ran for two hours (without even losing my mind!). I figure that's equivalent to a 13 mile run at 9 min/mile pace (I actually kept my intensity pretty high, even though I was actually running at a 240 min/mile pace). I was pretty excited when I had finished, because I think I've found (rediscovered, really) a non-destructive way to train for the marathon at the end of my IM. I won't be fast, but maybe I can go into it uninjured, and with a chance of finishing (which is actually what I did at IM Arizona last year- I did no actual running (only pool running) in the two months leading up to the race (though I did run a 10K with my family the week before), and IM Arizona actually went really well. My run was slow, but I finished. It's such a joy to discover a light at the end of the tunnel, or in my case, a way to harness my motivation without tearing myself apart.

After my "run" I drove down to a spring-fed lake south of town and swam about 1800m in my wetsuit, and managed to identify a couple of the issues (even if I haven't totally addressed them yet) that plagued me in my swim at the Lone Star Tri a couple of weeks ago. So I managed to spend 3+ hours of my day immersed in water. After that, I went home and spent a couple of hours fixing some of the piping associated with my pool pump, without which the pool had turned a delightful algal shade of green. Perfect for frogs, but a bit off-putting to sunbathers and houseguests. It is now a beautiful crystalline blue, so my hard work definitely paid off.

Sunday morning I roused myself once again at the crack of dawn, and met some Houston Racing friends for a bike ride. Most were riding 44 miles or less, but a number of us (those training for IMCDA) did more. I ended up riding 85 miles in 25-30 mph winds. It was brutal. Really brutal. At some points, I was in my lowest gear and yet decelerating, wondering how I was going to get back to my car if I couldn't get my bike to go forward. It was great mental-toughness training! The tough part was riding as hard with the wind at my back as I did with the wind to my face, but I did a pretty good job of keeping my intensity high, and finished with an average pace of 18.3 mph, which isn't too shabby for 8 weeks out from the IM.

After my ride, I went back to the lake (with a friend who missed the Saturday swim) and got in another, shorter wetsuit swim. It was a beautiful day, and I had a fantastic weekend! I didn't really put myself to bed at a reasonable hour last night (sometimes it's hard to remember how much more sleep I need with higher training volumes), and today I am groggy and pretty much useless. Note to self: Get some sleep, dummy!

Motivation

While my running is on hold (indefinitely, it seems), I find that I have some golden opportunities to improve my swimming and cycling. The 1/4 Ironman three weeks ago was a pretty good wake-up call- being 10 minutes slower than last year pretty effectively demonstrates that I have a ways to go to get my fitness level up to where it was for last year's Ironman. So I came out of that race pretty motivated (as illustrated by the relentless destruction I imposed on my knee). The weekend after I did an 80 mile ride in the Texas Hill Country, but was a bit frustrated by not being able to hang with my usual group of friends. Last weekend I rode an 80 mile leg of the MS150 (the first day was canceled), and had a great, challenging ride, but again didn't really hang with my friends. I'm not sure this time if it's that I wouldn't have been able to, or if it's more due to my recently developed aversion to drafting. I just don't draft anymore- it's dangerous and saps that mental edge you need riding alone in triathlons. Needless to say, I've lately been frustrated by my present slowness and apparent loss of fitness, but somehow have just been accepting being slow. All that frustration has been building up and then this week I remembered...

I'm a badass.

And after that everything changed. I've spent the whole year nursing injury and getting back into two sports that I dropped completely last year, and haven't really had my usual outlook on training. I've been letting my lack of fitness be an excuse for a lack of intensity in my training (with the exception of my ill-fated week of crazy running following the 1/4 Ironman). I only really enjoy training when I'm pushing myself, or otherwise impressing myself, and lately I haven't been all that impressive. But I can control that.

This week I've had two fantastic swim workouts, and last night I had my best ride at the park of the year. My metric for cycling fitness has always been my average speed for 15 miles at the picnic loop, dating back to when I first got into triathlon several years ago. My best ever is 22.5 mph with no drafting. This year my averages (that I've bothered to check) have been: 19.8, 20.3, and 20.8.

Last night I remembered who I am. I remembered why I do this. I remembered that there's no reason anyone should pass me. Certainly no reason that I should let them. I averaged 22.2 mph (no drafting). Not so far off of my PR. Maybe the fitness situation isn't so dire, after all. Maybe there is hope.

I am pleased to announce:
I am BACK. It is ON. (and all I need is for my knee to heal before the Ironman)

Status update

OK, a lot has happened since my last post, even aside from the massive passage of time. I ran about three 3-6 mile runs every week up until about three weeks ago. I did a pretty good job of getting consistently better cadence, although it continues to take some effort. My calves got progressively better adapted to the Newtons, to the point that I wasn't really noticing them at all. I've been doing a good job of regularly stretching my calves, and my feet have been getting progressively better. So...

I went home to S.C. three weeks ago to run the Cooper River Bridge Run 10K, a race I run with my family every year. I was pretty sure I'd be slow, and was somewhat anxious about how my feet would hold up, so I went into the race with some trepidation. I ended up having a great race- I kept my turnover high, my feet held up nicely, and I only had my worst 10K time ever by about 2 minutes (which isn't so bad, considering how much time off I've taken). A couple of hours after the race, I jumped on a plane back to Houston and got all of my tri stuff together for a quarter-Ironman triathlon the following day in Galveston (probably not the smartest plan, but it was the first big race of the year, and I had lots of friends going, and I couldn't resist). I had a great race! Slow (10 minutes slower than last year), but fun and satisfying. Everything went about as well as could be hoped, and since last year's race was 2 weeks before Ironman Arizona, I didn't expect to be in as good a shape, and didn't feel too bad about this year's performance. I hung out and helped man an aid station, and by the time I headed home I was utterly exhausted (but happy) :).

So I was a little excited. So I followed up my weekend of two raced 10K's (one in the tri) with a week of three 6 mile runs and an 8 miler, on an increasingly painful knee (but my feet weren't hurting a bit!), when my max weekly mileage to that point had been between 9 and 12. So the knee wasn't (and still isn't) happy, and I don't feel very smart. I've taken about a week and half completely off from running (aside from playing softball, which I am loath to give up).

The knee is feeling less painful (I can now walk stairs without visible limping), but still feels a little awkward, so I know I need to rest it. But... I have a 1/2-Ironman in Panama City in two and a half weeks, and an Ironman in eight weeks. So... the plan is to do pool runs for the next week (through next Wednesday), which is what I did leading up to IM Arizona, and which served me well, and then make a game-time decision for the 1/2-Ironman whether or not to run (recognizing that the real goal is the Ironman, and I need to stay/get healthy for that).