TNO’s Phriday Phun:

1. In honor oph graduates everywhere, what high school did you graduate phrom? What was the school mascot? School colors?

I graduated from The Webb Schools - Class of ‘92. Our school mascot was a Gaul. Sort of a Viking looking thing, but not really. Yeah, it’s a pretty weak mascot. School colors were blue and gold!

2. It’s Memorial Day Weekend and that usually means getting together with phriends and cooking outdoors. What do you call your grilling adventures and what’s the main course?

I have no idea what will be on the menu for this particular weekend, but when I grill I usually like to get some nice big thick steaks and cook ‘em up medium. A little spicy marinade is always good, but the flavor of a good cut of beet is nice in itself. Yum!

3. Iph you don’t mind my asking… what do you do phor a living? Do you see yourselph doing it phorever?

I work as a Systems Engineer/Administrator for an Internet Service Provider. I’ll be here as long as they keep sending me a paycheck. ;) Could I do it forever? Perhaps. I guess I haven’t thought that far out yet.

4. So, tell me honestly, how do you really feel about swimming?

I have a few years of competitive swimming experience, but I’m not sure I really like it all that much. I imagine I may be a little burned out from it all. As for the swim in triathlons specifically, I’m a little bummed that it’s not more important than it is. Time spent in the pool is not really rewarded due to the distances being so short and because wetsuits provide more of a benefit for less efficient swimmers than more efficient ones. That’s another whole debate in itself though.

5. How far are you phrom your “A” race and how are things looking?

I’m about three week past my original A race - Gulf Coast Triathlon. While I was there, I managed to get one of their spots for IMMoo this coming fall which is just over 15 weeks away. *gulp*

Rich Strauss at Crucible Fitness had the following to say on his forums about the Ironman Wisconsin bike course. Should be good information to review several times before race day.

——

Here are my first impressions, with some additional comments regarding strategy, pacing, etc.

1. The bike course is absolutely beautiful. Assuming that IMNA puts on a top notch race, I predict that this event will be one of the more popular races on the calendar. Rolling farm land, no traffic, forests and woods to each side for much of the course. Add to this the fact that the race will be in the fall, when the leaves are turning and the weather should be nice. We got rained on for a few hours and it was muggy the rest of the day, but hopefully we won’t see a repeat on race day.
2. The bike course is a rider’s course. I predict that we will see a wide range of ride times on the course. More than any other I’ve done, IMMoo will force you to make decisions. On courses with long flats or long climbs, you only make a few decisions and then execute the plan for several minutes. Wisconsin requires constant attention and decision-making, due to the rolling hills and corners. It’s a blast, but it rewards stronger, disciplined, experienced riders and will probably punish weaker, less knowledgable riders. More on this aspect later.
3. Did I mention that it’s fun? Do yourself a favor and brush up on your cornering skills. There are some very twisty and fast sections that are just a blast to ride.

Strength and Experience. How will these be rewarded? Basically, the course has two kinds of rollers:

• Quick successive rollers, like a roller coaster. A strong rider will be able to build up enough speed on the backside of the hill to carry him over much of the next hill. In addition, knowledge of your gearing, climbing abilities and limitations will be critical. In short, there are MANY rollers that require a decision about two thirds up the hill: should I shift to the little ring and spin? Should I leave it in the big ring and hammer up the hill? Should I stand or sit?

  Tactic: Approach the roller with a good amount of speed. Shift through the gears to maintain your normal cadence. Know beforehand under what conditions (cadence, grade, HR, etc) that you intend to shift to the little ring. At the start of the hill pay very close attention to the pressure on your feet. Given two riders with equal cadence, the one that is pushing harder on the pedals is applying more power to the rear wheel. It’s very easy to turn up the power at the start of the hill, with very little tactical gain. These short, ineffective power spikes are going to add up and make for a very long day. Instead, focus on applying the same or perhaps slightly greater pressure to your feet as you do on the flats. Focus on this pressure and maintain it to the crest of the hill. The next step is very important: accelerate over the crest, maintaining or increasing your effort on the first portion of the downhill. In short, if you are going to push your effort on any portion on the hill, do it on the backside in order to generate enough speed to carry you over much of the NEXT hill. In my mind, I start a roller on the downhill of the preceding hill.

• Rollers with intervening flat: the course has many of these. You crest a hill and see a long downhill, a flat stretch, then another hill. Assumption: the intervening flat is too long to maintain your downhill speed without going outside of your target zone.

  Tactic #1: Maintain your effort down the backside of the hill, then coast and rest. Let the flat bleed some speed off until you reach a pre-determine speed, then soft-pedal to the base of the next hill. Manage the hill, extend the effort over the crest and make a plan for the next set of hills. This is what I plan to do for much of the first loop.

  Tactic #2: Hammer the downhill and maintain this effort over the flat and to the base of the next hill. Manage the hill, extend the effort over the crest, etc. I will probably use this tactic on the second loop, during some sections that I’ll keep secret :)

Now you’re saying “This is all great for a freak, but what about me?” Like I said above, this course requires you to think the entire time. It would be behoove you to:

1. Really think about these lessons above and try to simulate them during your local rides. If you are a flat-lander, do some mental rehearsals.
2. Make an honest assessment of your personal strengths and limitations.
3. Have the discipline to ride WITHIN these limitations on race day.
4. Remember the OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Observe the hill. Orient yourself to it: rank it and then make an assessment of your limitations with respect to the hill. Decide on a course of action. Then Act on your decision. I will also add “act with discipline.” Ride your plan for the hill, based on YOUR strengths and limitations, and ignore the other people around you. Let them hammer out of the saddle. Your plan is to coast by them on the downhill.

More on Decision Making
I almost forgot this one. A great feature of the course is high visibility. There are many sections where you crest a hill and can see the course and upcoming rollers for a mile or two. This will be a big help.

Gearing
I rode with a 55/39, 23-11 on a 650c wheel. I will probably experiment with making my own custom cassette for the race. There where a few spots where I could not find an optimum cadence, because I lost the tight ratio of a 21-11. But just when I thought I might ride with a 21-11 I’d hit a section where I was glad to have the 23. However, if you are in the 30-34 AG, I recommend a 56/42, 19-11.

Wheels
Definitely a disk course. I had almost $1k of performance measuring gear on my bike (PT and S710), none of which freakin’ worked consistently, so I had no idea of my speed for much of the course. But there were many sections where I was well over 30mph, and I would say there are only a handful of hills that you “climb.” You enter the rest with a significant amount of speed from the preceding hill.

I’ve made the switch from using MovableType as the “engine” that runs this site to WordPress. A couple years ago, I had been keeping an online journal and had started out using the b2 blogging engine. Soon after I started though, development seemingly died on that project and when I couldn’t get any responses back from the developers I decided to move on. I switched to MovableType because it seemed a popular choice with an active community, but I still preferred b2 with its dynamic page generation and MySQL backend (lets face it - MT’s rebuilding is just kludgy).

In any case, that previous journal died a quick death after a not so quick divorce. The blog itself was filled with posts and pictures from my “former” life, so I decided to start fresh with a new one. It appears that in my blogging haitus, the folks of b2 have come back with a vengence. WordPress is the successor to b2 and it’s back with active development and a whole new look. Combine that with MT’s shady licencing scheme and the choice to move back was easy.

So far so good. The transition was quite painless and from what I’ve seen so far, WordPress should prove to be much easier to use moving forward. Hats off to the developers for creating an excellent piece of GPL blogging software.

Nothing like having to ride into 30 MPH gusting head winds when you’re on your last stretch home after a tough ride. Ugh.

I need a shower.

It’s been a while since I last did any real base training. I had almost forgotten what it was like to have training fatigue… until now. After a couple of hard sessions this week, I have that all too familiar feeling of lactic acid in my legs which manifests itself by having me nearly fall everytime I try to decent a flight of stairs.

As much as it sounds like it sucks though, deep down I know that I like it. There’s that odd feeling of satisfaction knowing that you’ve beaten your body up and that it’s going to come back stronger.

I’m just pooped. I got up early on Saturday to try and get my long ride in early so I would have some free time to myself later in the afternoon. I was up early on Sunday to help volunteer with the GearWest Duathlon. And I was up early today for another session of masters swimming. I just want to go come, crawl under the covers, and not wake up until tomorrow.

Alas, I don’t have the luxury. I need to get some more bike miles in before Moo, but I haven’t run since Thursday either. Not sure what I’ll end up doing tonight. Perhaps a little of both.

Not a whole lot to report from the weekend. I did a four hour ride yesterday on the trainer. It was forecasted to rain pretty much all day and I didn’t want to be out on my bike for hours while cold and wet. Four hours on the trainer though really tests your patience. The good news is that my long ride went really well. Not too much fatigue in the legs for the rest of Saturday nor today.

Today I went to volunteer at the GearWest duathlon. The folks at Gear West always treat me well, so I wanted to help them out with their race. My hats off to the people that competed in the race. It was pouring out this morning! 47 degrees at the start, cold, windy, and rainy. But there were a few hundred folks there that still toughed it out despite those conditions. Good showing duathletes!

The Lakers lost (yes, I’m a Lakers fan - maybe the only one on the planet) this evening. Not too disappointing. They got one of the two games here. No more home court advantage for the Wolves with the next two games in L.A. Not to mention the potential for Game Five tickets here in Minneapolis.

If you’ve been following along or happen to know a little about me, you’ll know that I started training for triathlons back in August 2003. My life was somewhat in a slump - my marriage of just two years had fallen apart and I was living a rather unhealthy style of not eating well and not exercising at all. All of this is pretty atypical of how I was when I was younger. I was always a pretty active kid and played a multitude of sports growing up. I swam on the varsity teams both in high school and college. Perhaps I was a little burned out from it all?

The idea of getting back into competitive sports was very appealing to me. I needed an outlet and something to do to get my mind off of things. I longed to get back into shape and to lose some of the excess weight I had gained from my inactive and unhealthy lifestyle. My best friend was a triathlete and there was a network of folks that existed through him who were also interested in the sport. I decided to give it a try.

Just for kicks, I signed up to do a local sprint triathlon about a month after I started training. I did some of my training on an el’ cheapo bike that I bought from Target, I bought a pair of running shoes and pulled out my old swimming gear from my college years. I was in piss poor shape unable to run more than a mile straight and with probably less cycling fitness than that. But I wanted something to look back on that I could make fun of myself later for. This race with official splits and times seemed like a good point to draw a baseline for where I began.

I didn’t do too badly for my first race, I guess. Considering that I only had about a month of training under my belt and that I had been sedentary for about seven years before that (there were spurts of a few weeks of running here and there, but nothing serious), I finished my sprint swimming half a mile in about 14 minutes, averaging 18.4 MPH on the 14 mile course for the bike, and running just under 10 minute miles for the 5k run. Certainly nothing to brag about, but I now had a starting point.

I knew my serious training would happen during the winter. I was determined to do a longer race in the Spring. I didn’t care what it was. I just wanted a goal to look forward to and to train for. My friend picked out the Gulf Coast Triathlon 1/2 IM in May and I had a finish line to reach.

I read through various triathlon books to help me create a schedule of workouts from then until race day. I did about 10 hours a week of preparation training and started my Base 1 period around the beginning of February. I chose the 600 annual hours route and planned for three solid base periods before tapering for GCT. I followed my weekly hours that I wrote in my scheduled to a T. There were plenty of days where I didn’t want to do everything on my schedule, but forced myself to do it anyway. I was a slave to my scheduled hours.

My diet was another hurdle that needed to be addressed. I was used to eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I tried this during my first base period figuring that I’d easily burn more calories than I was taking in since my workout volume was going way up. To my surprise, I actually gained weight despite my hard training and all it took was a mirror and my finger calipers to know that it wasn’t all muscle. If I was going to be serious about training, I had to get serious about my nutrition. I started closely monitoring my food intake and my calorie expenditure and always ensured that I maintained a calorie deficit. By then, my goal was to lose about 15 pounds in just under two months.

As race day grew near, I grew more nervous. I knew that I had put in the training hours, but I had never done a race or workout that would be as long as the effort I’d have to put out on race day. It hadn’t been that long since my separation from my couch and in the back of my mind I thought I was in over my head. Race day inevitably arrived and it proved to be a big success. My goal, having never done a 1/2 before, was simply to finish. I thought if I had a good day, I could finish in under six hours (30 minute swim, ~19 MPH on the bike, and maybe just over 10 minute miles for the run) as that seemed to be my paces during training. As I made my way through the course, I was amazed at what my body was doing. I swam an effortless 31 minutes for the swim, I negative split my bike leg averaging just under 21 MPH, and I was on pace to run under a two hour half marathon until I tired at the end (2:04 was my run split time). I finished in 5:26:42 and am still a little shocked while I write this about how well it went.

Of course, everyone was asking how did I make the progress that I made in such a short amount of time? There seems to be an air of doubt if I’m telling the truth or if this is one big tall tale. If you really stop and think about it though, nine months is a pretty darn long time! There were hundreds of hours spent training during those nine months - masters swimming in the mornings three times a week at 5:30 am, riding countless hours on the bike trainer which is one of your only options here in Minnesota during those winter months, running in subzero degree temperatures through loose snow which I can only guess is similar to running on sand. Sure, it was only nine months, but to those folks that still can’t believe it can happen for them in that amount of time, I challenge you to working out two hours a day for nine months straight while maintaining a strict diet (lots of fruits and veggies and under 2500 calories a day) and to reevaluate your fitness at the end. You will surprise yourself.

—–

So enough for a lengthy introduction. People probably want specifics. My suggestions come from a newbie to the sport so take them for what they’re worth. I’m certainly no coach, although I’m pretty well read on the sport and training for it, at least. Here are some tips off the top of my head (that I reserve the right to change since I’m probably missing some things - I’ll have to go back and check my books for reference):

1. Establish your goals. Where do you want to go this season? Goals should be difficult, but obtainable. No point in attempting the impossible, but shoot for something that you can for see yourself doing if all things go well.
2. Educate yourself. Read books and ask questions on forums. If you don’t own a copy of The Triathlete’s Training Bible (TTB), stop reading and go buy a copy NOW. It goes into quite a bit of detail, but if you read the book carefully, it’ll tell you exactly how to setup your annual training plan step by step.
3. Develop a realistic training plan suited for you and stick to it. Pay attention to your annual and weekly hours and your training zones.
4. Stick to your training zones and “light” RPE during base training. I get the feeling that people that just start out having too much motivation and think “more is better” and “faster is better”. All you’re going to do with that attitude is burn yourself out quickly. The goal is consistency. You should leave every workout feeling like you could have done more. If you’re out there killing yourself everyday, your motivation is going to drop quickly and you’ll fall off the bandwagon. Consistency is key.
5. Believe in the plan. It may feel like slow going at first. I certainly wondered what good it did when I was out there running just three miles at a time and having to take walk breaks during those run. But your body adapts and gets stronger. It will get there. A little consistency and patience will take you where ever you want to go.

After my terrible run last Tuesday, I was a little hesitant to try my legs out yesterday for my scheduled long run. As it turns out, it appears that I’m starting to recover. My HR stayed down (although still not where it should be), no chest cramping like I had on Tuesday, and while my legs were fatiqued a little earlier than normal, I was able to run long yesterday. At least I’m in good spirits that I will recover and that fitness loss was probably minimal during my off time.

Masters swimming this morning was rough. For some reason, I just couldn’t get into the swing of things for the first 45 minutes. My workout got better towards the end of practice though. Unfortunately, this was right before I was getting out of the pool.

It’s going to be a rainy, miserable weekend here weather wise. Probably a four ride ride on the trainer tomorrow. I’m really not looking forward to that. Can we say boring?!

Phriday Phun from TNO:

1. Headed to Memphis this morning for MIM and it’s got me thinking… I done races in cities I would never have otherwise traveled to… Oph the towns you have raced in, which one impressed you the most & why?

Well, considering I’ve only done two races, I’d have to pick Panama City Beach over St. Paul. Sun and beach beats… whatever it is St. Paul has to offer. As a spectator, I was really impressed with the layout of turnout at IMMoo. Great course for spectators to view the race from (although Madison itself doesn’t have much to offer).

2. What color is your ride? And do you color coordinate?

Grey/Silver. It pretty much matches with everything.

3. Son has his phirst job interview on Saturday. Hoping to be a “courtesy clerk” at the local market… didn’t they used to be called bag boys? Where did you start? What was your phirst job?

My very first job was when I just turned 16. I worked as a cashier at Best - a retail store that I think went out of business a few years ago? I worked all summer and bought myself a new stereo with some of the money I made. I still have the speakers that I bought from that summer to this day.

4. You’re at one oph those ice cream places where you order a base phlavor and then pick add-ins… what’s your pleasure?

Mint ice cream with oreo cookies and maybe a brownie or something else chocolatey (is that a word?) mixed in.

5. Kinda have Elvis on the brain… so, iph you had the chance to see any one perphormer, living or dead, in concert… who would it be?

Hmmm… I’m not really one for concerts. But maybe Kid Rock. I bet he puts on an awesome show.