Shedding Light

Ironman Wisconsin 2011 Race Report

2011-09-15T23:17:00.003-05:00

Quick statistics:

73:51 swim (4 minute PR on course)
6:54 T1 (1:46 PR)
5:46:52 bike (2 minute PR)
2:29 T2 (2:34 PR)
4:12:53 run (34 min PR)
Total 44 min PR vs 2009
22/271 age group starters; 22/237 age groupfinishers; 253/2243 finishers
2243 started/2449 finished = 8.4% DNF

Executive summary: I am basically pleased, though I had hopedfor a better time. Run and bike wentwell. I gambled on the run and paid forit; the last 2/3 of the run was very, very painful. Overall, a B+ for doing well at parts of therace and gutting out the run.

Prerace

In the week before the race, there was an unfortunateconfluence of many things happening in my professional and family life, and Ididn’t have the ability to sleep or mentally prepare as you would like. Nonetheless, I resolved to make due and geteverything done Friday before the race as much as possible to at least givemyself Saturday to rest and mentally prepare. Cynthia was not thrilled with the idea of leaving for WI at 5:00 a.m. onFriday, but we got out the door (also with my mother) and made our way toMadison. Friday morning, we met up withthe EN crew for a bit and got a friend his wallet who had left it home the daybefore.

Check-in was smooth, except for my weigh-in. They put me down for 158 lbs, which I knew tobe crazy. I had not weighed myself forthe last week of taper, but I had been 143-145 lbs up to that point. Give it 2-3 lbs for time of day, maybeanother 2-3 in water weight from taper, and 5 lbs for clothes, but this stillseemed crazy high. Not that thismattered, but it comes up later… (Other people in line who used the same scalealso thought their weight was quoted high to them.)

The rest of Friday and Saturday went pretty much asplanned. I managed to sleep well onFriday night and even got a Saturday afternoon nap. Lunch was the last big meal. At dinner with TRI racer friends, I had asmall pizza that I removed 90% of the cheese from, so it was basically breadwith tomato sauce and a bit of cheese and spices. I drank quite a bit of G2 throughout the day.

Saturday evening, I showered and shaved and put on a thicklayer of Bullfrog sunscreen before bed. At 2:00 a.m., I got up and chugged two Naked Juice smoothies (about 750cal) and was able to go to sleep again until 4:00. Another thick layer of sunscreen, getdressed, and drink more G2 for the rest of the morning….

The big excitement of the morning getting to the race was thatthe car wouldn’t start! Fortunately, wecarry a backup battery in the car, and this also went fine. I got to transition, and pumped up my tires,only to find I had not brought my electrical tape to close up my “gap” on mydisc cover. Oh well. I tried to just let it go. Evidently most of my friends had already beenin and out of bikes by the time I got there.

I stayed in transition area until it started getting lightbecause I need my glasses. At thatpoint, I handed them off to Cynthia. There was no line at the helix, so we just walked down. Getting into the wetsuit was leisurely andthere was plenty of time.

Swim

I wanted to beat the crowd into the water, so I went in veryshortly after they started letting folks into the water. I made my way past the ski jump and hung outbetween there and the buoy line. Thisalso enabled me to do a brief warmup. Aspeople came in – closer to the gun time – I just looked for a less-dense areain that range.

My swim goal had been to be “strong” and not get lost behindthe churn in such a way that would cost me 10 minutes or something. I had predicted 75 min time, with 70 minutesas a dream time. I lined up 5-10 peopleback from the start, and when the start came, I was off.

I was fortunate that my choices worked out. The swim was crowded, but not crazily forme. There were long stretches where Iwas able to tactically draft. I did havea bit of a delay at the first turn, but nothing that caused me to actually stopswimming. I cannot overemphasize how I lovethe knowledge of this swim course being 800/200/800/200 and the buoys so easyto follow.

I got to the end of the first loop finally, wondering how Iwas doing, so I looked at my watch, and saw 35 min. Awesome. On the third 800, something not-awesome happened…I got an abdominalcramp. I decided that there was nothingto do about it but keep swimming, but I knew I was going a little slower. After 10-15 minutes, it resolved itself and Ifelt a lot better. My watch said 73:40when I got out of the water. I figuredthat between the cramp and the extra time to get back to shore, this was a goodresult for the second lap. I left theswim pleased. Not extatic, but pleased.

T1

Another big plus from the swim was that I was not exhaustedor incoherent. Out of breath? Yes. But unable to run up the helix? No. I have a 2-minute improvement in T1 in part because I exited the swim inbetter shape than I did in 2009. I hadto get and dump out my own bag, but this is not a big delay. A volunteer delayed me maybe 15 secondstrying to mess with my number. I hadworn it under the wetsuit, but the low quality paper had scared me, so I hadstashed the second race number in my T1 bag in case my number got ruined on theswim. The volunteer (understandably) gotconfused and was trying to put on the number, blah blah blah. However, he paid me back by letting me leavewithout stashing my wetsuit.

Bike

I had predicted a 5:45 bike time, thinking 5:40 would be mymiraculously good time and anything under 5:50 would be fine. Statistically, my bike came out almostperfect with my work goals:

· 163 W NP (target 161)
· 153 W AP (target 155)
· NP 1.07 (high due to judicious coasting incertain places, not spikes)
· IF 0.71
· TSS 270-278, depending on which software Ibelieve.

My display had current W, lap average W and total average W, among other things.

I took the first “stick” easy, between 5-10 watts down fromtargets. I had a bottle of InfiniT and abottle of water, plus 2-3 gels in my bento. I was riding fine, mostly getting passed. Once I got to the loop, I decided it was timeto get going, and cranked up to my target. Always looking for a current W in the low 160s and keep the lap averagepower near 155. I took laps about every30 min after the first 45 min.

My first mistake on the bike came on a very early aidstation (first or second). I tossed bothmy home-brought bottles…the water was almost empty, but I had not yet startedto eat much. It was a water-onlyexchange! Ouch! After this, I wisely decided to take a gel atmost of the aid stations whether I needed it or not, just to have some onboard. This turned out to be good,because I got one bottle of Perform that had a faulty lid (or at least one Icould not get to stop leaking all over me) and had one bounce out at a railroadcrossing.

Aside from this, I simply spent the bike trying to do it aswisely as possible. I kept my max wattsdown and kept drinking and eating. Afterthings settled down a bit, I almost got to the point of laughing at a handfulof guys who kept beating me up hills and letting me catching them goingdown. I had learned the ride well enoughthat I knew where to apply some good downhill watts to get back up hills. This worked great except for a spot where anoncoming semi took up almost 2/3 the road….

I very much enjoyed seeing Cynthia on the bike course. I kind of wondered where my mom was, butfigured she was just standing back, since Cynthia didn’t say anything. There were some funny signs, and I ran into acouple friends along the way. Other thanfighting the water bottles that didn’t fit the cages and the railroad crossingthat bumped anything out of them, my only problem was some hot-foot on my rightside that I knew would be relieved by lowering pressure on the sole. I loosened the strap on the front of the shoeand this helped but did not quite solve the problem.

I made a judicious decision in the last hour to let off thegas a bit on the downhills when there weren’t up-and-down features to getover. I was feeling strong, but definitelythe wear of 100 miles was there, so I was trying to preserve my legstrength. However, I did make onemistake. My GPS had my bike split acouple of miles too long, and I “checked out” too soon. I probably rode 3+ miles with my feet on topof my shoes. Was there even a fullminute of time lost? Probably not, butit was frustrating and a little mentally unbalancing to think you are almostdone when there are 2-3 miles left.

I knew I had reached the end in good shape when going up thehelix was almost fun. However, this iswhere I made my second, and more critical mistake.

I knew the temps would be near 80, and that my “ideal” runtime would be around 8:30 pace for the opening and 8:00 after. But I felt great and did not feel hot, so Idecided that instead of backing that down as I should have, I would start at8:30 and see how it felt…if we were lucky on the temps and I kept myself cool,maybe I could hang on to 8:30 for the whole time. This decision – and not knowing that it washotter than 80 degrees (or shortly would be) - undid my run.

T2

T2 was very uneventful and fairly quick.

Run

The IM splits tell the whole story:

RUN SPLIT 1: 8.9 mi	8.9 mi (1:15:22)	8:28/mi
RUN SPLIT 2: 13.2 mi	4.3 mi (39:40)	9:13/mi
RUN SPLIT 3: 21.95 mi	8.75 mi (1:29:34)	10:14/mi
RUN SPLIT 4: 26.2 mi	4.25 mi (48:17)	11:21/mi

My first 8 miles or so didn’t hurt that bad, and 8:30 waspretty easy. I managed to feel cool (orat least not too hot) by keeping ice in my shorts.

But I had cooked myself. My groin and the lower medial muscle attached to my knee (next to quads)started to SCREAM. I was in a lot of pain. I managed it by running whatever pace I could go, then taking 20 steps,then starting again. I never walked morethan that, with the exceptions of Observatory hill and one other short hill,but I ended up taking the breaks more frequently. The 20 step discipline, though, was key. No “until the bush” or whatever. I did not count my steps at aid stations, butI decided this was a necessity, since they were not as well organized as I hadhoped. Sponges were often warm; drinkscame in different orders, etc etc etc. But I never walked more than a couple of steps past the aid station either.

My mile-to-mile splits just kept getting slower andslower. My shoes were sloshing withwater from all the ice and sponges. Myyoung son delights in the image I told him of being in the big burlap bag withthe Big Man With The Stick hitting you. Well, unfortunately, that was where I was. As poor as my run was, I am proud of theeffort I put in on it.

Post race

As I crossed the line, I knew I was in bad shape because ofall the suffering I had done on the run. I got taken to the med tent and re-weighed. Although I had been drinking constantly andnever felt thirsty, they declared me to be over-dehydrated because my post raceweight was in the 140s.

You may recall that my pre-race weight seemed crazyhigh. Maybe this worked to myadvantage. I got a liter of IV fluid andfelt a lot better. Oh yeah, and 3bottles of Perform, and felt like never drinking anything again. They sent me home, which was too bad, becauseI didn’t get to watch some friends finish, but it was probably for the best.

Analysis

I give this race a solid B+, even though I thought I was inshape to break 11:00

I was in shape and good weight. My bike and run fitness were solid and hadnot fallen dramatically. My swim fitnesswas peaked for sure.
I executed the swim well. I mighthave taken a couple more minutes off from a harder effort. I definitelywould have taken less time without the cramp. That, however, is racing, and I am completely satisfied.
My bike season has been an odd one. It has been a season of consolidation ratherthan gains. I did not have any bike PRsat the half distance. However, whatfitness I did bring, I extended its distance-worthiness effectively. I did not feel at any point terribly strainedon this bike ride. I executed asplanned. No miracles happened. I made one very good decision (getting gels),one modestly bad one (underestimating the remaining distance of the leg), andone terrible one (underestimating the temperature). For the bike leg itself, again, I feel goodabout the effort. The VI looks high at1.07, but this is partly a function of my relatively low FTP of 230 W. I just can’t get up some of those hills atall without putting out 200+ W. Again, Iam satisfied that I did the best I could with what I had that day.
I blew my race on the run with hubris. I knew I had a good day going and I bet onpushing it for a statistically very good day. I will never know what would have happened if the temps stayed around79-80, but even then, I was probably too ambitious. I managed to FEEL fairly cool in my white topand with the ice and I did not know what was happening with the realtemps. This said, I live with mydecision. I would advise myself againstit doing things again, but I won’t beat myself up about it. I am pleased withmy mental strength. If I had known I was30 seconds behind a couple more guys in my AG, maybe I could have caught themto get into the top 20. But I did notand I did not.

This race probably fairly reflects where I am as aracer. Pretty good. Definitely above average…but having to have aperfect day to get into the sub-elite. That didn’t happen for me. Istill put together a good overall performance, if not quite the one I wascapable of, even on the day. (I think Iwould have netted a faster run by slowing down more at the beginning.) But it was close enough for me to feel good aboutit, and I know that – the one critical bad judgment aside – I left absolutelyeverything I had on the run course, given the pain and psychology of the day.

Chisago City Half Ironman Race Report

2011-07-25T09:17:00.008-05:00

Race Report for Chisago Half Ironman, July 24, 2011

Executive summary: “Local” quality race on a nice course, with attendant issues of “local” quality leadership. Foibles on swim (my fault and that of course and RD) meant I have nothing to take home from the swim. Otherwise, very good race for me, despite not really tapering or even training intelligently. Smashed my HIM run PR. 4:52 final time.

Background/Prerace

I have been looking forward to this race all summer. Although it was not a race I was going to “prepare for” other than taking a couple of easy days in advance, it was going to be special because Chris was racing it with me – in fact, that was the only reason I was going to do the race. He has had a great summer full of elite soccer reffing, but has still worked hard to get the bike work in that he could, and he was running and swimming with organized groups, too, so I knew he would have a good race. On paper, you could make a case that we should be VERY competitive with one another, but we all know that the first race at a HIM rarely goes perfectly (or even well), so the reality was that I probably had an advantage in the intra-family championship. Nonetheless it was going to be great.

Saturday, we got packed up, got haircuts, and drove up to Chisago City, northeast of St. Paul. It was raining, but this was going to be a relief, weather-wise. We checked in and listened to a not-very-impressive course talk, then drove the bike course. This was instructive, because I had thought the course was flatter than it was. Actually, it was full of relatively gentle rolling hills.
The rest of the evening was fun, if uneventful, except for having to find a new hotel room at the last second.

Race Morning

We again lucked out on the weather. It would be in the 60s for much of the morning, before warming up to the 80s. The transition area was – Chris’s words – a bit sketchy, but there was enough basic room, and we got set up, marked and the like.
The start was bizarre. There was an elite wave, and the rest of the waves were in groups of 50 by registration number. You therefore were not racing with people in your age group, nor did you know anything about where such people were. Strict time-trialing I guess! Chris was in the elite group because of his fast swim. I was in heat 8, about 15 minutes later.
Right before the start, a fog rolled in. The RD decided to go ahead and start the swim anyway to stay on time.

Race Plan

I did not really have a race plan. Those that know me will realize that’s pretty uncharacteristic. However, my race prep for the three weeks in advance consisted of:

July 1-4 very heavy bike and some swim
July 5 Swim
July 6-14 90 miles of running, mainly in 100 degree heat. No bike, no swim. (Business trip)
July 15 off
July 16-17 Long bikes in 105+ heat
July 18-20 normal training (SBR) with surprisingly devastated legs
July 21-23 hard swimming only; I just didn’t see the purpose in digging a deeper hole for my legs.
I knew what I had been able to do for KS in mid June: aim for 180 W, average 170 after coasting, etc, which led to a run PR of 1:36:35 (7:22 pace). Given my prep, I just figured I would go with trying to duplicate that effort if it was there, and just enjoy the day if not. I guess that’s a race plan. :)

Nutrition was going to be sparse on the course; I took one bottle of 200 calories of InfiniT for the first 20 miles, and would then live on Gatorade. They were vague about what would be available on the run, so I packed several gels, planning to take them at miles 1, 5, and 9, and have a spare if they ran out of Gatorade on the bike.

Swim

The swim course was a straight out and back. In theory. In reality, it was shaped like a fork, i.e., with a bend at the last buoy. I know it’s the athlete’s responsibility to know and navigate the course, but between the fog and lousy buoys, it was darn near impossible to see where you were going. Furthermore, the small waves made it worse. You could easily get down to just a few people and no one really knew where you were going or could see anything else all that useful. The kayaks were far too neutral, given the circumstances. They could have done a much better job of keeping everyone on course. We all watched in amazement as people in the elite/pro wave went all over the place…and the rest of us were not immune. All this complaining is probably something I should just suck up and be silent about, but my visual difficulty didn’t make it any easier, and I went way off course I am sure. I ended up swimming into people goin the other way as well. [In discussing this with other people after the race, a lot of people said the same thing; additionally there were many reports of people turning around one buoy too early.]

I finished the swim in a disappointing 39:30. I thought I was swimming fast enough for maybe 3 minutes faster, but of course we will never know. However, I came out of the water in pretty good shape, not having had to deal with chop like at KS.

Bike

The first 15 minutes of the bike was a little ragged as usual. I averaged 168 W excluding zeros or 157 including them. Ugh. But then suddenly I just felt a lot better. I went up to targeting the 180, and it got easy. Found myself targeting 190. No problem. A little taken aback, but what the heck. This is where I should be based on FTP testing, even though I pooped out at KS. I thought to myself that this is a fun race for me with no expectations, so let’s see what happens. The long and short of it was that I stuck to it the whole way. Final average of 187 W, several watts lower including zeros.
While out on the course, I decided to play Ricky Racer to an extent. There was a moderate wind, and a big pile of Sprint racers to go through. The course was not especially crowded for me though, so I played the “legal draft” game of riding up directly behind riders to pass, then going around them at near the last second. There was plenty of room, so it was safe, and I was entirely within the rules. Whether I really saved time, I don’t know, but it was a fun game to play. I had a good time with that.

At about the halfway mark, I felt pretty darn alone on the course for several miles. Eventually I caught up with more riders, though. I was passed by a number of VERY strong riders, but I did not get passed by people I would regard as contemporaries particularly.

The bike course has several sections of excellent road. It also has a few (maybe 10 mi total?) of really terrible, bumpy road. This was bumpy enough to jar lots of bottles out, and bumpy enough that I had a hard time maintaining power.

With the increase in power and flatter course, the result was better than KS – 21.6 MPH average. This is not my world record, but I was still very pleased, given the circumstances of the day. The only question was what would this harder effort do to my run.

Run

The answer: nothing.

Again, just running the race for fun, I figured I’d just run the first few miles at a comfortable pace, see what it was, and just keep an eye on the pace to keep it not completely out of control, fast or slow. First mile 7:10. Whoa buddy, just a little fast. Relax a little. Second mile 7:00. I said, “relax” would you! Third mile, 7:01. OK, what the hell. Let’s just go with it. I did my gels as planned and walked the 10 steps or whatever is required to get the water every time.

Ran the whole course at a 7:00 pace with pretty even splits, taking account for a bit of geography. Yeah, ok, the last couple were harder, but not death defying.

Amazingly, this led to a 1:31:43, a FIVE MINUTE run PR for the distance.

Back to the bit with Chris and the race: the run course is out and back, mainly through residential neighborhoods. It’s a very pleasant and pretty flat course. I had expected to see him somewhere in my 5-6 mile range coming the other way. In reality, I was closer than I thought and the out-and-back had a loop at the end, so I missed him. I caught him at the 8 mile mark and he was clearly suffering. He had had some cramps. I didn’t get all the details, but I tried to encourage him because I knew he was really doing pretty well. But, if there’s one thing that boy can do, it’s suffer with the best of us. I worried a little bit, because I know what cramps can do to you, but I moved on and knew he would be ok.

I finished my race and wandered around. Just a few minutes later, Chris came through…very excitedly. I saw the whole thing; he ran straight through the chute and eventually just dived onto the ground. I misinterpreted his excitement for pain, but I was very proud. I caught up to him and offered him my best. It was great.

We finished the day with him picking up a 3rd place medal, and me finishing 7th. There were quite a number of very fast dudes in my age group, even though there were only 56 entries. I came away very happy with my time and experience.

Pluses and Minuses of this Race

The Chisago half is an inexpensive race, and they let people under 18 race. Those are both big pluses. The location means it is unlikely to be excessively hot. That too is a positive.
On the negative side, there were consistently too few volunteers throughout the course – on the swim, at the aid stations, etc., and the transition area was crowded. I have also alluded to the road quality, but the course has changed on the bike more than once and this may or may not be an issue going forward.

Overall, it is a good enough race if it fits one’s schedule and needs. It is not as well run as Pigman, but the run is a lot more pleasant.

Lessons Learned

I have been thinking about this ever since we started the drive home. What did this race mean?
I’m not certain of that. I think I am pleased with my ability to adjust upward, as well as downward, from whatever low-grade “plan” I had. I imagine I should take home the idea that – for me – “less may be more” on race week if there is any question about it for the last few days.

2011 KS 70.3 Race report

2011-06-13T12:32:00.001-05:00

Executive Summary

Goal time sub-5:00; actual time 5:06:51 (slow swim for everyone)
6^th place in age group
Swim improved regarding placement if not time; bike iffy but ok; good run
Minimal nutrition worked fine for me. 300-350 cal total on bike. ~600 total for race.

Saturday

Christopher and I drove down to Lawrence on Friday night and had dinner with EN friends. Our plan was that Chris would ride the bike course Saturday morning while I checked in, etc. (He is getting ready for a race in July.) Then we would drive the course.

We slept in and then got over to the venue a bit before 10:00 a.m., which was the opening time for registration. Chris got his gear on and we headed up to the check-in area. After a bit of confusion from the staff, he found the volunteer check-in and got on his way. I checked in easily as well. I put my number on my bike and headed over to T1. I was pleased to find that my space would be very easy to find coming out of the water. I checked my bike in and practiced finding the spot a few times, then left happy after deflating my tires.

With Chris being out for about 3 hours, I went back up to the outdoor expo area. I was feeling optimistic; the T1 spot seemed like a good omen. I bought a few small knickknacks and met some friends from TRIracers and Endurance Nation, but tried to keep mostly in the shade and hydrated. After Chris returned, we got Subway for lunch and then drove the bike course. This was a good thing. Although none of the hills were outrageous, I had forgotten just how constant they were. Chris was an excellent and invaluable course guide.

We then checked into the hotel and joined the TRIracers for early dinner. I made sure to keep it very simple: pasta with a plain sauce. We sat outside in heat and sun, which I didn’t care for, but I did my best to minimize the problem. After dinner, Chris and I retired to the hotel after buying some stuff for breakfast in the morning. He went to sleep and I finished up packing for the morning. The last step was to shower and then (yuck) apply a heavy dose of sunscreen. As in 2009, I obsessed over the weather, which didn’t look good (storms…), but there was nothing to do about it, so I went to sleep.

Sunday Pre-Race

By morning, it was clear that the weather would cooperate. Breakfast was 500 calories worth of Naked Juice smoothies with protein and one small breakfast bar (so I wouldn’t feel hungry) all before 4:00 am. This worked fine. I was not hungry all day, well into late afternoon.

We arrived on site a little before 5 am, but that was not quite early enough to avoid the crowds. Chris took off for his volunteering duties on his bike and I walked up to T2 to set up my gear. (This was the first race in a while that I used almost all the available time; note to self: get to KS 70.3 VERY early next time!)

I headed down to T1 and set up my stuff – inflated the tires, set out my shoes and socks and laid my helmet on the ground by my bike with my glasses inside. I checked the straps of the helmet just to be sure they hadn’t gotten dislodged like at Steelhead last year…. After a final trip to the portapotties, I put on my wetsuit and tried using a new (to me) spray-on silicone lubricant to be able to get it off.

Swim

The swim was a deep-water start. I discovered that I hadn’t taken off my wedding ring, so I quickly transferred it to my bigger middle finger, knowing it would not come off that way. The course was approximately 950 m out, 200 m left turn, 750 m return – very simple.

I felt pretty confident starting out. The water was in the mid-70s but I felt very comfortable in the wetsuit. The gun went off, and I started swimming, focusing on the stroke I’ve been working on. Everything seemed to be going fine for the first couple hundred yards. It was not super-crowded, but I noticed right away that I was having some trouble drafting. Shortly I wondered what the hell was going on with some super-kicker next to me. Then I thought maybe it was some annoying boat not too far from us. Then I figured out that that we were actually subject to much choppier water than we had realized. This seemed to get worse as we got out into the water. There were two effects for me. First, drafting was near impossible because of all the water-induced jostling of bodies. Second, it was just more “work” to make progress. The first leg felt longer than it should have. The worst section, though, was the short leg. The current/chop just was making progress much more difficult. It was a relief to turn back to shore and get back to “normal crappy” conditions. I was never scared or confused, but I wasn’t happy about the situation.

As I got out of the water, I glanced at my watch and, in horror, saw 40 minutes. I was really disappointed, and knew that was probably the end of my sub-5:00 day. I heard Chris yelling for me, and that cleared me out of my funk and got me going again.

Bike

Transition was relatively smooth. My wetsuit came off easily, so I’m going to use this silicone spray again. I whipped off my goggles and got on my glasses and helmet. Sock, sock, shoe, shoe, grab the bike and run. I did cheat to get a drink from a water bottle. Bad idea to do anything standing still, but I was quite thirsty. (Bad William! Bad William!)

It was immediately clear on the bike that the swim had cooked me more than I was used to. I hoped that everything would calm down fairly quickly, but the swim-fatigue lasted longer than I would have liked, maybe 20 minutes.

My original aggressive plan had been ~175 W for the opening of the bike, and as high as 190-195 W after that, based on a guess of a 2:30-2:35 split. However, that first 20-30 minutes didn’t feel very good, and the speeds I was able to get on the day with the hills made it clear I wasn’t going to get that 2:30ish split no matter what. I made an on-the-fly decision dropped my wattage goal to around 180 W, knowing I would likely cook myself if I went 195 W for 2:45. I had a small snafu with my Garmin that caused me to miss a small portion of the course and I cannot properly input into PowerAgent or WKO+, but in the end, it was clear that I met this goal based on the analysis I can do with GTC and Golden Cheetah.

During the bike course, I passed more often than I was passed, but I did notice a couple of guys in my age group that blew by me. I was using the even-power strategy, so over and over I got dusted up the hills only to catch people down the hill or on the flats. There were plenty of spots where I could cruise without pedaling with speeds in the mid 30s mph. There was this one guy that did this repeatedly with me during the course… he would repeatedly get out of his seat and destroy me going up a hill and I would catch him. There were a few guys from my age group that I thought I was keeping close enough to catch on the run, but I wasn’t going to kill myself on the bike to get them. I did catch a couple of friends (Nelson and Jass) who routinely out-swim me, but I was glad to see they seemed to be biking strong. I did not see a lot of drafting, and the course was not packed in my area, either.

Because of the mild weather, I had opted to put all my nutrition in a single bottle and drink water from the course. I had a 500 calorie bottle of InfiniT and made sure to drink some about every 15 minutes. I didn’t finish any of my water bottles completely before any of the aid stations, but exchanged for a full one each time.

As the bike was approaching the 2:00 or 2:15 mark, I was pretty sure I could come in somewhere around 2:45. I had hoped to go faster, but I knew I didn’t have anything much faster that day. Mentally, I resolved that I would just live with the result. I was pretty spent and knew that I hadn’t had 2.5+ hours worth of harder riding in me that day. I think the swim bothered me more than I would have liked. I decided to play the run in a very “normal” strategy, not being super-aggressive to try to catch anybody, taking risks for places. I thought I was too far back for it to make much difference, and I figured I could put up a decent run and be happy with a good, if not killer, day.

As I pulled into the end of the bike, I took note of the amount of my calorie bottle that remained. It appeared that I had only consumed about two-thirds of it, i.e., around 300, maybe 350 calories. I decided I needed to be careful about nutrition on the run.

Run

I came into T2 smoothly and found my spot. I took off my helmet to find that I had done the whole bike with my swim cap on! I quietly and quickly wondered how much that had cost me, but there was nothing to do about it. Got on my shoes, grabbed my stuff, and went. At the first aid station, I popped a gel and got some water to wash it down.

My super-aggressive goal had been 7:30 for 3 miles and then as close to 7:00 as possible for the remainder of the run.

I resolved not to look at my Garmin for half a mile so I wouldn’t get all upset that I was going too slow coming off the bike. I looked finally and found myself going along at around 7:15. I deliberately slowed down to the easiest pace I could bring myself to go, which was right around 7:30. The geography of the course was generally mild with some slight gradients, excepting one big dip/hill. In the end, that geography put me at around 7:15 for the first three miles. The hill was too steep to run fast down it but it would definitely cost some time going up. By this point, I was aware that I was making progress through the crowd. I saw several EN and TRIracer friends, which is always great. The turnarounds were long enough that it was hard to judge about any progress from one to the next. Crowd and teammate support was awesome. It is so cool to get a boost from seeing folks.

After the 3 mile mark, I tried pushing closer to 7:00 for a little while, but it felt too hard. I was feeling good near 7:15 and decided just to stay in that range, and if there was a lot left, use it in the last 5K. I realized that this has been the pattern of my good HIM runs. Instead of running the first three miles as slowly as I’d like, I tend to find an intermediate pace that feels very easy. Then I tend to keep the pace constant, but it just feels harder and harder.

The one concession I made to speed was that I came to a walk for 5-10 steps to get my nutrition at the aid stations. I never felt close to a bonk or anything, but I knew I was going on the low end, so I felt like I had to be sure I got something down. I believe I took the “Gatorade” (PowerBar brand…) 7 times. That would mean 125-150 calories at 3-4 ounces on average, plus 100 calories from the gel, for a total of about 225-250 calories total on the run and under 600 during the whole race.

The KS course is two loops, so there are people coming onto the course at the same time at the I’m starting my second loop. Some of them look pretty good; some are suffering already. I will admit to getting a private chuckle from passing a few people who clearly had no idea I was a full lap ahead of them when they said something about good going. I was always as polite as I can manage.

From mile 3 to 9 or so, the run was pretty uneventful except for a near-constant mild abdominal stitch. I was starting to want to see the miles tick off as it got notably tougher to keep the pace. I had to start looking at the Garmin to assure myself I was going as fast as I needed to. The fatigue was definitely muscular, not bonking.

The last 5K was an exercise in following through what I started and giving pretty much everything I had, even if the splits of 7:20-something do not show I was working so hard. I got into the beginning of the very long chute, and Chris yelled at me to hustle as there was someone behind me. It took an incredible distance to accelerate to my top available pace, but I finished as hard as I could and held off the guy behind me. I knew I had given my best, at least on the run.

The race-based splits were way off. Accounting for the race geography, my splits ended up about as even as they could possibly be, with a few seconds per mile fade at the end. But not more than a few seconds. My final run time was 1:36:35, a PR by a little over a minute at the HIM distance.

That was it. I was spent. I just put my head down on something (about a 4 foot stack of water bottles) and stood there for quite a while. Someone came over to ask me if I needed medical assistance, but what I needed was time to recover.

Post Race

After the race, I spent most of my time standing, as I was sore all over. It felt like every muscle I had was sore. I saw friends and Chris and got to check in with everyone. I thought I had PRed the run, but hadn’t seen an official time. Finally I got my phone and Cynthia had texted me to tell me I got sixth and I almost started to cry; I couldn’t believe it. I checked and she was right.

Before the race, I had written “I will NOT fall asleep on the swim. I will ride steady at first and hold hard in the last half hour. I will show discipline in my run and I will have nothing left at the end.” Aside from the mental compromise I made with myself about where “riding steady” was, I have to think this was a success.

As the statistical measures below will show, the lesson I really need to take from this race is that I should not get discouraged from my mid-race numeric results. I need to just bear down and stick with the plan or improvise as need be…but focus on doing the best I can and let things sort themselves out in the end.

Some technical/statistical notes

Transitions

We can’t all swim as fast as Andy Potts or run as fast as Rini. But we can try to be as fast at transitions. I’ve tried to go minimalist, with the exception that I generally put on socks and shoes before mounting my bike.

T1 had a pretty normal setup, but my tactic had been to be as sure as I could where it would be. I was far from the bike exit, but it was paved, so I figured I could run with my cleats pretty easily. I still spent an extra 10 seconds finding my bike, and I cheated by taking a drink, but otherwise, it was at least OK.

At T2, I had a very minimalist setup. A pair of shoes and a ziplock bag. Inside the bag was my hat and a can of sprayon sunscreen. I dropped my helmet (and swim cap!!!), slipped on my shoes, and picked up the bag. Before hitting the exit (again, the long way from where I was), I was jogging/running, had my hat on, and had sprayed my arms, ears, and neck. I was lucky that Chris was at the exit, so he kept the sunscreen, but I had been prepared to just toss it in the garbage on the way out.

So let’s see how I did compared to some random pro, like, say, Chrissie Wellington:

T1: Chrissie 1:28, William 2:51. Ouch. That whole glasses and shoe thing clearly costs me. She’s also probably better at getting off the wetsuit. I can improve.
T2: Chrissie 1:09, William 1:08. OK, that’s better. J

Statistical measures

Swim:

2011 KS, 41 min , 437^th, 70.3^rd percentile overall, 79^th percentile AG;
2010 Steelhead, 34 min, 542^nd, 70.0 percentile overall, 85.8 percentile AG
2009 KS 38/5 min, 722^nd, 67.5 percentile overall, 73^rd percentile AG
If the larger events grow mostly in the middle, not at the top, I am improving. If they grow in a “flat” way, my progress is minor. This is my worst event in terms of placement, no matter what.

Bike:

2011 KS, 2:45 290/1476 overall, 17/124 in AG
2009 KS, 2:45 484/1487 overall, 41/156 in AG
Clearly enough, the conditions must have been a bit tougher in 2011. I still wish there had been a more measurable time improvement, but clearly enough I moved up within the cohort by holding the same time.

Run

2011 KS, 1:36:35, 189/1476 overall and 5/124 AG
2009 Ks, 1:39:12, 484/1487 and 27/156 AG
In 2009 there were 16 male 45-49 runners under 1:40 and there were only 11 in 2011. Again, this indicates at least anecdotally that the race was a little slower in 2011. So this represents my best improvement. This is ironic in that it was already my strength. Maybe, though, it represents better management than actual run improvement; hard to say for sure.

Drake Half Marathon report

2011-05-02T00:20:00.001-05:00

Drake Half Marathon Race Report

April 30, 2011

Des Moines, IA. 56 ˚F and cloudy at start time. Moderate wind. Moderately rolling loop course with 433 ft total climb (source: USATF map)

Course: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=122478

Gun time 1:29:00. Previous PR for the distance: 1:38:12 in 1990, and 1:37:57 for the run leg of a half ironman in 2010.

Background

The Drake Half Marathon was a B+ race for me this year. I spent all winter on a “get fast” program for both bike and run. My best 5K time trial was 19:15. I did another one at the very end of the training cycle, at which I thought I had a chance to go to ~19:00 or just under, but I couldn’t hold it mentally and fell apart. I did not adjust my VDOT paces, took 2 weeks of transition time, and am in my 4^th week of training for a HIM distance triathlon. As prep for this race, I moved a weekend bike ride to the beginning of the week, dropped the mileage on my mid-week long run to just an hour, and did only biking on Thursday, and only swimming on Friday. The race was Saturday morning. I felt reasonably rested.

Those that know me are aware that I am the calculating sort. I looked at several calculators to see if my 5K augured well for a sub-90 min race. The straight VDOT equivalent time was 1:28:15, but other estimators ranged up to 1:31:30. After careful consideration, I set sub-90:00 as my goal. The required pace for 90 minutes is 6:52.

Based on a 90 minute goal and the course map, my plan was

Miles 1-3 at 7:05
Mile 4 at 6:35 (downhill)
Miles 5-6 7:00 in the long uphill part
Remainder 6:48, not being sure of the significance of one other hill

Day before

I’m an old-school carb guy. Nothing very special here diet wise, save that I consumed quite a bit of carb until early afternoon. Meal size at dinner was reduced to keep the colon fairly clear on race day.

At about 9:30 pm the night before, my 16 year old son Christopher figured out that I was running and gave me a hard time about having not told him. Since he is in the middle of both high school track AND soccer seasons, and had had three soccer matches and a track meet that week, it hadn’t occurred to me that he would want to run. By 10:00 pm, he had secured permission from his track coach. This threw something of a monkey wrench into my mental preparation, because I realized now that I would have to deal with him as well (sign up, transport, etc.). But I resolved just to roll with the punches and have a great bonding morning.

Race morning

Chris and I got up at 5:00 and got to the race site by 7:00. Sign up for him and packet pickup were uneventful. I had a very light breakfast of toast and brought a 300 calorie bottle of InfiniT with me. I consumed about 2/3 of the InfiniT by about 7:30 before final lockup of the car and strip down.

The other issue I had to deal with was that I had to give up my Garmin. My old Garmin finally died a few weeks ago, and I had been using my son’s for the last few weeks. Given that he had to totally SWAG a pace because he hasn’t trained for the distance (and it was his…) I agreed to give him the running watch. I pulled the computer off my bike and calculated what my paces were in miles per hour, though I knew the speed would not be as precise as pace would have been. To carry this would be a pain, but better than nothing.

We lined up near the front of the crowd at the start. Both of us expected that Christopher would beat me, but there was more uncertainty in his time than mine. He had a race plan, but it had more RPE variability than mine. We agreed just to meet at the end of the race.

After the gun went off, I quickly found that the bike computer was not very useful for determining current pace. It just isn’t designed to go as slow as a runner and the fluctuation is too high to be very useful. I had set it up to auto-lap every mile and give me average speed for the mile in addition to current speed. This meant I would at least get useful data for the latter half of each mile.

The first mile was an execution disaster – partly as a result of using the bike computer instead of a running watch. I went out in about 6:40. This said, it was a struggle to slow down. The first few miles felt ridiculously easy. There was a pack of people running in view of me that I was tempted to catch and run with. I decided not to; I decided I needed to run MY race, not do whatever that group was going to do. The middle section of the race, until about mile 9 or 10 just felt like a garden variety run at some effort, and the last 3-4 miles were fairly hard work, but grossly uncomfortable. I took a gel at the top of hills at about miles 6.5 and 10.5.

Mile splits were

6:40
6:52
6:53
6:26 downhill
6:42 up and down
7:04 uphill
6:51
6:47
6:49
6:50
7:03 included uphill
6:48
6:40

I adjusted these up a few seconds per mile from the raw Garmin data, since my auto laps were slightly shorter than the mile markers indicated. Examining the splits, I ran the last ten miles or so almost exactly as planned, and picked up half of the minute faster than I intended in the first three miles. The rest was just a couple seconds here and there.

My final placement was 58^th overall out of 1061. In the last mile, I passed 8 people and was passed by one guy whom I estimated to be in his early 20s.

I learned as I finished that Chris was half a minute ahead of me, since I heard his name being announced as he crossed the line ahead of me. I had not been aware I was anywhere close to him.

Final gun time was 1:29:00. Actual time was only several seconds less.

Post race analysis

I was very pleased with this time. I had run 3 half marathons in the late 80s, none nearly as fast as this. My marathon PR (from 2010) is 3:16:40; this time is faster than the half-marathon equivalent – so this is undoubtedly progress.

I feel like if I had known how to do this race optimally, I could have shaved another minute or so off the time. My heart rate was under 160 for miles 1-4, between 160 and 165 for miles 5-11, and between 165 and 170 for the last couple of miles. My threshold HR is in 168-170. There was no long period of intense suffering.

That said, this is a very good compromise. I learned that I could pace with much less than optimal feedback. I set a big PR. Even better, my recovery is pretty quick. As I write this (Sunday), I am sore, but not overly so. I am pretty sure I will be able to be running back to normal by Tuesday. Had I really blown everything out, recovery would have been longer. Thus, this race fits well into my training regimen for my first A-race of the year, in mid June.

My only lingering question is my mettle as a RACER as opposed to making my own personal achievement. I am confident – after the fact – that I could have raced with that pack. Over the rest of the year, maybe I should focus on being a Racer instead of a Runner after I get to The Line in my races. Feedback on this point is appreciated.

On the side, I will also say that I’m proud of my son’s effort. Dude hasn’t run any longer than 6 miles since last fall, but has run fast this spring. With zero taper, the fourth competitive event in a week, and a seat-of-the-pants race plan, he crushed the race for the first time at the distance. Undoubtedly, if I had figured out he was only 30 sec ahead of me and somehow caught up…he would have outsprinted me the last half mile, and both of us would be in bigger recovery holes; he has another track meet and soccer match this week, and I have a triathlon to get ready for soon. So it’s perfect. He beat me, and I was close, so both of us can soothe our egos…and both of us have times to be proud of.

Hickory Grove Race Report

2010-08-30T11:51:00.000-05:00

Quick summary: 1:17:20, good for 25 second PR and 3^rd of 29 in 45-49 Age Group. It was a satisfactory, but slightly disappointing performance.

This summer, after my A-race for the summer, I had on the schedule a team half event (Pigman, 3 weeks post) and two sprint events. The first of these was the Hickory Grove Triathlon on 8/29/2010, 4 weeks after my A-race.

In the two weeks previous to the Hickory Grove, I had been focusing my workouts on shorter efforts (e.g., half-mile and mile run intervals). I had taken a couple of easy days in preparation – a Friday swim only and a Saturday with only an easy 4 mile run. I had been thinking for the last few days about what it would be like to sustain a threshold effort for the (roughly) hour of the bike and run.

Race preparation was easy. There was plenty of time and space. Timothy came with me, so I had to keep track of him, but life was good. I took a short swim warmup and felt good.

I was in the last wave, with 6 minute intervals. Given the short swim (500 yards), there would be very little overlap between waves. We were all very friendly/chatty on the shore, so I felt a little guilty when I ended up banging into a competitor a few times in the water. I put in a good effort, but I was surprised that I felt surprisingly winded at one point in the swim. The time was a little disappointing, but does include a considerable run up to the transition area. T1 was unremarkable and quick.

The bike leg was good but a little disappointing. The course is a little unusual for something this short, with a full 180˚ turnaround in a 3-loop course. It has a few rolling hills, but nothing difficult. My perceived effort was pretty high, and heart rate was in the low 160s consistently, which is probably just short of my lactate threshold. The power, when actively pedaling, was in the upper 20X range, though, which was a little lower than I had wanted. Normalized power was just short of 210 and VI was 1.04. I would have liked to see 10-20 watts more on the bike. I didn’t sit there and whine about it – I just did the race and felt pretty comfortable; it was just something I could sit there and detachedly watch as I was going on. In retrospect, maybe this was the “problem”, i.e., that I was too detached and not as invested as I would have liked. On the other hand, I was not passed by anyone in my age range, but that is also a function of how they did on the swim. The average speed was 21.3 mph. I had been hoping for 22+. T2 was smooth again.

My run went ok, if not great. The first ¾ mile or so is off road, which I find less appealing, and the uneven footing was bothersome. My legs felt much more jelly-like than usual. The first was my slowest mile, consistent with these two factors. I was pretty sure I was not leading the age group because I hadn't passed that many riders on the bike leg, but I wasn’t sure how far ahead anyone was; I may have passed a couple, but not more than that. In the end, it turned out that I was simply beaten by people too far in front of me to see! I am pretty convinced that the race was just a touch long – maybe 3.2 miles instead of 3.1. (They re-routed the finish compared to previous years.) My last two miles got under 7:00/mile. It had been my goal to run under 7:00 pace overall. If I am right about the course being a little long, I did…if it was right on, I was just over. Again, my effort level looks good on paper; my average HR was 170. But still, I can’t help feeling like I was a little detached and could have put in just a little more.

As I reached the finish line, I got a big smile seeing Timothy waiting for me. I got my chip taken off and got my water bottle. I gave Timothy a hug, and we went to see the results. I was pleased to see that I came in 3^rd for the group.

We had a Very Important Soccer Match to go off to, so I had to leave without saying good bye to anyone. Also, it was a little funny to get to the match wearing my race outfit. Interestingly, there were a couple other parents who had done the race, but they had managed to change before they got there! Maybe one parent went to race and another took Johnny to the match. Oh well, one of the deep mysteries of the universe!

Two more weeks before the last tri of the year – another sprint. Two weeks to figure out how to maintain my fitness and also apply it just a little better on race day.

Steelhead Race Report, July 31, 2010

2010-08-04T10:57:00.000-05:00

Overall time 4:48:43 (best time by 20 minutes)
Swim: 33:58
T1: 5:15
Bike 2:30:28 (22.3 mph, the fastest I’ve ever done ANY distance triathlon)
T2: 2:05
Run: 1:36:57 (7:24 pace)
9th place in AG of 148, 133 of 1788 overall

Prerace expectations

This was my A-race for the summer. I had two big races for 2010: Boston and Steelhead, and I wanted to do well at both. I had chosen Steelhead because of the timing relative to Boston, so I had time to train up and taper.

Quietly, my goal all summer had been to break 5:00 at Steelhead, having done 5:08:xx at Kansas in June 2009. I had not had a good day at Pigman in 2009, and I really wanted to prove to myself that I was the 5:08 guy, not the guy who couldn’t run very well at all at Pigman. I had also had a very tough day at Bluff Creek this year, so again, I felt like I had something to prove.

I did not widely share my sub-5:00 goal, in large part because it seemed pretty audacious. Also, I was hesitant, having had disappointments at one level or another at my last few triathlons. I discussed it in one place on an online forum, and I told Cynthia the day before I left.

Friday

Friday was my birthday. Christopher and I got up at 5:00 a.m. and got out the door by 6:00 or so. We were set to lose an hour to the time zone change, and had about a 7.5 hour drive in front of us, which meant that we were likely to get there about 2:30 p.m. The drive went fine, save for one bad traffic section near Gary, IN, so we got to Benton Harbor a bit later than we expected. Never did care for Gary. :-) I made sure to have a big lunch and start drinking. Christopher started making fun of me for how often I wanted to pee.

We arrived at race check-in and there were two things that immediately struck my eye. First, the check-in line was LOOOOONG. And second, I was surprised how much it seemed like guys were preening and checking each other out. I hadn’t really picked up an “intimidation vibe” at a prerace checkin like that before. I tried to just ignore it. Fortunately, the line moved pretty quickly. Christopher checked in at the volunteer table. We poked around the small expo for a bit, and then we went out to drive the course. [Christopher was volunteering at one of the bike stations, which turned out to be 25 miles out on the course, so he needed to see it too!]

Our impression of the bike course was that it was pretty moderate. The road conditions were largely good, and the hills were smaller than the ones in our neighborhood.

As we finished going around the course, we drove back to have dinner with the Nelsons, Jasses and Coxes. We were late for dinner, but they were very gracious, and the restaurant was very cool about it. I didn’t want to eat much, but had a great bowl of soup and picked at a few other things. After dinner, Christopher and I went back to the hotel, did final preparations, and settled in for the night. Since he was doing body marking, we had to get to the race site by 4:30 a.m. the next day, meaning a 3:00 a.m. wake-up, given where we were staying.

Saturday morning prerace

We got going and checked out of the hotel on time, and got to the venue right before 4:30. Christopher went off on his bike to the check-in area, and I got there a bit later after re-inflating my tires and double checking a few things in my bag.

Parking was some fraction of a mile away from the transition area, so I rode my bike. [This matters below!] By the time I got there, it began to rain a little, and the transition area was not lit. I did find a good landmark to locate my bike and checked out which way I would be running in, and so on. This part went well.

The race organizers obviously don’t control the weather, but they could have brought in portable lighting, and in my opinion should have. I will admit I let this difficulty get to me. Between trying to stay warm, deciding how or whether to protect my shoes, etc., the situation threw me off mentally. I forgot to put the sticker over the gap in my disk cover, but this was a minor issue in the long run. Eventually, I decided I just had to get out of there because the whole situation was making me tense. David Jass will probably tell you I was feeling/looking a little incoherent, as we were next to each other in the area.

I put on my wetsuit for warmth, and walked down to the beach and the mile down to the start shortly before sunrise. It was a good thing for me to get away from there. I went through patches of sitting alone and trying to focus and others of visiting with friends or other racers.

Nutrition Plan

I had done a lot of practice rides using the standard practice of a concentrated Perpetuem bottle and water, and they had gone fine, but I always felt like I got a boost if I actually drank something with simple sugars, e.g., gatorade. I had also done some rides with just gatorade endurance, and they went fine. After considering how few calories I wanted on the bike leg (up to about 500), I decided to REALLY simplify my nutrition plan. I would carry two bottles of gatorade on my bike (~300 calories) and drink (most of) one of them in the first 10 miles, and get going on a water/gatorade mix for the rest of the ride. Getting through my two bottles and a bit more than one more handout bottle would be plenty of calories. On the run, I figured I could get away with 200-300 calories total (and take more if I needed). At about 50 cal per 8 oz, I would need 32-48 oz over the race. That averages out to about 3 oz per aid station, and that seemed very doable. So the run plan was just to take a good swig of gatorade and then a second cup of water to drink and/or cool myself. All Gatorade all the time. Pretty boring, but I wanted to simplify, simplify, simplify.

The start and the swim

My focuses for the swim were the following:

Swim harder than I usually do. As hard as I can without losing form/control. Don’t fall asleep
Navigate well. Try not to sight much; try to let the other racers guide me. Try to go at least 25 yards per sighting (a dozen or more right arm strokes).
Try to draft well without pissing off the guy in front of me. :-)

I lined up nearer the start of the swim than my previous times would indicate, but this was a conscious decision, since I didn’t want to have to clamber around a bunch of other swimmers if I was successful in going faster, and I wanted a chance to catch a good draft leader.

I was totally unaware of any current in the lake walking down, during warmup, or the race. Nelson said he thought it changed, but that was news to me.

The swim was very straight, which was a huge advantage for me, given my bad eyesight. I just hugged the buoys and tried to draft as much as I could. It turned out that it was less time than I would have liked. There was not so much “violence”, but there was a lot of nudging people of other people’s feet. After the first half or so, things thinned out as well. I probably only had a draft half the time.

That I wasn’t sighting very much but stayed on course was testified by the fact that I physically ran into two of the buoys. Oops.

Especially in the second half of the swim, when there were fewer people, I caught myself not going as hard as I wanted a few times. In retrospect, I attribute this to the whole issue of being a bit mentally out of it all early morning. It’s just a crude estimate, but I wonder if I could have gotten another minute out of the swim.

When I stood up, I was under 33 min for the swim. That was a big bolt of pleasure hand helped kick me up mentally. My official time was 33:58 by the time I got up to the transition area. I have no confidence issues swimming, but probably everyone knows I’m kind of slow at it — so this was a good time for me.

T1

I got up into T1 smoothly. My landmark made it very easy to spot my bike. As expected, David Jass’s bike was gone already.

T1 was going great until....

I couldn’t get my helmet strap buckled without the strap going across my nose! This took me forever to figure out. It turned out that someone had pulled the strap in such a way that the strap slid from the left to the right side of my head (through the top of the helmet), thus making the whole strap totally “out of balance”. Between the general disfunction of having just gotten out of the water and the fact that my glasses were wet, hindering my vision, this took me FOREVER to figure out. I finally did, and got it straight. I am SURE I lost 2-3 minutes fussing with this. Ouch! Otherwise, T1 was fine.

Bike leg

Technical analysis. Over the last 18 months or so, I’ve become a devotee of power analysis on my bike rides. The simple fact is that if you know how hard you want to pedal, a power meter tells you if you’re doing it or not.

For this race, I had targeted a 180 watt warmup phase, and then trying to hold steady at 190 W for the remainder. These numbers were based on tests that approximate what I can hold for an hour, and then multiplying by a fraction to account for the longer ride and needing to run afterwards. Real power geeks will probably laugh at the low numbers, but (a) I’m not a large guy; (b) I value being able to run well, since you lose MORE time with a bombed run than a slightly slow bike; and (c) yeah, I do want to get stronger on the bike, so quit bugging me about it. :-)

My bike computer (a Garmin) had a flaw that I did not know about. A few weeks before the race, but after my testing, I had upgraded to the latest firmwear. Unbeknownst to me until after the race, this firmware has a well-publicized bug in which it has a tendency to go into auto-pause for seconds at a time. It holds the display (not updating power, speed or distance, but not showing zeros, either) but records the ride as shorter than it was. In retrospect, this appears to have been happening at a rate of about 10%. (I have since gone back and un-updated...)

This turned out to be a race issue for me for a while, because my Garmin was telling me that the mile-markers on the race course were off. I thought I was headed for a “normal” 2:45ish ride (near 20 mph), even though my speedometer had felt like I was averaging higher than that. Finally, when we passed the 45 mile marker, I asked around other riders, who verified we were at 45, so I just gave up trying to figure out what was wrong and tried to stick to the power numbers.

During the first 20 min or so, I was being pretty conservative, and then I tried to move up to my full low-190s target. I was intentionally working at high cadence. I recently bought a compact crank, so I’m riding 50/34 in front and a 12-25 cassette. This lets me spin easily up the midwest rollers, without having to stand up. However, it means that downhills, I spin out somewhere in the mid 30s.

The final power numbers I got for the ride (TSS, etc) are, I think, distorted by the recording issue. The bottom line was that I held the power pretty much what I wanted the whole time.

My HR dropped from the upper 150s at the beginning to the upper 140s by the end in a very steady manner. My LT HR for the bike is in the low 160s. Cadence average was 98. 50% of the time was 90-100, 31% of the time was 100-110.

Descriptive analysis. Unsurprisingly, the first 10 mi was very crowded. It was good that I had resolved not to go my full power during this time because it was very difficult to do so, between steering around people and various small obstacles. I was the first male wave after several female waves, so I was gradually moving up through the crowd. I ran into David somewhere in the first quarter of the bike leg, but I can’t remember exactly where. We exchanged hellos and encouragement, but it was in a flat section, where I tend to be moving faster, and I went on. Similarly, but later, I ran into Steve Cox. I do always enjoy seeing friends on the course, but the truth is I’m probably not the greatest “friend” during the race. I try to give a good cheer, but I can never concentrate enough on my race if I chit-chat, and people tell me that I totally miss them sometimes. I’m sorry about that!

For the first half of the race, I found myself “racing” with a pack of 6-10 riders. Some of them were newbies (having overheard their conversations), and at least 2-3 were apparently roadies, based on their riding style. Two were people only doing the bike leg as a relay. This was pretty frustrating. It was a lot of mental work to not get caught up in their draft pack. It was often a fair amount of work to have to pass the whole group of them instead of one or two riders. (I was clearly going faster on the flats and downhills than their pack.)

At the first aid station, I had a bad experience with volunteers who were not very good at handing off, were running into the road, etc. I didn’t get a bottle of anything. However, it was only half an hour in, and the weather was not hot. I had plenty of fluid to make it to the second aid station, so I didn’t stop. At the second aid station, I got a bottle of water from Christopher (yea!) and stuck it in my teeth. I got a gatorade bottle from another volunteer and stuck it in my down-tube holder. Just as I was getting out of the area and was ready to get a water drink then pour the rest in my aero drink, the bottle broke! I was left with a bottle top in my teeth and nothing else! Another quick calculation: Still not hot. Next aid station in only 8-9 miles. Nutrition going ok. OK, I won’t stop again. But next time, I will take whatever I get first and put it in the down tube no matter what! Fortunately, there were no more mishaps, and I got my fluids safely from then on out.

The only other annoying problem was that my wet, old velcro of my bike shoes kept coming undone. Grrr!

Around mile 30, the course finally opened up. It was totally a pleasure at this point. I felt good. The pack was still hanging with me off and on, but it had gotten smaller, they were passing me less frequently, and the rest of the riders dramatically thinned. Finally, between miles 35 and 40, we saw a course martial. The pack was down to 3 by then, and they passed me up a hill as a martial rode parallel with them for quite a while. I passed them back on the flat, and eventually the martial rode off without doing anything. They passed me one last time shortly thereafter, the unofficial leader kidding with me about how he wondered if the martial had been watching him. I mumbled something considerably more polite than I had been thinking, and broke a rule for a few min, putting some distance between them and me at about 200 W, and I don’t remember seeing them again.

Somewhere around the 2:10 or 2:15 mark, the ride was feeling a little less fun and more hard and a bit painful. I knew I could hold it through 2:45 (if that’s how long I would be), and probably be fine to start to run, but I was glad - at least for then - I hadn’t pushed it too much harder.

I can’t recall exactly where, but there was one section of headwind in the last half hour. I figured I was doing well enough when it became clear that I was moving up through the field more than usual at this point. It looked like others were suffering more than me, so I figured I had judged things ok.

I did have one potentially important bike mishap. I was doing my standard stand-on-the-pedals-and-swing-your-leg-over dismount that I’ve done a million times. Standing on my one pedal, just about to step off, my pedal slipped out, and I went completely down within 20 yards of the dismount line. I got some scrapes but could “immediately” tell that I was ok. A well-meaning volunteer picked up my shoe and wanted to help me out. I assured him (her??) I was fine, but s/he wouldn’t give me my shoe back for what seemed like an eternity despite me reaching for it! Finally, I just stopped and said, “Please give me my shoe! I’ve got to get going!” and I got to run into transition. In reality, this was probably less than a minute, but boy it felt like forever!

T2

T2 was uneventful except for the small lakes that I had to pour out of my running shoes. There were a lot fewer bikes parked than there had been bikes missing when I had come into T1. I saw and waved at Nelson and Jass’s better halves. Things went pretty quickly, but all that water was a little disorienting. I knew my shoes would dry up shortly, but they felt like wet mops when I put them on!

By this time, I knew my real bike time, and I knew that as long as I didn’t blow up, I would make my sub-5:00 goal. I even knew I had a little room if I slowed down more than I wanted to. This was great, because it gave me great confidence in my run strategy.

Run

This course doesn’t look like much on the elevation profile, and the truth it that it’s not too bad. There is one big hill at the beginning, and a smaller one you have to do twice. On bummer is that one of the major downhill sections is on a very twisty walking path through the park, so you don’t (or at least I don’t) get to take advantage of it like I would if it were straight. I would not call it a hard course, but I would not call it an extra fast one either.

My plan here was fairly conservative: First 3 miles easy - slower than my marathon pace. Next 7 was the “steady block” at about marathon pace, and the last 3 were to be where I would meter out everything that was left. Everything until mile 8 was to be to get me there in decent enough shape to deliver. I had my watch set to autosplit the miles and give me current and lap pace.

I ran Boston in 3:16 this year in even splits, which gave me a good handle on my REAL marathon pace. My VDOT had improved marginally since then, but not dramatically. The official Daniels MP was 7:09, and my Boston pace was 7:30. However, “everyone knows” that VDOT give a MP that’s faster than anyone actually finishes. My plan was to race around 7:30-7:40 for the first three miles, and then see how I felt about getting up to close to 7:10 after that.

As is common I am sure, it felt much easier to fly at the beginning of the run than was wise to do. I kept telling myself “Discipline. Discipline.” The first mile had the one really tough hill of the course, and I still covered the mile in 7:36. For the next two miles, only the “Discipline” mantra kept my pace down around 7:20. Section 1 done. Feeling good, but now I know I’m in a race and I’ve done a lot. Legs talking to me, but not shouting. Don’t screw it up. You want sub-5:00, now is where you have to do it. Broke Section 2 in to first four and last 3 mentally. It became apparent that to hit 7:10 would require an effort that felt risky, and I REALLY didn’t want to blow up. Discipline. Stick to 7:20ish. OK, well done. Three more miles until I’m allowed to go into the Dark Places if I have to. I am living in a box from mile to mile here, checking them off as we go. Tick, tick, tick. One of these miles was mostly downhill and fairly straight section and was the fastest mile of the day. Now I’m at mile 10. It’s a bit hard to calculate because I didn’t have a total time split and didn’t know the exact time of my wave, but I am pretty sure I can even beat 4:50. Wow. Don’t screw up. Mile 11 is the one other pretty tough spot on the run. I gave up 30 seconds here, doing 7:51. In retrospect, maybe I could have eeked out a faster mile here, but it was respectable. Miles 12 and 13 were largely downhill or flat. I ran them well, but I wish I had found that last gear earlier. The last quarter mile, it was there. If I had just found it earlier, I think I could have held it. But this is a petty complaint. I just about took someone’s hand off high-fiving them as they offered me a hand within sight of the line and I knew I was under 4:50.

In the end, my actual run execution turned out to be about effort rather than actual pace. Aside from minor mile-to-mile variations due mostly to terrain, the run was evenly paced. But it was easy-pace, steady-pace, and meter-it-out pace from the point of view of my effort. Is that a problem with my execution? I’m not sure. My self-analysis is that my run’s weakness was not so much that the pace was even, but that “if I had only known” I might have pushed even a little harder. My heart rate was 155 ± a few beats and totally flat for all but the last quarter mile. (LT HR is probably about 168.)

The result was fantastic. I had run my best half-split ever, if not QUITE as fast as I had targeted, but I had blown away my bike split and done some pretty serious damage on the swim.

After being across the line for a while, I found out I came in 9th in the AG out of 148, which totally blew me away. Top 10 in a big name event. Wow. I’ve always thought of myself as a middle-of-the-pack guy who did a little better than that by being a bit bullheaded. I didn’t stay for the Clearwater offerings, but I couldn’t have been more than a few spots away. What if I hadn’t had the helmet mishap? What if I hadn’t fallen at the end of the bike... I would never have thought I’d even consider if I could make that kind of result. Maybe I need to think about how to get better.

Bluff Creek Olympic Tri Race Report

2010-05-24T12:19:00.001-05:00

I like to think that I'm quick enough to whip out a 2:30ish Olympic distance race without a major fuss, based on about a 30 minute swim, a 1:15 ride, and a 45 min run...with enough margin on those times to stick in transitions. My best last year was 2:23. Didn't happen yesterday: finished at 2:42. Uggh.

This was a "C" race for me... I'm not racing that often this year, but I knew I needed to race a time or two before my A race at the end of July (a half-iron). It was about a month after Boston, which seemed like long enough to be recovered and getting going in training again, but I guess that's pretty accurate - just "getting going" again. I did not taper for the race, save for shortening Saturday's ride to two hours.

Christopher and I got up about 4:30 in order to get to transition as close to 6:00 a.m. as reasonable in order to get a decent transition spot. I wanted to get a good spot, plus with my bad vision coming out of the swim, it's important for me to find a place I can easily see. We got to the race a little after 6:00 and got good places. Everything was fine. Christopher found his friends/teammates who were all doing the sprint.

I did a short run warmup and found my quads surprisingly dead. This didn't seem like a good sign. However, I figured that, as often, after a good warmup (read: swim), everything would be fine.

We took the bus over to the swim start, and I took a short swim warmup to find out what the 60 degree water would feel like. Fortunately, it didn't seem too bad. It was a bit cold on the face and feet, but I knew it would be ok once we got going.

The swim course is harder to navigate than many if you can't see very well because you have a very wide "lane" between the shore and a big turn, and then the swim exit isn't very easy to see after the last turn. As a result, I think I probably swam longer than I needed to. The effort, though was pretty good. I looked at my watch and saw 28-something getting out of the water (there was a very long run up to T1, so official time was 30:44). So far, so pretty-good.

T1 was a touch slow due to being a little off-balance, but I felt fine. The heart rate was high, but I was ok with that.

I started the bike, taking the first half mile or so, getting out of the park, a little easy to let my HR get down. The main part started then with the wind at our backs. I started going well and slowly catching up to some people, but I noticed that I was having trouble getting up to my target power of 200 W. This was disturbing, but again, I hoped that with more warmup, I could get there. In the long run, this did not happen, though power did slowly trend up roughly from 180 to 190 during the sections I could ride at steady state.

I falsely attributed some of the early low power to the strong wind at our backs. After a few miles, we turned east and had huge crosswinds. I have ridden enough in this kind of wind that it didn't bother me especially, except that it's obviously harder to do. But I was still disturbed that my power wasn't going up.

We hit the Pilot Mound river valley crossing (Twister Hill). I flew down the hill pretty much alone, so the blustery wind pushing me around a little didn't matter too much. Topped out at 46 mph. I could have hit 50 I'm sure, but didn't have the nerve under those conditions. Going up the hill, I tried to keep the watts under control. Didn't want to burn out, especially because of how things were already going. I had to crank it up to 250ish in a couple spots, but felt ok about it.

After getting out, a pattern emerged. I was getting regularly passed any time we'd go uphill, then pass back on the flats (or on the downhill). This pattern was ok with me, because I knew I was trying to flatten my effort, but it's a little embarrassing, especially when it's the same 2-3 people over and over again! I decided, given that the legs just weren't happy, not to pedal when I was going 32+mph if I didn't feel like it and wasn't moving relative to the field. I know that from an efficiency standpoint, you want to pedal with the wind at your back, but from a gearing standpoint, I spin out in the mid-30s. Perhaps a wider gear range would be better for these very windy rides.

By the turnaround, I had drunk most of my bottle and was very glad that another bottle was available as an exchange. This was the first indication that the heat and humidity were going to be a factor. I didn't feel uncomfortable on the bike, but I definitely was consuming water faster than normal. My recent less-is-more strategy was failing...

The last section of the ride with crosswinds felt longer than I remembered going out, but I felt like I was making progress relative to the field, so this was ok.

Ave Power = 170 (including zeros)
NPower = 181
VI 1.06 (probably not bad, given the wind and hills)
Ave speed 19.53 (ouch)
Target power had been 200 W. Ouch.

Getting to T2, I thought everything was ok, if not great. I got on my shoes and made decent time getting out.

But as soon as I hit the trail, I again realized things were going to be tougher than I thought. I felt like I was going at a snail's pace, and I quickly got a nasty side stitch. I NEVER get side stitches, so that was pretty annoying! After getting out to the road part of the run, I looked down at my Garmin to see my pace, hoping against hope it would be faster than I thought. I saw a number that started with 9. Uggh. And now it was hot. And humid. And windy. That heat just didn't hit me the same way when I was on the bike.

At that point, I made another quick decision. The run was going to just be from one mile marker to the next, and I wasn't going to use the Garmin particularly. I would just meter out what effort I had and get through it. If things got better, I'd reconsider.

During the run course, I was passed by a few, and passed a few, but the placings seemed unusually non-dynamic. It was as if everyone in my time range were all suffering. I was personally disappointed I couldn't give it my usual effort. I pride myself in running well, and I just couldn't.

Fortunately, the side stitch went away after a couple miles, and I felt marginally better. I took lots of water and gatorade from the aid station and was pleased to see Joe Robinson and a couple other fans along the way. Thanks guys!

Eventually, of course, the race ends. After I was able to get my times, I was actually relieved that the run was "only" 51:10, or about 8:15/mile. Now that's easily a minute per mile slower than I'd like to go, but I realized in the end that it wasn't the utter disaster that it felt like. I realized that a few bouts of mental toughness where I had stuck to it instead of walking had paid off at least modestly. I was hoping to hit a 7:00/mile Oly this year, but it sure wasn't going to happen today.

I found out that Christopher won his age group in the sprint, so that was a fantastic plus. I should have been mean Dad and made him drink more, though, because he got sick later in the day in a way that sure looked like dehydration.

Some statistics and remarks:

Start time was 8:30ish. At 10 a.m., the temp was over 80, the humidity about 90%, and winds 20 mph, gusting to 30+ according to the local weather web site
Could I have just plain bonked? I've been trying to take off a few last pounds, and did not take any calories on the bike on Saturday 2 hour ride and really didn't eat more than normally in anyway after a post-ride clif bar. Normally, this isn't a problem, but did it just put me in too much glycogen deficit?
Obviously, the legs weren't ready today, on top of the heat. How many days does it take after some hard work to get them there? I wonder how much this really mattered as well.

In the end, I have to reconcile myself to being satisfied with this race. It was a disappointing performance, but I didn't really set myself up for success, and the conditions were tough.

If it's a test of fitness, then I know where I am. More work to do.

Boston Marathon Race Report, April 19, 2010

2010-04-20T11:26:00.001-05:00

This race report is way too long. Sorry. Because of that, I broke it into two sections. The first one is about "the experience", which includes "my story" and some pointers for anyone who might read this and is going to do the race in the future. The second is "the numbers", which is an analysis of my actual race and the time I put up. It was a 9 minute PR, so let's just say I thought it was good.

The experience

My race preparations for the Boston Marathon began Thursday night with the ritual trimming of the eyelashes and eyebrows.

I grant that this is not a conventional ritual. However, my racing sunglasses have clip-on corrective lenses within them, and when my eyelashes and eyebrows are at full length, they are close enough to the lens to dump sweat and sunscreen on them – not good for visibility. Trim them back, problem solved. For the record, it takes a bit of skill to trim the eyelashes of your right eye with it closed and your glasses off, but I digress.

More seriously.

I arrived in Boston Saturday late afternoon. Got my self out of the airport and, via bus and subway, got to the convention center with literally seconds to spare to get my number and packet. The irony that my qualifying time was similarly close to the edge did not slip by me. I could have checked in on Sunday, but I wanted to get it done if I could. Another subway ride to the end of the D line and a trip on a hotel shuttle, and I was at the Marriott. I spent a quiet evening, but didn't sleep as long as I wanted.

After a leisurely Sunday morning, I made my way back to the expo. I also invested in the traditional jacket and a few other small items I needed. I found a place to buy some food for my room and sunscreen. I had a nice lunch with some folks from an on-line group; this was my "pasta feed". For long races, I've taken to the routine of having lunch before the race to be the last big meal, then small stuff after that.

Wake-up on race morning was 4:30 a.m. Getting to the race involved a subway ride to Boston Commons by about 6:30 a.m., where we got on school busses to go to the starting line, 26 miles away. The whole thing is amazingly orchestrated. Once at the start, you go to an "athlete's village" where there are big open-air tents, drinks, and basic food. There is considerable time to pass here, so you have to wear extra layers of clothing. You drop off a bag of clothes for the end of the race (like Ironman) before walking the ¾ of a mile to the start. But since they start getting you moving and dropping off that bag about an hour before the start, they still collect lots of discarded clothes between the village and the start, which are given to charity.

My starting number was 12079, which put me in the first wave, which started at 10:00 a.m. (This was seeds 1-13,999.) You go in corrals of 1000 each, dictated by your number, and they are seeded from fastest to slowest. I wasn't sure if I could see the start from where we were! I shed everything but my hat and gloves (and shorts and top... no worries!) before the start.

I never heard the start, but we started to move, very slowly at first, then a walk, then almost a jog. Interestingly, the starting line was not very well marked, i.e., no fancy banner across the top or anything. Thus newbies like me did not know where the starting line was until we were practically on top of it and saw the mats across the road and a sign. It took me about 10 minutes to get to the start.

Because the corrals are so tightly seeded, there was a lot less diving and dashing around at the start than in many road races. I found myself choosing to run very near the middle of the road to keep the surface level under my feet. Water stations were regularly placed first on the right and then on the left. I chose to take drinks from the left on the theory that most people would take the first opportunity. This worked well for me in that I only had to slow down from my general pace 2-3 times.

I had resolved to hold back in the first few miles, which I discuss in more detail below. Because of the seeding, the first mile was a lot closer to my target pace than it might have been at another race where I was 12000 people back! Knowing the course had lots of downhills, my mantra for the first half of the course was "feet barely touching the ground". I was all about trying to run my pace and trying to do it as smoothly as I could. By the end of the race, I was very glad I had done that. More than any other race I have done, it felt like running with good form was important here, because the terrain will chew you up as the day goes on.

The crowds along the Boston course are great, but probably comparable to a lot of big city marathons like New York and Chicago. I raced New York 20 years ago, but my memory of it was the fascination of the changing character of the crowds as you went through different neighborhoods. I had less of a sense of that here. There were surely some pretty amazing spots, among them the Wellesley women near mile 13, Heartbreak Hill, and several sections of the last 4-5 miles. The course itself is run largely on unremarkable suburban roads – pretty, rather than breathtaking, but there is still quite a lot of attractive scenery. There are also lots of places where the cant of the road is undesirably steep if you get away from the center. I should also note that the crowd of runners, at least at my pace, never seemed to completely disperse. I was slowly moving up through the field the whole race (because I ran steadily and finished faster than my seed time), and I can't count the times I looked ahead and thought I was going to be running into a denser crowd than I was already in. Most of the time, this was an optical illusion, but it's definitely a race you could find a pack and go with if you want to.

Another item on the pack and the crowds: the crowd can't resist yelling the names of people who have written them on their shirts. I'm sure this is a boost to the people whose names are being called, but it gets old hearing their names over and over and over!

I cannot overemphasize how my impression of the course is that the downhills are far more important than the uphills. The Newton hills are not easy, but they are just rolling hills that happen to come at a fairly tough time in the course. However, if you've been pounding yourself for the first 16 miles, running with not-so-good form and hurting your quads going down the steep hill sections, they could break you. The first hill is gentle but long. This was the first place I saw people walking the course. I remember thinking that this was a very bad sign for those guys, because it just isn't that steep.

At the top of Heartbreak Hill, you know the work that will get your heart rate up is over. There are some steep downhills after this in the next couple of miles that are "work", but the work is holding form, not getting to speed. After that, the race is moderate downhills and flats to bring it home. My experience was that my legs were in pain, but that I was holding my pace ok. It was all control, all execution, all doling out my remaining leg strength for the rest of the race. My heart rate peaked at 166 at the top of Heartbreak (LT is a few beats higher than that), but went down and remained in the mid 160s for the remainder of the race, averaging 164 for the last two miles. Given how I often finish races in greater strain, I considered whether I could have gone faster. A few seconds? Sure. I didn't absolutely kill myself the last couple hundred yards, just ran in as hard as reasonable without feeling foolish. A minute? In all honesty, I doubt it.

The end of the race is just as orchestrated as the pre-race. The post-finish walk seems very long. First, through the water bottle people. Then, the Gatorade recovery drink people. Then the blanket people, followed by the tape-person. (These are critical, since it's cool and windy there apparently every year, from what I heard.) Keep going. Someone hands you a lunch-sack with food in it. Keep going. Finally, you get to the medal folks. Keep going. Then comes the busses with the dry clothes. I got my stuff, found a place to put them on, and wandered about for a while. The family meeting area is even further down the road. It's all great, and wonderfully organized, but it felt a little anticlimactic for me, because they kept encouraging you to go forward and I didn't feel like it was cool to linger and chat with other runners. I guess they need the space for people following behind you. All this said, everyone was VERY nice. My race day ended with a subway trip back to the hotel, feeling very sore, but very good.

The race and some number crunching

I did a serious marathon training prep for this race. I focused on building my endurance near race pace and raising my lactate/functional threshold pace. I peaked at a little over 70 mi per week a couple of times, and I set new PRs in training runs at both the 5K and 10K distance. So I put in the time and work.

Using tools like the McMillan running calculator or an online Vdot calculator, and my 5K test times of a little under 20 minutes, I found what seemed like ridiculously fast marathon paces for myself. However, these things are set up to assume that you are equally trained for both races. The fact is that almost none of us age-groupers are as well trained for the marathon as we are for a 5K, and all the reading I did indicated that a couple of Vdot points lower than your 5K Vdot was a more appropriate target. For me, that worked out perfectly, because I had a pretty good sense that 7:30 should be my pace from previous races and the "feel" of my long runs...and it corresponded to almost exactly 2 Vdot points lower than my 5K.

To cut to the chase, my final time was 3:16:40, which is as close to 7:30 min/mile as you can get. It's 7 minutes and 30.06 seconds per mile. It was a 9 minute PR, so obviously I'm very happy with it. I would like to claim something wild about how I "crushed" or "dominated" or whatever the race, but the truth is it felt a lot more mechanical than that. I neatly origami-folded it, put it in an envelope, sealed it carefully, put the stamp on exactly in the right place, and mailed it in. Not very emotional at all. It was just one of those days where I had earned the right to do what I tried, and I pulled it off.

After quite a lot of reading, both books and on-line, I decided to take a conservative strategy of intentionally going below my average pace for the first 5 miles or so. I then found a calculator on line that gave a geography-adjusted equal effort pace for Boston, and sat down to make a plan.

I broke the race down into four sections

1) The first five miles (largely downhill) Idea = add 10 seconds to the pacing guidelines

2) From 5 to Newton, 10-11 miles (flat) Idea = subtract 5 seconds from even pace

3) Miles 16-21 = Newton (mixed, but net uphill) Idea = no change

4) The last 5.2 miles (some steep downhill, other parts moderate downhill or flat) Idea = go with whatever's left

After reviewing the terrain adjusted paces and simplifying a bit, I came up with these goals:

1) (first 5 miles, downhill) 7:30

2) (next 11 miles, pretty flat) 7:25

3) (Newton hills, net substantially uphill) ~7:40

4) (last 5 miles, downhill and flat) ???

This was easy enough to remember, and easy to implement with the auto-mile-lap on my Garmin.

Results:

My Garmin had me running 26.6 miles, or 1.5% too long. That's probably accurate, since we don't get to cut the tangents in mass races, and a little weaving is inevitable. Thus, I can correct my "Garmin pace" to a "forward motion pace" for each section

1) Hit section one pretty close. Maybe a couple seconds/mile slow, but much better than you might think for a mass start race. Mile 1 was not ridiculous and I didn't weave.

2) Garmin says 7:19, which is about 7:26, adjusted

3) Garmin says 7:34, which is about 7:41, adjusted

4) Garmin says 7:18, which is about 7:25, adjusted

My half split was 1:38:09. My finish time was 3:16:40. Pretty darn close to an even race overall. To me, that's pretty close to perfect execution, given that the second half of this race is the more difficult one.

Here is a link to my full Garmin data Ignore the "watts"; that's from software trying to guess your watts assuming you are riding a bike!

The first half of the race went unremarkably for me, except for one time. I started chatting with a guy running next to me early in the race. After a bit, I looked down at my watch and I was running 20 seconds/mile slower than I intended, and figured I had been for 2-3 minutes. At that point, I felt a little anti-social, but I resolved that I needed to shut up, focus, and run my race. I don't think I said another word after that, except "water!" or "excuse me" as I went by someone.

The weather was near perfect. No complaints at all. For nutrition, I took a gel right before the race, and at every fourth mile. Packed 4 in a pocket in the small of my back (wore a triathlon top) and picked up two at mile 17 from the course. Took water at every aid station starting at mile 3 (except one I missed) until mile 14, where I started taking Gatorade at the non-gel even ones, i.e., mile 14, 18, 22. I found myself slowly passing people the whole race. Only in the last 200 yards was I not going a little faster than everyone else. Other people had more of a kick than I did. :-)

I didn't find that I got physically or psychologically too tired - instead, the pounding of the downhills started making my quads progressively more sore. I started feeling them at the half way point. I had a little conversation with them in which I invited them to go along for the ride, and for the most part they did. I had still a little lingering hamstring soreness, but it never got worse at all. The only really tough part was a very steep downhill in the mile 21-22 region. I didn't feel quite strong/steady enough to really let it fly, but the "braking" that I had to do to not just fly also was hard. But after the hill mellowed out, I felt good again and less like I was making hamburger out of my legs.

For what it's worth, I finished in 3780 place, with a 12079 place seed time, so that's obviously good. But I also recognize that a lot of people focus on getting to Boston, and then just running it for fun. Regardless, I don't think anyone thinks Boston is a particularly fast course, even though it is net downhill, so I'm very pleased with the PR. I hope to take some lessons from it for the future.

Newtons, retired

2010-01-23T13:55:00.001-06:00

I finally retired my first pair of Newton Gravities. Well, at least semi-retired. I got two replies from the @sirisaac twitter feed on my query about when to retire them, and they were a bit different. (I assume more than one person does the job, but I didn't ask.) The first said that they have a number of runners get more than 600 miles out of them, and the second expressed concern that I was keeping them past 500. I asked about what the limiting feature was, as long as the lugs were still in decent shape, and they replied that there is a membrane beneath them that wears out over time.

So, at 557 miles, I have put my first pair on reserve, to serve as backup shoes in case of emergency need or need to go out in yucchy conditions. Here are a few key photos (click to enlarge):

As you can see, there's more wear on the right forefoot and a bit more on the left rear. However, they still appear more than usable. When I switched to a new pair, I really can't say that they felt dramatically different as is often the case when you go to a new pair of shoes from an old one of the same model. Thus, although I will leave them retired, I believe there is still a bit of life left in them.

And thus I come to my n=1 conclusion. Newtons are a big change in the type of shoe for most people. (You read of some people who love them from day one, but I believe that's a rarity. See the Slowtwitch reviews, for example. I think this is a good example of how they grow on you, or you grow into them.) As most people know there is this investment in trying a new philosophy of shoes that they may or may not like, there is a hesitance to buy them and try them because of the relative high cost: $175 list.

Although I still think this price is excessive, at least for me, the Newtons certainly performed on a dollar-per-mile basis comparably to another pair of shoes that would cost a bit more than half of that, but only be good for about 300 miles. This is the range that I have most recently experienced with other shoes, regardless of whether the outsole has worn out.

[An interesting point: At 300 miles of wear and $100 cost, you get 3 miles/dollar. If you run 7-8 miles per hour, that's pretty close to $2.50 per hour of running just in shoe cost!]

Another caveat I have to consider is that these shoes had a majority of their miles run indoors, where I presume the wear on the lugs is lower than it would be outdoors. Come spring, we will find out if this high mileage holds up.

In any case, I am pleased with the Newtons on these points:

The high initial investment on the shoes was accompanied by a high wear factor, so they didn't end up costing more per mile than I've been paying already.
The upper is just super comfortable, especially for someone like me whose toe joints stick out a bit and can get dug into by some shoes.
After a long, slow adaptation, they really are supporting a new forefoot/midfoot style of running for me. I am not one who gets a lot of injuries anyway, and I will not yet claim that it makes me a lot faster. However, at 10K-marathon pace ranges, I now feel more efficient. Next season will see!

More Newtons. More running.

2010-01-01T00:24:00.000-06:00

Today (a Thursday) I had a great tempo run. Tuesday and Wednesday had put a total of 24 mi of moderate pace work in, so I was a bit slow to warm up. It took me a couple miles to get to my ~8:15 pace. After 4 mi came the tempo part. I was kind of looking forward to this because over the last couple of weeks, I've finally felt like I REALLY had a good-feeling stride down with the Newtons, particularly when running faster. Faster turnover, lighter touch, etc.

It turned out that the tempo section wasn't exceptionally FAST (averaging a few seconds slower than 7:00/mi), but my HR was very low for that pace. The average for 5 mi was 149 bpm. Pretty cool. Must be doing something a little more efficiently these days. Possibly a bit of fatigue from the previous two days kept the pace a little slower than it might have been. Hard to say.

This also gets me back to the Newtons. As you read about them on line, a common (and reasonable) complaint about them is the very high cost. They list for $175, which is about $50 more than other "high end" shoes usually go for. (Obviously if you shop around enough, you can get a 10-20% discount, but that brand hardly ever goes on sale - it's usually a store-wide sale.)

As of today, I have 476 miles on my first pair of Newtons, and I took the following photos a few days ago, when the total was 440. You can click to enlarge.

The left image shows the wear pattern on the more-worn shoe. The inner lugs are more worn than the outer ones, but 1.0-1.5 mm of rubber remains on the front of the more worn lugs. The red/orange coating on the toe area is starting to bleed through to the yellow beneath. I haven't detailed the photo, but there is some visible wear on the far outside of both heels, but it's the kind of wear you'd see for <50 miles on a normal pair of shoes. (This is kind of a funny place near the break of the black area - further to the outside than the typical heel-striking spot...can't figure out exactly what it's from.)

Supposedly, there's not much on the "inside" of these shoes to wear out, like a normal foam midsole on a typical running shoe, i.e., they "wear from the outside in". If that is really the case, I could easily get 600 miles out of these before the front lugs wear down to the ground. Granted, a large fraction of this running has been indoors, but that kind of total is double what I've been getting for other shoes. If i can get 600 mi on a $175-list shoe - all other issues of stride/technique/etc aside - it's a bargain.

Do you wear these shoes? If so, what kind of mileage do you get out of them? When do you replace them? How does the wear compare to your previous shoes?

Very disappointing vote in NY

2009-12-03T10:21:00.002-06:00

The New York legislature voted down Gov. Patterson's same-sex marriage bill. Especially disappointing was the way it collapsed, given expectations it would pass.

There is a good article on the event here.

2009 Season highlights

2009-12-03T09:59:00.001-06:00

The TRIracers had their annual party just recently, and everyone got a chance to say something about their highlights for the last season. Made me think about it. I had a few, too. The ironman was obviously the dominant theme for the year, but there were lots of great things.

Cynthia put up with me and the long days. It got to her, and she let me know when I was disappearing too long at times, but she supported me and I have to thank her. I love you.

Bluff Creek Triathlon in May. This was the first race of the year, and I just took a couple of easy days before to "prepare" for it and its hilly bike course. The highlight was just how easy the run felt. Boy I felt good that day. Hoping for more days that feel like that.

Ankeny kids Triathlon. My then-8 year old twins (boy and girl) both won first place. Can you believe? But the best part was when my daughter checked the results and exclaimed to him, "T, I got first place in boys and you got second place in boys!" without even blinking an eye. (I did mention to the scorekeeper that she was a girl a little while later.)

Kansas 70.3. I had been kinda worried about this race. I thought I had a pretty good shot of going under 5:30 and did a fair amount of race planning. When we got there, the weather reports just looked awful. It didn't seem we had a shot at racing, but on the morning of the race, it was all good. This race just went spectacularly for me. Everything clicked. My first pass of the run course, I ran by the TRI racers tent and yelled "sub 5:30" or something to that effect. I was looking at my watch and feeling the run so easy. Second pass, the run got a little harder, but the math was inevitable. I was having a great day. 5:08 and I feel good. Could I get to sub 5:00 with a better swim???

Hy Vee. I had a good race - maybe not super. (But what can you expect just a week or so after a 70.3?) But the venue was very cool, and it was a great race with Christopher. He had a breakthrough race of about 2:26, and immediately plotted his goal for the year: 2:20 at Big Creek.

Big Creek Oly. This was the most fun race ever. I started in a wave 4 minutes in front of Christopher. He passed me in the swim and shouted at me as he went by. (And broke up my draft...). I caught him back pretty early in the bike, and thought maybe I had dusted him, which disappointed me a little; I had hoped he would be on for that 2:20. But when I got to T2 and had a little trouble, there he was coming in just as I was getting ready to go out. We ran together for a few miles. It was awesome. Eventually, I pulled ahead, to finish a minute before him. But I had a four minute head-start. So chalk one up for him: 2:20! My PR at that distance too, 2:23.

Youth nationals. OK, I didn't race, but Christopher did. Great to watch him. He had a great day and finished in the middle of the pack. T&O both got altitude sickness, which was disappointing, but again, the experience overall was very cool.

PigMan Half. There is no way to turn this into a highlight, except that it was, shall we say, exceptional. Pounding rain was off and on through the swim and bike, along with horrible winds. It rained so hard that it physically hurt when it hit your skin. I've never seen so many guys stopped on the side of the road as during that bike ride. By the end of the bike, though, the rain cleared and it started getting pretty warm...almost hot. In the end, my bike time still looked ok, but I had horrible GI problems on the run. At least 3 other people I know had the same pre-race meal and all had the same problem, but was it that or because I biked too hard? The highlight of the run for me was the porta potty at mile 9. I have stopped to use one exactly twice in my race career - once to pee at ironman, and once to use the facilities a little more exhaustively at this race...and that was going to have to happen whether there was a porta potty or not. Uggh.

IM Wisconsin. What a great event! Our hotel was ridiculously overpriced, but the town area was otherwise very cool. Swim execution was perfect. (I was not quite prepared for how violent it would be, but at least it didn't seem long.) I had mentally broken it up in the two-lap sequence and this worked great. The bike felt awesome, and I had a great time without feeling excessively fatigued. (19.3 mph ave). I felt I would easily (?) get 11:30. Maybe even 11:15! But then my body blew up (temp, HR, as described in that race report) almost as soon as I started the run, which I still attribute to a virus, though I cannot rule out an overexuberant bike split. No nutrition issues. I did the best I could for the rest of the day, and I have no regrets. A little disappointment I will admit with my 12:06 finish, but I should not complain. It was a good first effort. It's just that the next one will be so long from now.

Bun-huggers

2009-11-13T11:02:00.000-06:00

I haven't bought a pair of running shorts in at least 10 years. Well, until a week or two ago. I just seemed to have enough. Two or three do the trick, especially when I have a supply of tights and tri shorts. But my old standby shorts are losing their elasticity in the waist, and I'm running more frequently to prepare for Boston, so I wanted a new pair, and I bought a supposedly top end pair made by Asics. They are comfy enough, but...

I am definitely not the skinniest guy in the world, but I usually wear 31 or 32 pants, and I bought the 32-34 sized shorts, since the size down was definitely too small (28-30 I think). Thus the last thing I expected was a snug fit. Since when do runners have no butts? The liner in these things ... well, let's just say it's taking a little getting used to! Didn't know my cheeks needed that much support when I ran!

I will say that the (one) pocket in the shorts is well placed and seemingly well made. (But can't I have another??? Please???)

And finally, one request to all you running shorts manufacturers reading this: Please, please, please figure out a way to make shorts that don't have a big, nasty, scratchy seam on the inside of my thighs! I have enough to worry about already. Or is my conspiracy theory correct? That you and the makers of Body Glide are in on this together....

Off Off Analysis

2009-11-04T09:30:00.000-06:00

Since this is an Off Off Year election, I offer a quick Off Off Analysis.

The first thing I think we all need to realize is that the situation for the Republicans was so awful in 2008 that there was little reason to think it could get much worse. It had to get better for them. In the stock market, they call it the Dead Cat Bounce. As in, even a dead cat bounces when dropped from high enough.

Thus, I think it's inevitable, but silly to over-interpret the victories by Republicans in narrowly held states like the Virginia governor race. Deeds was long thought to be not such a great candidate on the Democrats' side, and thus the "intensity" was higher on the Republicans' side. So the Republican wins. The New Jersey governor's race was, I think, more meaningful and encouraging to the Reps. But we could come back with counterexamples, such as the CA 10th district, where the Great Republican Upset just didn't come close to materializing. And, of course, there's NY 23, where Republican party dynamics have been shaken, but the result is the election of a Democrat in a seat that has been held by the Reps since the 1870s.

So, just like sports teams never are as good as they look when on a winning streak, nor as bad as they look on a losing streak, the Dems' advantage over the Reps that gave us the 60/40 senate and the current House is not as large as that "winning streak" - based largely on the bad economy and Bush-hatred - would imply.

The result in Maine on Question 1 is very disappointing of course. While there are no moral victories, the race is getting closer and closer. Same sex marriage has won. The only question is whether that win will come 2 years from now or 20. How many more years must we wait for generational change, or will enough people be actually persuaded to move that issue now? In Washington, where the question was not explicitly over same sex marriage, but in reality was, there was a narrow victory. (The Washington measure assured full state rights to unmarried domestic partners, obviously mainly targeted at same-sex couples.)

NYC Marathon: map and memories

2009-10-31T13:44:00.000-05:00

The NYTimes has a pretty cool interactive map of the New York Marathon course.

Of course, I'm not running it this year, but it made me think about the course and the race. Some memories:

The pre-race "infinite pee trough" in the holding pen that can be seen by the trains going by. (Or at least could be a long time ago...)
The first mile up the bridge coming out of Staten Island. All uphill, but you never notice with all the people around you. It took me 3.5 minutes to get to the starting line in my first race, and there were no timing chips, so my 3:30 finish was only recorded on my watch...It was 3:33:30 or so in the books.
The second mile down the bridge. Can you believe a bridge is 2 miles long? The crowd thinned for me here. Still crowded, but not nearly as bad.
From right there at the bottom of the bridge - the crowds. As you move from neighborhood to neighborhood, how the crowds change - in level of noise, manner of dress, everything. Such an amazing city.
The Queensboro Bridge. Carpeting over grates at about mile 17 or so. Not such a comfortable run at that point, but the crowds on the other side!
Finally coming into Central Park with about 4 miles to go. Like coming home.
WHY ARE THEY MAKING ME LEAVE THE PARK TO GO ON 59TH STREET! I KNOW IT'S ONLY AN EXTRA 50 YARDS OR SOMETHING BUT I DON'T WANT TO GO! I WANT TO TURN HERE AND STAY ON THE PATH!
Gosh darn, I hate all this irregular pavement and stuff to get back on the Park path. WHY COULDN'T I HAVE JUST STAYED ON THE PARK PATH IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Almost there, and then a great finish line.

The NY Times map is like a time lapse photo sequence taken from a car, except for the parts on the Central Park path. It can't do the course justice, because the course is about the people at least as much as the scenery, and it's just a business day in NYC. But this is still a cool link. Have a look.

Sarah Palin's book deal

2009-10-27T22:26:00.000-05:00

According to Politico, Sarah Palin only got $1.25 M for her book deal. I have to say this surprises me. I expected it would have been bigger.

'Nuther Newton Update and Boston

2009-10-27T22:21:00.000-05:00

I am pretty excited. Today in the mail I received confirmation of my Boston marathon entry. It'll be the 114th running on April 19, 2010. This means that this winter, I will focus mainly on running. My secondary goal will be building bike power through shorter interval workouts, and swimming will take a bit of a back seat until spring.

By the time I write this, I've been running in the Newtons for the better part of 5 weeks. I have allowed my workload to climb up to the ~6 hour/week mark. No planning in particular yet, except for the general goal that by mid-December I want to be comfortably running 35-40 mi/week consistently and having a couple spins. This will set me up for a marathon buildup of about 16 weeks.

Lengthening my runs by about a mile at a time, I can now consistently run an hour in the Newtons without feeling muscular fatigue. I am no longer feeling pain in the soleus, and I have extended my long run up to about 11 miles in them. I've put almost 100 miles in them total. The pace of my running has been unexceptional - certainly I would not attribute any particular pace to the Newtons (other than it's still hard to run VERY slowly in them). The stride feels quite natural now.

Despite this progress, it seems that I am something of a slow adapter. There is no doubt in my mind that there are simply different muscles involved here and that I need to strengthen them. I am still sometimes getting some dull aches in my upper hamstrings the day after a longer run. It's not enough to be a problem, but enough that I notice when I'm sitting.

Another thing I really notice is that it makes a much bigger difference to me whether I stretch properly. For now, I believe that this simply has to do with the same need for strengthening that I feel otherwise. I called the folks at Newton, taking them up on their offer to chat, and I spoke to someone who seemed quite knowledgeable and reasonable. Except that she hadn't dealt with too many people with dull hamstring aches. Oh well.

At the very least, this has been a very interesting project/experiment to watch myself go through. I think it's going to turn out well.

Political Cynicism 101 - McCain/Palin

2009-10-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

There's really nothing more I need to add to this, other than the remark that it shows to what lengths people will go to elect their guy.

I've been clear that I thought Palin was a disqualifying choice by McCain, who was probably not such a bad guy that would have had a better shot at winning in another year. But the fact that his campaign leader (Steve Schmidt) shares my opinion but still defends the choice.... Ouch.

Quick thoughts on the Nobel Prize

2009-10-10T08:48:00.000-05:00

I didn't hear or read a lot of news yesterday, the day Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize, but you didn't have to hear or read a lot to figure out that a lot of people generally disposed to like BHO were a bit mystified or surprised, and a lot of people who dislike BHO were very angry and thought it wasn't just a surprise, but completely undeserved.

I'm not going to argue that it was obvious BHO should get the Nobel Prize. I was surprised, and frankly, I was not sure that it was time yet. But I do have a thought on the right wing reaction.

As far as I can tell, the prize was given in large part for the transformation BHO has wrought on world opinion of the USA. We are relatively blind to that here, but the survey statistics are pretty dramatic.

However, the right wing, by and large, just doesn't care about world opinion of the USA. As a matter of political theory, they think that we should act in our own interest and not particularly care what anyone thinks (e.g., see invasion of Iraq). I say that not as a criticism, but simply as an observation, and many of them would candidly agree (surely Tony Blankley would say exactly this, wouldn't he?). Part of this has been accomplished by "not being Bush", but the transformation of the diplomatic outlook has certainly gone well beyond that.

As a matter of outlook then, if you don't care what the world or world leaders think, and if the major accomplishment of BHO has been to change something you don't care about, then he has accomplished nothing of worth....

Miscellaneous Rants: The Post-Game soccer "treat"

2009-10-08T16:31:00.000-05:00

I'm an official with the local soccer club, so various vendors send me advertisements and the like. One thing I get is offers for fundraisers, which are sometimes marketing devices for companies; and sometimes these marketing devices are win-win deals that are ok. But many of them are not good for the club, as far as I am concerned, and we do not pursue them all.

Today, I got an email from someone with a company that is marketing a food product as " [a] great post match nutrition source for the players, offering carbohydrates to refuel and key nutrients from whole grains, real fruit, and nuts." This product is probably reasonably healthful, but COME ON. Kids who play 2/3 of a 60 minute soccer match on a small field DO NOT NEED TO REFUEL!

Soccer should be about fitness and fun (and soccer). There is no resisting the "treat" mentality at the end of a game. I personally don't like it, and always bring fruit. But this kind of marketing is just disingenuous. Kids of the age that get post-game "treats" can't be spending more than 200-300 calories in their games and just don't need to "refuel". Please, if you want to give your kid a snack, fine...but don't rationalize that s/he needs to "refuel" just because of a little exercise. They aren't exactly running marathons out there! Exercise is not an excuse to eat unnecessarily.

Finally, I did get something great from my kids' swim team about this, published by the American Swimming Coaches Association. The newsletter is below. The part in italics was added by the local coach. Someone gets it.

Carbohydrate Loading

By Keith B. Wheeler, Ph.D. And Angeline M. Cameron

Question: What exactly is carbohydrate loading? Is it appropriate for age group swimmers?

Answer: Carbohydrate loading refers to the process by which the carbohydrate (glycogen) stores in an athlete's active muscles are increased significantly above normal levels. This loading of carbohydrate in the muscles is accomplished through a combination of training and diet manipulation.

Specific techniques for carbohydrate loading have changed since the method was developed in Sweden. The original program consisted of 7 days of dietary management, beginning with exhaustive exercise bouts on the 1st day, followed by 3 days of extremely low carbohydrate consumption. The next 3 days consisted of an extremely high carbohydrate intake that caused the muscles to super increase their carbohydrate stores. In some people, this regimen produced nausea, fatigue, and diarrhea. Therefore, less drastic carbohydrate loading regimens were developed and are currently recommended.

Although, when done properly, it does increase muscle-glycogen stores above normal levels, carbohydrate loading is most useful for athletes who are preparing for endurance events such as triathons, marathons, cycling races, or open water long distance swimming. It should be done only a few times in a year. A nutritional concern that is more important to an age-group swimmer than carbohydrate loading is consuming enough carbohydrate on a daily basis. Age-group swimmers should get at least 60% of their daily calories from carbohydrate, which will maintain their muscle glycogen at levels that will support their training.

From a physiology point, as stated at the end of the newsletter, carbohydrate loading is helpful for endurance events lasting longer than 2 hours. With events lasting less than that, there is no need for it, since those are not long enough to deplete normal glycogen storages. In swimming events (from 50s to the mile), the loss of energy that a swimmer experiences is due to a decrease in the muscle cell pH, which takes place because of the accumulation of by-products of the muscle contraction. Therefore, unless you are going for a 10K swim, we would not recommend carbohydrate loading, neither for age-groupers or senior swimmers.

More Newtons. About a week

2009-10-06T22:14:00.001-05:00

The pain from last week's runs had me worried. I wrote to a friend, Rachelle, who uses them, and she scolded me something good for doing too much running in the first place after the IM. She also informed me that my sore spot was my soleus and told me in nice, but firm terms to back off, buddy, and take it easy. I hate that.

But she was probably right. If I weren't doing the Newton thing, I think I'd be running more/longer by now, because I've just run so long that I do believe in the easy aerobic recovery run, at least for me. But with the Newton thing, I needed to back off.

I have since done three more runs on them, two very short, and today back up to ~3.5 miles. So sad, given what I was doing! But I'll build up slowly but surely again, and my groin seems to think the bike isn't so bad any more. (Maybe that borrowed saddle?) I've also taken a couple pretty close to complete days off. They were almost required by scheduling of soccer tournaments and the like, but they were also probably good for me.

So today's report is that run 5 was 28 minutes indoors, and felt much better than either of the first two. I can feel a bit of soleus fatigue, but it's not bad. I did not push the distance past this because I didn't want to hurt myself again. Trying to work out in my mind whether high repetitions or time off followed by longer is better. I will probably try a combination: near-daily very short runs and extend one every few days a bit. No speed yet, and not for a while. It's all comfortable 8:00-8:15 type pace.

Newtons, post Day-2

2009-10-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

Tuesday was the first (3-mile) run on the Newtons. Wednesday morning, my calves were sore, pretty much right in the middle of my leg, below the "meat" of the muscle and above the tendon junction.

Wednesday afternoon, I went for another 3 mile run. "Torture" would be strong, but it was relatively painful, exactly where the calves were hurting. Toward the end, I did have to focus to hold the form. This did not seem too good... Running more slowly would have been worse, so the pace held at a little over 8 minute miles. I'm not trying to go fast at all, but I have to be at some minimum speed right now for this to work.

The wear pattern on the shoe so far is on the front of the middle two lugs. Obviously there's not much wear at all, but that's basically the only place you can see much of anything.

Today, Thursday, it's raining. The first few steps this morning I still felt the calves, and walking downstairs was a bit of a challenge. By midday, the pain in the left one has more or less resolved, although that part of the muscle still feels fatigued. The right one still hurts a bit. No run today (swam instead). Gotta heal up a bit before giving it another go.

I must say that, while I wouldn't yet call this a long adjustment period, I'm surprised at the intensity of it.

Going Newtonian

2009-09-30T12:09:00.000-05:00

I've made a mental commitment to give Boston '10 the best shot I can.

As part of that, I decided to give the whole Newton running shoe thing a try. For the few of my readers who don't know, these are running shoes that have very little heel and a built up forefoot. They are designed to force you to be a forefoot/midfoot striker, and they (and others) have a full argument on why this is a better/faster way to run. But it requires a break-in period for most people as it's a change. Thus, there was no way I was going to do it during the IM buildup.

This easy recovery time seemed like a good time to give it a go. Got myself a pair, and gave them a first 3-mile run yesterday. (They suggest as short as 1 mile!)

The first mile was carried by just the novelty. Mile 2 felt odd and a little awkward while I tried to figure it out. Mile 3 felt a lot more natural.

If you asked me before, I would tell you that I midfoot strike when I'm enthusiastic, and heel strike when I'm tired or slow. That appeared to be confirmed by my experience yesterday. By the end, all was good.

However, today, the lower halves of my calves are sore. Not ridiculous, but definitely sore. We'll see how it goes. Going to go for another 3 mi today.

Ironman recovery, part 2

2009-09-30T11:59:00.002-05:00

As of this writing, I am 2 weeks and 3 days out from the IM race.

As I noted before, I took about a complete week totally off. Week two consisted of a few easy hour-long bikes, with one a little harder, and a few 45-minute (or so) easy runs, plus a swim. I felt good during this week, save that there was definitely an upper limit on how hard I felt like I could go. The level of fatigue felt a lot like being in the middle part of the race, i.e., tired, but not just waxed. There were safe upper limits that I didn't feel like exceeding anyway.

At the beginning of week 3, I got another wave of fatigue. I've been sleeping like a bear in winter (or at least wanting to) pretty consistently, but Monday, I just felt like I really needed the rest and took a total day off. Yesterday, Tuesday, I was unenthused, but as soon as I got out the door, I felt good.

I am still clearly not fully recovered. I want to do well in the spring, so I'm taking it easy until I'm ready to go. Hoping that's 4 weeks. We'll see.

Season assessment

2009-09-22T13:49:00.002-05:00

So what to make of this season?

The positives:

IM KS 70.3 was a breakthrough race. My time of 5:08 was great, and I think I can/could do better. It made me think sub-5:00 is possible.
I raced fairly well at my non-tapered Olympic and sprint races. Bike splits were up, and run splits were at least in line with last year.
I recognized a bad swim problem early in the season and overcame it. My swims still weren't going to knock anyone's socks off, but I got them back at least where they should be.
I learned that maybe I can deal with a little less nutrition than some people recommend. It's less that this is a good fact than that knowing it is a good fact. For Olympic distances, I will no longer worry about anything other than using gatorade (or whatever) on the bike and having a gel or two available for the start and halfway point of the run. For HIM, something like 700-800 bike calories ought to be more than sufficient, not 1000+. Fewer calories = less likely for tummy issues. For IM, again, just keeping it at the lean end of recommendations will work for me.
I showed mental strength and discipline in my IM. I didn't reach my ultimate goal, but I coped well with what happened to me.
I set a new Olympic PR of 2:23 at Big Creek.

The disappointments

Once again, I got hit a bit hard by the Pigman, this time with GI issues that caused (or at least accompanied) a bonk. My result was disappointing. I owe that course something.
My run blowup in the opening minutes of IM was a disappointment. I don't know how else to put that. I feel like I was in shape to do better, but that the virus and heat got the better of me. Other people had to deal with the heat and did. So I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed that I don't get to try to redeem myself, but I also know that taking the long view on that is the only way to do better.
Despite working on my stroke in the winter, my swim didn't really improve much. I still need to work on how to balance effort and technique.

Overall, a very good year, and a fun one. Looking forward to the next.

Ironman recovery

2009-09-22T13:48:00.001-05:00

I write this on the Tuesday 9 days after the Sunday Ironman.

If you read around, the "word" you get is that among marathon, ironman, and half-ironman, the recovery time is in that same order, i.e., an open marathon is the hardest to recover from.

Within limits, I am finding that to be true. I have done three half-ironmans now, and racing two weeks out from that may not find me at my peak, but it's completely possible. Racing one week out would require very careful attention.

I am now 9 days out from my ironman. From an "injury" point of view, I feel fine. My messed up toenails are now no longer bothering me. I have no significant muscle pain, and I don't have any trouble getting around, e.g., descending stairs.

Last year, I went on a 30 minute run on day 7 from my marathon and the HR was pretty high. On day 9, I went for an easy 7 mile run, and the legs complained the next day. I remember my quads being sore for a couple of weeks. In the third week, it looks like I had a couple brisk, if short runs. It was 5 weeks before I went 10 miles again.

Yesterday was my first activity after IM. A very easy 1 hour ride (ave power 120 W) showed me that, although I am pain-free, I still have a lot of underlying fatigue. To have pushed that any harder would have been difficult. In my head, I know my goal is to accelerate recovery, but my ego wants to keep or increase fitness.

My cold/virus/whatever still hangs on. It has been two weeks. I assume that IM has made it worse, but I do not know. I sure wish it would go away. I know it will, but just wish it had already.

Ironman - Race report

2009-09-16T00:04:00.000-05:00

My ironman weekend began with a 5 hour drive to get to check-in on Friday afternoon. The process was smooth. I had forgotten that they do a weigh-in. (This is so the medics can pull you off the course if you are too dehydrated or over-hydrated.) I got my race materials and chuckled at the relatively small swag-content. There was not the usual pile of samples of this and that. Just some ads, the bag to carry it in, the race number stuff, and the drop-off bags. I had planned to drive the bike course on Friday, but it was too late. I saw some friends from the TRI-racers, but got separated, so I went to the banquet myself and sat through the prerace meeting. I learned more from just talking to people at the table than from the race directors, but that was ok.

On Saturday morning, I went out and checked out the swim venue, bringing my wetsuit and a backpack. It made the whole idea of the swim easier to realize that it was really just 4 sets of an 800 followed by a 200 because of the rectangular course shape. That's longer than I normally swim without stopping, but it made the whole thing a lot easier to swallow than just being told to swim 2.4 miles. Afterwards, I did a little bit of easy biking, then had my last big meal - a nice burrito, easy on the veggies and beans. In the early afternoon, I took care of a few last minute issues on the bike (numbers, etc), packed my transition bags, and brought them to check in. I found a grocery store to get some supplies. Finally, I had time to go out on the course by car.

I had ridden the course a couple of months ago, but it was refreshing to see it again. It consists of a ~15 mile "stick" out to a ~41 mile "loop", and you do the loop twice before coming back home on the stick again. In retrospect, the driving was more informative of the tight turns going downhill than it was for the uphill sections, but I am still very glad I did it.

By this time, Cynthia had arrived, having ridden up with Ingrid Guttin. We met, and I had a light dinner consisting mostly of soba noodles in the early evening. We met up with TRI-racers again and agreed to all meet in the morning to leave for the race at 5:00.

I got up at 2:00 a.m. to have "breakfast" consisting of 4 small containers of Ensure. Vile stuff. However, it was 1000 calories that was all liquid and reasonably balanced. I went back to sleep for 90 min or so, and we got up about 4:00.

I put on my lube and race gear, and Cynthia got some real breakfast at the hotel, which had specially gotten the breakfast out at 4:00 for the race. We met our TRI-racer friends and went out to deposit our special needs bags (stuff you can pick up halfway through the bike and/or run) and got to the site.

I had been nursing a low grade viral sore throat (etc) bug for at least half a week, but I felt pretty good. You don't get to put the race off for a week, so you just go with the hand you've got. After inflating my tires, I headed down to the swim start and dropped off my glasses at the special table for me and my fellow blind racers.

I chose to go out into the deep water for the start instead of hanging out at the beach. The beach was very rocky, and I was more concerned about possibly hurting my foot than spending the tiny amount of energy required to tread water wearing the wetsuit. In the last few minutes before the start, all the people around me were assuring one another how nice they were and that they had no intention of smashing each other in the head once the gun went off.

So much for intentions.

Actually, the swim didn't bother me much. I felt very comfortable and in control, but it was pretty darn rough pretty much the whole way. My final swim time was just barely faster than the 50th percentile (1:18), but I was passing a LOT of people who mis-seeded themselves. I had decided I didn't want to be That Guy who was too close to the front, but I clearly went too far with it. After one lap, I took a quick glance at my watch and was pleased to be on track. As I got to the last leg, I knew I'd be ok and I was ready to get on the bike.

After getting out of the water, I got my wetsuit taken off by the strippers and grabbed my glasses. Like everyone else, I "ran" up the helix, got my T1 bag and got ready to ride.

I had a very specific bike plan. I have a power meter on my bike, and I knew how many watts I planned to put out on the flats (of which there are not too many), and my cap for going uphill. I am not yet a super-strong biker, so those numbers were only 170-180 and 250. My goal was to keep it to 200 W on modest false-flats (e.g., 1-2% grade). My rolling hill tactics were to downshift to a low gear early, let people gap me going up, but be able to accelerate in the top part of the hill (when many people flag) and over the crest, so that I could put some watts into the top of the descent and then catch up and/or pass people while not doing any work. This seemed to work beautifully. I saw myself progressing through the field as the rolling hills wore on. Toward the end of the loop, there is a sequence of three hills that are not rolling so much like this. Just up, pause, up, pause, up. Those, I just gutted out in low gear to keep the watts in line. I lost some ground to my contemporaries on the first lap, but gained a bit on the second.

The way the splits were laid out on the bike course, they didn't show that my first half was somewhat faster than my second. I could feel some fatigue in the last quarter of the bike, but that seemed pretty reasonable. I was choosing to coast at somewhat lower speeds than I did on the first lap, but I still seemed to be generally progressing through the crowd and I wasn't concerned.

My nutrition on the bike consisted of an 1100 calorie bottle of Perpetuem for the first half, and another one at special needs, plus a couple of cut up Clif bars in my little bento bag for variety. I think I have learned that I need to go a little light on the nutrition compared to some people, so this was to have both margin (in case of some disaster) and variety (Drinking mocha-flavored pancake batter for 6 hours is dull...) I picked up water at the aid stations and poured it into my aerodrink each time. The volunteers were very skilled at hand-offs, which was fantastic.

I saw Cynthia and other people cheering for the TRI-racers along the route. We have a great club. I'd wager that we were in the top 10 clubs for the number of jerseys out on the field.

As I finished the bike in under 6 hours and still feeling very good (relatively speaking), I was optimistic I was going to have a very good day. I had some fatigue, but it seemed quite manageable The only problems I had on the bike were a nerve in my foot that occasionally makes it feel like it's on fire on long rides, but always goes away within a few minutes of getting off the bike (even when that means running), and the usual discomfort a long ride can put between the legs. But that, too, also goes away when you stop riding.

T2 seemed uneventful. After the fact, I realized that I had forgotten to take the bike shorts off that I was wearing over my running tights, but this was not that big a deal.

I went out on the run feeling very strong. I took out what seemed like a very moderate pace, knowing that no one can really "run" a strong marathon after that without the luxury of full time training.

Unfortunately, within 10-15 minutes, I had major problems. My heart rate was sky high, relative to how fast I was going. My usual lactate threshold for running is ~168. My max HR is near 185. It was getting pretty hot, and I suddenly felt quite uncomfortable and my HR was 175, even going this very modest pace. I wasn't thirsty. I was still sweating. My stomach was ok. So it wasn't dehydration or some other GI issue. I realized that I was overheating though. I believed that I had lost control of my core temperature.

At this point, I had to make a decision, because I wasn't more than a couple miles into the run, if that. I could try to keep up this pace and just see what happened, or I could try to get the HR under control. I feared that if I took the first choice that I would shortly end up in a very long death-march, but I also realized it was potentially faster than my more conservative option if that didn't happen.

I made what I hope was the wiser choice and started to walk to let the HR come down to my target (near 155). After what seemed like forever, it eventually came down, but it rose again very rapidly once I started running again. This happened for a few cycles. I hated to do it, but I got to the point where I would walk up hills and through aid stations (drinking COLD things). The idea of this was killing me, but I didn't know what else to do. After several cycles, I looked down at my watch again, and my HR was LOWER than my target (without me expecting that from how I felt). So I started to run again. Now I couldn't get my heart rate back UP, but I felt just as bad at the lower peak HR as before.

So there I was. I resolved just to continue on and do the best I could under this walk-run routine. I saw Cynthia about half-way through and told her I was going to do my best to keep it under 13 hours, because I didn't know how much more my condition would deteriorate.

For the good news then... although of course I tired, things did not get worse. My management strategy, while difficult, let me traverse the first ~22 miles at about the same pace overall. Of course, the splits don't show when I sped up and slowed down, because they are in several mile chunks. With about 5-6 miles left, I started to feel, if anything, better. Maybe this was psychological; maybe it was the temperature coming down; maybe it was my body getting control of itself again. I was able to "run" every step from mile 23 on. Finally, I finished, at 12:06:48.

As a precaution, I stopped at the medical tent because of the HR issue. They weighed me, and I was only down ~4% of body weight, so that was really ok. They watched me and my HR for a while, and let me go.

I had hoped to finish under 12 hours. I will admit to some disappointment that I didn't. But I also have no regrets. I swam as I planned, finishing as I expected - between 1:15 and 1:20. My nutrition on the bike and run both seemed fine. I had no GI issues (other than needing cooling!). I only had to stop once to pee the whole time. I still feel like I nailed the bike to the best of my particular current skill set, at least according to my plan. Perhaps, knowing I was slightly ill, I should have adjusted my power targets. Not doing that is something I have to live with, but I'm ok with that. I'll never know what would have happened if I had just carried on jogging the marathon without walking, but I don't think it would have been good. My choices were rational, and I worked hard to carry them out. Friends and Cynthia supported me and encouraged me and I worked hard in return for their cheers. I did my best on the day. I am an Ironman.

Downs and Ups

2009-08-25T22:48:00.003-05:00

I know it's supposed to be ups and downs, but that's not the way it went!

Pigman HIM was supposed to be my big last race rehearsal and give me big confidence for IMOO. Instead, the bike portion of the race was largely in a huge wind and rain storm, and then it dried out and got warm. I had GI problems (thank goodness for the portapotty on mile 9 of the run), and bonked on the run. Hard. I still finished in 5:26, but this was a big comedown from the 5:08 at KS, and my contemporaries had times that were much more comparable to their KS efforts. I had lots of potential excuses, but I don't really know...

For most of a week, this was a big problem for me. I kept wondering if all this work was going to happen, and then I still suck. Big confidence problem.

But last weekend made things a lot better again. All I did was ride an easy century (is that an oxymoron?) on Saturday, then run 16 mi (albeit pretty easy, about 8:30 pace) on Sunday. Nutrition was no problem on Saturday, and the run on Sunday went fine with nary a water or nutrition stop.

Oh, and I got to watch Christopher at the Hickory Grove Tri. He averaged 21 mph on the bike for the first time and came in 3rd among all competitors 24 and under, 1st among everyone 19 and under. 19th out of 420 overall. Not bad for a 14 year old. His friends/teammates came in pretty much right behind him. Awesome.

Now it's Tuesday, and the legs feel fresh again. Life is good. Onward.

The Best Race Ever

2009-08-25T22:48:00.000-05:00

At least so far.

Sorry for taking this long to write about it!

Christopher and I raced in the Big Creek Olympic Triathlon a few weeks ago. He had done a 2:26 on a relatively slow HyVee course and had been plotting all summer how to get down to 2:20. I, of course, lost to him at HyVee, but had not tapered. Big Creek was going to be the same. The family had gotten me an aero helmet for my birthday, but I let Christopher wear it because it was his big race.

We got started with me in the penultimate wave and Christopher in the last, with a 4 minute gap. Well, he's going to dust me in the swim by more than 4 minutes I know, so the big question I had was would I ever see him!

I had found a good draft on the swim for the first ~1000 m. Shortly after the last turn going in, some guy blasts by and yells at me. Who is it? Of course it's Christopher letting me know who's boss. Passing me was fine, but it was downright rude of him to break up my draft!

In a way, I was a little disappointed to catch up to him on the bike. I thought maybe he would go out and absolutely tear it up. But catch him I did. I challenged him to keep up with me, which he misinterpreted as an invitation to draft, which he loudly dismissed. Good for him!

I thought I was putting on more time against him than I did. When I got into T2, I had a shoe mishap (coming off my bike) and ran around for a little while trying to find it. Surely less than a minute, but longer than I should have. By that time, he had caught up, and we ran out of T2 almost together, him actually a touch ahead.

Dad was running just a touch faster that day. This irritated Christopher who wanted me to come up right away, instead of taking a while to catch him. We ran together for a mile or more, which was just great. Eventually, I pulled slowly away and played catch as catch can with other guys. But as I finished, Christopher was only about a minute behind.

Times - Christopher 2:20, Me 2:23. PRs for both of us! I was so proud of him, and happy for myself.

The coincidence of the start time and everything may have been unique. But I'll remember this one for a long time.

Not all long workouts are the same...

2009-07-22T22:33:00.000-05:00

If you read the books, they tell you - especially for IM training - that running is the hardest thing on your body.

In previous years, at lower volumes, I haven't really faced this much.

But this year, 3-5 hour workouts are no big deal.

Except the 3 hour run. First of those just the other day.

Definitely the most wearing low-moderate intensity workout so far this year. Oddly, it seemed more so than just 15 minutes shorter. Now, I'm not completely wiped out or anything, but it was a lot more than just a 3 hour ride, or even a 2/1 brick that was taken pretty hard. It would get old if I were doing that every week, at least as long as I was doing all the other stuff, too.

T1

2009-07-12T21:42:00.000-05:00

Christopher is a T1 Stud.

Dude gets in and out in a flash. He had the fastest T1 in the whole race at Cornman, and 3rd at Iowa Games. 19 seconds. My goodness!

Sockless

2009-07-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

Today I took the plunge.

I've never done a race without socks before. Now, with Christopher breathing down my back at every race, maybe I need those extra 30 seconds!

We did a "fun race" today - the Iowa Games sprint triathlon. Just a "train though" race, not even sanctioned by USAT. He got 2nd his age group; I got 4th. The only bad thing was that I took a spill on my bike. The transition area for this race is horrible, and I got a rock in my cleat. Right out of T1, there is a small but steep hill you have to climb, so as I clipped in (or so I thought), I had to power up. The rock disagreed, and down I went. Arrgh. Just a few minor scrapes and a sore hip to show, but the rest of my race went fine (though I missed the podium by under a minute....wouldn't have if I hadn't fallen; oh well).

But other than that, the T1 was great. In and out in 37 seconds!

No issues biking, no issues running. Made sure to grease up my feet and shoes with body lube, and everything was good.

I don't think I'll be doing any more sprint races this year, but now I'm not afraid. That's a Good Thing.

The Curse of the Cornman

2009-07-06T22:56:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was the Cornman Sprint triathlon. 500 m, 14 mi, 3.1 mi.

This was the third Cornman for me and Christopher. In 2007, we were both pretty much newbies, and just had fun on this pretty hard, hilly course.

But 2008 was The Year of The Flats. Christopher had a flat about 6 mi into the ride. After changing the tire, he had a second flat half a mile later. Grrr. But he was determined and actually ran his bike the rest of the way in (barefoot!) and then ran the 5K. Very courageous, I have to say.

So we should have been pre-disastered, right?

We followed the directions to the race that Google Maps provided, carrying our bikes on the back of the van with the nifty new carrier, and with Cynthia and the twins with us. Well, the road Google had us take was a "B grade" road after a point. Never heard of that? Neither had I.

Let me save you the trouble: never take a "B" road.

We did, and we ended up completely stuck in the mud. We did everything we could to get that van moving, and nothing helped. Nothing. Didn't move it more than 6 inches after we got stuck.

Cynthia was the hero and said that Christopher and I should go the rest of the way by ourselves to the race, and she would call someone to get help. One small thing: there was no cell service. Another small thing: we had to carry our bikes on our backs up a few hills in the mud until we could get to a paved road.

Well, we did. Christopher had left his bike shoes, but I spotted this and threw them in my bag. Fortunately, we were using backpack style bags. We eventually got to the hardtop and rode in the rest of the way - seemingly several miles - to the race. We got to packet pickup with about 42 seconds left and then dashed over to the transition area.

We were both wearing our running shoes and had thick clay mud up to our knees. Needless to say, two guys running into transition with bikes that looked like they just finished Xterra races and mud up to their knees drew a little attention.

But we got set up - barely, and ugly, but ready.

I had told Christopher there was no chance we'd be able to use wetsuits, but we couldn't have carried them anyway. But the water was only 70! Coldest it had ever been, they announced. Fortunately, it was fine to swim in, but we had a slight disadvantage.

Christopher was in the first wave and got out of the water fourth, within a few meters of the top 3. He even beat Patrick Davis onto the bike. Patrick and others began to pass him, as to be expected, but he was going fine. Until near the end - eeek! Crash!! Fortunately, it wasn't too bad, and he probably only lost a minute or so. His run was fine, and he turned in a decent time that turned out to be within 1 minute of the winner of his age group and me.

My race was fine. Well mostly. I intentionally thought I went out hard on the swim, trying to improve my lousy last couple of swims. But I had had to borrow Timothy's goggles, and it turned out they were so scratched that I actually had to take them off to see where the heck I was going! So my swim time stunk again. T1 was ok. I got out on the bike and felt good and started passing people. No one passed me and I liked my power numbers, considering it was the end of a hard week. About 20 W better than I was getting at HyVee. Felt good going up and down the hills. Ultimately, it wasn't a perfect ride or anything, but I was pleased. Got to see Christopher as he was heading back in from the turnaround (before his crash).

T2 was smooth, except for the lady who wanted to have an extended conversation about all the mud on my shoes. I tried to be polite and got out as quick as I could.

Again, the run started out feeling fine. Tami Ritchie passed me on The Big Hill, but there's no shame in that, considering she was first overall woman! Don't know how far she started behind me, but I was really pleased to be able to keep her in my sights the whole race. I finished with a 22:13 5K, so that was pretty successful, given the terrain. I kept wondering where the heck the guys were in my group. I only saw (and passed) one. The good news was that I must have passed most of them in the bike or something, because I came in second! Woo hoo!

And the guy that beat me did so by 7 minutes, so I didn't even feel guilty about not trying harder.

Anyway, I shortly met Christopher and heard his story. Eventually we got ahold of Cynthia again. They had gotten up to a portion of the race and had been talking with a sheriff during the race - and cheering as we went by. (No tow was available at the time.) Eventually, they got a tow, and met us up at the race by about 12:30 or so.

Finally Cynthia and the twins took off with Christopher out to his soccer camp in Omaha, and I began the long ride home. In the end, the race had taken more out of me than I might have thought, so the ride home was a moderately hard 75 mi, but it wasn't too bad. It didn't help that I was getting a cold, either, but hey....other than disasters, how bad a day could it be?

So now the only question is... do we dare go back next year?

So long, Sarah

2009-07-06T22:17:00.000-05:00

Ok, I admit I don't get it.

Sarah Palin's announcement that she was going to resign as governor seemed almost incoherent to me. Although I'm hardly the only one to think that, I'm also not her target audience.

I don't think she'll be able to be a commanding presence, even in the Republican primaries, from this position. Is the idea to get out and make some money? I just don't have any insight.

As always on this topic, I still think Andrew Sullivan has as good a perspective as any on SP.

Who turned off the Air Conditioning?

2009-06-22T09:44:00.000-05:00

Gosh, it's suddenly hot and humid.

The 85 degrees that it got up to during yesterday's run doesn't sound so bad, but the dew point was about 77. Got entirely soaked and kind of broken down by the end of the run. By the end of the run, it was more like "run" than run.

Here's hoping for some heat acclimatization and some relief.

KS 70.3 - A Race Report

2009-06-17T23:03:00.002-05:00

The KS 70.3 half-ironman was last weekend, June 14.

To make a long story short, I was very pleased with my race, and I finished in 5:08:19, a half-hour faster than my first effort at the distance last summer. My most important goal had been to get under 5:30, and 5:10 had been my fantasy time. That was based on 45 min for swim plus transitions, 2:45 on the bike (20 mph) and 1:40 on the run (about 7:30 pace).

The weekend started early. I was carpooling with 3 other guys and want to thank Rod Haws for driving. Left the house a little after 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning to meet up with them. We then loaded my bike into Rod's truck and we were off. The drive down was fun - all of us talking with excitement and nervous energy.

We arrived at the site about noon and parked. We learned the hard way how far away we were from the site, walking up to check-in. The line was long, but not ridiculously slow. Met up with some other TRIracers and heard the pre-race talk while we got our packets. Then we had to hike back to the car to get our bikes for drop off at T1. I scored a few brownie points with Rod for remembering to bring electrical tape. Funny all the details to keep track of.

When we approached T1 for bike check in, we learned that they were doing body marking. I was wearing jeans. Fortunately, they were fairly loose, so I thought nothing of it. But then the guy decides he wants to mark my thigh, not my calves. My mother would be pleased to know that I was wearing reasonably clean underwear. I figured we lay it all out on race day, so what else was I going to do...

After returning to the hotel, I started obsessing over the weather. The reports were deteriorating and it looked like there would be rainstorms Sunday morning (race day). The other guys were all casual and drinking beers, and there I was doting over my iPhone, trying to figure out if we'd get to race. I guess we all react differently.

Eventually we met up with other TRIracers, (Nelson, Jass, et al.) and went for dinner at a nice little Italian place in the late afternoon. Nice conversation and a good time to relax. We stopped off at Walmart to get something to eat for breakfast, which was to be at something like 3:30 a.m. the next day.

I spent entirely too long "organizing" my bag back at the hotel, then hung around with TRIracers for a bit, before retiring early. I kept getting just to sleep when my son and wife started texting me. They had gone to Minneapolis for a race the next morning that he was going to do. I was using the iPhone for my alarm clock, so I couldn't turn the sound off. I kept waking up when they sent something and cursing before I replied. Eventually, I just said that I was going (back) to sleep, and so it was.

Race morning -

We got up early and I slapped on the first of 3 layers of sunscreen before getting dressed. I did NOT want to get burned again. I put water into my bottle of Perpetuem and ate the bagels and peanut butter I'd bought the night before. Out of the hotel and off to the race in the dark. We arrived a little before 5:00 a.m. and started the trek to T2. Rain still looked likely, so I left my shoes in a plastic bag. Then the hike in the sunrise to T1. When we got there, it was amazing how crowded the T1 area was. Narrow aisles and tight packing of the bikes. I again practiced getting to my bike from the swim area. Then a couple trips to the bathroom, a last layer of sunscreen and body glide in all the right spots. By this time, it was just a few minutes before the pro start at 6:30 and I was grateful to be nursing a bottle of gatorade I found.

The weather looked like it would hold out, at least for a while.

I was a little surprised by the start, where we waded out to deeper water and went from there. It wasn't a big deal, but I just hadn't been able to see well enough that this was what was happening.

And then we were off. I was very pleased by the simple course: ~900 m out, ~200 across, ~800 back. This made it easy for me to follow and know where I was in the race. I was surprised how physical the swim was. There was quite a bit of jostling, compared to what I'm used to. Aside from this, the swim was smooth for me. As I got out of the water, I glanced at my watch and saw 38 min. That was ok by me. A couple of weeks ago, I'd had a pretty bad swim at an Olympic race, so this "on par" time was ok.

T1 was not great. I knew what aisle my bike was, but I underestimated how far down, and I spent too long looking for it. Then, once I was ready to go, I heard Nelson's voice behind me, yelling me on. That encouragement was great, but it meant I had lost 8 minutes to him on the swim! Maybe my swim wasn't so ok after all, I was thinking. Then some guy stumbled or something in front of me, and I almost fell stopping while running down the narrow aisle with my bike...Nelson right behind me. Nelson started yelling some more - I thought he was yelling at me, but I learned later he was yelling at the other guy and trying to check on me. So much for me not being disoriented...

Finally, I cleared from the bike aisles. After all that mess, I decided to run well past the mount line before mounting. I did, and mounted cleanly. I could hear Nelson still behind me, so it must have been reasonably fast, too, since he was right behind me. The other advantage was that I got a great, smooth bike start.

I had resolved not to consume anything for about 10 minutes or pay much attention to my speed for that time, as well, just taking it a little easy. So when I finally did look down at my computer, I was glad to see I was on target, between 180 and 200 W, and over 20 mph on a little flat. There were guys zooming by, but I decided to stick to the plan: 180 W ave target and up to 190 if I felt really good. All the people passing was disturbing, especially since there were some it looked like I could keep up with, but I stuck with it. I started to consume my Perpetuem on 15 minute intervals.

My only unfortunate bad spot of the race was somewhere in that 30-50 min range into the bike. I didn't feel right, and the power seemed low. But soon enough it was over, and I started counting the miles until halfway. The rolling hills went up and down constantly. Shift, shift, shift, shift. Started coasting when I hit about 35 and sitting up out of aero when under 15 mph and needing 250 W for a hill. Anything to make those relatively high wattage efforts easier and take some pressure of the quads for the day. I tried to keep the max to about 260 W except for an incidental stroke or two.

Something happened for me psychologically at the half way point. Somewhere around there, we turned such that we were going into the wind, which was pretty strong - maybe 20 mph. Suddenly, the course seemed just like home, and I was in a zone. Just kept going. Felt strong but under control. I figured out that my "feeds" would cost me about 1 minute of modest discomfort each time, usually ending in a belch and then a good spot for a while. It was all good.

There was a great psychology as I started catching back a lot of people that had passed me early in the race while going into the wind. Surely, it wasn't all of them, but it was enough. I knew the wind was hurting my speed (like everyone), but it looked like I might bring in 20 mph. More good psychology that made it easy to ramp up the power just a little bit, maybe 10 W. Ran into David Jass along the way and cheered each other a bit. It was a good day.

In the end, the only thing that really bothered me during the bike was some annoyance over a lot of unnecessary drafting. This wasn't just packs from the course being crowded, but blatant drafting. There was a little bit of rain, but it ended and the roads stayed essentially dry.

Soon enough I was coming into T2 and wondering if the rest of the race could possibly stay this easy. I was in a great mood. I saw my watch, and that I had come in under my target time, and that gave me another boost.

I hadn't seen many TRIracers on the bike, partly from focus, partly from limited out and back sections. But I knew I'd start to see them now, because the run was a two loop course with lots of two way traffic.

I ripped the bike computer off (with GPS), and put it in my back pocket. I grabbed a gel to eat at mile 1. Just like the bike, I had resolved to run easy the first few miles and just see how it was before firming up plans. So I did that. Just ran easy and comfortable. Saw Chrissie Wellington, who just looked like she was on a run in the park. Unbelievable. After that, I focused back on myself and saw I was doing 7:30 pace. Incredible.

I did a little math and knew I was in for a sub-5:30 time unless I just crashed. I thought 5:20 was reasonable. I realized that being able to do math was a good sign. (I guess the picture proves I'm still an inveterate heel-striker.)

Started seeing TRIracers and sharing little cheers and high-fives. Tami passed me easily. Oh well! Saw Nelson again for the first time. Always fun - he's a great teammate. I ran by the TRIracer tents in the camp ground and yelled something stupid like "sub-5:30" as I went by. But it was what was on my mind.

The whole psychology was great. My mantra turned into "all day pace". As in I was running a pace I felt like I could run all day. Started ticking off the miles. Everything was good. I didn't stop once. Not for anything.

Right around mile 9.5 or so, the one killer run hill came up again, shortly after the sun had broken through and it had warmed up. That hill did hurt and I realized that the previously "all day pace" would be harder to keep up. Also, I was developing a painful blister under my left arch.

But I did some more math. If I could just keep it up anywhere near 8:00 miles, I was looking at 5:10! And so I did. Miles 11 and 12 were a bit tough, but I knew it was going to be over soon. When I could see the finish, I had enough left to sprint.

5:08:19! Wow!

I got my medal and some water. Eventually an ice bath, then started looking for friends. But that's the subject of another post. Great celebration. Lots of great times. Great day.

First A Race this weekend: KS 70.3

2009-06-12T08:35:00.000-05:00

First A race is this weekend, the KS 70.3. I'm feeling fairly confident, but you always get a little nervous.

Two weeks before the race (May 31), I did a "C" race Olympic with a few good hills. The swim was disappointing for various reasons, but OK. I got on the bike, hoping to do 210-220 W. In the end, it was 206 normalized power. Just a touch disappointing. It was an unusual race in that you were really isolated on the bike. Passed a few people, only got passed once. Figured the latter was because I had a poor swim. Didn't see any of my usual friends on the race. But the run turned out great. I felt very strong and ran a 7:10 pace overall. Found my friends, who had been in front of me the whole time (because of my bad swim). Didn't collapse at the end. The time was 2:40. With a 2.5 mi extra-long bike, the nasty hills, and a couple of dopey transition things, I figured it was more-or-less equivalent to a 2:30 normal course time, right about on mid-season form.

So I'm feeling strong. Trying to shed just a little residual soreness in my quads. And already looking past it, i.e., to the ironman. Funny how I have trouble just focusing on the present.

Prop 8 ruling

2009-05-26T15:03:00.000-05:00

Today, the CA Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage, after it had been established by the the very same court.

As much as I'm in favor of same-sex marriage, this ruling strikes me as reasonable. The actual question being considered did not directly address same-sex marriage – instead it was a question about whether a too-significant change (a "revision") was being made to the CA constitution by the method of propositions. (Propositions are not allowed to make radical changes to the CA constitution, only minor amendments; the system is pretty obscure as as I can tell.) If the court had held that the change was too big, it could have invalidated the proposition.

I am not expert enough on the CA system to comment coherently on what constitues a too-radical amendment to their constitution to be passed via the standard proposition system, but this strikes me as a case where the political forces advocating either side of the argument are largely addressing the merits of Prop 8, not the actual legal question. Both sides have a result they want to achieve more than wanting to preserve the CA constitution.

So, I am disappointed with the result, but not surprised by it, nor do I view it as a setback to the same-sex marriage movement.

Instead, I take heart in the other part of the ruling. Some 17,000 couples or so were married during the short window. The court found no reason to invalidate those marriages, since the language of Prop 8 did not address retroactivity directly. After all, it was this same court, that ruled 4-3 that same-sex marriage should be available in CA.

Things are changing. Just not overnight.

New England and marriage

2009-05-14T14:46:00.000-05:00

New Hampshire is now in the marriage equality camp, joining Maine as states that passed it through legislative action. Terrific. Most of New England now. Even New York, where outside of the city, it's pretty conservative, is considering a legislative change for marriage equality. (Gov. Patterson is not especially popular, and I am not that optimistic that this will ultimately pass, but at least it's on the table.)

Is it a coincidence that these are the places that used to have moderate-to-liberal Republicans, and that most have been purged from the party? I think not. When Republicans are in the clear minority, and only appealing to their "base", then everyone else can choose not to worry about the "base" Republican position as much. This is an oversimplification, but I would not be surprised if it happens elsewhere in the country for a while if the Republicans continue their current "purification" trend.

The senators from Maine are an interesting exception. I wish I knew enough about the politics of Maine to know how they survive.

The Power Meter

2009-04-27T09:50:00.000-05:00

I bought a bicycle power meter a couple of weeks ago.

If you've already got one, tell me where you think I'm wrong or could use some advice. But for those that haven't ridden with one:

Prepare to be humbled. At least I was. Nothing like cold, hard, wattage numbers to put a reality check on how things are going.
When you aren't humbled the first time, be prepared to be humbled when you don't believe the first numbers you're getting. Think you're going to hold 20-30 more watts than your test shows for even a 20 minute interval? Good luck with that one.
The power meter IS very satisfying for rides in varying conditions. One of my recent rides was in a 30 mph (+ gusts) wind at a slight diagonal, relative to my squarish route. As they say, a watt is a watt is a watt, regardless of wind and hills. And it turned out to be interesting that I could achieve a bit more than I thought into the wind, just by holding the watts.
I have sure learned what I am or am not doing on downhills. I'm not sure I want to pedal hard when I'm already going 40 mph because of gravity, but it is interesting to see what's happening in less drastic conditions, like a 1-2% downhill grade.
At least when fatigued, I was interested to learn that I don't put a heck of a lot more force on the pedals by standing up (unless of course, you yank on the bars). It's different, and "easier" in a way because the muscles are different, and more adapted to slower rpms, but I'm surprised it's not a lot more torque. Will keep an eye on this one.
Intervals feel different. I tended previously to use even HR, and (presumably) somewhat falling speed/watts. Now trying to do them appropriately so that my power is constant. Sometimes that means the HR goes up when it's pretty aggressive. But that darn meter lets you know what you're doing.

More to come...

Progress in New York

2009-04-16T11:22:00.002-05:00

Paterson Unveils Same-Sex Marriage Bill

Another politician with a bit of courage on this. It's time for those who have played the "I don't want to discriminate but I'm not in favor of the world 'marriage'" game to get over it and stand up in favor of equality and civil rights for all. Can you hear me Barack?

Vermont, DC, a rock, and a hard place

2009-04-09T07:52:00.001-05:00

A couple of days ago, the Vemont legislature overturned a veto of a same-sex marriage bill by their governor. That is, the legislature affirmatively passed a pro gay marriage law, saw it vetoed, and then raised a 2/3 majority to override the veto. This is a big deal, because it is the first time this has been done by vote of an elected group, rather than by the (common sense of the) courts.

Meanwhile, Washington DC's city council voted to recognize same-sex marriages that originate from the states. That's the closest they can do. (Hypothetically, congress can overturn this law. We'll see.)

This is all fantastic, but it starts to put some of our weak-kneed Democratic politicians in an awkward spot. Two among them are the governor of Iowa (Chet Culver) and our president (yeah, that one, Barack Obama). These guys have historically wimped out on the issue (much like some do with the death penalty) saying something like, "I personally think marriage is between a man and a woman, but I'm for civil unions" or something to that effect.

Personally, I think most of these guys have been disingenuous. I think they think there should be gay marriage, but can't be "out" in that position. Now, they are in an awkward position: I don't think any of them wants to be against same sex marriage, but they're being called out by the very people they tried to reassure with their public "opposition" to it.

Time to get on board. Full out. "I was wrong." Get right with the world and with common sense, people. Read the Iowa decision to get some clarity and join us out of the closet on this one.

Iowa Court Gets It Right

2009-04-03T11:41:00.001-05:00

The Iowa Supreme Court today ruled that laws that ban same-sex marriage violate the Constitution. (Varnum v Brien)

They ruled unanimously.

And they wrote an excellent explanation piece.

After spending some time explaining about protected classes, strict scrutiny, and an intermediate level of scrutiny, they address the "defenses" of the ban one by one and dismiss them as easily as they should be. Here is a short excerpt:

Promotion of Procreation. Next, the court addressed the County’s argument
that endorsement of traditional civil marriage will result in more procreation. The
court concluded the County’s argument is flawed because it fails to address the
required analysis of the objective: whether exclusion of gay and lesbian
individuals from the institution of civil marriage will result in more procreation.
The court found no argument to support the conclusion that a goal of additional
procreation would be substantially furthered by the exclusion of gays and
lesbians from civil marriage.

Promoting Stability in Opposite-Sex Relationships. The County also
asserted that the statute promoted stability in opposite-sex relationships. The
court acknowledged that, while the institution of civil marriage likely encourages
stability in opposite-sex relationships, there was no evidence to support that
excluding gay and lesbian people from civil marriage makes opposite-sex
marriage more stable.

They got it right. Congratulations.

Now we move on. The opponents of same-sex marriage will undoubtedly cry about legislation from the bench. There are even those who now argue that the court does not have the right to overturn laws (Marbury vs. Madison anyone?) But the more serious callenge will surely be some effort to change the constitution, e.g., Prop 8 in California. Let's hope a more serious resistance is put up.

Not exactly ready for IM yet.

2009-03-21T15:59:00.000-05:00

As I write this, the temperature is 72 degrees outside and it's perfectly clear.

Nine hours ago, at 7:00 a.m., as I waited for the sun to rise, it was just as well that I didn't look to see the temp, which was about 38 degrees. At least it wasn't windy when I set out for the first long outside ride for the day. (Except on my face and my cold toes!)

Today, I covered between 75 and 80 mi in about 4:15. Didn't have enough nutrition because I ran out of powder, but at least I had a chance for a big breakfast. Well, by the time that last hour came around, it was pretty clear there was no marathon left in the legs if I had gone the full 112. Actually, I don't think there was a marathon in the legs after 75. Kept up the base and kept down the HR, but...

"Ran" about 3 mi afterwards. Boy did that feel weirder than usual. I couldn't believe it when I looked at the Garmin data afterwards and saw it was under 8 min/mi pace. Sure felt weirder than that.

So, it's a good day because I was out there almost 5 hours, and I feel ok. It's an educational day because I know there's a lot left to do. And it's a good day, because there's still almost 6 months left.

Nose to the ground

2009-03-17T17:35:00.001-05:00

The weather was really nice yesterday here, for the first time in ages. I went out for a real, live outdoor ride on my Cervelo.

So, the title of the post is what I meant - felt like my nose was on the ground! Anyone else feel this?

I think it's just a combination of having lowered the front end 5 mm toward the end of the season last year, and all those hours of indoor riding, where you're up higher on the trainer. But whatever it was, it sure seemed like I was a little short shrimp out there!

(But, not so bad...over 20 mph average over 90 min, mostly in Zone 2, despite 20-25 mph wind!)

The Long Aerobic Swim

2009-03-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

The long aerobic swim is a bit dull. But I'm working on the assumption that it's a necessary evil. A long run, a long ride, and a long swim. Everything I read, that's pretty much Base Training for the Fe-man.

Last Saturday was another mini-Big Day: 1/2 hour swim, 3 hour indoor ride, 1 hour run with reverse split. (Under 8:00 pace! woo hoo!) That felt great. But Sunday, I was pretty wiped out. It was a scheduled easy day - just weights - but didn't know how today would go.

Long aerobic swim at lunchtime today: 90 minutes with only a total of about 30 sec break for a couple sips of water. Well, it went pretty good. Started out at 1:44 per 100 yd pace, and finished up at 1:48 per 100 yd pace. Started out at 10 right arm strokes per 25 yards, finised at 11. This was my second swim of 5000+ yds, and it was better.

As the weather warms up, hope to work in a couple days of bikes after that: the swim/bike brick. We'll see.

Gay marriage and Free Speech

2009-03-05T08:17:00.000-06:00

I just heard a story on NPR regarding the backlash that donors to Prop 8 received in California. (Prop 8 passed; it overturned the legal right to marry.)

The opponents of Prop 8 ran a campaign that was widely acknowledged was poor, and were shocked when it passed, despite CA being a strong Democratic/Obama state. A well-funded and organized opposition ran a moderately disingenuous campaign, but apart from my strong feelings on the issue, it wasn't much worse than many political campaigns in terms of its scare tactics and half-truths. It was funded in large part by people with direct religious affiliation, including Catholic and Mormon groups. In the end Prop 8 won, fair and square. (There are current court cases about the merits of Prop 8, which is common in CA politics, but no one can dispute that the election itself was fairly won.)

But that's not where it ends.

To make a long story short, it's public record when you make certain kinds of political donations, and many opponents of Prop 8 got riled up AFTER they lost. They started publicly pointing out who had given money in favor of discrimination (i.e., Prop 8), including some tactics like boycotting business.

Not surprisingly, many of the people who were "victims" of this tactic felt picked on or intimidated. Some complained that their freedom of religion was being violated.

Nonsense.

The Supreme Court long ago settled the point that political donations are "speech". And, frankly, conservatives have benefited from this decision because it tends to make regulation of political donations of marginal legality. But the point is this: Free Speech (donating money to a political cause) is surely allowed and an important political freedom. Anonymity is not promised. In fact, it is, in this case, forbidden.

There is a reasonable question whether the opponents of Prop 8 went over the line in civility in their response to Free Speech with more Free Speech. But there is no question that this is - in general - the way that we are supposed to deal with what we feel is "objectionable speech": by adding MORE speech.

For better or worse, there are reasons that many celebrities and businesses don't get involved in political causes: they don't want to take the heat after the fact when they say/do something controversial. The opponents of Prop 8 took this up a notch on people that weren't prepared to take that heat.

I don't want to defend every last action taken by Prop 8 opponents. I am willing to believe that some may have crossed the line. But the simple fact is this: if you give money to groups that can reasonably be characterized as supporting discrimination, you should be willing to stand up for that position when called on it. To do so will make your position stronger. To run away from it and complain when your identity is pointed out makes it seem that you are ashamed of what you have done.

Long warmup

2009-02-25T10:11:00.000-06:00

One of the offshoots of high volume training for me is a long warmup. I'm not certain if it's due to being "in shape" or being fatigued. But sometimes I don't feel warmed up for half an hour's run or ride.

Miscellaneous thought: it's amusing to know that when you're running indoors, it's literally true that when other people who started about the same time as you quit, you'll just be getting warmed up...

In the Long Run

2009-02-25T10:07:00.002-06:00

"There are no recovery runs if you're training for an Ironman."

So say Friel and Gordo in Going Long, even if those aren't the exact words. Since I started out at this whole thing as a runner (maybe a little above average, but surely nothing special), this is a hard concept for me. But I'm learning.

An easy 1-hour run when you're just running is like playtime. Or it has been for me. Just fun. You come back home refreshed and feeling good.

I am learning however, that F&G are probably right. With the increased volume of lots of cycling and weights, a one-hour run doesn't have to be hard, but it's more work and less recovery than it used to be. So, now I schedule my runs with more care.

Last night was this week's long run. Last week had been relatively heavy, about 13 hours. Because of circumstances with my schedule, Saturday had been a one-hour run, Sunday had been a three-hour ride, Monday included a one-hour run, and Tuesday had been my long run. Without the cycling, the two consecutive days of run wouldn't be anything to worry about. But my quads on Monday were letting me know that I should be worried. My pace Monday was slow, maybe 9 minute miles. I did some strides at the end, but had to really keep them under control.

Last night, though, showed that this long slow process is starting to pay off. Two hours running with a pace of about 8:15. My heart rate stayed just exactly where I wanted it, in the upper aerobic (after a long warmup). Sure, the last 15-20 minutes seemed like more work than they usually would in weeks where I haven't been working this hard, but Things Are Good. Today, my legs are tired, but tired is kind of the point.

Cycling Cadence

2009-02-15T12:43:00.000-06:00

Indoors this winter I'm working a bit on pushing harder gears at lower cadence to build up some leg strength. But even when I'm not, I find it tough to get anywhere near 100 rpm on the bike. I use a fluid trainer, so maybe it's the steepness of the resistance curve. Maybe I just have to start at a really wimpy gear and then speed up, and it will get to the right level of difficulty. Maybe I'm just not reading how to use the trainer just right.

One semi-warm day a week ago, I took an hour outdoor ride. 110 rpm no problem. 95 minumum.

Got up on rollers for a few minutes for the first time yesterday. A bit wobbly and scary, but pretty cool.

The Big Day

2009-02-15T12:39:00.000-06:00

A week ago Saturday, it was pretty warm (for Iowa in the Winter), and I used the opportunity for a Big Day. 30 minute swim, 3-hour trainer rides with my friends at the YMCA, and then an hour run with a reverse split in the 8:30/mi range. Not too bad. Felt great, if tired, by the end.

Only a couple days days later did my quads let me know that this workout took a fair amount out of me. It was timed to be right before my recovery week, so I'm better by now, but that kind of feeling was a good reminder how I have to be careful in slowly cranking things up.

Yesterday was my long day of the recovery week. Mellowed out. 30 min swim, 2.5 hour ride, and 30 minutes on a treadmill, instead of outside. Still feel it a bit, but will be ready to go again next week.

Intellectual Honesty and the Stimulus

2009-02-15T12:32:00.000-06:00

Wouldn't it be more straightforward and honest for the Republican talking points to be, "We know it's unpopular, but we just don't believe in Keynseyan stimulus. We don't think you should spend money on government programs just as a matter of principle. We think that makes you dependent on the government and That's Bad. We think it's just a bad idea to spend money without paying for it and we think taxes are too high as it is." I personally disagree, but at least that's a tenable position.

But then, the other side of this is the war of the last several years, which was...let's see...government spending without paying for it????

SarahPac

2009-01-29T10:37:00.020-06:00

Paid for by SarahPAC
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee

www.SarahPAC.com

So reads the disclaimer on the entry page of Sarah Palin's new PAC web site. I suppose this is true as a technicality: Sarah Palin is not an official candidate for anything right now. But this is a bit of a joke, isn't it?

Two points:

As a strictly partisan matter, could the Democrats ask for a better candidate to contrast against Obama, assuming he manages to get through his four years remaining as thoughtful and calm as he has to this point? On the other hand, what does it say that she thinks she is viable among the Republican primary electorate? Ouch.
This web site shows the horror of our political contribution laws. Sarah Palin is not doing anything a million other potential candidates haven't done. Completely legal and completely disingenuous. I don't blame her. But this silly facade that people have to put on is stupid. I tend to think that the first amendment arguments against restricting political donations are pretty strong, but either we should loosen some of these laws or tighten them. This is ridiculous.

Here's the text from the next page. Not affiliated with a "candidate"? Right.

Sarah Palin's Official PAC

Dedicated to building America's future, supporting fresh ideas and candidates who share our vision for reform and innovation.

SarahPAC believes America's best days are ahead. Our country, founded on conservative principles and the fight for freedom, must confront the challenges of the 21st century with integrity, innovation, and determination.
SarahPAC believes energy independence is a cornerstone of the economic security and progress that every American family wants and deserves.
SarahPAC believes the Republican Party is at the threshold of an historic renaissance that will build a better future for all. Health care, education, and reform of government are among our key goals. Join us today!

Rest Week is Good

2009-01-24T21:04:00.000-06:00

Hard couple of weeks of training ended last Sunday, about 14.5 hours, including riples on Thursday and Saturday. Took it easy this week, as planned, with only about 8 hours. Friel says that most beginning Ironman people are under-recovered. Could have worked harder the last few days, but now I feel really refreshed for the next mesocyle. This is good.

Bush: A Good No Surprise

2009-01-24T21:02:00.000-06:00

It's been a few days now, but not too late to note that Bush didn't offer any high profile last-minute pardons. I'll give him credit: he's been consistent about being pretty stingy with those. No Scooter. No Dick. No Whole CIA. etc.

So, for once in his administration, the rule of law will stand.

Inauguration Day, Part 5

2009-01-20T11:08:00.000-06:00

43 Americans have taken the oath. One guy twice with an interruption (Grover Cleveland). Bad fact-checking!

Get that photographer dude out of the picture!

"The time has come to set aside childish things." How true.

I love the "quit screwing around" theme.

Love the reaction shot of Bush after BHO says that it's a false choice between freedom and security.

Nice touch to include "non-believers" in his list...

Not a perfect speech, but a perfect tone. Didn't shoot too high to be Lincoln, but he laid it out. It's good to have a real thinker back in the job.

Inauguration Day, Part 4

2009-01-20T10:45:00.000-06:00

Rick Warren..... was that a prayer or a speech? At least it was constructive for the most part. Not that I'm against the Lord's Prayer, but these things usually avoid specific Christian references, which he had done up until then.

Sun is in Biden's Eyes. But he wants to say this fast and take that job now!

Someone pointed out during this musical interregnum that Biden is briefly Bush's Veep...

Barack knows the oath better than Roberts...or so it sounds. Have to see a replay to figure out who messed up.

Inauguration Day, Part 3

2009-01-20T10:33:00.000-06:00

A bit of "live blogging" here...

Bush walking down to the ceremony as they are doing the introductions looks terrible. Like he's sick or being arrested.

Cheney looks like he still has something evil up his sleeve.

Bush manages to smile as he's introduced.

Biden looks like he's going to burst but he's trying to keep it under control.

As usual, Laura Bush's lipstick contrasts way too much with the rest of her face. I've always thought that looked bizarre.

Is that a genuine laugh from Cheney???

Biden seriously wants a high five, but has to restrain himself to more decorous hugs.

Obama walking down the hall looks like he's got a million things on his mind, including excitement, and he's doing everything he can to control it. The expression changes so rapidly...

Man there's a lot of people there....

Now on the stage, BHO looks like he's got it under control again...

Inauguration Day, Part 2

2009-01-20T08:42:00.000-06:00

I was born in 1964.

As I struggle to think about it, I know I don't have any specific memories of 1968, but somehow I feel like I remember the sense of tragedy around the assassinations of RFK and MLK.

Somehow, though, it makes a connection to today.

Inauguration Day, Part 1

2009-01-20T08:34:00.000-06:00

All this reminds me...

What were people thinking in 2004? Voting for Bush in 2000 was reasonable. The country certainly (and reasonably) had Clinton-fatigue.

But by 2004, Bush was a known quantity. How could half of us have missed that?

Remember, it wasn't too long after that when the scales finally started to fall from our eyes. Maybe it was a testament to Rove, et al. that they held it together just long enough to get through Nov 2004.

Getting sore

2009-01-20T08:17:00.000-06:00

Hit the end of another 3 week cycle, and just in time. Thursday included a very intense leg strength session on the bike. I attend a bike spinning class late Thursday nights held at a local cool bike shop (Bike World), which is inhabited mostly by real roadies. So it's all strength and intervals. Friday, unsurprisingly, was sore. Saturday was the big day for the week: 40 min swim, long ride, then 30 min run. Had been planning on only 2.5 hours on the bike, but a couple other guys wanted to stay for another half hour, so I did too. And then one of them, who knows what he is doing, pushed us to do some intervals. They probably weren't that hard if they hadn't been at the end of 3 hours, but they were pretty hard as it was. Sucked it up and made it through.

Despite the fatigue of those long trainer rides, I always find the run after to be a relief, almost a pleasure. It's almost just stretching out the other half of those leg muscles is a relief, at least for a while. For now, I've kept them to ~30 min. Longer than that would mean more nutritional needs, especially after all that riding.

Anyway, Sunday was just an easy hour's spin. Or at least it was supposed to be easy. Hurt a bit just to get to 90 rpm in low gear.

So now it's recovery week. Nothing too terribly long. Took yesterday off. Slept like a rock two days in a row. Feel a lot better today. I hope this is how it's supposed to work.

Me and Coach Troy

2009-01-13T14:15:00.000-06:00

Spent a little Quality Time with Coach Troy over the weekend.

If you have ever done time on a trainer in front of a Spinervals DVD, you know exactly who I mean. Fit, authoritative-sounding, pro Triathlete background, some kind of southernish accent, stopwatch. Coach Troy cajoles and yells and tells you you have to put it on the big ring on the front and the 12 on the back and give me 100% for only 1 minute. And that 30 seconds is plenty of time to recover before we do it again.

His DVDs have titles like "Suffer O Rama", "Have Mercy", "Bending Crank Arms" and "No Slackers Allowed". So perhaps we ought not complain, but just about everyone who has ridden with Coach Troy has wanted to throw something at him. In fact, you wonder if he's out of his mind at times.

But on "On-the-Road v. 4: Madison WI training ride", we learn that Coach Troy does have a modicum of self-awareness. For this ride, you're supposed to pretend you're riding with him and three other studs around the Madison Ironman course. It's about 3 hours, and doesn't have deathly crank-bending interval sets. In contrast to most of his DVDs, Troy actually rides. Although he clearly taped most of the commentary after the ride, it's done in a style as if he were riding at that very moment. He talks, and instructs, and talks. Actually, if you're alone, he keeps you company if you don't mind a one-way conversation, because at least on this one video, he isn't trying to kill you.

With between 45 and 43 minutes to go, though, find out that Troy knows what we think of him. Nothing dramatic, but he admits that maybe he is annoying and you might want to turn the volume down and not listen to him.

It's good to know he's human.

Not the Prez any more

2009-01-02T16:43:00.000-06:00

I don't mean Obama, I mean me!

I just finished my term as president of the local soccer club. In a way, I'll miss some of the duties, but I will certainly not miss having to keep up on every last detail. I remain on the board, so I will still be involved. Funny, though, what letting go feels like.

Early swim

2009-01-02T16:35:00.000-06:00

Swimming was the first thing my soon-to-be-14 year old son could beat me at all the time.

I got a grade 3 AC separation in my shoulder last spring, which did not do anything good for my already mediocre swimming. I had tried to make a point last winter of getting better at it, and I had taken my 1000 yd time trial time down from 17:45 to 15:47 over the course of a few months before I hurt myself.

This past recovery week I did my first swimming TT of the season, and came in at a pretty respectable (for me) 16:34. That's way ahead of where I was this time a year ago, but I think the "easy" time has come and gone. We'll see how fast I can get on my new-and-not-improved shoulder. I have signed up for a group swim workout, which starts in a week. Maybe there will be some good stroke coaching to come from that. We'll see.

Feeling optimistic.

Base 1.

2009-01-02T16:22:00.000-06:00

I'm old enough that I train on a 3 week cycle instead of the traditional 4 week cycle. That means 16 days "on" and 5 days recovery (low volume), instead of 3 weeks/1 week. My 5 day recovery cycle means a business week of low volume, and then I can come back with something longer on the weekend.

This past week has been my first rest week since I formally started my program to get to IM Moo. I have a 6 week "Base 1" cycle, followed by a 6 week "Base 2" cycle that will take me into early March. If these terms don't mean anything, a good place to look is Joe Friel's The Triathlete's Training Bible. Basically, this is a pretty low intensity time, meant to build strength and basic endurance. It's "training to train", as opposed to training for the race just now.

Anyway, the good news is that by about Wed or Thu, I felt ready to go again. Still taking the full 5 days. Don't want be great in April and burnt out in August.

More on Rick Warren

2009-01-02T16:15:00.001-06:00

I initially thought Rachel Maddow's take on the Rick Warren invitation to do the invocation at Obama's inauguration was a bit shrill - she did not seem to take seriously that there could be a reasonable "reaching out" component to it.

But Rick Warren recently dug the hold deeper. Rather than rehash the details, I instead draw your attention to another Rachel Maddow segment. Again, some of this is editorial and reflects her strong initial opinions, but there is a lot of plain old fact and quote in here.

If we are to give RW the benefit of the doubt here, this kind of thing sure doesn't help. Can you imagine the collective cringe by the Obama gang when they see this?

Week 1

2008-12-19T22:40:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday was the first Big Spin for me this season. Two hours on the bike on a trainer with a bunch of great folks and half an hour on the treadmill. After some time off, it felt great. I got all those same feelings again. Like impatience after 30-45 min on the bike. Like euphoria in the last 30 minutes riding and the first 20 minutes running. Like an unfathomably deep hunger an hour later.

4000 continuous yards in the pool today, about the length of the IM swim. Not at any kind of exciting pace, but it's an entirely doable distance. Enough to make me tired, but no problem.

Big Spin 2 is tomorrow, and I have to get up early when I'd rather sleep in. I can't wait.

Rick Warren

2008-12-19T22:28:00.000-06:00

For the last couple of days, one of the big news items was Obama's invitation of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the presidential swearing-in.

A reasonable question that doesn't seem to be noted much is whether there ought to be a religious invocation at this event at all, but I digress....

In what I will call, for lack of better terms, the "pro-gay" literature on the Bible, it is often argued that one of Jesus's traits was his radical inclusiveness. Even many supposedly anti-gay stories (e.g., Soddom and Gammorah) are interpreted with this theme. So, on the one hand, this invitation strikes me as an example of a similar radical inclusiveness, with Warren himself and symbolic of others who are most definitely not sympathetic to the LGBT (or for that matter, Democratic) cause.

On the other, Warren, in his otherwise non-flame-throwing persona, has been staunch in his opposition to equal rights for same-sex marriage, comparing it to incest, polygamy, etc. His statements, while often calm and articulate, have been damning and hurtful. So, on this other hand, inviting him to open the ceremony for Obama seems like a massive kick in the teeth to the LGBTA community.

I hope this was not a cynical calculation, that it was a genuine attempt at post partisanship, or at least inclusiveness. It doesn't feel that way now. At minimum it feels like a miscalculation. At worst, it feels like a major tarnish on our otherwise still-shiny new president (-elect). I hope it was worth it.

Gay marriage case in Iowa

2008-12-10T15:38:00.001-06:00

The case in the Iowa Supreme Court is summarized well by the Des Moines Register. The quick and dirty version is that in 2007, an Iowa district court judge held that Iowa's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and (temporarily) made same sex weddings legal. However, within hours, he stayed his own order, and only one (I think) couple actually got married during the short window.

Here's how we know that history is going to be on our side:

"One could easily argue, and we do, that fostering same-sex marriage will harm the institution of marriage as we know it," Kuhle said. "It's not going to happen tomorrow. We're not going to see any changes tomorrow, next week, next year, in our generation. But you've got to look to the future."

Kuhle said state support for same-sex marriage would teach future generations that marriage is no longer about procreation despite thousands of years of history.

Are we kidding here? This is the lawyer defending the ban on same-sex marriage. Some vague, undescribed harm well into the future? Seriously? How about no-fault divorce if we want to talk about a harm to marriage! And can this guy be serious about procreation being the purpose of marriage? Undoubtely, there is a correlation, but we're not really going to have fertility tests associated with marriage licenses, or ban the weddings of 60 year old women are we?

The battle is over. It's just a matter of how long it will take for everyone to figure that out.

Do-Overs

2008-12-10T15:30:00.000-06:00

(I apologize for the delay here. Got completely swamped at work for a while.)

The Bush "Exit Interviews" have started. The one with Charlie Gibson had a section that just rang like nails on a blackboard:

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one?
BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.
GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?
BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.
GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.
BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

Reading between the lines here in the last few sentences: he was going to go to war anyway. Any reasonable person who was serious about the WMD justification for going to war in Iraq could easily answer Gibson's question. "If we had known Iraq had no WMD, we would not have started a war." This shows once again that the WMD explanation was just a pretense.

Crossing the Rubicon

2008-11-22T20:57:00.000-06:00

Well, today was the day.

Today was the day that my son beat me. He's 13.

Pretty damn cool.

We did the Living History Farms run, this huge cross country race in sub-freezing temps with about 9 little stream crossings. It's about a 7 mile race with 7500 people. The winners go sub-40 min and sub hour is a pretty good time. He beat me by a minute. I could give some excuses, but no matter how you cut it, he beat me. Fair and square. Way cool. (They seem to have not done the chip timing right, because my start-to-finish time was just under an hour, and his was just under 59, but no harm done.)

Next season, it's on. I have a feeling it'll be my last where I have a chance.

Banned to Alaska

2008-11-20T08:32:00.000-06:00

The news yesterday was that Ted Stevens conceded his senate race to Democrat Mark Begich. Honestly, outside of removing a corrupt old hand who didn't listen to anyone, it's not clear yet that Begich will be a senate leader.

But what he has done is kept Sarah Palin in Alaska. No Sarah the Senator, at least for now.

We'll see how likely she is to stay there based on her travel schedule over the next 18 months. She matches well with the Iowa Republican party (in large part rural and conservative Christian) and could do well in the Iowa Caucuses. The Iowa Caucuses don't choose presidents, or necessarily even the nominee (ask Pres. Huckabee and Gebhardt, for example), but they do narrow the field. In 2008, the Democratic survivors were Obama and Clinton. Edwards essentially tied Clinton, but everyone knew he had staked everything on Iowa and hadn't won. That, in combination with Obama's headline-grabbing win, was enough to effectively knock him out. On the Republican side, Huckabee and Romney got tickets. I think McCain was a special case, in that he skillfully played his knowledge that he wouldn't do well in Iowa but could make a comeback in New Hampshire.

The point remains, though, that Palin could place well in Iowa, based on her appeal to its Republicans. The value of that ticket to New Hampshire would depend on the rest of the field and how the next four years go. But watch the Des Moines airport over the next while to see if she's thinking the same thing.

Prop 8 and the impasse on same-sex marriage

2008-11-13T13:23:00.003-06:00

I picked up this video clip from Andrew Sullivan's blog. I'm completely with Savage on this one, and I think some of Perkins' arguments are specious. But that said, it seems to me that this is one of those times that your preconceptions completely predetermine who you think "wins" this exchange. If you come from a world view that civil gay marriage should be banned because of your religious convictions, then Perkins' arguments will ring a lot truer. Stuff like "using the court to overturn the will of the people." (Again, Savage is right that this is exactly one of the things that the courts are for, but most people don't see it that way when it's their will that's being overturned.)

As to the content, Savage makes two excellent points. First, he notes that we straights are the ones that have redefined civil marriage over the years in response to societal changes, so doing so is hardly unprecedented. Second, he gives the excellent and rational reply to the usual polygamy/slippery-slope objection to redefining marriage: that each such proposed change should be weighed on its own merit. Disliking polygamy has no bearing on any decision regarding same-sex marriage.

But again, if you think both same sex marriage and polygamy are abominations, does that color how you view that retort?

We will win this in time, but it will take a while.

Disingenuous

2008-11-09T09:33:00.003-06:00

Socialist. Terrorist. Etc. This is an example of how rotten our election tactics have become (or still are). I am a Democrat, and it feels like the Republicans, on the whole pull, this crap a lot worse than the Democrats do. And of course, this is angering. But worse is how they do it and don't believe it. The NY Times documents how disingenuous it all is.

Feeling better

2008-11-09T09:21:00.002-06:00

My marathon was three weeks ago today. After a week completely off, and a week of very light work, last week edged into daily, but brief, training again. Today I feel great, and I haven't felt the need for my good buddy Ibuprofen for a while. Aside from a run this afternoon that will be longer, workouts of 30-60 minutes were the norm, and strangely refreshing. For the month of November, it's all about preparation for training: keeping up 5-7 days/week of something, while getting fresh and ready to begin the training for the next season all healthy again.

September 2009 - Ironman Wisconsin
April 2010 - Boston Marathon

Here we go.

Alaska Senate

2008-11-09T09:16:00.003-06:00

So now we know that a Special Election would have to be held to succeed Ted Stevens, assuming he is eventually called as the winner of the Alaska senate race and either resigns or is dismissed from the Senate. The way I read the tea leaves - admittedly just a guess - is that Sarah Palin would like this to stretch out a while so that the presidential election can be a few months in the past. At that point, some of the negative emotion of the performance of the McCain/Palin ticket and her role in it would be past, but she would still be in a strong position to take the senate seat if she ran for it. We'll see.

Palin still goes to Washington?

2008-11-05T17:32:00.004-06:00

So it looks like Stevens will ultimately win the Alaska senate seat, despite being found guilty of a felony. He says he will appeal, but it seems unlikely he will survive this. It seems much easier to believe that this sort of talk was designed to get himself reelected to keep the seat in Republican hands. Assuming he has won, he will probably have to resign some time soon.

At that point, the governor gets to appoint his replacement. Which governor? Palin of course. It would certainly be a gutsy way for her to keep her profile up if that is what she wants to do. After all, there is now precedent for a 1-term senator who got famous for a speech at a political convention to be a successful candidate for president.

Maybe a little nuts on my part? You betcha.

An election disappointment

2008-11-05T09:00:00.002-06:00

There are people who know who their gay friends and relatives are, or at least most of them. There are people who don't know. And there are people who pretend they have none.

The case for gay civil marriage is simple and compelling, and can be summarized in two sentences: There is no compelling state interest in denying equal civil rights to gay couples and straight couples, and the benefits to those gay couples who choose to marry are paramount. Religious institutions already restrict the marriages that they recognize and sanction, and civil marriage has no impact on that fact.

The benefits of marriage need not be expounded here. We all know them.

But what is so frustrating is the pretense that civil gay marriages would somehow be an unbearable assault on the religious sacrament of marriage (to use the Christian term). Catholic doctrine already does not recognize second marriages. Many religious groups, orthodox Judaism being only a single example, do not approve of cross-religion marriages. Yet these marriages are, of course, sanctioned by the civil states.

Many, including our president-elect, pretend that the solution is to have a new word for gay marriages, i.e., "civil unions". This would be sensible, as long as all civil weddings were "unions" and homosexual and heterosexual unions were held on equal terms. We could leave the word "marriage" to religion, if we wanted to. However, that is not what is proposed: Civil Unions are always a lesser option.

Thus, I find it crushing that California, the state I grew up in and arguably the most progressive state in the Union, has found it necessary to constitutionally enshrine civil discrimination. What a chance they had.

Day 1

2008-11-05T08:38:00.004-06:00

I start this on Day 1.

For several more weeks, W is still president and DC is still in the undisclosed location, but has anyone been a lamer duck?

Congratulations to us all on this one. Good luck, Mr. Obama.