Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Resolutions aren't just for January 1, apparently

So I somehow talked my friend Tina into doing the Resolution Run as her first 5k race. Okay, to be fair, I can only take half the credit (and corresponding blame); I mentioned it, she pretty much talked herself into it. This is all great. Tina and I both run about a half-hour 5k, so we can pace each other. Her husband, who's also signed up, is a little more accomplished, and should be warm and dry and sucking back hot chocolate by the time we see the clock.

Problem is, the Resolution Run, which is on January1 pretty much everywhere else they run it in North America, is actually on December 26 in Toronto. This we did not discover until Tina registered. With Tina and James in, I was kinda obliged to do the 26th, too.

January 1 would have been perfect. I'm not much of a New Years' reveler. I don't like the holiday, to be honest, and I like it less as I get older. Let's celebrate another year passing! Sure, buddy, just wait till you've got as few of 'em left as I do.

(And much like St. Patrick's Day, it's what my friend Simon calls "Amateur Night." I'm much more comfortable around the professional drinkers; they're less unpredictable.)

Whereas at Christmas, my family tends to eat. Lots. I'm not going to be crossing the finish line alone; there'll be a good fraction of a turkey and a not inconsiderable amount of ham accompanying me. The wine and beer will surely have evacuated, but their ghosts will linger, if you know what I mean.

I'll also have to come back into Toronto Christmas night, which may be a bit of a pain, but it's a blessing, too. It'll mean a couple fewer beers, a few less Yorkshire puddings, and maybe a fighting chance to start the race feeling like I can finish it.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

It isn't walking if they don't see you doing it

I ran my first 5k race on Sunday on something of a whim. The Run Ajax Waterfront 5k is in my hometown, and I'd thought about running it earlier in the year, but I never got around to registering. Last Saturday, I took the train out to Oshawa to drop off my old bike for my daughter. It's a bit big for her, but only a bit. Then we went out to get a multi-tool, so we could adjust the seat and a couple other things, and a lock.

While we were at it, we stopped at the Running Room in Pickering. They were handing out the race bags and taking last-minute registrations, as I thought they might. I ended up with race bib No. 598.

While I was there, a picked up a pair of tights to replace the ones I'd quickly grabbed off the rack at Mountain Equipment Co-op the week before. I hadn't tried them on. As it turned out, I'd grabbed a women's medium.. I dunno, maybe I would have looked fabulous. And since I can't pass up a clearance rack, I also ended up with one of their Resolution Run jackets, last year's version, for half price. (The Resolution Run is a New Year's Day 5k the Running Room puts on in cities across the country. The jacket, which sells for $90 the rest of the year, is your gift for entering.)

And it's a good thing I did, too. It wasn't till later that the thought crossed my mind: In the event I was going to run this race, I had brought a pair of cotton shorts (all my Lycra was in the wash) and a cycling jersey. It never crossed my mind, until Saturday evening, that the weather might be rainy and cold in the early morning in late October.

And it was. Probably 6C when we got to Rotary Park. Okay, that's not so bad, but add cloud and wind and rain at 8:30 in the morning, and it's pretty uncomfortable. My dad drove  Sophie and I down to the lake. It was unfortunately early. I've never gone through the registration process for a race before, so I had no idea how simple it was. There was the start of a half-marathon walk at 8:30, followed by the start of the half-marathon run at nine. The 5k was a 9:30 start. My dad grumbled and read his Kindle in the car. Sophie and I went to the start line about 9 just to see how people took off.

The rain stopped about 10 minutes before my gun time, which was perfect. Five minutes before we took off, someone took to the stage to lead us in a warm-up. It looked like fun to my daughter (who despises running, like I did at her age). I just kinda shuffled from foot to foot. There was a guy wearing a cap that said "80 AND STILL RUNNING." I had a feeling he'd beat me.

And we were off. I'd positioned myself about two-thirds back in the back, where I figured a half-hour 5k might come in. The course began heading east, with a loop back to the west before continuing east along the lake shore. This gave me two waves from Sophie as I started.

In the first five minutes or so, I was passed more than I passed people at a ration of about three to one. This is discouraging. But as we wound along the path toward the turnaround mark, I was no longer being passed. I caught up with a number of people on the outward leg. (I paced myself behind a pair of very attractive young ladies for a while, and I'm sure it hurt my time. But you have to reserve some strength for the finish.)

I was probably at the 1.5-kilometre mark when the first runner passed me coming back the other way. I couldn't do the math at the time -- the only thing I could focus on by that point was my breathing -- but that would have meant he'd covered 3.5k in the time I'd covered 1.5k. There were only a few outliers like that, though. But by the time I got to about the 2k mark, there was a steady stream of people coming back the other way. (One of them was the 80-year-old; I figure he beat me by about four minutes.)

The course has long, rolling hills, for the most part not particularly steep. But there was one downhill on the way out that made me think, "Expletive deleted, I'm gonna have to climb that on the way back."

From 1.5k to the turnaround felt dreary, but at the turn, I felt much better. Then came the hill.

I don't know for sure, but I figure it's somewhere around 3.5k. I got to the bottom, had a quick look around, and saw no spectators. I can walk for 30 breaths, I figured. And I'll make 30 breaths last the length of this hill.

And the rest was a struggle. I was close to packing it up when I came back into the staring loop, but a spectator told me: "You got it beat now." Still, that last 500m was a test. Then I rounded the last corner into the home stretch and saw the time clock.

I can't describe the feeling. It's not just relief. There was no element of excitement. It's kind of like having wandered around in the woods for hours, with no idea where you are, and suddenly, you spy the parking lot you left from. I sprinted the last 75m. (I'm sure witnesses would tell you it was 50, but it's my blog.)

And not only was Sophie there at the finish, but my high school buddy Kevin. I'd called him the day before, since he'd mentioned he'd run a couple 10ks, to see if he'd registered. He hadn't, but he came down to catch the finish.

I figure I finished in about 30:35. I was 58th overall (out of 90-some-odd), 25th male. I have much of this information courtesy of my daughter, since I was wearing contact lenses and couldn't properly read the results page. Running Room hasn't posted the results yet.

I took advantage of the free massage afterward, which was probably a mistake. I hurt WAY more afterward than I did before. I should have just stretched. Well, I know for next time.

This does officially make me an endurance athlete. I have raced. I want to do the Resolution Run this year, but I'm not sure where. I'm not sure where I'll be for New Years', and the Toronto run starts at 9:30, whereas the Whitby run starts at a more civilized 12 noon. The jacket is kinda orange this year (last year's one, the one I picked up in the clearance rack, is green). I could see myself getting into the habit of collecting them.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

It's a Cannondale

Great news on the my new baby front: It's a Cannondale, about 22 pounds, white and black with red trim.

Another way of saying the Toronto International Bicycle Show (Fall Blowout Version) was this Saturday. I had been prepping for this for at least two months. I'd researched brands and models out the wazoo. But the more I researched, the more I realized: The model I want, even if I've only narrowed it down to about eight, is not going to be there. What you want is a nice aluminum frame, carbon fork, and the rest you can upgrade.

I'd promised to hold a place in line for Kathleen and Beryl at the show, but my buddy Paolo, whom I've known since we were five, dropped in and I misbehaved somewhat the night before. Kathleen actually got there first, probably about an hour before the show opened. We were about 200th in line.

I had planned my assault on the show, mapped it out. But when the doors opened, I did what everybody else did. Hustle in, very business like. Stop, intimidated by the scale of the venture. Wander aimlessly for a few moments. Then, go back to pretending you had a plan.

I think I bounced along pretty efficiently, ruling out shops quickly. The inventory they're blowing out is often unpurchased because it's higher-end than your average failed triathlete might be looking at, and a general rule of these shows is: The more you're willing to spend, the bigger the discount you'll get. A bike with an MSRP of $3,200 on sale for $2,400 is still $1,400 over my budget.

I settled on a Cannondale CAAD 8, mostly for the frame. It felt right. The drive train is nothing to write home about, Shimano whatever, but Peter from Pedal Performance assured me that an upgrade wouldn't be horrifically expensive when the time came. (I'm not giving numbers because there was an element of bike-shop-guy confidentiality. I will, however, reveal this: Do the fall show for bikes, but do the spring show for accessories.)

It's lightish at 22 pounds -- a new wheel set and drive train will take a little off that -- and it just plain feels good. Checked out a Specialized Secteur, a bit more expensive but with a better drive train, but I just didn't feel as good with the frame.

(Kathleen got a Trek, after wrestling with a number of colour schemes and some geometries that just didn't look right. She's also difficult to fit, to be fair, with a long torso.)

The next day, I spent a good hour in the courtyard of my building, practicing clipping in and clipping out with cleats. I've never ridden cleated to a bike before, and it's a little intimidating when you're slowing to a stop and you can't get your feet out of the pedals. I'm okay with that now, though it isn't the most graceful thing, and I'm still not going to be found in heavy traffic till I'm more used to it.

I've swapped the aero bars over, and I'm going to need a fitting. I'm hoping the PP folk will give me at least a 30-day tuneup, once the bolts and cables and such stretch out. Maybe a fitting while I'm there? probably a good idea.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Happy Trails

Had to travel on business to Vancouver last week. Since I've got a couple of friends who've moved out there in the last six or eight months, I extended the trip a couple days to catch up. I also designated the week a "recovery" week. Well, I recovered in epic style, going from nine workouts the previous two weeks to ... three.

One of those workouts, though, was a trail run in Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver. The weather was glorious; so good, in fact, that on the Friday night, I'd slept on Dale's 14th storey balcony in Yaletown. (I woke up at six on the morning remembering I'm terrified of balconies. Yes, I'm afraid there was some drinking involved.)

Dale and I did breakfast at The Tomahawk, a greasy spoon in North Van that does Yukon-style bacon and feeds you like it's a Denny's. Then we went off to the park for a run.

I'd not gone for a proper trail run before, largely because there aren't proper trails in Toronto. This one started with a walk across a suspension bridge about 50 metres over the river and canyon. I stopped in the middle to revel in the awesomeness of it all. ("I cannot deny the snazzy of this," were my exact words.) Then there were stairs of hewn wood, lots of climbs, lots of descents, fallen trees to hurdle (okay, climb over) and dogs that had been rolling around in the mud. We ran for about half an hour, and I kept up with the punk. Not bad, since he's 10 years younger than me. I even outsprinted him the last 50 yards, though, to be honest, I don't think he knew we were racing.

It was easier on my knees than lap running, with a much softer landing. The scenery was compelling, though for the most part I kept my eyes on the trail ahead -- there were lots of impediments and, in general, crap that could kill you if you didn't see it coming, or at least twist an ankle nicely. In half an hour, I'm sure we covered at least 5k, if you factor in the changes in altitude.

I also hurt in different places than I do after a lap or street run. It didn't help, I'm sure, that I didn't have my foam roller to tease out my IT bands, etc., but it definitely works different muscles.

Now, I have to find some half-decent trail to run in Toronto. Any suggestions? It won't be Lynn Canyon, I'm sure, but there has to be some trails worth running.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Dude, *there's* my breakthrough

Sometimes, you have a breakthrough workout. You go with a plan; when you hit the end of the workout, you feel like continuing. Before you know it, you've doubled your target, maybe more.

My runs lately have been capped by knee pain, almost like clockwork, at about 18 minutes. I'd run for 20 laps, or 2.5 km, walk a lap, then continue. At 26 laps, the knee pain would start; by 28 laps, 3.5 km, I'd have to shut down.

So I went in today with that general plan; run 15 minutes, walk a lap, run until I had to shut down. But I got to Lap 20, and I still felt good. Breathing wasn't too laboured, legs felt fine. And that put me at the halfway point of a 5k. So I figured I'd just run it out.

I thought I felt the twinges begin at Lap 24, but I relaxed a bit and they stopped. I was expecting them at Lap 28. Nothing. By the time I'd got to 30, I figured I had no choice but to finish.

At Lap 32, I started getting twinges. They didn't go away. But I only had a kilometre to go. (BTW, if I'd said, "Only a kilometre," six months ago, I'd have been being sarcastic.) The pain got worse, but slowly, and only a little. Steadily, but not a lot worse. I turned it up a notch for the last two laps. I sprinted the last half lap, though "sprint" would be a loose description; it might have been a 25-seconds-per-100m pace.

So, radical improvement. I'm sure the foam roller helped; my IT bands are much looser now. The new orthotics, too. But everything else falling into place helped, too -- the spinning, the swimming, they helped build the cardio aspect of it as well.

I'm in Vancouver a couple days next week, so I'll get a chance to check in with my buddy Dale. I'd hoped by the time I saw him, I'd be able to kick his punk ass in a 10k. For now, I'll settle for keeping up with him for five.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Note to self

After swimming with a pull float, remind yourself to start kicking when you try to swim without one.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Making other plans

I'm up to my hips in triathlon training plans. Aside from the iPod app, which I can't be bothered to even look up the name of let alone link to right now, I've got at least three magazines (plus two with bicycling training plans), two books with about a half dozen to a dozen each. Other people's plans are useful. They've actually got experience. But I found trying to follow someone else's training plan, especially as I'm essentially a fitness beginner, unsatisfactory. Sure, it gave me a certain structure and demanded a certain amount of discipline, but bristled at that after about six weeks. It didn't adapt well to my circumstances.

But it's a good body of research to draw from, in terms of specific techniques -- interval training, for example -- to develop my own plan. And that's what I plan to do now. Every Sunday, I'll develop a plan for the following week. It'll take into account how I feel, what I want to (and realistically think I can) accomplish, other demands on my time (damn work), etc.

What I want to do at this point, since there's no pressing deadline, is develop general strength and fitness, using sport-specific training where possible.

As I see it, there are five disciplines I need to work on: swimming, cycling and running, of course, but also upper and lower body strength. I should probably work some flexibility training in, too; at the moment, it's a matter of stretching after workouts and with the foam roller at home.

Another mistake I made, I now realize, was thinking I could squeeze most of my training into lunch hours. It just doesn't work. At best, you get 45 minutes, five times a week (though it probably turns out to be four), plus whatever you do at the weekend. So I'm building my weekly training plans around two sessions a day -- 45 minutes at lunch, and an open-ended one after work -- figuring it'll realistically turn out to be seven sessions a week.

Each discipline gets one session in the lunch slot, and one in the afternoon slot. (The exception is cycling, since spin classes start at 6:30 at my Y, and that just gets me home too late.) For example, this week's schedule:

Monday: Swim at lunch; upper body/core strength in the evening.
Tuesday: Spinning; run
Wednesday: Lower body/core; swim
Thursday: Run; upper body/core
Friday: Spin; Lower body/core

If I miss something during the week, I juggle and try to make it up. For example, I missed my run this afternoon, so Thursday, I'll swap it from the morning to the evening so I can have a longer session. Or I can try to fit it in one day on the weekend, but it's no big deal if I can't, as long as I don't habitually miss one discipline. Logging is very important, not just to track progress and what I've missed, but also to make sure I ease off every fourth week. And that's another area where weekly planning comes in handy. If, like at the end of this month, I'm away a couple days on business and can't get to a gym/pool/run, I can make that a recovery week.

Must say, there was something relaxing and motivating about sitting down Sunday evening with the puzzle of how to fit disciplines and sessions together. It made me look forward to the week. Eventually, I'll have to work on cycles where I focus on specific disciplines, but that depends on my progress. Swimming will probably be first. And possibly second. Definitely last before I launch into a training schedule based on event dates.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Two words ...

Gatorade Popsicle. Man, I wish I'd come up with that in June.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

The war on the other front

I'm fighting the whole VO2Max battle on the one side -- breathing has never been my forte, but I'm working on it -- and on the other side, there's the fact that, well, I'm just not as flexible as I used to be, and it's causing problems

The largest problem,specifically, is my illiotibial band. Which I may not have spelled properly. Anyway, it's a tendon that runs from your hip to your knee. When everything'.s cool, you probably don't even know it's there. When everything's not cool, your knee lets you know about it. The classic presentation is that your effortless running stops at a specific time -- say, 15 minutes into your run -- at which point your knee puts a gun to your head and says, "We're not going to keep doing this, if you don't mind."

I walk a lot. Okay, I walk like a nomad. This tends to tighten up those IT bands. And they're very difficult to stretch. I'm religious about stretching after a run, but I didn't have anything that worked for my IT bands.

The I saw a YouTube clip of some guy using a foam roller to stretch his IT bands. You put the roller, which is about six inches in diameter, on the floor, lie along the top, and let it roll up from your knee to your hip. The guy demonstrating it was a little teary-eyed, and there was a catch in his voice, but he swore it worked wonders.

I picked one up this morning at The Running Room. The cashier, a lovely and inevitably fit young creature, gazed at me a little awestruck, like I was a soldier off to a foreign land to do some very unseemly task, like clean portas in Afghanistan. "Have you ever used one of these?" she asked.

I confessed I hadn't.

"The first couple of times, it's going to really hurt," she said. "But it's going to hurt sooooo good." Apparently, I'd notice the difference almost immediately. I got the impression that as soon as I walked out of the store, she'd begin praying for me.

I made sure everything was good and warm before I tried it. I went for a 45-minute ride, a hard ride, one of those rides where you have to yell at children and picnickers. Then I rolled out my yoga mat and laid out The Roller.

There are six stretches prescribed for The Roller. I began with the IT band stretch, figuring I'd get the worst over with first. And it hurt. Not as bad as I'd expected, but yeah, it hurt. I made some noises loud enough that my neighbours might misinterpret and consider me a ladies' man. (I am, just not enough to worry the neighbours.)

I went through the other five exercises, each one eliciting a louder (and easily interpreted as more carnal) howl. But it wasn't until the last stretch, the upper and lower back stretch, that I wept. No tears, understand. But there was no question that I was crying.

And ... I noticed the difference immediately. I had no idea where my IT bands were before; now, I can feel that they're looser. My quads, my hammies, everything. Tomorrow morning, I might feel like hell. But I don't think so. It's like having a massage from a masseuse in a really bad mood. It hurts like a sonofabitch, but it doesn't leave bruises, and later, well, it's a thrill to have survived and you feel refreshed.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Little known fact

Spanish cyclist Miguel Indurain, who won five consecutive Tours de France in the early 1990s and is actually about seven months younger than me, had a resting heart rate of 28. That's not even one beat every two seconds.

I keep forgetting to take my pulse first thing in the morning, but I think I'm down around 60. And I'm thinking that's pretty good for me.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Back in the swim

Okay, first of all, colour me self-absorbed. I haven't mentioned that my friend Brian Jackson, whom I dragged into the triathlon with me then abandoned when I discovered I couldn't swim, managed remarkably well in the race, finishing in a little under 58 minutes. Congrats, Brian. I'm still planning to kick your ass next year.

I've been lazy about training since missing the race. Vacation the first week, then just reacquainting myself with the gym. I started with a couple trips to the weight room. Did a run, which confirmed my 15-minute limit (it was actually closer to 18, but still, I've obviously got an IT band problem that needs dealing with). And I did a spin class.

I think I've mentioned spin class. This is where people who think they're fit get taught a lesson. It's interval training, really -- blasts of full-bore pedalling alternating with brief recoveries. I left a puddle of sweat under the bike, and I only did half a class. I'm glad I didn't shit myself, to be honest. It was definitely a leave-with-my-tail-between-my-legs experience.

Thing is, the others in the class don't look much fitter than me. In fact, some of them looked less fit. But I couldn't keep up with them. Spin is a different world. I'm trying to make ot once a week until it kills me outright.

And this week, I got back in the pool. I've resented the pool. Swimming was the failure that made me miss the race. But I have to learn to swim properly, and I had to start somewhere. So I went to the training pool with a pull buoy.

A pull buoy is a float you hold between your thighs. It keeps your lower body up in the water so you can focus on your upper body technique and breathing. I tried one early in my training, and my simple lack of mastery scared me; I couldn't get anywhere, and I'd panic and twist out of the water. Now that I have a little facility with a front crawl stroke and I'm forcing myself to breathe underwater, I'm finding it very useful.

I can feel the hip rotation that you don't realize is going on with a front crawl, so much so that I've rotated right over onto my back a couple of times. I've been trying to get the hang not only of breathing, but breathing every third stroke, so I'm alternating breathing on the left and right. And I'm getting somewhere, too, though I'm still not rolling my face out to breathe as a seamless part of the stroke. I still kinda lift my head out of the water.

I've been trying to make the recovery part of the stroke -- where your arm comes out of the water near your hip and reaches back ahead -- faster than the stroke in the water. That's coming along a little awkwardly, too. I've never been taught proper front-quadrant swimming.

I really am back to Square 1 here. I'm setting a goal of 100m continuously for the end of the month. Very modest, I know, but I'm looking at this like I'm learning to swim from scratch. Don't pick up bad habits, refine the technique a little, and develop a more efficient stroke.

There's also the question of plain aerobic capacity. Mine is not great. But I have a couple things lined up to help develop that. Spinning class is one them. If the other folks in my class can manage, I can too.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Everything you've done wrong, baby

From that four-in-the-morning moment when I decided I wasn't ready for the swim, I was determined to analyze what mistakes I'd made along the road. I was on vacation with my daughter last week, so I didn't much think about it. But I'd already got a handle on many of the sometimes contradictory mistakes I'd made.

I focused too much on the swim. I never took the cycling training seriously, figuring I was good enough on the bike. (My first spinning class this afternoon disabused me of that notion. Holy Hannah.) I eased off on the running when I encountered a some knee pain. These both hurt my swim; I wasn't getting the aerobic cross-training benefits.

I didn't focus properly on the swim. I was dealing with a distance target; once I found a flailing, dog paddle/breast stroke hybrid that got me across the pool, I beat that into the ground, hoping it could get me the distance. I should have focused on technique, learned a proper front crawl, and let the distance come. (It still might not have come in time, and I still might have had to pull the plug, but I'd be further along now. As it stands, it's back to Square 1, and I don't mean in Mississauga.

I peaked too early. I was in my best condition about five weeks before the race. Let's face it, when you haven't spent any consistent time at the gym in 30 years, going five times a week for more than 15 weeks is a little much. My training tailed off after that, too. I was just damned tired.

I started too late. Not too late in the sense of a training schedule; too late in the grand scheme of things. I was cumulatively too old and too out of shape. I don't mean to say I can't do it. It just took longer than I thought to get a base level of conditioning. Guess what Job 1 is?


I didn't take it seriously enough, especially nutrition-wise. Beer robs your body of the ability to store glycogen. Beer is also cold and fresh and tasty. Did I cut back? Um ... maybe a little. Certainly not enough. Hence, five months of five-a-week workouts and I still have a belly. I did, though, take eating regularly more seriously. I still spend half my day at work eating. More grain (I wasn't much of a bread-eater). More fish and vegetables. More peanut butter than is strictly necessary. Lotsa yogurt and chocolate milk. I'm about 163 now, up about 13 pounds. I should probably get back to about 155.

I didn't get strong enough. I didn't spend enough time on the weights. This, too, was brought to my attention by the spinning session. When the others stood to pedal, I couldn't. My legs didn't have it. (If you think you're in good shape, take a spinning class. It exposes all kinds of shortcomings.)


So ... now, I've got, say, eight or nine months till I'm likely to run a triathlon. No rushing to hit a distance target. Build base conditioning (boy, was that spinning class a wake-up call). Get technique right. Sort out the nutrition. And spend a couple days a week at spin class.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

A very difficult decision

SCENE: Press conference. REPORTERS are jockeying for position near the dais, mumbling "peas and carrots, peas and carrots" in order to sound like a louder crowd. PR FLACK comes to the dais, grasps the microphone on a gooseneck stand, which emits a howl of feedback


PR FLACK: Thank you. That was Dazed and Confused, by Led Zeppelin. If you'll come to order, at least as close to order as you ink-stained wretches can manage with the promise of two drink tickets, Fishbelly White will make a statement. If you'll shut the f--- up for 30 seconds. Mr. White?


FBW: Call me Fish. The irony will become apparent shortly. (Clears throat) As you all are aware, as you're figments of my imagination, 19-1/2 weeks ago I declared the goal of going from chain-smoking, beer-drinking couch potato to triathlete in 20 weeks. It is with much regret that I have determined that my swimming skills are not adequate to cover 400m in Lake Ontario, and rather than become involved in a scenario which involves dredging and questions as to what the hell I was thinking, I have withdrawn from the Toronto Island Give-It-A-Tri. Twenty weeks was long enough to get into shape. Wasn't long enough to learn how to swim.


REPORTER 1: How do you feel? Are you disappointed?


FBW: How do you think I feel, ya yutz? I'm disappointed on a scale you can't imagine in your pointy little head. On the bright side, I didn't drown. This gives me a warm feeling inside.


REPORTER 2: Is this the end of your triathlon career?


FBW: Buddy --  and by "Buddy," I mean, "Jackass" -- my triathlon career hasn't even started. If I've learned anything from being a Brett Favre fan, it's that it ain't over until it's over, unless it's over, in which case, it might not be over.


REPORTER 2: That answer made my head hurt.


FBW: Good. You should have an aneurysm. Putz.

REPORTER 3: Do you think you made errors in your training plan?


FBW: What, you all came off a short bus? Of course I made errors in my training plan. I'll start analyzing them as soon as I stop crying myself to sleep and post them on my blog, like anyone will read it now.


REPORTER 1: What would you say to Fargo, who's participating in a Give-It-A-Try in Cobourg two weeks from now?


FBW: Fargo ... this is my decision. It shouldn't affect yours. Go kick some ass, even if it's your own. And thank whatever's holy this week you don't have to put up with imaginary reporters.

Yeah ... been a bad week.Two nights I didn't sleep, vacillating between I absolutely can do this and I absolutely cannot. I haven't made 200m consistently in the pool for the last month; at best, I was betting there was a 50 per cent chance I could make it half way, which would have been irresponsible.I am going over for the race though. I'll volunteer if they let me.

I'm not done. I will try again. I'm going camping with my daughter this week, but eventually, I'll start analyzing what I did wrong. I'll learn to swim properly, instead of flailing for distance. I'll post more links here, too, instead of making it a diary of someone who can't swim 400m.

It ain't over ...

Friday, August 6, 2010

Last post ....

... till after the race.

Not sure I have anything to say at this point. I am not sure I can make it through the 400m swim. That's it, that's all. If I can, I finish. If not, it's a DNF. Which is still a personal best.

I had an encouraging chat with Hank Cunningham the other day. Hank's a financial genius, author, avid cyclist and repentant marathoner. He's possibly the most centred person I've ever met. When I have some time and I'm not so horribly self-possessed, there are many links I will post that speak to Hank's contribution to a world worth living in.

Hank is one of those people who draws your worries out of you without asking. And I was worried. I don't think I can do this, I told him.

He told me about his first marathon, years ago. It involved a lot of walking and lessons learned. And he told me: Try as best you can. That's the measure. If you can't do it, the worst thing that can happen is ... you try again. But it's about you, nobody else.

I set as one of my goals to shame myself into shape. I have accomplished that. Okay, good shape, not great shape, but a helluva lot better than I was. I've also made fitness a habit. That comforts me. And, in a way, sentences me to a forever of swimming, running, weights, etc.

It's made me recognize how important the YMCA is in our community. I want to contribute now.

And -- I feel like I'm bragging now, but I'm not (I hope) ... Several of my friends have told me I've inspired them. That wasn't what I set out to do, but, really, that's what I should have set out to do. I love my friends.

So ... Here I go. Thanks for reading, and I'll let you know how it comes out.

I don't want to end  this post.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Really? Is this how it works?

Thngs have gone steadily downhill over the last two weeks. After my panic attack in the lake, I got ill. While I was ill, the free-floating anxiety returned. Somehow, a cut has developed under a couple of toes on my right foot, making it occasionally difficult to walk.

Does this happen to people? You train and train and train and then, two weeks before the race, everything falls apart? It can't be. That wouldn't be right.

I've probably trained too long. Looking at my log, I think I peaked about a month ago. Now, my IT bands are tight as piano strings. My knee starts to give in at 4k when I'm running. And -- since I've lost some fitness having only been able to work out four times in the last two weeks -- I can't get to 400m in the pool anymore.

I'm developing a strategy to get through this. Next week is critical. Getting back up to distance for the swim is Job 1. A couple light runs and bike rides, nothing too hard. If I don't finish the swim, my performance in the other two is immaterial. Then show up rested and zoned in.

So. If you're in your mid-40s (leave me that illusion), you haven't worked out in 20 years, and you haven't been living the healthiest lifestyle, it appears that about 14 to 16 weeks of five-day-a-week workouts is probably about optimum. This is definitely salvageable. But if I knew then what I know now, I'd have done it differently.

I'm taking the week after the race off. Annual camping trip with my daughter. And just relaxing and not working. Or working out. Maybe a trail run or two. Short.

Then I'll decide whether to enter a 5k trail run in my home town for October.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

A perfect day for a panic attack

The sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to return soup at a deli.

-- George Costanza, The Marine Biologist, Seinfeld

I finally jumped in a lake, as I've been told to do a hundred times. It's critical preparation for a lake swim (duh) in a triathlon. You can log miles and miles in a pool; that doesn't necessarily prepare you for open water. I'm glad I did it yesterday rather than waiting for another couple of weeks, and I wish I'd done it sooner. I was seeking the answers to several questions: Will the shock of the cold water make me seize up? Is it more difficult to swim in a wetsuit? What kind of premium on effort do the waves make? I got those answers (No, the water was 24C; No, the wetsuit hardly affected my stroke, such as it is; and considerable), and the answers to questions I hadn't sought, such as: What is pure, blind, regurgitive terror like?

I dropped my keys off at my local, since I didn't want to take anything with me I couldn't afford to lose, and walked down to Cherry Beach. Stopped at Balzac's in the distillery to pick up a coffee and a biscotti. All very civilized. Maybe a half hour altogether.

A sign at the beach put the morning water temperature at 24C and the e coli count at 10, well under the swim-at-your-own-risk limit of 100. I felt a bit pretentious in a wetsuit. But there was another guy in a suit in the water; he looked like he knew what he was doing, so I figured I'd tail him for a while. The footing, BTW, was awful, a sprained ankle waiting to happen. Funny how none of my training books mentioned this. I guess "rocks are not smooth" is a given.

As I entered the water, a lifeguard -- lovely young thing, very blonde and owns her own kayak -- started paddling along. "You read my mind," I joked. She didn't laugh. She'd probably seen what was about to happen dozens of times.

I started out behind the other swimmer, parallel to the beach, in what I thought was about four and a half feet of water. I hadn't really warmed up, which I realized later was a mistake. Even in the pool, if I try to swim 100 metres as soon as I jump in the water, I fade quickly. I need a couple lengths to get used to the water, a break of about a minute or so, then I can pound out 400 or 500 or even 600 metres.

The chop was moderate -- it was a windy day -- but not insurmountable. But after a couple minutes, I got that fade. Aside from the effort, being in open water had cranked up my heart rate some, and I was breathing a little funny, like when a pretty girl talks to me. So I turned and headed back for shore.

As I turned, I reached down with my foot to check for bottom. Nothing.

This worried me some. I swam a few more strokes. Checked again. Nothing.

This panicked me. My coffee started coming back on me. I thrashed. The girl on the kayak was about 20 yards away. A croak came out of me that, at a closer range, might have been recognized as a reflexive and unwilling cry for help. The kayak had swung around. My conscious and willing capitulation: I raised an arm to the lifeguard.

And discovered I was in three feet of water.

How scared had I been? I wasn't even remotely embarrassed. I wasn't even embarrassed when I told the story later.

I wasn't pleased with my initial reaction to open water, but I did make a recovery. I went through this in the pool, though with less likelihood of drowning. What did I do at the pool? When I couldn't swim a full length, I started in the deep end, so by the time I'd run out of steam, I'd be in the shallow end. So, having made a mental note to update the e coli reading as a result of my panic attack, I walked as far out into the water as I could, then turned around and swam back to shore.It was about 25 strokes, so close to the length of a pool. I did 200 metres that way.

And it was cool. There was a flock of geese and a flock of ducks coasting through, so I had to make an effort to stay out of their way. (Get between a Canada gosling and her mother and tell me how that goes for ya.) In five feet of water, the waves were a foot, maybe a foot and a half crest to trough, and I let them bob me up and down. I watched somebody kite-surfing, tearing along at motorboat speeds. A couple stand-up paddleboarders went by. It's something I want to try this summer. Some friends and I are going to arrange a lesson. All in all, I just kinda felt like a beach bum. I liked it.

It was quite worrisome for me from a triathlon perspective, though. Swimming in 10 or 20 feet of water should technically be no different than swimming in four feet of water. This I know. How do I shut down that instinctive panic reaction and just swim? This I don't.

The obvious answer is to get to the beach as often as I can manage before the race in four weeks' time. It took me three months to go from 25 metres at a time to 400 metres at a time in the pool. I've realistically got only three weeks, and perhaps three swims in open water, till the race. I'm revising my training calendar, giving up on the iPod app. One, maybe two, days of running a week. Occasional recreational bike ride. The rest is swimming, swimming, swimming. I have to get more confident in the water.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Officially a tri geek -- my daughter says so

Might recall I was thrilled that my 12-year-old's Father's Day gift to me was a running hat and a water bottle that straps to your hand. This weekend, she demonstrated she is unquestionably my biggest supporter. She made me a T-shirt that shows a figure -- readily identifiable as me by the glasses and the bald head -- in the three phases of the race, swimming, riding and running. Above, it reads: "My Dad is a Tri Geek." She made this from a transfer, so had to draw and write the text backwards. It was a Herculean effort just to get the three disciplines in the right order. The shirt is hanging in a place of honour right now till I can get it framed.

(I must say, the sun in the background of each of the vignettes is a little intimidating. A la Indio, a Big Hard Sun. But that's just me being spleeny, I'm sure.)

If my daughter's declaration doesn't make me a tri geek, try this on for size: I'm going to review socks.

A few weeks back, Running Room in Commerce Court had a three-pairs-for-$15 sock sale. They were slightly irregular, and you could mix and match. So I chose three different pairs. They are before me right now. (Seriously, they are.) These are not dollar-a-pair cotton jobbies. I wash them in special athletic wear detergent and I hang them to dry, lest the dryer spin some of the magic out of them.

Pair 1 is a thin poly-blend quarter sock. Pair 2 is an Ironman branded sock that comes only to the top of my running shoe. Pair 3, the Wigwam Thunder Pro, is also a shoe-height pair, but much thicker. (I'm not playing favourites by linking to the Wigwam sock; there are pages and pages and pages of socks on Running Room's Web site. I lucked out finding the Thunder Pro.)

(If you're still reading this after two paragraphs about socks, bless you. I hope this somehow convinces you to end the punishment you put your feet through by buying cotton socks. Though I do wear cotton socks on an everyday basis when I'm not exercising. With apologies to The Tragically Hip, It Can't Be Nashville Every Night.)

I'd thought Pair 2 was going to be the sock to beat. It appeared to have it all going for it: Low profile, thin fabric, and, um, well, that's about all you ask for in a sock, isn't it? But I found it was a bit futzy to put on, not a great trait for a triathlon.

Pair 1 pulled on more easily. That was really the only difference. I really didn't notice either pair of socks while I was running. I don't mean I was ambivalent. I mean I really didn't feel the socks. I can't call them comfortable; it was like they weren't there.

Likewise with Pair 3, my winner Low profile, like Pair 2 -- just a half-inch hike on the back to keep the shoe from rubbing against the Achilles. Virtually unnoticeable when riding and running. But, they went on absolutely without a fuss. At a guess, all straightened out, four or five seconds faster than the others. And equally unnoticeable.

I've just reviewed socks. Can't imagine there's anything more to say. I've slipped into the abyss of tri geekdom.

Monday, July 5, 2010

The goat rodeo is now a zoo

Summer programs for schoolkids have started at the Scarborough Y. When I dropped on at noon, half the pool was populated by screaming, splashing tweens. Of the three "swimming" lanes, one was occupied by teens horsing around; one by seniors chatting and doing exercises in place. This left a single lane for swimming lengths, and about eight of us, all of different speeds and strokes, were trying to share it.

At 12:30, they whistled end of play, took the tweens out, and rearranged the swimming lanes. It still took a while to get back to normal. A teenager nearly landed on me doing a cannonball at one point, a crime that would have got me ejected from the William E. Legros Centre in Ajax in my day.

A lifeguard told me later that the zoo's in town from 10:30 to 12:30, and from 1:30 to 3:30, every day over the summer. This leaves me three options: either a precisely timed lunch hour arrival at exactly 12:30 (I could wear my trunks under my work clothes, and at the appointed hour, just tear my pants off and run shrieking across the street, which I might get away with on casual Fridays, but they're run days, anyway); arriving at 7:30 and swimming before work, which would take some adjusting of my diurnal clock; or going after work, which would mean I'd get home 7:30 or 8 p.m. For the time being, I'm going to try to be religious about a 12:30 lunch on swim days and see how that works out.

In the name of whatever's holy this week, I hope they don't do the same thing with the running track. They have regular sessions up there with about a dozen developmentally challenged adults, and when you combine four or five other runners up there, that's pretty much capacity. With the unruly mob of future felons -- uh, sorry, leaders of our Just Society -- running would truly be impossible.

(Don't get me wrong, I don't hate kids. I just wish they all had my daughter's temperament, compassion and consideration.)

Sunday, July 4, 2010

How I spent my summer vacation Pt. 1

I did not jump in the lake yesterday. More logistics than fear. Two weekends from now, I'll have to do it twice, is all. See, you need someplace for your other stuff when you go for a lake swim. At minimum, you're carrying your house keys with you. And it wouldn't do for that stuff to disappear. I know. I've lost house keys before, and the buddy I stay with when I do something stupid like that (Hi, Dale) has moved to Vancouver. They do have lockers on Toronto Island, so I suppose I could have done it there.

Whatever. I wasn't all together at 11 this morning, so the easiest thing to do was a brick workout -- an hour-plus bike ride followed by a 10-minute run. I'm happy with how it went. The calf sleeves definitely make a difference, and it was the first time I'd run with the knee strap on. Getting a better idea, too, of what I need and don't need for each section of the race. (If it's particularly hot, I need the right cycling glove during the run because it has a sweat pad, for example. I have a water bottle in the left hand. Amazing the little things that occur to you.)

I got a couple days in on my week off where I got to work on more than one discipline -- cycling and swimming, cycling and running -- and also managed to squeeze some weight work in. I didn't manage to spring the surprises on my body I wanted to. One was the lake swim; my body already knows that's coming, so I can talk about that. The other is something a friend suggested to me that I'd planned on earlier in the week, but the knee issue kept me from trying. Week after next is a recovery week, so if I'm going to do it, it'll be in three or four weeks' time. It may have to wait till after the race.

I'd like to have accomplished more this week, but it's hard to know how much work you can put in until you've put it in. One thing I would like to have done is a mock triathlon: Swim, bike and run as far as necessary in one day. I got two-thirds of the way there today, and was considering going up to the Y for a swim, when I saw on TV that Yonge and Grosvenor was Ground Zero for the Pride Parade. Even if I could have got to the Y, that's just too much humanity to deal with.

I did gain a new appreciation for how wonderful it is to live by the lake. I rode out on the Leslie Spit to the end and got a view of the skyline with the islands in between. I wandered along Harbourfront. Tonight, after visiting my bike locker -- I've become attached to my bike in an unseemly way since I had the handlebar work done -- I walked down to Queens Quay to have a look at the water. I think that's how I'll close my evenings for the summer, rather than watching TV (I haven't turned mine on in more than a week anyway; any TV I watched, I watched at the pub, mostly World Cup fixtures) -- visit my bike locker, then go down to the water.

Back to work tomorrow, which means back to peanut butter and English muffins in the morning. I haven't had them in nine days. Lost a pound.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Having a 'Who's idea was this, anyway?' moment

Several elements have cross-bred to conceive a perfect storm of doubt in my ability to resist a brutally overused metaphor. I'm sorry, in my ability to complete this race.

First was the knee pain that shut me down on Wednesday. That meant an extra day off training aside from my rest day today. Could I have swapped them as rest days? Yes, but I would have paid for it in a few days. You have to keep your one rest day a week sacrosanct; I take a break Saturday or Sunday, even if I've had to miss a day during the week. This was a lesson learned the hard way, as in the I-can't-get-out-of-bed-after-eight-consecutive-days-of-training hard way.

Then was the fact that I couldn't repeat my 400m swim. I managed 300m, in about 9:15, which would put me at about 12:25 in the water for the race. Still six weeks off, so I can still build confidence on that.

But tomorrow, I'm scheduled to jump in the lake, and I'm not convinced that's not Insanity Lite. I want to get in at least two lake swimming sessions before the race so I don't die of shock when I jump into 65-70F water on race day. But this is Lake Friggin' Ontario. It ain't warm, even if the air temperature's 30C in July. Superior, it's said, never gives up her dead, but Ontario's pretty forsaken cold, too.

Which is why, in a weak moment, I let a voice in my head say: "What the expletive deleted were you thinking? You can't do this."

Well, voice in my head, with apologies to Billy Joel, you may be right. This was a dumb idea. I should pack up the tents and go home, Goodnight Irene, etc., right?

Fuck you, voice in my head. Did the Donner Party give up? No. Did the Uraguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes give up? No. Have I any idea why I'm choosing examples of superhuman endurance that involve eating your companions? No. Probably shouldn't invite me over for dinner for a few days.

Point being ... this is about training my will as much as my body. Am I scared of swimming 400m in a lake? Yes. Is it possible that my knee is not up to the full training plan I'm on? Yes. But I can find a way to keep training without doing more hurt to my knee and still be in shape to run 2.5k. And in two or three more weeks, I'll have convinced (or deluded -- tamayto, tomato) myself that I can handle the swim, and I can overcome the panic by remembering: It's a little under 13 minutes. Someone's written a book about survival and endurance on the principle that you must focus on getting through the next five seconds. What's five seconds? Whatever the circumstance, you can get through five seconds. Thirteen minutes is just five seconds, 156 times.

By the end of next summer, I want to be able to do an Olympic distance triathlon, which is about four to five times as long in every discipline. Wouldn't do to cough up on a super-sprint, would it?

I would also like to one day run the Beer Mile in Boulder, Colo. In the dead of winter, competitors run four circuits of a 400-m track, after chugging a beer at the beginning of each lap. That's endurance. Nobody scared of a little cold water can pull that off.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Take that, bike shop boy

You may recall, and I'm not obsessing over this or bearing a grudge or anything, but back a couple months ago I went to the Bike Mechanic Who Shall Remain Nameless at the Outdoor Store Which Shall Remain Nameless about getting a flat handlebar put on my bike (a hybrid KHS Urban Xpress, if you'll recall) so I could mount an aero bar on it. Said Mechanic (still nameless) called the idea retarded. I then decided I would never darken that store's door again, etc., etc. You can read all the boring history thereof here.

Anyway, the good folks at Cycle Solutions delivered, and for much less than I'd anticipated -- about $70 for bar, bar ends and installation, tax in. Picked it up this afternoon and took it for a spin.

It's a much shorter bar, so the brakes and shifters are pushed more toward the centre, which I find much more comfortable -- there's less twist in my wrist. The bar ends are very low-profile, not like the big horns you see people honking up hills with. (Sorry, "honking" is bike jargon. I think. Maybe it's just an insult.) They act as more of a palm rest at the end of the bar.

As for the aero bars ... well, I had been warned, hadn't I? Your elbows take some weight for your back, and you tuck in more aerodynamically. But because you're steering essentially from the stem of the bike, it's not easy to keep it traveling straight. You have to look it straight: Take a bead on something 20-30 yards ahead, and the bike will track to it. Sight on anything closer, it's a bit of a wobble. Needless to say, this is not for use in traffic.(Looking it straight also works when you're pushing your bike from the seat rather than the handlebars.)

In any event, I feel vindicated. It's a more comfortable ride. The bike even looks a little meaner, a little more lethal, in the way a hat-rack can look lethal, you know, if it's sharp and maybe falls on you the wrong way.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Temporary shutdown

I was planning to do more training today than I got to. I had a run in my schedule, but I thought I could squeeze a swim and some weights in, too. Didn't quite work out.

Being on staycation, naturally, I'm waking up earlier than I ever do for work. I was up at 5:30, looking to maybe go for a run at six. At six, I checked the temperature: 15C. Thought I'd give it an hour to warm up. At seven: 14C.

I took off anyway, eager to try the water bottle that straps to my hand that my daughter gave me (almost unnoticeable, though the weight turns your hand palm down, and it's perfect for about a 45-60-minute run; wear it on your off hand if you're racing, so you can grab on-course refreshments with your good hand) and the compression sleeves I'd got for my calves. They're supposed to prevent shin splints, increase circulation, and help combat lactic acid build-up. They may, in fact, do all of these things; I definitely felt more comfortable in the calves.

It was also the firsts time I'd run with speed laces, and particularly with zero-friction loops. These loops screw into the eyelets of your shoes, and the speed laces -- which clinch with a spring-loaded plastic cylinder, rather than tying -- loop through. They're supposed to offer instant adjustability, even tension, etc. They screw into every second eyelet on the shoe.


I'd installed them a couple weeks ago on one of my pairs of Sauconies, but I'd never taken them for a run. I'd walked in them, and I have to confess they didn't feel that balanced, tension-wise. Hot spots on the tongue (which could be a symptom of malaria).

My run this morning confirmed: Not nearly enough support. The laces only cross the shoe three or four times; with the support demands my feet have, that's not nearly enough. The first 15 minutes were fine; after that, serious knee pain. In my bad knee. I tried a couple five-minute stretches afterward, but then shut it down.

On finishing, I immediately unscrewed the zero-friction fittings and replaced the laces with speed laces that fit through all the eyeholes of my shoes. I can feel the difference already. The shoe's as tightly locked as with regular laces. I also picked up a patellar tendon strap that goes under the knee, which ushered away the pain quite quickly. I'll probably have to get used to running with it on; the lacing issue may not have caused the problem so much as exposed it. We'll see.

So, rather than work out more, I watched Spain vs. Portugal in the World Cup. Probably the best game I've seen so far. Tomorrow's a swim day, so there's also the prospect of weights and whatever else the Y has to offer. Yoga, maybe.

PS: Re: The request for photos of me in the embarrassingly tight swim trunks ... not without my race bib on.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Power training after the G20

Yeah, shameless Googlebait in the heading. I did get the hell out of Dodge for the G20 weekend, and in the nick of time, apparently. My daughter and I spent the weekend at my folks' in the suburbs, occasionally yelling at the TV: "If you wanna break shit, break it in your own neighbourhood, ya punk!"

I didn't have my daughter for the Father's Day weekend, so she was eager to give me my gift. Especially eager since our first stop after I picked her up was Running Free in Ajax. "You have to open it before you get out of the car!" she said. So I did: A running hat and a water bottle that straps to your hand from The Running Room. I was so thrilled -- my daughter, while she may think I'm crazy, supports me in this.

Less supportive she was as I was picking through swim trunks. I'd settled on a thigh length pair of TYRs that are unfortunately tight if the guy who's going to be wearing them happens to be your father. "Can't you find something that goes to your knees?" she asked. When I pointed out the alternative -- something in more of a Speedo cut -- she reluctantly relented.

You think that something like a tighter fitting trunk is going to have a minimal effect. It doesn't. When I first got the chance to wear them in the pool today, my first length, it reduced the number of strokes from 21 to 18. I swam a 400-yard uninterrupted stretch and had plenty left over. Not saying I couldn't have done it with something a little blousier, but still.

The swim was later in the aft. I went for a 90-minute bike ride first, because I'm way behind on my bike training. Didn't do hill repeats because I've been off the bike for two weeks. Dropped it off at Cycle Solutions on Parliament to finally get that flat bar put on. I'd wanted a Specialized Transition Aero bar, but one of the guys talked me out of it -- I'd need new brake levers, new shifters, and, in general, a lot of money. Instead, I settled for an Easton straight bar and dropped off my Profile Design clip-on aeros for them to install, and put a pair of low-profile bar-ends on to give me another hand-position option. Whole schtick costs less than the Specialized bars alone, so that's a good thing.

I'm bikeless till Wednesday, but that should be fine; I'm going for a run in the morning, and I'll probably go for a swim later in the day. I'm on staycation at the moment. This is a build week in my training, so I'm planning on putting as much time in as I can. Put a big vat of chili in the slow cooker, so I don't have to cook for a couple days. Just run, swim and, when I get my bike back, ride.

Got a couple surprises for my body this week. Can't tell ya, cuz I don't want it to find out.

Monday, June 21, 2010

The Aquatic Goat Rodeo

They've shut down the training pool at the Y for maintenance for six weeks. The training pool is kept about 10F warmer than the lengths pool. The depth is adjustable, but it's generally kept about three feet deep. This is where older folk go for low-impact exercise and physio; novices develop their strokes in an environment where the side is never far away and the water's never deep. I like going there at the end of my swim to stretch in the warmer water.

But as it's closed, the die-hards among the denizens are flooding the lengths pool. There are three roped-off lanes for lengths, taking up half the pool, but I wasn't sure I'm fast or consistent enough to use them, when I had the whole other half of the pool to swim lengths without getting in somebody's way. But today, it was an obstacle course in there. People just standing around, people doing physio routines that looked like interpretive dance, people just in general getting in the way.

At first, I was sore displeased. I was having a helluva a time picking my way around people to do my set. Twenty-five metre lengths were becoming 30m lengths. I was shipping water from the wakes of other people trying to swim lengths pressed into a more confined area.

Then, dodging someone coming eastbound while I was trying to go west, I almost collided with a guy going west at a fair clip front crawl. I pulled up in time, but found myself swimming right at his feet. And I found the going surprisingly easy; I was keeping pace with breast stroke, and it was a cool-down lap. My first experience of drafting in the water.

That's when I realized ... if I think *this* is a goat rodeo, what am I going to make of the beginning of the triathlon? I started to enjoy it more. It's good practice for swimming in traffic. Good for learning how to draft. Good for learning how to deal with a mouthful of water.

And I started realizing the people "in my way" weren't pylons. The two women leaning on the edge of the pool chatting? One was trying to help the other overcome her fear of water and feel more comfortable floating. The older guy beside them was doing pushdowns with flutterboards stacked on top of each other. Excellent idea.

I did eventually move over to the roped off lanes, where I settled in quite comfortably in the medium-fast lane. I actually ended up doing almost as much dodging there; one of my lane-mates had a massively horizontal front crawl, his arms swinging out almost the entire width of the lane. I had to duck half into the fast lane on more than one occasion. But I managed to string together 200m uninterrupted, which is the best I've managed to date.

With only eight weeks to go, I think it's too late for a massive overhaul of my swim technique. That'll have to wait till winter. But I find myself hoping next swim is going to be just as crowded so I can work on my traffic skills and see if I can sneak in a draft or two without anybody noticing.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Help Wanted: Somebody who can explain nutrition

There are three disciplines to a triathlon: swimming, cycling and running. The transitions -- getting from swimto bike, and from bike to run -- are considered the fourth discipline. In training, though, I think there's a third-and-a-half discipline, especially for those of us who are recent jumpers-on of the fitness bandwagon: Proper fueling.

I have done much research regarding how to eat properly when in training, and in preparation for a race. I.m still pretty much faking it, though I can't complain I'm carbing out during workouts or feel woozy from eating the wrong stuff. Carbs before workout (peanut butter and English muffins -- I think I've mentioned I'm 19% peanut butter by weight now -- bananas and yogurt), carbs and protein afterward (the blessed chocolate milk -- widely hailed as The Best Recovery Food Ever -- fish and rice and veggies and stuff).

But I keep reading how I should get x% of my calories from carbs, x% from proteins and x% from fats, and frankly, even with the anal-retentive level of food labeling we have in this country, I can't figure out what that means. How many grams of carbs equals how many calories? How many calories to a gram of fat? Saturated or unsaturated or polyunsaturated? Am I gettijng enough protein? Am I getting too much protein?

Best advice I have to go on is Canada's Food Guide, but erring on the high end of the range -- more calories, more servings of each food type. And I'm getting by. I haven't bonked in a workout.

But I sure would like to know how to reach that nirvana of carb/protein/fat balance. Not that I necessarily would hold to that diet; I'd just like to know how to do the math. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd be grateful.

The other dietary issue I have to work out is ... let's call it "processing time." I already have an issue with getting to work at 9 a.m. because it's a 1:15 commute and every morning between 7:45 and 8:00, nature calls rather urgently. (I'm sharing too much, amn't I?) I'm looking at about an 8:20 start time for the race. I have to a) ensure I'm carbed up and ready to go for that start and 2) work out how to make sure I'm not in the porta when the gun goes off.

Any advice (other than eat more peanut butter) would be appreciated.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Me and the boys go running

Warning: This blog posting contains persistent, euphemistic references to the male nether regions (see, there's one already). And something that might qualify as a joke. If that sort of thing offends you, don't get teste. Um, testy. Just stop reading now.

I was discussing with a friend, who shall remain nameless for the time being, the importance of quality workout gear. Anything I buy this summer, I said, will be of a wicking polyester nature. I recently bought a pair of Elan shorts from Mountain Equipment Co-op -- 87% Supplex, 13% spandex in a "men's specific" cut. They're 1,000% comfortable. I was trying to find a polite way to explain that, well, my boys don't want me to wear anything else.

"My undercarriage approves," I said.

"'Undercarriage-approved,'" she mused. "God, I hope that's a thumb that's up in the logo."

I've long held to a no-Speedo ethic, feeling that such swimwear puts the side-order of veggies too prominently on display. "Banana hammocks," my friend Joe calls them. However, at some point, you gotta say, "Modesty be damned," give some priority to comfort, and maybe wear a longer jersey.

Cotton is cheap. Cotton is forgiving. Sweatwise, cotton also soaks it up like your Scottish uncle at a whisky pavilion. It becomes uncomfortable quite quickly; and if it's miserable in the heat, it's even worse in the cold. I've read recently that Merino wool wicks wonderfully and controls odour well, but I haven't had the opportunity to put it to the test, and frankly, it's June, for the love of whatever's holy this week. A spandex/poly blend may be a little revealing of your little brothers, but I guarantee it'll make you want to work out longer, accompanied by a suitable top of a wicking variety.

So I gotta pick up another pair of Elans this weekend. And, I suppose, a couple longer jerseys.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Pay attention to the little things

An endurance event is all about economy. Never use muscles you don't need to. Keep a quiet upper body when you're riding. Keep your shoulders and arms loose when you're running. When you're swimming ... well, hell, that's just such a panic, I figure every muscle in my body will be flailing, but still.

It's odd how a very small thing you haven't considered can screw that all up.

I was on an hour-long bike ride and just could not get my shoulders relaxed. Neck muscles clenched the whole time. Even when I focused on relaxing -- which is not necessarily a contradiction in terms -- just couldn't shake it loose.

Then I realized ... I was wearing my glasses. I have old-people lenses -- three prescription progressives -- but hip Gen X low-profile frames. (Is Gen X hip? I don't even know anymore.) Bent over the handlebars, if I looked forward with just my eyes, I was peering *over* the frames, like a sexy librarian. So in order to see the road, I had to crane my neck. Thus the tension, the neck pain, the etc.

Most of my rides have been with contacts in, as I 'd planned to do the race. But it's funny what you can overlook, how such a small thing can have such a profound impact. Attention to detail, is all I'm saying.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Halfway there

I started the 12-week 1st Time Tri training program two weeks ago, which leaves me 10 weeks to the race. And, as this blog is subtitled "Going from chain-smoking, beer-drinking couch potato to triathlete in 20 weeks," that would suggest I'd better be halfway to a triathlete.

I'm on or ahead of schedule in all the disciplines in terms of workout, says my app. I am dead on 165 out of 165 minutes cycling, though I've missed two workouts. I tend to bank time on long rides, which I know is not the point. But riding a stationary bike is as boring as watching a very boring thing being bored, so I try to log all my time outside, which usually means the weekend. (Also, the week is the best time for swimming and running for me, thanks to the proximity of the Y to work.) I have 105 minutes to log for next week, which I'll likely put in tomorrow with Rob, weather notwithstanding. (Then I'm taking my trusty steed -- my bike that is, not Rob -- in for tweaking at the shop.)

Well ahead on the swimming, having put in 2,100 metres in the last two weeks, when the program wanted 1,150. I bank these metres not to buy days off, but because I am still concerned I won't be able to finish the swim leg unless I put in more time.

But my proudest accomplishment when it comes to the program is that my running has kept pace. So far over the last two weeks, the program has demanded 75 minutes. I've run 76. I actually banked a minute running. This is a huge deal for me. In high school, they practically had to put a gun to my head to make me do the 12-minute run, a pre-requisite for passing PE in 11th grade. I have always despised distance running. The 13.5 km I've run in the last two weeks is more distance running than I'd done probably between my 18th birthday and March 21, 2010.

After the early gains of the first few weeks, I probably haven't improved much. And the first two weeks of the training program have been reasonably gentle. When I look ahead at next week's sessions, there's a definite step up in the demands for running; rather than 4x5-minute sessions, I'm looking at 2x10-minute sessions. That's a fair hump for me to get over, especially since I took my Saturday rest day on Tuesday because of work issues. (I blame the lawyers. Long story, and one I can't tell anyway.) The swimming increase is moderate (and I usually go over anyway), and I'll have the biking out of the way by tomorrow afternoon.

The week after is a recovery week, so the demands don't go up. They don't go down, either. The week after the week after ... well, it gets a little nastier.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Oh, You Pretty Things ...

No particular reason for the headline. Just it's my favourite David Bowie song: "All the nightmares came today/And it looks as though they're here to stay ..."

Punchy. Long day at work. (It involved a lawyer, a deadline and a seemingly endless stream of people who wanted to piss me off.) Not your problem and I apologize. I particularly apologize to the photographer's assistant at the event I was at this evening who asked what my name was and who I worked for. I am not Elton John and I am not the president of Mexico.

I've had the second person tell me (Hi, Jennefer) that this blog is not allowing comments to be posted. This is odd, because some people *have* been able to post comments. I know not why this is. I have changed a couple settings, neither of which should affect the ability to post comments, in the hope that, since this problem is irrational, random solutions should correct it. There's no reason, according to the settings, that anyone can't post comments. I completely opened it up when someone else (Hi, Gail) complained that *she* couldn't post a comment. Charles Manson should be able to post a comment to this blog. I mean, if he had Internet access and wasn't batshit crazy.

I will figure it out. If you feel a pressing need to comment in the meantime, a) I'm really flattered, and 2) do it on Facebook, since I'm actually checking my Facebook notifications with some regularity now. Jennefer's comment had something to do with the relative merits of pop-tart Hayley Williams's breasts and toe clips for your bicycle. In fairness, as an aspiring athlete and a single male with hormone issues, I approve of both.

And now, seeing it underlined like that, I must say, with apologies to Briony: Hayley Williams's Breasts would be a great name for a rock band.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Futzing with toe clips

My, isn't that the most compelling headline you've read on a blog post? Had the blogosphere existed in July 1969, and you had the option of reading "Man On The Moon!" or "Futzing With Toe Clips," I'm sure the toe clip post would be pulling the traffic. (I don't even have to use my sarcastic typeface.)

Nonetheless, the toe-clip issue is a significant one for cyclists looking for a more efficient ride. There is a topless picture of an alt-rock star here. Click back there, or continue reading.

Since you've decided to follow the toe-clip stream, here's the thing. You want to be pedaling in circles, not up and down; as your leg comes up, it should be pulling the crankset, not just along for the ride. The best solution is cycling shoes with cleats and pedals designed to fit them.Two problems. A) It's a laughably expensive proposition. (I managed to pick up a pair of Adidas, sans cleats, for $30 at the bike show, but your mileage will definitely vary. Cleats are another $30. Pedals, well, that could get truly ugly.) And 2) Unless you're running an Olympic distance or longer triathlon, you're probably not going to want to change shoes.

(Gatorade has a great video of the swim-to-bike transition showing how to put on bike shoes on the fly.)

Your other option is toe clips. I bought a pair of toe clips when I took up cycling again a couple years ago, but before I read how the Cyclists In The Know dismissed them outright as potentially lethal in traffic. I hid them in my tool box so the cool kids wouldn't know I had them.

But as I was researching triathlon training, it came up again and again: If you're going to do one thing to tweak your bike for a triathlon, put toe clips on the pedals.So I dug out the toe clips and installed them on my pedals, a process that takes the most anal-retentive perfectionist about 30 seconds a side.

After several rides with them I can confirm that, yes, it makes for a much more efficient ride, and, yes, they're potentially lethal in traffic.

The problem is that, gravity being a harsh mistress, the clips rotate down and expose the unclipped side of the pedal when you take a foot out, which you have to do every time you stop in traffic. (I find myself slowing hilariously when I approach a red light, hoping it'll go green before I have to put a foot down. Works maybe half the time.)

So, a couple tips. My clips are, entirely by happenstance, flexible plastic, so they can take the occasional scrape across the pavement when I accidentally hit the first couple of strokes with the pedal upside down. More importantly, I've been working on a no-look pedal flip. My right foot is on the pavement at a stop, my left in the stirrup. The right pedal is upside down, clip facing the ground. With my right pedal at 12 o'clock, I step on the back of the pedal and paw it  backward, popping my foot into the clip when it spins around. DO NOT WATCH YOUR FOOT. You're in traffic.

I get it right about eight times out of 10 now. I'm still practicing. One thing I have noticed is that the more I focus on it, the more likely I am to screw it up.

See? Aren't you glad you read on instead of looking at what's 'er names breasts?

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Apologies to my Facebook friends

I've been living a Facebook lie. I haven't actually been on Facebook in ages. I just post to the blog, which posts to my Twitter feed, which posts to Facebook. Or something like that.

It's not that I don't love you. I just hate Facebook, on so many levels. The arrogance about privacy, the endless data-mining apps, the huge amount of time it sucks out of my life.And I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn all day every day at work.

But so many of you have expressed so much support, I feel like an ass not acknowledging. A heel. So, I hope you'll accept this as a peace offering. I'm sorting through my Facebook notifications folder and replying as I can.

Gail, my BFF: Yes, I would love to rock the lycra Spiderman onesy. However, Spiderman didn't tell me where I could get one. Anyone who has an idea, please let me know.

Terry: Yes, Paolo is my official spokesperson. And also my financial advisor. No one's heard of me and I have no money. Draw your own conclusions.

Paolo: See above.

Lisa: I don't have the abs for Pilates. What kind of sadist came up with that? And chocolate is the best sponsorship. And the best defibrilator.

Jennefer: Pray harder. Please.

Cindy: They don't have to tear the jersey to use the defibrilator. I've had jumper plates installed on my nipples.

Michelle: You make breathing underwater sound so easy. I am not Aquaman. I can't even find a Spiderman onesy.

Quigs: You up for the 10k at the zoo in October? I'm still trying to decide whether to register. Early bird deadline is June 30.

Monday, May 24, 2010

And so it begins

I am now out of pre-training and into training. As of yesterday, it's 12 weeks to the triathlon.

It was an unusual May 24 long weekend. First of all, the holiday was actually on May 24, which almost never happens. In general, it didn't mesh with my 24 associations. I associate the May long weekend with miserable weather, the smell of two-stroke motors and live bait, and sleeping on, at best, a couch. Granted, I haven't done the May 24 fishing trip in years, but for a while it was a regular thing. Since then, like most long weekends, it's been about laundry. But it's the outboards and live bait I remember.

My daughter spent the weekend at a friend's trailer, building her own May 24 associations. So I was at loose ends. So I packed a fair bit of training into a weekend of glorious weather, though what might be most important is what I took a pass on.

It was my brother-in-law's birthday. Big surprise party out in Belleville. Martyn is the most decent guy who ever married a sister. But I knew it was going to be a weekend of music (great), drinking (not so great) and smoking (potentially fatal). I've quit too recently to take the chance I might fall off the wagon, so I had to decline. I'm hoping to one day be forgiven.

Took a ride along the waterfront trail out west to the Ex and a little past, where I found a great little spot to do hill repeats. It's the lead-up to a bridge across Lakeshore Blvd. at about Roncesvalles, a steep little hillet that's about 20 seconds up. Coast back down the other side, ride back 30-odd yards, repeat. After about 10, I was ready to go home. A spring shower gave me the excuse.

On the way back, I heard an air horn behind me, so I pulled off to the right. Somebody positively blew by me on roller blades. About 6'5", maybe, very cut, long-legged and wearing a lycra Spiderman onesy. I kept pace after he passed me, but didn't make up any ground until he got into traffic. (Hey, I'd been doing hill repeats.) Finally caught him at a light.

"Man, you fly on those things," I gasped.

"I'm Spiderman today," he said. Then he took off. Never got a chance ot find out where he got the onesy.

Sunday was the official first day of training. According to my iPod app, I was supposed to swim 200 metres. I had time on my hands, and I was enjoying the pool at the Grosvenor YMCA, so I did 800. But I'm still not doing front crawl, my best sprint time translated to 100 yards is still about 2:40, and ... well, I think I can finish. I just think I'm going to be spending too long in the water.

However, one of the books I picked up put it this way: the swim is the shortest part of the program, the bikes the longest. Take 10% off your swim time, you save x-minutes. Take 10% off your ride time ...

So today, I finally got out on a ride with Rob, who dragged me all over hell's half-acre -- 30k up through Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, over through Rosedale, out to Bathurst. Coming back east along Broadway were a couple of long downhills ... I don't know how I kept from howling. They were the kind where you pick up so much speed you don't realize it until a car brakes in front of you and your own brakes squeal when you have to stop. Hills that make you feel like a 12-year-old. When I was a kid and I took hills like that on my CCM five-speed,  I'd pretend I was flying a fighter plane. And it's the weirdest thing ... I could smell two-stroke engine and live bait.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Why bother?

What's the best reason for racing your first triathlon?

No matter what your result is, it's a personal best.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Is this a taper week?

For a first-timer, the accepted training time for a sprint triathlon appears to be 12 weeks. As I was in no shape, back at the Easter weekend when I decided to undertake this nonsense, to take on that kind of training program, I decided to devote eight weeks to getting fit enough to train -- pretraining, if you will.

Week 7 is over.

 In a week's time, I have to start adhering to a tri-oriented training program. So, I guess this coming week should be a taper week, just like before a race you're training for.

So, in the pool, no worrying about yardage (though I did more than 1,400m this week, 600m today). Strictly technique, like getting my face to stay in the water. I haven't had much luck with that; breathing has been my bane, both in the pool and on the track, the whole time. So I guess I'd better start yoga on Mondays next week, 24 or no 24. (I'm pretty sure Jack Bauer can save the world without me.) I can probably finish 400m swimming breast stroke, but right now I'm swimming 100m in about 3:35. That's just too slow, even if my only goal is to finish. It's almost 15 minutes in the water, and I don't want to do that.

On the track, no pushing it. Probably just 500m or 1k and then a trip to the weight room. As for biking, if I go out for a leisure ride, that'll be fine. If not, that'll be fine, too. Might be a good chance to take my bike in for some tweaks. I did a little work myself last weekend, putting on pedal clips and adjusting the front derailleur, so I'd like to take it for a stretch first.

It's difficult -- *really* difficult -- to ease up on your training, especially when you've come from pretty much nothing in terms of conditioning and are seeing improvements almost every session. But it is absolutely necessary. Or so I've read.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Fugged. I gib ub

I wend swibbing today. God lodsa wadder ub my node.

Fugged. I gib ub. Godda buy node plugs.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A sponsorship idea

I think I should approach The Mikey Network, providers of easy-to-use defibrillators, to sponsor me for this triathlon. I could wear the logo on my jersey. Or, at least, someone could follow me around with one during the race. Just in case.

Friday, May 7, 2010

I hit the weights and the weights hit back

Many things I'll have done by the time I stand or fall on Aug. 14 will be filed under you-probably-shouldn't-do-this. For example, it's generally recommended that when you get to a certain age -- let's call it "creaky" -- you should consult your physician before embarking on any exercise regimen. I did not do this. Not because I thought it a formality; in fact, just the opposite. I figured he'd say no.

Let's see, you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, you have asthma, you haven't run unless you were chased in 30 years, and three months ago, you were walking with a cane because your quads are so weak. I see no problem with you swimming 400m, riding 10k and running 2.5k. That doesn't at all compromise my duty to help ensure your continued health. Also, I'm lending Lindsay Lohan my car.

I have not collapsed in a heap yet, and it's been six weeks, so I guess I got away with it.

Wednesday, in the interest of building up some upper body strength, I went to the basement of the Y, which is stocked with all manner of resistance training machines. I'd been doing some basic stuff on the machines up by the running track, but downstairs are weight machines I've not seen the like of before. So I jumped into some exercises that worked some places I hadn't been working.

Thursday, I woke up a little stiff in the upper body. It hadn't gone away by lunch, so I figured I'd better skip the swim and just do a short run and some lower body weights. Again, a few new machines.

This morning, when I woke up, my legs were fine. But my upper arms had gone from stiff to agonized. I could hardly lift them. When the pain had subsided enough that I could isolate which muscles were actually rising up against me, I found it was, for the most part, my deltoids, all of 'em on both sides. At least I now know exactly which machine wrought such havoc. Have to be careful with that one.

Why my upper body and not my lower body? I have a couple of theories. I warmed up Wednesday with five minutes on the elliptical machine; on Thursday, by running a kilometre. My upper body probably wasn't warmed up enough on Wednesday, whereas my lower body definitely was. Also, in general, my leg muscles are larger and stronger than my upper body muscles. And -- probably critically -- it's easier to get an effective stretch on the lower body after a workout.

Long and short of it: Used today as my rest day, a day earlier than planned. As long as I don't stiffen up again overnight, I can make up the swim tomorrow and take a ride and/or run Sunday. And, while I'm not going to dump the weight training from the schedule -- I really need to build the strength -- I'm going to approach new stuff much more warily next time.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Variety

One thing I quickly learned about triathlon training: It opens your eyes to a whole litany of athletic possibilities.

I'm an inveterate reader. Any time I take an interest in something, even at the pre-hobby stage, I bury myself in books, magazines, Web sites, etc. I picked up The Complete Idiot's Guide to Triathlon Training (click on the link to the left; you know you want to). Get Out There magazine I got at the bike show. I've since picked up Triathlete, Trail Running and Canadian Running's Trail Special.

Aside from a triathlon, I'd like to do some running, a 10k maybe. Canada Running Series has a 10 or 5k at the Metro Zoo in October; after the Island, that would make my two favourite Toronto landmarks. But the next weekend is the Run Ajax half-marathon and 5k, a Running Room trail run in the town where I grew up. Trail running has a particular appeal to me. Easier on the joints, a little more pastoral than street running.

Then, I don't know why, I became obsessed with cross-country skiing. This makes no sense. I hate winter about as much as I hate cold water (oops ... there's a problem). I've been waiting for summer for ages, and it's around the corner. Hell, it was 21 degrees today. Why the fixation with cross-country skiing?

I've never actually been nordic skiing. But a couple of maybe four years ago, when I lived up in North York, there was a yard sale. By Toronto standards, I was in the middle of nowhere, so I had to walk half an hour to Yonge and Sheppard when I needed something other than groceries. I think it was a screwdriver I was after; whatever. I passed this yard sale on the way out and promised myself I'd check it out on the way back.

It was abandoned by the time I got back, with a few leftover items propped up against a tree with a sign that said "Free." Among those items was a cross-country ski set -- skis, boot and poles. If the shoes fit, I told myself, I'll take 'em. They were a size 43 -- to this day, the best fitting footwear I have. So I took the kit.

Quality stuff, too. Salomon boots. Fischer skis. The poles I don't trust, but whatever. Is it old? The skis boast: "Fischer XC Skis: 6x Gold, Lake Placid". So at least I know it's no more than, what is that, 30 years old? However old, this is the year they get a workout. If, or course, it snows. But there's no point thinking about that now. It'll be upon us soon enough.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

My First Brick

After the episode with the bike mechanic who called putting an aerobar on a hybrid "retarded," I thought I'd try elsewhere. So yesterday, after spending the morning cleaning -- serious cleaning -- I decided to wander up to Cycle Solutions on Parliament, with aerobar in hand, and ask if they thought I was retarded. (On the way up Parliament, I bumped into a protest march several hundred people strong. Jeez, I thought, they really don't want me to put on aerobar on this bike. Turned out it was the No One Is Illegal May Day March.) The bike fitter at Cycle Solutions did not call the idea retarded. Sure, he said, we'll put a straight bar in, and whatever compatibility issues there are, we'll work something out.


But I realized this morning that I shouldn't be getting my hardware tweaked if I'm not riding it in the first place. So after the rain stopped, I saddled up. The plan was out to Woodbine Park, lock the bike, run a kilometre, then ride back -- a brick workout of sorts.

For a change, things went pretty much to plan. I cut a pretty brisk pace out to Woodbine. It also gave me a chance to practice passing without drafting. In a triathlon, you can't draft off another rider, letting him cheat the wind for you; you have to maintain a three bike-length distance. Once you creep into that three-bike-length zone, you've got 15 seconds to execute your pass. The riders I passed weren't exactly traveling at race pace, but it was a useful exercise.

Off the bike, I'm pretty sure I didn't make it a kilometre. But I didn't feel uncomfortable switching from bike to run. It wasn't the classic T2 transition -- nobody stops to lock his bike and helmet to a stand at Kona, I'm pretty sure -- but it was ... well, fun. And good practice. And I'm marking the run down as a kilometre in my log anyway.

BTW ... Been checking my weight and body fat percentage per my log book. After remaining pretty much exactly the same for three weeks, I discovered this week I'd gained three pounds and my BF percentage had gone up a full point. In the absence of any other suspects, I'm blaming the Bacon-Infused Angus Burger at the Jersey Giant. Darryl actually grinds two pounds of bacon into the ground beef, and tops each patty with Cajun-battered onion rings. As I felt my left arm go numb ...

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Dreaming is free ...

Had my first triathlon dream the other night. I didn't have my wetsuit. My transition wasn't set up. Pretty much a yawner for Jung.

Oh, and my daughter was trying to overthrow the government. Really not her style, but you never know with kids.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Week 5: Dude, where's my breakthrough?

I'm coming off six consecutive days of either running, swimming or weight workouts, something I haven't done since ... well, ever, probably. I should take a rest day tomorrow, but I feel pretty good, and it's awful tempting to take the bike out for an hour or two, especially since there's a chance of rain, which might keep the path out by the Beaches a little less crowded. Game-time decision.

I'm now five weeks in, a quarter of the way through this nonsense. On the one hand, I feel pretty good -- very good, actually -- about the progress I've made. On the other, it's still a daunting prospect. In a little more than three weeks, I start the proper training program for the race. Where am I?

Running: I can run 2.5 km. In fact, I've done four, with the occasional bit of walking. There wasn't much of a distinction, though, between "warm-up pace" and "race pace" until I started breaking up the runs into segments. There was a bit of improvement alternating running 1k and walking 100m. But I really saw a difference Thursday, when I did weights. I ran 500m to warm up -- and if you told me a year ago I'd be running 500m to warm up for something, rather than in total for a year chasing buses, I'd have laughed myself silly -- and cool down, and found I was traveling at about a 4:30 per km clip, rather than six-minute-plus pace I was keeping running the sessions uninterrupted. I think breaking the runs into segments is definitiely going to pay dividends.

Swimming: At the beginning of this process, I could not swim. I wasted two weeks on denial. Since then, I've developed a head-out-of-the-water breast stroke that will probably get me through. But it's inefficient and exhausting; if I can learn a more effective front crawl, I'll have a better time (not a primary concern) and should, in theory, be less exhausted when I finish the swim leg (very much a primary concern, right behind not drowning).

So I'm trying to work the crawl in, slowly, the way I got comfortable with that weird stroke I'm using now. I spent most of today's swimming session doing 10m stretches of front crawl, focusing on arm motion and breathing. I did a couple 25m lengths of breast stroke with my head under water, and did a couple 50m stretches with my head out. My plan for next week is, do the 25s front crawl, the 50s head-in breast stroke, and the 100s head-out breast stroke. The following week, the 25s and 50s are front crawl, the 100s head-in. And the week after that, it's all front crawl. Which takes me right up to the beginning of training.

There's still no appreciable difference between warm-up and race pace. And I haven't done any outdoor swimming, which is intimidating because, frankly, I loathe cold water. But there'll have to be a splash or two out at Cherry Beach, apparently.

Riding: I've been out once this year. Not good. Once the training starts, I'll probably have to do much of the bike stuff on a stationary at the gym, which does not appeal to me; a 40-minute session on a stationary bike is about enough to bore me to tears. The gym has spinning classes Monday nights, right after yoga, and it might behoove me to take those.

In summary: Going into Week 6 cautiously optimistic.

Bike geometry

When I was first talking about doing a triathlon with my riding buddy Rob -- he of "I could tell by the look on your back something was wrong" fame (yes, eventually I'll tell the story) -- I was talking about wetsuits and aerobars and tri-suits and --

"You like stuff," he interrupted. "You only want to do this so you can get more stuff."

There's a small -- okay, maybe not so small -- element of truth to that. I tend to like hobbies that involve gear. I can't help it. I'm a guy.

One piece of gear I've been neglecting is my bike, probably because, in recent memory, I've ridden regularly, whereas I haven't run or swum competitively in 30 years. (And I wasn't much competition back then, either.) I've been focusing on my swimming and running because they're weaker.

But my thoughts turned to the bike the other night. I have a great city hybrid, as I've mentioned before, but I really wanted to find a Web site where I could, component by component, custom-build my own bike. I'd love to give you the link, but I couldn't find one.

But I was, and am, of a mind that I might want to do something more custom for my next bike. I figured I should start by learning a little bit about frame geometry.

This is not a little bit. This article on SlowTwitch.com's Tech Center by retired bike designer Dan Empfield is pretty exhaustive when it comes to the whys and hows of bike frame design and geometry. Despite the heavy technical content, it's a breezy and sometimes very funny read. If you're fantasizing about designing and building your own bike, this is porn for you. If you're actually considering doing it, it's a necessary primer.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

A bit of a wall

Is it four weeks or five? I can't remember and I can't be bothered consulting a calendar. I'll try to be more chronologically aware tomorrow.

The first couple of weeks of training, I was making progress pretty much daily. I was surprised that I could run at all, let alone go from 1k to a mile to 2k to 2.5k in consecutive sessions. After a rough start in the pool, I started getting somewhere pretty quickly. But in the last week, I haven't been able to increase my yardage at all. I've hit a bit of a wall.

I have been violating the 10 per cent rule, the one that says you should only increase your workout by 10 per cent (either in time or distance) from week to week. I suppose I could write it off as a recovery week, or just admit I'm writing cheques my body can't cash.

In the last three (four?) weeks before my training program proper starts, I guess I should try to maintain rather than push it. At least the base fitness level I'm starting from is worlds better than what it was four (five?) weeks ago. So break the runs up into 1k followed by 100m walking. Maybe spend one of my swim sessions a week in the training pool working on technique; I could try to switch to freestyle, but keep up the yardage with breast stroke. (The training pool's a bit of a goat rodeo, what with the seniors, physio patients and, well, novices like me, crossing chaotically, but it's worth trying.)

Then, second last weekend in May, my 12 weeks starts.