Some Things Are Getting Back On Track

And some other things aren't.  So first up is my tri bike.  You know, I've always thought my guardian angel pulled double shifts or something but now I'm certain of it.  Basically, because of rain, shifting personal commitments, and a general aversion to my tri bike these last couple of weeks, I stayed off the bike.  Good thing too.  Apparently, the fork the tri shop loaned me hadn't been put on properly (it was missing a part which could have caused yet another accident).  I'd take my guardian angel out for a drink but I need her alert and on her toes it would seem.  A heart felt "thank you", will have to do.

My training this week has been good.  Almost inspiring.  I'm feeling like something has shifted in the water and I'm getting in touch with my power points there.  I probably haven't talked about "power points" all that much in my prior posts.  And not the program that sucks the life out of any meeting in corporate America (at least in my opinion it does).  No, I'm talking about those points in physical movement that have the most potential to propel you forward with the greatest amount of speed and the least amount of effort.

I began thinking about "power points" a couple of years ago when I was riding after recovering from a pulled hamstring.  Because of the injury and my desire to restore base fitness, I opted to ride VERY slowly.  Rides of 2-3 hours on a looped course with a heart rate maximum of 130.  Typically on these rides my average heart rate was about 120 cresting 128 only on the loop's sole hill.  But by riding that slowly for sooooo long, I became aware of points in my pedal stroke where even with a low heart rate ceiling, I was able to generate more speed without incurring a perceptible physical cost.  So now I spend a great deal of time maximizing my use of these "points" in my pedal stroke on each ride.

At any rate, I began to wonder if I could find similar power points in my running and swimming.  Running was pretty easy to find but swimming had proven elusive.  Then I began to swim more and more with fist gloves and slow down my stroke cycle to focus on where and how to apply force to the water.  That's when I found it (or them).  So now with the same perceived effort in the water I've lopped about 50 seconds off my 1000m swim time.

I'm also seeing some really promising results from doing some fine tuning of my diet.  My recovery from hard/long workouts has been shorter and I have more energy throughout the day.  Huge, huge, huge.  I'll write more about this soon.

At any rate today was a fairly good one training wise starting with a 90 minute tempo run at 8:00 pace with an average HR of 150.  I didn't feel all that hot when I started out and wasn't sure I'd run that long or maintain that pace but toward the end I started using some of the techniques I've learned from practicing yoga and ran more from my core than my legs.  

After soaking my legs in Barton Springs for 15 minutes and a smoothie, I was out on the tri bike for a 2:00 hour tempo ride.  This was also comfortable.  I got to try my new racing wheels out and maintained a pace of 20mph with a heart rate average of 145.  

Tomorrow, I'll swim and do some yoga.  Its a recovery day!

When It Rains... We Still Train!

Actually, it has been raining a bit more lately in Austin giving us a welcome break from the seasonally early and hot weather.  I for one am quite thankful for this.  Rain doesn't really affect my training much.  I ride or run indoors and use the time for either more specificity in my workouts or get my testing done to actually "plan" my workouts.  A win, win really.  

 This week I got to the track to get some testing done so I could try to dial in my running a bit more.  For the most part all of my running so far this year has been unstructured.   Some of this was by design, some of it wasn't.  At any rate I went to the track.   The thing about going to the track was I thought I was getting faster.  How I felt in my last race pointed to this but courses and conditions can easily change.  The only way to really know how fast you are running in my opinion is to go to the track.  That's what they are made for.  And that's probably why I hadn't stepped on one in over a year.  But I digress.  

 The workout was simple.  Warm up with some plyometric work, then get things going with 8 400 meter intervals.  Next would be the 1 mile time trial that I would be basing my steady state work on for the next block of training.  This would be capped off with a 1.5 mile run to a flight of stairs.  At the stairs there would be 15 min solid of stair running followed by a 1.5 mile "jog" back to the track for a 1 mile barefoot cooldown.  The whole workout was slated for about an hour and 30 minutes.  I clocked in at about 1:27 (1 hour 27 min).  

 

The intervals went well and looked like this: 

 1:21 HR 156

1:21 HR 158

1:23 HR 160

1:23 HR 160

1:19 HR 162

1:19 HR 162

1:17 HR 164

1:16 HR 166

The mile TT was done in 6:22.9 with splits of:

1:35 HR 155

1:36 HR 160

1:36 HR 163

1:35 HR 163

 

For some reason (basically my endurance sucks) I've always found intervals much easier than steady state work.  But that's why we train weaknesses.  And why I’m going to work on this now.  But I also find this type of work gives me a more fine tuned sense of pace which helps when it comes to measuring out efforts for longer distances.  What I will do is take the time of 6:23 and add 1:15 to it and this will be my threshold for steady state track work for the next 3 weeks until my next test.  Each mile of the workout will be done at between 7:28 to 7:30 pace per mile.  This means each lap on the track will be done at about 1:52 per 403m.   My goal here isn’t to get “faster”.  It is to build endurance for longer events maintaining an even, efficient pace.  I’ll start out with 3miles and work up from there eventually getting up to 10 miles on the track or 40 laps.  I’ll know I’m doing what I’ve planned when each 400m lap is almost identical.  And that is both the beauty and the challenge in this type of work but over time my body should run this pace no matter what and for as long as necessary if properly fueled.

In Boulder For The Week...

So I'm in beautiful Boulder Colorado for the week. Even the 18 degree temps when my plane landed this morning in Denver wasn't enough to keep me from being exited. I'm gonna start tomorrow off with a run. We'll see how things progress from there. Maybe I can find a yoga class somewhere. Any suggestions?

Your Body Is Precision Instrument

I would be well advised to keep that sentiment in mind. For the last couple of weeks I've been attempting to deconstruct my body's apparent mutiny against all things training related. Honestly, it wasn't really all that difficult and it didn't take a PhD to figure it out. My work schedule at the latter part of the summer was abysmal. (You know, maybe there is something to my mom's assertion that the use of profanity is for those who lack the vocabulary to express themselves appropriately. (Did you notice my use of the word "abysmal?" If you did can you tell my mom?) At any rate if that wasn't enough, when both my Naturopath and Acupuncturist used the same phrase to describe my sudden onset of chronic fatigue, "Low Kidney Chi," I knew I wasn't gonig to like what came next. But don't ask me what the phrase means exactly. All I know is that in their traditions the kidneys are the energy stores that come into play AFTER the adrenals. So when you burn through the adrenals and deplete the kidneys, you've essentially dug through the bottom of the well. When they both looked at me with those, "You poor, poor dear" eyes, I knew my season was done. Crap.

But I digress. Looking back at my year, I can see that my training, when following a set pattern yields consistent fitness gains. What I can also see is that when my schedule is changed I begin to "wing" my training attempting to fit in the same number of workouts with less recovery and/or sleep. I also notice when this compression of my workouts comes into play, my carefully crafted diet also gets shot full of holes. It is just one short fast downward spiral from there. "Game over, player one."

But now after a couple of weeks of low intensity work, consistent rest and restoring my prior eating habits everything seems to be looking up. I've upped the intensity of my workouts recently but kept their duration modest. Nothing much over 2 hours and I've been consciously finishing my workouts with plenty of energy left.

This winter I want to spend some time addressing some things to get ready for next season. I'll have to deal with my job because this is be biggest challenge I face not only with regard to my training and racing, but simply with my overall health and well being. I also want to deal with my body composition. I made a lot of headway in this area over the last couple of years but I could still lose about 7 pounds. Losing this weight would go a long way to improving my running speed/economy. To do this I put some of that Personal Trainer knowledge I've acquired over the last couple of years and started some serious calorie counting. Don't worry, its all very scientific. I don't plan on losing more than a pound a week.

The next area I plan to address is my swimming. My swimming was affected by my decision early in the year to take the Yoga Teacher training class. This was followed by the 6 weeks of recovery and rehab after my bike wreck. For some reason I wasn't comfortable putting a lot of stress on the arm so, I pretty much babied my swims in races and in practice. Over the course of the winter I'll be doing a lot of long sets for base/strength to address my lack of actual time in the water this spring.

Last but not least my cycling has to get much better. I'd like it to be better than when I stopped racing 6 years ago, but at this point I'll settle for just as good. Thanks to aging, most guys in my age group can't ride as fast as I was riding so that's fine with me. :) This winter I'm going to focus on power more. My pedal stroke doesn't appear to break down so I'll spend less time on economy. I'll do more sets with turning over bigger gears faster now. We'll see what happens with that. As I get more specific I'll keep you up to date with what I'm seeing as far as results are concerned. Well, I'd better get back to work.