Sunday And Monday

Sunday I was up before 5am so I went for a swim. This must have been exactly what I needed because now I'm officially adding it back into my training. Not that it was ever really "out" of my training, but If I was going to bail on a workout, swimming would be first, cycling would be second, and running would be a distant third. I think the cold has something to do with it. And because warmer temperatures seem to be here to stay in Austin, Texas, I think I'm in the water to stay.

The swim went well and I've gone back to my efforts at being efficient in the water. (As if I'd ever left them). But I am starting to think more along the lines of is a workout just a workout? Or sort of like are all calories created equal? I'm really feeling not. If I told people what my longest swim from last year was, they'd probably either laugh at me or just not believe me. Especially if they found out that was the kind of volume I went into a 2.4 mile swim with. But that's the point. I'm wondering if all the volume with out real purpose isn't defeating all efforts at getting better?

I mean, I get it. Volume is really easy. It looks cool in the log book. And it gets a lot attention at parties. But I'm starting to wonder if there are some caveats? Like I would never say not to do any distance in training for events like the Ironman. But I am starting to consider trying to find out what ENOUGH is and doing no more than that.

The reason I say this is because there was a point last year in my training where I could almost feel my body say, "You can do this all day". And I think I could have listened to that more closely. If I had I might have actually trained less but more specifically from that point on. I would have put my money in the sharpening basket versus obsessing over more and more volume.

But live and learn. Which is why I'm swimming now instead of obsessing about it in January and February when I really didn't feel like doing it. And why I'm starting to get out on the bike more consistently. Soon I'll be up to running every day and that will be nice.

So Today I biked and swam. Both were short sessions. The bike was just 45 min of maintaining consistent pressure on the pedals so that the shift from one leg to the other was uninterrupted. The swim was 30 min working on my left arm pull which isn't as efficient as my right. I will say a 30 min swim is a big deal for me. Especially at this point in the year. Last year about this time I was all about 15 and 20 min swims and "worked" my way up to 30 min much later in the season. Who knows at this rate I may actually stay in the water for an hour this year. But only if the work is of good quality.

Thursday And Friday

Thursday was a day off. I don't normally take days "off" when I'm training as much as let my body decide when and how long to rest. This was a day off. I wrote it down before hand, wasn't particularly tired, and just took it.

Friday on the other hand is my normal strength day focusing on the legs. But because last week I maxed out all of my sets, I took today easy and dropped the weight back down to prior levels. The weight I did today was still heavier than what I was doing last season, so I'm seeing progress. While I am using weight now, I will switch to more body weight leg work in the future as I start to focus on my triathlon training. The reason for this is I am using the weight now to monitor progress as I work on balancing out the difference in strength between my right and left legs.

In my case what I've come to learn is that this disparity was actually caused by instability in my left knee. So just as flexibility can be influenced by mobility in the joints so can strength and muscular balance. To that end I've been doing a slew of new movements to improve things.

What I didn't expect was the comment from my Rolfer when she saw me this week, "Your feet look a million times better!"

Coming from a Rolfer that is a "functional movement" junky who is obsessed with feet, this was high praise. All I know is it is easier to run faster and I'm just happy about that.

After my leg work, it was time to swim and start focusing on dialing in my technique for the upcoming season. I felt really good in the water and have been toying with the idea of having a single drill be the sole focus of my workout for the day. Today's swim was about 30min but focusing only on extending my arm out in front of me as I floated was more challenging as it sounds. After a few lengths of this, I was pooped but I managed a good solid half hour in the water. When I moved back into freestyle after the drills, I felt strong and balanced. I think the next drill I work on is the catch underwater.

What We Have Here...

Is yet another equipment failure.  If you saw my last post, you'll know what I'm talking about.  This time out, it was my front derailleur clamp that broke.  And I was fortunate.  1) I was watching this happen so I stopped pedaling before doing even more damage, and 2) I had stopped pedaling so I didn't lose control of the bike when the chain seized.  

And I suppose I can count myself lucky that I was on my road bike at the time and this was a recovery week so the ride was only supposed to be 2 hours (it wound up being 1:15).  

The repairs will probably take about 2 weeks because the hanger is probably still under warranty.  But we have to ship it to them so they can look at it before sending out a replacement.  I don't know why we can't just send photos?  This is 2009.  But whatever.  

So for the rest of the week it has been back on my tri bike on the trainer.  Not a bad thing really.  I'm considering training up to about 80 percent of my weekly milage on the trainer versus on the roads.  What this will mean is that I will have more of an opportunity to focus on growing stronger under more controlled conditions.

I've been putting in more work in the pool this week as well and turning my attention to doing long sets for endurance as well as a bit more pace based work in the medium length sets.   All in all I'm feeling pretty good with my strength and fitness right now.  As for the bike and the other malfunctions, I guess its just all part of the process.  

Getting The Work In Amidst Adversity And A Rant

There is not much to say about Saturday. I was working. From the moment I walked through the door until the moment I left which was about 20 minutes late because my relief in Bangalore was late. As usual.

So I was content to just get the workouts in and call it a day. A day which started at 5:30 in the morning I might add. I have a fairly long commute to work - almost 35 minutes with no traffic. And with no more working from home when I feel like it, this has me thinking I've got to do something else to support my training.

The picture on this post is of me outside just so I could say I at least got to "see" the sunshine and experience the warm weather -- for all of ten minutes. I wanted to ride my bike. I am not liking the new schedule that has me working on weekend days at all. Especially when they turn out like this in January. It is becoming more and more apparent that I'm not going to be able to sustain this type of work and the commute and meet my more personal life and triathlon goals. Yeah, it is going to by a real stretch for me to put up with this type of "professional nonsense" in 2009. I hate to say it but I for one wasn't too upset by $4.00 per gallon gasoline. It gave my argument to work from home a lot more weight and kept me from having to talk to people I wouldn't drive across the street to speak to let alone listen to them yell at me on the phone when their networks go down. And now there is the email support we manage... I hate email. When you are responsible for someone's email in "ANY" way, your life loses all meaning. Problems you don't deal with are yours anyway because you are the person they have on the phone. Did I mention I hate email?

But I digress.

Today I swam before work for about 30 min and I ran after work for 30 min. Nothing too hard either way. I was just interested in the time and the consistency of effort. Especially since it was warm out and I didn't get to ride. All I know is it better be warm on Monday when I'm off or I'm going to be really, really unhappy...

Handstand Practice

Lately I've become obsessed with doing handstands. So obsessed in fact, I haven't really thought about blogging that much. I know, I know, if God had meant for us to be upside down she would have put our feet on our wrists. The thing of it is though, I think I'm on to something. Bear with me. This is just the way my brain works.

So in Yoga each week, we do handstands. At first, I was was like, "No way. I'm not 10 anymore. Besides, I have two perfectly good feet to stand on thank you very much..."

But the thing about doing anything in a group is that even if nothing is said (and not a word was that first day in Yoga class when everyone started turning themselves upside down without a second thought) is you start feeling a little self conscious because everyone else in the room is upside down and you are not. So initially I started doing handstands purely as a result of peer pressure. Plain and simple. I mister, super individual, think for himself, went to yoga class each week, lined up on the wall and turned myself over when commanded. Which by the way in case you were wondering was not nearly as easy as writing about it some months later.

But then one day I went swimming after a Yoga class that had us focus on inversions. (In Yoga, headstands and handstands form a subset of the practice called "inversion".) Anyway, at the pool that day I noticed something I'd never noticed before. I was aware of my feet in the water. I know this may not seem like a big thing to those of you who grew up swimming but to an "adult onset swimmer" (you can find a complete definition for this term on Fedofsky's blog which is where I stole it from) like myself, this was nothing short of miraculous. You see in my initial forays into the world of triathlon, swimming was definitely my limiter. And one reason for my being limited, as the woman who swam in my lane with me at masters swimming back then called to my attention, was that my feet were pointing straight down toward the bottom of the pool. So for all practical purposes, while I was a drag racer on land, capable of high speed in both the bike and the run, I was a dragster in the water with both of my braking parachutes open and deployed as I tried to swim.

You know, you would think a person could feel something dragging their feet in the water like that. But I didn't. Chalk it up to the survival instinct. I was so concerned with just making it from one end of the pool to the other without actually drowning at some point in between, what my feet were doing was not really high on my list of priorities. Keeping my arms moving so I wouldn't sink to the bottom of the pool and drown was.

So you can imagine my surprise when I was in the pool and could actually feel the tops of my feet pressing against the water when I kicked. But what was even better, I could tell that my toes were pointed!!! Now I suspect the pointed toes had been going on for a while and this was also due to Yoga. In yoga, aside from sitting cross-legged aka Lotus pose, you sit on the tops of your feet. A lot. This is probably where the actual flexibility for toe pointing came from. But the sensation of pointing toes, that came from the handstands. Here's my theory. When you are upside down, your brain, marvelous little computer that it is says, "Hey I'm gonna need some balance and sensation in the feet if this guy is going to be spending time upside down so I don't fall over." And because falling over would SO suck that's what it does. It creates new little neural pathways connecting it to your feet so that it can keep your body upright and balanced whether you are on your feet or on your hands. And what is one of the key skills in swimming?? Balance.

So that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. So now at home every time I walk by the front door I do a handstand. Just like turning over a new leaf, you never know what you'll find. On my blog until I get over my new obsession, you'll find video. Handstand videos...

Book Review: Total Immersion by Terry Laughlin

My copy of Total Immersion (TI) is actually pretty worn. I will probably have to buy another one soon. But that makes sense given the fact that I've probably had the book for almost 10 years. Taking this into account, I'm sure some folks would wonder why I'm taking the time to write about a book this old. I'm writing about it because I sat down recently and read it again. For the third time, I think. I heard somewhere that the number three is magical to our subconscious. A friend of mine swears that if you want to really learn something, you should either read an authoritative source three times or find three varied sources and read them all simultaneously. Maybe he's right because I'm really coming to appreciate what Terry Laughlin is trying to say in this book.

The basic premise of the book is that swimming, due to water's being 1000 times more dense than air is a hugely difficult medium to move through. Because of this generating more force in order to move faster through the water is a poor strategy. To illustrate his point he uses the equation "V = SL + SR," where V is velocity, SL is stroke length and SR is the stroke rate. From the equation, one can also derive that increasing velocity by favoring either stroke length or stroke rate is essentially a "zero sum" game. This means that as you increase your stroke rate to achieve more speed, your stroke length gets shorter. In essence, as your arms move faster requiring greater and greater amounts of energy to move shorter and shorter distances. Ultimately, even if you could achieve super stroke rate you would run out of gas. For triathletes in particular, this strategy would potentially have devastating results in that valuable energy necessary for the bike and the run would have been expended in the swim where time gains are really minimal.

So to address this zero sum problem, Laughlin attempts to shift the reader's perspective by advising three important things:

1) Look at the body as a vessel (like a ship) moving through water creating as little drag as possible.

2) Look at swimming as a technique sport more in the way people think about golf and tennis as opposed to looking at it as a strength sport like running or cycling.

3) Because swimming is a technique or skill-based sport, just like golf and tennis, these skills can be taught.

The rest of the insights in the book, as well as the drills provided, do support these three tenets. My personal experience however, after my first reading was not as promising. When I first read this book, I was working out with two very good friends and we had all started doing triathlons at about the same time. For a while we all did the drills but instead of seeing our swim times decrease, we all saw our times in races stay the same while our times in the pool were a lot slower. By the end of the season both of my friends had abandoned the book altogether. I kept using the book on and off and was a regular at a masters swim group. This would be my routine until I stopped racing five years ago.

At some point during the five years away from triathlon training and racing I read the book again and used it to structure my workouts. Total Immersion places a lot of emphasis on counting your strokes so most of the actual swim sets are structured around how many strokes you take and not how long it takes you to get from one end of the pool to another. Because of this element I sort of stopped timing myself altogether and shortened my time in the pool to about 30 minutes. This is specifically how I swam until spring of 2006.

In spring of 2006, I had planned to start racing but didn't because of a severely pulled hamstring. My rehab for this injury consisted of weekly rolfing and acupuncture treatments along with short sessions (about 30 minutes) of cycling and swimming. Because of the pain in my leg, I was forced to swim even slower and by and large all I could really manage to do were some of the basic TI drills. It was then I read the book for the third and final time.

For some reason reading the book the last time and spending all of that slow, focused time in the water I saw something I missed completely. For Total Immersion to work the way Laughlin envisions, you have to be able to completely connect with how your body is positioned in the water at each moment during the stroke cycle and make subtle adjustments to your position on the fly. This really isn't explicitly pointed out in the book at all. Even here for all of Laughlin's talk of looking at swimming in a different light, I think his falling back on using the term "feel for the water" while accurate does not convey the state of mind necessary for the drills to work properly.

Over the years as I've used these drills so many people have come up to me to ask why they aren't getting any faster or to say the drills are boring. Some have been to the TI seminars, enlisted TI coaches, and used the videos. What I also find telling is there aren't many people I've run into that come out of the water in that first wave that credit TI for this. Part of the fault for this I believe is Laughlin's in being unable to communicate what is really necessary for the drills to work the way people want. But part of the fault is also our society's. By and large our society is interested in quick solutions. That is why we buy our stuff on Amazon and our food at McDonalds. It is fast. We have it and we move on.

Terry Laughlin is exactly right when he says Total Immersion is like Yoga or Tai Chi. These are more than just workouts or stress relievers. They are both practices which are deeply spiritual in essence and require a commitment to a different way of seeing and living in order to integrate them fully and successfully into one's life. When you look at the numbers of people who actually study and understand Tai Chi or Yoga, you can understand why Total Immersion doesn't seem to work for large numbers of people.

The drills in Laughlin's book are really just a series of dots he leaves you to connect to create your own perfect stroke. The book is sort of like "connect the dots" meets a "coloring book" of effective swimming. If you were to go to a Tai Chi class taught by a master, you will be shown a small series of movements which are a blueprint on how to move your body from one point in space to another. Each week this is repeated until you master this series and a new series can be introduced. In my own experience with Tai Chi, my teacher taught a form consisting of only 39 postures. Within each posture I was shown no more than 3 movements. Each week I practiced the 3 new movements and added them to what had come before. It was almost 18 months before I had learned all 39 postures. It was at this point my teacher said, "Now you understand the basic movements, create your own Tai Chi form."

Total Immersion for me was no different. After the third reading I decided to give TI the same commitment I gave Tai Chi and now give my Yoga practice. First I mastered all the drills. I noticed which ones made me faster in the water and which ones didn't. I focused on my body in the water and how it moved there. Once I mastered the drills I found made me faster, then I refined them. Now the majority of my practices focus on two objectives. The sensation of sliding through water and counting my strokes. I work out either 30 or 45 minutes depending on what I feel like doing. My workouts consist of anywhere from 60% to 75% drill work. I swim sets no longer than 300 meters at once. And now I am faster in the water. This year I lopped 3 minutes off my 800 meter open water swim time. So the bottom line is Total Immersion does work, but for it to do so you have to be willing to change how you relate to swimming, how you relate to the water, and how you relate to yourself. In this respect, Total Immersion isn't just the title of a book, it speaks to the level of commitment you have to be willing to give in order to change everything for the better.