Unsung hero(in)es: Chrissie Wellington

I'm not sure how much recognition Chrissie Wellington gets in the UK outside of triathlon circles (two worlds in which I no longer live) but, she does have an MBE, so at least the Queen is paying attention. As far as I am concerned, she cannot get enough recognition for her incredible achievements.

I think everyone has heard of Paula Radcliffe by now. Chrissie Wellington is the Paula Radcliffe of the triathlon world. It may be a cliché to compare one athlete to another from a different discipline, but it seems the only way to get the due respect in anything less than a lifetime. What reminded me to write something about Chrissie Wellington was reading last night that she not only won the Ironman in South Africa in record time, but her marathon leg was faster than anyone else (including the men, in case you were wondering). But this kind of result is no longer surprising now after the shockwaves that reverberated through the triathlon world in 2007 when she came from nowhere to win the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.

At first glance her results look like an anomaly:  for example, last year, in Roth, she recorded a bike leg of 4:36:33 and a marathon of 2:48:54! I could go on, but you can find all this stuff in Wikipedia. The best article I have seen, however, is by the guys at Science of Sport who analyze whether she really is an anomaly or whether the gap between men and women in Triathlon is now where it should be as compared to other sports. All this is written in their usual style, being very careful not to detract from these amazing athletes.

What I like about Chrissie from reading her regular columns in triathlon magazines, is that she seems to have a contagious energy and healthy sense of humour. After all, she was unable to defend her crown in last year's Ironman World Championships due to illness and she has had her fair share of bike crashes and broken bones, so these two qualities will have come in handy. I'm just disappointed she didn't chose Ironman Brazil this year...

Week 13 / 20

If only all weeks were like this one. To start with, the weather was fantastic - as hot as 30 degrees which, although it's more conducive to lounging by the pool, it's most likely to be close to the conditions of the Ironman in Brazil. The only day I really suffered this week was on Wednesday, when I had to effectively do the bike leg of a Half Ironman at Half Ironman pace - on the indoor turbo trainer. It is very hard to motivate yourself on the turbo trainer, especially when the only goal is to elevate your pulse rate - there is no indication of how well you are doing (speed or power) and without the wind chill you sweat buckets. Other than that, the other runs and rides were very enjoyable and I made an effort to find some unexplored territory.

I read recently that in cycling jargon, you "get your seat" after some 400 miles or so - meaning that your derriere becomes tough enough to take the punishment doled out by the saddle. Maybe the fact that you have to sit so far forward on the saddle in triathlon means it takes longer to get your seat. I am still definitely suffering, that's for sure. I did find a couple of tricks that are helping, though. One is to smear chamois cream on the chamois itself (this is the padded insert in the shorts) rather than on me (I suppose there's a good clue in the name of the cream). The other is to really concentrate on a smooth, circular pedaling action to minimize the shifting around on the seat.

On Saturday I had a fairly hard "brick" session which consisted of a 3 hour bike ride (including series of high intensity climbs) followed by an hour run. It left me feeling shattered for the rest of the day and worried that I wouldn't recover in time for the long ride the next day. (It's funny how other people say things like "oh, you can run down to the shops - it will be good for your training". How to explain that - more so than for "normal people", my training has been carefully and scientifically measured out - not a minute more, not a minute less. In fact, I think that one reason my back got overloaded a few weeks ago was having to fill the diesel tank for the central heating with two 40 liter containers.) I had planned to meet up with some friends for the long ride but, as they were starting some 30 kilometers from my house, it meant getting up at about half six. I went to bed a bit late in the end and kind of accidentally forgot to put my iPhone cum alarm clock on charge. Of course, I woke up at 8 and ended up having to do the ride on my own (as usual...). It was probably just as well as my friends had opted for a ride in the mountains around Madrid (la Sierra) which would have been tough to do at my low intensity. I went on a relatively flat course (by Madrid's standards) instead with only 1,138m of climbs and I did the 5 hours at 30.8kph the whole way, and it felt easy (average heart rate 121bpm). Looking at the map, I was only 2km away from cycling out of the county (La Comunidad de Madrid) and into Castilla la Mancha - I'll save that for next Sunday, when I have a 6 hour ride planned. Amazingly, my legs didn't feel heavy at any point. I did get a bit sunburnt, though, because I didn't apply the suntan lotion on my back, a part of which I hadn't realized was exposed to the harsh Spanish sun the whole way. I'm convinced that I was able to recover so well from the day before because I slept 8 hours solid and I had stuffed myself with high protein foods.

As an aside, have any of you had these kind of problems with your Garmin 310XT? Look at this crazy graph of my heartrate during a 2 hour run last week. There is just no way that it was really doing that (for a start, my maximum heart rate is 191bpm). When it goes haywire like that, the calories that get calculated are much lower than normal when you'd expect the opposite
.

Typically I get this kind of behaviour for the first 8 minutes of a run (not on the bike, for some reason) and I put it down to the contacts on the chest strap needing a bit of sweat to make good contact. For a while I thought it might be due to some interference as it would always stop at more or less the same place (but then, the first 8 minutes of my runs tend to cover the same ground) and I am wondering whether that is the explanation this time. Perhaps it comes from aliens trying to read our minds. A more likely explanation could be that the batteries on the chest strap are running out but, either way, I would like to avoid this happening in the Ironman. It's funny how you tend to give a personality to a gadget and a brand. Had this happened with any other watch, I would be cursing it and saying it was a load of rubbish. But my Garmin has been with me along every step of the way and it is such a joy to use that it is hard to get angry with it. On the other hand, if someone told me that it runs a Windows operating system, then I would be slagging it off no end.

Top Triathlon iPhone Apps

OK, OK, this is an unashamed attempt to divert more traffic to my site (its all for a good cause, after all!). If you are new here, welcome, and check out some of the other posts on the blog.

My coach told me today that we were back on track and that I should enjoy the training and not get obsessed. That's like telling me not to think of an elephant (damn, just did). I am currently obsessed with my iPhone - its the best thing I have bought in ages, or at least it is for the moment. I'm downloading so many applications it's just as well that a lot of them are free. Anyway, here are the ones that get to stay on my phone:

MyFitnessPal

I use this app for counting my calories. There are loads of apps around that do this but this one has the advantage of an offline mode (with a more restricted database) and it is very nicely thought out which makes the pain of logging every single thing that you eat bearable. It also syncs with an online account so you can be sure of not losing any data and you can also log stuff from your work computer and so on. The only problem I have with it - and this is an inherent problem of the absurd activity of counting calories in the first place - is that if I type in "chocolate croissant", for example, I am confronted with about 20 different equally plausible options, varying from 160 to 575kcal, and that's not counting "pain au chocolat". You have to use your common sense and, more importantly, try not to cheat. Some competing apps have a barcode scanner that automatically identifies the food you are eating (assuming it is in the database) - but, if you are mainly eating packaged food then perhaps you are at cross purposes. I use it to make sure that I pack in more calories on the days when I am training longer or harder as well as to help me eat "conscionably" in between main mealtimes. Typically, I try to budget myself for enough calories to spend on dinner and a small bedtime snack. The app gives a breakdown in terms of how much protein, fat and carbs you are taking in, as well as vitamin C, calcium, sodium, etc, but you have to take this with a pinch of salt (excuse the pun) as not all of the entries in the database have this kind of detail. Still, it helps me skew my diet towards a higher protein and lower carb based one à la Paleo. Since I started using it around September last year, I have gone from about 12% body fat to about 7% (according to the same - albeit (albethey?) flattering - bathroom scales).

Pacemaker

You probably won't come across this little app unless you specifically search for it, it's very simple and low profile. It does all the conversions between pace, speed and race times but it also has a neat little prediction feature (based on Jack Daniel's or equivalent tables) that gives you a good idea of what kind of time you could shoot for in a Marathon, say, based on your Half Marathon time.

Run PaceCalc

This app is similar in many ways to the basic functionality of Pacemaker, but it has the quirky extra that, based on your race times, you can see at a glance where you would have ranked in a number of important Marathon and Ironman races around the world (based on the run time alone).

Strands

There are a lot of apps like this to choose from (for example, the one by Nike) from but this one is the best I have seen. It measures your speed as you run / bike, keeps track of the route, allows you to take photos along the route and plays your favourite music with an optional commentary of how many minutes or miles you have covered over the top. You can even see who else is running or riding right now near you. As I have my Garmin I don't use it so much for these features but more to get ideas of new routes - especially when I am traveling. One cute feature is that you can send a "pep message" to another person who happens to be training. I suppose you could also ask them to help you fix a puncture but I've yet to try it.

Mundo TRI

This may not be of interest to many of you as it is in Portuguese (although it has nice pictures!). It gives you access to all the past editions of the Brazilian Mundo TRI magazine and it is completely free! Of course I am particularly interested in it as I will be doing my Ironman in Brazil but, being fluent in Spanish, I have to say that Portuguese (especially written) is very easy to understand. And I like the pictures.

GymTimer

The other day I had to do loads of isometric exercises, each one for 30 seconds. "Isometric" means without moving - the classic example is the "phantom chair" where you sit with your back to the wall but with no support under your legs. (When I have do these type of exercises in the gym I often get the piss taken out of me because many of them look as though you are trying to overcome a case of bad constipation.) I needed a countdown timer that would simply beep every X seconds. You'd think it would be easy to find, right? I went through about three, beautifully fashioned countdown timers that did not have the option to reset automatically before I found this rather basic looking but functional one.

Training Log

This is a very simple app indeed, and that is all I need. I fill in a training log which I send to my trainer once a week; if I am away from work (where I keep it) for any length of time, then it is surprising how quickly I forget what I did or, what is more common, I start to play down the subjective load of the session or neglect to note any aches and pains which could otherwise develop into full blown injuries. I use this app to note down my training at the weekends, on holidays or on business trips.

Route Planner

With this app you can very quickly chalk up a route for the bike (or running, for that matter) complete with elevation data. It's quite handy if you have to improvise while out on the road.

Sleep Cycle

Perhaps not particularly targeted at triathletes, sleep is an important part of the equation (training + nutrition + sleep = good results). This amazing little app works by using the iPhone's accelerometer to monitor how much you are tossing and turning during the night - it can then work out which phase of sleep you are in. Here's the clever bit: you set your alarm to wake you up at no later than 7am, let's say, but with a margin of half an hour before. Why would you want to get up any earlier than strictly necessary? Well, if you happen to be in the optimum moment of your sleep cycles at some point in that window, the app will wake you up slightly before 7am and you will feel much more rested and awake. It also keeps graphs of your sleep patterns so you can easily see how much and how well you have been sleeping, which can sometimes give a clue to lacklustre performance in training.

File Viewer

Again, not specific to Triathlon by any means, but this is what I use to view my training schedules. They are pretty much etched in my mind anyway, so much time do I spend thinking about how I am going to fit them in, but the details of how long to go at what intensity with how much rest are important. My coach sends me my training plans in Excel and this app happily reads them.

WeatherPro

The weather is all too important when planning a long ride - in 6 hours it can change from being sunny to pouring with rain (well, not so much in Madrid but you get the idea). As with all weather forecasts it doesn't seem to be terribly accurate going several days out, but it has good by the hour information including important data like wind speed and humidity which can influence performance greatly.

Heart rate

The difficulty I have with measuring my resting heart rate is that, by the time I remember to measure it, I'm drinking my coffee over breakfast and my pulse is already racing with the stresses of the day ahead. Occasionally, I have to admit, I have gone to bed with my Garmin recording my heart rate all night, and looked at the heart rate on waking but this is extreme, even for me. So, wouldn't it be cool if your alarm clock could take your pulse for you when you woke up? Incredibly, this app is able to measure fairly accurately your pulse using the flash to illuminate your finger as it covers the camera on the back of the iPhone. It sounds so unlikely to work that I nearly relegated it to the ever growing category of apps that claim to read your mind / read your fingerprints / warm your hands etc. It actually works. Having said that, I still never remember to measure my heart rate upon waking but it wins any "I bet your phone can't do this" competitions, if you go in for that sort of thing.

 TriReader

If you want to keep abreast of all the news and gossip in the Triathlon world, then this is your bag. It pools feeds from various blogs and forums into one place.

Quinoa

Today I finally got around to translating quinoa into Spanish: it's "quinoa". It's something I've only heard of from reading Triathlon magazines but, today, I thought I'd actually try it out. What a discovery! I've been trying to cut down on refined carbohydrates like bread, pasta and rice and it is actually quite hard to do. They are so convenient. Brown rice takes forever to cook and I don't have even half of forever to spare. Quinoa looks a bit like couscous, takes a bit longer to cook (10-15 minutes), is absolutely delicious and is stuffed chockablock with proteins (according to the label, 100g of quinoa contains no less than 12.5g of protein!). So I think I have found the solution to what to complement my sirloin and tuna steaks with.

Bars

(DISCLAIMER: I buy these bars with my own good money and I have no incentive other than to support these companies so I can keep on buying them.)

If you've been following this blog you'll have read about what supplements I am taking on a daily basis as well as what I take immediately prior to a competition and during. I've also talked about calorie counting and the kind of foods I try to eat / avoid. But I haven't said a great deal about what I eat and drink during my training sessions.

I try to do all of the early morning workouts (bar the long ride on a Sunday) on an empty stomach. Even though I wake up slightly hungry, just like anyone else, the fact is that the glycogen stores in the muscles have had some time to replenish during the night. I completely avoid all so-called "sports drinks" and energy gels except in competition. Other than water, the only refueling I allow for is any training session that lasts over 2 hours and in that case, I reach for

Mule bars

There are three things that set the Mule bars aside from the competition in my opinion. Firstly, they are made with "natural" ingredients (of course anything can be called "natural" - I mean, unprocessed and therefore high in nutritional value). Secondly, they are calorifically quite dense, packing about 350kcal per bar. And thirdly, they are absolutely delicious. It takes some self control not to eat them outside the strict training window (when it is better to eat slower release, low glycemic index foods) but, when I am starting to get hungry on the bike, I notice an almost alcoholic warmth as the ingredients start to simmer in my stomach. So far my favourite flavours are Apple Strüdel and Licourice Allsports. I will be using these in the Ironman to complement the sickly gels that I will be flushing down.

PhD Diet Whey Bars

My God, these are delicious. So far I have tried the chocolate cookie and the chocolate orange flavours - what's great about them is the slightly chewy texture. The best thing is that they give the highest ratio of protein per calorie that I have seen in a bar (25g grams for 181kcal). The protein powders are much more effective in this respect but I just can't get into the practice of mixing them with milk (even though I have a mini fridge at work) and cleaning the beaker afterwards. This second point is particularly important because whey protein starts smelling (literally) of rotten eggs by the next day. I'm not sure that these bars are the most natural, holistic or even healthy way to boost your protein but when they taste this good I just don't want to know.

Testosterone

Am I the only one losing my temper more often as a result of all this training? Is it just me losing my patience or are the training (or the supplements??) increasing my testosterone levels? My knuckles had just managed to heal before I punched an air pump in a petrol station yesterday for deflating rather than inflating my tires (and for charging me 1€ for the service). (It was a "digital" pump - for God's sake, why does everything have to be digital these days?). Now I have to wear the badge of grazed knuckles for several weeks at work and I am unable to make up a story (and, if I were to do so, people would probably assume that I had been in a fight) so I just sheepishly tell the truth to anyone that asks.

I have to allow for some margin, especially on the long bike rides. I actually like cycling but the flat tires, the loose bolts, the grease, the stretching gear cables just MAKE ME MAD! I've got a number of long rides still ahead of me - not to mention the races themselves - so let's see if I can "mentalize" myself beforehand so that any little mishap doesn't send me into a freaking frenzy. It is difficult not to get upset. You go to extreme lengths to be able to shoehorn in a 6 hour ride at the weekend, trying to disrupt things as little as possible, you know that it is probably THE most important training session of the week and you also know that, if you don't do it right now, you won't get another chance. So when something threatens the sacred training session, all the energy you put into making space for it in the first place, not to mention some of the energy you have psyched yourself up to expend in the session itself, comes tumbling out in the form of unadulterated rage and frustration. Once I was on my way, it was fine and I even enjoyed a large part of the ride, in spite of being on my own the whole time.

I found myself thinking wayward thoughts while I was on the road bike. I started to fantasize about my other two-wheeled love, the mountain bike. When my training volume was lower I favoured the road bike for its silent speed and elegance but now that it is not about speed but about how many beats my heart makes, I find myself lusting after the robustness of the mountain bike. I must have a fairly short memory after what happened a few weeks ago. Anyway, these are dangerous thoughts to have - it occurred to me that I would be quite capable of kicking in one of the wheels if I really lost it and that would be very expensive (and embarrassing) indeed.

Anyone else been suffering from road (bike) rage? I'll feel better if you tell me that there is. I'm hoping that I will be able to calm down a bit after all this.

Week 12 / 20

Just to confuse you, here week 12 is numbered 16

 I'm back, that little warning from my back putting the brakes on my training seems to be behind me now. This week went to plan, that is to say, more or less the original plan. I can't say that I am completely free of aches and pains but my troublesome shoulder is going the distance without giving me too much grief - whether it just needed a rest or whether the extra-curricular strengthening exercises I am doing are the reason only time will tell. Whatever the case, when I get to the taper before the Ironman I'll have time to fix myself up (and my bike, for that matter) good and proper.

It seems like I am not the only one falling to pieces with the training load: today the big chain ring worked its way loose - just as well I was only 500 meters from my house when it happened. I had a brilliant idea today which will seem all too obvious to anyone unlike myself, who is not used to doing anything by halves. I had a 6 hour ride to get in but my wife had just come back from Haiti the day before and so was knackered physically and emotionally - I couldn't really do my usual disappearing act leaving her with the kids and, yet, if I left it too late my beloved lunch would get screwed up. On the other hand, six hours on the turbo trainer would require more motivation than I can muster. So I did what would come naturally to most normal people - a compromise: I got up before the sun and did a couple of hours on the turbo trainer with a good DVD and then went out and did the rest on the road (and, amazingly, it didn't rain although it looked certain to do so). An added bonus of the turbo trainer is that I get a "discount" from my trainer of 20% on the riding time. This is because when you are riding on the roads you typically spend some of that time coasting or free-wheeling. I'm not sure I buy it really because I burn more calories per hour on the road than indoors, but it is true that that gets reflected in more time spent in higher heart rate zones. Anyway, as they say, best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The rest of the week was fine. I did a pleasant 1h30m run on Saturday, this time hitting my target heart rate (145bpm) all the way. Recently I have been slacking a little bit on the long runs, using my new found aerobic fitness to run at a lower heart rate rather than to run faster. I had to do series of high intensity both in running and on the bike on consecutive days but I more than recovered by the next day. My only regret this week is that today it was the Madrid Half Marathon, one of my favourite races and one I have not missed for the last three years. But it just didn't fit in to my plan: had my wife been around on Saturday I might have swapped the run and the long bike ride so that I could run (at low intensity) along the course but, let's face it, I would have ended up over-revving the engine had I found myself running with everybody egging us on.

Looking at the graphs of objective and subjective training load (carga objetiva / subjetiva), it seems as though the training is having an effect because my perceived (subjective) load is relatively lower than it was a number of weeks ago. I've got two more weeks of increasing intensity / volume ahead, a mini-taper before the Half Ironman in Lisbon and then a last build and taper cycle before the Ironman itself. The end is in sight.