I'm writing this while "watching" Alvin and the Chipmunks (3 - how on earth did they manage to get this far?).
On Wednesday I was suppose to do 3 hours on the bike - two of them easy and one medium. As it was a "school
day" and, especially as my wife was away and I had to look after the kids, there was no way I was going to be able to find three straight hours in the day so I did the next best thing: commute to work, spinning class at lunchtime and commute back.
Friday was a reasonably tough session on the treadmill: 20 minutes at 13.5 kph, 20 at 15.5 kph and 15 starting at 16 and finishing at 17 kph. Even though the amount of running I'm doing is much less than before, I'm still hitting the same speeds for a given heart rate.
I went for a three hour cycle ride (outside!) on Saturday morning. I still find the aero position tiring, especially on the bumpy roads around here.
The workout I was dreading all week was the "brick" (bike-run) of 2.5 hours that was set for Sunday morning. Dreading, because I knew I would have to do it all indoors because I had to look after the kids (which meant plugging them into the tv - not ideal for a beautiful Sunday morning). It wasn't too bad thanks (again) to The Wire which at least took the boredom out of it. After an hour at easy to medium intensity on the bike, an hour and a half at 13.5 kph was surprisingly easy, with my heart rate well below my aerobic threshold most of the time. I even wondered whether I should measure the treadmill again to see whether it has got even slower.
Minggu, 11 Maret 2012
Jumat, 09 Maret 2012
Soft Star Sale!
(Disclaimer: I have nothing to gain by plugging Soft Star, other than helping ensure that they stay in business!)
Soft Star Shoes, the makers of my minimalist running shoes of choice, are having a sale. I just picked up a couple of pairs of shoes for half price - enough to last me to the end of the year and beyond. The second pair I bought seem to be lasting much longer than the first, which I got about 1,000 km out of before having to buy a new pair.
Kamis, 08 Maret 2012
Lesson 4: Fuhgeddaboudit
A combination of energy draining meetings and having to switch my training around so that I ended up doing my heavy weights circuit before the swim meant that I was not in the best frame of mind for a lesson. I suppose that there is always going to be a bit of "two steps (strokes?) forward and one step back". We did some drills to emphasize the body roll (hands crossed over chest, rolling from side to side while keeping the head looking down) as well as breaking the stroke at the point where the recovery hand is just by the goggles before initiating the catch with the other hand. The results weren't great so we wrote today's lesson off. To be continued...
Selasa, 06 Maret 2012
Lesson 3: Cadence
Another of the leftovers from having learnt the Total Immersion method is that I have a very low cadence (stroke rate). Obviously, speed can be thought of as the product of cadence and stroke length: Total Immersion puts the emphasis on eeking out the maximum glide from every stroke which is good, to a point. It is all very well being ultra efficient (which, by the way, is hardly the case for me) but when you are competing you have to get speed from both length and cadence. Add to that the fact that Triathlon swims generally take place in open water with thousands of other people thrashing about and it quickly becomes apparent that you are not going to get much out of
The idea is to coordinate the entry of the hand with the pull phase of the arm already in the water. The "pull phase" follows immediately on from the catch that we worked on last week. We practised this doing drills where we broke the swim cycle (with a "dead spot") just at the point after the catch, timing the start of the next stroke to coincide with the entry of the recovering arm. My cadence certainly increased but it started to spiral a little out of control.
The article also makes the point that you should increase your cadence for open water swimming to account for the chop and wake from other swimmers, otherwise you are likely to come to a complete halt in between strokes.
As I have been saying lately, I think Total Immersion has helped me instil some good habits but I have gone too far the other way. Now it is time to put some speed back into the equation and, while doing so, hopefully not lose too much of the efficiency and length.
The idea is to coordinate the entry of the hand with the pull phase of the arm already in the water. The "pull phase" follows immediately on from the catch that we worked on last week. We practised this doing drills where we broke the swim cycle (with a "dead spot") just at the point after the catch, timing the start of the next stroke to coincide with the entry of the recovering arm. My cadence certainly increased but it started to spiral a little out of control.
I've bought a gadget to help swim with a more appropriate cadence. Actually, this time it was coach Luis' idea, not mine, even though any excuse to buy another gadget is a good one. It hasn't arrived yet but it is a small device you place in your swimming cap that beeps every so often, like a metronome.
I've found precious little information on the internet regarding swim cadence or stroke rates suitable for an Ironman or a Half Ironman but, judging from videos on Youtube, the faster swimmers are going like the clappers. Recently, I read an interesting article in Triathlon Plus magazine with a rough guide which I found very useful:
30-45 strokes per minute: extremely slow stroke rate, certainly over-gliding with a long pause.
46-54 spm: low stroke rate, probably due to dead spot at front of stroke.
55-64 spm: moderate stroke rate that should probably be higher in open water swims
65-74 spm: good rhythm for open water
75-94 spm: very fast stroke rate. Most elite triathletes swim at 90 spm
95-120 spm: extremely fast stroke rate for 1:05 /100m pace
The article also makes the point that you should increase your cadence for open water swimming to account for the chop and wake from other swimmers, otherwise you are likely to come to a complete halt in between strokes.
As I have been saying lately, I think Total Immersion has helped me instil some good habits but I have gone too far the other way. Now it is time to put some speed back into the equation and, while doing so, hopefully not lose too much of the efficiency and length.
Senin, 05 Maret 2012
Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome
I felt crap for most of the weekend, no doubt because I was fighting off some kind of virus that had already affected half of my household. It was something very similar to when I ran the Marathon in Valencia. These days I rarely seem to actually get "ill" (touch wood), that is to say, with tangible symptoms - but, every so often, I notice that my energy levels are very low and training even at low intensity is like doing a hard workout. It doesn't happen frequently enough for me to worry that it might be "all in my mind" or an excuse to get out of training but it does remind me of something that happened to me when I was 20. I wonder if there are some psychological scars left over from that time.
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Summer 1992, Saturday of Eights Week, Oxford. It was the last day of Summer Eights, the biggest inter-collegiate rowing event of the calendar (the Oxford-Cambridge Boatrace being inter-University). All the "Blues" were back in the college boats after their victory over Cambridge. That year I had decided not to try out for the Blue Boat after my experience the year before but rather to focus on my academic work. The Summer Eights is what is known as a "bumps race". Around 160 crews of 8 rowers and a cox (who steers the boat) take part on the narrow tributary of the Thames known as the Isis. As it is too narrow for the crews to race each other side by side, instead they all start equally spaced by 1 and a half boat lengths and must try to catch ("bump") the crew in front before they are themselves bumped. The competition takes place over four evenings so that crews may advance 4 places in the rankings that year (or even more if they manage to perform an "over bump"). If a crew bumps the crew ahead on each of the 4 occasions, then the crew members are entitled to get their "oars" - an oar with the details of the crew and their weights painted on the blade. (If you ever go to the Cambridge Blue pub in Cambridge, on the street where I used to live, you'll see a blade of mine hanging there. It was too big to move to Spain!). The male and female crews that finish at the top of the rankings on the Saturday are crowned the Head Crews and get to burn their boat and have their names chalked up over an arch in the college quad. (Strictly speaking, they burn a crappy old wooden boat - it wouldn't do to burn one of those nice expensive plastic boats they race in.)
On the Saturday of Eights Week, the Pembroke Men's First Eight in which I was rowing was at number two on the river, just behind Oriel who rather boringly tended to be in first place most of the time in those days. If I remember right, we had bumped up a couple of times but failed to catch them on the Friday night. We decided to try something new: "hatchet blades". Hatchets - with an asymmetrical blade that supposedly gripped the water better - had just started to be accepted and, indeed, Oriel and some of the other top crews were already using them. We had been offered to try them in a tune up race we in Nottingham but the Captain had decided that we shouldn't scupper our chances in that race by changing something at the last minute. A wise choice had it been an important race but now, here we were, with the same dilemma. This time we chose to try them out for the very first time.
What the others in the crew were not aware of is that I had blacked out during the day. It is the only time I have ever fainted. I just put it down to nerves. But when I was in the boat, pulling for all I was worth, I could tell something was up. I felt incredibly weak and it seemed that all I could do was just move up and down the boat with the rest to avoid spearing the guy in front in the back with the handle of my oar (or being speared myself, for that matter). I felt like I was letting down the others, not to mention myself. That evening I felt an exhaustion I had never felt before, like I could hardly keep my eyes open.
A few days later I tried rowing again, this time in an Oxford City Four that was headed for Henley Royal Regatta. This time I couldn't even row easy ("light pressure") and I had to ask them to row me back to shore. I went to see a doctor whose words I remember exactly: "If I were a betting man," he said, "I'd say you've got Glandular Fever". Glandular Fever or Mononucleosis is also known as "The Kissing Disease" as it is easily passed by saliva. I don't know where I got it from because my girlfriend at the time was fine (maybe she was immune) but it's something that could even be transmitted by sharing water bottles which was common enough.
A test confirmed the doctors prognosis but the symptoms soon made it clear beyond any doubt. I spent at least a week with my glands completely swollen and almost unable to swallow food. It wasn't nice but it was nothing compared to what was to come.
Some people seem to bounce back right away - in fact, the same thing happened to another guy in the crew some months later (no, we didn't kiss) and he was able to resume training within weeks. I felt listless, lethargic and suffered from panic attacks where my heart rate would start racing for no reason as well as sudden, non-negotiable needs to sleep immediately. The panic attacks made me susceptible to blow ups, where I would fly into a rage. I discovered that smoking a cigarette helped calm me down and this is when I started smoking albeit it one a day to begin with. I found that the fatigue would come in waves and I was convinced that their was some psychological element to it, as if just worrying about it happening was enough to make it happen. This didn't make it any less real or any easier to deal with (if not completely the opposite).
It took months and months to get better - even a year later I was still suffering from it. I was now starting my final year at University which would determine 100% of my final results. My mum did me a great favour without knowing it at the time: her suggestion that I should take a year out of University to recover made me very determined to finish my degree on time, but it wasn't easy. The only long lasting casualty was my fitness. I felt cheated of all the hard work I had done to get so fit and I couldn't bring myself to go through it all again. With hindsight, I think that this attitude was very immature and self-pitying. On the other hand, the way that I had got to that point was through gruelling training which I saw as a necessary evil, thriving only on winning competitions. As soon as the reward was removed and I no longer had a coach cracking a whip over my back, it was easier just to slip into a more "normal" lifestyle. In any case, it would have happened sooner or later. It is a classic pattern: as soon as the results no longer justify the investment - something that comes to all but the professionals at some point or other - you drop out and focus on other aspects of your life like building a career and a family. So I shouldn't kid myself that things would have turned out much differently had it not been for Glandular Fever.
Now with what I have read about fatigue and Tim Noakes' Central Governor Theory - that fatigue is something manufactured by our brains, not something physiological - it is interesting to think about that kind of post viral fatigue I suffered from all those years ago. It seems like it is something psychological but, equally, it is just as insurmountable as the fatigue you feel while you are running the last few kilometres of a Marathon. The question is why is the brain telling us to slow down and what can we do to temper it?
.jpg)
Summer 1992, Saturday of Eights Week, Oxford. It was the last day of Summer Eights, the biggest inter-collegiate rowing event of the calendar (the Oxford-Cambridge Boatrace being inter-University). All the "Blues" were back in the college boats after their victory over Cambridge. That year I had decided not to try out for the Blue Boat after my experience the year before but rather to focus on my academic work. The Summer Eights is what is known as a "bumps race". Around 160 crews of 8 rowers and a cox (who steers the boat) take part on the narrow tributary of the Thames known as the Isis. As it is too narrow for the crews to race each other side by side, instead they all start equally spaced by 1 and a half boat lengths and must try to catch ("bump") the crew in front before they are themselves bumped. The competition takes place over four evenings so that crews may advance 4 places in the rankings that year (or even more if they manage to perform an "over bump"). If a crew bumps the crew ahead on each of the 4 occasions, then the crew members are entitled to get their "oars" - an oar with the details of the crew and their weights painted on the blade. (If you ever go to the Cambridge Blue pub in Cambridge, on the street where I used to live, you'll see a blade of mine hanging there. It was too big to move to Spain!). The male and female crews that finish at the top of the rankings on the Saturday are crowned the Head Crews and get to burn their boat and have their names chalked up over an arch in the college quad. (Strictly speaking, they burn a crappy old wooden boat - it wouldn't do to burn one of those nice expensive plastic boats they race in.)
On the Saturday of Eights Week, the Pembroke Men's First Eight in which I was rowing was at number two on the river, just behind Oriel who rather boringly tended to be in first place most of the time in those days. If I remember right, we had bumped up a couple of times but failed to catch them on the Friday night. We decided to try something new: "hatchet blades". Hatchets - with an asymmetrical blade that supposedly gripped the water better - had just started to be accepted and, indeed, Oriel and some of the other top crews were already using them. We had been offered to try them in a tune up race we in Nottingham but the Captain had decided that we shouldn't scupper our chances in that race by changing something at the last minute. A wise choice had it been an important race but now, here we were, with the same dilemma. This time we chose to try them out for the very first time.
What the others in the crew were not aware of is that I had blacked out during the day. It is the only time I have ever fainted. I just put it down to nerves. But when I was in the boat, pulling for all I was worth, I could tell something was up. I felt incredibly weak and it seemed that all I could do was just move up and down the boat with the rest to avoid spearing the guy in front in the back with the handle of my oar (or being speared myself, for that matter). I felt like I was letting down the others, not to mention myself. That evening I felt an exhaustion I had never felt before, like I could hardly keep my eyes open.
A few days later I tried rowing again, this time in an Oxford City Four that was headed for Henley Royal Regatta. This time I couldn't even row easy ("light pressure") and I had to ask them to row me back to shore. I went to see a doctor whose words I remember exactly: "If I were a betting man," he said, "I'd say you've got Glandular Fever". Glandular Fever or Mononucleosis is also known as "The Kissing Disease" as it is easily passed by saliva. I don't know where I got it from because my girlfriend at the time was fine (maybe she was immune) but it's something that could even be transmitted by sharing water bottles which was common enough.
A test confirmed the doctors prognosis but the symptoms soon made it clear beyond any doubt. I spent at least a week with my glands completely swollen and almost unable to swallow food. It wasn't nice but it was nothing compared to what was to come.
Some people seem to bounce back right away - in fact, the same thing happened to another guy in the crew some months later (no, we didn't kiss) and he was able to resume training within weeks. I felt listless, lethargic and suffered from panic attacks where my heart rate would start racing for no reason as well as sudden, non-negotiable needs to sleep immediately. The panic attacks made me susceptible to blow ups, where I would fly into a rage. I discovered that smoking a cigarette helped calm me down and this is when I started smoking albeit it one a day to begin with. I found that the fatigue would come in waves and I was convinced that their was some psychological element to it, as if just worrying about it happening was enough to make it happen. This didn't make it any less real or any easier to deal with (if not completely the opposite).
It took months and months to get better - even a year later I was still suffering from it. I was now starting my final year at University which would determine 100% of my final results. My mum did me a great favour without knowing it at the time: her suggestion that I should take a year out of University to recover made me very determined to finish my degree on time, but it wasn't easy. The only long lasting casualty was my fitness. I felt cheated of all the hard work I had done to get so fit and I couldn't bring myself to go through it all again. With hindsight, I think that this attitude was very immature and self-pitying. On the other hand, the way that I had got to that point was through gruelling training which I saw as a necessary evil, thriving only on winning competitions. As soon as the reward was removed and I no longer had a coach cracking a whip over my back, it was easier just to slip into a more "normal" lifestyle. In any case, it would have happened sooner or later. It is a classic pattern: as soon as the results no longer justify the investment - something that comes to all but the professionals at some point or other - you drop out and focus on other aspects of your life like building a career and a family. So I shouldn't kid myself that things would have turned out much differently had it not been for Glandular Fever.
Now with what I have read about fatigue and Tim Noakes' Central Governor Theory - that fatigue is something manufactured by our brains, not something physiological - it is interesting to think about that kind of post viral fatigue I suffered from all those years ago. It seems like it is something psychological but, equally, it is just as insurmountable as the fatigue you feel while you are running the last few kilometres of a Marathon. The question is why is the brain telling us to slow down and what can we do to temper it?
Minggu, 04 Maret 2012
Week 1 / 7
I'd forgotten how time consuming Triathlon training was compared to Marathon training. Even "just" for a Half Ironman, there were weekend sessions along the lines of 3 and a half hours on the bike followed by a two hour run. I told Jonathan that I wanted to do the bare minimum (in terms of time) to be able to complete the Half Ironman but without worrying too much about the time. The basic shape of the training is a couple of weights sessions a week, a couple of swimming sessions (that I have decided to make purely technical for the moment), a couple of hard sessions of series on the bike plus a medium intensity run, a long ride and a "brick" (bike + run) at the weekend. So, notably, no running series which I am convinced is what has made me so much faster lately. Given that I am (perhaps unwisely) trying to get a qualifying sub-38 minutes time in a 10K race the weekend after the Half Ironman, I think I will have to slot some in towards the end.
The training went reasonably well this week: I did series of 10 by 4 minutes and 8 by 5 minutes at my anaerobic threshold on the bike. I don't feel safe doing this on the road so I do it on the turbo trainer or on the spinning bike. The medium intensity run was only half an hour after a 20 minute warm up and this I did without too much strain at 15.5 kph. These days I am finding it hard to motivate myself to train outside, especially when I can watch an episode of The Wire when I train indoors. On Saturday afternoon, after the second set of series on the bike, I started to feel quite ill, with no appetite and no energy. I think I was fighting off a virus that has laid half my household ow this week. I felt better when I woke up on Sunday so I set off on my 3 hour cycle ride. But I noticed that my heart rate was some 10-15 beats higher than it would normally be riding at that intensity. If I stuck to my prescribed heart rate of 123 bpm, I would have to go along at a crawl. I took this as a sign that I was still not 100% and decided to bin the session. It's always hard to do this because you immediately feel better and then spend the rest of the day wondering if you should have continued after all. Having said that, I think it was the right decision. Hopefully I will be better tomorrow and I can commute to work on the bike to compensate a little.
The training went reasonably well this week: I did series of 10 by 4 minutes and 8 by 5 minutes at my anaerobic threshold on the bike. I don't feel safe doing this on the road so I do it on the turbo trainer or on the spinning bike. The medium intensity run was only half an hour after a 20 minute warm up and this I did without too much strain at 15.5 kph. These days I am finding it hard to motivate myself to train outside, especially when I can watch an episode of The Wire when I train indoors. On Saturday afternoon, after the second set of series on the bike, I started to feel quite ill, with no appetite and no energy. I think I was fighting off a virus that has laid half my household ow this week. I felt better when I woke up on Sunday so I set off on my 3 hour cycle ride. But I noticed that my heart rate was some 10-15 beats higher than it would normally be riding at that intensity. If I stuck to my prescribed heart rate of 123 bpm, I would have to go along at a crawl. I took this as a sign that I was still not 100% and decided to bin the session. It's always hard to do this because you immediately feel better and then spend the rest of the day wondering if you should have continued after all. Having said that, I think it was the right decision. Hopefully I will be better tomorrow and I can commute to work on the bike to compensate a little.
Lesson 2: High elbows
This time the focus was on keeping my elbows high during the recovery, with my forearm hanging down vertically towards the surface of the water. I tend to have more problems with my left arm - probably because it is the weakest and perhaps also because I breathe to the right. I found that I had to really think about rotating the shoulders (and hips) and almost doing a "monkey"gesture to ensure my hand cleared the water. We focussed on making sure that I was pulling my arm from the water using the elbow - otherwise I tended to drag it out of the water making a bit of a splash - and also on finishing the stroke completely.
We also went over the Early Vertical Forearm from lesson one. Rather than tilting the hand downwards, the idea was to think of "reaching over a barrel" - this rotation causes the elbow to rise up and you end up moving your body past your hand rather than scooting water backwards. A drill to get this point home was to lie in the water in the "superman" position and make little figures of eight with my hands: this little movement (the catch) was enough to move me forward, albeit very slowly.
Next week we will work on turning the 2 beat Total Immersion kick into more of a 6 beat kick.
We also went over the Early Vertical Forearm from lesson one. Rather than tilting the hand downwards, the idea was to think of "reaching over a barrel" - this rotation causes the elbow to rise up and you end up moving your body past your hand rather than scooting water backwards. A drill to get this point home was to lie in the water in the "superman" position and make little figures of eight with my hands: this little movement (the catch) was enough to move me forward, albeit very slowly.
Next week we will work on turning the 2 beat Total Immersion kick into more of a 6 beat kick.
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