Stretching a point

I was gratified to see that the media is starting to report the results of a scientific study which claims that stretching before a run has no positive (or, for that matter, negative effect) on the prevalence of injuries. I already mentioned some time ago, in a review I did of the book "The Runner's Body", the most convincing reason I have seen for not stretching: that, if you subscribe to the school of stretching, the one single adaption that the body makes in response to running that is detrimental, is that the tendons become stiffer. I prefer to believe in the wisdom of evolution. I'd be interested to see someone take the study one step further and to study the impact of stretching on performance. Apart from being boring and annoying, stretching has always seemed to me to be a kind of barbaric thing to do to your muscles, especially when they are either cold or just after exercising. Anecdotally, I have had no injuries since I completely stopped stretching (touch wood!) and I also feel that my running is "stiffer" and more springy (whether as a result of not stretching, it's impossible to say). Personally, I believe that the emphasis should be on warming up and warming down and, once you are sure that you are doing that properly, think about including some stretching. The new trend towards dynamic stretching seems to back up this idea, whereby the stretches are performed as part of a warm up routine.

Unsung heroes: Pertti Karpinnen

Check out the legs on this guy! Bear in mind that he is over 2 metres tall (6" 7) and, when he was competing, he weighed over a 100 kilos, so he is hardly what you would call of a stocky build.

The holy grail of the rowing world is the single scull: it is just you and your boat, noone else in the crew, not even a cox to steer you (you have to steer with your foot which is connected to the rudder, looking over your shoulder from time to time). Even the mighty Steve Redgrave "only" managed to get a gold in the single scull in the Commonwealth Games. (What a wonderfully British euphemism the word "Commonwealth" is.). As you are moving much more slowly than a rowing 8, your oars spend more time in the water and technique is much more of a factor: how quickly you "catch" the water, how smoothly you accelerate without ripping through the water, how good your rhythm is, how explosively you coordinate all the muscle groups (we're going to assume that balancing the boat is not an issue!).

So how come you haven't heard of arguably the most successful single sculler of all time? He won three Olympic gold medals at three consecutive Olympics, a feat only equalled by Vyacheslav Nikolayevich Ivanov. Maybe its due to the fact that it is impossible to remember where to put the double letters in his name (unless you are Finnish, of course) which makes it is harder to find him on the internet. I read that at the age of 52 he was able to row 2000 metres on the Concept II Rowing ergometer (typically found in most gyms) in 5 minutes and 52 seconds - that means pulling at a 500m split of 1:28 for 6 minutes! Try it sometime.

A week in the life of...

This is a fairly typical week - not a recovery week nor a peak week. The training time adds up to about 22 and a half hours (funny how only a couple of weeks ago that seemed like an insane amount). So here's how I fit it in:

Monday
- early morning swim before work
- half an hour run at lunchtime followed by 3 weights circuits and another half an hour run
- swimming lesson after work

Tuesday
- 50 minute commute to work on the bike
- spinning class at lunchtime where I ignore the instructor (sorry) and do 10 minutes warmup, 10 series of 4 minutes at high intensity and a 10 minute cooldown
- 50 minute commute back home on the bike

Wednesday
I'm supposed to do two and a half hours on the bike but as its an easy workout and I have the important long bike sessions at the weekend to build endurance, its OK to split
- 50 minute commute to work on the bike
- 1 hour "spinning" at lunchtime
- 50 minute commute back home on the bike

Thursday
- run to work in a roundabout way so that it takes 1 hour and 50 minutes to get there
- swim at lunchtime
- run / metro back home

Friday
- 60 minute extended commute to work on the bike
- swim at lunchtime
- 60 minute extended commute back home on the bike

Saturday
- 3 hours on the bike followed by progressively harder run of 1 hour and 20 minutes

Sunday
- 5 and a half hour ride with some medium intensity permitted

At the weekend, a friend asked me a very strange question: "how did I keep going?". At first I didn't understand him but then I realized, that this is a very good question that most people probably consider to be quite a normal one. The answer is that, most of the time, I don't think about it and the fact that I do most of my runs and rides as an out-and-back course or on the way to and from work means that the main motivation is simply to get back home or not be late for work. There are times when I think about my friend, Neil, and how I am doing this for his memory but, thankfully, those times are very few and I will save them for the competition itself. There are other times when I think of my family and the price they are paying for me to be doing all this training away from them, so I think that I should make the most of all that time and not waste a single minute. Funnily enough, I haven't yet resorted to thinking the obvious "I am doing this so that I can be an Ironman!" but I expect that will come as I get nearer to the date.

Rowing in the 90's

I've been wondering for some time now, how my training now compares with the training I did back in the days when I was rowing. I dug up some old documents I had stored away in a file in the 90s. I was surprised to see that the philosophy wasn't so different from now. This is an example of how the British rowing squad / hopefuls were training back then: the training we did in the Oxford University squad was similar given that there were several Olympic gold medalists in the team and we all had to do the same training because we were literally in the same boat. I find it funny to see that we were supposed to be doing most of our training at some kind of aerobic pulse rate because none of us actually had pulse meters back in those days, and there was definitely a kind of macho culture in which you had to be seen to be pulling hard all the time, even when we were doing so-called "half-pressure". We would be videoed from time to time and you could more or less gauge who was pulling the hardest by the relative size of the puddles that would well up around the "blade" (oar). Even if we had stuck to the program below, there were three sessions of series a week, two of them back-to-back, and at Oxford we weren't such "wusses" to take a day off, the only exception being if we had done a test or a race the day before.

I also found some stuff from the Oxford University Boat Club. According to the program, we were doing 5 two hour rowing sessions during the week plus two "double outings" of 3 hours on Saturday and Sunday, plus 3 weights / circuit training sessions in the mornings. That adds up to about 18 hours of training time a week, so it is fairly comparable to the sort of load I am under now - the difference is that I was only 18 years old back then and didn't have the kind of experience or one-to-one guidance to be able to assimilate that kind of load. On top of that was the pressure the hours of training + travelling + faffing about put on my academic work and my (then non-existent) student social life. I would do my "homework" in the van going back from the river in Wallingford, squashed up against the other rowers.

I was amused last night to read the following "recommendations for a healthy diet" - remember, we are talking about an 18 year old kid, away from home for the first time. My problem was that I just couldn't keep my weight up - in rowing, as your weight is supported by the water, there is much less penalty to being bulky than in running, say. Especially as the most objective tests we did were on a rowing ergometer where you weight is fully supported, bulkier was better. The recommendations for a healthy diet say that there are "no limits" on carbohydrates such as bread. Well, I used to sit in my college room and work my way through a loaf of bread with the aid of a toaster and a pot of marmite to make it more palatable. My rowing training coincided exactly with the time when lunch was available at college, so we managed to convince the staff to let us eat with them, at the slightly earlier time. Dinner was served in a hall and we had to wear - get this - a shirt, a suit jacket and a gown(!) - many times I would have to slip these items on over my all-in-one lycra rowing suit if I were to make it in time. We perfected a little trick whereby we would eat the main course or pudding so quickly that we could jump to another table and get served again: sometimes we would eat 3 main courses and 3 puddings. What an incredible metabolism I had at that age! Still, now knowing that "you are what you eat" and that, had I been eating properly, I might have been able to tolerate the training better, it makes me slightly sad. I hated the training - it was boring and hard and seemed pointless. Pointless because there were times when we would train more and more only to get more sluggish. I vividly remember one day our coach asking us whether we thought we were training too much - after a few nervous glances someone said (I even remember who was first to say it) "No, of course not". The fact was that I got ill very often, missing days of training and damaging the confidence the other members of the crew had in me. One time I got so ill and depressed that I must have scared the hell out of my dad on the phone because he turned up on my doorstep a few hours later after catching the first train from Cambridge. The final straw was when I managed to inflame a tendon in my wrist from the boat overbalancing and catching my oar in an awkward position. This was after 5 months of the 6 months of training before the Oxford Cambridge Boatrace (I had been selected for the Isis - Goldie race between the second boats). So you can imagine I was very pissed off and upset when I got "binned" - as they so tenderly called it - by Rupert Obholzer, but I was also incredibly relieved.

 

All this happened exactly 20 years ago and yet it is still like a little splinter under my skin that, however much I pick and hack away, I can't dig it out. It was my first real experience of failure and of being rejected by "the group". I think it is one of the reasons I have chosen such a solitary sport as triathlon and decided to train in such a lonely way. I don't want to depend on anyone else or on anyone else's opinion: this is my personal test and noone can say whether or not I get to take part or not. It has occurred to me that crossing the line at the Ironman in Brazil can, in my mind, be equated to competing in the Boatrace and will hopefully allow me to dig out that annoying little splinter at last.

That's me, just behind Olympic gold medalist Sir Matthew Pinsent (really!)

Week 8 / 20

This was an "easy" week in terms of training (except for a tough BRick = Bike+Run workout on Sunday) but it was a hard week in terms of dealing with obsessions - perhaps the surplus energy I had was translated into excess brain activity... I finally admitted to myself that I was unable to maintain the aero position as I had it set up for more than a few minutes - let alone the 5 hours plus that the Ironman would entail. I started to convince myself that the only solution would be to buy a Triathlon specific bike, which has a geometry that allows you to get down low but, at the same time, be relatively comfortable. I went as far as going to a bike shop and getting a quote for a Cervélo P2 (which, by the way, in Spanish is pronounced "pedos" which means "farts"). I felt like I was cheating on my bike. I'm sure it was already getting suspicious after I washed it the other day for the first time in ages, as if to make up for my wayward thoughts, and it has been acting very sensitively lately. Luckily the bike shop attendant had more sense than I did and certainly more than his desire to sell bikes. He said I should get properly measured up before taking the plunge (again) and that, in the process, they could set up my road bike properly. Once I realized that it wasn't so simple as just walking out of the shop with the perfect bike and that I would have to wait (something I am very bad at), I decided to fiddle about with my bike some more and see how long I could tolerate the aero position on the turbo trainer. I found it helped to separate the elbow pads a little and to angle the bars up slightly. It looks less like I am fighting against the geometry of the bike and instead accepting the slight upwards slope it enforces. Although the main objective was to get more comfortable, I think I end up hunkering down slightly more than before and the straw of my drinking bottle is now in the perfect position to take a sip from. I've seen even top Ironman athletes with a position as "upright" as mine so, as long as I can hold it, it should be fine. I really probably should do a bike fit at some point but I am worried they are going to convince me I need to buy some ridiculously expensive orthotics for my bike shoes - I have no problems with my legs on the bike (touch wood) and I have a prejudice about orthotics from running, although this is a different thing altogether I suppose.

The Sunday session was just what I needed to restore my motivation: a challenging but mostly enjoyable outing of 4 hours on the bike at easy pace followed by an hour and 20 minutes mostly running at around half marathon intensity. Although I don't seem to be able to find a decent bike route that doesn't take me through the fugly town of Brunete, I did manage to find a fairly flat route where I could practice my aero position. At least, I thought it was flat until it was time to turn around - it was too good to be true to be able to hit a steady 40kp/h at easy intensity! In the end, what was supposed to be a 3 and a half hour ride turned into a four hour ride but my legs were still fresh enough off the bike to hit my first 20 minute medium intensity run at 15kp/h (the second and third were quite a bit slower...).

I almost forgot that I started the week off with a bit of a cold, presumably from my "controlled over-training" from the week before: my coach had warned me about this. I followed his advice and started taking Inmunoferón, Echinacea + Propóleo and Vitamin C pills. I'm now taking 15 pills every morning (one of which is over 2 grammes - not milligrammes!) and it feels like I am trying to take an overdose. But the extra measures seemed to help and the cold lasted little more than a day or two.

I've got a harder week ahead, building up to another peak in a couple of weeks, so I think I'll plug myself into the Compex tonight to try to shake out my muscles and ready myself for what's to come.

Lisbon International Triathlon, here I come!

The next stop on the road to becoming an Ironman is the Lisbon Half Ironman distance Triathlon on the 30th of April. I did it last year and it was the first Triathlon I had ever done. To say that it is an "easy" Triathlon is like saying that my bike is a "cheap" road bike. It was the perfect venue to debut as a triathlete because the course is nice and flat, not too windy, not too hot - the water is salty (good for flotation) but not open sea, the race is organized to perfection and the hotel is within walking distance of the transition areas. The only problem with the event was that a large ash cloud from a volcanic eruption had lead to me (and thousands of others) being stranded in London. I managed to get back just in time to drive down to Lisbon with my bike in the back of the car. I bought a t-shirt from an entrepreneurial guy with the logo "2.4 - 90 - 21.1 - I made it!" and a graphic of a volcanic eruption.

In the race itself, I suffered from terrible cramps in the run (which took me the best part of two hours to complete) but was able to finish anyway - in a time just over 5 hours which wasn't too shabby - but as soon as I crossed the line I was whisked off by someone who took my pulse to check I wasn't about to expire because I must have looked pretty terrible (see photo below). I was in such bad shape that I couldn't even get on to the massage bed without cramping for another half an hour after the race, even though they shot me to the front of the queue. I remember how the masseurs freaked out when they saw my shoulder, thinking that I had sustained that injury during the race! I'm pretty confident that I have overcome the cramping problem (remedy: salt stick tablets and lots of them) so I'm hoping to break the 5 hour mark this year.

  

My fantasy bike collection

I'm sure that, if I were to see a psychiatrist, he'd suggest that my case of bike envy could be tempered by putting it all down on paper. If space, money and sense were of no importance then I would go out and buy


1. A triathlon bike

When you've got a budget in the 10s of thousands (euros, dollars, pounds - who cares), its probably quite difficult to choose between the top of the range triathlon bikes, unless you are a pro and get "lumped" with the one made by your sponsors. Choosing a bike is a bit like trying to choose a single malt: why choose between them when you should have one for each and every mood? The differences must be so tiny between the top bikes that it becomes a question of which one fits you best and which one has the best adverts in your favourite Triathlon magazine. For completely subjective reasons that I can't put my finger on, I would probably go for the Specialized Shiv Triathlon bike with Shimano Di2 electronic gears and a disc wheel thrown in (why not?). At least I already have the same water bottles as this chap, that's a start.

2. A full suspension Mountain Bike

I've never ridden on a "full susser" so I don't even know whether I would like it. After laughing at the other competitors for rocking up with full suspension bikes to a Duathlon Cross I did last year, I quickly realized why as I had to dismount for the steepest descents (and ascents, for that matter). On the trails that I go on to work, I think that a full susser would skip along even faster although I would lose the workout I get from the vibration on my single susser... There are so many different suspension systems and styles of Mountain Bike that I get lost. In a way, the sheer variety puts me off altogether because I know that I would only start coveting another slightly different Mountain Bike even if I satisfied my current desire. As I am pretty tall, I'm quite tempted by the so-called 29ers, which have 29" wheels. I suppose that the suspension is a bit more limited by the size of the wheel but I'd probably go for something like this (it would look nice sitting next to my current road bike):

You wouldn't be able to do anything crazy on it, like loony descents or stupendous stunts but, at my age, I think its best for me to avoid those kind of things anyway.

3. A fixie

Madrid isn't the best city in the world for a "fixie". For those of you who haven't been swept up by this strange cult, a fixie is a bike that not only doesn't have gears, but doesn't allow you to coast or freewheel either. The best thing about these bikes is their simplicity: you don't even need brakes (although at least one has to be fitted by law if you are going to ride on the roads) because, to stop, you simply stop pedalling. A slightly less extreme variant of the fixie bike are the single speed bikes which allow you to freewheel at least, but don't have any gears. Whether it is a fixie or a single speed is just a question of the back wheel - there are even "flip flop wheels" that have a freewheel cog on one side and a fixed cog on the other, so you can choose. In principle, many bikes can be converted into single speed or fixie bikes, but the trick is whether you can get the right tension in the chain: without the sprung derailleur thingy, you need to be able to set the back wheel at exactly the right distance from the chainstay and this requires a special kind of "drop out" (notch for attaching the wheel). The other way of going about it is by adding a chain tensioner but this seems totally pointless to me: the whole idea of a fixie is its elegant simplicity - put another cog in there and the friction increases and there are more parts that can wear out, just as with a regular bike. I wish I had had a fixie in Cambridge, where I grew up. I only ever used two gears of the 10 that I had on my racer: the lowest one to get started and the highest one to belt around town. In fact, when I started looking to buy a bike a year and a half ago, I rang round asking for fixies and the shop attendants told me that they had never sold one before. Now I have ridden around Madrid a fair bit, I can see why. Also, the gear mechanisms are so much better than they used to be: I was blown away by the concept of indexed gears (you used to have to fiddle about with the gear lever - which was mounted on the frame - to get the precise position - although, if you only ever used the highest and lowest gears like me, that wasn't a problem). Even though they are much improved, they are still not perfect and I would love to have one of those retro styled fixie bikes for zipping around town on. The annoying thing is, that they are now so fashionable that they are about ten times more expensive than they were "back in the day". I recently saw a beautiful model with leather seat and titanium(!) frame and all in Asturias of all places (its even more mountainous than Madrid!). This one from the Spanish bike manufacturers, BH, would do me just fine thank you very much...