What a week

This week has been crazy. Here I was thinking I was over my cold, only to have it come back full force. After the race on Sunday, I started to feel weak and sick again. Since then, I have not done many workouts. The workouts I have done have been pretty tame. I am avoiding the pool altogether for two reasons. One, it tires me out more than the other sports and I am left feeling exhausted for the rest of the day. The second reason is that I don't want to infect anyone else on the Lifesport team. There are already two or three people with the same cold, and I don't want to spread it.

One thing I have been reflecting on during this impromptu break, is the recent mental block I have been feeling in training. Being a hockey fan, I always wondered what it would be like for a top draft pick to go from being the best player in his junior league to the NHL, filled with guys that were all the best in their leagues, but 30 pounds heavier and stronger. I think I have been experiencing a bit of that this year.

Last year, almost all of my workouts consisted of me being near the top of the heap in ability. This year, I have taken the leap and joined a team, as well as decided to do workouts with other people outside of triathlon. It has been humbling to say the least. I'm not saying that I used to think I was hot s#$*t or anything, but I do think you workout better when you feel good about your fitness. This year, I swim with people that kick my ass every practice, do tempo runs with people like Nick
Best, and bike with cyclists that are 10 times better than I am. In fact, this week I ran with Nick, and felt as slow as I have felt in 2 years. I actually felt sorry for him. When we talked about it, he thought that we were going at a pretty decent pace, just as quick or quicker as in the past. I could be getting faster, but you wouldn't know it running with Nick, or swimming and biking with other people in my group.

All of this challenges the mental side of triathlon. The strongest can accept the humility and strive to one day be the best. The weak can't handle the crushed ego of stepping up a level. I hope I am the former.

Anyhow, I am taking one more full day off and hoping that I can be ready to roll next week. I had a bike fit last week and I am dying to get on it and test it out.

Shawnigan Lake - Race Report

Shawnigan Lake is an awesome triathlon. I have done it every year since it began and it is crazy to see how far it has come. The Lifesport crew clearly know how to put on a professional triathlon. This year, there were three distances: Half IM, Olympic, and Sprint. Since I have already done the Half IM and Sprint races, I wanted to do the Olympic, in part to see where I am in my training so far this year.

One of the advantages of having a race run by Lifesport is the pro talent that comes out to this grass routes triathlon. If we were in any other place, it would be a huge deal to have Simon Whitfield, Brent McMahon, as well as other Olympians toeing the start line. Here, it's not even a big deal to look to your left and wave to arguably one of the greatest triathletes ever before your heat starts. Anyways, to my race.

I learned a lot this week. I always learn things after a race, but this weekend was more than usual. Hindsight is 20:20 and now I see what I should have done.

Swim: 24:04.
The swim went fairly well for the first open water of the season. The start was a little crazy, but I managed to tuck in behind 1 guy for most of the swim. I wasn't going 110% hard on the swim, but the draft was nice and the guy ahead was really good at sighting. Since I couldn't see a thing, I felt it was better to be able to follow his bubbles than try and forge ahead on my own. The swim was about 1.5 minutes slower than what I want to do in Australia, so there is definitely room for improvement. Also, my groin was bugging me pretty bad out of the swim, which has never happened before. I can only assume that this is due to the wetsuit. I think I came out of the water in 16th or so.Simon only beat me by 6 minutes ha!

Bike 1:15:18
After T1 I was in 12th place. I started to aggressively attack the bike. I wanted to make up ground on a lot of athletes. The groin was actually getting worse, and it was freaking me out. I have never really been injured since I started triathlon 5 years ago. I figured there was no choice but to just keep pushing it hard and hope that it would go away. (DNFing is not an option)
On the second lap of the bike the groin started to settle down a bit. Either I just stopped noticing the pain or it was going away, I'm not sure. After T2 I was 10th out on the run. That's pretty crazy when I look at the results. I only passed 2 people on the bike! Crazy

Run: 40:59
I was excited to get out on the run. The run is my wheelhouse. I was hoping to catch a lot of people. After the 1st km however, my back started to ache pretty bad. I can only guess that it is from the wetsuit as well, since I have never felt that before either. This extreme lower back soreness and stiffness made me feel a lot more tired that I probably was. I struggled out there. I was hitting 4 minute kms, which is considerably slower than my usual pace. I told myself that everyone was having this hard of time, and to just keep going as fast as possible.

I have always had problems with this run course. Although a beautiful track, the loose gravel slows me down pretty good. It's definitely something to work on. I posted the 6th fastest run of the day. Other than the top 4, the run times seemed pretty slow. I came in 5th overall and 3rd in my age group. Total Time was 1:22.59. If you factor in that the bike course was 4 km longer than a standard Olympic course. I would have finished in 1:15.30, which is roughly 4 minutes faster than last years PB.

I'm not going to lie, I am disappointed. To be slower than expected on two of the three disciplines is hardly a good day. Also, the back soreness and groin scared me. Here is what I need to work on for next time:

1) Do more back exercises to strengthen it up
2) Do at least 1 open water swim per week
3) Get a new bike fit, both for the back but also to optimize my running off the bike
4) Get my running back to form.
5) Stay out of the sun the day before

The one bright spot of the race was that my nutrition went pretty well. After the race we headed back down the island, as I had to work at 5:00. It was the worst shift ever. It was really busy and I was basically sleep walking the whole time.

The Recovery

I think I am turning the corner on my cold. It started Wednesday, when I was feeling really lousy. I went to our swim practice not expecting anything special. I ended up having one of the best swims of the year. Holding 1:23 on the 100s and 2:54 on the 200s. Since then, every day I have woken up feeling better. I think the excessive amounts of Vitamin C and other supplements have helped me a lot.

This week has been a crazy taper. It isn't really supposed to be a taper, but a recovery week from three weeks of intense training. To give you an idea of the amount of taper it is, I did 16+hours of training last week, and only 8 hours this week. Still working out every day with the group, but shorter more intense stuff.

Since the race this weekend is put on by Lifesport, a lot of the group workouts have been race prep stuff, which is pretty cool. I don't think I have ever prepared more for a race since I started the sport!

Yesterday was a Brick outside in the beautiful weather, doing 2 x 10 minutes in race mode as our main set. Coach Paul on a mental tour around Shawnigan Lake as we did the set. How bout that for race prep ha! I felt pretty strong on the run off the bike. I feel a lot better than even 3 days ago.

One thing that hasn't gotten better is my sleeping. Reducing my workout load by 50% has made me a little crazy. Mentally I can handle it, since I know that I am sick and it's not in my best interest to workout a lot. But physically my body doesn't know what to do. I wake up in the middle of the night squirming around. I have tons of race dreams. Last night I had a nightmare that I was stuck behind the one train that crosses the course on Sunday and had to wait 5 minutes while my competition got away!

I need to relax.

Sick

Well this week has been a TOTAL write-off! Here I was excited that I would have a solid week of training / tapering before the Shawnigan Tri, and all I have had is a nasty cold that has taken me through the classic stages (starting from sore throat to overall leakage of the nose and weakness). I started to develop the cold on Saturday night at work. By Sunday morning, I had to cut my bike ride short because I couldn't take the pain of swallowing my water anymore.

Monday was more of the same. I managed to make it out to my Masters group, but I only did 2 of the 3 reps in the Main Set. I was dragging some serious ass. I wish I went in a slower lane so that I wasn't noticeable, but I stuck out like a sore thumb in my usual lane, getting passed more often than not. After that I stumbled home and slept the day away.

Tuesday was a different stage of the cold. The overall weakness that I felt yesterday makes me wish that I did more workouts on Sunday and Monday, when at least I had some energy. I missed a short recovery swim in the morning, as I felt it would just do more harm than good. I made it out to the Sidney time trial in the evening. I was debating on whether or not to go, but I really wanted to move my legs and get out of the house for a bit, so I decided to give it a go.

I did an extra long warmup to get my legs as prepared as possible. I also got to the TT nice and early so that I could go first and get home as early as possible. Not much to report on the TT. I did it in 28:14, with my first positive split of the year. I pushed it as much as I could, but my throat and lungs felt raw, and my legs just didn't have the energy. I 20 minute cool down to the car and I went home.

Today I still feel pretty rotten. This cold better be gone by the weekend! I am pretty worried that even if the cold is gone by Sunday, my body will still be exhausted from fighting it all week.

Better head off to the pool....

Week's Numbs

The numbers don't exactly reflect the effort this week, since the intervals don't really show distance, but here they are.

Actual Time	15:14
Planned Time	15:15
Hours from ATP	0:00

Swim Distance	11400 m
Bike Distance	130 km
Run Distance	44.13 km
Brick Distance	40 km

Heeeeyo

Last blog entry I said I was really tired. I don't think I even knew real tired when I wrote that!

This week has been the heaviest training load yet. Lots of workouts, but also lots of interval/hard/want to puke workouts as well. I threw lots of low intensity in there as well, so that I barely made it through the week. Although my swimming has been less than impressive, my other workouts have been going along well. Doing hill reps on the bike after a race and TT this week has left me tender. Doing tempo runs with Nick as well as others has left me tired.

This Saturday was the creme de la creme of ass kicking. After a crappy swim at Gordon Head Rec Centre, where I forgot my goggles and had to pass a 75 year old lady 45000 times doing the dog paddle in the fast lane, I headed to our group run at Elk/Beaver.

I was so tired and completely planning on dragging ass the whole workout. Then Coach Paul shows up. Then Coach Lance shows up. Then Lisa Mensink shows up. Then Brent McMahon shows up. I was obviously not going to have a crappy workout with three of the top coaches in triathlon, two pros and one Olympian at the workout. We were also doing 10 x 1km, which would not be easy on tired legs. I ended up giving the workout 150%. I managed to lower my km splits to 3:27 by #10, which I was really happy with considering the boys say that the km on the back of Elk lake is 5 seconds slow. After that we could all barely hobble back to the parking lot. The entire Lifesport crew took a dip in the lake after, which was pretty funny. It was basically one of those gut-check workouts that I will remember for a while.

Yesterday at work I came up with a pretty nasty sore throat, so I had to shorten my bike ride today due to my inability to swallow water. Next week is a recovery week and then the race! Hopefully I feel better by then.

La settimana dopo

La settimana dopo (the week after) the Sooke triathlon has been trying. After the tri I went for a bike ride and an hour into it I got two flat tires. Like two at the same time! Must have been a bad patch of road. Thankfully a bus driver let me on and I made it back to my car without dishing some serious cash!

Monday was a much needed day off, in which I took my bike in to get two new tires. I got some gatorskins which I am told are very flat resistant. I am now paranoid of flat tires even though this was my first flat for 2 years. After shelling out well over a hundred bucks (tough for a student/graduate) I brought my bike home and stored it for the time trial the next day. Tuesday had a non-group swim (always the toughest) where I literally sank for an hour. I was doing 5 x 400m as the main set and was dragging ass. I was just proud that I finished it. My arms were still so sore from the race on the weekend and bartending that night. Later that night was the second time trial of the year. I was eager to not get disqualified this time, but I knew my legs still felt like blocks from Sunday. So 1.5 hours before the race I go to get my bike out of storage and I find that one of my new tires is flat. S$@t! I have 10 minutes to get it down to Fort St. Cycle before they close. After getting the new tire, I was extremely late and rushed to get down to Sidney in time. I just made it and got in a very quick warmup before I was lined up to start.

I gave it my all for those blessed 27 minutes and change. What was different from last week was that the cyclist in front of me was catch-able (word check?), so I was chasing him the entire way, making small ground. I finally caught him with about 7km to go. I ended up with 27:30 something, which was 10 seconds faster than last week. Not bad for some seriously hurting legs. I averaged 39.221 km/hr. Did a small cool down with coach Dan and headed home fast to the girlfriend.

Today was crazy. Due to time constraints, I had to get all my working out done before 1:30. The crazy part was that I had three workouts to do. 1 recovery bike ride, 1 hard Fartlek run, and 1 masters swim. I decided to go bike, run, swim. This was not a good idea. I had no time to eat anything in between these workouts. I made it fine until the swim. Coach Paul had us do a 1500m TT in 1 x 1000 and 1 x 500. Exactly the workout I didn't want to do. I needed to suffer through some 100s or something, but not a straight swim. I was fine for about 500m, swimming easy with the girl beside be. Then she just kept slipping away...... I bonked. I mean I really bonked. The go home and cry to your mommy bonk. I was never going to quit the workout, but I got embarrassingly (another amazing word) passed twice on the 1000m TT, and almost twice on the 500m TT.

This week has been tough post race. I gotta get back into the grove. I think a nice run in the am and brick in the pm will get me back on track. Till next time...

YEAAH

Just got the final results in for the Sooke Tri. I came 1st OA for the age-groupers!

http://www.sookespringtri.com/results/2009/age_group.htm

Look at those run times! Not one under 20 minutes. That shows the difficulty of the run course. Looking at the elite times, only three of the NTC guys ran under 20 minutes on the run!

With all of the elite and junior elite NTC folks there, I think I came 10th or 11th OA. Nice to see the hard work paying off.

Sooke Sprint Tri - Race Report

I figured I should get this report out as soon as possible before I forget anything. I litteraly just got in the door 5 minutes ago, and I am still in my race suit.

I am always excited for the SSS triathlon. I'm not sure why, since it has to be one of the toughest sprint triathlons in BC. The bike course has one major climb, and once you get up it the course becomes an unrelenting spew of rolling hills to zap the legs. The run course is an out and back straight up a large hill, which does not feel good after the bike.

I arrived pretty early and after a solid warmup, I took my bike out on the run course to make sure I remember where each hill is. That is when I noticed that they had changed the course from last year. They still had the out and back up the large hill, but someone decided that wasn't enough so they added another 500m out and back up a similarily steep hill to warm us up before the main show. I appreciate that they are always tweaking to find the best course possible, but it is slightly annoying that because of this new hill, I really cannot compare my run time from last year to this year. Anyhow, back to the race.

The swim was great. I had 4 guys in my lane that swam basically the same pace as me. One guy in the lane was a little frustrating. I was settled in nicely behind him for the draft, and I accidentaly lightly touched his feet, which to him meant that I really wanted to pass. Not knocking the guy, since that is the polite thing to do, but that sent me out of the draft. Then this guy all of a sudden feels pretty fast (due to the draft), so he wants to pass me! I had to laugh! So I let him pass and just conserved energy behind him until the finish. I did the swim in 9:59, which is about 25 seconds faster than I was hoping for! I was going to be happy with a 1:30 pace, but I will definately take a 1:25.30 pace!!!!

I shot through transition. I think there was 3 guys ahead of me from my heat after the swim. I caught up to them pretty quickly on the bike. This is a new sensation for me! I have never been a very powerful biker, but today it seemed like I was passing guys fairly easily. After about 10k on the bike I was alone in front, and just concentrated on attacking the rollers and conserving energy. I finished the bike in 36:05, which is more than 4 minutes faster than last year!

I was first into T2, which was an exciting feeling. I headed out for the run with my legs feeling pretty tired from the bike. I usually do brick workouts, so I know how it is supposed to feel, and this wasn't it. I might have pushed it a little too hard on the bike, but o well, it's a sprint! The run starts with a slight downhill, and then proceeds to go up for about 700m to the new hill added this year. Boy it was tough going straight up right off the bike! I think it would have been a lot easier if I had had a km or so to loosen up before the climb. I focused on good form and held pretty steady over the major climb of the run. On the turnaround it looked like I had put even more time on the guys in my heat. After that it was just solid work to get to the finish line. I did the run in 20:30, which is obviously way slower than I usually do it in. I think it was about 90% due to the tough course, and 10% due to some sluggishness. I ran around that time last year, when the course didn't have this hill, so it's not as bad as it seems. I will be interested to see the times of the other runners. I put the elevation map of the run below. I wish it looked harder than this stupid graph, so I could use it as more of an excuse ha ha.

One of my goals was to get top 5 overall in this race. Unfortunatly, almost every NTC althlete was out today, so that probably didn't happen. I did take 1st in my age group, and I secretly take pride in the fact that no NTC woman beat me today! Looking at last years results, I would have come in 3rd OA, so the time I had in mind to get my goal was reached today. A whole 6 minutes faster than last year! Time to stretch and then go to work to suffer through 5 hours of pain!

Total Time: 1:06:35

Sidney Velo Disqualification - May 5

"Hi, Mike. I regret to inform you that have been disqualified in the May 5, 2009 Sidney Velo time trial for riding to the left of one of the traffic cones at the corner of McTavish and Lochside. I appreciate that this was your first ride on this course, but there are no exceptions to this rule."

Larry Pommen
Secretary-Treasurer, Sidney Velo

Ha Ha O well next time I will stay inside the cones! I'm such a triathlete!

oops

Forgot to mention that my avg speed for the TT was 38.87 km/hr. Had a nice 14.5 hour workday yesterday, which included 2 workouts (1 at 6 am and 1 and noon). Needless to say I am extremely tired today.

Cool

After a break on Monday, yesterday was another double workout day. After a nice solid drill set swim at lunch (which included an impromptu race with one of my masters teammates), I headed out to the Sidney Velo Time Trials.

What a cool experience! I have to admit, cycling is the last of the three sports of which I have gotten into the specific community. I am pretty entrenched in the running community, I swim in a masters group, but I do not do any cycling workouts with "cyclists." There are a few reasons for this. First, I don't have a road bike, which is a big no-no for group cycling. Second, the strict rules of cycling groups kind of distract me. Last time I was in a group I was concentrating 100% on not breaking any rule of the pack, and not on my workout.

Anyhow, that being said, I went to the 18km TT with an open mind, and ready to get my ass kicked. I arrived at the start and did a quick warmup ( I tried to watch as much of the Canuck game as possible), and proceeded to the start line. Although the TTs are low key, it is pretty cool to line up at the start with someone holding your bike up and the guy counting down from 10. I was actually shaking I was so excited! I shot out of the start gate and gave it a pretty hard go for the first km. I knew I wasn't really warmed up, so I tried to get there as soon as possible. After about 5km the first cyclist passed me, but I wasn't too worried. I went out around 35km/hr into the wind, and was cruising at around 42-43 km/hr on the way back. I finished the first lap in 13:51, which I was happy with. I had no idea what to expect for this TT, so I was going to be happy with anything under 30 minutes. The second lap felt way better. I was warm and feeling good. The legs were burning but for 30 minutes I can handle just about anything. I got passed by coach Dan on this lap (who blazed through the TT with a time of around 25:30), who was the second and final person to pass me. I finished the second lap in 13:46, for a negative split. Total time was 27:37. We'll have to check later if I was DQ'd though, since my wheel locked up on one of the turns and I hit a pylon, which is an offense.

All in all it was a great experience. I will be hitting this workout every week now, as it is just an unparalleled intensity workout that is so good for the legs. This morning was a Fartlek run at 6:30 am, and I'm heading to the pool at noon.

A Hurting Week

Since the TC 10k, my body has been pretty sore all around. I think it is due to my first full week of work since school has ended, which involves me being on my feet for at least 6 hours late at night, after a full day of training. Work is hardest on my feet. They have been feeling progressively worse each day. I have been trying really hard to stretch everything and keep ice close.

Monday was a nice swim with a main set of 36 x 50, which we were doing on 50 seconds. We were all thinking that it was a little too much rest, but that we were all tired from the TC and that we would concentrate on good form. Well after about 30 of them, we were all struggling to finish the 50s in 41-42 seconds! The entire set was only 2900m, so it was a nice recovery set.

Tuesday was a rest day for me. I got a nice massage and relaxed all day.

The Weds swim was a sort of breakthrough workout for me. Our main set was 20 x 100, and we were asked to go about 2 seconds per 100 faster than our goal race pace. My goal pace is 1:30, so I was hoping to hold 1:28s the entire way. I held 1:25 strong for the first 10, 1:26-1:27 for the next 5, and then around 1:27-1:28 for the last five. Pretty good for getting a massage the day before, which usually renders me useless the next day.

Thursday was a 1:45.00 brick. The main was 1 x 15mins of different cadence, 1 x 10mins of cad 85-95, and 1 x 5mins all out, with rest in between (these efforts are all at 90%). The run part was 10 x 90 secs on, 90 secs off. I couldn't get much out of my legs on the bike, but the run felt ok.

Fridays swim was a MS of 10 x 200m on 3:15.
Reps 1-5
Hit 2:50 on the first few, then settled in to 2:58-2:59
Reps 6-10
Started to get pretty fatigued, and was hitting 3:00-3:03 on the last few. I think the 13-15 seconds rest was getting to me by the end. I was completely demolished by the end!

Saturday was a TT in the pool, and I was pretty happy with it. After that, we had our Sat morning run with the legend Lucy Smith, who kicked our asses in a 5 x 1mile main set. She was not even going hard and was just jogging a 5:15 mile! Amazing.

Sunday was a 2.5 hour bike followed by 15 mins hard run off the bike, 15 mins ez. I was rolling down the road going about 40k/hr when this biker blew up to me, probably going around 45-47k/hr. It was my coach Dan! Clearly a super-biker. We rode together for a few kms and talked about my training. It was really nice. I love having a local coach that you can actually get to know! On the run, my foot started to kill me after about 12 minutes on the run, so I shut it down early. I was pretty worried, as I have never had a serious problem with my foot. I'm resting and icing all day today, in the hopes of making it better. Happy training!

April Numbs

April Totals:

Swim: 48,900 m
Bike: 509.9 km
Run: 132.32 km
Brick: 210 km
Time: 54:36.00