Training, Training and a Race Report

Training training training. That's what I do. I look like a slob at work, coming off of a 3+ hour training day with just enough time to hop in the shower before showing up to slog it for another 6-8 hours at night. Training has been hard to describe. So much good but not without the bad. I don't know what has happened to my swimming. I am definitely not getting slower, but I feel like I am worse. Probably because I have been doing so much open water lately. I have definitely lost confidence that I am an OK swimmer. These days I dread jumping into the pool, where I meet training partners like Lindsey, who can miss like 2 weeks of Masters and still jump in and push me to my utmost limit. While I gasp for air on the wall just trying to hold her back, she sighs lightly and says "woo tough one today." ha ha. I have a lot of respect for that girl. It would be the easiest swim or one that is torture and she still has the same attitude. I wish I could say that I do the same.

Coach D and I have been trying to figure out why I suck so much in the open water. We have been trying different things, and now sometimes in the water I'm not sure where I started! How did I swim two months ago? Today in the pool Sabrina told me that I have the largest spray from my kick in the pool. That's cool. I wonder where all that power is going, since I am the worst kicker in the group!

Anyhow, frustrations aside, biking and running have been going great. I did a lot of running last week, including two hard interval sessions. Biking has taken a back seat this week, after about 2 months of bike specific work. I had another amazing run session going at Elk this Saturday where I attempted to stay with Magali and Kerry for the km repeats. OMG it was hard. They were running around 3:20-3:38 kms. Coach Lance and Paul say that the km is about 10 seconds slow. That was probably the first time I have ever ran 3:10-3:15 kms. Every time we started, the girls would shoot off like a cannon, while I would struggle to close the gap in the first km. I bowed out after 6/10 repeats, since my hamstring was crying for mercy in that scary "i'm gonna snap any time" way. I also thought that I should waste the $30 entry fee for the Esquimalt 8k the next day, and actually run half decent. On to the race.....

Although I bowed out early from my workout the day before, I was still really tight. I took a nice light warmup with some A,B,Cs and then headed up to the start line. My goal for the race was to run consistently and smoothly, preparing for the run leg of my next tri. I went with my new racing flats, sans socks, to get used to them. This would be my longest run in these flats. I had done two 5km run legs in sprint triathlons with them, and am eager to see how they will hold up in longer distances. I am not the most agile runner, so I was slightly worried about running hard in flats.

The race started and I kept it pretty chill. It always amazes me how fast some people go at the beginning of the race. These people are in every race, and know who is going to and not going to beat them, yet they still insist on sprinting ahead of the leaders like they belong there ha! To the dude that momentarily passed Marilyn Arsenault doing 3 minute kms before fading into the dust, that was just silly!

Anyhow, I settled into a rhythm after a 3:35 1st km, knocking off 3:40s for a few kms. Jeff Hunt was around me, and that was nice to key off of. I thought he may hold a little back for his second race of the day, so I decided to not pace off him. There was nobody else to go with, so I just ran by myself the whole way. 3:40, 3:40, 3:40. It was getting a little strange. I just kept the same pace the whole way.

At km 6, things started to unravel. It was hot out. I was sweating. My feet were sweating. For the last few kms I was reeling a PIHer in that went out waay to fast and was fading fast. I swear he was hitting 3:15 kms at the start, and was now hitting around 3:45. Unfortunately, I could feel the blisters starting under my feet. I could actually feel the liquid shifting under my weight. I held steady for the second to last km at 3:40, but the pain became too much by the last km. I just wanted to finish. To his credit, the PIH guy held it together long enough and had a great race. I finished with a 4 minute km for a time of 29:59.995. I actually saw the official results and that's what it said ha!

I probably would have run slightly faster at the end had I known I was even close to 30 minutes. O well. I just wanted to get that damn show off. Surveying the damage, I had three blisters, each bigger that the size of a quarter. Another blister was on my heel. Not cool. How am I supposed to run a 10km leg in a tri, if I can't even deal with 8k? Unfortunately, I think these shoes are done. Either I'm not a racing flat guy, or not a Saucony guy. I'm going back to my ol' Nike's.

After a post race brekky with my family, I headed out for a bike ride in the 30 degree heat. Damn it was hot. It was so hot that I ditched my usually jersey and put on a racing top. I decided not to bring my extra tube and stuff, since I haven't had a flat in a while and it was to be a short ride. You know what happened. I got stuck on the highway with no phone, no money and a 3 km walk in my socks to the nearest gas station. With all of the blisters, it was pretty hellish. A $36 (honestly it was like $2/ km!!!) cab ride later, I was home and grumpy! Had to work in the night, which I barely managed with a heavily taped up foot.

Today was an ugly swim that I will not talk about. I'm over it. I just want a solid week of training before the Self Transcendence tri this weekend. Swim and Bike tomorrow. Happy training.

Mj

Quick Pick

Here's a cool pic from this Saturday's pro workout from Kerry Spearing's blog. That's us leading the women's pack, before getting reeled in on the final two!

Awesome!

The past few training sessions can only be described as awesome.


In my last post I talked about how excited I was to finally get to run with some of the pros. Well, Saturday morning I shot out of bed 2 minutes before my alarm went off (after working late), and was rearing to go to Elk Lake. I grabbed my usual granola and double espresso and headed to the lake. I was excited to see the whole Lifesport Pro camp there, with some extra people sprinkled on top such as Simon Whitfield and Andrew McCartney. I am always star struck when I am around such greatness. It really is like golfing with Tiger Woods. You get to see up close the best the sport has to offer!


Anyhow, for the workout we were doing 6 x 1 mile repeats. Dan had a sore knee so he wasn't running. I was hoping that he was, since I wanted to gage my pace off of him, to prevent me from going out too fast. I was slated to go with the main Women's pack. With multiple Ironman titles in the group, I was obviously stoked to be there!


After a solid warmup we started our first interval. I noticed that the group was taking it pretty conservative the first mile, so I headed to the front to lead. Lucy Smith and Magali Tisseyre shot off the front, and were out of sight pretty quick. Lucy was looking sooo good today! Magali stuck with her for the first mile, which ended up being 5:16, and suffered a bit after that. I got a little gap on the rest of the girls, but I wasn't trying to extend it or anything. I wasn't about to go out and try and show up these girls! They know what they are doing! Did the first one around 5:28. After the first mile Kerry Spearing, who was just ahead of me, asked if I wanted to run with her. I knew it was a bit of a stretch for me, but I wasn't going to say no! We did the second mile in 5:21 or something. It was fast!


Kerry obviously thought it was fast as well, as she slowed down a bit on the next mile. By this time though Bree Wee decided that she was gonna take charge and set the pace with me for the next two reps. It was so fun to run with her. It was all positive and all strong! I was really having a great day! We were doing mid twenty's for the repeats. Reps 5 and 6 were pretty tough for me. Bree just has so much more endurance than me. She grabbed about a 3 second gap on rep number five, and never looked back. It was pretty funny having Coach Paul riding beside Bree yelling at her, and Coach Dan riding behind me yelling at me to go hard! I gave it everything I had to catch her, getting my heart rate up to 191 (100%), but Bree was too strong!


It was an amazing day, with Simon running 4:25 miles, and me and the girls following. It's too bad the pros aren't here every week! When I got home I was pretty sore, so I hopped on the bike for an hour and a half to flush the legs out! All in all a pretty amazing day. I think there are some more pictures to come, but I snagged these ones from Bree's Blog (Thanks Bree!)

The pep talk before the workout

The most intense practice run start I have ever experienced ha! Look at Simon leaning on the right!

Fun in the sun

A few days since my last post. I am over my beating by the pros, especially since I was beaten again this morning at Thetis lake. But who am I kidding? It's the best

One thing that is different about the pros being in town is the length and difficulty of the workouts. They are just on another level. This morning at Thetis we had a 4k swim that had a 1000m segment, two 150m hard segments, and 2 400m segments. Being incredibly slow compared to the rest of the group, I only got about 10 seconds to regroup before the next effort. On the last rep, we were doing a pair race, where you went off in pairs and had to work together to win. I got all of about 15 seconds of rest before Coach Paul put me with Lance, who has been swimming amazing these days. I thought "o my god here we go." ha ha.

Lance was really nice to put up with me on this one. He did everything short of a tow rope to keep me going. I think I even saw him at one point doing backstroke to watch me! Sad I know!

What it did do was force me to go the hardest on the last rep of the day, which is good.

I did the swim today without a wetsuit. I have now figured out that I don't swim bad in a wetsuit, and I don't swim bad in open water, I just swim bad on longer intervals ha ha!. The lack of wetsuit did nothing to help my dragging ass. I just do not have the endurance in longer interval swims. It's crazy. O well, I can only improve so much in one year. I am happy with knocking off 4 minutes on my 1.5k swim time.

After the swim I couldn't help but get a few picks with some of the pros that I admire most. I snapped one with Magali and one with Bree. I swear Magali is the next big deal. I love that after we took the pick she said "thanks" to me. So nice ha ha! Those pics are to come. But Bree snapped the awesome pic of the group that is on her blog.

Look at me in the middle like I'm some bigshot ha ha!

I'm really excited for tomorrow 'cause it is my first chance to run with them (I think). I think it will be a lot more enjoyable to do one of my better disciplines with the group!

Happy training!

Humble Pie

I'm not gonna lie. Yesterday I was dominated. I was ok about it at the time, but upon further reflection I am a little embarrassed.

Sure, there's nothing to be embarrassed about when you are competing against some of the top athletes in the world. But I could have, should have done better! I was pretty amazed to show up to our usual Wednesday swim practice at Durrance Lake and see Linsey Corbin, Magali Tisseyre, Brent Poulson, and Bree Wee among the throng of other pros in town for the week. I was especially star struck to see Linsey and Magali. Linsey is one of the top Ironman athletes, and Magali has posted the fastest 70.3 time for a woman this year.

Needless to say, the swim was pretty fast paced. I am not usually in the front pack on the swim, but I couldn't believe that after about 20 meters, I was at least 15 meters behind already! In fact, I was so far behind at some points that they started the next segment without me. It was crazy. At one point we were doing an out and back, and I turned around before the "turnaround" to latch on to the back of the pack to see what it was like. Well that lasted for a solid 10 seconds ha ha ha. I couldn't even bear to do the last segment of the workout. It was just too much for me. Even Coach Dan sat one rep out. As I got out of the water Coach Lance seemed to read my face perfectly, saying "makes you feel pretty average huh?" ha ha.

I'm really not that upset about it. I only wish that I could have done a run or bike with them, instead of my weakest discipline. It would be amazing to be a little more competitive with them. It did shoot me into reality though of how far I am from being a pro. Not that I thought I was. These athletes are long course, so technically they should be a little slower than short coursers. Believe me they aren't! It will make me think twice next time I put myself as an "elite" in a race that's for sure!

Other than that training has been going well. I damn near killed myself on a run this morning in order to make up for yesterday's swim! I was up all night thinking about it!

Happy training!

Update

The Numbers

Actual Time 13:40
Planned Time 13:40
Hours from ATP 0:00
Swim Distance 9300 m
Bike Distance 145.85 km
Run Distance 40.87 km
Brick Distance 35 km


First a quick comment on my numbs for this week. 145k of bike intervals, 40k of running intervals, and a brick. I'm pretty stoked! Swimming was a little light this week, but it was still good work. It's pretty amazing that my planned time and actual time are the exact same, as I was under time on some workouts and over time on others! Although the hours are not overly amazing, almost every minute of that time is used to do something productive. I don't think I could handle any more training in my life!


Training has been going great since the Tri of Compassion. I have stepped my running mileage up quite a bit, so my legs have been constantly sore this week. I have also been doing lots of speed work in running and biking, which has taken its toll as well. I don't mind though. I know the benefits of recovery for endurance athletes, but I can't help but be a little smug when my legs burn from going up a flight of stairs at night. I'm working hard, and getting faster. Swimming has been going good too. I only had three swim w/os this week. The first one I already described. The second one was a 10 x 50 followed by a 6 x 200, which absolutely demolished me. It was a classic blow up in the pool. I always forget that a set of 50s followed by longer intervals always kills me, and this time was no different. The 3rd and 4th 200s were the worst, but I managed to salvage a somewhat respectable time for the 5th and 6th. The third swim was the usual Thetis Lake swim, where I was pretty competitive right from the start. I usually take a few intervals to get going, so I was happy. I still have to work on my form in a wetsuit. I don't know why I can't swim the same as the pool!

I also had some monster shifts at work, and since I do not wear very good shoes, it has taken a toll on the legs as well. To be honest, I am really proud of myself that I have finished all of my workouts this week. This next week of training is going to be tough. I have a wedding on Saturday and golfing on Sunday, so I will have to bank a lot of workouts during the week in between work! One day I will sleep in.

Mj

Tri of Compassion - Race Report

First of all, I want to say that I love this race. As long as I am in town, I will always do this one. My family lives on one of the streets that the run goes down, so I feel like it's a hometown race. Everyone including my grandma stands out on the lawn shouting encouragement!

I stated to my coach that depending on the field, one of my goals for this year was to win this race. When I got to race package pickup and saw names like Travis Chater and Allan Boos, I knew that my hopes of first were probably too high. That being said, I was really excited to race against these guys. I thought I might be able to give them a run early, or at least take away some positives. As of a year ago, these guys were completely on another planet regarding triathlon fitness. Now, I feel like I am closer than ever to being on the same step as them.

The triathlon itself cannot be any more athlete friendly. The swim is in a pool, the bike is 3 laps of a pretty flat course, and the run is along the beautiful shoreline of Esquimalt. Another nice thing that was changed this year was the start times. Last year the top triathletes started at 12:30, which is way too late if it is hot. This year, the first heat went off at 6:00 am (I feel bad for those guys!), so that we could go off at 9:30 am.

I found myself in a lane with Christopher Sundby, who is a great young triathlete. I knew he would have a good swim so my goal was to stick right on his toes for the swim. For possibly the first time in a pool swim tri, we were given a nice amount of time to warmup. I probably got in around 500m of solid warmup before we lined up to start.

The swim felt good. I had tons of energy. I caught up to Christopher after 1 lap (we went off in 5 second intervals), and stick with him for the entire swim. The other two people in our lane were either not feeling good that day, or thought they were better swimmers! We passed both after about 7 laps. It was funny because for both swimmers Chris was able to pass them on the wall, while I had to pass both mid lane. It wasn't a big deal though, since the lanes were nice and wide, and 3 people could fit easily. Because of this, I didn't try to overdo it when passing. I just slowly climbed up to the swimmer until be both hit the end wall more or less even. The second swimmer however, didn't see me (I don't know how), and as we both came up to the wall she suddenly turned right into me. I didn't really mind at all, since I am used to contact from open water practice and races, but I'm sure she wasn't too thrilled to get a foot in the face! I felt kinda bad. I finished the swim in 7:01. That is 25 seconds faster than last year. For a 500m swim, that's pretty sweet! Last year's swim was considered the swim of my life. I jumped out right behind Christopher. To show how different my wetsuit swimming is to my pool swimming, I came out of the water over half a minute behind Chris 2 weeks ago at the New Balance Sprint.

T1 was as smooth as it gets. Superman onto my bike, with my elastics perfectly placing my shoes, and I was off.

The bike was good. Last year on the bike, I duelled it out with a guy the entire way, and it really helped my time. This year I was all on my own. I came out of the water right behind Allan Boos (another positive for the day), and I knew Travis Chater was out way before me, so I figured I was in third. Riding solo is definitely harder. You think more about the pain. My first lap went by in 11.12.28, which is slower than I wanted but it included all of the transition time and putting my shoes on, so I wasn't worried. Second lap was done in 9:31. I passed Don from Fort Street Cycle on this lap, who was the bike part of the FSC relay team that had Kirsten Sweetland as the swimmer. After passing him I was almost certain that I was third. The final lap was done in 10.42.95 (again with some transition stuff in there), and I was done the bike in 31.28.00 (31.55.00 including transitions).

T2 was completely the opposite of T1. It was my first real "ordeal" of the year. I come off the bike feeling good, and go to slip on my new racing flats. These flats are a little tricky to get into. There is an elastic band near the toe of the shoe that sometimes catches my pinkie toe in it. At the New Balance race, I just ignored it. At this race though, it got caught in an awkward angle and after about 20 steps I knew I wasn't going to be able to continue with it. I stopped and pulled my foot out of the shoe. Unfortunately, the in-sole came out with it. Well I have played with these in-soles before and I know they are not easy to get back in, so I just decided to forget about it and run without it. I was running with an in-sole in my hand! One of the volunteers kindly took it for me.

After about 100 meters I started to feel the pain. It was like a knife stabbing the arch of my foot. Although there is not a lot in a racing flat, those flimsy in-soles make a world of difference! There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to fight through the pain. My family was waiting along the route, and I would continute with a broken leg if it meant running by them! I started to run on the outside of my shoe. It sounds dumb, but in the moment you just do whatever the hell you can! The pain started to subside somewhat, though I think it was more me getting used to it. That's when another problem started, my nutrition.

I wanted to change it up a little bit this race. I hate eating gels. I can barely get them down before a race. I always feel better in training with a little bit of solid food in my stomach. So today, I tried eating a powerbar 20 minutes before the race. This combined with half a water bottle of gatoraid was a bad combo. Too many carbs for such an intense race. I think the powerbar thing could work, but only in an Olympic distance race or longer. This race was just too intense for it.

So here I am 200 m in on the run, with a sharp pain in my foot and I am trying not to puke. I family's house is coming up, and I am already planning where to puke when I turn the corner after seeing them. It felt bad. I could feed the jostling in my stomach. Thank god the first 500m of the course are basically a slight downhill. Without that, I don't know what would have happened. After about 900m, I started to feel slightly better. By slightly better, I mean I wasn't going to immediately puke, but the feeling was still there. It is the feeling when I am sprinting with Dan on the last of 10- km repeats at Elk Lake.

But there were also positives that I was taking note of during the run. First, my legs felt great. I went to get a bike fit earlier in the year, because I was having a hard time on the run with sore legs around my ankles. We switched things up, and now I feel much better off the bike! If my stomach was feeling better, I could have pushed it a lot harder. Also, my form felt really good. Since I couldn't go as hard as I wanted to, I concentrated on good form and high knees. This really helped me keep my speed during the tougher sections of the course. At the turn-around there was someone about a minute behind me looking strong, so I picked it up as hard as I could and headed for home. I crossed the line in 57:26 with an 18:30 run time. Good for 3rd place overall. Let the analysis begin.

I read an article by Mark Allan a while back talking about his trials in Kona. He couldn't understand why he was consistently having a sub par run, when running was his strength. He said he finally realized that he wasn't running well because his swimming and biking were not strong enough, which didn't leave him as much energy on the run compared to others. This is exactly how I feel I have improved. Looking at last year's time, I was over a minute and a half faster, which is pretty good on such a short course, where time is hard to find. My swim was obviously better than last year,but my bike was only 15 seconds faster than last year.

Let me tell you, I am ten times better at cycling than I was last year. But I remember that last year, I had the ride of my life. And last year, when I got on the run, I had a terrible go at it. This year, due to the increased fitness on the bike and swim, I had a run that was almost a minute faster than last year. This decrease in run time is not due to me being that much better at running. In fact, I have been doing fairly low mileage for a while now compared to cycling and swimming. It is due to me being a better all around triathlete compared to last year. So this I am happy about! This is including my debacle with my shoes and nutrition! I am also fairly certain that I could have run a second 5 km faster if we were doing an Olympic distance event. I take a while to get settled on the run, so the Sprint distance does not suite me as well. All in all I think it was a great day shared by family and friends. It was also my first time ever winning prize money! $50 bucks goes a long way these days, so I am extremely pleased!

I cannot wait to do a solid block of training before the Self Transcendence Tri in August. I started today with a 20 x 100 main set in the pool, where I was consistently under 1:25, and dropped to 1:21 on the last few. I wanted the pain. It felt so good!

Happy training!