Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Obligatory Post

Hello:

I realized it has been over 1 week since I last posted and even that one was just some pics from a previous race.

I've been flailing a bit this past week. Diet isn't on track - although I may be down to 220 so at least I'm not going the wrong direction. The running seems to be going ok - although I'm concerned that my pace goal is over ambitious. The last thing I want to do is develop some injury at the end of this season that will hurt my chances at IM CDA next year. Right now I'm focusing on my right achilles tendon. It always gets a little touchy when I pick up the pace a little. I decided to just do a base run today instead of the hill workout I was contemplating.

I do a tempo run tomorrow and my 8 miler on Friday. After that I'll have a good idea where my goals should be. Right now I see 3 possibilities: 1) go for it - 1:55 or less; 2) scale it back but still shoot for under 1:59:40 - a PR; or 3) coast - put in enough miles to finish comfortably, practically eliminate the speed work, eat and drink my way through San Antonio leading up to the race, run with Angie as she shoots for 2:10.

That third option is looking better and better. I know the Doc would like it. This is our first trip to San Antonio and she would rather be there with the relaxed, just having a good time, up for anything me as opposed to the more tightly wound than usual, resting, inwardly focused, going for a PR pre-race me.

Doc, OB and Ang who should I bring? Fun Rich or Focused Rich (those terms being relative of course)?

I'm hoping to get out and cheer on Capt Brian, Caroline and XT4 at TCM Sunday. The day looks perfect. It'll be wierd not doing the 10 mile - I've done it 4 times in a row.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Since I'm Not Training Anyhow

I might as well throw some pictures from Square Lake. Compare the first running picture to the last ones. I see a difference - do you?





Reset Button

Where is the darn reset button on this thing? This thing being . . . me. Apparently my decision to cut my run short on Friday was a good decision. It took until the middle of the night on Saturday before I came down with the full cold. Woke up to completely stuffed sinuses. Sat around yesterday. Started to feel better last night. Felt great this morning, but after running a couple of ERRANDS (not miles), I'm starting to feel ick again.

Depending upon how long this lasts I may have to rethink my goals for San Antonio.

Hopefully I can get a short run in tomorrow and go from there.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

To Get Fast(er) - I Must Get Lean(er)

The Sibs weekend was a nice break. I didn't train at all (although I did have a couple of strange Ironman dreams - so I didn't get completely away from it). Skiing, fishing, poker, football, hanging and the younger crowd wakeboarded.



Now I'm back at it. If I'm going to go under 1:54 in San Antonio, I'm going to have to get serious about it. I know I can put in the miles, hills and speedwork. Where I'm going to have to make some changes is on the front end - the intake. The only way I seem to be able to change my diet - no more massive handfuls of M&Ms, is if I'm logging my calories. I use a calorie counter at http://www.fitday.com/ . They've updated it since I last used it (not a good sign) and it seems even more user friendly.

One advantage to being in the Clydesdale division is that I burn a lot of calories. If I limit my calories to 3,500 a day I'll lose weight. You wouldn't think that would be much of a challenge. Did you know that 1/4 cup of plain M&M's has 220 calories? That's about one small handfull. Now take one of those every trip through the kitchen and I'll have 1,000 calories that do nothing for me. That's why I have to log. When I'm logging my food I have to budget the calories. I generally will choose a quality food over the quick handful of candy coated chocolatey goodness.

We'll see how it goes. I'm on day 2.

My tempo run this morning didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped. It's not supposed to be comfortable, but I really struggled to get to 8:30s and came up a bit short. I believe two factors made it tough:

  1. I'm still just 9 days out from the Square Lake 1/2 IM. It took almost the full 2 weeks between Rockman and Grandma's before I had my legs back.
  2. I weigh 222 lbs. As I shed a few pounds it will get easier to make the pace goals.

I'm actually looking forward to more of a run focus for a while. I'll still bike and swim at least once a week, but just for kicks.

Thursday planning a big ride with the Doc. It (and she) should be gorgeous. Not many days like that left (for the weather, not the Doc - she's got a lot of gorgeous days left). I'm thinking gateway from 694 to Pine Point Park, up to Scandia, lunch, and then back.


Monday, September 15, 2008

Sibs Weekend Crashes Video

Here's a video montage of crashes by James and Mike. The one segment where the music drops out so you can hear the laughter and derision is Mike trying to slalom. What you can't really see is him supermanning holding on to the rope as his ski trails behind him through the water.




Enjoy.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Sibs Weekend

My brothers and their wives are coming to the cabin this weekend. Should be legen . . . (wait for it) . . .dary. Hopefully I'll get some videos of some sick wakeboard crashes to share. Until next week I leave you with the profile from last weekends run (thanks Steve).




Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Critical Eye

So the Doc is reading the Square Lake Report Monday night when she looks over at me and says "Do you think people really want to read all this stuff?" Ok, I'll admit the race report was long winded - I gave you a shorter version at the beginning. My answer to her, that I'll now share with you was . . . "maybe they do, but not everything I write is necessarily for you, the audience, some of it is for me."

While I try to interject some humor where I can, I really want to be able to use the entries as a reference. To look back on mistakes I made or the occassional triumph and see if I can fix it or for the triumph duplicate it, that's a big reason for this.

For, though a "presidential campaign isn't supposed to be a jouney of self discovery" (I'm sure Mindy will stop reading now that I've quoted Palin) what else is signing up for an Ironman, putting in the long and often lonely training hours, toeing the sand with 2500 other nutjobs for 14 hours of pushing yourself, but a journey of self discovery.

Recent Discoveries

Eventually the aches in my quads and knee from Sunday's race will go away, any fitness gains will also fade, but hopefully the lessons learned under the crucible of race day will be remembered and applied to future endeavors.

So you're saying - enough preamble Rich what are these self discoveries and lessons learned on Sunday?

Drumroll . . . . (I'd have a real drumroll here for your listening pleasure but it got unbelievably complicated so you'll have to just imagine your own.)


  • Get some arm warmers (taken care of thanks to Capt Brian) , and probably some leg warmers too.
  • Do some run training on a similar profile to the race course (hilly, flat etc.)
  • Don't go into a half iron man (HIM) with your only run over 7.5 miles some 2 1/2 months prior to the race.
  • Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition - know how many bottle stops there are going to be on the bike, don't rely on just the big aero bottle. Put a cage and extra bottle on your seat tube. That way you're not trying to get and dump one bottle into your aero bottle and then grab another to fill it up (unsuccessfully). Continue to take in fuel on the run - 4 oz of gatorade every 2 miles (or even one mile) is NOT going to get you there. Bring some gels/beans/blocks.
  • If you don't get what you need at a bottle stop - pullover and STOP - 30 seconds to grab that second bottle could save you, oh . . . 14 minutes on the back of the out and back run.
  • Electronics - make sure you've got your time alarm set to help you stick to your nutrition plan.
  • Don't gain 5-10 pounds in the weeks leading up to the race - they won't help.

You might think that I had a bad day, but really most everything went well. I stayed within myself on the bike hitting my time goal and keeping my legs relatively fresh. With better nutrition and better run training I think MJs PR would have been in play. Maybe next year.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Square Lake Half Ironman Race Report

I'm back baby - well at least my blog is.

Race Report

Short version - 6:01:16 fast swim, reasonable bike, 1/2 of a good run, rain, vertical, pain, ice.

Longer version

Weather considerations. The forecast called for 50s with possible showers throughout the race. That’s a tricky forecast - 50 degrees with the sun shining is pleasant on a bike, 50 and cloudy is chilly and 50 and raining is downright cold. Checking the radar before leaving in the morning it looked like there was a small band of showers in western Minnesota. I didn’t think it would rain until late in the bike or maybe the run. I decided to wear a long sleeve compression shirt with a short sleeve shirt with a rear pocket over it. I had a self storing coat with a waist belt but I decided not to take it on the bike.

THE SWIM

Square Lake is a real gem. Crystal clear water - think Lake Geneva. The wind was calm so it was like swimming in a pool with 50 of your best friends. The water temp was slightly warmer than the air so no problems there either. The first swim in a while I haven’t started to heat up in my wetsuit. It was a 2 lap swim counterclockwise. I was happy to hear that we didn’t have to come out of the water in between laps (some races do this so you cross a timing mat and they can make sure you swim both laps).

I was in the first wave with the elites, men 29 and under and the clydesdales. In which category do you think I was? Ordinarily (when I’m not in with the elites and young bucks) I try and go out hard in the swim to get some open water and then settle in to a rythm I can maintain for the distance. With these guys though, I just needed to focus on getting into a rythm, maybe finding some feet to follow and letting the open water come to me. Why follow feet? Drafting (swimming closely behind someone) reduces the effort required to maintain the pace by up to 10%. In other words, I could theoretically take 3 minutes off my time just by following someone who swims a little faster than me or I could save that energy and use it later in the day.

I did find someone to follow for quite a ways on the return during the first lap. He tired so I went around. For most of the second lap I was by myself. There was a group in front of my but it turned out they were from a later wave, on their first lap, and considerably slower.

I left the water in 32:54 (1:34/100 pace). That compares to 36:20 for my Rockman swim. In order to get to the transition area you have to go up about 40 steps. I thought I’d take my wetsuit off before going up the steps. Unfortunately, after about 30 seconds of fumbling for the pull cord I finally just started up the steps. Eventually I found the cord as I got to the top of the steps.

T1

Now the weather was going to impact my transition time. I didn’t want to swim with the long sleeve compression shirt on (too restrictive) so I had to put on both shirts while wet and then do my regular routine. Socks, shoes, helmet, glasses, on the road. Between the fumbling for the wetsuit cord and the extra dressing - 4:07. (This easily cost me the 1:16 I was over 6hrs - or a good chunck of it)

Bike

The bike was good preparation for Coeur D’Alene in a couple of ways. 1) vertical profile - Square Lake has around 2400 feet of elevation gain in 54 miles, CDA has, ugh, around 6000 in 112 miles. Ok, so this bike isn’t quite as tough as CDA. It’s still the most climbing I’ve done in a half ironman and required me to hold back the whole time. 2) getting passed - the first lap (the bike was also 2 laps) I spent getting passed at regular intervals by cyclists of all shapes and sizes on all kinds of rides. At least no one passed me on a hybrid but there were a few aluminum road bikes with or without aerobars streaming past me. I was trying to keep my heart rate at 130 when cruising and limit the increase on the hills. For the most part I was successful and felt decent getting off the bike for the run.

Time 3:00:26. Note, this is course is just over 54 miles instead of the full 56 so this time is slight misleading. Even with the short distance it’s my slowest bike split in a half IM. It was supposed to be, I was hoping to save my legs to have a good run.

The long sleeve/short sleeve combo was perfect for the bike. At one point I thought I was going to be too warm but then it clouded up and started to sprinkle.

T2

I knew I didn’t want to run in the long sleeve shirt. This meant I needed to take off both shirts in transition, carefully so I could easily put the short sleeve shirt back on. I probably should have had a 3rd shirt so I didn’t have to worry about seperating the 2 shirts I was wearing.

Time 1:32

Run

All in all my legs felt pretty good at the start of the run. My left foot was pretty numb and every now and then I’d get a little shock as it came back to life. My quads and calves were sore but it was at a manageable level. A couple of miles into the run it started to rain pretty steadily. Fine with me, I don’t mind a little rain - helps keep my large mass cool. The run is also very hilly - around 2500 feet of climbing. I made it to the turn around in 1 hour 4 minutes. The turn around is at the top of huge hill. It was on that hill that my quads and calves completely revolted. At this precise point, halfway through the run it became a real battle to keep moving. The second half took me 1:18. That’s over 2 minutes per mile slower. On the last hill it came down to running to the next “no parking” sign and then walking to the next. I knew I was close to breaking 6 hours but also knew I wasn’t going to do it. My heart rate wasn’t coming down when I was walking, I was sweating more profusely than I should have been when walking, and it felt really good to close my eyes both while walking and running. I didn’t have any energy to reply in kind to the encouragement from other racers.

Time 2:22:19. That compares favorably with Rockman at 2:36:56 especially given the difficulty of the course.

Total Time 6:01:16. You might think I’d be disappointed with not breaking 6 hours. I’m not. I feel like I raced a smart race and didn’t leave anything in reserve. I’ve got the ice on my knee right now to prove it. I’m more sore than I was after my marathon.

I’m still not sure how I’m going to double all of those distances. At least the run at CDA isn’t quite as vertical. (I hope)

Tri season’s over. Now it’s time to recover and focus on the San Antonio Half Marathon. NS Rob’s time is going down!