Ryan is kicking his own ass for IM Lake Placid in 2012!

6 mile lunch run & 25 mile trainer spin - 2/1/2012

2012-02-01T23:15:00.003-05:00

Double session today!

I did another lunch-break run today - same loop as last time. Once again, it was at an easy pace - at this point I'm more interested in seeing what kind of mileage volume I can accumulate and build up. Also, I knew I'd be hitting the trainer this evening (and likely doing another lunch run tomorrow), so I definitely wanted to take todays run pretty easy and keep it low stress.

I ran this run in my new NB Minimus road shoes. It was my second run in them, but the jury is still out. I may have mentioned this before in another post, but they seem to have a bump of extra material on the outside of the foot, about mid-foot. I'm not positive, but I think it may be something to encourage forefoot striking. While it's easy enough to forefoot strike, my concern is that at LSD paces, I tend to naturally fall into more of a mid-foot strike, where I can feel that bump. I'm hoping that it won't cause any issues; I can tell you one thing for certain - the second I start feeling something a little odd that persists through multiple runs in those shoes, they are getting tossed. So I'm not totally convinced they will work for me - but I do like that they invoke more calf muscle, and due to the 4 mm heel to toe drop (vs the 7 mm for my Nike Free Runs), they are the next step in the direction of barefoot/minimalist running (although they are anything but minimalist shoes - the drop is only 4 mm, but there is definitely a sole to them).

For my cycling workout, I wanted to do something relatively easy, so I ended up just doing a non-structured 90 minute workout. The goal was to keep a HR of around 145 - so it was a simple and straight forward 10-15 minute progressive warmup, and then settling into a speed of about 17-17.5 mph, resulting in a power of about 200W for 90 minutes right around the target HR. What amazed me about this workout was how it felt. I wasn't necessarily faster than a previous 90 minute spin, and my HR wasn't lower (in fact, my HR was a tad higher - but then again it was a double session today) - but my legs really felt different on the pedals. Previously, I would say that I was 75% using an up/down motion on the pedals - especially if I wasn't thinking about it. If I thought about it, I could get the muscles to apply pressure on the pedals throughout the cycle, but I could also tell that more leg muscles were firing than was necessary. End result was that there was a lot of fighting amongst the muscles. However, just a couple sessions of easy one leg drills seems to have really done a lot to teach the muscles how to fire, and when to fire so that they could apply pressure when necessary, and relax when necessary. So instead of 75% up/down, it seems almost flipped around - 75% circular with just some residual up/down that needs to be tweaked. I actually found myself with my mind drifting a bit (I was watching episodes of 24, afterall), but when I'd return my attention, I was still actually more 'cycling', instead of 'pistoning'.

So while my speed and HR may not reflect it, I think thats a very positive step - so it may be that the primary benefit of this workout isn't the aerobic benefits, but one more of cycling efficiency, which will pay dividends down the road.

Trainerroad.com Gayley workout - 1/31/2012

2012-01-31T22:29:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I started using trainerroad.com as source for indoor cycling workouts and a way to get more information about my progression. One of the appealing aspects of the site is the myriad of workouts they have available, and the fact that they package a bunch of them up into targeted training programs. One of these such programs is a six week base building program, so I figured that since I'm relatively new to cycling, it'd probably be a good idea to start there.

The first workout in this program is called 'Gayley'. I'm not sure where they come up with the names for these workouts, but whatever - thats the one I did today. Anyway, it is composed of several minutes of low intensity warmup, followed by a few minutes of progressive intensity warmup, for about 15 minutes total. One of the things you can choose is whether to base workouts on power, or HR. I decided to go with HR, since I figure I'm far more in tune with what I can handle based on HR as opposed to power (since I don't have a power meter). While the ability to base workouts on power (which, in my case, would be a correlated value based on the publishe speed/power curve from my trainer manufacturer) might come in useful some day - for right now I am more interested in working my body at an appropriate level using primary biometrics (such as HR), as opposed to glossing over them for what I'd call secondary (power output) metrics.

Anyhow - the program initially wanted my peak HR to be 150, which correlated with what it thinks my LTHR is. However, I knew I'd be able to hold the interval times @ 150 with no problem, so I upped the intensity to 156, which you see reflected in the link above as the green line above the blue.

After the warmup, the workout consists of four 8 minute long stints at higher intensity, with 4 minute recovery interludes. The first interval I kinda had to chase things a bit because I still wasn't fully warmed up - so I went out too fast in an effort to get the HR up, but then had to back off because continuing would have pushed the HR even higher. The other three intervals were better - since I was warmed up, it was easier to progressively build up to the intensity without overshooting it.

In the end, I'm not sure that raising the intensity was such a great idea. Although I had no issue holding it for the 8 minute long intervals, since this is a base building portion, it may have been a bit too intense. However, that is carrying over rules of thumb from running - and while I assume there is a good deal of similarity, I'm not entirely certain.

(Oh, the other thing to mention is that yesterday, before Yoga, I was able to squeeze in some one legged drills. Five minute quick spin warmup followed by 2 x 5 minute drills on each leg. Once again, lowest intensity, concentrating more on getting the motion correct with minimal fighting of the path that the crankset guides the foot around on. After only a couple sessions of those drills, I feel like I can say one of two things - either my trainer is broken and its resistance has diminishes noticably, or those drills help a lot - because I've definitely seen improvements in my cycling already. Although I'm sure a large part is due to simply cycling on a more consistent basis).

8 minute test - 1/29/2012

2012-01-29T22:05:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago I found out about a site called trainerroad.com. It's a site that uses data collected from equipment like a HR monitor, cadence/speed sensor and power meter (if you have one) to determine metrics like LTHR (lactate threshold heart rate), FTP (functional threshold power) and other things that I'm finding are part of the cycling vernacular. All this can be useful, but the other thing the site provides is training plans, such as base building, power and endurance, etc. While I'm sure that I could make significant gains in cycling simply by piling miles on the trainer, if I can have focused workouts, it could probably go a long way to maximizing the benefit I'd receive.

For the past few weeks, as I get closer to the 24 week countdown (Feb 5) before Lake Placid, I've been formulating my training approach for that timeframe. One of the things I've been contemplating is exactly how to mix/match running with cycling - and I think the answer I've settled on is to treat cycling very similarly to running, as they are both 'build the engine' activities. One of the followup questions, then, is 'what workouts do I do?' - and that is where something like the workouts on trainerroad.com can come in.

Until I discovered the site, I was planning on mimicking run workouts on the bike - LSD, intervals, threshold, etc. While that may be effective, if I can follow workouts that do things such as basebuilding, etc that have been designed/used by other cyclists, I stand a better chance of optimizing the returns on the effort. And the best part is that trainerroad.com only costs $10/month. The downside is that I had to order an ANT+ USB stick that my equipment (HR monitor, cadence/speed sensor) was compatible with. That was an easy $30 fix, however.

So today was the first time I had a chance to actually follow a workout. I decided to start with a baseline type workout called the 8 minute test. Basically, it is a series of warmups followed by two 8 minute speed tests intended to be performed at maximum sustainable effort. Then, using some magic calculations, it comes back and tells you what it predicts your LTHR would be.

Once I got things all sorted out and fired up the workout, the first thing I noticed was that it wanted a warmup at what seemed to be a random target HR - 117 if I remember correctly. I could change the intensity of the workout, but I had no idea whether it was already going to be killer or not, so I kept it where it was. In fact, the whole routine seemed to be driven by target HR, aside form the high cadence warmup section where it was looking for a target cadence as well. I tried my best to follow the target HR's, but in some sections I was bouncing around a lot - I still tend to take a while to zero in on a specific HR, so any of the short bursts were the equivalent of a hail mary pass for hitting the target HR. For the first 8 minute test, I took things a tad conservatively, because at the end I still had more in the tank - but I've found I'd rather do that and up the intensity than overdo it and have no idea how much to lower the intensity to get it right. For the second 8 minute test, I increased intensity, but my HR was overshooting the target, so I eased up a bit to bring it back down.

In the end, it said my LTHR should be 136, as opposed to my user inputted value of 150. I decided to stay with the 150 because I've done an hour of cycling at a HR of 150, so I know 136 is low. This tells me two things - I could have pushed harder, and I shouldn't necessarily go by target HR (although that is probably workout dependant). I'd expect that over time, I'll either figure out how to compensate, or my parameters will zero in to something more accurate that represents fitness level.

17 mile LSD - 1/28/2012

2012-01-29T21:30:00.002-05:00

This weekend I wanted to get a 17 miler in - the last long run was two weeks ago @ 15 miles, and last weekend being the Hampton half course @ 13 miles, I was all set to up the distance this weekend a notch.

It's amazing how quickly distance endurance can be lost. One might think that since I just did a full marathon in mid-October, that I should just about be able to do a full marathon again any day of the week. However, a solid month after the marathon was extremely reduced mileage on account of my right foot, and then even with a half marathon in mid-November, it was only a month and a half later that I did 11.5 miles and was glad to be done when I was, because I could feel my left knee getting 'squishy' (something I've found to be an indication that it is close to time to stop). Fortunately, the rebuild to previous distance is significantly easier the second time around - it just takes patience to not try and do it too quickly. Honestly, having the bike trainer really helps with that - allows me to do something worthwhile in lieu of running when I shouldn't otherwise be.

A few of the initial distance building runs I remember fairly vividly, but honestly I don't really remember a whole lot about the 17 miler. Looking back through my log, it looks to have been in mid-July. Oddly enough, it doesn't look like I had been taking walk breaks every mile, which really confuses me. I have no idea why that would be. Either way, my avg HR for that run was 159 and the average pace was 9:53/mile. I'm sure it being summer has something to do with it, but it gives a baseline for effort.

Compared to that, a 17 mile run now is a relative cake-walk - pace is a bit north of 9 min/miles, but the average HR was in the mid-140's. I still took walk breaks, but this time it was every two miles instead of every mile. There were two reasons for this change - I'd like to eventually cut out walk breaks if possible (although I have a feeling I'll still always benefit from them), but the more important reason is that two miles is perfect timing for refueling and rehydrating. This way, it's easy to make sure I consume calories and drink water every 15-20 minutes (as opposed to trying to remember every other break, when I'd be liable to mix something up). I also brought some of my homemade energy goop with me as well - my plan was to consume it all during the 10-11 mile loop around the local reservoir, and then refill the gel flask and water bottles at home, and then head out for the remaining several miles. However, when I got to about mile 8, I felt like I was continually refueling and rehydrating myself sufficiently that I wouldn't need a refill in order to finish what miles were remaining.

The rest of the run was pretty uneventful and done in a steady state. It turned out I had to improvise at the end a bit to tack on the last 3/4 to 1/2 mile - but I was feeling good enough to do that as opposed to skimp out on them (it can be very tempting to turn it in following the same road path you always follow when doing a common loop).

After the run, I took and ice bath for the 20 minutes, followed by a hot shower and my typical refueling meal after a long workout - a burrito from Chipotle. Later on in the evening, I hopped on the bike trainer for 30 minute easy pace spin in order to see if something like that helps with recovery (get blood moving around without the impact).

Steady state trainer spin - 1/26/2012

2012-01-27T23:46:00.000-05:00

After yesterdays six miles at lunch, and intervals on the trainer in the evening, I wanted a workout today that would not be terribly taxing. Especially with a 17 mile long run coming up this weekend. So I did a simple and straight forward steady state trainer spin with a target HR between 140-145.

Unlike the past couple trainer workouts, this one I wanted to hit a cadence of 90 rpm as close as possible - at least during the real workout portion. I did a two step warm up - 5 minutes at 34x19, followed by 5 minutes @ 34x16, represented by the two plateaus in the HR graph. I then went to 34x14, and found the HR settling into the 140's around the 25 minute mark. Figuring it would probably climb a bit over time, I kept the gears at that spot, aiming for the proper cadence, and kept spinning for about 70 minutes. As anticipated, the HR did increase slightly, the cadence decreased slightly, as did the speed. However, the dropoff was real minimal, so I'm pretty happy about it.

Following that, it was about five minutes of cool down spin.

One thing of note is that I did continue to toy around with efficiency during the cycle. Having been through a couple sessions now of OLD's on each leg, I did feel like I could start to tell when the leg muscles were firing appropriately for the position around the cycle. Prior to doing the OLD's, I had no idea what it felt like - so as of this point in time, even if the OLD's haven't yet helped with actual efficiency or power, they do appear to be helping with knowing when it starts to 'feel right'. Or, maybe 'right' is too aggressive at this stage of the game. Maybe it should be more like 'not feel quite so wrong'.

OLDs, Yoga, Minimus shoes, lunch run and spinning intervals - 1/25/12

2012-01-25T23:56:00.000-05:00

I seem to be making a habit of combining multiple workouts into a single entry lately.

So after Sunday's run of the Hampton half course, I found myself with a free 40 minutes or so before Yoga on Monday evening. It dawned on me that this would be a perfect time for some OLD's at the easiest resistance setting. I could do a few sets on each leg, get the benefit of that drill and not wear myself out before yoga.

Turned out it was a really really good idea! By setting the trainer to the lowest resistance, I was able to get five minutes on each leg without a problem. I could have done more if need be, but it seemed like five minutes turned out to be just about right. The cadence was not stellar - probably around 70 rpm or so - but the important part was that I was able to have an extended time with the muscles in my legs learning how to fire in coordinated fashion without tiring so quickly that benefit is lost. Kind of a carry-over concept from Total Immersion swimming - start out just getting the mechanics down first, tossing anything else performance related (speed, time, resistance) out the window. This would allow the muscles to learn how to work together instead of against each other. At least, so the theory goes. I guess time will tell.

Yoga on Monday night was nothing terribly new - but it was necessary. Even though the half course on Sunday was done at a low intensity, it was still over 2.5 hours on my feet, and throughout the day on Monday I still had some residual soreness because regardless of speed, 2.5 hours of pounding impact is 2.5 hours of pounding impact.

On Tuesday I managed to get out and pick up a pair of NB Minimus shoes. For about nine months now I've been running on Nike Free Run's, and they've been working great. However, I recently found that while a typical running shoe has a heel to toe drop of around 10-12 mm, the Free Run's that I have are around 7 mm. So that explains why they ended up being a good compromise between what I was used to (Air Pegasus) and the sandles I was using in the spring (0 mm drop) that turned out to be too aggressive. So, when I found out that the Minimus shoes have a drop of about 4 mm, it seemed like the next logical step. They are by no means minimalist shoes, but they do accomplish the goal of forefoot striking and make it even harder than the Free's to heel strike.

Anyway, I wanted to give them a shot, but I didn't want to take them out on too long a run. So I grabbed the dogs and did a quick short run of just under three miles. They felt pretty good, but the jury is still out on them - they have a bit of a hump mid-foot towards the outside. I feel like it might be there to 'encourage' forefoot striking, but I'm not positive. I'll have to run in them a few more times to really start making up my mind.

After the run, I hit the bike trainer again for some more OLD's. I felt like Monday's workout of five minute repeats of each leg at minimal resistance was really helpful, so I repeated it. After a five minute warmup at easy pace, I did three sets for each leg, alternating, at five minutes per set. I could tell by the end of the workout that it was getting easier, in a subtle way. To be sure, the legs were getting fatigued, so there was extra effort from that. But outside of that I could tell that the mechanics were getting a little more efficient. It's hard to describe, but even as the muscles got fatigued, they were less herky-jerky about going through the entire cycle. Also, the cadence wasn't fast - again, around 70 - but that is/was not my primary concern.

At lunch today I decided to head out for a run. First of all, at 45F it was nice weather. Second, I'm going to be entering a base building phase in the next week or so, and to make that work I'm going to have to be running 2-3x per week, I figure. So doing a quick 5-6 miles a couple times during the week at lunch when I can will make it that much easier, because then I'll have more flexibility for hitting the bike trainer in the evenings.

Finally, with a run out of the way for the day, I hit the bike trainer in the evening. I decided to try a high cadence workout with a few intervals. To be honest, I have no idea whether it's a good workout or not - but I have seen people talk about not just usefulness of one leg drills, but also high cadence stuff, low cadence stuff (high resistance, to build power), etc. So I figured I'd throw something together and see what would happen. I started on 34x19 for about five minutes, then moved to 34x17 for five minutes, then 34x16 for five minutes, and then 34x15 for five minutes. By that time, my HR was touching 160, so I figured that was a good top limit. After the five minutes was up, I went back down to 34x19 for five minutes as recovery, until my HR got back down into the 140's. I repeated that three times, followed by a few minutes back at 34x19 as cool down. It is too soon to tell definitively, but I do feel as though the OLD's did provide some benefit, as power seemed to be better balanced throughout the entire cycle. Still got a ways to go, but it at least seemed better. Who knows if it was or not!

Strength workout and Hampton Half course trial - 1/23/2012

2012-01-23T16:08:00.000-05:00

Got a little bit of catching up to do...

Friday turned out to be a rest day because I had plans in the evening after work, so not much to say there, except that I repeated the plank hold routine (1 minute front & 1 minute each side, two sets)

Saturday I originally had plans to do my weight training circuit and then spend some time on the bike, but I wasn't sure whether to do a long session on the bike, one legged drills, or what. So I ended up letting things just happen as they would.

This was my second time through my own personalized circuit, and it was as much of an ass kicker as it was the first time. Maybe more-so. If you look at the results, many of the numbers were the same (although the lunges and squats did go up) - but there was less rest in between because I had the weights all sorted out ahead of time. I got through the first set pretty smoothly - take a couple quick breaks, but for the most part knocked in out in 10-15 minutes. The second set I slowed down a bit, took breaks that were a little longer, but for the most part still managed to come out on the other side in pretty good shape. I want to say the first two sets took me around 25 minutes combined. The third set kicked my ass something fierce. It took me just about as long to get through the third set as it did the first two combined. I had to take much longer breaks in between each exercise, and after the one arm balance pushups, I just collapsed on the floor for a good couple minutes before I even got up to write down the number of reps. After I was done, I stumbled on the stairs a bit on my way out of the basement, and once I had my glass of chocolate milk and was on the living room couch, I actually took a quick cat nap.

It occured to me that perhaps the reason why was because I woke up that morning, had my normal breakfast of a nutrition bar (clif bar, on this day) & chocolate milk. Or maybe I had waffles - I know I had waffles at some point during the weekend, and it wasn't on Sunday - but I don't remember whether I only had waffles on saturday, or whether I had the bar and milk earlier in the morning and had the waffles a few hours later. Either way, I took the dogs for a walk for over an hour, and did the routine after that. So by that time, it was 4:30pm or so and I had very little to eat. So I was pretty underfueled, and used everything I had on the routine and bonked at the end. Any aspirations of doing anything on the trainer went out the window as well.

On Sunday I met up with my sister to run the Hampton Half marathon course. It'd be her first time doing anything over 10 miles, and while I did about 15 last weekend, I was just as happy to have a lower mileage weekend because the time spent on the ground would make up for it. It turned out to be a real good example of how you can still have a good workout without it being one that makes your lungs really work. Average HR was in the low 120's, which was interesting because it highlighted what seems to be a pretty consistent trend - 1 min/mile for every 10 bpm:
125 bpm - 11:30 min/miles
135 bpm - 10:30 min/miles
145 bpm - 9:30 min/miles
155 bpm - 8:30 min/miles
165 bpm - 7:30 min/miles (monson half)
170 bpm - 7 min/miles (thanksgiving and freezer five races)

Outside of that, it was the longest time spent pounding the pavement since the marathon - a little over 2.5 hours. So regardless of pace, that still counts for something - I still had to stretch out a couple times, I still felt mild soreness on Sunday evening after sitting for a period of time, etc. It was, as it turns out, a really good way to continue with base building. Instead of combining structural/skeletal base building with aerobic, it was almost exclusively structural - which I'd think would be a valuable thing to be able to work at a time of year when I'd be able to continue working the aerobic systems via the bike trainer, but would have limited opportunity to work the structural stuff.

Short run, OLD drill and plank holds - 1/19/12

2012-01-19T23:13:00.003-05:00

Today was a mix of activities. First, I took the dogs on a run for about 3.1 miles, which was not a distance PR for them, but it was a time PR of 28:46 (which included two potty breaks for them). The few other runs I had done with them a few weeks ago were more in the 9:30 - 10 min/mile range. Todays run was probably about the fastest they can do at the moment - the were dragging behind a bit the entire time. My original intention was to do 5 miles, but after about 2.5 miles, girl dog was really starting to lag.

Once I got home, I hit the trainer for a quick spin session because I wanted to try the one legged drills again. Since I was already warmed up from the run, I did about 10 minutes of cycling warmup, followed by 7 x (right leg 1 min, 1 min both legs, left leg 1 min, 1 min both legs).

Here's the profile from SportTracks:

So you can see the first ten minutes is pretty much steady state. The first OLD set was at my typical warmup speed/resistance of 15 - 15.5 mph - but I found that to still be too much. It was fine for the first 15-20 seconds, and I was able to keep a fairly smooth and even cycle stroke, but I found that the back-up-forward motion really started to fall off the table at that point. At this point, I found I instinctively pushed harder on the down stroke to maintain cadence - but by then it was spiraling out of control - the harder I pushed, the more awkward and disjointed the whole entire cycle sequence became. After one set on each leg at that speed, I clearly needed to make an adjustment. So on the next set, I dropped the resistance a bit - I dont remember whether it was one gear or two. I think it was one.

Over the next several sets, I refined my process a bit each time. I found that I had to consciously keep myself from pushing downward so hard, and put more emphasis on keeping even pressure throughout the entire cycle. Part of the problem was that initially, I found I was subconsciously peddling faster, I think because I was trying so desperately to keep cadence. What I didn't realize initially was that it was unnecessary - it was like I was trying to fit a mental rhythm I have in my head for two feet into cycling with one foot. So once I concentrated more on other other parts of the cycle, and less on the down portion, things evened out. However, I found that my hip flexors were tiring rather quickly - having to move my foot through the entire cycle was exhausting. After about 30 seconds, form started to get sloppy, and often by 50 seconds, the muscles were so tired they didn't know how to fire in a coordinated manner anymore. It was very bizarre - it was like one muscle was trying to pull up while another was trying to extend my foot forward while yet another was still trying to pull my foot back.

In the end, as the graph shows, I ended up dropping the resistance again in an attempt to be able to maintain form and muscle firing coordination for the entire minute. It definitely helped, but it is also obvious that practice is needed.

All in all, though - it was pretty eye opening. I didn't realize just how much of a 'free ride' my leg was getting on its path through the cycle. Obviously, this means that part of my power generation is being robbed - not only am I fighting resistance from the road and wind and elevation, but I'm also constantly fighting myself while cycling - clearly a holdover from the years of riding a bike as a kid without clipless pedals. So I'll definitely be incorporating some of these drills into my routine - I'm not sure how yet, though - I may just throw some in during certain spins, I may keep one spin/week dedicated to repeating the drill several times, or I may put heavy emphasis on it as sort of a 'break down a rebuild' exercise.

Oh, for the last activity of the day, I did two sets of three way one minute plank holds. One minute forward plank on the elbows, one minute left side, one minute right side and repeat (with rest where necessary). My thinking is that something like this might be a good way to get core workouts in multiple times during the week - because they are something I can do quickly while watching TV.

45 min trainer spin with OLD and intervals - 1/18/2012

2012-01-18T22:19:00.001-05:00

After yesterday's trainer spin where I spent some time trying to improve form via circular motion instead of up/down, one of my DM (Daily Mile) friends mentioned one leg spin drills as a way to improve that. I always figured one legged drills (OLD) were just to improve strength in a leg, but when I looked into it, I found indications that it might be helpful for form as well. So I decided to give it a shot during tonights session.

After a 20 minute warmup at about 16-16.5 mph (I finally got smart and wore a sweatshirt that I took off. I cycle in a 50-53F basement, but since I know I'm going to get warm, I have a fan on. Since I dont want to stop and dismount to turn on the fan, I turn it on at the beginning - but as I'm not warmed up at that point, having a fan on me blowing 50F air gets chilly. So today I actually used the ole noggin and put an extra shirt on to keep from getting too cold initially), I gave the OLD a shot. I started off with 30 seconds on the right leg, and found it pretty easy and straightforward for the first 10-15 seconds. After that, I ended up reverting to more of a pumping up and down motion, and I think it was more to keep the cadence up. So it ended up being a very uneven-powered cycle - and as a result, tension on the chain and gears was not consistent. By the time I hit 25 seconds, it was pretty atrocious - so that is why I ended up at 30 seconds. After the first leg, my HR was up near 160. So I clipped back in, and gave myself a couple minutes to see if the HR would come down a bit. I repeated the exercise on the other leg, rested, and did the two-leg set a second time.

After that, I decided I was done with that for the evening - I'd have to reassess and re-evaluate my approach before trying it again. Since my HR was already raised, I decided to make it a shorter spinning session and do a couple quick intervals. So after about 5-6 minutes of rest from the OLD's, I increased intensity to 18-18.5 mpg range for one minute, followed by a minute rest, and did four total interval sets.

You can see the online garmin results here, but it is rather pointless. For some dumb reason, Garmin has decided to really expand the HR scale, so you can't see squat on it. And of course the speed is all messed up, thinking I was going at either 15.6 or 23.4 mph - nothing in between. Of course, SportTracks renders the data much more nicely, as shown below:

So you can see the 20 minute warmup with the HR steadily rising (although it did flatten out a bit in the low 140's from 15-20 minutes), followed by the four sharp rises in HR at 20, 23, 24.5 and 27 minutes. Speed dropped as the cadence dropped slightly. Then there was the speed from from 27 to about 33 because I lowered the gear. The intervals were at about 35, 37, 40 and 42 minutes.

In the end, I'm going to try the OLD drills again - but I think my mistake this time was doing them with a resistance that was too hard. I think I ended up having to really power through the downstroke to maintain cadence, but was unable to maintain that power and speed throughout the whole cycle. With a lower resistance, hopefully I'll be able to keep the motion more even throughout the entire cycle. Ultimately I'd like to be smoother throughout the whole cycle with resistance, but at first I think the main objective is going to be more about training the muscles how/when to fire in a coordinated effort - and then once they learn that, then I can try to have them generate more power.

23 mile trainer spin - 1/17/2012

2012-01-17T23:14:00.005-05:00

Today's workout was the length of two '24' episodes - a couple minutes shy of 90 minutes. The goal was basically to do a steady state session with the HR getting into the 130's. After Sunday's spin where the HR stayed in the 120's, I wanted to bump up resistance a notch - but I wanted to have it be a shorter session just in case it got a bit too arduous at the end. If all went well, then perhaps the LSD sessions on the weekends could be brought up to the same intensity.

I started out with a warmup of about 15 minutes or so in an easy gear (about 15.5 mph), and then increased resistance to one higher than Sunday, resulting in a speed of about 16.5 mph. After a little while, I decided to try playing around with mechanics a bit - trying to not make such an up and down motion that uses primarily the quads for power, and instead make it more circular, which may pull other muscles into the power generation. I noticed that when I did that, the cadence dropped a bit - from the mid-90's to somewhere between 88-92. So as a result, the speed dropped a tad as well, closer to about 16 mph. However, I may end up being ok with that - the cadence is still in the optimal range, and if I can get my legs used to that sort of motion, it may pay efficiency dividends later on in the future. For now, though - I found that when I paid attention to it, I could maintain it, but time moved slowly. When I allowed myself to get distracted by watching TV, time moved more quickly but I tended to fall out of that new mechanic. So I'm hoping that over time, it'll start getting more into muscle memory and I won't have to think about it.

30 miles trainer spin - 1/15/2012

2012-01-15T23:38:00.000-05:00

Two out of three aint bad. I had grand visions of doing a swimming, weight training and cycling session today - but when I got to the pool, more lanes were being used than anticipated for other purposes, leaving only two lap lanes available. At the time I thought I'd come back later in the day, but then I decided that since January and February are pretty busy times at the pool, and my swimming isn't going to improve by much at all in that time, I mine as well punt on swimming for the most part until at least March. I think I'll still try to go like twice a month just to keep from regressing, but my time would be better spent on the trainer in the end.

So anyway, that meant that I only did two of the three originally intended workouts - which I'm still happy about. The second workout today was about a two hour trainer spin at low intensity. For some reason, once again the speed graph on the Garmin is rendered incorrectly - it says I peaked at a speed of 23.4 mph, meanwhile when I check my Forerunner 305, it says my peak speed was sub 18 mph. So here is the SportTracks graph:

At first I didn't worry about the HR being a bit low - I've started to see a trend where it takes about 20 minutes for it to settle into a steady-state range. However, after an hour, I was still seeing the HR in the 120's - and while my goal was an easy spin, I didn't know if maybe the resistance was still a little low. So at 1:10:00 I went to one higher gear, which brought the HR up - but I wasn't sure I'd be able to sustain that without the HR creeping close to 140, so I opted to go back down. I'm still kinda figuring out my HR ranges on the bike - while I know that it seems my HR is often 10 bpm lower on the bike for similar RPE as compared to running, that is entirely based on feel. Until a have a better idea of what my cycling legs feel like, for these longer spins I'm thinking I'll err on the side of easier. I'll leave the possibility of more intense workouts for something like hour-long sessions during the week.

However, in comparing this weeks two hour session with last week - the average speed was virtually identical at 15.4 mph, but this weeks avg HR was a full 10 bpm lower.

1/15/12 - Strength training circuit 1 trial

2012-01-15T17:04:00.000-05:00

I've obviously been laxing on the P90X recently - ever since getting the trainer and having that option available, having 3x per week to dedicate an hour and a half to strength training has been a tad too much. I had considered just sticking witht he Legs & Back routine, due to the benefits of the leg workout, but I didn't want to completely abandon the upper body. So that was why I recently tried out the Spartacus workout - which has some aspects I liked, and some I did not.

What I ended up deciding to try was to compile a list of all the P90X exercises, sorted by what section it works, and come up with my own circuit type workout (mimicking the Spartacus workout in that respect). I liked the fact that Spartacus did the routines three times around, but I also like how P90X varies things up a bit. So I combined the two concepts together, picking three exercises from each portion of the body worked by P90X, and creating a three set routine out of it. My thinking is that I can then do this one workout, once per week, and that'd be my primary strength training.

I ended up with the following:

Set 1
- Wide front pull ups, max reps
- Balance lunges, 1 minute each side
- Standard pushups, max reps
- One arm cross body curls, max reps
- Weighted circles (30 seconds each direction with 5 seconds of rest in between), max time
- Overhead tri extension, max reps

Set 2
- Reverse grip chin ups, max reps
- Dead lift squats, 1 minute each side
- Slow motion pushups (4 seconds down, 4 seconds up), to max
- Static arm curl, max reps
- Shoulder press, max reps
- Front to back tri extension, max reps

Set 3
- Close grip overhand pullups, max reps
- Single leg wall squat, 15 seconds each side alternating to 90 seconds total
- One arm balance pushups, max reps
- Curl up hammer down, max reps
- Pour fly's, max reps
- Lying tri extention, max reps

So in general, the muscle groups worked are in this order:
1) back
2) legs
3) chest/tri
4) biceps
5) shoulders
6) triceps

My goal was to obviously hit every major section once each set, but it's almost unavoidable to work the chest without also working the triceps - so I split them up as best I could to give the triceps a little bit of a break between station 3 and station 6. The other nice thing is that this is just an example - there are enough exercises in P90X that I could probably come up with 3-4 of these circuits, so I'm not doing all of the exact same exercises every week.

Overall, I found the workout to be a very good start, but I think there needs to be some minor modifications. First off, I feel like the legs should maybe see a little more attention - I may have underestimated their ability to perform with little rest in between what is otherwise exhausting sets. That said, in both the balance lunges and dead lift squats, I definitely felt the gluteus medius being worked on the last several reps - and that is one of the primary muscles I'd like to see targeted in a legs routine due to its roll in hip stability (according to PT). So we'll see over the next couple days whether the legs really do need more attention, or whether it is sufficient. Second, it does end up being a workout that focuses primarily on the upper body. Not the worst thing in the world, and if I decide to add more legs, that would obviously help balance things out. Third, there is no core stuff in here. I'm not sure exactly how to approach that, because not only would I like to work core more than once per week, but I also know I mentally tap out of a strength workout after about an hour. So I may have to end up doing a core/ab workout during the week - at the moment I'm thinking of just doing something like Ab Ripper-X - but we'll see.

Back to this workout, though, it is an exhausting routine, and it does take up the ideal amount of time for me - about 45 minutes, excluding warmup and stretching. Since each exercise is done to max reps, or trying to get as many reps in as possible during a specified time, it definitely elicits heavy breathing. In fact, halfway through the third set, after writing down what I had done, I collapsed on the floor for a minute to catch my breath. Unlike a normal P90X routine where you are exhausting a single section of the body, this was exhausting my entire body, leaving me with little to draw on to hold myself up. Also, I did find that the progression from one body part to another was real nice - after fatiguing myself at one station, I was looking forward to the next one and giving the just-worked muscles a much needed break.

You can find the results of todays workout in the 'P90X Progress - Winter 2011' section above, under 'Circuit 1'.

14.5 mile LSD run - 1/14/12

2012-01-14T17:19:00.000-05:00

Since today was forecast to be the nicer day of the two this weekend, I decided to go for my long run today, saving the trainer workout for tomorrow.

The last couple LSD runs have been just a hair under 12 miles, and I haven't run anything longer then that since the Monson half in November. Part of the reason was that my right foot had its tendonitis issue, and then I only recently got over some runners knee symptoms in the left knee after overdoing it mileage-wise a few weeks ago. Since neither have been bothing me for over a week now, I figured something in the 15ish range would be good for today.

Right away I could tell that this was going to be a perfect example of running before not fully recovering from a previous workout. After I got off the trainer yesterday, I could tell it was a good workout because my legs were feeling a little fatigued. I only ended up having a glass of chocolate milk and a banana for dinner before going to bed. Then this morning I had another glass of chocolate milk and a zone bar for breakfast before setting out on my run. So the combination of a quick turnaround, plus not having eaten anything substantial means that my muscles were still a tad tight from yesterday, and my energy stores were lower than usual for a Saturday long workout. I didn't get 20 feet down the road before I could tell I didn't have as much spring in my step as normal. I debated whether I should actually go for the full intended distance or not, but decided to press on, knowing I could call it later on if I needed to. Fortunately, within a couple miles, I was able to tell things had loosened up a bit, removing pretty much any extra concern for a problem to develop.

So while that was good news, the 'bad' (if you really want to call it that) was that it was also apparent that my HR was going to be a bit higher than normal for this pace. Whereas last weeks run was at an 8:42 min/mile pace and the HR was in the low 140's, today was going to be closer to 9 min/miles and the HR around 150. I was ok with that, though, since I had a good reason - the quick turnaround and lack relative lack of food since the last workout. Logging miles in the appropriate HR range was more important than pace or whereabouts in that range I ended up.

One of the things I did last season on every long run was take a walk break every mile. While I'm still an advocate for that strategy, I'm trying to save it for only my longest runs or an actual marathon - and at this point 15 miles isn't a distance-extending run, so I limited the walk/stretch breaks to two - one at 7.5 miles, and one at 10 miles. In both cases, the reason for stopping was less because I felt like it was needed energy-wise, but because I felt like things were tightening up enough to justify a quick stretch to avoid further complications. I figured that was a good compromise for doing todays distance on muscles that started out tight.

75 minutes on trainer - 1/13/12

2012-01-13T22:18:00.003-05:00

Today I picked up a replacement steel skewer for the rear wheel on my bike. I had noticed that trainers come with skewers, and I never quite understood why. Then the other day when I dismounted the bike from the trainer to move it, I noticed two good size gouges in the handle. Presumably the handle is made of aluminum, and since it is softer than the steel piece of the trainer that locks onto the bike - well, the softer piece gave way. So rather than incur more damage, I spent the $11 for a steel skewer that won't get worn out.

I wanted to do something over an hour, but as I still wasn't sure what my plans for the weekend would be, I didn't want to do anything too much and wear myself out. But I couldn't resist making things a tad interesting by varying the resistance throughout the session. I started out in an easy gear, and every 10 minutes went to a higher gear to increase resistance. When I got to one that resulted in a HR in the 155-160 range, I found that that was a pretty decent workout - sustainable for 10 minutes, but I was glad for it to be over. Then a five minute rest period to bring the HR down and recover a bit, followed by another 10 minutes at this new 'threshold' intensity, and then a 10 minute cooldown.

Unfortunately, the Garmin Connect website really kinda screws up the speed graph for this, and I have no idea why. Fortunately, SportTracks renders the data really well (further confusing the issue because they both get their data from the same source!)

Even though I've been using the trial/free version of SportTracks, I think I might actually donate to it - the data manipulation capabilities are far superior to anything in the Training Center that comes with the Garmin, and while the online data is kinda cool, it is still pretty limited - there is no way to get the kind of data representation you see above with the Garmin stuff.

Oh! The other exciting thing - about 1:10 into it, the power went out. I was down in the basement, so it was pitch dark. I figured that with only having a few minutes left, I mine as well continue - so thats what I did. Made me think that one benefit of a mag trainer vs fluid is that you could maybe rig up some wires to it to power a couple lights in case of a power outtage. Then I consider that I probably only put out about 200W of power - and considering the effort it takes, and realizing that it's only enough to power two light bulbs - well, thats sort of sobering.

Spartacus workout - 1/11/12

2012-01-11T22:54:00.000-05:00

Over the summer, I was talking with a coworker about strength workouts, and I mentioned that I was planning on doing P90X over the winter. He agreed that P90X is an effective routine (you look at him and know he's a fit guy), but his main problem with it was that it was an every day thing. While I obviously haven't been doing P90X every day - I have been finding that with the mild winter and the acquisition of the trainer, my desire to do the P90X stuff has been lacking. However, I've seen huge improvements in upper body strength, and I feel that the leg workouts are absolutely worthwhile. So one of the things in the back of my mind has been how to maintain when full training time hits - I simply wont have enough time to be training for running, biking and swimming as well as yoga and strength training, with strength training being 3x per week.

Anyhow, this coworker mentioned a thing called the Spartacus workout, and the nice thing about it is that you do it 3x per week and it's a more full-body workout than any of the P90X sessions. So I was thinking that once P90X is done (or, at least, when I'm done with it) - it might be an option for maintenance.

I decided that today would be a good day to give it a shot and test its viability - I needed to get a leg workout in this week, and in looking at some of the portions of the routine, there are some squats and lunges and such.

The entire workout calls for going through each of the 10 stations three times. However, in going from one station to the next, it gets quite exhausting - I was definitely sweating more than during any P90X workout. After two rounds, I decided that it wasn't ultimately going to work for me. There were certainly some stations that I think are beneficial, but some of them I'm not so sure about.

The major issue I had was on some of the ones where you do a pushup with the dumbbells in your hands - I found that having all my weight on my hands like that was tweaky. Also, for at least one of them, I don't have a heavy enough dumbbell in hex shape - and it has to be hex shape to keep it from rolling.

I'm thinking that what I'm ultimately going to aim for is listing out each of the exercises that P90X does for each section - chest, shoulders, triceps, back, biceps and legs - and then mix and match them to hit every portion in a single workout. With so much variety in the exercises for P90X - I think I should be able to get at least two fairly unique workout routines from it - and then each week I can designate a day for strength training and hit everything. I won't do as many sets for a particular group each time - for example during Legs & Back day you hit pullups eight times - but doing each of the four major types of pullups should still be enough to provide overall benefit.

1 hr trainer spin - 1/10/12

2012-01-11T22:38:00.001-05:00

Making this entry a day late..

One of my coworkers often sends me an Amazon gift certificate for $40 around the holidays. I usually spend a couple weeks trying to figure out what to spend it on - something I wouldn't necessarily buy on my own, unless there is something really pressing that we need. So in this way I try to make it a treat to myself. It had recently occured to me that with having the trainer over the winter, it'd be a good time to improve my cycling fundamentals, and one of the ways I hear that is best done is to make sure that cadence is at the right speed - around 90 rpm. So in browsing around the other day, I stumbled across the fact that Garmin makes an accessory that is compatible with my HR monitor that measures cadence. And that accessory was on Amazon for $40. Perfect!

I received the sensor yesterday, so I was excited to install it and give it a whirl. Turns out it measures speed as well - while I already have a cyclometer and my HR monitor with its GPS functionality gives me speed on the road - it doesn't provide speed on a trainer. My cyclometer does, but having a speed profile from the Garmin is nice because then it provides a complete picture - speed, distance, time, HR, cadence, etc.

While I'm not yet at the official start of my base building phase, I'm taking the next couple weeks to iron out some scheduling and logistics for my training in the 24 remaining weeks before Lake Placid - and that 24 week countdown starts on Feb 5. So I'm hoping to have all these kinks worked out so that I can concentrate on training at that time - my work schedule with travelling will present enough of a scheduling and logistic challenge as it is.

Thats a long winded way of saying that this was the perfect time to give it a test ride. I decided on an hour, partially because thats how much movie I had left after the two hours on the trainer on Saturday, and it's long enough to get some workout without going overboard. And wouldn't you know - I immediately hit a cadence in the mid-90's - just about where I need to be. So thats good news - because I have a good sense and feel for that speed, and at least now I know it's the proper speed as well. However, I think the real value of the sensor will come when riding on the real road - those are the times when it will be much more varied.

12 mile LSD - 1/8/2012

2012-01-08T19:45:00.000-05:00

Instead of hopping back on the trainer today, I decided to go for a run to take advantage of the continued nice weather. I had been avoiding running all this past week due to my left knee, but the past couple days it hadn't been giving me any grief, so I thought I might give it a test-go. It was a little odd - it had largely gone away by Wednesday, but then on Thursday it came back a little bit, which I attributed to the legs workout from Tuesday.

I decided on a medium length run - I certainly didn't want to do a long run on a just-healed knee, plus it has been two and a half months since I've done a long run, so I'd likely have to build up to it again. I also figured that I'd probably be spending most of the week on the trainer - so I'd not be running anyway, and if the run did aggrevate the knee at all, it'd have time to heal. Plus, tomorrow is yoga day, so that'll help.

The other thing of note is that I tried my invert sugar-based homemade energy gel. Although it did thicken up a bit, it was nowhere near as tough to deal with as honey from the last time. Also, it turns out that the flask I got (which is not a Fuel Belt brand) actually was able to be kept in one of the holsters on my fuel belt without falling off. Not a perfect fit, but it was enough. Ultimately, I'd like to get a fuel belt brand one just to ensure that it wouldn't ever fall out.

Other than that, the whole point was to keep the HR relatively low. I'm starting off with a new base-building phase, which I'll be following for several weeks, which means lots of low intensity workouts. So for now, the threshold, tempo and intervals will be few and far between.

Fueling for endurance events - Part 3

2012-01-08T00:02:00.001-05:00

In the second part of this series, I took a quick look at various energy gels out on the market and got an idea of what type of sugar they use, and how the ones commonly used (maltodextrin, glucose, and fructose) all differ from one another.

The problem with the commercial energy gels is the expense. At typically over a buck per serving, and the suggested use rate of one every 15-20 minutes - it really doesn't take long for a long steady distance training session to end up costing 10 dollars or more. For an occasional race, spending the money may be fine - but I've always been too cheap to always just fork over money for something I can do myself. It's why I started doing my own car work.

Anyway, so that led to the question of how I can make my own energy gel. When I googled, I came across this page, which I've found to be referenced many times in forums, blogs, and what-not. Essentially, it has a recipe for using honey as an energy gel, with some blackstrap molasses thrown in for potassium, and a pinch of salt for the sodium. A couple weeks ago I made the recipe, and had decent results with it - but I used it for an outdoor run and found it got very thick at cold temperatures. When I'd squeeze some into my mouth, it was basically chewy. Not unpleasant - but by far the most unpleasant aspect was trying to actually squeeze it out of the flask. To combat that, all I could think of was adding water, but I wasn't sure about doing that to honey, since bacteria is in honey (just inactive due to low water content).

I also looked into honey to find out what kind of sugars it contains. Based on the wikipedia entry, it has approximately equal ratios of fructose and glucose (about 38 and 31% respectively). While some sources say that optimal fructose absorption occurs with a 1:1 ratio of those two sugars, that doesn't necessarily mean that optimal overall absorption of fuel is with that ratio. Additionally, from what I've seen (and posted in the last section), the commercially available energy gels generally have significantly less fructose than glucose/maltodextrin. So there might be some room for improvement.

Then, it occured to me that we are having a bit of a honeybee crisis in the US here, so the price of honey has actually gone up quite a bit. So while using it as the base for an energy gel may still be cheaper than commercially available product, I started trying to think of another option.

Then it hit me - invert sugar! Invert sugar is simply sugar (sucrose - which is one fructose and one glucose molecule bonded together) that has the sugar molecules separated via heat. If you were to dissolve sugar into water and use that as an energy source, your body would have to break the sugar into its separate components first. However, if that can be done ahead of time, you'd end up with an energy gel recipe that can be used more quickly by the body. Furthermore, once sucrose is broken down - you have your equal ratio of fructose and glucose - so right away you are starting at a point very similar to honey. And far cheaper as well. Electrolytes could be added by adding salt for sodium, and some molasses for potassium. You could also add in salt substitute (potassium chloride) as the potassium source as well - but the molasses adds a touch of flavor.

So in the end, I tried the following recipe:

2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 TBSP lemon juice (acid required to catalyse the reaction that breaks sucrose into fructose and glucose)
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp molasses (I would have gone with blackstrap, but didn't see any at the store)
1/4 tsp salt substitute

Put water, sugar and acid in sauce pan. Heat to simmering, cover, and let simmer for 20 minutes. Pour into container, add salt, molasses, and salt substitute.

The resulting product is about 1 3/4 cups of viscous liquid that is pourable even at freezer temperatures. Not surprisingly, very much like pancake syrup (since, really - thats all syrup is anyway).

Additionally, I tried looking for a source of maltodextrin. All I came across was Carbogain, which is available at a local shop, but in a big-ass tub. I may end up doing it, but at the time I didn't want to buy a huge quantity. Anyway, I was looking for maltodextrin because that would provide a way to decrease the ratio of fructose. Effectively, I could make my own C2MAX by adding maltodextrin until I had the fructose percentage down to 33%, while the maltodextrin and glucose would make up the remaining 66%. It would also likely thicken the resulting product, but by how much I don't know.

For a nutritional analysis:
Calories: 1568 (1548 for two cups of sugar + 20 for 1 tsp molasses)
Carbs: 392g
Sodium: 1120 mg (1 tsp = 3g kosher salt)
Potassium: 700 mg (1/4 tsp salt substitute)

For the sake of convenience, each fluid ounce (4 fl oz = 1/2 cup) has:
112 Calories (28g carbs)
80 mg sodium
50 mg potassium

Although I feel like this is a start of an improvement over the honey-based recipe (for me, anyway), I have to acknowledge that article on active.com as the inspiration for this. Also, the list on that page of other things that can be added - kool-aid for flavor, chia seeds, soy protein, etc - applies to the recipe above as well, and are also some good ideas.

2 hrs on trainer - 1/7/12

2012-01-07T22:51:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned in my last cycling trainer post, I've been thinking about the best way to approach using the bike trainer in order to maximize results in the amount of time I have. While some sort of interval training is certainly in the cards, I've decided that I'm going to go with the idea that cycling is very similar to running in terms of how to approach creating improvement. As an example - with swimming, there is far less point to building up strength and aerobic capacity, and it is more beneficial to concentrate on form improvement, since swimming requires moving through something 1000x more dense than air. However, cycling, like running, is all about moving your own weight horizontally, albeit the mechanics are different.

With that in mind, and applying the concepts from Daniels Running Formula to cycling, the first phase would be a base building phase. In a future post, once I've got the plan more ironed out, I'll go into more detail into what the base building and it's purpose is - but for now the important part is that it is comprised of long steady distance. No need for getting the HR elevated in crazy fashion, nothing that'll induce too much soreness - just plain ole' getting the HR up into the aerobic zone and hanging out there for a good long time.

So today's workout was just a matter of putting a movie in (I chose the first LoTR movie), sitting back , and peddling. I was originally thinking I'd go for the full three hours, but ended up opting for two. Dinner logistics intervened, going from one to three hours would be quite a jump (just in case there'd be something to get conditioned to), and the fact that I have plenty of time to build up made me decide that two hours would be enough for today.

My primary focus was on cadence and keeping the HR in the mid-130's. I tried my best to stick to what I thought was close to a 90 rpm speed at a gear that provided just enough resistance to keep my HR in the goal range. Interestingly enough, the garmin connect page shows my avg HR at 127, but SportTracks on my local computer shows an average in the 130's. No matter, just one of the few times I've seen a difference, and just odd because they both get data from the same HR unit.

Initially, I figured I'd do the whole workout with just water (without it being intense, I figured it'd be a good opportunity for some fat burning, since carb requirements would be low). But after an hour I started feeling myself lagging a tad, so I ended up grabbing some of my homemade energy goop (the recipe for which I'm still experimenting with) for the last half.

Having something to watch was definitely nice, but I'm not sure my movie choice was the best. Sometimes the story plods along kinda slowly - so I might have to try for some more action-type movies. I almost went with The Dark Knight, but I can always pick that one some other time. And wouldn't it figure - the two hours came up during the fight scene with the orcs and cave troll.

Day 60 - 16 x 100 plus 600 yd - 1/5/12

2012-01-05T22:06:00.001-05:00

It's been a while, just about a month, since my last pool visit. That last one was a series of 100 yd sets to try and increase efficiency by trying to reduce the number of strokes per lap. At that time, I found I was between 15.5-16.5, depending on whether it was the first 25 yds, or the final 25 yds. When I decided to hit the pool again today, I wasn't sure what to do - since it had been a month, should I just go for a mile and a half, since I likely forgot some of the nuances from the last session, or should I repeat that effort?

I ended up going with repeating the attempt to increase streamlining. In a sense, it'd be more necessary now with a layoff than before. Plus, unless I had something to work from on a long swim, it'd likely not see any improvement.

I ended up doing 16 x 100 yd sets today, and found myself in the same 15.5-16.5 ballpark. The resultant times were pretty consistently under 44 seconds per lap, but I usually lost anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of a second on the second set of 50. This is information I didn't have the first time around, so having an idea of how much is lost is kinda nice. Not sure what to do with that data, but at least I have it.

After about nine sets, when the stroke count started to climb consistently to the 16-16.5 range, I decided to try extending the glide even more - knowing it would slow me down a bit, but maybe there'd be benefit to feeling the glide stretched out. My times went up to the 44-47 seconds per lap range, but many of those sessions did bring the number of strokes back down to the 15.5 to 16 range. Again, possibly something that is nice to know, but not sure what to do with that information yet.

At sixteen sets, I decided to see what, if any, difference I could sense by doing a continuous swim. I ended up doing an additional 600 yds, knowing my stroke count would increase, but maybe the times would improve slightly. For those 12 laps, the average time was 50.58, and if I recall correctly, I was typically in the 18-19.5 strokes per lap range. My last long swim had an average time of 50.18 seconds per lap - but that was over a total of 54 laps, whereas these laps today were after 1600 yds of more intense swimming. So I suppose some drop off is expected.

Day 59 - Cycling intervals - 1/4/12

2012-01-05T21:54:00.004-05:00

Posting this a day late (seems to be a pattern).

Rather than just hit the trainer always doing the same intensity - which I figured would be like trying to finish a marathon in three hours only doing long, slow runs - I decided to experiment a little bit with some intervals on the trainer. I say experiment because I have really no clue what intervals are supposed to be like on a bike, nevermind a trainer. With running, I know there is more to consider than just 'run fast for a period of time' - there are the factors of how fast to run so that you don't overdo it, how long the interval should last so that you get maximum benefit without excess fatigue, how to know when you are recovered sufficiently for the next interval, etc. So I can only guess there are similar questions and factors to consider for cycling.

So, since I was just toying around, I decided to warm up for 20 minutes to let the HR get into some sort of steady state condition, and then bump up the intensity a bit for 5 minutes to get the HR up where I know I'm working but not killing myself, followed by a 5 minute rest to let the HR come down. Rinse and repeat a few times, and add an extra 5 minutes to the end for cooldown. I ended up at about 16 mph for the warmup and rest intervals, since that allowed my HR to settle into the 130-135 range, which is about the typical range for real road cycling for me, and then about 18 mph on the intervals, which brought the HR up to about 155. The five minute rest interval @ about 16 allowed the HR to come back down to 130-135. I have no clue whether this workout is actually beneficial or not, but I certainly felt it on the last 1:30 or so of each 5 minute interval.

Since it appears garmin connect is down, this was the resultant HR plot from SportTracks:

From what I've heard, the Spinnervals DVD's are good for indoor training - so I'm thinking I'll ultimately look into acquiring some of those. I think there's a place for straight up same intensity cycling, kinda like there's a place for long runs at an easy pace - but I'd really like to see solid improvement in my cycling, since it is my weakest area.

Day 58 - P90X Legs & Back - 1/3/2012

2012-01-03T22:55:00.000-05:00

I kinda had to force myself to do this workout today - I wanted to spend some time on the trainer, but as I've gotten older and mor experienced with this stuff, I also know I have to parcel out the novelty of something to keep it from getting old. Plus, while the benefits of the upper body P90X workouts are debatable, there's really no question that the legs routine is worthwhile.

Some of the numbers today are better than before (such as 13 reverse grip chinups out of the gate), but there were a few sets I had to take a break earlier. Overall, there were still 2 more than last week (76 vs 74). Actually, now that I think about it, it's starting to get impressive - inching closer to 100 pullups total. Granted, they are 8 and 10 at a time, but still.

I also upped the weight on some of the leg stuff today, going from 4 kg to 10 lb. I may feel that over the next day or two, especially in the calfs.

The only other thing of note is that there was no runners knee pain in my left knee. I had wondered whether doing this workout today would be a good idea, but after waking up with only very minor residual inflammation (my god, how many ways is Yoga going to be proving itself to be so damn healing! It's starting to border on rediculous), I figured I shouldn't have a problem with doing a bunch of lunges.

Fueling for endurance events - Part 2

2012-01-02T23:10:00.001-05:00

I'm finally sitting down to start writing this up. In the last post, I laid out my recent discovery of just how important it is to properly fuel the body for endurance events - something that if I had done up to this point, it was more by accident than by design.

Generally, my primary fuel during long bike rides or runs has been Gatorade. At 50 calories per 8 oz serving (about 14g of carbs), one would need to consume about 20 oz per hour to reach the 'suggested' 35g/hr of carbs as referenced on this page @ www.runningforfitness.org. Keep in mind that the 35 g/hr is on the low side - elsewhere on that page it also mentions that the average person can take up 30-60 g/hr. Also, keep that 60 g/hr figure in mind - it'll come up again later. While 20 oz per hour of Gatorade is certainly achievable (especially since many rules of thumb mention 24 oz of sports drink/hr) - in my case I tend to mix the gatorade a little light, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not always so good about keeping to that regiment. Other factors, such as not wanting to deal with a stomach full of liquid, or availability of water, come into play all to often - especially on bike rides. Thus, it may be more convenient to find additional energy sources.

Usually people migrate to some sort of energy gel for this purpose. There are a bunch of them out there, but just taking a quick look at some examples of the common ones I've come across:

Chocolate Outrage Gu:
100 calories (20g carbs)
70-80% maltodextrin
30-20% fructose

Hammer Nutrition Gel:
This one isn't so straight forward (if you check the link, there is all kinds of scientific techno-babble). But for the purpose of this post, the linked page indicates that they use a ratio of about 7% simple sugars and 93% long-chain carbohydrates. Later on they say that sucrose (table sugar - which is 50% glucose and 50% fructose) and fructose are considered simple sugars, and that maltodextrin is a multiple of sugars hooked together. The wiki page on maltodextrin corroborates this. So, for simplicity sake, we'll say the following:
90 calories (21g of carbs)
93% maltodextrin
7% fructose

Powerbar Energy Gel:
Powerbar uses their C2MAX carb mix, which they claim is a 2:1 mixture of glucose to fructose.
110 calories (27g carbs)
66% glucose
33% fructose

So at this point, two things are obvious - each manufacturer has a different idea of what is optimal, and that they all use a combination of simple sugars and more complex sugars. It may also be worth keeping in mind that perhaps each manufacturer has a different idea of the market they want to play in - for example, one may want to promote their product in shorter races (10k or whatever) and want a faster absorbing fuel. Another manufacturer may want to be strong in longer events, such as a marathon or anything beyond a sprint triathlon, and may want a fuel that isn't as 'spikey' on its energy surge.

Since I didn't know what the target market was for each, the next thing I could look at was the differences in the various fuels. For that I turned to my trusty friend, Wikipedia. I decided that for this it'd be a trustworthy source - how sugars are digested is common enough knowledge in biology circles that I'd seriously doubt there would be any major misstatements.

In looking at the entry for glucose, the following stick out:
- Primary fuel for all cells in the body
- Simple sugar (monosaccharide)
- Dextrose is another name for it
- The base carbohydrate that other carbohydrates get broken down into
- Transported via the SLC5A1 protein
- Directly transported to muscle cells, where it can be converted to glycogen for short term storage

In looking at the entry for fructose:
- Simple sugar (monosaccharide)
- Mentions that it and glucose can be absorbed directly into the bloodstream
- Metabolised in the liver, whereas glucose can pass through the liver and be metabolised directly by cells in the body
- Absorption rates vary, but some studies indicate absorption is highest when fructose and glucose are in a 1:1 ratio (ie, table sugar) due to a bottleneck in the GLUT5 transport protein, which is required for absorption of fructose.

Maltodextrin:
- Essentially X glucose molecules strung together, where X is between 2 and 20

Unfortunately there's not a lot of other information on Maltodextrin, but from what I can gather, since it is simply glucose molecules all tangled up, it almost acts like a time-release capsule of glucose.

The reason why I bothered to point out the transport proteins is to point out that different sugars apparently have different ways of getting absorbed through the intestine, so it stands to reason that it is possible to saturate one transport mechanism, while the other is idle. In other words, if all you fueled yourself with was glucose, you may saturate your body's ability to process it because there is only so much SLC5A1 protein to go around. Meanwhile, GLUT2 proteins are floating around with their figurative thumbs up their asses.

When you look at Powerbar's information on C2MAX, they claim that part of the reason why they feel their product is superior is that their researchers discovered that the previously understood limit of absorbing 1 g/min of carbohydrates (remember that 60 g/hr figure?) was only for glucose. Just because glucose has a maximum absorption rate of 60 g/hr doesn't mean significant additional absorption cannot be happening in parallel with fructose. Yes, fructose may have to detour through the liver first, but when you are talking a multi hour endurance event - there is plenty of time available for fructose to become effective. Honestly, whether you want to believe the whole idea that a specific ratio of glucose/fructose provides the 50% additional uptake in carbs that they claim or not is up to you. But it is interesting nonetheless, especially when you consider the various products, the types of carbohydrates they choose to use, and the question of what their target market is.

In the next post - homemade energy gel.

Day 56 - 1 hr trainer - 1/1/12

2012-01-01T21:52:00.001-05:00

Today I picked up a trainer tire for the bike, set up the fan, and rigged the iPad so I can watch streaming video while on the trainer. So with all that, it appears my indoor training setup is complete.

After this mornings race, I wanted to hit the trainer again, but I didn't want to put any additional real stress on my quads and legs, on account of the runners knee issues. So todays spin was at a reduced effort.

What is interesting is that for only being 1 mph slower (about 16.1 vs yesterdays 17.1) - my HR dropped from 155 to about 125. It is possible that the small speed difference makes that large a difference in HR, but I suspect something else - I'm just not sure what it is. It may be that the trainer tire has a lower rolling resistance, but I wouldn't think it would be that significant. If it is, I definitely have to see about getting new tires on my bike in the spring! I think a bigger difference was probably having some cooling going on - it takes a lot of effort for the body to cool itself, and yesterday I was sweating a lot more than I did today. Until I thought of that factor, I was starting to think I'd have a hard time correlating various spins to track improvement. Realistically, however - I care less about what the speed/HR correlation is, and more about its precision from one session to the next.

Day 56 - Sterling Freezer 5 miler - 1/1/12

2012-01-01T21:40:00.001-05:00

Today was a local race that a couple of my friends ran last year, and I joined in this time around. Last year I was still recovering from my IT band issues, so five miles was too far for me at the time.

Although I was pretty set on doing this race, a little voice in the back of my head told me I should probably skip it. After last weeks 16 threshold miles, I discovered on Thursday night that my left knee started showing symptoms of runners knee - pain behind the kneecap when weight is applied at about 30 degrees of flexion in the knee, and pain when walking up and down stairs. I woke up Friday morning with it still there, and came to peace with the idea that I'd probably be favoring it for a while until it healed. Then, on Friday afternoon while I was at work, I decided to give something a shot - I'd balance on that leg, and start squatting down just until the point of pain, and see what would happen. I found that as I slowly approached the point of pain, it went away - so I lowered myself ever so slightly more. About 15-20 seconds in, I was past the amount of flexion that resulted in pain - so I stood back and up gave it a test. Oddly enough, there was no pain. It was like inflammation was there, but I was able to squeeze it out like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. "Huh?" is right.

I ended up finding that if I sat or layed down for a period of time, the inflammation would come back - but at least now I had a way to get rid of it that seemed to be more effective than any NSAID. Since I was able to combat it, I decided I'd go ahead with this race - and then take a week off from running (especially with having just acquired the bike trainer) to give it time to heal.

I entered the race figuring there was a pretty fat chance of beating my thanksgiving day pace of 7:03 min/mile - but stranger things have happened. Afterall, that particular race had a big uphill in the beginning, and I went out way too fast. If I was lucky, pacing myself better during this race might result in an extra kick at the end and maybe I could shave a few seconds off.

This time around, I started about 1/3 of the way back - which was much better suited to how I like my starting pace to be (you know - slower than a 5 min/mile pace). About half a mile in, I started having doubts about PR'ing because I felt like I was a little winded, and my HR was already in the 170 zone. But by the time I hit thefirst mile marker, and saw my split was right around the 7 min pace, my thoughts were a bit bouyed. The next couple miles were a little touch and go - periods of sub 7 min/mile pace, periods over - mostly dependant on the hills. Halfway through, I was just about on par - if I could just maintain until mile 4.5, then I could give an extra kick at the end and shave a few seconds off my PR. Unfortunately, since it is an out and back course, a very very gradual overall downhill up to that point became a very gradual uphill. My third mile split at 7:17 pretty much erased any hope of a PR, and at mile four I had to concede that it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe if I really pushed myself I could make it happen - but it'd have to be a pretty monstrous effort - and I wasn't sure I wanted to chance it. I ended up figuring that after 16 miles of threshold miles this past week, I'd leave well enough alone and just be happy with finishing within a minute off.

Garmin results

Day 55 - 1 hr trainer ride - 12/31/11

2012-01-01T00:11:00.001-05:00

Up until a few months ago, I had a set of rollers that could be used for indoor cycle training. I got them, instead of a magnetic or fluid trainer, because at the time, research I had done indicated that rollers were better for improving overall cycling skills. However, I found them to be lacking in resistence unless I had the headwind fan attachment. Unfortunately that created so much noise that it was difficult to watch TV without headphones on. And since I have a hard enough time keeping in-ear headphones in anyway, it was just a royal pain in the ass. Nevermind the fact that I didn't feel safe on them unless I had a helmet on, which would then bump against the ductwork in the basement. Then, when I tried to convert them to a more traditional trainer via the forkstand - it was somewhat unstable. So all in all, I ended up selling them, figuring that I'd rather eat a gun than train indoors.

Recently I started looking into the possibility of a fluid trainer, though. I had interest in continued training over the winter renewed - and with a clean slate available to me (since I had no rollers anymore), I was able to do some additional research. I ended up deciding that the CycleOps Fluid2 trainer would be the best option - all reviews were very, very good - from beginners to experienced cyclists alike. The only problem was that they are close to $400 new, or $300 online. In the midst of all this, I asked someone I know who bikes a lot what kind of trainer he had. His response? He had a fluid2, but got rollers and uses them exclusively now. To add gravy to the top, he had dropped his fluid2 during a move, busted it up, and CycleOps had replaced it free of charge. And he was looking to unload it. I asked him how much he was looking for. He replied "$200".

I jumped on it - a brand new fluid2 for $200 is about as close to a steal as one can get. Worst case scenario, I can recoup at least $150 of that if I need to. So I met him today, picked it up, and after some initial set up, I hopped on and gave it a whirl for an hour.

I think this thing has serious potential! I was able to watch TV at a reasonable volume, felt solid riding on it, and settled into a speed with a good cadence that I could maintain, but which still produced a good HR. Typically on an outdoor ride, I tend to average in the 135-145 range, but about 15 minutes into my ride today, I hit 155 and stayed right about there. I suspect a large part of that is because the real world offers opportunities to coast and incidentally give yourself mini breaks - whereas the indoor trainer does not. And to continue with numbers, based on this page from CycleOps which shows power curves for their trainers, my average speed of 17 mph appears to correlate with a power output of just about 200W. I have no idea whether thats any good or not, and I'm sure there is some +/- with that. I find it hard to believe that a power calculation that does not take into account headwind nor the combined weight of the rider and equipment can be incredibly accurate. However, as long as it is precise, then I can use it over time to track improvement.

I have a few tweaks that still need to be made such as getting a trainer tire (unless I decide to use my existing tires and get new in the spring/summer) and setting up our fan to help cool me off - but so far I'm real happy with it.

Fueling for endurance events - Part 1

2011-12-29T22:46:00.001-05:00

A few days ago, I was browsing around and came across a blog post by TJ Tollakson - the person who won the Lake Placid Ironman in 2011. To be honest, I normally don't read much on these things because they usually talk about stuff that doesn't much apply to me, and things that are only interesting to those who are elite athletes. I figure they get enough attention, they don't need mine. This time, however, it was different. I'm not sure whether it was because I saw him cross the finish line in person, or what - but I was compelled enough to read it. Or at least, to start.

It started out like I'd expect - events he did leading up to IMLP, fancy equipment too expensive for me to afford but that would help his time, yadda yadda yadda - but before too long, it started getting interesting. He started detailing what he ate before, during and after the event. Suddenly, there was something he was writing about that I could relate to. I may not have the training, equipment, or inherent talent that he does - but one thing I can optimize is how I fuel during a race.

My plan for IMLP in 2012 has always been to take full advantage of the support. They will be having sports drink available every 10 miles on the bike, and every mile on the run. My plan was to down a 24 oz bottle of sports drink at least every other aid station, and possibly grab half of a banana at the other stations - something like that. That would equate to 24 oz per hour of sports drink, minimum (at my pace) - and plenty of potassium. Normally I don't end up consuming quite as much on my rides simply due to logistics and availability of water. Then, on the run, I'd grab some more during my walk breaks every mile. In fact, I was figuring I'd be better hydrated and energized during that race than at any point during my training.

So, back to the blog post - what really stuck out to me, after reading all the stuff about a gel every 20 minutes, having caffeine halfway through the bike, was the comment that he got off the bike and felt almost as fresh as he did at the beginning of the bike.

Let me repeat that: He finished a 112 mile bike ride, and still felt energized enough to, as he put it 'rock a solid marathon'. The fact that he did the bike ride in a stupid-fast 4:33 (25 mph on one of the hilliest IM courses in the world) is just gravy on top.

I think that stuck out to me because I don't care who you are or what training you've had - you are going to feel a 112 mile bike ride.

Now, obviously his power output on a bike far exceeds mine, for a multitude of reasons: he's got a coach (I don't), he's got a tri bike (mine is a road bike), he's trained far more than I have, he's an elite athlete (I'm an average Joe), etc, etc. The list goes on and on. But that list is a list of things I cannot change (well, realistically, anyway - I'd like to keep my day job and continue living in a nice neighborhood). What he did do, though, is make sure he was loaded up with fuel. That is something I can change.

A few years ago when I started this whole triathlon thing out, my friend Dave convinced me pretty quickly how important sports drink was for endurance. However, I didn't put a whole lot of stock into the number of calories, because it seemed a small fraction of how many would be needed. For example, you have a marathon at 26.2 miles. For most people, thats going to equate to about 3300 calories required for that effort. If you drink 24 oz of sports drink per hour, and it takes you four hours - you end up with 96 oz of sports drink. Most drinks are about 50 calories per 8 oz, so you end up consuming 600 calories. Sure, 600 out of 3300 is a decent percentage (about 18%) - but it certainly isn't where the vast majority of calories are coming from.

Now if you look at TJ's calorie consumption - he ate 15 gels in the 4.5 hours of the bike. Cycling requires significantly fewer calories per mile than running; running generally equates to about 125 calories/mile, and cycling is often closer to about 45. Sure, each of those vary from person to person, and the numbers vary with intensity and equipment - but we are ballparking here. So each energy gel is 110 calories - meaning he consumed over 1600 calories on the bike alone.

So, the rule of 24 oz of sports drink per hour provides 150 calories of fuel per hour. TJ consumed about 360 calories per hour on the bike - more than twice the caloric intake. That is a significant difference.

But that's not all. In my recent exploration of fueling for endurance events, I browsed through the 'Running for Fitness' link that I have on the sidebar of this blog. This was an example of a page I stumbled across before, found it imformative, and just flagged it for review later without really processing what it had to say. I found section 7.3 - "Energy While Running", and suddenly a bunch of things started clicking in my head all at once:

"You can store about 400g of glycogen in your muscles, and about 100g in your liver (though, as we shall see, these can be increased with training). This means you can store about 2000 kcal as glycogen – enough energy to run or walk about 20 miles."

Well that there pretty well explains the dreaded wall at 20 miles for a marathon. However, my wall ocurred a few miles later during the Baystate Marathon . I only consumed a total of 48 oz (6 x 8 oz bottles) of gatorade during that marathon, which accounted for about 300 calories (or 2.5 miles). In fact, its worse than that because I mix gatorade at about 2/3 to 3/4 strength. But either way, the timing of when I hit the wall vs how many calories I consumed is just about perfect.

"The aerobic energy system primarily uses a combination of carbohydrates and fat (but can also use proteins). The proportion of carbohydrates and fats used depends on the intensity of the exercise. For low intensity exercise, your muscles mainly draw their energy from fat. But as your effort level goes up and your muscles have to generate energy more quickly, so you have to increase the proportion of energy that comes from carbohydrates. The proportion of energy provided from carbohydrates rises as exercise intensity increases from around 10% to up to 90%."

My HR during that marathon was generally between the 75-85% range. So if the amount of carbohydrates required goes up with intensity (up to about 90%, where it switches from aerobic to anaerobic), then I was in a mode where the majority of my calories needed to be carbohydrates. That leads back to the previous point, where I only provided my body with an additional 300 calories of carbohydrates. In effect, I was starving myself of carbs.

Then there was this bit that started to tie it all together (bolding mine):
"During the first hour of exercise, most of your energy comes from glycogen stored in your muscles. After about an hour, the muscles begin to draw their fuel from the blood sugar, which is in turn supplied by glycogen stored in your liver, as well as from their own stores. Your liver glycogen levels are also finite. So when your liver glycogen is depleted, your blood sugar level falls and you are unable to carry on exercising. This low blood sugar (called “hypoglycaemia”) induces a feeling of tiredness and light-headedness, and your legs begin to feel very heavy. Marathon runners know this as “hitting the wall” or getting “the bonks”. It is a quite distinct (and unpleasant) feeling, and it has the same effect on your running performance as a large bear climbing on to your back.
But if you can replenish your blood sugar while you are exercising, you will not deplete your liver glycogen stores so rapidly, with the result that you can carry on for longer before you hit the wall. That is why it is a good idea to take energy on runs of more than 2 hours."

This is where I got into forehead slapping territory. Durrrr... Just one of those moments when I realized that all those times during long training runs that I felt like I was running out of gas - it wasn't that I needed more training to push beyond the limits I had found. I just needed to do a better job of fueling my body.

Then, finally, there was these bits in the last section:
"Research shows that the average person’s muscles can take up about 30g to 60g an hour of carbohydrate from the bloodstream."
--snip
"It takes about 30 minutes for the carbohydrate which you eat or drink to reach your bloodstream, so you need to start consuming carbohydrates before you begin to feel tired."
--snip
"consume about 35g of carbohydrate per hour, which will roughly maintain your blood sugar levels."

Thats a lot more carbohydrates than I've been taking in during long runs and bike rides. The problem I had was that during bike rides, opportunities to refill water bottles in order to consume that many carbs in the form of gatorade were relatively few. This has me thinking that I might have to re-evaluate how I get carbs during long rides and runs. It may be that energy gels are a higher density form of carbs that can more easily be consumed in the proper amounts per unit time. Another option might be to go with gatorade full strength (or even more) - but honestly that gets too sweet, and I know that I'll be wanting nice cool, fresh, unflavored water on those rides and runs in the middle of summer when it is hot out. So I think that possibility is off the table right away.

I'm starting to see why they say that sports drinks are good for anything over an hour, but not necessarily for the long haul as the primary form of fuel during a marathon.

Coming up in the next part - now that we've established the importance of fueling during exercise, we take a deeper look at fuel sources.

Day 53 - 10 mile threshold - 12/29/11

2011-12-29T22:19:00.005-05:00

Although I normally wouldn't do a second threshold run in one week, I really wanted to experiment with some homebrew energy gel, and today was the only day I could do it in the near future. The full story on the energy gel will be detailed in the next post - but the short version is that I've been looking into nutrition, specifically how to fuel for endurance events, and have had my eyes opened somewhat.

Today's run was a repeat of what I did earlier in the week. During that previous run, everything felt generally fine until about mile five, when I could tell the wheels were starting to get squirrely. Then around mile eight, I pretty much bonked and had nothing left in the tank, unless I really wanted to make recovery absolutely miserable by way overdoing it. But then again, I didn't bring any water or anything with me.

So I bundled up in my cold weather running gear (complete with newly gifted blinky lights, and a headlamp that we've had but I never actually used), 4 x 8 oz bottles of water, and a 5 oz flask of homebrew energy gel. I was concerned about the gel and its fluidity, due to the temperature. I started out thinking I'd take some every half mile along with a swig of water - but quickly realized that due to viscosity, squeezing it out of the tube was so distracting that I'd be better off taking some every mile instead because that would minimize the distractions. I'd just end up taking more, thats all. It ended up working decently well - I thought I had finished with the majority of the gel consumed, but once it got into the house and warmed up a tad so that it wasn't all stuck to the walls of the squeezable flask, it turned out I only eaten about half of it. Oops.

Regarding how well it worked - most definitely an improvement. I felt fairly strong throughout the whole run - going up hills were not as fatiguing, I recovered faster, overall HR was decreased, had no problems with bonking out. If I was out of gas last time, this time I'd say I finished stronger and still ha probably 1/3 of a tank left. Enough to push the pace up for a few miles at the end if I was running a full half marathon, but not so much left that my overall pace could have been significantly faster

After reviewing the results, two thoughts come to mind. Having something to top off energy glucose stores during exercise definitely helps with maintaining a fairly strong feel throughout - and the gatorade I've typically been having in the past was helping far more than I ever thought. I always considered it primarily hydration and electrolytes, and it is both those things - but I didn't realize the tremendous effect that the sugars in it also have.

Day 52 - P90X Back & Biceps - 12/28/2011

2011-12-29T21:53:00.001-05:00

Writing this a day late. In fact, I got a few posts to write up tonight. I'll be in front of the computer for a while.

Anyhow, this time around on this routine I had gotten a new set of barbells that are easier to switch weights out. They also came with weights in lb increments, instead of kg's. So, now that I have four barbells total - all of them adjustable (two quickly adjustable, two are a pain in the ass) - I was able to enhance this workout a bit. In the past, I had to keep switching between weights that were appropriate for bicep work, and then switch them out for weight appropriate for back work. This resulted in excess downtime between sets. However, this time I was able to set one pair of barbells up with heavier weights for back stuff, and one pair of barbells up for biceps. I ended up going with 16 lbs for biceps - which I figured would be just about right for some things, and maybe a tad light for others (based on previous workouts) - and 14 kg for back stuff.

It turned out that those weights were just about right. One thing I didn't anticipate was the difference that the extra rest between sets had previously made. This time around, since the sets occured one after the other with much less rest, it turned out that the slightly lighter-than-expected weights for biceps was just about perfect.

So, overall - some of the numbers are down from last time (like only 6 total chinups, and 2 corn cob pullups towards during the max rep set at the end), but I think the reps and weights from this time around are much closer to what they should be. It also means that the results are likely going to be more repeatable week to week.

Day 50 - 9.5 mile threshold - 12/26/11

2011-12-26T19:47:00.003-05:00

Not really sure why I bother keeping track of the days anymore. With the warm weather, it's not like I've been concentrating on P90X as much as I anticipated.

The past couple days I've done a couple runs around the neighborhood with the dogs again. I mostly wanted to see how my right foot acted after some slow, easy miles during a run lasting between 30-60 minutes, with the primary stress being two days in a row. So there was one run on the 23rd (day after my last post), followed by a rest day on the 24th, another easy run on the 25th, and a threshold run today.

Unfortunately, there was both a good and a bad. First off, the good: the right foot hasn't been a problem, even with running two days in a row, twice, with only a day in between. With the total being over 20 miles during that time, I'm pretty happy about that. Also, I am still able to put up a decent performance during the threshold runs in terms of pace and sustained HR. The bad: there are more and more signs that the very low amount of running over the past couple months is taking its toll.

Part of it, honestly, is my own doing - today was a day of throwing in a few variables that were detrimental to performance. First, I went out with no water, gatorade or anything. I knew I was going to be out for the better part of 90 minutes or so, but for whatever reason I just didn't feel like getting all that stuff prepared. Second, I tried playing with the workout feature of my HR monitor - setting it for one mile of a warm up (which I defined as a HR of less than 155), followed by 8 miles of a HR between 158 and 172, followed by a cooldown mile of a HR less than 150.

The workout experiment lasted all of about 1.25 miles. While I went slow, and the average HR during that mile was 144 - right about where it should be - the damn thing was so sensitive that it was beeping all over the place. Go up a tiny hill, it complains about the HR being too high - and that first mile, while certainly not describably as being 'hilly' - has a few gentle inclines that tend to bring the HR up briefly. After I got past the warmup mile and into the threshold, the HR monitor was then, almost immediately, complaining about HR being too high - as it was registering nearly 180. I know what a HR of 180 feels like, and I wasn't feeling that. Soon after it settled back down and registered a more accurate reading in the 150's. Not sure whether electrical interference was a problem (I've had interference with Polar HR monitors, but never the Forerunner), or weather it was poor conductivity of the chest strap - probably the latter - but either way the thing was complaining. And since it was complaining, I slowed up a bit before I realized it was registering high - so of course once it started reading correctly, my HR went below 155 and it started complaining about that. I ended up saying 'screw it' - I didn't want to listen to this thing yapping at me the whole run. In the past I've tried playing around with these kind of workout features, and just found them too inflexible. I wish they'd use some sort of averaging algorithm in order to determine when to scream at you, as opposed to the instantaneous HR.

Anyhow, I stopped the workout, but that of course screwed up the whole standard I follow of autolapping every mile. So it ended up being about a 1/3 of a mile off on every autolap. Not that big a deal, really - just annoying.

So then once I got off workout mode, I was cruising along pretty decently, but it didn't take long for me to start whether I really had the stamina to keep up the pace. I was hovering around the 8 min/mile mark and a HR of 160 for most of the time - which I was happy about because I've certainly sustained that HR (or higher) for distances longer than this run - however I didn't know whether my mind was playing tricks on me with regards to endurance, or whether I was actually exerting myself more than I should have. At around the 5 mile mark, I pretty much had my answer - I was starting to feel the effects of pushing things, and I knew I was only halfway done. Also, most of that first five miles is relatively downhill - not a whole lot, but I knew the last half was going to be slightly uphill. It was at this point that I realized not bringing gatorade or at least water was probably a mistake. As the next three mile wore on, the rate of exhaustion grew as well. By the time I hit mile eight, I had spent a few miles in the high 160's for HR, and was feeling pretty cooked. I slowed up a bit to recover, thinking maybe I'd treat the rest of the run as an interval workout, but I couldn't really even muster up the energy to do that. I decided that this workout was done, and I'd slow up and give myself a nice and long cooldown. If the run was somewhat of a fail, I didn't want it to spill over via soreness and tightness.

I'm hoping that in the next week or so, I can find a chance to do that loop again, but I'll bring gatorade with me. I'd be interested to see what difference in makes - I feel like it'd make a significant one, but I'm also basing that assumption on results from a couple-few months ago, when I had been better about keeping up with running 3x per week.

Day 46 - 5 mile run and P90X Chest, Shoulders and Triceps - 12/22/11

2011-12-22T21:39:00.001-05:00

Today, in an effort to condense three activities into one, I decided to try bringing both dogs along with me for this run. In the past, I've run with one of the dogs, but stopped because having to deal with pit stops and other stuff was distracting for a run where I was trying to actually accomplish something. However, today I had no real goal - I just wanted to run an easy 5 miles or so - so I figured I mine as well try getting exercise for me and the two dogs all at once. I set out on a course around the neighborhood, which ended up totaling about 4.75 miles, so it was a little shy. It was a distance PR for both dogs. They made no attempts to cover it up either - during the short walk back to the house they were lagging behind a good amount.

For the P90X workout, this one is still pretty rough. Part of it is that I have 8 lb dumbbells, and I've been going with 6 kg for most of the exercises, because switching out weights is a hassle. So although 6 kg is a bit much for some things, such as the later tricep extensions - I am finding I'm making progress. Whereas before the weight was so much that form was sloppy AND the exercise was difficult, it is starting to get to the point where I can pay attention to mechanics and form a bit more. Granted, it is still rather sloppy, and the reps are few - but it is at least going in the right direction.

One more workout for this week (Back & Biceps) and then Phase II is done, which means a week of rest. W00t!

Day 44 - P90X Legs & Back - 12/20/11

2011-12-20T23:38:00.002-05:00

I just realized - I never made an entry for yoga yesterday. Probably because there was nothing much special to report on. Except that it gelt hotter than it's ever been. It seems I've said that probably 4-5 times, but I can tell you with certainty that this time felt hottest. Fortunately, I've learned how to pace myself so that I don't burn myself out.

My biggest hope for the class was to see it set my right foot back to normal. One of the ways I can tell how inflammed the tissue is is during some of the kneeling poses - when my ankle is at its greatest point of flexion, and my weight is on top of it. If it hurts when the pressure is released, I know inflammation remains. Fortunately it was only a mild annoyance on the pain scale, so the hope was there. Even still, this morning and throughout the day today I popped ibuprofin and aspirin - thinking that maybe if I kept the inflammation down in the first place, it wouldn't get worse. That experiment is still in progress (more on that later).

So tonight was the legs & back workout again. Increase weights on a few of the exercises, and managed a total of 74 pullups - so that number is slowly increasing by a few each time.

Hmm.. not much to say other than that. Tough to always come up with something to say with strength training - I lift things up, and put them down. Or, rather, in this case - I go into a lunge, and come back up.

After that workout, I started experimenting with another treatment for my foot (maybe this entry should have been titled differently?) - alternating cold and hot. So while I watched some TV for about an hour, I dunked my foot into cold water for 5-10 minutes, followed by dunking it in hot water for 5-10 minutes. The idea is that cold constricts tissue and cuts out inflammation, but then the heat causes a rush of blood flow and nutrients to promote healing. I'm also going to put a heat pad on the top of my foot overnight and see if that helps. It's kind of a gamble - since inflammation is due to swollen tissue, and heat causes things to expand - it may actually result in a set back. I guess we'll see.

Day 41 - 11.75 miles easy - 12/17/11

2011-12-18T16:04:00.001-05:00

Finally catching up on blog entries. Before I wrote up yesterdays HR training zones entry, I had gone out and ran a mid-distance run at an easy pace. After last weeks 11 miles at threshold, and recognizing I had not only taken a step back cardio-wise, but also physically (I had minor soreness for a day or two afterwards - previously an 11 mile run would have induced no such thing) - I figured it'd be a good idea to take a step back and get at least a couple weeks of easy runs in to build back up. While my original plan had been to do shorter, more intense runs - the weather and crappy roads that led to me to that plan have not come up yet, so other options become available.

If I was going to go easy, I wanted to add a little more distance than last week. I wanted to keep it under 15 miles, though. I ended up adding a segment to one of my 10 mile loops, hoping it'd add a few miles - and it did add distance, but not quite as much as I hoped. Still, at 11.75, it turned out to be enough.

I started out at a nice pace and intensity - generally below 155 and somewhere between 8:45-9:00 min/miles. However, after about 4-5 miles, I noticed that the HR was creeping up a bit, so I had to slow down a tad. In retrospect, perhaps doing the back/bicep workout beforehand, plus only have a light breakfast, affected things more than I thought. True, I haven't been running much in the past month - but the pace and corresponding HR were a little more out of whack than I'd suspect. By the end of the run, I was having a hard time keeping the HR down, so I knew that I was pretty much done.

When I returned home and saw my average HR of 154, I was pleasantly surprised - I was concerned it'd be over 155. Then, the secondary concern was whether 154 was low enough to be considered 'easy'. After writing up yesterdays post and seeing the ranges for easy based on my performance, I saw that 138-157 fills that range of 65-79 %HR, so I just barely squeaked in. However, I don't like cutting it that close.

Later on that day, I started noticing a return of some right upper lateral calf soreness. I felt it in the same spot after last weeks run (which was one indication that I needed to build up again), but it went away after a day or so. Additionally, the top of my right foot started aching again. I popped a few advil later that afternoon (after the ice bath), and this morning both are improved, though not totally gone. I was hoping that with being off work this week, I'd be able to run a couple times - but those plans will have to be put on hold for the time being. A yoga class or two should clear things up pretty quickly, and I hope to be able to get in a 5 miler or so during the middle of the week, and a 9-10 miler on the weekend.

Revisiting training zones and Jack Daniels Running Formula plan - 12/17/11

2011-12-17T22:52:00.000-05:00

For most of this year, I've generally gone by the rule that anything under an avg HR of 155 is easy, 160-165 is threshold (sustainable for a 10k distance), and 165-175 is tempo (sustainable for 3-5 miles). While doing certain things like tempo and threshold runs in those ranges has worked out rather well, I started thinking the other day that I should probably get more regulated in keeping track of this stuff, since too many things have changed over the past few months, such as overall stamina at increased HR, and performance. The main reason I didn't worry about any of this in the beginning of the year was that I was more concerned with making sure I was managing and over my ITBS issues.

To help track this over time I've put a new page on the main screen of this blog (HR training zones) that links to a spreadsheet. Entering the base values of age and resting heart rate, I calculated various %HR numbers using the Karvonen Formula: [((220 - age) - RHR) * %HR] + RHR. I also put a place for my current Jack Daniels formula VDOT value, and below that what the easy, MP, threshold, interval and repetition paces are. My hope is that this way, over time I can track my RHR, race-determined VDOT, and what my resultant training ranges should be - based on the VDOT calculator found here.

So, just for fun - how does it all line up, with regard to HR ranges and race performance? The Monson Half was a 13.1 mile race, and fairy hilly (so in truth it probably wasn't the best race to base a VDOT on - but it was the only one available). Obviously the pace should be faster than the MP of 7:57 min/miles, since a half is half the distance of a full marathon. Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to find a corresponding pace in Jack Daniels world for the half marathon, but my average pace for that race of 7:38 min/mile was between VDOT (45) marathon pace of 7:57, and VDOT (45) max threshold of 7:25. Furthermore, my avg HR of 169 puts me at the 88%, which is at the bottom of the threshold range of 88-92%.

Then, for the 5 mile Whitinsville Thanksgiving day run - going off the VDOT of 45 from the Monson half, the predicted performance for 5 miles would be 36:07. My actual time was 35:29, which is obviously pretty close. In fact, recalculating the VDOT for a 35:29 5 miler results in the same VDOT of 45. Furthermore, the average HR of that 5 mile race was 172, which is again in the threshold range of 90%.

Looking at another example - last weeks 11 mile run - the pace was 8:03 min/mile with an average HR of 161. That puts that run at about 82%, in the marathon pace training zone. However this also highlights a subtle point and a resultant question - when you look at the zones that Daniels sets forth, there is something to account for the range between 65-92 %HR - so what distribution should be followed in a training plan? I suppose thats where weekly mileage comes in, and that would be where the plan really starts to take shape. However, when totalling up the percentages, it never seems to quite add up. This had been something of a persistent question in my mind with his running formula.

Lets assume a 40 mile/week, with an easy pace of 9:17 minute miles. Based on his formula, I should be running the lesser of 10 miles (25%) or 150 minutes at an easy pace. At 9:17 minute miles, it would take me a little over 90 minutes (but far less than 150 minutes) to run 10 miles, so that means I stop at 10 miles for easy runs.

On to marathon pace, which is lesser of 90 minutes or 16 miles. At MP speeds of 8 min/miles, time would be the limiting factor, as 90 minutes would be just over 11 miles. So now the total is 21 miles in the week.

For threshold runs, which are lesser of < 10% miles or 60 minutes. At a threshold pace of 7:25, the 10% miles is the lower value. So four miles at 7:25, which is a total of 25 miles.

Intervals are 8% of weekly mileage, so another 3.2 miles there, for a total of 28.2. However, in between intervals of whatever distance is used (probably 400m, or about 1/4 mile) - do you run slow and easy to recover, or just walk? All easy miles have been used up, so I guess you'd walk. Finally, repetitions for 5% weekly mileage, or 2 miles.

So in total for a 40 mile/week plan, only 30.2 miles are accounted for. I've never really known what to do with those extra miles. I would seem to make the most sense to have them be categorized as easy. Also, does that mean that the 10 miles @ easy pace is my 'long' run - even though my MP run is 11 miles?

Maybe the problem is that my pace is too slow. How different is it for someone who has a VDOT of 58, whose easy run pace is 7:34?
Easy: 10 miles @ 7:34 (about 75 minutes)
MP: ~14 miles (6:25 min/mile pace for 90 minutes)
Threshold: 4 miles
Intervals: 3.2 miles
Repetitions: 2 miles
Total: 33.2 miles
So, not much different

What about a VDOT of 58, but that person doing 60 miles per week?
Easy: 15 miles @ 7:34 (about 113 minutes)
MP: ~14 miles (6:25 min/mile pace for 90 minutes)
Threshold: 6 miles
Intervals: 4.8
Reps: 3
Total: 42.8
So, about 9 miles extra accounted for, but there are 20 more miles added to the week, so those numbers still don't add up.

Day 41 - P90X Back & Biceps - 12/17/11

2011-12-17T19:21:00.001-05:00

Last time I did this workout, I was really concerned that my biceps would be extremely sore for a good long time. Doing a lot of curls is relatively new to me (although the Shoulders & Arms routine from Phase I did a decent job of prepping the biceps), and virtually every exercise in this particular routine uses biceps at least a little bit - so they really got worked. Fortunately, any residual soreness I felt for a few days afterwards was surprisingly mild.

So today I mostly wanted to hone in on the appropriate weight to use, as opposed to trying to up the # of reps from last week - since I'd be increasing weight already, I didn't want to also increase reps and overdo it. This way I'd have a better baseline with regards to exhaustion. The only wrench that throws into things is that my rest between many sets was longer than desired, since I often had to spend a solid minute changing out weights.

The big 'WTF' exercise from last time was the corn-cob pullups. I was able to improve on the form slightly by moving side to side a little more, but I ended up banging my head on the ceiling joist. And then I tried actually doing the in-and-out part, but banged my head on the air duct behind my pull-up bar contraption. So in the end, I decided that maybe I'd just have to make do with somewhat limited range of motion.

The nice thing is that I was able to adjust weights up and down based on last weeks notes, and complete the reps, and I don't feel quite as sore. I think I am finding that my strategy of increasing reps from the previous week via mid-set break (ie, if I did 8 last week, this week I'd do 8 and then 2), or combining a previous workout with a mid-set break into a single set, seems to be working. There are certainly some exercises where I'm keeping the number of reps the same during two successive weeks, but as long as I'm seeing progress and increase strength elsewhere, I'm not worried about having to consistently increase reps on every exercise.

Day 40 - P90X Chest, Shoulders & Triceps - 12/16

2011-12-17T19:02:00.002-05:00

I'm writing this a day-after, because I managed to squeeze this workout in before heading out for the evening, and I didn't have a chance to do a writeup until now.

Both this time and last time I did this workout, I found the tricep extension workouts to be kinda tough because I'm a tad too lazy to continually change out the weight plates. So as a result, I usually just pick a weight that seems relatively appropriate for all exercises in a particular routine, and just deal with it.

The two twitch speed pushups are still killer, though. I can manage the first set of four slow, and the second set of four fast, but by the time I hit the next set of four slow - I'm close to beat. Plus, switching between speeds is kinda tough - it's like the muscles get used to slow and then when its time to do them fast, the muscles don't know how to respond.

There were a couple things of note this time around - being able to do another set of floor flys on each side, and I figured out that if I put my hand out farther on the one armed pushups, I can actually sorta do one (on my knees, of course). Previously I had my hand in, almost directly beneath my chest. Maybe eventually thats a good place to strive for, but for right now I just need to find some place to start so that I can actually do one.

Day 37 - Yoga - 12/13/11

2011-12-14T02:15:00.001-05:00

When I looked at hotels in the area of where I'd be staying this week (Redwood City, CA), I for once actually looked at the fitness center. It said it had a weight station. GREAT! I thought - I can do my P90X Chest, Shoulders and Triceps this week while I travel.

Then today I visited the fitness center. Two dreadmills, one two weight lifting contraptions. Not a dumb bell or free weight in sight. /sigh

So I pondered what to do. I could just bag it totally and wait till I get home later this week to do anything, I could do some barefoot on the dreadmill, I could do as much of the intended workout as I could without weights and call it good enough, I could go to a local yoga class, maybe do the plyometrics workout in the hotel room, or - as one of my DM friends, Becky, suggested - "That [$18 for a yoga class] seems awfully expensive for yoga, no? You're in a hotel, for $18 you could get a slice of cake, watch the first 4 minutes of some overpriced porn, rub one out and call it a night."

I ended up going with the Yoga. I figured that if I've previously determined that yoga is the best overall and all around workout (which I have), I mine as well do it in place of something else if that something else isn't available.

One of the nice things about Bikram is that it's always the same 26 postures - so once you know the routine, you can go into any Bikram studio and know what you are getting into. That rang true here for the most part and at a high level, but there were enough differences that I seriously wonder whether this place is actually a legit Bikram studio, or whether they just call it Bikram but intentionally change enough things up to avoid having to pay licensee fees.

When I first walked into the room and sat down, I noticed it was rather cool. Enough so that I was actually thinking 'seriously!?' and that it might be so cool that I may not be able to get warm enough to really get a great stretch. However, a few minutes before class started, the heat cranked on and it got to a more normal temperature. Still felt somewhat dry, though. My home studio has multiple humidifiers to keep things sticky - this place didn't seem to have any. But thats neither here nor there with regards to whether this place is an actual Bikram studio.

Right off the bat, there were differences. Standing in mountain pose before the pranayama breathing, bending in all directions during half moon pose instead of just side to side, the extremely long amount of time maintained in half moon pose, squatting down to grab ankles during hands to feet, no instruction to extend the foot during standing head to knee, no instruction to lean forward during standing bow pulling, no having hands on floor at all during cobra, second set of full locust pose being with hands clasped behind the back, and random childs poses instead of savasana in between the more active postures. And on top of it all, the dialogue was comparatively vacant. I'm used to the instructor talking virtually non-stop for the entire 90 minutes. Here, there was the bare minimum of instruction, followed by countdown until the end of the pose ("thirty..... twenty.... ten... five...change").

I still got a good workout because it's not like I really require the dialogue at this point to know what to do - but it was just different. But I did learn to appreciate my local studio - all instructors have a full dialogue, and the floor is carpeted with foam underneath as opposed to hardwood!

Day 35 - P90X Legs & Back - 12/11/11

2011-12-11T16:13:00.001-05:00

Very quick update today, as I am writing this in the last 30 minutes I'm at home before I head to the airport to fly to CA for most of the week.

I wanted to make sure I snuck in this workout before I left because hotels usually lack facilities to do pushups and pullups. And since I was questioned by the TSA one time for bringing this on board with me once (they asked me if it could be used as a weapon - I replied: "I suppose." I mean, seriously - you could turn anything into a weapon if you hit someone over the head with it - so what the hell kinda question is 'Could you use that as a weapon?'), I'm definitely not bringing a portable pullup bar with me. So I figured I'd do one of the back routines today, then I could save chest, shoulders and triceps for the hotel weight room, and then on Friday when I'm back home I could do the other back routine (biceps and back). Travelling will mean missing a pool workout, and possibly a yoga workout, unless I look to find one near where I'll be, and the class timing works out.

Anyhow - I didn't really look to increase the number of pullups this time around, because I could tell my biceps hadn't fully recovered from Thursdays Back & Biceps workout. One of those situations where I only feel sore when flexing my biceps (as opposed to the past couple days, where there was minor residual soreness that was always present). I did manage to eek out a couple more total, and in a couple sets I did manage to do the same number of pullups as last week, just without taking a midset break.

The only other major change is that I want to start adding weights to the side to side lunges. They don't feel intense enough anymore. And I could probably up the weight slightly for the calf raises - from 4 lb dumbbells to 2 kg (4.4 lbs).

Day 34 - 11 mile threshold run - 12/10/11

2011-12-10T23:27:00.001-05:00

I've mentioned in a previous post how I've noticed significant improvement in my right foot following a yoga class, and that it occured not just once, but twice. At some point late last week, I realized that it was almost fully better, just a small spot of inflammation left. It's interesting when you've had something amiss for a decent period of time - when you really dig into it, you really learn specifics about it. For example, in this case, I was able to actually feel the inflammation. So there were times when I'd be walking along and not feel anything, but if I rolled the tendon that runs across the top of my foot which connects my big toe to my ankle, I could actually feel the resistance brought on by the inflammation. So I knew that I wasn't fully healed, even though there were times it felt ok when walking.

So when I went to Yoga on Monday, part of the goal was to knock out some more inflammation. The thing is with Bikram Yoga - if you ask them, they'll tell you it heals whatever ails you. They claim certain poses stimulate your this gland and that gland and helps with weight loss and helps with sleep and all this other hokey dokey BS. I've generally ignored all that, and just bought into the overall health benefits that are more tangible - core strength, balance, flexibility, etc. But this recent incident has me thinking that maybe there is just a tad more to it than what I've been letting on. I still don't believe that standing with your forehead touching your knee and your throat choked helps your fix your metabolism - but by Wednesday morning after Mondays class - the inflammation was gone. And not just 'I dont feel it while walking around' gone, but gone in that I could actually feel the tendon and feel it rolling under my thumb with no resistance. Just one of those things that makes you say 'Well I'll be damned..'

Anyhow, with that progress, I started getting amped up for going for another run this weekend. I wasn't sure whether to keep it conservative - just do something like five miles to make sure to not aggrevate the foot, or do something more. I figured I'd do something more - if I re-aggrevated it, it wouldn't be that bad (it had been steadily improving , even with the running - although the running did set it back every time) and it'd heal rather quickly. So I ended up doing my 11 mile loop around the local reservoir. I initially thought I'd just go at a nice easy pace, but doing so would mean more time pounding pavement - and I figured I might already be pushing things a bit, so I wanted to minimize the number of footstrikes for that distance. I also didn't want to push quite at a race half marathon pace either, so I ended up making it a threshold run - keeping the HR between 160-165.

It was really nice to get back out running again, especially without the mild aggrevation every time I planted my right foot down. I could tell pretty quickly that I'd lost a step over the past two months, with only having done about 30 miles total in that time. I'm ok with that, though - it's to be expected with a reduction in both mileage and quality workouts.

In the end, I don't think I reaggrevated the foot at all - at least, I can't feel anything. I did my ice bath afterwards (which, BTW, really suck when doing them in the winter when the house air temp is in the low 60's), and we'll see what happens over the next couple days. However I think I'm at a spot where I'll probably do anywhere between 10-15 miles during runs on the weekends, weather and road/sidewalk conditions permitting.

Day 32 - P90X Back & Biceps - 12/8/11

2011-12-09T17:02:00.001-05:00

Today was the first time through the P90X Back & Biceps workout. All the other workouts I had done a handful of times before starting out, but I think this one got left out because it was the most redundant. Back gets worked out with Legs & Back and Chest & Back, and biceps naturally get worked out when doing some of the chin-ups. So with the limited training time I had, I just never bothered to bring this one into the rotation until I actually started the program.

It turns out, I was right. The major overriding thought I had with it was that it is a workout that blurs the lines between the sections being worked the most, out of all P90X workouts. With every other one, you have a definitive rest of one set of muscles while working the next, and there is little if any overlap. In this case, you do some bicep work, and then when you get to the back section (which will naturally include a lot of pullups), you do some more moves that invoke the biceps as well. So as a result, I found that the number of pullups I could do seemed lower - more like 5 and 6 instead of 8 and 9. I guess what that means is that I'm definitely working muscles, and the biceps are the bottleneck at the moment. Eventually they'll catch up, but at least I have the Legs & Back routine that will serve to work the back as much as possible. It also means that it is a sore-inducing workout - when I'm starting to feel sore shortly after the workout is done, that means I usually have a relatively rough couple days ahead. The only solace is that biceps can be rested more easily than, say, legs - which are used for virtually everything you do in life.

Other than that, there is some honing in on weights that needs to be done. The 10 Kg I had on each bar was too much for some exercises, so I ended up lowering it to 8 Kg, which was better for things like curls. Looking at the numbers, it kinda looks like 10 Kg is about right for back exercises, and 8 Kg is good for ones that isolate the biceps more. The only problem is that there is only a few weeks to figure it out before this routine gets taken out of the rotation.

The one exercise that I was probably most sloppy on was the corn cob pull ups. I had no idea what one of those was - never heard of em. But when I saw them demonstrating it, I was like 'Yeah, that'll happen!' I managed to get a handful of them out, but it was obvious I had never done them before. I do like the variation, though - even though they are pretty rough.

Day 31 - 12 x 100 yd sets to reduce spl - 12/7/11

2011-12-07T21:25:00.001-05:00

After a couple months of having been able to consistently do 2700 yd workouts, I decided it was time to try switching things up. Up until this point, 100% of my focus has been on form, and making it as comfortable as possible - whether it getting used to bilateral breathing (last winter), introduction of the two-beat kick (summer), or maintaining form for a full 2700 yds (fall). Each one of those aspects were focused on because at the time, they were one of, if not the primary contributing factor to less efficient form. The problem I've had recently is that it has become a bit unclear what the next step is.

Way in the back of my mind, I remember an aspect of Total Immersion where reducing the stroke count per lap is something to focus on. I kept it in the back of my mind and didn't worry too much about it because, as I mentioned, there were what I considered to be more pressing needs at the time, based on my overall goal (which is to swim the 2.4 miles in the ironman as comfortably as possible). So, with the plateau of being able to maintain a 30 minute/mile pace in the water, I thought it worth seeing if I could experiment with lowering stroke count.

Unfortunately I never had enough time over the past day or two to dig out the TI materials to research what I could do for a workout for this. Even as I left the house to go to the pool, I wasn't sure what I'd do. So, on the way I decided I'd just see what happened if I did 100 yd sets, counting strokes in the first lap (25 yds) and see how well I could maintain that stroke count through the course of three more laps.

I started off by hitting the SportCount button after every 50, and then at the end of each 100 pausing it while I rested up a bit. The first lap was in a lane that I was sharing, but at the end of that lap, another lane opened up - so I reset the counter and went from there. At the end of the workout, I saw that the first lap registered a time that was for 50 yds - but the other laps were for the 100 yds. I'm not sure exactly how that happened when I was hitting the lap button after every 50 and then pausing after every 100 - it's almost like the counter interprets everything between pauses (regardless of how many times you hit the lap button) as a single lap. Thats unfortunate, because I was interested to see how the first 50 compared with the second 50 for each set. And then, on top of that, the last 100 yd set seems to have gotten purged out for some reason. Clearly I have to toy around with the thing and figure out a solution to that if I want that kind of data - but for a first time around, I'll deal with it.

So anyway, the first lap for each set was consistently around the 15.5 spl range. Every so often, during my previous workouts, I'd count strokes for a lap, and I usually ended up falling in the range of about 18. So clearly being rested makes a big difference. I found during this workout that 100 yds seemed just about right - I was able to maintain that 15.5-16.5 spl count for the set, but it was clearly falling off at the end. Then, after a 30 second break or so, I'd do another set and find the same thing. I stopped when I found that a couple sets were seeing a spl count of 16-16.5 on that first lap - going on the idea that I was now fatigued, and I didn't want to imprint bad form into muscle memory.

Below are the lap times for each set - not shown is the time for a break in between.

0 - 44.29
1 - 1:29.77
2 - 1:30.01
3 - 1:27.96
4 - 1:29.15
5 - 1:28.65
6 - 1:28.75
7 - 1:27.98
8 - 1:28.88
9 - 1:28.22
10 - 1:28.41
11 - 1:29.08
12 - 1:27.19

As another point of reference, my average 50 yd lap times for my long continuous workouts are around 51 seconds - so the sets in this workout were about 10 seconds faster per 100 yds. The question in my mind became: "Yes, these laps are faster, but they are less sustainable because I need rest after 100 yds. I am also exaggerating the stroke a bit - extending the glide, and exerting more pull, so naturally the spl count will be lower. But is this going to really be helpful in the end?"

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to that question - I'm basically hanging my hat with it on two facts: (1) anytime I've decided to make a change to my form in the past, I had to go through a period of adjustment (which entailed either slowing down temporarily until I worked out the mechanics well enough to be able to speed up gain, or gain the appropriate aerobic capacity to maintain form with the new mechanics), and (2) I may not end up being able to maintain 16 spl when I return to 'normal' form - but if I can go down from 18 to 17, that'd be a significant improvement (in the TI book, I remember a section where the guy essentially says that if you can get used to doing a lap in X spl, doing a lap in X+1 is that much easier). Granted, in that example he's talking about someone who can do 25 yds in 12 spl, and then turning around and doing something more like 20 during a race - but I'd think the concept is transferrable.

Ultimately, what I took away from this workout is that a few of the latter sets appeared to go more smoothly throughout the entire four lap set. So whereas the first couple sets were nice and smooth in the first 50, and then a little more choppy in the second 50 - some of the latter laps I seem to have managed to normalized the smoothness of the form throughout the entire 100. I was still fatigued and needed a rest, but subtle nuances (such as degree of hip rotation, angle of the arm during the catch, mechanics of rotating the head to grab a breath) seemed to have a noticable effect. So now the challenge will be to focus on those aspects a bit over the next few workouts and try to get more consistent with it. I suppose that when thinking about it, I had heavy suspicions that those aspects could be improved during the long workouts - but the mental energy required to keep everything else in check during those workouts in addition to trying to focus on those minor adjustments was a bit too much. I'm hoping that this way, it'll allow me to really pay attention to and work on just those things. Then, if I'm lucky, I'll find that the 100 yds isn't the limit - I can then see about extending to 150 and/or 200 yds. But I'm sure that'll be a while.

Day 30 - P90X Chest, Shoulders and Arms - 12/5/11

2011-12-06T22:06:00.001-05:00

With the start of phase two of P90X the other day with Legs & Back (which, after having not done a legs workout in two weeks, I find I'm back to having somewhat sore legs two days after that workout, btw - even after having done yoga yesterday), today was Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. This time around, I had some weights I could use, as I had recently picked up some weights from my parents house recently that they managed to scrap from the "put & take" at the local recycling center. Yeah, they aren't as convenient as dumbbells, but not nearly as expensive, either. Also, they tend to be graduated more in Kg (1 Kg, 2 Kg, 4 Kg weights), so there was some mental gymnastics that had to be done in order to figure out the weights to use.

Previously, the heaviest weights I had were 8 lb dumbbells - which was way light for some of the exercises. So the primary issue I had this time around was how much 8 lb might be too light by. I ended up fitting the bars with a total of 6 Kg (a little over 13 lbs) - and sometimes it felt just about right, other times it was a bit heavy.

I tend to find this workout one of the more challenging ones. While there are a lot of pushups in the Chest & Back routine - this one includes what I think are more difficult variations: slow motion, plange, floor flys, two twitch speed, one arm and clap. So whereas Chest & Back is straight up normal, wide, decline - this one definitely makes you work by having differences in pace and introducing more lateral movement while doing the pushup, plus the explosiveness needed for something like the clap pushups, and the sheer power needed for one armed ones. Which, BTW, I can't even come close to doing. Not even a little bit. Even being on my knee, there's just not a whole lot of range of motion there.

Day 28 - P90X Legs & Back - 12/4/11

2011-12-04T22:55:00.001-05:00

So, after a week off where I was hoping to do a couple Yoga sessions, and a few P90X Core Synergistics session - none of which happened - it's time to get back on track and continue on with Phase II of P90X.

Phase I had Chest & Back, Legs & Back and Shoulders & Arms for the strength days. Phase II changes things up a bit - Legs & Back stays, but we have Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, and then Biceps & Back. So, still two back days, and still a legs day. This last part was rather important to me - throughout the 12 weeks of P90X, Legs & Back is done 10 times. Of all workouts, that is the one that I am most concerned with.

I ended up skipping plyo during Phase I due to some residual inflammation on the top of my right foot that just hasn't completely gone away. It's markedly better, but instead of getting noticably better by the day, it seems to take 3-4 days before I notice a difference. Oddly enough, the two times I've noticed the biggest difference is after Yoga, even though I feel like I stress it out more during class by sitting with my legs under me and my ankle at full flexion (which is, actually, why I chose to do a P90X workout today instead of tomorrow, so that I could get to Yoga tomorrow). Anyhow - I'm thinking that I'm probably ready to introduce plyo into the workout routine now. Although not completely gone, I'm thinking that the inflammation is gone down enough that I don't have to let it keep me from doing that workout.

So with the return to Legs & Back, after a week and a half, I'm not at all surprised that initially I was able to bust out more reps, but the stamina definitely started to dwindle. Even still, last time I did 63 total pullups, today I upped that to 66, so thats improvement. But most excitingly (is that a word?) - I was able to get into double digits on a single set! Sure, it was the first set, and it was reverse grip chin-ups, where you can use your biceps, but it's still something I'm rather proud of. The idea of being able to do 20 is, like, rediculous - but this is the danger with this kind of thing - I figure that if I can go from 0 to 10, then going from 10 to 20 is also possible.

Regarding the legs workout - it's definitely getting easier, but I still find myself having to hit pause after certain sets because they are so draining (sneaky lunges and chair salutations, primarily). And of course, single leg wall squats.

Day 27 - 2700 yd swim - 12/3/11

2011-12-03T17:27:00.001-05:00

It's been a few weeks since I've been to the pool - the sacrificial workout on account of Thanksgiving and other schedule snafu's. Anyhow, in the interest of not going too long without a swim, and because I had time today - I decided it'd be a perfect time to hit the water.

I wasn't really sure what to expect beforehand - when in a routine, things become predictable (is that redundant?). But I've fallen out of my routine in the past couple weeks - so when I was heading to the pool I didn't know whether to expect some degree of having slowed down or not. I feel like I'm at the point with my swim stroke that minute differences in form can have a noticable impact - and when you are on the edge like that, especially when it comes to mechanics, I've often found that time off can be a detriment. It reminds of when a professional athlete has an extended time off - here's a guy who has been pitching 94 mph fast balls for his whole life, but when he comes back from the 15 day DL, it's not uncommon for him to stink up the field on his first outing. Little differences.

I'm not saying I'm a professional athlete (although I do wish I was paid like one) - I'm just equating the phenomena of performing at the edge of your current ability level with time off.

Anyway - I figured I'd just do what I had been doing - 54 laps, and if I was a little slow, so be it. Before I started, I checked my sportcount and saw my average lap time last time out was around 50.8 seconds - so at least I had that frame of reference. During the first couple laps, I realized that I didn't even know what my main takeaway(s) were from the last session. I try to at least have something to take away and work on next time, but I had no idea what that might have been. So I just did what I could remember: keep the head down, extended arm low during the catch, avoid tilting the head up when taking a breath. For the first bunch of laps, I felt like I was flying through the water. Afterwards, when I checked my sportcount, it wasn't until lap 24 that I was more consistently over 50 seconds per lap - aside from 3-4 laps in that span, all laps were under 50 seconds. So that was good. I just with I could remember what I did. The mid to late 20's through around 40, I was around 50 seconds per lap, afterwhich it crept up to 51 per lap. In the 40's, there started to be a fair number of 53 second laps - but it was also inconsistent, because there were lows in the 49s range as well.

Total Distance: 2700 yds
Total Time: 45:09
Avg: 50.18

So the average of 50.18 is good for about half to almost 3/4 of a second faster per lap than last time. I'm not sure whether it was due to the extended rest relaying fatigue, or what - but I think that sets a new bar for me.

Day 25 - Slummin' it - 12/1/11

2011-12-01T16:11:00.001-05:00

While I realized that this week was supposed to be a rest week, based on the P90X schedule - what I didn't realize was how little I'd end up doing. I imagined a couple yoga sessions, maybe a couple pool sessions - but so far... nothing.

This week I'm operating on Pacific Time while located in Eastern, thanks to work. So that means I end up getting up around the same time in the morning (7 am), but I don't roll into work until 11 am, but I have to stick around until at least 8 pm, and I don't get home until around 9 pm. And know what isn't open at that time? The pool. And you know what classes aren't running at that time? Yoga. And it's nice to think that I could get stuff like that out of the way before work - but if I did that I'd likely end up dozing off in the middle of the day, and thats not good. It'd be one thing if this weren't a rest week - but it is, and I guess I take my definitions to the extreme.

Day 21 - 46 mile bike ride - 11/27

2011-11-27T21:10:00.001-05:00

The past few days has seen nice weather for this time of year, and I've sort of been lamenting the fact that I haven't been able to go for a bike ride. Actually, not that I haven't been able to - but after my last bike ride in early October, I sort of mentally checked out for bike riding for the rest of the year - so it's not until it's mid-way through a nice day that I think 'damn, it'd be a nice day for a ride'.

So after doing that (again) yesterday, I checked the weather for today and saw it was going to be decent weather again - in the 50's. So instead of going to the pool, I decided to take advantage of the decent weather and do my Wachusett Reservoir loop. The last time I had done this loop, I vaguelly recalled having done it in around 2:45 or so - and today I was somewhat curious how the leg workouts I've been doing may affect cycling performance.

It didn't take too awful long after starting out to determine that today might not be the best day for high hopes in that regard, because my legs weren't feeling incredibly strong. As the ride progressed, my mental state went through the phases of 'Hey, it's nice to be on the bike again - I'm glad I got the opportunity to go for another ride before it gets too cold' to 'Oh man, I'm not even halfway through yet and I'm kinda tired of doing this' to 'This is starting to get annoying' to 'Wow I really wish I was done, but I'm only 2/3 of the way through' to 'Should I give a call home for a pickup - because it is starting to get cold and I'm just really not enjoying this much'.

It was around the halfway point that I decided I should just admit it - I'm a fair weather cyclist. Cycling is enjoyable enough in the right circumstances, but there are aspects of it that aren't so fun no matter what the conditions - so when you start tossing in cooler weather, for me it just tips the scales enough that I'd rather not bother. Yes, there is cold weather gear, and I had (barely) adequate layers on - but even still, the cold affected other things - like it seemed like the bike frame was stiffer, making bumps more annoying. Also, my rear derailleur needs a tune-up, because it spontaneously shifts back and forth when I'm in a couple of particular gears. It occured to me that with the lower temperature and resultant contraction of the metal cable, that maybe thats why it was a lot more on the fritz today as opposed to earlier in the year.

So, all things considered - I'm glad I did it because this way if we get weather in the 50's again, I can now say 'no thanks, still too chilly for a bike ride for me', and I don't have to feel bad about missing an opportunity.

By the time I got home, I was just glad to be off the thing. When I checked my time, I was about 2 mph slower than my last time around that loop (sometime in September). So that kinda sucked as well. I'm going to blame the temperature for it all, though. It's not that I was really that cold (core temp was fine - just the extremities were a bit chilly when I got home), but I was wearing cycling shorts, so I just think that overall temperature was too low for optimal energy output in the human body. Thats my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Day 19 - P90X Chest & Back - 11/25/11

2011-11-25T19:14:00.001-05:00

By doing Chest & Back today, I got myself just about back on track for my workouts this week, minus swimming - which I can do tomorrow or Sunday. It's the most skippable of any workout I do, so if I don't get to it, thats not a big deal.

As suspected, having done the double session the other day (including back), I was definitely limited in the number of reps I could do today. At first I just aimed to keep pace with the previous Chest & Back numbers, but on the second set I was having to take mid-set breaks just to do that. Thats ok, though - I still managed to eek out a few more pushups and pullups overall as compared to the last time I did this workout.

And it figures - just as I start getting the hang for the grips on things like lawnmowers, heavy pants and back fly's while using the bands, I look at the worksheet and see that this is it for the Chest & Back until week 9.

That means next week is a recovery week - lots of core work, and a couple yoga sessions.

Day 18 - Whitinsville 5 miler Turkey trot

2011-11-24T21:14:00.001-05:00

Today was a Thanksgiving day race that I ran with a couple friends. I wasn't really sure what to expect - I had just done the legs workout yesterday - but I figured I'd probably be able to do about 7:30 min/miles. That would give a final time of about 37:30 or so. The only other five mile race I did was way back in 2009 - the Lawrence Sons of Italy race - where I had a final time of just a hair under 39 minutes (although the course was a tad longer than 5 miles). So I figured there was a good chance of PR'ing a 5 mile race today. At least, a PR post-high school - I know I did one 5 mile race in high school on Thanksgiving, but I've long since forgotten my time - and at the time a 7:30 min/mile was on the slower side of things.

Anyhow - normally during a race, I position myself in the crowd based on where I've been finishing - if I'm finishing in the 50%, I'd get about halfway back. Part of the reason for that is to not be one of the obnoxious people who line up in front and get in peoples way. The other reason is that it helps regulate my start, so I don't go out too fast. Today, I threw caution to the wind and lined up right in front. When the race started, everyone seemed to be sprinting right out of the gate. Within a few hundred feet, I looked down at my watch and saw an instantaneous pace under 5 min/miles. I knew for a fact that wasn't sustainable - so I started to slow up a bit. At this point, a good number of people were passing me, and even though I slowed down, it was tough to get settled into a comfortable pace. My heartrate was already well into the 160's and rising, so I needed to get that under control.

As the first mile clicked by in 6:45, I knew I was still going too fast. On the other hand, there were only 4 miles left at this point, so it would not be worth really slowing down because by the time I did that and got caught up, the race would be just about over. So I just kinda had to suck it up, and come to grips with the fact that my HR was going to be in the 170's for 5 miles, and it wasn't going to be comfortable. I decided that'd be ok, though - I'm intentionally lowering miles, but this run was definitely keeping the intensity up.

I slowed down a bit each successive mile - but still stayed under 7:30 min/mile. Once I hit mile four, I could tell based on my time that there was going to be a finish in the 35 minute range. I knew this would be a PR for me, but I didn't recall the finish of the Lawrence race from a few years ago. I was thinking I finished int he 37 minute range, but wasn't sure.

In the last mile, of course - everyone got a little bit of a final kick, including myself. I gradually sped up during that mile, and opened up an all out sprint in the last 100 feet or so. My HR shot from the mid 170's to the mid 180's, and my lungs were trying to suck more air into them than my windpipe would allow. That's always fun.

Anyway, final results.

A few hours later, I got an email informing me I was 77 of 771 overall, and 15 of 75 in my age group. For someone who has typically been in the back half of the pack, that was my best showing in a race so far.

Day 17 - P90X Double Session - 11/23/11

2011-11-23T21:47:00.001-05:00

So, I never got to Legs & Back last night - got home too late to get it in before bed.

Since I had today off from work, I was able to do a double P90X session - Legs & Back this morning, and Shoulders & Arms this evening. I did skip the ab-ripper portion of legs & back though, and only did one session of that today. So that puts me back on track for the week - I'll do Chest & Back on Friday and find some time over the next few days for a pool session.

So it was pretty much the same story with Legs & Back as before - trying to increase reps or eliminate breaks on each round. What is really starting to surprise me is the total number of pull-ups I'm able to do in the full workout - over 60. What I'm curious about is whether this workout will affect my performance at all during tomorrow's five mile race.

With Shoulders & Arms, I was back to using the bands. I did manage to tweak things a bit to start getting more effectiveness out of them, so that is good. But there are still some of the exercises that are difficult because the grip is imbalanced (no handles on the bands).

Day 15 - Yoga - 11/21/11

2011-11-21T22:42:00.001-05:00

My schedule this week is all askew. I was going to do Legs & Back tonight, but made dinner plans with a friend tomorrow evening - so I couldn't do yoga then. And there is no 7:30 yoga class on Wednesday, so I needed to get it in at some point this week - so I opted to go tonight, and try to get the Legs & Back workout in tomorrow somehow, sometime. Worst case scenario, I end up having to do Legs & Back on Wednesday morning, and Shoulders & Arms Wednesday evening since I'm not going to work that day. It might affect my performance on the 5 mile turkey day run I plan on doing on Thursday, though.

Anyhow - the past couple weeks I've been finding that I am getting more precise with balancing during the balance series:

Standing Head to Knee - This pose has consistently been on the top of my nemesis list. It looks easy, but holding it for as long as you do in class is really, really hard and exhausting when you get to it in class. Believe me - you may stop reading this and try it out and say 'eh, he's a wimp' - but I can tell you from personal experience that new students in class often kinda laugh and snicker through the first few postures, but after this one they have a look of horror and the biggest 'Hoe-Lee SHIT!!' expression on their face. It's quite amusing :) (hey, I was that person once)

I still can't straighten my horizontal leg all the way, but I'm getting there (the left leg is 95% of the way there!). The thing I liked about it right away is that I always felt like it was engaging the stabilizing muscles in the hips that directly affect the IT band - the gluteus medius. A few weeks ago I feel like I came across a point of balance in my hip where I don't need to hold the leg and hips in place with as much muscular effort - kinda like I figured out how to balance a marble on the tip of my finger. This made the posture significantly easier.

Balancing Stick - This pose has never been much of a killer for me, but it is surprising how much it can make your heart pump. I'm sure when I first started I was more like the guy in the video (awkward and falling over), but that was quickly remedied. Regardless, kinda like that marble analogy from before, I find it easier nowadays.

Standing Bow Pulling Pose - Ok, I can't get my leg nearly as high as the woman in the video - but as you could guess, this is a great posture for increasing quad flexibility (yes, please!). So over time, I've gotten better at it - but the balance is often a tricky thing because you are trying to kick your leg up, keep your torso horizontal and maintain balance all at the same time. Add the fact that this pose causes me to get lightheaded after coming out of it - it makes for a unique challenge. But once again, finding that point in the hip to balance on has made it significantly easier.

So it is definitely nice that I'm finally, after a year of practicing, able to find that point of balance where I don't have to consistently use minor muscle corrections to keep myself balanced - and, ironically enough, I find that when I totally lock the standing knee, it is easier. Go figure - cuz they say to lock the knee every. time.

Day 14 - P90X Chest & Back w/Ab Ripper - 11/20/11

2011-11-20T19:47:00.001-05:00

This workout was originally to be on Friday, but I ended up making other plans with a couple friends, and intended to get to the workout on Saturday. However, I had to work on Saturday and it took longer than I thought it would - not getting home until 9:30 - so the workout didn't happen then either.

This posed a bit of a problem, because tomorrow is supposed to be legs & back - but having just done back today, I really don't want to do it again tomorrow. And then with Thanksgiving this week, the schedule is all a mess. So at current I'm thinking I'll go to Yoga tomorrow, followed by Legs & Back on Tuesday, and swimming on Wednesday. I will hopefully be able to get Shoulders & Arms in on Thursday evening, leaving Saturday for Chest & Back, and putting me pretty much back on schedule without having missed a workout. That would be nice.

One of the things I'm still toying around with in P90X is how to go about increasing reps - I don't want to go to exhaustion for one pull up set when I know there are others coming up, and I don't want to go balls to the wall for one thing and end up sacrificing something else. So for something like Chest & Back, where there are two sets - I thought one idea might be to do the same number of reps as the previous week for the first set, and then on the second set increase reps. Theoretically I should be less fatigued during the first set on the subsequent week, leaving more ability to do more reps on the 2nd set. Then, on the next week (which would be the third), I could bump up the number of reps on the first set, and keep the reps on the 2nd set the same as the 2nd set from the previous week. Follow? If not - don't worry - there are only 5 workouts for chest & back, and 2 are finished already and two occur in the last month of the P90x schedule, so it really doesn't matter.

But anyway, it does help illustrate my goal numbers for this week and why I (for the most part) kept set one the same as the previous week, and opted to increase the reps for set two.

Day 11 - 2700 yd swim - 11/17

2011-11-18T08:14:00.001-05:00

I'm still working on tweaking minor aspects of my swim stroke. Today I mostly concentrated on keeping my hand lower during the catch - I have a tendency, in my attempt to elongate my body as I reach my arm forward, to keep it outstretched. As a result, it tends to be closer to horizontal, and I can feel the drag it creates - as opposed to when it is lower (hand maybe more like 1 ft below the surface) and the induced drag feels less. I'm still not sure exactly why that is - you'd think that being horizontal in the water would be more streamlined. Maybe it is for the hand itself, but then again body position is affected by hand placement - and usually a large contributor to drag is the body itself, when the legs are lower than the torso. So by lowering the hand, it helps keep the rest of the body in a more streamlined position. At least, that's what seems to happen - so I'll go with that.

A few times during these swim sessions, I get a lap or two that feel exceptionally nice and smooth. I usually try and make a mental note of which laps they are so I can go back and look at those lap times to compare, but I usually forget, or after a lap of being conscious of how things feel really good, I end up inadvertantly trying harder (ie, using muscles more) which ends up being counterproductive. So I think one of the next goals will be to try and emulate those good feeling laps as much as I can - I at least have a sense of what the entire stroke should feel like, so it gives me a little bit of a direction.

54 laps - 45:47

Day 10 - Yoga - 11/16/11

2011-11-17T13:10:00.001-05:00

I was originally doubtful I'd be able to make it to yoga today due to flight times returning home, but yay for finishing early and catching an early flight!

And I needed it. Between minor residual soreness from Sunday, and the workouts Monday and Tuesday, I woke up Wednesday morning and knew I had to get to yoga - at the expense of my next workout, if necessary.

Nothing too major from this class - I got into toe stand again this time (a tad easier). The top of my right foot was still aggrevated, especially during kneeling poses where there is a lot of weight on it - but it wasn't as sensitive as it was last week. So that is a good sign that things are healing.

Day 9 - Shoulders & Arms - 11/15/11

2011-11-15T23:16:00.001-05:00

The main reason why I ended up doing legs & back yesterday - with the legs being a day after a hard workout on the half marathon the day before, and the back on short rest - was because I knew that this evening I'd be in a hotel. I can do the leg routine in a hotel room, but I have no pull up bar, so my workout would be limited. Hotels, however, often have dumbbells - and the shoulders & arms routine is one that I feel I get a huge benefit from when using dumbbells. As a result, it was possible for me to get a good workout in today while also seeing what kind of weights I'd need to get, if I were to get dumbbells. See? I think of everything!

Unfortunately, it also means it is hard to compare against last week - because all I know is that I used the blue band last week - but no idea how many equivalent pounds that ends up being. But I can say that I found a set of 15's and 20's are definitely adequate for this workout for me. Most of the things like curls or presses were good with 20 lbs, while some of the fly and tricep stuff was better with the 15' lbs. The one exercise I couldn't really do was the outstretched shoulder fly, because the lowest weight they had was 15's, which was still too heavy.

Other than that - because I was able to select the proper weight to limit reps not on time elapsed before they went on to the next thing, but instead my own fatigue - I'm pretty certain that I'm going to be feeling sore in my arms starting tomorrow and into Thursday. But, its a good kind of sore, because I brought it.

(Except I didn't do ab ripper today, I'll do that tomorrow)

Day 8 - Legs & Back - 11/14

2011-11-14T18:28:00.001-05:00

As I suspected, the back workout today was affected by the fact that it was only Saturday that the previous back workout occured. This morning I could tell I had worked out the back muscles and they were still recovering. I had toyed with the idea of switching around my schedule this week to accomodate, but decided not too because doing so would be more hassle than it'd be worth. So, instead of trying to increase reps today, I'd do what I could - if I could match last week's numbers, great. If I fell a rep or two short, oh well - thats ok too.

I actually ended up doing reasonably well. I was at least able to match the reps from last session, but I did have to take a couple extra mid-set breaks. On the other hand, though - there were a few spots (like round one of the wide front, or the closed grip overhand pullups) where I was able to add a rep or two before taking a break. So, all told - I'd call it a wash. Considering it was only 48 hours of rest, I'm pretty happy with that.

The legs were definitely still fatigued from yesterday, though. Wasn't much of a big deal on stuff like the lunges and squats - that just meant pushing through a little more adversity - but I definitely lost something on the wall squats, specifically the single leg ones. I had just gotten to the point of being able to maintain for the full 60 seconds, but this time I had to take a break during the entire middle 20 seconds. Thats fine, though - after taking 13 minutes off a half marathon PR, I'm ok with it!

As will be the case going forward, I won't put links in the text of each post - there is a link on the bar above that should bring you to a google docs spreadsheet that I update with my progress.

Day 7 - Monson Half Marathon - 11/13/11

2011-11-13T16:54:00.001-05:00

I guess this would be filed under 'cardio' in the P90X workout schedule.

So today was the Monson half marathon. I approached it with the attitude that it was a race at a time when running miles are down, and therefore I'd push myself to try and keep up the intensity. Reason being is that through talking with people and doing some research, I've come across the idea that one way to maintain running conditioning during a down period is to make the runs more intense (ie, not all LSD). Due to road conditions around these parts, the winter is definitely a down period for running.

I ran part of this course with my dad last Sunday to get a feel for it, get a sense of hills and what-not. I've only run 3-4 times since the marathon, so I really had no major preconceived notions of my performance because I had no idea how much dropoff to expect. My previous half marathons (and PR) have been in the 1:53 range (not counting the half marathon in the patriot half iron) - an 8:40 min/mile pace, or so. There were two primary factors in the back of my mind that led me to believe that I was likely ready to break through that plateau, though:

Previous half's were done at a time when it was pushing the envelope of my conditioning - either being the first half I've ever done (Lowell Sun '08), after IT band issues (Lowell Sun '10), or building up to that kind of mileage in minimalist shoes (Worcester '11). This was the first time I was doing a half where I had little significant reason to be cautious, so I could just go.
Two of my September threshold runs were 10 miles in length - with eight of those being in the 7:40 min/mile range, for an overall average of right around 8 min/miles. Those runs were on a flat course with an average HR below 155. A third threshold run was hillier, but done at the same pace of around 8 min/miles, but with a HR of 161. Since I didn't let it all out on those runs, I knew that I could maintain that HR/intensity for the time required to complete the 13.1 mile distance.

However, this course had some hills - and from looking at the course profile, I knew the first half was mostly all uphill:

So really, the biggest question was how would the hills impact my performance. There was potential to completely burn out in the first half, making for a very long and brutal second half. Even with the downhill - once you are gassed, just putting one foot in front of the other can be a challenge.

Since I knew the course to be fairly hilly, I did a few things for this race that were new - things I had recently heard were beneficial, but had no experience with:

Compression pants: A couple weeks ago, my sister got me a pair of compression pants. I've always thought of them as somewhat gimmicky, but when they arrived and I put them on, I noticed that my legs felt more springy. I immediately thought that any small benefit could easily be worthwhile during the ironman next year - so they were definitely worth trying out.
Carbo loading technique: Everyone has heard of this, and I never really paid much attention because I've heard conflicting reports on its effectiveness. However a few weeks ago I came across an article discussing the results of a study where the methodology of carbo loading was optimized. See link in the sidebar for more details. Once I saw that study, I decided to give the technique a shot. So yesterday, after the P90X Chest & Back session, I did the quick 3 minute balls-to-the-wall run, following by consuming a bunch of carbs. I didn't quite match the nearly 750g of carbs that the technique calls for - but I didn't hold back on the Mountain Dew or the left over halloween candy or the chocolate chip cookie for lunch after the workout.
Caffeine: Speaking of Mountain Dew - I've always avoided caffeine before a race figuring that it is a diuretic and that I wanted to retain as much water as possible. However, I've read things recently that caffeine can help improve performance. Apparently it's a debatable topic, but I figured what the hell - there are already so many unknowns in this race, I mine as well give it a shot.
Stronger Legs: Not so much an unknown, but recently I've noticed a big difference in leg strength. The first major indication was being able to do the P90X Legs workout the other week without being sore for days, the second indication is the noticibly longer holds on the wall squats - both regular and single leg. The last indication is that the past couple yoga classes, the sitting portions of awkward pose (similar to wall squats) are much easier than they were before. So I was hoping that the increased leg power might help with ascending hills, as well as recovering quickly from said ascention.

Oh, I should also mention that I saw Dick & Rick Hoyt before the start, as they live in the nearby area. I don't know if they ran the race or not - I didn't see them at the starting line, so I'm guessing they were just present for support of Team Hoyt. If you've never heard of them, google them. You'll be amazed.

So, as usual, I started off relatively slow as a warm up (the joke between my dad and I was to 'start slow, and then taper back from there') for the first mile. But something was wrong - the first mile clicked at just over 8 minutes. Shit! I better slow down, because otherwise I'm going to be gassed pretty quick. But my HR was < 155, which is high for a first mile, but not terrible. The problem is that I didn't feel like I needed to slow down. I'm not sure why, but I decided to keep up at a similar pace, maybe slow down a bit on the steeper portions - but I was finding that after those sections, my legs were re-energized pretty quickly, and I could resume buzzing along at a sub 8 min/mile pace.

For the next few miles, I just kept up pace and it felt fine. Which was surprising because my HR was at least 165. Typically at that intensity, my endurance starts to plummet, but I wasn't feeling nearly as strained as I would have expected. Very odd. The concern was how I'd feel at the halfway point of the race - would I burn myself out?

As the miles clicked by, I continued to be surprised by how strong I felt. I have to admit, I was keeping myself motivated by passing people on the hills - there were a few times I was keeping pace with someone nearby, but eventually we'd hit a hill and they'd drop back. I switched to using mostly calf muscles for ascention, giving the quads a brief break. During the downhill parts, I picked up speed - but not too much. I think this ended up being a smart strategic move - the downhills gave my body a chance to recover, and my not flying down them, I had a longer period of time for that recovery so that I was re-energized for the next uphill.

By the time I hit mile 11, I had been on a downhill slope for a couple miles and hit a mini wall. My overall pace was slowing down slightly because cadence was dropping - so I had to start consciously thinking about that to maintain a high foot turnover. This is where the race became mental - at this point I knew I was going to beat the 1:53 previous PR, but now it was a matter of pushing it for the last two miles, and not having the ego hit by being passed. Honestly, those last few miles - that was a huge part of what kept me going. I'd pass someone, and I didn't want to be that guy that passed someone, only to have peaked too early and then crash before the finish line. Plus, by this time, my foot was starting to hurt again, so I just wanted to be done. And the only way to do that was to run faster.

So anyhow - how did it go?

Absolutely crushed it.

Remember how I said my halfs PR was in the 1:53 range? This was a full 13 minutes faster! Are. You. Flippin'. Kidding me?

And this was on a hilly course! Where the hell did I ever pull that from?! And on a right foot that is not 100%! (which was actually fine and painless until mile 7 or so, BTW)

I'd have been reasonably happy with something in the 1:53 range, figuring 'eh, it was a hilly course, haven't run much at all in the past few weeks, and on a bum foot'. I'd have been really, really happy with a 1:45 - knocking 8 minutes off a 13 mile course, around 40 sec/mile faster than before, is significant improvement! But a full minute/mile faster?! I really pulled some magic out of my ass on this one.

Day 6 - Chest & Back w/Ab Ripper

2011-11-12T21:32:00.001-05:00

So, this workout was supposed to have happened yesterday, but because I was gone all day, I punted it to today. For the time being, I am skipping plyo (even though it's on the P90x schedule) because I am trying to minimize high impact activities until my right foot feels 100%. Plus, I'm doing a half marathon tomorrow - so I'm not sure how the idea of minimizing impact and then doing a half marathon reconciles with each other. Whatever.

Anyhow - since there's no plyo this weekend, it gave me an opportunity to catch up on the Chest & Back. The only potential problem I could see was that I am looking to do the Legs & Back on Monday - meaning only one day of rest in between workouts involving pull ups. So I'm a little concerned that my pull up numbers will be low on Monday. On the other hand, maybe I'll just grin and bear it. Maybe I'll end up surprising myself.

I haven't done this yet, but I mine as well start - logging on here how many reps I do for each workout. It'll give a better way to demonstrate improvement, as opposed to just saying 'yay I did more!' Plus, maybe the improvements will help motivate someone to give P90x a shot, seeing some real actual results.

Link to Chest & Back Results

The heavy pants, lawnmowers and backflys were performed with resistance bands instead of dumbbells. Even using the thickest band (blue), it is still tough to really feel like I'm working muscles much, so I usually go with an isometric hold at the top of the exercise. It provides something, but I don't think it is as effective as actual weights would be. As a result, the count for those exercises aren't really good for comparison, as they are usually an indication of how many I did before time expired, as opposed to how many were done before muscle fatigue set in.

Day 5 - Rest!

2011-11-12T10:27:00.001-05:00

Writing this the day-after. Due to work scheduling, there was no time for working out at all. It wasn't exactly restful, though - woke up at 4am to catch a 6am flight to DC, spent the day in a data center (didn't even have time to get lunch), caught the 7:30pm flight back to Boston, got home at 9:30, watched a little TV and went to bed.

Later today, though - Chest & Back.

Day 4 - 2500 yd swim

2011-11-10T21:40:00.001-05:00

Kinda odd to be labelling a swim as day 4, since there is no swimming in P90X, but whatever.

Anyway, short update because I have to catch a 6am flight and need to get to bed. Intended to do 1.5 miles (54 laps), but was cut short at 50 because the pool was closing. I got there a few minutes later than intended, and didn't go immediately after work because the local swim team uses up 6 of the 8 lanes until 8 pm.

Interesting note - when I got to lap 44, I knew I wasn't going to get another full 500 yds in, so I kicked up the intensity a little bit to try and maybe eek out an extra lap or two before I had to go. I figured each of those last six laps would be a solid two seconds faster than normal (down to about 48 seconds). Well, two of the six were about that much faster, the other four were either par for the course at that time (around 52 seconds), or only slightly faster at 51 seconds or so. Regardless, what I might toy around with is increasing intensity for the last ten laps or so - not so much to improve time (it won't make that much difference) - but more to see if I can locate any additional form streamlining improvements due to the increased drag. But also don't want to go too much more intense - because obviously the return on investment of time vs energy expenditure is very low - so anything I do I want to be done with an eye towards maximizing energy efficiency.

2500 yds - 42:26

Day 3 - Yoga

2011-11-09T23:08:00.000-05:00

I normally never post anything about yoga classes - primarily because there's not that much interesting that happens and is worth reporting. Once you get past the shock of the first class and the heat and humidity (which is certainly worthy of a post), and then you get to the point where you can go through the entire class without a break (worth of another post) - occasions are few and far between that are worth posting about.

But today happened to be one of those days! Over the past year (holy crap - I've been doing yoga for a year now!), my flexibility improvements have been drastic and obvious. I credit yoga a huge amount with being able to remain injury-free up until the marathon. However, there are two places that I find I still struggle with - hips and knees (in that order). For those two reasons, one particular pose has always been a far off dream to be able to do - the toe stand pose.

To try and describe it would be a waste of time, so here is what it looks like:

There is a process to be followed to get into it, starting with bring your foot up to your thigh, dropping your knee, and leaning forward. Over time, I've been able to lean forward, with my foot on my thigh, enough that instructors have encouraged me to fall forward in an attempt to slip into the next phase of the pose. Problem is that I've always been paranoid about my knee - not because I've had knee issues - but I've been paranoid I'd screw something up, torque it and rip my ACL right in two.

For whatever reason, today I decided to throw caution to the wind, and lean forward. To my amazement, I was then able to bend my supporting knee and sort of get into the pose. I say sort of because I didn't look anything like the above picture. My leg wasn't really horizontal (my knee was higher than my ankle), there was no way I was balancing on my toes on one foot (I was balancing with the help of my hands on my side), and my back was nowhere near straight (I was hunched over like a leprechaun). BUT I managed to be in sort of a sitting position, so I'll take it!

Day 2 - P90X Shoulders & Arms w/Ab Ripper - 11/8

2011-11-09T11:40:00.001-05:00

Today was the first day I've ever done the Shoulders, Arms & Triceps routine. I originally figured I'd be doing Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, but when I looked at the P90X schedule, I saw that was in Phase II. So I figured I'd follow along and do the prescribed routine and do Shoulders & Arms for Phase I.

The other reason I avoided this is because I had a hunch that Shoulders & Arms would require dumbbells, and be tough to do with the bands that I have (which don't have handles). It turns out, I was mostly right. I was able to make do with the bands I do have - but I think at my heart I'm really going to want to use dumbbells when possible. The problem is that they aren't cheap, at like $1/lb - and I don't know whether to get 12 lb, 15 lb, or what. So that is potentially a lot of money in trying to hone in on the proper weight. Yeah, there can be dumb bells had for cheap on something like craigslist, but a full set can still end up being a couple/few hundred dollars. I think in the end I'll just end up either getting a few sets of dumbbells and dealing with the possibility of being a few pounds off my ideal weight, or getting a set of adjustable dumbbells and dealing with adding and removing weights in between sets. I'd rather avoid that, but I also don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on convenience. Yet. Perhaps in the future, after I've proven to myself that I may want to stick with this kind of thing, and I get really sick of switching out weight plates, I'll change my mind.

Overall, I was a little disappointed in this workout, though. Unlike other workouts, I really didn't break much of a sweat in this one, so I wonder about my caloric burn. On the other hand, it's not like I'm doing this in a warm room - I'm doing this in a 60F basement. In the end, though, I think the major reason is that it seems to be a workout with a lot of isolation - so there just isn't a large proportion of muscle mass being used in any one exercise. The morning after, I am slightly sore - so I guess that is a good sign.

And of course, Ab ripper kicks my ass. Getting better, but man those Pfeiffer Scissors are killer by the time you get to them.

The other thing I need to do, and soon, is get pictures. It's the P90X thing to do, even though it'd kinda be cheating, since I've done a lot over the past eight months to trim down. But then again, people post before and after pics for subsequent rounds of P90X that they start on.

Day 1 - P90X Legs & Back - 11/7

2011-11-09T10:58:00.000-05:00

I retroactively decided that this would be the start of my winter routine. It came about after a couple weeks of finding myself settling into a pattern of days that I was doing certain activities - when I looked at it more closely, I realized I was 90% of the way there, just had to make a couple minor tweaks). One thing I wasn't giving thought to before was following the nutrition guide for P90X - but I'm actually starting to give more thought to it. I'm still unsure, to be honest - but I'll likely decide this by the end of this weekend, knowing that the more realistic possibility is that I'll just record what I eat instead.

So until I settle in on what to actually document (will I bother to list out how many reps, and the corresponding weights? Or will I just mention improvements I notice as I go along? I don't know), there isn't really a whole lot to mention other than that I did the Legs & Back routine today. Usually, when it comes to performing one of the exercises, I look at what I did previously, and depending on how I feel, try to improve on it in some way. So if I did six total chin-ups last time, with a mid-set break at four, then the next time I'll see if I can get to seven, or maybe do all six again but without the break. So thats what today's back workout portion was mostly about - trying to either improve by one rep, to do the same number as before but without a break.

The leg routine was fairly typical - since it is all about reps first, and weights second - I often don't end up recording whether I was holding 4 lb or 8 lb weights during things like the calf raise squats. So I suppose I need to get better about documenting that as well. It was one thing to be a slacker about that during the summer when I was just doing the routines as a way to break into the program, but if I really want to
,
then I have to start writing some of this stuff down.

Workout & P90X routine - Winter 2011/2012

2011-11-09T10:53:00.000-05:00

I believe I've settled on what my routine will be for the next couple months. It ends up being very similar to the stock P90X routine, but I've modified it to suit a few of my specific needs:

Saturday or Sunday would be my run days, as the only days of the week during the winter when I can realistically get outside during daylight for any run over a few miles.
I'm hoping that stacking a couple legs heavy workouts (running and plyo on the weekend, combined with Monday's leg workout) in succession will be successful in providing adequate stress to maintain or improve the power-to-weight ratio, while not sacrificing endurance.
I wanted a solid days rest after the legs workout before yoga, to take full advantage of being able to really crank on muscles and tissues that may get tight over the weekends.
The yoga instructor for Monday and Wednesdays class tends to hold postures longer than other instructors, so that gives an extra edge to the workout. So getting to yoga on one of those two days was also somewhat of a priority.
The swim does not come immediately after an upper body strength workout, and seemed to nicely fit in on Thursday (which is also a day that the pool tends to be rather vacant after 7:30pm or so)
I removed the Kenpo, Yoga, Stretch and Cardio from the P90X. Kenpo may be fun, but I couldn't find a place for it. Yoga, Stretch and Cardio - well, the first two are covered with Bikram yoga and the cardio is covered during the weekly run, yoga and swim sessions.

PHASE 1	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Chest & Back, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Chest & Back, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Chest & Back, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Core Synergistics	Core Synergistics	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Core Synergistics	run/plyo	run/plyo


PHASE 2	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Core Synergistics	Core Synergistics	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Core Synergistics	run/plyo	run/plyo


PHASE 3	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Chest & Back, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Chest & Back, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Legs & Back, Ab Ripper	Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper	run/plyo	run/plyo
	Core Synergistics	Core Synergistics	Bikram Yoga	Pool Swim	Core Synergistics	run/plyo	run/plyo

P90X & 10 mile run - 11/6

2011-11-06T17:57:00.002-05:00

It is starting to become routine that Friday night is a P90x night, since the pool closes early. With Legs & Back having been on Wednesday, I usually go for an upper body workout on Friday, to give my legs more recovery time. So this week it was Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. This routine is basically variations on push-ups, tricip extensions and other things to isolate the shoulders. For now I'm just trying to find a routine that works with P90X in terms of what days to do certain workouts, so while I'm tracking numbers and weights and such, I'm a little more laissez faire at the moment, as opposed to what I intend once the weather really gets crappy.

On Saturday I dusted off the plyometrics DVD. Last time I did this workout, I stopped halfway through, because I could tell it was going to make me sore - so I didn't want to do too much. For that reason, I have been holding off on revisiting it, because I didn't want it to impact my training for the marathon - but on this day I decided to revisit it. I was pleasantly surprised that I managed it much better this time around. I still only did half the workout, because I knew this morning I'd be going for a run in hilly terrain, and because the impact of the jumping was starting to aggrevate my toe (damn thing!). But it was really nice to know that I'm more able to keep up with it and not get totally wiped out. So that bodes well for incorporating it into a routine over the winter.

Speaking of which, I've been trying to think how everything would settle out. There are a multitide of factors to consider when doing certain workouts, but I think something like the following will work out best:

Monday - P90X Legs & Back
Tueday - P90X Chest, Shoulders and Tricips
Wednesday - yoga
Thursday - swim
Friday - P90X Chest & Back
Saturday - run or plyo
Sunday - run or plyo (opposite of Saturday)

This gives me rest between back workouts, yoga after the more intense legs workouts of plyo, running and P90X legs, a few days between chest workouts, and swimming on Thursday which, so far, has proven to be a day where there are few people at the pool. It also gives me two chances to run on the weekend, depending on how the weather shakes out.

Finally, today was a 10 mile run to get a sense of the course for the Monson half marathon I intend to run next weekend. I ran this with my dad, as he's done the race a few times in the past, and likes to run the course beforehand. I haven't run much in hilly terrain this year, so it was an opportunity for me to see what it would be like. From what I can tell, there will be a couple primary challenges - the first being the immediate up-hill, so a slow warmup will be essential to prevent burnout before the three mile mark. The second is the steep downhill on the backside of the route - I find a slight gradual downhill is best, but the grade on this particular section is fairly steep. Fortunately, the uphill sections are either short when they are more intense, or fairly gradual on the more extended sections. However, it is one thing to experience them at a pace where the HR is well below 150 - it'll be another thing to feel what they are like during race conditions and trying to maintain a 155-160 HR.

1850 yard swim - 11/3

2011-11-03T21:56:00.001-04:00

I went to the pool today intending to do another 1.5 miles, but by the time I was 100 yds in, I was feeling the fatigue from yesterday's P90x Legs & Back workout. There were two good things that came out of that workout - I greatly improved in pullups and chinups over previous performances, and I think that finally, leg soreness will be minimal. The downside is that it appears my lats are just tuckered out and haven't recovered.

For whatever reason, I just wasn't feeling all that great about the swim workout the entire time. I could relax and settle into a rhythm for a short period of time, but never had that groove going for an extended period of time. By the time I got to the 36th lap, I decided that I had had enough - I just wasn't feeling it today, I felt sluggish in the water, and didn't want to develop bad neuro-muscular habits in part because of being fatigued. For a while I was trying to look at it as an opportunity to make sure that my form would be maintained through fatigue, but continuing that requires a lot more mental fortitude than I had on this particular day. Oh well, these things happen.

37 laps - 31:48

5 mile run - 11/1

2011-11-02T21:16:00.001-04:00

A day late making this post.

Anyway - last week I started off with a 10 mile run, somewhat re-aggrevated my right big toe, did the P90x Legs & Back workout, and figured that the incipient soreness would keep me from wanting to run. It did, but by Sunday I was starting to wonder if I could run again. My toe was feeling 95% better - but it was one of those things where the last little bit of ache just. wasn't. going. away. Once in a while I've had aches that were like that, and they aren't necessarily made worse by running, and in some ways can actually be helped. I've always surmised in those situations that the extra bloodflow helps more with healing than the harm done by the activity. The problem is you never know quite when you cross the line from activity hurting to activity helping.

After a couple days of this, I decided to give a shot at a fairly short run. The complication I had in mind was this: I am hoping to do a half marathon in a couple weeks, and this coming weekend I'm hoping to do 8-10 miles of the course. It is a hilly course, so having some exposure to the route would be beneficial. On the other hand, if I went for a run and started over with reaggrevating the ache, then I'd likely have to pass on the half marathon and just suck up a few weeks of not running.

In the end, I decided to take a gamble - mostly because the ache had actually migrated up the foot a tad, and was no longer in the same spot. So I reasoned that this might be an effect of the human body's ability to compensate during injury to reduce stress in one area - an action which can often cause extra stress in another.

It wasn't looking so good initially, as I was feeling the foot every time it struck the ground. About a mile in I was really debating the wisdom of this, but for some reason I kept going. I'm not sure why - I think it was just plain old stubborn-ness. I kept up a threshold pace for the run, but I wasn't looking at the Garmin - mostly going just on what felt comfortably hard. I didn't know whether I was doing 8:30 min/miles or 7:45.

When I got back home, I iced my foot immediately and took a couple aspirin - thinking that maybe if I caught it in time, the inflammation could be minimized. My foot did hurt a bit initially, starting out feeling like it was definitely reaggrevated, but over time it actually diminished quite a bit. Probably an effect of the aspirin.

I woke up this morning with it actually feeling like it was back to square one - no worse for wear. I took an aspirin in the morning, and another at lunch. My current thinking is that maybe a constant low level of NSAID's will help knock it out by preventing just normal every day life (ie, walking) from causing a constant low level of inflammation. I guess we'll see how it goes - but so far, as I write this 9 hours after my last aspirin tab, it does seem to as feel close to 100% as it has felt so far.

2700 yd swim - 10/30

2011-10-30T16:31:00.001-04:00

Let the good times roll!

Only a few thoughts on todays swim:
(1) I started out slower, which continued to help with smoothing out the pseudo-temporary higher-intensity-feeling zone that develops between 300-450 yds before settling into a more comfortable rhythm at about 600 yds.
(2) It takes until about 1000 yds before I feel warmed up.
(3) Neither of the above really show themselves in significant time differences between laps
(4) Right around the 1500-1700 range I consistently lose about one second per lap. This coincided with the feeling that my form was falling apart slightly. My right arm was high in the catch, my breathing from the left wasn't as smooth as it has ever been, two beat kick and hand entry timing was somewhat sloppy - all of which increase drag. If I paid close attention, I could sort it out - but it tells me that I still have some efficiencies that have not been fully committed to muscle memory yet.
(5) Due to #4, I conceded that I'd likely be a bit slower today than the past couple sessions - especially because the handful of times I counted the # of strokes for a 25 yd lap, I was at nearly 19 when I'm usually closer to 18.
(6) I ended up shocked to see that not only was I not slower, but was slightly faster today than last session - by about 20 seconds total.

2700 yds (54 laps) - 45:39

2700 yd swim - 10/27

2011-10-28T14:46:00.003-04:00

Whats better than a great workout where you feel like you made some progress? Following it up with an equally as satisfying workout!

Bouyed by my last swim performance, where a couple minor mechanical changes resulted in the first sub 30 min/mile pace, I wanted to attempt a repeat, but I also wanted to try to extend the distance to 1.5 miles. The big unknown was whether the form would hold for the extra distance.

This time I also really tried to start slow, barely even trying for the first 50-100 yds, in an attempt to more gradually warm up, hoping to avoid the condition where I'm 5-6 laps in and somewhat gasping for breath. I did a little better, but I still found myself reaching a point where it was slightly uncomfortable to breathe.

That always happens, but it always settles down. However, just a few laps before it eventually did, I remembered that I had done the P90X Legs & Back routine the night before, which involves pull-ups - which I was now feeling in the way of slightly fatigued lat muscles. Hmm.. that might present a problem. So I tried minimizing the amount of actual muscle pull, and instead using hip rotation to generate power. I don't know if it worked or not, but it wasn't more than a few laps before I completely forgot about the muscle fatigue. So it either did work, or that feeling of fatigue was fleeting.

Once again, though - when I got into the high 20's in lap count, I started actually feeling re-energized and hitting a rhythm. From there, it was just a matter of waiting until the lap counter reached the number 54.

Total Time: 45:58
Laps: 54

P90X Legs & Back w/Ab Ripper -10/26

2011-10-26T20:59:00.001-04:00

I've been lazy with the P90X over the past couple weeks - I was avoiding the legs & back routine because it always makes my legs stiff and sore for a few days, and I prioritized the runs during the marathon taper over the strength routine. And then for whatever reason, I ended up not doing any other P90x routines either during that time.

But with my right big toe still recovering (I'd say its about 85% there today) and my moratorium on running until at least this weekend, I figured it'd be a good time to start up again on the strength training to start getting into a rhythm for the winter.

There's not usually a whole lot to say about a strength training routine ("I lift things up, I put them down.") - but the major reason why I'm bothering to post this time is that I am fearful of what my legs are going to feel like tomorrow and Friday. Normally, I get stiff 48 hours after a workout, but it starts the next day. So I knew that I'd start feeling this workout tomorrow before I even started, and that Friday would be the roughest day. And then because it's been a few weeks, it'd be even worse on Friday.

Unfortunately, I can feel soreness already - less than an hour after finishing. This does not bode well for me over the next 72 hours or so. Of course, I'm not seriously concerned - I'll heal, and it'll certainly help keep me from overextending myself by running before my right toe is really ready for it - so there is that positive. But I know that on Friday I'm going to be in rough shape when I get up to walk after sitting for an extended period of time (work, commute, etc).

Same with the ab ripper - I had never gotten to a point where I didn't have to take breaks, but this time, with a solid 3-4 week layoff, I can tell my abs are going to be sore as well for a few days.

So I guess the majority of any cardio I do between now and probably Sunday will be swimming.

Fitness hurts.

2250 yd swim - 10/23

2011-10-23T20:12:00.004-04:00

It's not often you look at your stop watch and have to do a doubletake on the time and laps to make sure it really read what you thought it read.

A few swimming sessions ago, I remarked how I came across a small mechanical difference that I felt made me more smooth in the water - but the problem was that the feedback loop was rather long and would take a few sessions to determine whether that change translates to an actual advantage.

In my previous session, I got off to a crap start, and it took until over half way through the workout before I finally felt myself slipping into a good mechanical rhythm. With the contrast of the bad form vs good form fresh in my mind, I went to the pool today determined to nail it right from the start with a solid sense of how the form needed to feel. I was looking to keep my head down (I tend to face forward slightly), rotate the shoulders just a tad more, higher angle of attack on the arm during the entry (aided by the greater rotation), and lower hand position during the catch (especially on the right-hand side, because I was tending to push down with my right hand to lift my head out of the water when breathing from the left).

As usual, I the first handful of laps were a combination of nice and easy (from being rested) and stress inducing (from having a very fixed breathing rhythm instead of an ad-hoc one). Even though I always feel pokey on the first lap, it always tends to be a good 6-7 seconds faster than my eventual average. So I know I still start off way too fast, which doesn't help when combined with not being able to breathe whenever I damn well please.

But after a few hundred yards, I started to settle down - the breathing became more regulated, I became more relaxed, etc. At that point, I just started cruising along. I noticed after a while - somewhere around the laps in the late 20's and early 30's that I actually started feeling like I was catching my breath more as time went on. That was very strange - I don't know that I've ever felt like I was regaining energy while swimming before.

The 45 total laps went by pretty quickly again. I think a big part might be the novelty and excited feeling of sensing an improvement in stroke efficiency - when it feels right, I just want to keep doing it, shouting a 'YEAH!' to myself every time.

By the end of the workout, I stopped my counter and checked the time - 37:59. Are you flipping kidding me?! My previous swim of this length was clocked at 39:44 - almost two minutes slower! I don't think I've seen a time drop like that in my swimming since I switched to Total Immersion. Sure, I gained 30 seconds here, a minute there, as I went from the 37-38 minute range for a mile down to about 31 minutes, but those were major mechanical changes that were the swimming equivalent of low hanging fruit. Having already gotten to the 31 minute range for a mile, even improving by ten seconds consistently is a worthwhile improvement - nevermind well over a minute.

I'm hoping that novelty doesn't wear off soon - but just in case it does, I'm thinking maybe I should now start extending to 54 laps - a full 1.5 miles.

2250 yards
37:59

9 mile run - 10/23

2011-10-23T19:32:00.001-04:00

After the marathon last week, I was emailing with a friend of mine who lives in the town next door, and we decided that this weekend would be a good time for us to do a run together. We've met up once before a couple years ago, but in between we just always had other factors contributing to our not being able to sync up (whether it was birth of a kid for him, or IT band recovery for me which placed me well behind him in terms of speed and mileage, or whatever). He's done a handful of marathons, and with my debating what my next step will be (should I do another full before the Ironman in July?), it seemed a good time to talk training approach and for me to absorb some extra wisdom.

We met up at 6:45, and were initially going to do seven miles, but decided to turn it into nine. This was his long run, so I was ok with doing whatever he felt comfortable with. In the end, nine was probably a good amount, because that ache in my right big toe hasn't completely gone away - it abates after a few days of not running, but Thursdays run brought it back, and todays run brought it back as well. At this point, it is either something that will slowly go away if I just run through it by running 2x per week and treat it with ice/NSAID in between, or it would probably go away more quickly if I just didn't run for a couple weeks. I think what I'll end up doing is not running this week, and see how things feel towards the weekend and take it from there. Maybe if I ice it frequently over the course of the next several days, that'll help.

Anyway, it ended up being a more unstructured run that can't really be considered part of training because chatting during running brought the heartrate up - so the data is skewed. But the nice thing about the timing of it is that it doesn't really matter - it'll be a while before I really start thinking of training runs again. At least until this stupid right big toe thing goes away.

2300 yd swim - 10/20

2011-10-21T16:15:00.000-04:00

After the recovery run, I had some time left and decided to go hit the pool for a swim session. On the way over, I debated on what I should do - extend the distance again (to 1.5 miles?), do something like 1 or 1.25 miles but break it up into 100 yd sprints with rest in between, or just do the same distance I did before?

I decided that my whole outlook on swimming is prioritizing form over any sort of speed work or fast splits - and since I recently found a mechanical alteration that may be beneficial, I should probably attempt to sink that into muscle memory first, before trying to do faster splits which would only lead to fatigue and compromised form. So, I'd do the same 2250 yd workout I did the last time. With a little luck, I'd recapture some of how I felt last time, which was sleek and fast in the water.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as lucky today. To start off with, I got water in my goggles in the first 50 yds (I think the pair I have is slightly too large, because it happens often enough to be annoying). Not a huge problem, but it'd mean I have to stop and pause to fix it - and I'm still getting used to the SportCount timer thing and in the past when I've tried to pause it, I ended up recording multiple extra super-short laps. I managed to pause the thing this time, fixed my goggles, and started off again, but then found after a couple more laps that the SportCount was only on lap 3. WTF? Something got missed - either it didn't capture my first couple laps, or it started over when I paused it. Neither option was sounding quite right. Oh well, I'd continue on with the count it was giving me.

Then the problem became that I was somewhat flustered, and if there is one thing that screws up swimming, it is when you are not relaxed. I am finding that when I am more relaxed, I move through the water more quickly and easily, but when I am not relaxed, I get short of breath, which leads to further tension, and it becomes a cycle that I have to consciously break out of. So, needless to say, this swim was not starting out very well. I was thrown off my game, flustered, and trying to play catch up by the time I hit 500 yds.

I eventually did sort most of it out by the time I reached 20-something laps. Most of it. It took until the mid-high 30's before I started really feeling like I was in a zen state again with the water, and by that time the session was just about over.

So in the end, not my best swim performance - but then again, when it comes to form, sometimes having to suffer through those trying times are what provides your brain and muscles with the contrast necessary that allows you to achieve a higher standard of mechanical motion next time.

Oh - at the end, I looked through the laps and realized what happened - I never quite hit the button between lap 2 and 3 - so they got combined into one lap. End result was that I did an extra 50 yds. I like the SportCount, but it is frustrating that I still have yet to use it when something doesn't go wrong - either accidentally clearing out all data, accidentally having an extra lap at the end, or somehow missing the button and two laps get counted as one.

2300 yds - 41:14

5 miles easy - 10/20

2011-10-20T15:37:00.000-04:00

After the marathon on Sunday, followed by the sports massage on Monday evening, I was feeling probably 60% recovered on Tuesday. No major soreness, just muscle fatigue. This recovery got to probably 80% by Wednesday, and by Thursday I felt pretty much ready to go. The only lingering issue was my right big toe was still sore - I can't tell whether its connective tissue, or inflammation near the joint. But it was getting better - just more slowly.

The timing worked out in such a way that I was able to squeeze in a quick 5 miler before the sun went too far down and it got too dark. The intent on this run was to take it easy and keep the HR low - definitely below 150. I knew there'd be a spot or two where it'd get above that briefly, but I wanted to mostly just get a handful of miles in before too much time had passed.

It seems as though I'm pretty much recovered from the marathon. One thing I've learned over time is how to use HR to monitor status, in terms of stress and recovery progression - so the fact I was able to average a pace faster than my marathon pace, with an average HR of 141, tells me that my body has replenished its stores of energy, repaired the vast majority of any cell damage incurred from the marathon, and was ready to go. Unfortunately, the only problem is that damn big right toe - it's still sore.

Baystate Marathon - 10/16/11

2011-10-16T21:29:00.003-04:00

For a day that has been one of my bucket-list days since high school, I sure have been pretty relaxed about it in the lead up. You'd think that on the eve of an event I've wanted to accomplish for close to.... 20 years now? I'd be a wreck. Nope, I went to bed around 11, had a decent nights sleep, and got up with not too much of an issue. I was more nervous the night before my first triathlon a few years ago.

Today was the Baystate marathon, my first ever full 26.2. I ran a half marathon (the Lowell Sun - partially the same course as the Baystate) in '08, and wanted to do the full the following year. However, my IT band had different ideas. So even though I signed up on the first day of eligibility in January '09, by August that year it was clear that a full was going to be out of the cards, because at the time I wasn't able to run two miles without my IT band hurting. PT in the off season between '09 and '10, followed by a minor recurrance of IT band issues during the season in '10 - I knew last year that a full 26.2 miles was out that fall as well. So, I concentrated on finding out more precisely what the root cause of my IT band issues were (thats a whole other story in itself). Come spring this past year, I was ready to go, and with a couple 20 mile runs in August followed by a 23 mile run in mid-late September, I was 99.9% certain that this would be the year - barring any sort of catastrophic injury or accident.

So, how was I expecting to do? According to Jack Daniels VDOT system, which I've been sorta loosely correlating some of my times and performances against, my VDOT is a paltry 39 or 40 - depending on which run you are basing it off of. A VDOT of 40 projects my marathon time at 3:49:45, while a VDOT of 39 projects my marathon time at 3:54:34. Of course, that assumes that the appropriate training has been done - you can't just run a 5k, get a VDOT, and then go out and run the marathon and expect certain results. The question was whether I had been doing the appropriate training or not. I suppose if you ask Daniels, the answer would be 'no'. But a discussion on his running training program is not part of this post, so we'll just leave it that there was some degree of unknown - what I did know was that my 23 mile run in September was done at an 8:46 pace, which included the last mile being a 12 min/mile cooldown. So I had reason to believe I'd be in that range, equating to a 3:49 marathon - and that race-day performance with a taper might be worth a few minutes. So about 3:45 was about what I was expecting.

In this post I offer two versions of how things went. For those not interested in the details, I pictoralized how things went - a comparison of my mental and physical state during the event. It sums it up with reasonably accuracy:

For those who want to know the more detailed version:

Miles 1-3 - This was effectively the warm up. The field of participants seemed larger this year - in the past I remember half the road being closed off, but this time the entire road was closed off during this portion. Plus, there were still same-day registration slots open, whereas it has sold out the past few years. So, due to the large number of people, it was difficult to get a good start, unless you line up at the front (which I knew I am not good enough to justify without pissing people off). I was half-expecting 10 min/mil and higher times for the first mile, but was pleasantly surprised that we were moving right along at what I'd consider ideal pace for my warm up:

Oh, one other thing I should mention - every long training run I've done was using walk breaks, and I intended to do them here as well. I was very tempted to skip the first one - afterall, we had only just started and I'd have to be 'that guy' who was walking already when there was still 25.2 miles to go. But I sucked it up, and walked anyway. I lost count of the hundreds of people who passed in that 0.05 mile walk.
I did feel someone better and justified on the second walk break when a spectator saw me walking and said 'Jeff Galloway - good for you, nice going'. It took me a second to connect the dots, but I managed to say 'yup, every mile on the mile!' At least someone there knew I had a game plan and wasn't dogging it already.

Miles 4-14 - This part of the run was smooth sailing. Every mile, walk 0.05 miles, and run at a sustainable pace, trying to keep the HR managable. It took me until around mile four to even remember to consider what my marathon intensity would be - I had figured previously it'd be 150-155, but I was consistently doing about 8:30 min/miles at 150 or lower, so I opted to keep the HR down. Early on, my plan became to keep running along easily, and then unleash the fury at about mile 16 and blow by people during that last 10 miles. So far, everything was going surprisingly well - my legs felt fresh with a quick turnover, fleet-of-foot, and my HR was kept low.

Unfortunately, this is where the cracks in the ediface started to appear. It wasn't something that I felt at all, but right at mile 13, I noticed by HR notching up just a tad. At first, I was thinking it was the slight incline of going over a bridge, but the HR never settled back down, I knew that the fun times were coming to an end. True, mile 13 was one of the faster miles I ran, but so was mile 9 - and unlike mile 10 where the HR stayed low, mile 14 continued with the elevated HR.

Also, somewhere in here I saw the Galloway lady again (this time on the other side of the river). She caught me in the middle of a walk break again.

Miles 14-23 - The slow drain
Even with the increased HR, I still generally felt strong. Around mile 16, I started to notice fatigue building in my legs. Every mile accumulated a tad more, but I was still feeling 80% or better. At mile 18, I started noticing some the dropping of the flies - as it were. More people were taking breaks, pace seemed to be slowing down a bit. I was not passing people nearly as often as I was up until this point - so either I caught up with those who rocketed out of the gate and were running out of gas, or I was slowing down. However, when I looked at my mile times, I was still maintaining faster than 8:40 min/miles. I was paying for it though, as evidenced by the still increasing HR, which was now pushing close to 160. At the time, I wasn't too concerned in terms of it affecting my ability to finish - I knew from experience that I'd be able to maintain the remaining 8 miles at that HR, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that the distance itself was causing the higher HR, instead of a faster pace. The idea of turning on the afterburners was starting to fade away.

In an attempt to avoid this for the rest of the run:

(DISCLAIMER - credit for the overall idea of using a picture like this goes to The Running Jackalope - his review of the SF marathon had a similar image, which made me laugh).

I decided to slow up a bit for mile 19, to try and get my HR down. At this point, I didn't want to take an extended walk break, because I was concerned I'd tighten up too much. I was happy to see that I was able to get my HR down a bit, but it was very touchy, because it went right back up as soon as I sped up again.

At this point, I was at the dreaded wall of 20 miles. However, I didn't feel like I was suffering too greatly, to be honest. I felt like I was in better shape than many of the people around me. Sure, I was fatigued, and my body was obviously under stress, but I was definitely not being pushed beyond what I've pushed myself before - I was simply trying to manage things appropriately so I could still have a sprint-like finish for the last few miles. The problem I was having, though, was that miles 22 and 23 felt dog slow. I had accepted the higher HR, knew I could maintain it, but truth be told, I was starting to get bored, and kept looking at my watch hoping to see the mile lap almost over, only to see that I ran a few hundred feet. At this point, the run switched from a physical battle to a mental one.

Miles 24-26.2 - The real marathon
Some people say the hardest part of a marathon is the last 0.2 miles. For me, on this day, the hardest part was miles 23-25, hands down. Although 25-26.2 comes in second place, for sure.

At this point, I'm getting more and more physically beat with every step, which only amplifies the mental struggle. Really, there are two positive thoughts in my head at this point: (1) I'm going to die and therefore my suffering will end soon, and (2) I can count the kilometers I have left on one hand. Unfortunately, that thought of death only lasts for about a mile, when you realize that no - there is no easy escape.

To add insult to injury - I ran out of gatorade (I had 48 oz with me), so I was now dependant on the water stations, which were not spaced with my normal mile by mile walk breaks. So this meant that during these miles, I snuck in extra walk break every mile. This had a double-edged sword effect - stopping for a break felt soo good - but I paid for it whenever I started up again. My cadence was also sluggish by this time. I tried to pick it up, but it just wasn't happening - the muscles used to maintain it were fatigued, and it was easier with a slightly slower cadence because other muscles got engaged - muscles that weren't nearly as fatigued.
Somewhere around mile 25, I realized that as worn out as my muscles were, a lot of my discomfort overall was actually my feet themselves - all the pounding and flexing to absorb impact was taking its toll on them.

Somewhere around mile 25.75 and 26, as I was getting closer to the finish line, I started thinking about food. The idea of a burrito from Chipotle (my typical post long-workout food) was sounding really, really good. Then, I smelled burgers from over yonder, and they smelled really good. Then I saw a sign for Sal's pizza, and contemplated devouring a whole 19" pizza pie by myself. I was really looking forward to the post-race food.

When I got home and loaded the data from my Garmin into SportTracks, I found this graph to be pretty revealing:

There is a distinct difference between mile 13 and 14 in terms of HR. Up to that point, its fairly steady - and while a bump of only 5 bpm (a measly 3% of the base HR of 150) may not seem like much - anyone who has done HR training will tell you that it is certainly significant. For me, 150 bpm is LSD run intensity - a 10% increase to 165 quickly becomes tempo pace, sustainable only for mileage in the single digits.

So the immediate jump at mile 13 tells me a few things:
(1) It is an indication that most of my runs have been 13 miles or less (true - a couple halfs, and only four runs > 13 miles this year)
(2) Keeping a comfortable HR during that time is indication that the threshold runs of ~10 miles are effective for that distance, but that doesn't translate to distances much longer.
(3) If I want to make miles 23-26.2 easier, I have to do more long runs. I have to condition my feet to the impact and I have to condition my hip muscles to maintain fast turnover for that amount of time.
(4) If I want to avoid boredom, I have to run faster.

Oh yeah - Garmin results.

2250 yd swim - 10/13/11

2011-10-13T21:23:00.001-04:00

WOW!

It's swim workouts like this that are dangerous. They get me thinking I'll have no problem with working up to 2.4 miles. They make me think I could swim all day long and barely lose pace over time. They make me think I've got this swim form thing licked! It's like when you get a hole-in-one in golf and think 'What the hell did I do different this time that made it so easy? Nothing! So I should be able to do it again!' Then you hit a five on a par three.

I decided to start extending my swim distance today from the typical 36 laps (about 1 mile) that I normally do. I decided to start with an extra 1/4 mile, for a total of 45 laps. I figured I'd be feeling like my form would get sloppy around the 20's (as it usually does), and that I'd just suck it up and tack on another nine laps. In anticipation, I started out a little slower than normal - I usually try to keep from starting out too fast, but usually after a few laps that somehow always seems to go by the wayside. Not that I go all out - I stay around six or seven out of 10 on the effort scale (as opposed to the two or three for the first few laps) - but the effort jump is still significant.

But to my surprise, I had knocked out nine laps before I even really knew it. I felt like I was still warming up. That nine turned into 17, then 25, then 31. For whatever reason, I was cruising right along. I briefly considered adding yet another nine laps to make it a full 1.5 miles, but decided against it, for good or bad. If my plan was to do 1.25 miles, that was what I was going to do.

So I don't know what it was - maybe it was the burrito I had at lunch (more fuel), maybe it was the chia seeds and cacao nibs I had this morning on my way to work, maybe it was the few sips of mountain dew I had on the way to the pool, maybe it was the rest from the taper, maybe it was the almost 10 days since my last swim, maybe it was the slight mechanical adjustment of keeping my elbow high and spearing my arm forward (as I discovered in my last swim post). I have no idea what it was, but whatever it was - I want more. I may not have been any faster than a typical swim, but it was certainly easier - and when talking about the prospect of doing a 2.4 mile swim - I'll definitely take it.

2250 yds
39:44

6 miles tempo - 10/12

2011-10-13T18:57:00.002-04:00

I feel like I've been slacking a bit recently in my workouts - partially because I'm in the middle of a taper for the marathon on Sunday, and partially because this past weekend I was in the DC area from Thursday night until Monday night for a wedding. In retrospect, I probably should have brought my running gear with me to get in at least something, but on the other hand, two full days of walking around, combined with a hotel bed that was as soft as plywood with a sheet, left me in an overall somewhat exhausted state.

I finally got around to getting a run in on Wednesday morning. I didn't want to do anything too awful long in an effort to keep the stress of mileage at a minimum, so I decided to do a loop near work that I figured would be somewhere around 7 miles. However, I wanted to keep the intensity up a bit. Unfortunately, I got to work before I realized that I left my HR strap at home. I originally thought about scrapping the run and heading home early to get it in, but it wasn't long before my afternoon started filling up and I realized that that plan wasn't going to work either. More important than anything that day was getting to yoga for the 7:30 class, so I had a hard stop. In the end, I decided to go on the run anyway, without the HR strap, figuring that I should have a decent idea of what intensity I'd be able to keep for the run based on feel. Sometimes that is a dangerous proposition, but in my experience, the times I've gotten in trouble the most when following that strategy is when I start out too fast. So, I'd just have to make sure to not do that.

The run ended up being just about 6.3 miles. I knew the initial part would be uphill, but I didn't realize it'd be a full 2.5 miles of uphill. I could tell I hadn't run in a while because I was laboring through it harder than I would have expected. I did a reasonable job at keeping the first mile slower, at just over 9 min - but I probably still overexerted on the 2nd mile, and been at more like 8:40 or so instead of 8:11. The next couple miles have consistently been fast miles when I've done this loop thanks to the gradual downhill, and 7:07 for mile 4 and 7:27 for mile 5 may be the fastest single mile and back-to-back miles I've done in a long time. That was kind of spur of the moment during the run - I knew some uphill was coming that I'd have to slow down for, but I decided to add in that little extra something for those two miles.

I guess we'll see on Sunday whether this run results in any carryover - I'm thinking that on Saturday I'll do a slow 3-5 miles as kind of a burn-in run, since going from Wednesday to Sunday with no running would probably result in a performance hit (albeit slight) during the full on Sunday.

15 miles @ planned marathon intensity/pace - 10/5

2011-10-05T15:51:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to get a 15 mile run in, at planned marathon intensity, with no walk breaks. There were a couple reasons for this: (1) I wanted to see how my body would react, in terms of stiffness and tightening up, for a distance this long (my longest non-interrupted run ever), (2) I wanted to see if I could find a correlation with an intensity (HR) and pace - based on Daniels running formula and my VDOT value of 40 (picking 23:50 for the Nassaney 5k) or 41 (1:21 for 10 mile run), my marathon pace should be between 8:35 and 8:46 - so I wanted to see how my anticipated marathon intesity HR of 150-155 would correlate with those paces. Of course, those VDOT's weren't obtained using the ideal method (flat course in race conditions) - so there's a chance that my VDOT is actually a notch higher - but those are the latest numbers I have, so beign conservative I figured I'd plan on a 8:40 min/mile marathon pace. Lastly, I was curious as to whether it would be worth thinking about doing the full without any breaks - or if I'd take fewer breaks.

The complication with getting this run in was, first, being sick over this past weekend. With the days getting shorter, finding a time where I can get 2 hrs of running in is more and mroe difficult. This coming weekend is out for two reasons: (1) one week before the marathon - seems like a 15 miler is a bit much during a taper period, and (2) I'll be out of town on a vacation of sorts. Last week my mid-week run was done after work, but even with starting at 5:20 or so, by the time I finished around 6:45, it was getting dark. For a 15 mile run, I'd be out closer to 2 hours - so running after work was out. I could get up real early and go for a run, but the sun doesn't light things up until around 6am - so that'd mean I'd finish around 8-8:15am, have to shower and get ready for work and then commute 45 minutes - it'd be a late start to the day. Plus, getting up and going for a run right away sucks - I'm a slow waker. In the end I decided to get up early (5:30am), drive to work, start my run from there at about 6:30-6:45, and then shower in the building afterwards. At least this way I'd be much closer to being on time.

The first half was similar to the first half I did last week on my threshold run. I was originally intending to do that loop twice, but ended up deciding to go a different route - one that was flatter and therefore easier. One of the goals of this run was to try and correlate HR with pace, and going up and down hills would throw that correlation off.

I felt fine through the first few miles, but I did have a sense around mile 3 that perhaps I am still not fully recovered, energy-wise, from feeling under the weather. My legs just felt a tad more fatigued than I thought they should for only a few miles in. But pushing through wasn't too difficult, so I kept moving. Around mile 8 or so, I started noticing fatigue setting in - so the question then became when would I be maintaining the same HR, but have a slowing pace. In an attempt to fight that, I started drinking more fluids and making an effort to keep cadence up. This also seemed like it would have been a good time to do some quick stretching, but I didn't (I find simply doing a squat and staying down in that position for 4-5 seconds works pretty well). I ended up figuring that during the marathon, I'd be doing that multiple times during walk breaks - so I wasn't going to worry about it much here.

By the time I got to around mile 11 or 12, I could tell that this run was providing a good workout. My HR stayed within reason (about 150) - which was actually lower than I was anticipating, and my overall pace wasn't dropping significantly, as I was still holding around 8:45 min/mile average. However I could tell that the uninterrupted shock of running for this distance was causing just that little bit of extra stress in the legs to make you aware it is there. It occured to me that there might be two ways to push back ones' lactate threshold - do threshold runs, where your HR is at a higher intensity; or simply run for longer periods of time to wear yourself out. The benefit of the former is time efficiency (shorter runs), but the benefit of the latter is that you can get a threshold workout without the intensity of the former - something that could be beneficial in a taper period. Thats my theory, anyway.

As usual for long runs, I took the last mile as recovery, slowing down a bit to let the HR come down closer to 145. By the time I finished, it was just about exactly 15 miles to the corner convenience store, which was perfect - because it allowed me to pick up my recovery drink (chocolate milk), and then head back to the office to go about my day.

In the end, this is what I've learned:
- The projected avg HR of just about 150 is pretty much dead on with the predicted pace of 8:40 min/mile. That is what I was hoping would happen, because it makes projection for the real thing much easier if I know that 150 bpm, which is a sustainable HR, lines up nicely with 8:40 min/miles, which is just about exactly as Daniels VDOT calculator indicates.
- Definitely still taking walk breaks during the marathon. I dont know that I'd have another 11 miles in my legs without stressing them more than I'd like to. Not worth the risk.
- Will also make sure to stretch out briefly a few times during the marathon. It doesn't have to be much, but it seems to make a difference.

1800 yd swim - 10/4

2011-10-04T22:19:00.003-04:00

I woke up last Friday morning with a sore throat. I initially thought I maybe caught whatever the wife had (she was sick last week), but then it occured to me that I did run in the rain the night before, maybe that had something to do with it. While I never got sick to the depths that my wife did (sinus infection, well timed to occur on the weekend of a wedding that she was in), it was enough to knock me off my planned schedule of running 15 miles over the weekend at planned marathon intensity to see how 15 miles with no walk breaks would feel. Most of what ailed me was above my neck (some minor congestion, sore throat) - and so by some people thats not enough to warrant skipping out on a run, but I didn't want to take the chance that a long run would make things worse. So I did nothing for a few days.

Now that I think of it, it seems like if something will happen, it'll happen a few weeks before a race. A couple years ago I sprained my back 4 weeks before a sprint tri, earlier this year I came down with a hell of a sickness 3-4 weeks before the half iron in June, and here I am two weeks before my first full marathon and I'm fighting sniffles away. Fortunately, the timing always seems to also be working out in such a way that it forces me to take some rest/recovery time, which is an imperative part of any training schedule. Except that I don't really ever seem to actually schedule it - instead letting work travelling or sickness take care of that part.

After a couple nights of decent sleep back in the comfort of my own bed, I'm feeling quite a bit better. Not 100%, but then again it seems that last 10% always takes a good week to really go away. So now that I've declared myself un-sick, time to get going again!

This is what I said to being sick:

I decided to go to the pool tonight, because it'd be the last swim I'd be able to do until next week, as we are going to be out of town for a few days on account of another wedding. I can bring my running shoes with me - finding a place to swim while travelling is more difficult.

An odd thing happened today while I was swimming. After a couple hundred yards of warming up, I started thinking back to what I was concentrating on last swim session, specifically trying to minimize the drag induced by my hand when breathing to the left. Somehow, in thinking about that, I ended up with this fleeting feeling of being smoother in the water. Before too long, I realized that I was seemingly bringing my elbow up higher prior to entering the water, and entering the water at a steeper angle. Once I was conscious of this mechanic, I toyed around with it a bit, and found that it may actually help drive my hips more forcefully during the propulsion phase of the swim stroke. The big question would be its sustainability - many times I've found things that seemed to make for a smoother stroke - but it is always difficult to tell because if it engages new muscles, they tire out before I have a real good chance to tell whether it is worth building them up or not. But with this, it was just a matter of consciously thinking to raise my elbow up a bit and enter the water more steeply. Lap after lap, I was able to sustain that. So now the question is whether it is actually faster - which I'd be able to tell by todays result, but ultimately it'll take 3-4 sessions to get an idea of whether it actually makes a difference or not.

1800 yds (36 laps) - 30:53

10 miles threshold - 9/29

2011-09-29T21:11:00.004-04:00

I waited until today for my midweek run because my legs (mostly inner thights) were still sore from the P90x legs workout on Monday. Why is it that every other muscle group is sore for like a day maybe, yet that workout always makes me sore for three or four days? Kind of a pain in the butt (sometimes literally). Fortunately, though - the soreness appears to be avoiding the quads and other heavily used running muscles, so that is good.

The other challenge has been how to get a run in without either leaving work rediculously early (bad option), getting up rediculously early (worse option) or running at night (another worse option). I ended up deciding to give a shot to changing while at work, going for a run there, and then coming home. With only a few weeks before the marathon, at which point I'll likely do most of my running on weekends until the sidewalks get cruddy, the number of instances where its a challenge to squeeze in these mid-week runs are few and far between.

Anyhow, the only other unknown was going to be the sidewalk and narrow road situation - pretty much every road I mapped out I had been on before in my car, but I never took much notice at the time as to the sidewalk situation. There was one particular stretch I knew that I'd have no sidewalk, so I went along that section first while there was still plenty of light. The other question was the terrain - normally the route I take on these mid-week threshold runs is fairly flat - but there were going to be some additional inclines on this one.

My plan was to start out with the typical mile or so warm up, followed by about eight miles at a HR of 160, with the last mile at a HR of 150 for cooldown. Everything was going pretty well until about mile 4, when I started noticing it raining. Rain was in the forecast, but it wasn't raining when I started, so I was hopeful that maybe it wouldn't rain at all. It's not that running in the rain is a problem in itself (I actually like it - very cooling), but it creates puddles. On the other hand, if things are going to get wet, I'd just as soon have them be drenching. It seems like maybe someone was reading my mind, because within about 15 minutes, it started pouring. At first I avoided puddles, but it was raining heavy enough that my socked got waterlogged and shoes filled up with water anyway. At that point, avoiding a puddle isn't worth the energy.

Something strange happens to me when a cool rain comes.. On a humid, sunny day I can be running at a HR of 150 and feel labored. But put me in a cool rain, and I can feel just fine with a HR of 170 - which is typically getting into the range where my endurance starts to drop off. To me, its an example of how much energy and effort the body puts into cooling itself - when it is raining and you get that cooling effect for free, so much more energy can go into a faster pace. So today when it was raining, I noticed that my HR was close to 170, but my pace was also around 7 min/mile or faster. I had to make an effort to slow down a bit to try and keep it under 165, because I still had a few miles to go.

By the time I finished up, it was getting dark. The last mile or so I probably should have had a light with me - or at least something other than my dark blue shirt. I got to thinking that maybe one option for the future would be to get up early, drive to work and go for a run at that point. That'd give me a little over an hour of time to 'wake up' - as a person who doesn't drink coffee, I'm often a slow riser and take my time to get moving in the morning. Then it occured to me that perhaps next spring, I might look to do some bricks where I ride my bike into work (about an hour), followed by a run of anywhere from 5-10 miles. It all sounds good until the morning-of when the alarm clock goes off, though.

1850 yds - 9/28

2011-09-28T22:03:00.002-04:00

This is a perfect example of why I like triathlons. If I were to do only one thing for exercise, I'd become incredibly bored. But with a sport that has three disciplines, I get to break up the monotony and take a break from one activity while concentrating on another. It seems to suit my propensity to be uber-dedicated to something, to the point where I need to take a break from it after a time.

So earlier this year, when it was prime running and biking season, swimming took a seat on the back burner. True, I had intended to swim more in open water, but week after week, for one reason or another, it just never worked out. I didn't worry about it too much, because I knew that running and biking would be taking a back seat during the winter, and that would be prime season to returning to swimming.

Now that a few stars have aligned for swimming again (essentially finished with the long bike & run workouts, and having something to track laps with), I'm motivated again to be hitting the pool.

Tonight I started where I left off, swimming basically a miles worth (36 laps). Last winter I did a mile 2-3x per week, in an effort to get to the point where it was a relatively easy workout, because once the weather warmed up in the spring, I wanted to be able to concentrate on cycling and running in prep for the half iron. This winter, however, will be a little different, in that now I have to work up to 2.4 miles. To add another variable to the mix, I'll be in a wetsuit for the full iron, and swimming in a wetsuit is considerably easier than without one. Due to that, I'm figuring that having to swim 2.4 miles in a pool - 86 laps - will be unnecessary. Which is fortunate. Truthfully, swimming is boring enough. Swimming in a pool for 86 laps is almost as bad as running or biking indoors. I say 'almost' because at least with swimming you are still moving - as opposed to rollers, a stationary bike, or a treadmill.

Anyhow, as I was driving to the pool, there were two things I wanted to make sure I put attention to - not over-reaching (which tends to result in me hooking to one side when in open water), and to experiment with slightly higher arm turnover. Ever since I started incorporating the two-beat kick in June, I've been paying more attention to the mechanics as opposed to pace - and as a result the glide portion has been a tad extended in order to give myself that extra bit of time for self analysis after every power-generating portion of the stroke. But now, I figured, I might be at the point where I can try to increase arm turnover a bit in an effort to see if that would help increase pace.

Unfortunately, that goal came and went. In fact, I had to sit here for a minute to remember what the second goal was that I thought of on the way to the pool. I did do a better job of remembering to not over-reach though. In the end, there were a couple other mechanical aspects I toyed around with as I noticed what I perceived to be aspects of my form that were inducing drag. The first was quickening the motion of breathing from my left (vanilla) side. Since I'm more comfortable breathing from the right-hand side, I believe that when I turn my head to the left, drag increases. There are two possible reasons - either my mechanics are not as streamlined from that side, or I am slower to take a breath because I am not as sure of myself with regards to grabbing air instead of a mouthful of water.
Another aspect I experimented with was placement of the right hand during breathing from the left side. Again, since I'm not as comfortable with the left side, I unconsciously push down with my right hand a bit in order to prop up my head. Instead of putting energy to move forward, I'm putting energy into moving upward - which is a no-no. So all in all, it comes down to getting more comfortable with breathing from the left side - but just looking at two particular aspects of it that need work.

Which leads me to a particular gripe I have with swimming - at some point you get to where miniscule differences in form start becoming more significant in terms of things that slow you down. The problem with that is that it can be very difficult to tell whether a small change results in any improvement - who is to say that the last lap of 50 yds done at 51.3 with the form experiment in place is faster (due to the change) than the previous lap done at 51.6 without the experiment? Three tenths of a second isn't much for a 50 yd lap - but taken cumulatively over the course of 2.4 miles, it adds up - not to mention energy savings. So anyway, thats a long winded way of saying that although I experimented with those things, I have no idea at the moment whether they are an improvement or not.

In the end, I ended up doing an extra 50 yds, because for some reason around lap 19 the button apparently did not get pushed, and the lap time for that one was like 1:45.

Total Distance: 1850 yds
Total Time: 32:06

P90x Legs & Back plus 1 mile pool - 9/26

2011-09-26T21:32:00.000-04:00

Normally Monday is my Yoga day, but for some reason, I wasn't really feeling up to it. During the day, I started thinking what I could do instead, and the idea of doing the P90x Legs & Back came to mind. I've been skipping it recently because it makes my quads tight for a few days, and with long runs I didn't want to have my quads be tight and then put nearly 20 miles on them. But if I was going to be skipping Yoga, and probably doing that on Tuesday instead, it gave me an opportunity to get the legs strength routine in this week in plenty of time for recovery for a Thursday mid-week run. Actually, if things went really well, since yoga is a good recovery activity - it's possible that I would be up for a mid week run on Wednesday. But either way, by doing the legs routine tonight and yoga tomorrow, it gave me some additional options.

Then when I got home, I found I had this waiting for me. I ordered it on Saturday (9/24) at noon, with an estimated delivery date range of Sept 29 - Oct 4. It arrived the next business day. WTF. It's almost like USPS is working double time to justify being kept around, what with all the talk of removing post offices around the country.

So, obviously with my new toy, I was anxious to give it a spin. So instead of the full legs & back routine, I did the first half (which still is enough of a workout to induce soreness) and then headed to the pool. The only thing of note with the P90x routine for today is that I'm able to do 4 pull/chin ups consecutively. Then after a 10 second break I was able to knock out a few more. Considering that when I started I couldn't do any, I'm happy with that.

The Sportcount took a little getting used to, but it was definitely nice having something to count laps with again! I had to stop twice, once to adjust my goggles, and again to tighten the finger strap on the counter - but apparently I messed up invoking the units 'pause' function, because when I was reviewing the data after 36 laps, I saw two lap times were way off - instead of about 53-55 seconds, they were more like 1:40.

Either way, total time was about 32 minutes for the 36 laps. I'd have a more precise count, but in my attempt to shut the thing off, I ended up resetting it and lost the exact stopwatch time. I do remember it being about 33 minutes and change, but considering there was a solid minute to a minute and a half that was accidentally added due to messing up the pause function, 32 minutes is a pretty darm close estimate. The good news is that I didn't lose much swimming performance over the past couple months. The bad news is that I went 5-6 laps before I remembered to breathe bilaterally...

92 mike bike, 6 mile run brick - 9/25

2011-09-26T11:15:00.001-04:00

Late last week, I formulated my plan for this weekends workout. I was going to do the Wachusett mountain loop twice, which would be several thousand feet of climbing and about 110 miles, followed by a 10 mile run. I'd get up at 5am Sunday morning, as it was supposed to be rainy on Saturday, and this would be the last real long workout of the season, because I'd have to start the October marathon taper.

Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way. We went to a barbeque Saturday afternoon, and in trying to make sure I had a nice solid nights sleep, I avoided alcohol because I didn't want to wake up dehydrated. So I had soda instead. Unfortunately, between the soda and the desserts, I set myself for a restless night. I initially fell asleep around 10pm, figuring I was good - but then at 11pm I woke up to go to the bathroom (damn soda!) and couldn't go back to sleep (damn caffeine and sugar!). Try as I might, I tossed and turned, unable to catch any sleep. Once it got to after 1am, I thought 'well there goes that plan... SHIT!' and turned off my alarm clock. Now not only was I still jazzed on caffeine and sugar, I was pissed that I'd be missing the intended workout. I went into the living room to watch some TV (second such action in an attempt to distract myself and get tired), figuring that my workout would instead maybe be a couple P90x workouts, or do a shorter ride, or get an open water swim in - something. I was so upset with myself that I just really wanted to kick my own ass because of my stupidity with the damn soda and desserts. Finally around 2:30 I was suddenly hit with sleepy.

I woke up around 8:30 and fortunately felt fairly well rested. I started thinking that I could still probably salvage a good workout. I had already done most of all the weekend chores already, so I really had nothing to do all day anyhow. I decided I'd end up doing a Wachusett reservoir trip, but with looping around the reservoir a few times for the extra miles, and then do a 10 miler when I got home. I'd still get close to 100 miles, albeit a much flatter course, and get a nice brick workout in. Oh, and the other thing is that I'd be able to test my idea of using raisins, peanuts and M&M's as solid fuel for a long bike ride. Previous near-centuries I had only a protein bar in addition to gatorade and started thinking maybe it wasn't enough. And lastly I'd try upping the strength of one bottle of gatorade, and having another bottle be just water. I had been finding on these long rides that after a while of just having gatorade, it gets really boring, which doesn't help with fluid consumption.

I also tried a slower warmup period on the bike ride as well - trying to keep a relatively low level of exertion because I didn't want to burn out too quickly. I ended up doing three loops around the reservoir, at about 21-22 miles per loop. The first loop I felt good, but a little bored because I knew I was < 30 miles in and still had a long while to go. The second loop (< 50 miles) was better mentally and I still felt pretty good physically - I was finding that if I kept my HR at about 140, I felt like I was at a steady state of exertion and could go all day. The third loop (around 65 miles), my legs started to tighten up a bit and I was glad this was the final loop and then I'd be heading home. However, even the trip home was another 20 miles. All the while, I made sure to have some of my homemade trail mix fairly regularly, washing it down with regular water, and having gatorade in between. The variety of tastes, such as they were, were a nice departure from a long bike ride subsisting solely on gatorade - so that aspect was a success.

By the time I got home, I was glad to be off the bike. It was a total of 92 miles, but I definitely felt better than I did around the same point on my previous century rides - so that appears to have been another positive of having solid foods.

However, I knew that 10 miles for a run was probably out - I wasn't feeling that good. But I also knew that things can change - so I decided that I'd make the decision around mile three - at a point where I would turn one direction for six miles, and another for the 10 mile loop. If I felt really good, I'd go for 10 - but otherwise having done 92 on the bike, I'd actually be happy with anything more than three. As is normal for a brick run, the first couple miles were slow an odd feeling, but I was surprised I was able to keep nearly a 9 min/mile pace. My goal was to keep my HR around 150 (that turned out to not happen0, and as I do with long runs, I took a walk break every mile. Somewhere around miles two and three, I decided that six would be the distance, however I had to promise myself not to take a shortcut that would have resulted in about 5.25 miles. In return for not taking the shortcut, and also as an experiment, I'd allow myself to walk up the hills on my six mile loop, which occur from mile 3.5-4, and again from 5.5 to 6. I was mostly curious whether it would allow me to feel stronger on the flatter portions by not 'striking a match' just to get up the hill. In the end, the jury is still out on that one - I'm conflicted because walking that much allows for lack of mental toughness. On the other hand, I have no basis for comparison for how I felt at the end - without those breaks maybe I'd be absolutely shot after 6 miles instead of just fatigued and happy to be done.

Back to the pool - 9/23/11

2011-09-23T16:34:00.001-04:00

Waaaay back in... late June? I had an issue where my old HR monitor, that I had been using for the pool (bacause it had lap memory and was more water resistant than my Forerunner 305), had a dead battery. Upon replacement, I must have been sloppy about putting it back together, because it got water in it - which ruined the display. Since it was almost summer, I figured I wouldn't worry about swimming in the pool, and take advantage of the opportunity to do more open water swims. This would give me time to go out and get another waterproof lap watch I could use for the pool when the time came.

Well, that never quite worked out. I only swam a handful of times over the summer, and decided yesterday that I needed to get back into the pool at some point. So I spent last night after work scouring the local stores trying to find a cheap, simple wrist watch. I thought it'd be real easy, I was only looking for the following features:
- stopwatch with lap memory
- waterproof to at least 10ft

THATS IT! Yet, I couldn't find one. I hit (in order) Target, Best Buy, Sports Authority, Dicks Sporting Goods and BJ's. Any place that had anything had HR monitors for $70 or more. Dicks had watches, but they were all fancy Timex ones for like $50 (for the 50 lap model) or $65 (for the 100 lap model). What the hell!? Finally I went to Walgreens, figuring they'd have cheap-ass watches. Well, they did - for $5 - but they had no lap function.

/sigh

I was really hoping to solve my problem with an investment of less than $15 - but I suppose HR monitors have gotten so cheap that the cheap-ass watches that were ubiquitous when I was a kid have been phased out.

So, it looked like I'd have to deal with a pool session with no way of keeping track of laps, or timing. The lack of timing doesn't bother me - but I lose track of laps so quickly and easily that a counter is absolutely imperative. If I concentrated on repeating a number in my head during the whole lap, then I'd not be concentrating on form - and I absolutely want to concentrate on form.

Anyway - I got my butt to the pool at about 7am this morning without any real plan or idea of what I was going to do. It had been damn near a month since I last swam at all, so my only intention today was just to reacquaint myself with swimming. Any hope that I had of improvement via various strength training I have been doing went out the window pretty quick, because I only got about 300 yards in before I stopped to take a breather. Hell, I got halfway through my first lap before I remembered to breath bilaterally. Obviously, I have some ground to catch up on.

In the end, I did 5 or 6 sessions of between probably 200-300 yards each - so total distance was anywhere from 1000 to 1800 yards. After about 30-35 minutes, I called it a day and decided that I really need to make sure to hit the pool a good amount over the winter, and I also need to find a damn stopwatch!

10 miles threshold - 9/21/11

2011-09-22T10:16:00.001-04:00

I wasn't sure whether I was going to go for a run today. After having done 23 miles on Saturday, I still wasn't 100% recovered - probably more like 90%. Also, with the sun setting at 6:45pm or so, the amount of daylight after getting hom from work is starting to make mid-week runs of more than just a few miles more difficult. Due to a myriad of other factors, one of which being that I wanted to have more time after a mid-week run before this weekends plans for a long ride - I decided to suck it up and get the run in. However I think that for the next couple week, I'm going to have to plan better and get up early on Wednesday's for these mid-week runs.

I wanted to retry the 10 mile loop I had done the other week to compare todays performance with the previous one, but increasing the intensity. Last time I shot for a HR of 155-160 and felt good throughout the entire distance, so this time I wanted to shoot for about 160 to see what things would feel like. I figured there was only a slim chance I'd match or beat the pace of the other week, because as I mentioned there was still some recovery that could happen. Plus, last time it was raining, and although that means high humidity, it also means free cooling. Today it was humid, but not raining.

I followed the same basic formula - about a mile warm up, then running at desired intensity, followed by some lower intensity to keep blood flowing to help recovery. The first couple miles felt pretty good, but I could tell by about mile four that this run was definitely a notch more difficult. Although I felt like I could maintain intensity for most of the run, my HR was consistently closer to the 165 range than 160. Less concerning, but still notable, was that my pace was actually about 10-15 seconds slower than it was for the previous run. In other words, I was working about 10 bpm harder to maintain a pace 10-15 seconds slower than before. Prime example of how big an effect weather and degree of recovery can have on performance.

By the time I got to mile 6, my HR had consistently been closer to 170 for a couple miles, and I started to rethink my plan for the rest of the run. I decided that doing this distance, at this intensity, was already quite a solid jump, and that if I wanted to get a good long ride in this weekend, I should probably not go for broke on this run. Besides, my pace had slowed to 8 min/miles - and while I generally have been more concerned with intesity (ie, HR) - seeing my pace drop was an indication that I had probably reached some limit and should start backing off. So I planned on reaching mile 8, then slowing down to a HR of 160 for one mile, followed by the last mile being at my typical recovery HR of 150. I figured the two miles of reduced intensity should help in keeping me from getting stiff and sore over the next day or so.

So in the end it was slower than my previous run of the same loop - but on the positive side, the intensity level was higher, and I feel like I learned that a HR of 165 probably right around the proper threshold intesity for me. It just seemed that it was a level at which I could sustain for about an hour, which, according to the Daniels running formula, is the proper threshold training level. Looking back on the Nassaney race, I'd estimate that that HR (169) is just about right for tempo workouts - those that I can sustain for about 20-25 minutes.

23 miles - 9/17

2011-09-18T19:24:00.003-04:00

Going back a couple months, my plan was to do 20 miles 3x in August, followed by spending September building up to 26, with the last long run being late in the month, and then starting the taper. After not being able to do the 3rd 20 miler in August, I started a little bit of speedwork with tempo and threshold runs, on the idea that if I'm not extending the distance, I can get quality runs in by trying to improve performance.

However, as time as passed, the idea of jumping from 20 to 26 miles, with no long runs in September, started to bug me a bit. So after last Wednesdays somewhat failed 6 miles, I decided that this weekend would be the perfect time for a long run of 23 miles. I had a good long time since my last real long run, mid-September was just about perfect timing wise, and I saw very little activity the week prior due to travelling for work. The timing also gives me a chance for one last century bike ride over the next week or two, which would be real nice to get in. The other major reason I wanted to log this run was because I wanted to see what hydration and fuel consumption would be like in new england fall weather. With the other runs having been in August, I was sure I was going through more water during those runs than I would in a marathon in mid-October - but I wanted to get an idea of whether my fuel belt with 48 oz of fluids would be enough, a little short, or a lot short.

Previously, all my my long runs were done at a target HR of 150, but after doing some speedwork and getting a better idea of what I could sustain for distance, I started to wonder whether I should continue with 150 for this run, or maybe bump up a little bit. The other week when I shot for 155-160 and maintained for 8 miles I felt really strong. Not strong enough to tack on an additional 15 miles worth, but stronger than I thought I'd be. In the end I decided to shoot for 150-155 on this run - basically allowing myself a few more bpm than I was before. So not only was I going to be at a higher intensity, but I'd be tacking on a few miles. That would be enough added workload for this run.

I did my typical long run first loop around the reservoir, and found I was nearly 4 miles in before I thought about having anything to drink. So immediately the good news was that water consumption would be markedly less, but I was slightly concerned that maybe I was starting off behind the eight ball - if I was at mile 4 and the idea of having water came to me, perhaps I was already dehydrated - and playing catchup with hydration on the run is very difficult. So I downed a bit more than I normally would, and make sure during the next walk break (I'm still doing walk breaks every mile) I'd finish the 8 oz bottle. Hopefully that'd get me back on track.

Oddly enough, it took a few miles for my HR to feel like it settled in a bit. It might have just taken that long to warm up (it was about 46F when I started out, afterall) - but my HR was bouncing around quite a bit, which made finding a pace a little difficult, especially because the first couple miles have some mild uphills.

But once I got settled in, the rest of the first half or so went pretty smoothly. By this time, I was consuming about 2 oz per mile, or about 2 oz per 8-9 minutes. Probably a little less than I should be and am able to absorb, but I felt like it was sufficient enough. And that rate allowed me to keep running without stopping at home to refill.

Things continued to progress pretty smoothly, but by about mile 16-17, my hips did start to tighten up a bit. It was mostly my upper quad flexors whenever I'd extend my foot forward, but it was very mild, so I didn't worry about it. As I got to about the same point, I had to start thinking of how to modify my route back to add an additional three miles. I knew that if I got to my normal stopping point and was short, the temptation to just call it a day might be too great. So I had to find a way to add just about the right number of miles before reaching the finish line.

Around mile 18, I decided that instead of taking walk breaks for miles 19, 20 and 21, I'd just run straight through them. I wanted to see how much left I'd have in the tank without the walk breaks, and considering that I was already fatigued, I thought maybe it'd be a little bit of a threshold workout as well. Once I hit mile 21, I took a walk break before the next mile. By this time I knew mile 23 was going to be a slow, recovery pace mile - as I was stiffening up enough to know that if I didn't do any sort of recovery pace, I'd be real stiff and sore for a few days.

In the end, it was a workout that took a bit more out of me than I thought. Even as I write this the next day, I'm still a little sore, and this is the first workout that has warranted two ice baths - one immediately after the workout (as always) and one today. It is clearly going to be a few days before I feel recovered enough to run again - at this point I'm not sure whether my mid-week run will be Wednesday or Thursday.

6 miles - 9/14/11

2011-09-15T22:02:00.001-04:00

Some days you just don't have it.

This week I was travelling for work, and knew my schedule would be whacky because the project was a DR test, which involves late nights, shifts, troubleshooting and all kinds of other stuff that make a regular schedule impossible.

It wasn't until Wednesday that I had some downtime where I could do anything other than rest up. So when that afternoon came and I was presented with a few hours of time to kill, I went for a run because I wanted to get a midweek run in.

I knew pretty much right off it was going to probably be a bit tougher than usual. First, I wasn't as properly hydrated as I normally am. Second, it was 3 in the afternoon and it was hot and rather sticky out (for someone from the NE US, anyway). Third, I had just eaten lunch. Fourth, I didn't have any water bottles to bring with me. Lastly, this was new terrain as I was not home.

Mostly due to the heat and lack of water issue, I decided to shoot for about only 6 miles, as opposed to my typical 9-10 I do during the week. Things started out ok, but by the end of the first mile I could tell it was probably going to be a rough trip as my HR was elevated for the pace I was doing. I decided this wasn't going to be a tempo or threshold run - just an LSD pace run for several miles. By mile 4, I was constantly looking at my watch to see how far I had come along, and to try and determine how much farther I had to go, because I just wasn't feeling the run this time around. Some runs I go out and I'm feeling good and motivated with a springy step - this was a run that was certainly more of a chore than enjoyable. But these things happen.

When I got back to the hotel and was loading my tracking data, I looked at the weather and it was 88 with a heat index in high 90's. That could certainly explain it.

3.1 Miles Nassaney race - 9/10/11

2011-09-15T21:45:00.000-04:00

This year I have done very few actual races - just the Worcester half marathon and the Patriot Half Iron. Most of the time when a potential race came up, the timing wasn't good for me to either do the distance required, or push the intensity required. But this time ended up being different - after having done some speed work the past few weeks, and this race being a 9/11 memorial 5k that a couple other friends were doing, I decided to join in.

In thinking about my approach to this race, I decided that I'd shoot for an average HR of about 165 for the entire thing. My thinking was that I had done a few sessions of tempo runs @ 160 for 20-25 minutes, and I had just done eight miles at 155-160. Based on my recent paces, I figured that would have me doing a 7:30 min/mile pace or less, and very possibly closer to 7:15.

We got to the location a bit early and decided to walk along part of the course. It was at this point that I realized my plan probably wasn't going to work out all too well. The course was somewhat hilly - and having done no hill work, I knew my HR would be all over the place. So only way to try and keep it regulated would be to adjust speed based on terrain. I also did something I rarely do - warmed up for a bit before the run. Normally the distances of the races I'm running is long enough that I figure I can warm up during the run, and it won't cost me much time overall. However, with only 5k of distance, by the time I got warmed up, I'd be a mile in and it'd be hard to make up the time lost in the remaining two miles.

The first mile was pretty quick, but I could tell it was mostly flat with a slight downhill. To the eye, it looks pretty flat, but after a while I've been able to tell when there is a slight downhill because my HR and pace don't match up quite where they should. The second mile was pretty much all trail running, and consisted of rolling hills, which made keeping a constant HR nearly impossible. Then the third mile had the big uphill - afterall, in a race where the stop and start are right next to one another, every downhill you enjoy early on is met with an uphill later on.

It was about halfway through the 2nd mile that I decided to forego the idea of maintaining 165 throughout - my HR was bouncing around between the low 160's and the mid 170's during that second mile. So the average might have been close to 165, but that wasn't what I was looking for. Ultimately I ended up deciding that even with my HR reaching into the 170's - I'd be able to maintain for the full 3.1 miles, so even though I was higher than planned, I wasn't concerned.

So even though the best laid plans went to waste, there was something positive to take away from this - I am able to maintain about 170 for 20 minutes, so I have a much better idea of my tempo run intensity level that I can attain.

10 miles threshold run - 9/7/11

2011-09-07T22:44:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to being able to run this week - the shortened leg workout from Sunday still resulted in a couple days of soreness, and I did not want to run before I was adequately recovered.

I debated what type of run to do today - after a few days of not doing much (just the legs/back workout on Sunday, and yoga on Tuesday), I wanted to do something reasonably substantial in terms of time and distance, but I also wanted to do something like a tempo run. The only problem is that the tempo run, at 20 minutes of tempo pace, was less than what I was looking to do.

So I ended up deciding to do about 10 miles, but at a slightly higher intensity than before. Previously, I had done the 10 mile loop with one mile warm up, 8 miles at a target HR of 155, and one mile cool down. Today I decided to aim for a HR more like 155-160 during that 8 mile stretch, and see where that would take me, being conscious of how I was feeling to make sure I wasn't going to overdo it.

After I felt warmed up, I started increasing the pace to try and get my HR to that 155-160 zone. However I noticed something strange - the pace dropped as one would expect, but it kept dropping farther than I thought it would. I got to my target zone and found that I was well below 8 min/miles! The last time I did this run, last week - I was hovering right around 8 min/mile. So I told myself 'well, lets see what happens - if I start to feel like I'm flaming out after a few miles, so be it'. But - that didn't happen. My HR slowly increased during the course of the run, started to hover closer to 160 vs 155 towards the last half - but my pace wasn't dropping by a substantial amount. I distinctly remember being past mile 8 and the timer showing an hour and three minutes - I was averaging less than 8 min/miles, and that included the warm up mile!

As the miles ticked by, I was amazed at how strong I felt - sure, I was getting fatigued, but only mildly. Once I hit mile 9, I immediately slowed up to give myself a full mile in my recovery HR zone of < 150. By the time I finished, I had run the longest stretch of < 8 min/miles I've ever done in my life. Sure, in high school I ran about 6:30 min/miles, but that was only for 3 miles. Back then my longest run was probably 7 miles or so. So doing 8 miles in the 7:30 - 7:40 min/mile pace is quite the performance improvement.

While I'm super-excited about the results, I have to keep a level head - it was drizzly/rainy, and that means there was little effort my body had to put into cooling itself off. But it was still quite the pleasing result.

P90X - Half of Legs & Back, and Ab Ripper - 9/4

2011-09-04T21:25:00.002-04:00

My intention earlier this week was to do the legs and back workout after the brick on Saturday, but after I got home from the run, I really really did not want to do anything more. It was a case of being over anxious before the days exercise - so on future bricks I think I'll be best served by considering a day over and done with after the run.

The problem was that kinda threw off my planning for when to do the legs and back routine - one that I'm experimenting with shifting from Tuesday due to residual soreness for a couple days after the workout. Part of the reason for doing it on Saturday was that it'd give me Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday to recover prior to Tuesdays' tempo run. So by not doing the legs workout on Saturday, I had to come up with a new plan - I could either skip it entirely (which I didn't want to do at this point), or maybe go for a partial workout. I decided to go for the latter - instead of the full hour long workout, I'd just go through half of it. As it turns out, the first half has the majority of what I'd consider the most beneficial exercises anyway - balance lunges, super skaters, wall squats, single leg squats, single leg wall squats, step-back lunges, etc. The hope was that by doing half the workout, the soreness and tightness incurred would not last as long, and I could be recovered for Tuesday's run.

So we'll see how that goes.

Return of the bricks - 46 mile bike, 6 mile run - 9/3

2011-09-03T18:10:00.005-04:00

A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts on my continued approach to training. I've decided that I would spend the rest of the season focusing more on quality miles and time, as opposed to simply logging bulk amounts. One main reason is that less time running very long runs means less stress and reduced chance of injury. However to make up for the conditioning loss that would occur, I've been running more often throughout the week. So instead of one big long run that takes days to recover from, now I can do a workout every couple days, and in those extra workouts focus on things like tempo, threshold pace, etc. And since the only event I have this year left is a full marathon and nothing involving cycling, the reasons for doing more centuries on the bike begin to dwindle - especially since they are a huge energy drain that takes days to recovery from, which would impact the run training.

So now with somewhat shortened workouts, I can also return to doing bricks. I'm intrigued by this approach because it allows some continued cycling and the aerobic benefits of that, plus it also places fatigue on my legs for a few hours prior to running, without the impact stress of running. I'm hoping that, in a sense, this will help with conditioning because it might be a simulation of the latter portions of the full marathon. It also allows me to toy with the concept of doing a harder cycling workout as a way to keep in shape for longer rides, as the article in that previous post indicate.

Since it was my first brick in a while, I wanted to be somewhat selective about how I'd approach it and not be too aggressive. I decided to do the 46 mile Wachusett loop for the bike, but kicking the intensity up a notch, and if I felt ok afterwards, I could try the 11 mile Sudbury Reservoir loop for the run.

One of the things I've noticed on my bike rides is that my HR is very hard to pin down. Part of it is due to having to stop at lights, for traffic, etc - but part of it is also that because you can coast and there is momentum, it just seems a lot harder for me to pick and stick to a HR or intensity as easily. So all I could really do, unless I wanted to be constantly looking at my HR monitor instead of the road, was put a tad more effort into everything than I normally would. For the most part, that meant staying in one higher gear during climbs, but making sure to keep a fast cadence. It also meant fewer coasting breaks, and a little bit more pushing on straight and level sections.

I did take a few lower intensity breaks - the first being after about an hour, and I used this break to munch down on some food I brought with me. I knew I had a run coming up, so even though I wasn't hungry, it was more of a situation where I wanted to get some calories down for later on.

Once I got to the far side of the reservoir, I cruised right up a hill that I usually bog down on somewhat. Normally I go in first or second gear, trudging along at 8-9 mph, but this time I kept it in third, kept a high cadence, and kept around 12.5-13 mph. It felt like the perfect amount of effort - measured enough that I was able to maintain it to the top, but not so much that I had got to a point where I had to slow it down.

On the way back, there were a couple instances where I passed other cyclists going in the same direction. That marked the first time I have passed someone else on a bicycle with a helmet and clipless pedals. So that was good (and encouraging!)

At some point during the bike, I decided that the 11 mile loop I intended to do for the run probably wasn't going to work out. First, I wasn't too sure I should be doing that loop where the ability to cut it short and get straight home was limited. Second, I just felt like I was already pushing things enough.

Instead, I opted to do my typical 6 mile loop. I'd still get the benefit of the brick transition. I started out what felt like a nice easy pace, but it still turned out to be the fastest mile of the set. I decided to try and keep my HR around 150 or so (my LSD intensity), but having already done close to 50 miles on the bike, that was easier said than done. I found that anytime I went through a slight incline, my HR would shoot up and would take a while to settle down. So I ended up deciding that 150-155 would be an easier target range, instead of specifically 150, and if I hit 160, I'd stop, if necessary, to bring it down. So there ended up being a few times during miles 4, 5 and 6 where I did stop to walk briefly. It wasn't that I was out of gas, I just wanted to keep the HR under control. Thats the reason for some of the pace drops.

10 miles - finding threshold intensity - 9/1

2011-09-01T19:36:00.003-04:00

In addition to trying to figure out my tempo pace (starting off with aiming for a HR of 160 for around 20 minutes the other day), I also want to determine my threshold pace. Daniels defines this pace as that which is a little faster than marathon (ie, can hold for two hours or more) pace, but a little slower than what could be maintained for 30 minutes. With my long distance runs occuring at a HR of about 150, and the tempo runs having been at 160, I figured I'd shoot for about 155-160 and see how things went. I'm paying attention to HR as opposed to pace for a couple reasons - one is that my instantaneous pace as displayed by my HR monitor is way too erratic to follow directly, and the other is that I'm interested in running at a level that will properly apply stress based on intensity of effort as opposed to simply speed.

I have normally been shooting for about 90 minutes during this mid-week runs, and I knew that I am capable of maintaining my target HR of 155 for this amount of time, as I had an average HR of 163 for just about 2 hours during the Worcester half. In fact, if anything, I'm targeting a pace a little lower than what I'm capable of. However, I'm only just starting to try and hone in on these various intensities - and I'd rather undershoot at first than overshoot.

I chose a route that is about 10 miles, knowing that I'd probably end up finishing before the 90 minute timer. But this would give me an opportunity to run a first mile as a warm up, then eight miles at the target intensity, and then a full mile as a cooldown as a recovery HR.

Overall, things went pretty well. It was a little challenging to stick to the 155-160 range - it seemed like any little elevation change made it drop to 153 to shoot up to 162, but like last run, I just adjusted pace accordingly to maintain intensity. Of course that means that during some steeper inclines, the pace dropped to 10 min/miles or slower, but the payoff is that it allowed a faster pace overall while still being comfortable. I felt strong throughout the entire run, but did notice my pace dropping a bit during the last couple miles. Refocusing on cadence seemed to have helped a bit - as I tired my target cadence of 180 slacked a bit. I think the full mile of recovery HR intensity was useful - I'm writing this post the morning after, and even though I took an ice bath after the workout, I do feel some slight soreness/tightness which surely would have been worse without the full mile cooldown.

6 miles with 3 miles tempo - 8/30

2011-08-31T22:15:00.005-04:00

The past few days I've been thinking about my approach to training and trying to think of ways to refine it. Seems like this happens every so often as I learn more and my capabilities change as time passes. Or maybe thats just what I tell myself to justify altering a regime that has been working.

Long story short, I decided I want to maintain doing a tempo run once per week. However I had to shift my training schedule around slightly, and it seemed like doing the tempo run on Tuesday, and pushing the legs workout to Saturday, was the best option. Since I probably won't be doing any 20 mile runs or 100 mile bike rides for the rest of the season, and concentrating more on the quality of the outings, I should be able to manage a strength session after the days endurance workout.

Last week I did this run and sorta made things up as I went along. Get going, decide on trying to maintain about 160 for a while, and mid-tempo-run decide that 3 miles was enough. This time I was more measured about it. I knew I wanted to keep the tempo time around the 20-25 minute mark, so 3 miles was good. But I wanted to really try and peg 160 during that stretch, and in order to do that, I'd have to warm up first. So this time the goal was a one mile warm up, nice and easy and not paying attention to pace. Then 3 miles at a HR of 160 (about 10-15 bpm faster than what I do my LSD runs at). I had no particular reason at going for that HR except that I felt like it was something I could maintain for that period of time without going too far. Then, the last two miles would be at more of a recovery HR, about 145-150 or so.

So thats what I did. It seemed to have worked out pretty well - the first mile definitely gave my HR a chance to settle into a workout pace, so it quickly went up to 160 at the conclusion of the first mile. I managed to stick to 160 pretty closely, slowing down a bit when necessary, speeding up when necessary, to maintain that intensity. And having a < 8 min/mile pace during that doesn't suck either.

The tricky thing is figuring out what that all means. During the Worcester half, my average HR was 163 - so the initial thought is that perhaps that HR of 160 is what my half marathon intensity pace should be, even though the pace would likely slow over time. I'm not sure if that slowing pace over time means that the HR of 160 is actually still a little too intense for my proper half marathon pace, though. But either way, I'm not about to attempt 160 for the full marathon, instead probably staying closer to the 145-150 bpm that I've been doing the 20 mile runs at.

The 20 miler that wasn't. 11 Miles - 8/27

2011-08-27T13:11:00.006-04:00

Today was supposed to be the third and final 20 mile run. My original thought was to use September to extend beyond 20 miles (23 miles, then 26 miles, then begin a taper), but I've recently been debating whether to do that or not. More on that later.

Regardless, I had intended today's run to be 20 miles. However, after only a few miles, it was apparent that I still was not fully recovered from this past weeks activities of 150 miles biking and an extra tempo run on Monday. My legs felt fine, and I was pleased at my HR, which spent a lot of time in the 130's as opposed to the mid-upper 140's - but my foot turnover just seemed sluggish and I didn't feel quite as fleet of foot as I normally do. Typically, when I get my cadence up, I look at my watch and see an 8:30 min/mile pace or better - today when I felt like I was doing all the right things, I was seeing over 9 min/mile. It's not that a slower pace is necessarily a problem in and of itself - but I took it as a subtle sign that my legs were not as recovered as they usually are.

It is not uncommon when I first wake up to feel my left IT band. The majority of the time, after I've been up and been moving around, it goes away - the only time it may be more persistent is after a legs workout. However that is to be expected, so I don't mind that, especially since it never conflicts with the upcoming weekends' workout. So this morning when I woke up and could feel the IT band a bit, I figured it'd be one of those situations where after a mile or two, muscles would warm up and it would go away. That is a fairly common occurance of events. Unfortunately, today it just didn't seem to go away that easily. There were times when it would, but then it would come back. Then I'd realize my cadence slipped, which led me to think that my legs were not recovered enough to maintain cadence, and thus I probably should not go through with the full 20 miles. At around mile 3 or 4, I decided I'd just do the loop I was on, end up at 10 to 11 miles, and call it a day. My thinking was the following - having done 20 miles before, the mental aspect of my doing another 20 today was not a necessity. Therefore, if I did a full 20 miles today, there'd be little if any benefit. However, the downside of continuing on, and potentially igniting ITB issues has major implications. So, it was actually a simple choice. It turned out to be a good one, I think - because at mile 10 I was feeling the IT band rubbing - and so far this year when I've felt it like that, I've been best served by stopping.

So, at the moment I'm a mix of being disappointed, but also acceptance. I have put a good amount of stress on my legs this week with the riding, and the extra day of running - not to mention that some of the riding and running took place on the same day. Thursday morning I woke up and knew I was too drained to have made the bike ride, and I was hoping that the extra day of rest would suffice - apparently, it did not. The other thing is that not just this week has been stressful, but the entire month has been. Two 20 mile runs sandwiched in between two century bike rides, and when I look back and July and August, they each had about 30 hours and 330 miles of training each. It has been an intense couple months. I remember when following Galloways training plan, he basically had one day of rest between LSD runs per mile, rounded up to the next week cycle. So, for a 15 mile run, it would be three weeks before the next LSD run. By only going two weeks between 20 mile runs, I haven't been giving myself as much rest, nevermind the bike rides. Then, in Daniels book, he goes less by mileage and more by time, to help account for the different speeds of different people. In his view, a train to complete plan caps out at 2.5 hour long runs, although there are several of them. In other words, regardless of how you slice it, for someone just trying to complete the event, there is no question that the past two months have been stress-inducing.

Now the question is what to do from here on out. I may shoot for the 20 miles again next weekend, or I may wait a couple weeks and do something like a 23 mile run in mid-September. No matter what, I think one thing I learned recently is that I should grant myself a good three weeks of taper before the marathon in October. I was going to do two no matter what, but a third would probably be better.

P90X Chest, Shoulders & Triceps - 8/26

2011-08-26T21:35:00.002-04:00

The plan was that yesterday I'd return the truck to my parents, and then ride my bike the 50 miles back home. The problem was that as soon as I woke up, I knew with fairly good certainty that it wasn't going to happen. If I really needed to, I could have done it, but my legs were still too fatigued from the past several days workouts they had seen. They felt fine for normal everyday stuff, but I could tell they just didn't have it in them for a comfortable enough 50 miles of hills. So, I ended up deciding to take the day as a rest day. I knew I had a long run coming up this weekend, and due to the approaching hurricane, that run would have to take place on Saturday. While I already had today (Friday) as a legs rest day, I didn't want to add stress on top of noticably fatigued muscles in my legs that might cause ITB issues. So, that was that.

Sometime between yesterday and today, I decided that come winter time, when I do more strength training (which would probably take the form of a couple days of certain P90X routines), that the upper body workout I'd probably end up doing on a weekly basis is the Chest, Shoulders and Triceps. The other options would be Back & Biceps, but that would be limited to one upper body muscle, and the back would already be covered in the Legs & Back routine I am currently doing on Tuesday. I could do Chest & Back, the routine I've probably done the most, but again the back is redundant. So that left Chest, Shoulders & Triceps.

This was the third time doing the routine, and there are certainly segments that are tough. The chest portion is a lot of variations on traditional push-ups - slow-mo pushups, plange pushups (like military, but the hands are more towards your ribcage), pike presses, 2 twitch speed pushups, and the super-psycho plyo (clap) pushups. The clap part isn't that psycho - but when Tony launches his whole body into the air at the top of the pushup, and claps his hands - well, that is psycho. Especially when it is something like exercise 20 out of 24 in the routine and your arms are already wasted. I can only manage the clapping part if I am on my knees, at this point. Most of the shoulders and triceps exercises involve using weights, and I'm pretty much limited to 8 lb and 4 lb weights. More and more, I'm thinking I'll have to scrounge some weights for cheap off craigslist or something. But then again, I still manage to fatigue myself, so I don't know. It's a rough enough routine that all three people in the video can't finish strong - so it is definitely a strength workout that will work you.

50 mile bike ride, 1.2 mile swim, 6 mile run - 8/24

2011-08-24T21:38:00.003-04:00

Today was one of those days when multiple factors combined and resulted in pretty much one workout after another, all day long.

In order to get rid of a sofa that we are replacing, I needed a truck. My dad has a truck, but my parents live 50 miles away. They also live on a lake that I do most of my open water swimming on. And being Wednesday, I was due for my mid-week run. Oh, and I am taking this week off from work as vacation. So I didn't really have anything else to do (well, thats not true - there are always house chores to do).

So I got the wonderful idea - why not ride my bike out to my parents, go for a dip in the lake, borrow the truck and return home, and then do my mid-week run? Sure - lets bust out nearly a half iron triathlon randomly. And why not make it a few days after a century, two days after a newly incorporated running day, and one day after a legs workout, and then the following day return the truck and ride my bike back home. What could go wrong?

After I was done with the first of the morning chores of walking the dogs, I set out on the bike. The last time I did this route, I was surprised at how hilly it was - almost 3k feet of climbing. I was a little surprised at the time - just over 3.5 hours, and was pretty certain it was due to fatigued legs and lack of a real energizing breakfast. This time around, I was pretty certain I'd be able to knock at least a few minutes off. That turned out to not be true. A few minutes slower than last time. I guess the ride from this weekend, Monday's run and yesterdays leg workout took more out of my legs than I thought. And while I remembered it was hilly, I didn't remember how hilly it was. That was the big thing this time around - now that I had done the course once, there were certain hills I remembered - but others I had completely forgotten. It seemed like every time I crested a hill, it was either flat briefly before another hill, or it was downhill only to be followed by another up hill. Very few flat miles, it seemed. It occured to me it may be a better hill training route than I thought - while it doesn't have the single, more intense uphill that Placid has, it certainly is persistent.

Once at my parents, it was probably an hour or so before getting in the water. I was ok with that - I had no problem with the extra time to recover before jumping in. I had somewhat limited time, so I did a single loop around the lake, which is usually 1.2-1.3 miles in length, depending on how close to the edge I stay. As typical, the first half mile was the fastest pace - but once I made the turn at the far end of the lake, I found out why - the wind was definitely blowing waves that I was now going to be fighting against. It felt like the high seas - I could feel waves over my head, crashing over me. A few times I'd go to get a breath and get a mouthful of water, and would have to spit that out and just hold on until the next breath cycle. At least I felt like I was hauling ass, with all that water moving against me. One other challenge I had today, which I had last time, was that I tend to hook to the left again. I suspect I'm probably reaching too far with my right arm when it extends. This happened before and the fix was to make sure to keep my hands shoulder width apart, as opposed to allowing a hand to reach across the centerline of my body. So I've probably slipped back into a bad habit, with all the focus I've been putting on my leg work.

After the swim was done, and I was driving home - I decided I'd take it easy on the run by not going the normal 90 minutes, and by going at an easier pace. I have another 50 mile ride tomorrow, plus it was going to be 7:30 by the time I got home, and it would be getting dark soon. So I ended up doing my 6 mile route. I wanted to keep my HR under 150, preferrably under 145 - but of course there are certain sections where that is just about impossible unless I stop to walk. For the most part, I was able to keep my HR down, so my hope is that the run didn't add stress to my quads and IT band, and if I'm lucky may actually help keep the stiffness down that I usually experience 48 hours after a leg strength workout. I'll have a better idea on that tomorrow.

P90X Legs & Back plus Ab Ripper - 8/23/11

2011-08-23T20:31:00.004-04:00

Just the normal workout I'm trying to make a routine for Tuesdays. My main point of interest today was to see how the workout went after running a tempo run yesterday, and then to see how sore I get if I did an ice bath after the legs workout. Typically, I've only done ice baths after a long or strenuous run or bike ride. However, after a few legs and back sessions which ended in soreness that crept into the following Saturday (start to appear on Wednesday, be in full effect on thursday, start decreasing on Friday, and still some remnants on Saturday), I thought it'd be worth trying the ice bath trick. I guess it never really occured to me before, because while my legs feel fatigued after the workout, nothing else ever gave the impression that they were incredibly taxed until it was too late.

We'll see how it goes. I'd be very happy if I experience markedly reduced soreness. For one, it'd make me a little less nervous about Wednesday mid-week runs, and it make me feel better about doing a hard workout on Saturday. Even though I've managed to not have an issue with either of them so far, the more room for error I can give myself, the better.