inauspicio.us

“It was eleven more than necessary.”
-Jacques Anquetil, after winning a race by twelve seconds.

I was having a bit of a throb this afternoon between workouts when a sudden brainstorm hit. Often when talking with someone who’s relatively new to triathlon or running I’ve found myself attempting to explain the appropriate intensity of, for instance, a tempo run or a threshold run. So here is my handy dandy guide to intensity levels. If you follow this, you’ll get really fit without having to spend all of your time ruminating on percentages of your VO2 max. You still can if you want to, but it won’t be a necessary part of the program.

• Not Easy: This is your basic workout level. If you get out the door to go for a run, this is the pace you go. Since it’s a “work out” and not an “easy out”, the pace is more strenuous than what you would choose for, say, walking up a flight of stairs. Some people call this “zone 2″.
• Somewhat hard: Also known as “tempo”. Here’s how you do a tempo run: Go to a half-marathon intending to run as fast as possible. Drop out after seven miles. That was a tempo run. Don’t get pedantic with me on this, you can do a tempo run of just about any distance from two to fifteen miles. We’re working on an effort level, or a pace if you’re more experienced.
• Quite hard: Sometimes referred to as “threshold”, but less so lately since people started asking “Threshold of what?”  If you want to think of it in terms of an actual threshold, it’s the point where if you worked any harder you would have to stop after a minute or so.  A good way to find your pace for a threshold run is to take the average of miles 2 through 4, inclusive, of a 10k running race.  A good way to find your effort is to think of mile 5.

The special secret I will now let you in on is this: these are all you need.  You don’t even really need “somewhat hard” and “quite hard” to be separated, but it’s convenient to have two datapoints on the continuum for specificity.  If you work out in such a way that you’re not being lazy but also not killing yourself, you won’t have to worry about whether you’re doing it right.  The important thing is that you’re out there.  Improvement happens automatically.

A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn’t.

After a really lackluster couple days of training last weekend, I reached the inevitable conclusion that I was actually sick and not just being lazy. I started a course of antibiotics late on Sunday morning and the effect was nearly instantaneous: two good workouts on Monday, yes, count them, two good workouts in a day for the first time in weeks. Because I’m just so tickled about it, here’s the rundown:

• Monday progression run.
• Tuesday 30′ zn3 bike
• Wednesday 60′ zn3 bike
• Thursday long run
• Friday 60′ zn3 run

Yep, FIVE days in a row of quality workouts, good power numbers, second workout of the day still feels good, etc etc etc.

FINALLY!

Yeah, that’s all I have to say about that. For now.

I have been battling a weird problem with my sinuses for the past several days, making me feel less than super. After a string of pretty ordinary workouts last week (which I bitched about below), I had to take a couple days off to convalesce. No big deal in the grand scheme of things, I hope. I’m still planning to go to Florida next month to race in the new Tri 101 series race there. Hopefully they won’t cancel it, or anything weird. I guess if they do, I’ll find another race to do, or go surfing or something, because it would suck to fly all the way to Florida just to hang out in a swamp.

I managed to get back on my bike yesterday, for a pretty bread-and-butter trainer workout. Paulo has had me in training zones that correspond to an FTP of 320 watts for about a year now, and I finally think that number is beginning to be accurate. This is a sure sign that my zones are going up again soon, but I am enjoying it while I can. This was the workout:

30 minutes @ 235 watts
25 minutes @ 280 watts
5 minutes @ 305 watts
5 minutes @ 150 watts
5 x (1 minute @ 400 watts, 1 minute @ 100 watts) <- Holy Crap!  400 Watts!
5 minutes @ 150 watts
10 minutes @ 275 watts
Warm Down.

I was more than a little surprised by the 400 watt intervals. That’s right around 6 watts/kg for me, which is a fair bit higher than I’ve been able to sustain before, even for a minute. I had a nice swim in the evening, then filed my taxes, which was not the best way to end the day, but at least I’m done with ‘em.

Today’s training tip: Remember to breathe in and out. You cannot breathe in all the time or you will explode.

You thought you might have been out of the woods, but no! There’s more!

Pictures from the Lone Star short course, last Saturday (it was indeed conducted largely in a dark predawn haze)

And pictures from the Lone Star half ironman, last Sunday! I even trolled through the lost and found for my actual finish photo (ugh! no wonder they made me go back out), as well as two photos of my second finish, two and a half minutes later.

AND, pictures of Dave roaring through the course on his way to a twenty plus minute PR. Remeber to subtract ten minutes from that finish line clock for his wave start!

[Edit]: AND, I get a mention on xtri.com’s write up of the race!

Summary: Training works!

Since I have already subjected you to one and a half race reports this week, I’ll try to keep this pretty brief. But since this race was far and away the best race I’ve ever had in my entire life, a gigantic PR, the end of a long spell of not so great results, and I won, it might get a bit involved.

You’ve been warned.

Pre-race:
I actually felt fine after the sprint race on Saturday morning. It felt a bit strange to get back to the hotel having finished a triathlon before the breakfast buffet was even over, but who could complain about it? I tucked in, then went upstairs to rest for a bit. Checked in without incident, got my bike out of transition and sloshed it across the wet parking lot back to my room. Clearly the main task would be getting things dry before Sunday morning. I laid everything out on the floor so there’d be plenty of space, then went to meet Sophie, Dave, and some other ST’ers for lunch. After lunch Dave and Sophie came back to my hotel. Dave and I had a little swim workout, and then Sophie (who is an ART therapist) worked on my sore back. This was an absolute lifesaver. Thank you, Sophie!

I went grocery shopping for some dinner and passed the evening re-taping and re-pinning race numbers while the weather channel droned in the background. Dinner on Saturday night was a much more organized affair than Friday night’s powerbar feast: I had a starbucks sandwich, a piece of lemon pound cake, and a bagel with way too much just the right amount of butter. And a little chocolate that someone inexplicably brought by my room around 7:30pm. What’s up with that? I was afraid I was going to be too nervous to sleep, but the fatigue from getting up at 5am and racing that morning turned out to be a blessing.

All three of my alarms went off at 5. Ugh. Two cans of red bull, a couple of bagels, a tiny bit of Gatorade. Put my still-wet race clothes on and dragged my now quite sore self down to the transition area. I had been hoping that I wouldn’t be sore, especially since I hadn’t felt too sore after the race Saturday, but it wasn’t to be. Got on my bike for a quick warmup. My powermeter battery was of course still dead, and I was royally PO’d at myself for forgetting the charger. All the effort I’d gone to last week to make absolutely sure I could race with a power meter that wouldn’t crap out in the rain, and I’d brought one with a dead battery.

There was a time when this would have more or less broken me. But as I said I’ve worked really, really hard on the mental side of competition this spring. I realized that there was no point stressing about it; the only productive thing I could do would be to come up with an alternate plan, quick. So I did. The new plan: get out of the water near the leaders and bike my way into the lead as quickly as possible. A risky strategy, but I told myself this: “Will, if you want to win this race, you have to take the lead sometime.” This kind of bravado is not the self-talk I usually go in for, but as I mentioned I really wanted to win. So I put on my wetsuit and went down to the water for a good solid swim warmup, which I was going to need.

Swim: 1900 meters in 27:34
My normal strategy of taking the first 500 meters hard and then settling onto a pair of feet backfired dramatically. The initial surge that is so crucial when racing in the pros is useless in a group of 100 35-39 year old men. Both groups start out at a pretty ambitious pace: the pros then settle in to something challenging but doable; the testosterone-crazed agegroup men come to a more or less complete stop. Ah well. I swam it in steadily and alone, veering off course only a few dozen times in the process. Even with all that, it was a solid time for me and I was out of the water only about 90 seconds down on the leaders. As I mentioned before, I absolutely rule at putting on my shoes so I was out on the bike with a pretty good flying cyclocross mount just lickety-damn-split.

Bike: 56 miles in 2:18
If you look at the official results, you’ll see 2:20 for me, but that includes T1. My actual bike time was 2:18:45, and I only mention this because it was a PR. Whoo! I could see the lead car in the distance and I started chasing. The outbound leg had a stiff headwind and I shard pace with a kid from my wave. By my calculations we were barely making 20mph, but I couldn’t drop him so I bided my time 50 meters back and formulated some new strategy. I wanted to just pace off him the whole way to save the mental energy, but I knew there was a big tailwind section coming up that I could use to my advantage. Riding with a tailwind is an interesting value proposition: wind resistance is significantly decreased, so an extra 40 or 50 watts gives a much larger increase in speed than those same 40 or 50 watts applied into the wind. So when we got to the turnaround I had some gatorade, dropped the chain into my 50×11, and rode what must have been about a 32 mph average back to the turnaround. Excellent, except for one thing. I had lost another minute and a half to the leader. Crap. Now I was alone in second place, too far back to see the pace car and with no one to pace with. Again: “Will, if you want to win this race, you have to catch that guy.” So I went off after him.

The second lap was the same as the first, except I managed to hold the leader at 3:15 ahead of me. My heart rate crept up a little, but nothing alarming. In T2 I took the time to put socks on, because I knew I wanted them and I decided the race was not going to be decided by 5 seconds. I was either going to catch the guy or not, and the only way I could affect the outcome was to run my race and stay on top of the nutrition.

The Run: 13.1 miles in 1:18:25
I thought I had a pretty even pace going but I ran the first four miles in 22 minutes flat. This was a pretty ambitious pace – one I knew I couldn’t hold – but my only option was to run as fast as I could to catch the leader. When I finished the first lap in 38 minutes flat I knew I had the makings of either a massive PR or a spectacular blowup on my hands, but I had no time to ruminate on this because Sophie was screaming at me, “he’s only a minute up the road and he’s dying!”

I thought about surging at this point but I didn’t really have any surge in my legs at this point. Once again I realized that however close it was, I was eithr going to catch him or not. I was already running as hard as I could, and catching him wasn’t going to do any good anyway if I didn’t make it to the finish. So I ran my race and ever so gradually caught up to him. We exchanged pleasantries and I soldiered on. Of course I was petrified that he would catch me or that he and a horde of others would run me down, but I told myself there was nothing I could do about other peoples’ paces and I kept running as hard as I could.

The mile and a half between 10.5 and 12 was a low point. I lost at least a minute here and probably a bit more. I remember hitting an aid station and being asked, “water, gatorade, coke, gu?” and replying “anything.” I got coke and that got me to the finish line. With 200 meters to go I knew I had it, and I ran across the finish line with a huge grin on my face and fell over, ecstatic. Someone caught me.

“Are you OK?”
“I’m fantastic. I just won!”
“Sure you did dear, you know, everyone is a winner today.”
“No, I just won the race! Where’s the guy in red? Where is he?”
“Why don’t you just lie down for a minute, and I’ll get you some water.”

The announcer hadn’t noticed me go by, so for a few minutes no one would believe me. Later I learned that they’d been briefed before the race that a lot of people would be delirious and they’d chalked my ramblings up to the heat. When we finally got everything straightened out, they made me go back out on the course and run the last 100 meters again, so they could take a picture of me breaking the tape – which is why the time in my finish photo is 2 1/2 minutes slower than my actual finishing time.

So the race went awesome. My official time of 4:07:03 was a PR by over ten minutes, and it was the first long course race where I’ve had a good swim, bike, and run. It turned out that there were fewer than 500 participants at the end of the day, which made me extra glad that I’d decided to race the sprint on Saturday. I am ecstatic with the way things went for me this past weekend, and if you have heard me talk about races before, you know I don’t say things like that lightly.

I also want to thank everyone who has helped me this past winter and spring – I’m looking forward to sharing a whole bunch more positive race reports with you this season!

Go hard, then go home.

The idea of going over my entire weekend in one post is too daunting; I’m going to instead post separate reports for the two races. This one will be short(er), because the race was so hard and intense I barely remember any of it. That said, it will still be really self involved, so if that kind of thing turns you off … well, what the hell are you reading my blog for? It’s always like that.

The theme of this race report, the next day’s race report, and this entire season so far has been staying positive. I have worked really hard on doing my best to control things that I can control, and not worrying about things I can’t control.

Pre-race
I flew to Houston straight from Colorado Springs on Friday afternoon. The flight was a bit delayed
and I eventually got to the race site around 9pm. Went for a run and decided I felt awesome. Built my bike (with my snazzy awesome new SRM powermeter, more on this later) and decided I would ride it in the morning. Too late to go out looking for dinner. Ate five powerbars, went to sleep.

Race morning
I set the hotel room alarm clock, my cell phone alarm clock, and had a wake up call all at 5am. Just to be sure. There is no coffee to be found in the hotel so I drove out looking for a Starbucks, but they were all closed, so I slipped in to what I thought was a 24 hour grocery store to buy some red bull and a bagel. After five minutes of wandering around looking for a cashier, decided I didn’t have time to wait. I left way too much money to pay for two cans of red bull and a couple bagels, along with a note, and drove back to the race site with plenty of time still to warm up.

A bit of a run, with strides, and a bit of a bike ride. A few minutes into the bike ride, the battery in my new SRM died (remember how I said there would be more on this later? here it is. emphasis on moron). Damn. I have grown somewhat utterly dependant on my power meter as a pacing tool over the past two years. So I decided, with what felt like my new superpower of positive thinking, that it wouldn’t be a problem since the race was so short. Onward. Slithered into my wetsuit for the first time in six months and jogged over to the start area to warm up. Only … they wouldn’t let us in the water. Again, I really depend on having a good swim warmup. But rather than freak out – what could I possibly do about it? – I decided that stretching and arm swings were plenty and that I would do just fine.

Finally: the actual race.
I was in the third wave, so I had some chance to see how the start unfolded. They got us into the water and started us with a toy siren so we could get down to the important business of beating the crap out of each other for the first few hundred meters. I haven’t experienced this much since turning pro (that could be because the pros are a little less testosterone-crazed at the beginning of a race, or also because I just can’t keep up) so it was nice to be back in the mix. No one hit me all that hard, but people were swimming a range of erratic directions and paces which made it an interesting time in the water. I was out of the water in eight or nine minutes, or something, just about fifth in my wave. I had a decent transition and scored a great opportunity to do a flying cyclocross mount out of the transition area, passing two people in the process. The bike was uneventful but very hard. I threw up in my mouth a little near the four mile mark but managed to pass one more person. I got within striking distance of the guy who I was pretty sure was first from our wave, but couldn’t get any closer. He beat me into transition by a little more than twenty seconds.

I am awesome at changing my shoes and I made up three seconds in transition.

The run was agony. I felt like I was running as hard as I possibly could, but who knows these things? These shorter races are contested in a pace band which is no longer familiar. I do know I could not possibly have gone any faster right then, and that’s what matters for the race. I split the three miles in a shade over sixteen minutes, which, if it was accurate, was good but not great for me. I also got within nine seconds of my rabbit but could not reel him in.

Post Race
More or less immediately after I finished it began to pour rain. There had been big, ominous clouds overhead all morning, and a few minutes after I finished they dropped all of their rain all at once. I got back to my hotel room as fast as I could and got warm and dry, feeling pretty bad for the 500+ people who were still out on the course.

It eventually turned out – once the wave times had been sorted out – that the guy who I couldn’t reel in was the overall winner and I was second, nine seconds back. He won the race on the swim, where he put 21 seconds into me. I brought back a handful of seconds on the bike and another handful on the run. I was ecstatic to have finished second, since my only goal for the race was to be in the top eight so I could requalify for my pro license, but finishing second is a strangely bitter pill to swallow. You hear about it and you read about it. You think it doesn’t make any sense, they should be happy to have done so well, you certainly won’t feel that way if it ever happens to you, etc etc etc. But then it does, and you do, and you feel like an idiot for feeling that way, but there it is. 90% of me feels happy about the race and excited to have done so well, and 10% of me wonders if I could have worked a little harder, gone a little faster, been a little quicker.

OK, now what?
I had another race to get ready for! A longer, tougher, hopefully drier race that I decided I really wanted to win.

If you do something dumb, and it turns out way better than you could have possibly imagined, that doesn’t retroactively make it a smart choice. But it sure feels good!

I will write a full race report later tonight or tomorrow once I collect myself a bit more. The executive summary, though, is that it went pretty much perfectly.

There’s even an article in the Galveston newspaper mentioning how lucky I was.

Here’s the quick summary: On Saturday I was 2nd overall in the sprint race. On Sunday I won the half ironman race in a huge personal best time of 4:07:03. That’s an improvement of over ten minutes over my previous best, on a tough, windy day. It’s also the first time I have won a triathlon more than an hour long. I employed the time-honored pacing strategy of going absolutely as hard as you possibly can for the entire day, and it paid off! Whoo!  I was so excited I sent Stephanie the following text message right afterward: “Holy F***ing S*** I won!”

You can see the results of the sprint race and the results of the half online if you want. And I’ll write more, lots of gory detail, Real Soon Now.

[Note: the saga begins below]

With Paulo’s reluctant approval, I went ahead and registered for the Lone Star sprint distance race as well. My schedule for next weekend now looks like this:

Friday afternoon: Fly to Houston. Pick up rental car. Drive to Galveston.

Saturday morning: Lone Star sprint triathlon. .3 mile swim (how far is that anyhow, like 400 meters? what’s the point?), 12.5 mile bike, 3 mile run. Make sure to get in a good cooldown.

Saturday afternoon and night: rest as much as possible.

Sunday morning: Lone Star half ironman. That would be the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13 mile run that I’d been planning on doing for several weeks now. I can’t imagine that I’ll be totally wrecked by a one hour race the day before, but it will be my first race of the season so I’m anticipating some residual soreness. Oh well, I’ll just have to make sure to get a good warmup in. The last time I did a race put on by this group, they delayed the start while I was warming up and I got in almost 3000 meters. That would probably be excessive, but twenty or twenty-five minutes in the water wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Here goes nothing. Wish me luck – I’ll need it!

My final prep for the Lone Star half ironman is under way.  It’s usualy a bit weird for me, at the beginning of racing season, to remember that after all that hard work and dedication over the winter and spring there’s still the important part (you know, the actual racing) left to do.

I’m having a tiny freak-out at the moment, too.  One of the things I really need to make sure I do this year is requalify for my pro license.  I didn’t have the best luck last year, and between injuries and the occasional not-so-good tactical decision I didn’t put up the results I needed.  So this year I’ll need three finishes that meet the following criteria:

• Top 8 overall.
• Within 8% of the winners time.
• Race must have at least 500 participants.

That last one is the real sticking point.  It’s not that easy to get 500 people in one place for a triathlon, especially out here in the Rockies.  You tend to get either 200 or 2000, and naturally the 2000 person ones are a fair bit tougher to win.  My race this weekend currently has 450 people registered.

Now I don’t intend to fly all the way to Galveston, TX for no chance at some requalification points.  Fortunately this story has a new twist:  there’s another, much shorter race the day before.  It has 750 people entered.  Racing a sprint triathlon the day before a half-ironman might not be the smartest thing anybody ever did.  I’d even wager that it’s right up there on the list of Things Not To Do.  But I’m ready to take drastic measures here, if I have to.  And who knows?  Two races is twice as many chances to perform well.

Pretty whipped by the time I got home. I was gone ten days, with two of those being travel days. For the eight days of camp, I trained thirty-nine hours, with quite a lot of that being pretty hard training. It was a great camp, put together by my great coach Paulo, and made especially great by a whole heap of great people.

I tried to blog from camp, but I really couldn’t keep up after a couple of days. The swim video made the rounds, and Jodi has some other videos linked from her blog. Good luck at Oceanside, Jodi!

Some workout highlights for me:

• A 5000 meter swim workout that included 4 x 400 IM, long course meters.
• A tempo run in hot, windy weather that included ten miles in under sixty minutes.
• A long run of two hours at an average pace faster than 6:30 per mile.
• A four hour bike ride with an average power of 260 watts.

Some real highlights:

• A really great group of training partners. I can’t say enough about how awesome this was. We had a pretty wide range of speeds represented, but everybody had at least a couple of other people to train with in each workout. Before and after workouts, we could all help each other through the fatigue. Most importantly, I think, everyone was pretty low key. My biggest problem with a lot of triathletes is that they are real uptight type-A stress cases, and I don’t really want to hang out with them. I was very happy to find that this was not an issue at all at this camp. It was really, really awesome and I am excited to remain friends with every single person from this camp.
• The adventure of a long, solo roadtrip. My drive down was uneventful, but my drive back was highlighted by what eventually turned out to be a hole in the radiator. It was touch and go with overheating, but I stuck to the highway as much as I could to try to keep the engine cool with circulated air. Thanks to Art, Jim, and the gas station attendant near Las Vegas, NM for your advice on keeping my car rolling! This week I have procured a new radiator, so all should be well in that department for a while.