My Complicated Relationship with SWIMMING!

      Calendar year 2014 I did lap swim 15 times and 2 triathlons for 17 total swims.  Already this year in all of March and half of April I have done 800 - 1000 meters now 15 times.  Have I discovered The Joy of Swimming?  Not so much.  I realize that the best part of swimming, especially early in the morning before work, is walking to the car after a swim and shower and feeling good about heading to work. It's like the old joke:  Why did < the dumb guy > keep smashing his hand with the hammer?  Because it felt so good when he quit.  That sums up my relationship with swimming.

Hydrating is important EVERYWHERE!

      Today's low-light was 800 meters from 6:30 - 6:55 am and having some difficulty (more than usual) with coordinating my breathing - thanks (perhaps) to my 2nd time using Ambien to help me sleep the night before.  I also wish I could say my times were dropping but I am pretty consistently swimming 24 - 26 minutes for 800 and I am in the 32 minute range for 1000 meters.  Sounds slow and it is.  It's also just alternating 50 meters of freestyle/crawl with 50 meters of breast stroke.  At 400 meters of 800, I drink maybe 8 ounces of water from my bottle next to my watch.  If swimming 1000, I will get more water at 800 meters.

        Is all this increased swimming activity to get ready for another triathlon?  Not really.  I am hopeful that I will do another this summer but the increased swim activity is more about having tennis elbow so badly that instead of playing tennis normally maybe 45 times so far this year, I have only played 5 times. I find that swimming doesn't hurt my arm at all and that the cardio is also good for my running.  And more about that soon!

Why My Son is Better Than an iPod

     Imagine if I had uttered that title while working at Apple with Steve Jobs nearby.  I would have disappeared faster than a box of donuts near hungry teens!  Of course I love my son more than any type of mp3 player but I am referring to RUNNING with my 12 year old is preferable to listening to my favorite podcasts.

    When I ran in high school and after college I logged a lot of solitary miles-- sans music or podcasts.  But I also had a lot of people to run with on occasion.

    After starting to run again about 15 months ago, all of it alone, I am finally running now with my son and it's so great!  Running with others is soooooooooo much better than running with anything Apple could dream up.  Not only am I passing on my love of exercise to my son but I am relaxed and we talk about all types of horrific subjects in my son's eyes (and ears) including girls, love, peer pressure and even his favorite subject cars and his driver's license!

    Though I still start S L O W, after 10-12 minutes I am able to run faster with him than I know I would be able to do on my own.  Faster running and more relaxed, sounds like I have discovered the fountain of youth.  And maybe I have.  The youth of my son. Good times!

Holy Crap Batman, that was a HARD SPRINT!

Now if you are like me you think "third sprint tri, can't be that hard".  Yeah.  I.  Was.  Wrong.  Almost 2 weeks ago I went to Castaic Lake, just past California's Magic Mountain, and competed in the 1/2 mile lake swim, 14 mile bike, and 5k run. Looks good on paper but the problem wasn't the uphill 75 yard run to the transition area after the swim (dodging sandy bird-poop on the way), and the problem wasn't the hilly and convoluted 5k course at the end, so that leaves only one other suspect.

The 14 mile bike was an out and back course.  Meaning that the first seven miles meant climbing for probably 5.75 to 6 miles before descending on the same route.  I knew it was difficult when I passed 3 people walking their bikes BEFORE the 2 mile mark.  Being a strong cyclist I was out of my saddle riding pretty strong for parts of those 7 miles.  There were no cars to worry about as the road was roughly parallel to the 5 freeway that runs north all the way to Canada.  At times it was steep enough that I slowed to 6.5 mph pace, but even at that rate I could easily chat with fellow sufferers and an added blessing was cloud-cover.  Coming down should have been a blessing and it was but it was also a bitch (pardon my French).  The race director announced "no aero bars" on the way down.  Yes, I agree with that because the pavement which he had also deemed as "pretty good" was in fact pretty horrible.  Going UP you can avoid the broken pavement easily because of the slower speed, but going down- mainly over 30 mph (maxed out at 39.4), broken pavement can equal broken bones or worse.

I told the race director in an email that IF I do the race next year I will ride a mountain bike with 1.5" tires as to ride what I did (700 x 23 mm tires) is akin to suicidal behavior.  I heard of no casualties among the 104 participants but run that same course 5 years and I would guess one racer will suffer road rash and at least one more will be in the ER and/or hospitalized.

On a brighter note, my wife and sons ran in the 5k that began one hour earlier than the triathlon.  Of the 18 participants, my wife won it outright, my 12 year old son took second a few minutes later, and my almost 10 year old got 5th place.  Overall, a good experience for all and for me a 6 hour post race headache and a new record for my slowest time for a sprint tri-- 2:09:59. there's me in 58th place and there are my wife and son's results here-- so proud!

Darn, Wish I Had Kept Track!

My next triathlon is 8 days away.  "Honey, when did we do that last triathlon, March, April?"
"No, December, it was so cold..."
Darn.  I was looking through the exercise log I have kept daily since the first day of January this year.  I was hoping to see what I trained like and what I was doing in the previous 2-3 weeks before the last triathlon.

But I got nothing since I have no records earlier than January.

I continue to run on tired legs.  I played 2 hours of doubles tennis this morning and then tonight I was running once again on "tired legs".  With not much activity this week ahead I hope that they will recover some "snap" that they currently lack.

Time will tell.  Like eight days of time.

The Other Tin Man and California Chrome

Yes, sometimes Sprint Triathlons are called Tin Man Triathlons but this title goes back, way back to the original Tin Man.

My wife is a walker and a runner and even though I have competed in many more races than she, can tell a fartlek from a plain old fart, and have run in excess of 10,000 life time miles while she is still working on her 2nd grand, she nevertheless has some good ideas when it comes to the sport.  She walks a lot before, after and sometimes in the middle of a running workout.

I am not a walker.  I will take one of my sons bikes or one of their scooters 200 yards  to the corner to mail a letter rather than walk.

Today, after running only 5 times in the last 6+ weeks, I ran an entire 32 minutes without stopping.  This was huge for me, since my typical run has been only 16-24 minutes.  And why is this noteworthy?  I began with a 4 to 5 minute walk.  I generally start with a 20-30 foot walk so this was a virtual walking marathon for me before I ran.

When I broke from the walk into a slow jog, my immediate thought was the transition felt normal and relaxed.  My next thought was my left upper hamstring isn't hurting or pulling (it has off and more ON since December).  In fact in the next 32 minutes it didn't hurt at all.

Remember Dorothy's Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz?  At first it's just a soft, almost silent groan that emanates from his mouth.  The oil can then is applied to his jaws, crooks of his elbows, knees, etc and then he is able to move freely.  Walking for several minutes allowed me to move naturally and freely too.  

One of running and walking's unpopular cousins is called stretching and I still am an undisciplined stretcher.  I would always quip when others encouraged me to stretch before a run, "have you ever seen a race horse stretch?" What race horses do before their race is walk-walk-walk as their warm-up before the slow trot to ready their muscles for the strain ahead.

So leave it to Secretariat, California Chrome and the Tin Man to remind us of that old cliche, "you gotta walk before you can run."  It works for me and my guess is that it will probably work for you too.

Triathlon # 3, Complete!

But just the second actually since last September.  Last Sunday was a repeat location and length
of the fall one, except in mid December, it was 45 degrees at the start, but felt much colder.  Much colder. Despite wearing full wet-suits, the missus and I weren't ready for the extreme cold.  One person needed assistance back to shore after the first 100 feet.  We weren't that bad but almost.  Another athlete more or less collapsed during the bike portion and needed assistance.  An ambulance took him away but we believe he was okay.

Upon exiting the water my hands were so cold it was difficult to to take off my wet-suit.  That and dizzy, very dizzy.  That translated into a 6:50 transition to the bike race compared to a 4:53 transition in the fall.  The bike ride was better, save for the cold fingers and toes.  While I rode 18.9 mph, versus 17.8 in the fall, my wife rode 15.4 vs 17.3 in the fall.  Cold hands don't grip handlebars in confidence or strength.

Finally, upon starting the run, it felt odd to run and push off without feeling your big toe.  However, after the first two somewhat awkward miles, I was able to run 3 seconds per mile faster than in the fall, without having to sprint the last few hundred yards.  My wife ran 13 seconds per mile faster than in the fall, her only split that was an improvement.  She ran 7:47 a mile to my 8:47 per mile.

What did we learn?  Only to do running races or maybe duathlons in the winter months but do NOT swim!  Really.  Even with better gloves, nope. Not gonna happen.

On a very positive note, my wife and I want to continue and do more.  We look ahead to Spring and hope to find some runs and tri races that will continue to inspire and challenge us.

Specificity of Training

    Tough word, specificity. But I use it because I don't train very well SPECIFICALLY for triathlons. Once upon I did but today it's more about chasing a tennis ball than anything else. Playing tennis is about short anaerobic bursts and changes of direction. It actually compliments my ice hockey play well but not useful for much else. Riding my bike is great too, but if it's not followed by a moderate run it does me little good.
    After completing my triathlon back in September I know that I need to do less swimming, almost no biking (alone) but I need to practice both running by itself, or more importantly, running after biking. The next triathlon, same distance and same location, looms less than 2 months away. By doing the 2 transitions smarter and more purposeful I can easily shave off 2+ minutes. A new stiffer, faster bike has been in my garage for 2 weeks now. I rode it this week for about 12+ miles, the same distance as the triathlon distance at about 1 mph faster (17.7 to 18.7) on a similar oval, nearly flat course. That isn't much but over 12 miles will also save about 2 minutes. It never hurts to lift weights and be well rounded.
     However, ultimately you have to practice your weaknesses. That should really mean that I need to be in the pool 3 days a week but we know that will never happen. So this Saturday I will have that new bike on Pacific Coast Highway along the ocean, and before that I will be swimming with friend and solo-athlete (I HEART SWIMMING) Brad as we brave the cold Pacific currents to make it to the buoy in the distance...and back!