I retired a pair of skis yesterday while tearing up the slopes at Kicking Horse near Golden BC for the day. The snow was falling but we weren’t skiing all day in total whiteout conditions, but as is totally typical of this time of year in the Rockies the coverage isn’t yet great everywhere. I found a couple rocks. The result was that by the end of the day I had totally blown out the edge on my alpine skis. Yech, not happy. Not that they were new or that they were super great, but they were skis that I could ski on whenever I wanted and they were more than sufficiently sturdy and reliable. I got them 6 years ago and they were already second hand at that time. Now I’ll need to get searching for a replacement, and that’s going to cut into the sports equipment budget which I was hoping I could totally allocate to bike parts for the next year. I’m now scoping telemark gear, but that doesn’t come cheap. I think I’ll rent tele’s for a day yet this winter and then start looking with more effort once I confirm to myself whether or not I want that’s something I think I’d really like to try and invest my efforts in. Oh well, they were good skis while they lasted.

Last week was also the fourth annual “Nog Jog” where I successfully defended my title. The short report is that I was faster on both the chug and on the run, and I’m happy to report that I have yet to let a drop of Nog leave my mouth during or after any of my three previous attempts at the distance. I’ve posted a bit longer description of the race and longer race-report on the Fiera Blog. I’ll add the video footage below though:

My Aerocat R509 frame also arrived in the mail and the building has begun. I’ll be adding photos as it develops. Here’s a starter with seatpost, saddle, brakes and stem mounted. I’ve got some BB30 bearings ordered as well as a pair of Neuvation training wheels and a carbon wing bar. Once those parts arrive I’ll be able to put together a first version of the bike, start fiddling with stems and do some roller riding while I wait for the snow to melt. Race wheels and the powermeter are on a bit longer of a time-horizon.

I ran for 30 minutes on the weekend in my new shoes. My abs were killing me after 20 minutes. I ached in complete bliss for the final 10 minutes of that run. The new shoes are excellent, and they’re calling me to a higher level.

I’m joining Kristina in seeking membership in the 300 club. No, not “That 300 club”, I’m already a member of that one.

And on a completely unrelated note, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in thinking that black and white is sexy and just breathes fast lookingness.

The past couple weeks of training have been relatively successful. Successful in the sense that I am once again able to be completing workouts. Success has not been marked by extraordinary speed or fitness. That is most-certainly not there, Taking 5 weeks off of everything due to my trouble with the Achilles has been a bit of a rough go of things. Finding routine again though has been good and I’ve had a lot of joy in just getting back into the roll of things.

As I’m not pursuing Ironman in the imminent future, discussion with my coach has resulted in a situation where I’m the one planning all of my own workouts. Steven Lord will still be on-board for occasional discussions and feedback when I solicit it but for 2011 the thinking and planning is once again all mine. I’ll be posting a blog entry similar to this one (without this preamble in future) as an update of my progress in the previous 4 weeks and charting the plan for the next four weeks.

I’ll start with two weekly summaries of the previous two weeks. The focus has been on recovery and getting back into training safely and gradually. It meant that during the first week I only logged 10kms of running over 3 different runs. The second week I logged almost 33kms over the course of 6 running sessions. This was meant to be slightly higher as I had opted to allow myself to try and run up to 70 minutes duration on Saturday on my first run outside. I opted to be prudent and trimmed this run short as I could feel that my legs were getting quite fatigued and I logged only 9.5kms in 52 minutes.

During this period of time I’ve also done a few things worth noting here on the blog. I signed up to ski the 55km Birkebeiner with a 5.5kg pack like I did back in 2009. This was a very difficult challenge that last time I did it but overall it was a good time. You can read all about that adventure in the world of suffering [here]. To be completely honest, right now I’m in pretty poor shape skiing-wise, certainly no better than the last time I did it. So I’ll be putting in a bit more of a concerted effort in that regard as the race approaches to ensure that I’m not going to be knocking myself out by doing this, I still don’t think it will be easy (nor should it be easy, that’s the point. Borrowing from the theme of a recent post I’ll refer you to Rule #10). I’ve got some company along for the ride on this endeavor as at least Jan and Dave have also signed up for the ultra-long version and I’m sure Stefan, Emily and many others will be joining us for the faster versions of the race in mid-February.

I’m hoping to use XC skiing as a way to improve my aerobic fitness with relatively low impact demands, because doing that on the bike requires too much wall-staring while sitting on a turbo. The fitness has been dropped significantly during my time away with zero physical activity. This was no surprise, but because I want to be careful how I rebuild I’m going to use this form of low impact cross training to beef it up before I expect to be running 50 miles per week. This isn’t an abnormal strategy for me. The following picture is an interesting plot of how the three sports of swim/bike/run (green/blue/red) respectively have helped to total up to 100% of my fitness (y-axis) over the past few years (x-axis). It’s obvious from this chart that each winter there’s a significant amount of cross training that occurs to keep me from going crazy, and then as the cross-training fitness fades away the specificity of the other fitnesses for triathlon rises. The black vertical bar indicates the present time. Remember here that this has erased the information of my overall fitness by normalizing to 100%. You can see that I’ll be developing about 1/3 of my fitness outside of the sports of triathlon before really pouring focus into the run in a way that I never have before (red band gets THICK!). For interest sake I slapped in a bunch of big but totally achievable bike weeks following the marathon to show what would happen if I really focus on the bike during May, by early June I’m likely able to be a pretty focused cyclist again, but it will take almost a month to do it. Patience, patience, patience.

I’ve also elected to use a Pfitzinger style training plan for my running in the lead-up to the marathon on May 1 (I’ve elected to race the BMO Vancouver Marathon) and so have back-calculated all the dates and plugged in the running sessions along the way with relatively reasonable hypotheses for the training duration and intensity of each. For my first marathon I followed a plan more closely based on the FURMAN FIRST strategy, but based on watching my response to training in the past year I am quite sure that I will respond better to a program with a different style. The Pfitzinger plan is composed of four mesocycles (parts) with different focus along the way and I’ve elected (at least right now – I may change my mind) to try and do the final three stages as close to the plan’s guide as is possible. I have however opted to use a slightly prolonged version of the endurance building phase that is based more closely to what has proven successful during the past year of my running than is set out by the running plan. I’m also very interested in continuing to track my MAF Heart Rate during training to monitor it’s progress as I believe this metric is an extremely important indicator of potential success at long course triathlon. I’ll be tracking this very specifically during the endurance building phases of preparation and then tracking it perhaps a bit less directly when I have to get into the later phases of the Pfitzinger plan. There is a lot of marathon pace running that will occur and if I select run courses intelligently I’ll be able to find myself some periods of good testing along the way during that training. It means training for the sake of testing in the endurance mesocycle and testing for the sake of training in the final three mesocycles. It means I won’t be doing the MAF tests in as controlled an environment and for a full 5 miles as I did this past year. My observation in retrospect is that, even if you try and be controlled, your data is going to be perturbed by all sorts of factors. I’m better off to be more frequently recording data regarding my MAF pace than to be relying on occasional testing metrics. I hope I have recorded my season-worst MAF result of 5:18/km or 8:32/mile during my first (rather short but I believe accurate) test last week since the running has been underway. It’s a far cry from the 4:04 or so I got to at my season’s best pace, but it leaves a lot of room for improvement which in some sense is satisfying. It proves that I am a human being, in discussion with swim coach Matt, this is actually a really healthy thing to learn when your fitness doesn’t immediately matter.

All in all the running program if completed as planned will result in me hitting a running fitness metric approximately 40% greater than I have ever achieved in my life before. I can do that without getting anywhere near the levels of training stress that I endured this past season (because I’m doing it with single-sport focus) so while I sounds like I’m really planning to stretch myself, I am pretty confident that I can do this while maintaining a lot better life-balance than some periods of 2010. My run-training stresses should not exceed what I have done in the past and my overall training stress balance will be significantly easier than this past year. The chart seen here indicates the plan if I am successful in hitting every workout along the way, and because the chronic load (red) is somewhat cumulative in nature, I know that due to the times I come up short in training and have to skip things that this is a best case scenario.

click image for larger

Planned training for the next four weeks has been laid out: [in this .pdf file] if you’re interested in looking at it. Rather simply, I’m slowly building a long run on Saturdays, and the first of the runs came up short this past week so it might be the case that this plan is a bit ambitious, I reserve the right to lay off a bit with that progression and not make it up to 20kms before Christmas. Although, if I keep hitting frequency in a similar way to that which I have in the past two weeks (10 runs in 15 days) I think comfortably getting that long run out to 20kms is not going to be an issue. All my running is subject to a strict MAF cap with the exception of the Tuesday night club run where I am free to run as I feel. Cycling is twice weekly along with swimming, and I am hitting the gym twice weekly to work with light weights at 20 repetitions, two or three sets depending on the movement and emphasizing a full range of motion with preference for multi-joint and free weights. This is going well, and is designed to allow me to hit a few weeks of high strength focus in early January prior to the running volume starting to take off. Whether or not these strength gains can be maintained through much of the running focus is questionable but doing this feels like an appropriate response to establish confident and balanced muscles following a period of limping and being lazy.

The performance management chart metrics calculated for this period of time are as follows:

Jesse Kropelnicki just had an article on Xtri about so called ‘Starvation workouts’, or workouts where you try and force your body to function with higher aerobic efficiency by not feeding it what it would most like to have (pure sugar) and thus the hope is that you would be training it to default into slightly more favorable substrate usage ratios the next time you workout. In short, teach your body to burn more fat as fuel source so it uses less of the more limited carbohydrate fuel source at any given intensity.

Here’s a copy of the article. I have no idea if it is copyrighted or whatever, I presume he writes it and distributes it for free so that it gets read and he gets the publicity. I’m posting it here… so it gets read… and I can vouch for the guy otherwise having a lot of very good and very interesting stuff to say (The stuff written about critical volume has played a foundational role in how I think about training). You can read his stuff on the QT2 website as well as occasionally on XTri… so there’s my publicity plug…

The main focus of Ironman training and racing is on the improvement of metabolic efficiency. Developing metabolic efficiency is nothing more than training the body to use aerobic energy systems at the highest paces/wattages possible. This is the least costly way to fuel the body during exercise. There is a great deal of debate around how best to develop this aerobic efficiency. I, as most, would argue that training at intensities right around aerobic threshold (AeT) is the most effective way to improve the body’s aerobic efficiency. But, a recent push makes the argument that dietary changes can impact these adaptations. To this end, it has been hypothesized that “starvation workouts” can help to promote efficiency. These are rides and/or runs where athletes essentially starve themselves, in an effort to force the body to use fat as its fuel source. For example, an athlete on a long aerobic ride of 3 to 4 hours would consume only water, throughout. In my opinion the research on this practice is very uncertain, and is accompanied by a great deal of potential detriments, none of which make it an acceptable risk. Some of these potential detriments include:

1) Starvation workouts can be extremely catabolic, as the body is forced to attack lean muscle mass in order to create carbohydrates for fuel. This process of neoglucogenesis is nightmarish for lower BMI athletes, who are already strength limited, and older athletes (females beyond the age of 45 and males older than 50), who by the nature of their age have difficulty maintaining lean muscle mass. This assault on the body disintegrates muscle mass, thus exacerbating an already problematic limiter. Furthermore, depriving the body of the fuel that it needs to train over long durations can set the stage for a compromised immune system, leading to missed training time due to illness.

2) I am a firm believer that athletes should avoid nutritionally limited workouts, at all costs. In essence, never ever bonk! Be it a typical training workout or race day, it should NEVER happen. Starvation workouts create an atmosphere primed for bonking. This means that your workout is likely to be limited by a lack of fuel, prior to the physical energy systems being appropriately trained or stressed. This is in direct conflict with the reason why we do all of this training, in the first place, and focus so much time and effort on effective recovery. The goal of any workout should be to promote an environment where the athlete can have better and better workouts, pushing previous limiters, thus increasing fitness. Too many sacrifices are made, on a day-to-day basis, aimed at improving our fitness and racing, to allow our efforts to be limited by that over which we have 100% control over.

3)At the Ironman distance, training the gut to be able to absorb the nutrients in their intended race fuel is part and parcel to effectively executing their race plan. This is especially so for those with high sweat rates. These athletes often experience races that are limited by nutrition, rather than a true display of their fitness. Starvation workouts do not provide the opportunity to train this very limiter….race nutrition! We end up seeing athletes who are forced to walk through a great deal of the marathon, because they have not trained their bodies to consume and process the calories that will be required to race effectively. Because each of our athletes is equipped with a personalized race fueling strategy, that is practiced every single day in training (I cannot begin to tell you how many Power Bars and Power Gels QT2ers consume throughout the year), QT2 continues to produce some of the fastest Ironman marathoners in the professional and age group ranks.

4) I often hear of athletes using these starvation workouts during the early season base phase of training, while simultaneously in the gym trying to build strength. The catabolic nature of these types of workouts mixes terribly with the anabolic atmosphere that should be created, through a well-developed weight-training program, to create a positive hormonal balance.

Ironman racing has a nice clean series of events, namely the swim, bike, and run, with overtones of race fueling throughout and within each. How well an athlete has fueled their race does not typically become apparent until the run. I have always believed that the best way to approach limiters, in triathlon, is to first deal with those that exist in series with one another. With this in mind, and knowing that an athlete’s inability to handle their race nutrition is what typically undermines their Ironman, I try to first focus on this limiter as it typically occurs earliest in the chain of events. It really does not do much good to focus on a limiter that occurs further down the line, since it may never have the opportunity to actually become a limiter on race day. An athlete’s metabolic efficiency, on the other hand, is typically a limiter that appears in parallel with most of his or her other limiters. The cases are rare that an athlete’s race will come to a screeching halt, due to poor metabolic efficiency. Therefore, not until we are 100% certain that an athlete does not have a nutritional limiter, should we begin to even consider any unorthodox ways of improving metabolic efficiency, that could even possibly undermine the athlete’s ability to consume and process appropriate race fuels.

But, if you absolutely insist upon incorporating starvation workouts into your training regimen, I recommend trying it no more than once a month, and not until you have full confidence in all aspects of your training, racing, and fueling. At this time, there simply has not been enough research performed, on the topic, for me to feel confident endorsing it to any of our athletes. As with anything else in life, whether or not to utilize starvation workouts is really a matter of risk versus reward. In my opinion, the possible benefits of these workouts simply do not outweigh the potential risks.

Jesse Kropelnicki is an elite/pro level triathlon coach who founded QT2 Systems, LLC; a leading provider of personal triathlon and run coaching, as well as TheCoreDiet.com a leading provider of sports nutrition. He is the triathlon coach of professional athletes Caitlin Snow, Dede Griesbauer, Ethan Brown, and Tim Snow among others; and nutrition/cardio advisor for professional UFC fighter Kenny Florian. His interests lie in coaching professional triathletes using quantitative training and nutrition protocols. You can track his other coaching comments/ideas via his blog at www.kropelnicki.com.

Jesse is definitely right, there’s not a whole ton of good scientific evidence that this strategy is net-beneficial. That said, it is something Steven Lord had me do during training in 2010. I tried to read up on it, and came to the same conclusion as Jesse, there’s not a whole ton of scientific PROOF that this is a great idea but intuitively it seems like one of the only ways to make the kinds of changes that you’d like to make in your body’s metabolic defaults. Lots of different exercise physiologists will tell you that you get an advantage at ironman by being a fat burner, but there aren’t a ton of people who will tell you how to do it. Alan Couzens profiled the technique he employed with one of his athletes a while ago in some of his writing. Now that I want to post a link to it I can’t find the exact article I’m thinking of. In any case, he had this guy modify his substrate consumption to increase fat, decrease carbs, and do a lot of work at aerobic threshold with a whole heck-ton of patience. I wish I could find the article, what he had the guy doing was low intensity stuff and not the kind of stuff that’s going to make you fast very quickly. It was however, going to make this kid fast in the long run because there were significant gains made to this athlete’s fat usage during exercise. The numbers were mind-blowing actually, this average guy was scoring somewhere near the 10calories/min from fat that people have calculated Mark Allen was able to do during his heydey in Kona (I presume that lots of the guys in the top 10 this year must be around that magic number as well).

I decided to listen to my coach.

Annette said that she was really proud of me a couple times this past year for listening to what he said. Her opinion was that lots of the other people she knew who had coaches often tried to be too smart and didn’t listen, and thus didn’t get the benefit of the protocol as it was designed. I can’t say I listened to Steven all year long about everything, and I did some complaining (thinly disguised as asking tough and frustrating questions) about some things. This was one of the things I think I complained about, but I did do what he was suggesting I do about modifying substrate usage.

This year I had already decided I was going to eat more fat than last when I had been on this idea of making my body into a carbohydrate furnace, ready to pour them in, rev a high HR, and make more watts at any cost. I wasn’t racing so long (less than 5 hours) that I felt there was a huge detriment to doing that. I knew that I could eat and digest at pretty high intensities so my game plan was to just pour fuel on the fire and not worry about running out. This worked, it wasn’t a really long term strategy I found, and I think the lack of fat in my diet was probably a bit unhealthy in other regards. My skin didn’t heal very quickly amongst a few other things that I noticed (along with some search-engine help) were probably an indication that this “burn as much fuel as you can and you’ll go faster” was probably a bit shortsighted. It made me fast at a cost that I identified as being probably not the best for myself. So, that wasn’t a change posed by Steven, but he did put a few other interesting ideas on the table.

Starting early on Steven began suggesting on my endurance focused rides that I cut the carbohydrates completely in the morning before the ride. Now it’s totally possible to load up and feel full without hardly any carbohydrates and I always did that, I never did pure starvation in the manner alluded to by Jesse’s article, however I was doing a form of starvation training. A typical breakfast would be between four and six fried eggs with cheese melted on top. A red pepper, a glass of milk, and a handful of cashews or pecans. I also pre-ran prior to some of those weekend bike rides during the spring to rack up a bonus 40 minutes. Those mornings I’d just eat some nuts or halva with water or milk before the short run, and then come home and make my big pre-ride omelette. Then I’d start riding and I definitely and noticeable wouldn’t have any blood sugar.

These long rides were not completed without eventually getting myself into the carbohydrates and eating sports nutrition (i.e. practicing the race plan) along the way. Generally I’d ride the first two hours on just water and perhaps a bit of sausage or some almonds. That was it though, I’d generally feel pretty slow (even though I wasn’t necessarily being slow) and was just a bit mentally dreary. Considering the fact that your brain won’t fuel itself off anything other than sugar the mentally dragging your ass along the road feeling was going to be par for the course. Then I’d eventually pick up the fuel, and finish off the ride allowing the body to run off of both ingested carbohydrate fuel and processed fat.

Did I observe the four points that Jesse makes? Yes. Did I suffer the consequences he outlines? Only once did I actually bonk and had to pay the consequences of taking this method to to far an extreme by missing out on planned training.

1 & 4 I no doubt experienced the catabolic effect of this kind of training as it prevented strength gains during this period of time. Whether or not it was the low-carb riding that did it or the incessant running I was doing while shooting for 7 runs per week frequency is an open question but I no doubt would say that I didn’t get any stronger during this period of training (Mid-April through Mid-July). I basically made zero gains in the gym with weights between early May and the end of July when I quit strength training. I wasn’t in a period of trying to build strength in the gym, but I would have expected that my leg strength would have improved by the amount of riding I was doing and I’d be able to see evidence of that in the gym. This was not the case, leg-holds on the leg-press sled probably got relatively more difficult as the summer went on even though I did the same set at 270lbs with each leg all the way through. Did I suffer a compromised immune system? No. I didn’t get sick at all, but I can’t rule out that the hormonal effects tied to getting so tired weren’t related to the hormonal effects brought on by operating occasionally with a blood sugar deficit. The worst blood sugar low did result once in a total bonk and came a week before a race which I proceeded to do fantastic at. In a round-about way this could have been something setting me up to get knocked into serious fatigue as a result of that race. I was at a low mentally with motivation and with energy levels the next two weeks.

2 The warning is that if you do this to your body you’re unable to push your physical limiters. OK, if we narrowly define fitness there’s a way to make this statement true. I likely didn’t make any gains with my functional threshold power over 2009 during this season, heaven forbid perhaps it got a bit worse. This is a problem with deciding that your functional threshold power is the best metric for measuring success. As a result of this training I was able to post an age-group fastest bike split and on the run, run within a couple percent of my open marathon time. These are measurements of fitness success both un-acheivable last season, and so I think it’s misleading to say that because you might not be gaining a certain type of fitness by doing these workouts that it means you’re not getting better. If it makes you faster for your target race then that’s the measure of success.

3A true starvation workout doesn’t allow you to practice ironman fueling but I’d suggest that the method I used which is what I guess I’d call hybrid-carbohydrate-starvation is actually an extremely ironman specific way to practice doing the fueling. Starting with a morning-prior-to-the-ride-carboload is going to lull you into a false sense of having your glycogen stores and blood sugar at a maximum before beginning the ride. It will reinforce the idea that your nutrition is not a fragile calculus because you’ve got the glycogen reserve buffer to work against. The ironman swim is going to use up a large chunk of your glycogen and you’re not going to be eating with the “bank in reserve” during the race, you’re eating with the glycogen bank on it’s way to being empty. This is exactly what happens if you start your morning with no carbs, the blood sugar stays down, and while you’ve got some glycogen in your muscles you don’t have a big stash of liver glycogen because your body has used it over the course of the night to keep chugging along.

So would I recommend it? Early in the season (especially at bike camp in early April) I needed to be consistently eating all the way through the ride to stay topped up. Later in the season, I could still eat (I mean, I ate a LOT at Ironman, so I clearly didn’t de-train this ability) but I didn’t feel the need to constantly be eating as the season progressed. I’ll take the desire to eat carbohydrates as a measure that my body was requiring more carbohydrates, it’s generally smart like that. I also felt a lot better during the pre-carbohydrate portions of those rides as the weeks progressed. They set me up with sufficient cycling base to do the hard-ironman specific intervals that the program required as the race grew closer. I could have done all those earlier season rides fully fueled and I would have shown up with a similar cycling base, I don’t know if it would have been any better, but I wouldn’t have changed my need to be constantly pouring sugar into my mouth. I probably would have trained harder during this base period and perhaps would have come into better fitness sooner but that’s then a measure of planning appropriately and not so much what you eat. I don’t have the financial resources available to do the testing to prove that I made big gains in my metabolic efficiency this past year but I am confident that I did. Sorry, no fancy graphs from me for this post. Just a good idea for early-season pre-ride breakfast:

I’d definitely suggest that Jesse is casting this rather experimental kind of training in too negative a light. There are intelligent ways to do metabolic efficiency training and there are unintelligent ways of doing it. By suggesting that no-food starvation training is terrible without considering the middle-ground of beginning long rides in a carbohydrate depleted state I think he’s suggesting that this is something we’re hopelessly unable to improve. While I’m hesitant to really recommend what I did I do think that it’s definitely got merit. I’m quite open to there being a better way to develop this skill with our bodies than the method I used but I’m pretty confident that it is possible to do a better job of it than doing no job at all which is what Jesse is unfortunately suggesting.

I’ve been thinking about another road bike since early 2009. That year at the Pigeon Lake Road Race, which I went on to win with Stefan [race report] I could really tell that the bottom bracket of my aluminum Cervelo Dual was swaying back and forth pretty seriously when I was laying down the watts. I didn’t necessarily suffer big losses as a result of this but I did decide at that point that if I was going to really decide that I was going to race seriously I should probably get another frame under me that solved some of the bottom bracket stiffness issues that I was seeing in a 2004 aluminum frame. This definitely isn’t a criticism of that bike, it’s an observation. It’s an older aluminum frame by this point and no-one is going to tell you that they’re supposed to be the stiffest bikes with long lives. Aluminum has a fatigue curve that’s a heck of a lot different than steel, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I’ve ridden my way down that fatigue curve a LONG ways.

In 2010 I wasn’t about to be upgrading my road bike because the focus was on Ironman Canada and I also had to unfortunately deal with the replacement of my Cervelo P2 carbon fiber frame after an unfortunate incident with an exploding chain. That basically decided for me that the new bike wasn’t coming so soon! I also had an experience riding a Giant TCR that showed me what riding an entry level carbon fiber layup was like. I wasn’t super keen on slapping down any money if I wasn’t going to do better than that, I was going to be picky with my geometry (the back end of the TCR seemed squirrelly) and also not buy a carbon fiber bike that some bike company made out of carbon because they wanted to serve the “I want a carbon bike” demographic. It had better be made out of carbon fiber to serve a purpose, and unfortunately I see a lot of riffraff in the catalogs and shops that aren’t exploiting carbon, they’re just using it. I did upgrade my road bike to 10 speeds though at the end of 2009 and made the leap (sorry, couldn’t help myself) to SRAM with some Red doubletaps. I did so with the intention of taking those components along to my next frame at some point, and still managed to put on a bit more than 3500kms on that bike this past summer including an 800km week training camp in Penticton. The time has come though, that I’m going to retire my “first bike”. Well, at least the first bike that wasn’t purchased with Dad’s money!

The looking started amongst Ti frames. I was pretty sure I wanted to buy a life-long bike. I wanted to get the geometry right, and have something I could put ten thousand kms on every year for the next three decades. Once the looking got serious and I paid a visit to a shop to start discussing details the reality set in, it wasn’t going to happen. The cost of doing that was basically unjustifiable and so, as time wore on I gave up on the dream of buying a Moots and being “that guy” every time I was out on a cool ride. Not that I want to be “that guy”, I certainly don’t, but I did want to be able to ride “that bike”. I don’t know if the difference is understandable to someone who doesn’t know “The Rules”, but learning Rule 4 would be an appropriate place to start (please oh please read this stuff in context!).

It was about this time that pretty much all of my heros descended on a little town by the sea otherwise known as Mecca Kona for the annual pilgrimage showdown (OK, Heather Jackson and Angela Naeth weren’t racing but they were still there!). The number of powermeters used at the top ranks of my sport is mind-boggling considering the fact that they’re still not cheap. I am fully aware of the fact that there is a bit of a chicken and egg question here. Do they help people qualify, or is their purchase the result of being a qualifying level kind of triathlete. I’m well aware that Stefan’s only power measurement was on his trainer (inaccurate, but repeatable for his key sessions) and that both of the Pro winners did not race with power-feedback on the day. That said, after reading Gordo’s thoughts on the matter I have nearly decided that it’s an egg and not a chicken thing. Power-feedback is worthwhile, and if I decide to gun for a qualifying time then I would be wise to be training based on watts in addition to RPE and HR. That being said, there was now a big budget hole arriving right around the bottom bracket! Ti was unquestionably out.

OK, the search was dialed back to basically square one and I set out in search of a bike with a few less criteria than I had when I’d started out in dreamland (otherwise known as Steamboat or Chattanooga) earlier. I wasn’t about to give up on trying to cheat the custom bike builders rule of three, but I did decide I had to start learning and looking at carbon fiber with more seriousness.

Custom Bike Builders Rule of Three:

Light, Durable, Cheap – Choose Two.

OK, I’m going to try to get through this stuff quickly. There are a dozen different blog posts in here if I go into all the detail I’m tempted to. This is supposed to be chronological, not logical, so don’t suspect that the order makes much sense! I started by looking at the cheap carbon bikes that you can buy built from the old Kuota layups. They max out at 59cm frame size, No deal. Ibis Silk. Too small again, no deal. Kuota KOM and Cervelo S2, too close to the Ti pricepoint to feel like I was coming out ahead, no deal. KHS, not big enough, no deal. Colnago, doesn’t suit my style. Look, BMC & Pinarello, far too expensive. Trek, Giant and Specialized all seemed to have offerings right in my price-bracket but as soon as I started reading about them I realized the quality I was expecting was actually a step higher on their rather complicated ladder of products than I was looking at. Worth noting is that all of these guys are pushing women’s geometry, something I don’t believe, sure, sell women’s paint and a women’s parts kit, but base the geometry on research. Research says no dice there. This really makes my impression of them go straight to question the marketing, these are marketing companies. There are smart people selling those bikes for sure, but I figured I could do better, No Deal. Cannondale, very tempting actually, they’ve actually got an excellent spread of bikes at the moment. And if I decided on a cannondale I’m sure I would have been happy. I probably would be incredibly happy with a CAAD10 even if I didn’t nose my way all the way in amongst the SuperSixes. Then I was looking at laying my hands on a Scott Addict, but I didn’t actually read too much about it because I got distracted by the Wilier Imperiale. I was actually *really* keen on this bike for about a week. Then it started to make me feel the same way as I had with the Kuota KOM and Cervelo S2. This is a fantastic bike but it’s not the best bike, so why would I pay such a high fraction of the price of a best bike without getting one. Revamping this thinking AGAIN after basically doing a complete survey of almost all the bike bike companies out there made me re-evaluate my plan.

Let’s see how cheap I can get a bike that is still a definite upgrade from what I’ve got. If I do that, I can almost certainly find the bike with a pricepoint that allows me to buy some carbon wheels to trip it out for racing. The performance of that combination is going to be good. It might even be better than the tripped out bike (I’m comparing against the Wilier here) with the mid range Mavic Cosmic Elites that I used as my TT training wheels and road racing wheels this past year. OK, my mind was made up, or more made up. I still now needed to find whichever bike it is that fits this performance metric and scores on the pricepoint.

I went straight to Neuvation. I was frustrated (to say the least) that the FC500 wouldn’t come big enough for me, and I started to despair and was considering the Neuvation FC100. This was NOT going to be an upgrade from the dual, and I knew it. The geometry was excellent but the carbon layup was supposed to make for a bike with satisfactory stiffness according to review, not great stiffness. I couldn’t convince myself that this bike was anything better than a full carbon Trek Madone built up with cheap carbon and Tiagra components to put a bunch of groupies on “the bike that Lance rides” that a few friends and I have spent so much time making fun of in the past couple weeks. OK. Neuvation is sadly out. I’m starting to wonder about the viability of me finding what I wanted. How good of a bike will I be riding if I put carbon wheels, a new crank, and upgrade the bars/stem on my Cervelo? I think I could bring it in under 18 lbs, maybe mid 17s

Then I had a brainwave. I was pretty sure there were other companies out there making similar bikes to the ones that I’d seen on Ebay using the old Kuota molds. I didn’t need something from a Kuota mold, I didn’t care actually but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to get something with funny geometry that some dude built in his garage. Then I decided I wanted something from a Cervelo mold as I am proof of the effectiveness of their superior geometry. I was 100% certain that Cervelo wasn’t going to sell their Soloist molds to anyone but what if there was someone out there who reverse engineered it? I plugged “Cervelo S” geometry into google. On page three my world got a bit turned upside-down. I found EXACTLY what I wanted.

Aerocat is a little company out of Indiana. Good sign, that’s where ZIPP is from I thought to myself. (Not that that makes any difference, but at least I stayed on their site!) They have a bike called the R509 that’s built up based very similar geometry to the Cervelo S2/S3. I might even go so far to say that I like the geometry a bit better because the toptube is closer to flat. For someone who rides with a lot of post on the largest bike you can buy the idea of sticking with a level toptube is actually valued by me. I don’t know if this is a silly line of thinking. I haven’t read all that much about it because I don’t think much has been written, but I do think it is logical. If your bike is going to be a bit on the small side (which any bike except for that Lynsky custom Ti is going to be), then you shouldn’t exasperate the problem by selecting a compact geometry or heavily sloping toptube (a big reason Specialized doesn’t look quite right). A quick email to confirm that I could buy the fork/frameset and not a full bike from them and I was sold. So, if it sounds like the flat toptube really sold me on this bike you’d probably be at least partly right. But the rest of it checked out too. I can’t say that I was able to read all that many reviews of this bike in particular as it’s a new addition to the Aerocat line. The number they gave to it suggests that it fits in their “ranks” quite near the top. I was able to surmise that the carbon fiber layups in some of the lesser numbered bikes was actually pretty fantastic and that stiffness wise I’d have nothing to worry about with this bike. I am concerned that a company without a whole ton of proven engineering experience may not have perfected the balance between bottom bracket stiffness and vertical compliance. If it’s the case that I get road shock up through the back of this bike I am going to understand why but I am not buying an R5 so I can’t expect the world. I’m almost certain though that vertical jamming is not going to be worse that that which I experienced on the Giant TCR I rode in San Francisco (which didn’t ruin my ride by any means, but it was noticeable enough to be noticed though). With a proper geometry I would surmise that the effect of perhaps less than ideal vertical compliance isn’t going to be as noticeable. With the R509 I score the proven geometry, a la Cervelo. I wasn’t convinced that the TCR had it right because it felt off balance especially descending, perhaps not enough bb-drop or a chainstay length issue. Now that I’ve thought about this I’ll probably be hypersensitive to how that feels and I’ll let you know. I’ll be sure to run it with my same default Ritchey wheels when making the comparison as good vs. great spoke lacing can make a difference in that regard.

The proof of whether or not this bike is as amazing a coup as I think it is will arrive shortly. This bike is ON THE WAY! I’ll be building it up temporarily with parts I have before I get everything together for the build I plan to use next summer. That final build is going to look like this:

I make no apologies for the hack-job I did stitching together these images. It’s supposed to help you dream about what it looks like from the side, but as you dream don’t start criticizing, I think I can build even better than I can sketch. For starters I promise my bike won’t violate Rule 46 once I build it. Travis just un-sold me on the prospect of white Nokons, I am undecided what the alternative to that will be.

An aside for anyone who read all the way to the bottom, I’m sure you’ll appreciate Coach Gordo’s advice on how to make flat coke. Any wonder that tri geeks love this guy?

I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about where things are headed in 2011 and beyond with the fitness game, I’m currently under the assumption that I continue playing it. I still love it, and I’ve enjoyed making a progression through things, but Ironman was a bit of a destination and so future things needed to be sketched from scratch.

I was having all sorts of scenarios play out in my head about this and that and it was hard to sort anything out. Then I decided I needed to sit back and write down a few goals. The Ironman had been on the horizon for a long time before I got really serious about it, it was a multi-season goal, and now it’s multi-season goals that once again are making up the majority of the thoughts rolling around inside my head.

This entry is in two parts: Long Term Goals and a sequel outlining my Specific Athletic Goals for 2011.

Long term:

• Reclaim balance in my life with sport. I have been trying too hard and it is mentally exhausting. I spent a year with the mental attitude of “pull out all the stops” and I can’t handle doing that anymore. I can create as many good habits as I need to and I can drop all the bad habits that I need to but I can’t live with the attitude that I need to do things that I don’t want to do. The backlash from this is unhealthy. This is also making too many things a point of stress in my life. If I’m going to train like this again I need to make the training stress the only source of stress in my life, because I can’t let myself re-do that period of time, it wasn’t healthy.
• I need to reclaim a rest day each week with NO training. No easy training days and pretending that they’re rest except for during specific prep for the season’s A race between 8 & 3 weeks out. I’m undecided if this rule applies to a consistent block of running or not. I would like to think that it does apply. If I’m doing a MAF development challenge then I need to plan to double up once a week. I executed my first aerobic development challenge with 6 days a week of running, it found me more than 6 minutes of half marathon PR. The seventh day of training is the less value than the seventh set of workouts. If I need the seventh day worth of workouts then I can fit them into 6 days. In my mind this is quite clearly and if.
• Make it to Kona
  • 1 hour swim (1:25/100yds)
  • 4:50 bike. (23.2 mph or 37.3 kph) – I think this is approximately 54 minute 40km TT shape i.e. FTP yields 44.4kph in fair conditions.
    • Analytical Cycling says that this is an FTP of approximately 334Watts.
    • I have absolutely no idea where I’m at.
  • 3:15 – 3:20 run (4:45/km or 7:40/mile)
  • transitions
  • contingency time

What it takes? The first two long-term goals are going to require dedication and aren’t always going to be easy, but they’re probably more important than #3. The breakdown of Part 3 goes as follows – to get the Kona slot I think I need to:

• Treat Ironman as a race with finite duration rather than infinite duration. Unlimited endurance is unnecessary and seeking it drained me too much. Not being tired at the end of Ironman but only being sore is not the fastest way to do this sport.
• Get my MAF run pace down to 3:50-3:52/km. This will come with consistency, but it might not come within a year. My best recorded MAF test result was at 4:02 this summer, it was a single data-point though and I think I really only achieved a MAF pace of 4:05-4:07.
• Run a significantly faster marathon than I need to run for Ironman. Goal = 7 min miles = 3h4min
• Get my threshold swim speed down to 1:22/100yds (10 seconds faster than what I can do now)
• I am probably good enough to ride this fast if I decided that this was how fast I needed to ride. I could do it, but with not much confidence that I’d be running my best afterward.
• I need to adopt a bit more of a balanced cycling program so I can strategically race the bike leg. This means I need to improve the short duration end of the power-curve. This is not to be done at the expense of totally giving up the favorable fat burning bias I’ve developed so successfully in 2010.
• I now want to use a power meter.

In all honesty I don’t think I’ll be ready to race at this level next year. I can get there in the long term but I’m not yet ready to do it next year. Making this realization answered my questions regarding racing Ironman Cozumel in 2011. That time line is too aggressive. I can’t ever be sure I’ll qualify the next time I try Ironman, but I don’t see that it’s worth making all of the sacrifices to try it until I at least think I have a chance. The time/effort/stress cost of it is too high to rush it.

This entry is in two parts: Long Term Goals and a sequel outlining my Specific Athletic Goals for 2011.

Swimming:

• Figure out how I am going to fit more swimming into my new life as a working person. I need to find my love of swimming again.
• No swimming with the purpose of building fitness, only swimming with the purpose of being a better swimmer.

Running:

• Twice I need to put a 6 week focus on MAF running and aim for high frequency. Learn what this does to MAF pace.
• Run a fast marathon.
  • I feel like 7 minute miles is a rough estimate for the prerequisite I’ve estimated for Kona qualification. This will be a rough target for the year however race-day target pace will be based on evidence in training and not what I want to do.

I’m unsure of what the “minimum” is when I’ve got the MAF focus. Perhaps 30 minutes for 3 weeks immediately into 40 minutes for 3 weeks. Or 7.5kms for 3 weeks into 10kms for 3 weeks Those seem challenging yet appropriate. Keep track of MAF pace throughout this kind of training as well as through less focused training. I don’t believe I have graduated from MAF training on the run yet.

Otherwise I hope to execute a balanced run program. Be a balanced runner. 1x weekly endurance focused run, 1x intervals session with focus on 400m-1000m VO2max intervals with perfect form, 1x progression run or general tempo run designed for experience at marathon pace. During specific prep phases include a hills run where I run fast on ups and on downs (to eccentrically load the muscles and develop leg strength) plus additional easy runs (to get miles).

Cycling:

• Learn to really race bikes.
• Switch clubs so I have people to train on the road with and race as much as I possibly can. This means that this is the focus for May-August.

Triathlon:

• Don’t miss out on an entire season to gain some experience racing. That would be silly, so I need to race, and 70.3 seems like the appropriate distance.

An Aside:I am no longer convinced that I tapered ideally for the bike for Ironman. When I rode my best bike splits relative to my fitness (Chinook 2009 and GWN 2010) I had not been as bike-rested as I was for Ironman and Calgary 70.3. This makes me think I should probably try to design a slightly different protocol. For example I rode a pretty serious ride two days out from GWN, long stretches above IMeffort. I think the reason is this: I have such a hard time getting actually sore from cycling using the kind of protocol I used this past year that I can work on fitness so well on the bike that as soon as I stop riding I start to loose it. There’s minimal rest required with the method of training I employed this past year. If I were training with a balanced program and loading up on muscular fatigue then perhaps I’d need to taper but if I’m not training hard, just riding a lot then I don’t need to taper from it. We’ll see next year as I intend to train with more intensity on the bike, I may well find that I need to taper on the bike to perform well.

I should be able to learn quite a bit about cycling and cycle tapering by racing bikes and doing a half Ironman without a bike taper. I may squeeze in a few short course races as well depending on how they fit in alongside bike racing. I think they’d help maintain and develop skills in mentally focusing at max steady state effort instead of cycling which will be far more strategic next year. Some power and HR data from Olympic distance racing would probably be valuable in planning future training. If I decide to do it it would have to fit into a schedule with a few specific prep run-workouts and about 3 days of unloaded training so I could actually perform well. Weekends quickly get busy in the summer, so I don’t know exactly how this will fit, the ATA schedule is not confirmed anyhow.

Season plans:

As soon as the Achilles allows – get in the pool. Start knocking down 10km weeks. Figure out how to make it fit. Figure out how to stay focused. Figure out how to love it again. If I start hating it I need to change something to make it work again. Think about swimming primary goal for swimming is getting to the pool with motivation. This needs to continue throughout the year.

Cycling through the winter. Indoor training 2 or 3 sessions per week. Ride as much as I want to, no pressure to “get workouts in” until May.		Running until Christmas – just get back into it starting in January: 3 weeks balanced program 1 week reduced balanced program 6 weeks MAF focus 1 week reduced balanced program 3 weeks push balanced program 3 weeks taper to Marathon including 10mile race. MAF tests bi-weekly throughout Run focus finishes with Vancouver Marathon on May 1
May – train like a maniac on the bike, long easy miles transition into balanced intensity high mileage.		Running stays balanced and easy recovery from Marathon, no rush to get run fit again keeps the pressure down.
Early June – Oliver Half Ironman Minimal taper on bike to see how that works, I need to log the TT time though to make sure I’m ready to put out power in that position as not doing so was a recipe for disaster at Chinook 2010 on the bike leg. I’d mostly rely on residual run fitness from marathon prep, 5 weeks later is late enough to race again but it’s not really enough time to put in a good training block after the marathon. My 2009 marathon showed me that it will take a while to get my run legs back. No pressure on race day, set my sights high and just race. Love the sport and have fun. I’m not trying to benchmark or gauge progression or test a strategy, I’m just racing. It will probably be a season highlight.
June-July-August. Race bikes whenever possible. Go backpacking a couple times. Perhaps fit in a bike-tour with trailer for a few days. Minimal structured training except to fit in specific prep to race well at Bowness Stage Race, Road Provincial Championships and LaPierre Stage Race in August. If I’m feeling interested, race a late summer olympic distance triathlon. Help out friends training for IMCanada by accompanying them on their long rides when possible.		Run three times/week bi-weekly long run.
Cyclocross continues in the fall as entertainment and I don’t worry about my bike fitness. I let it fade and try to reap the rewards with some racing. This probably means I should move my long run to midweek in the fall so I can do a bit more horsing around on the ‘cross bike on the weekends.		Running – Begin focus again in September 2011 6 weeks MAF focus with weekly cross country race. 1 week reduced balanced program 3 weeks push balanced program 3 weeks taper to Marathon.
		Marathon in Nevada on November 20. Choose either a fast one or a really challenging hilly one depending on how the spring marathon goes. Both options exist on the same weekend, I can of course wait until after the spring marathon to decide which one I’d rather do, if I choose hills the training will of course have to reflect this choice.
Spring Marathon – in the city.		Fall Marathon – in the desert.

Sneak Peak at Ironman Attempt #2 – 2012

Take a break until Christmas and then begin structured training in January 2012 for Ironman. At which point I’ll almost certainly be a better runner. Hopefully I’ll be a more confident runner. I’ll almost certainly be a better cyclist. I’ll have a season of training with a power-meter and will have a pretty good idea about training with it in the lead-up to IM. Listening to Gordo talk about this and seeing how many people raced Kona with them has me almost convinced that there is cause and effect. It can’t be just the fact that people think they need then when they’re so widespread at the top level yet still not cheap.

Options include: Cozumel in November (AZ is similar time but I’d rather go to Mexico if I choose a late-season race), Coeur d’Alene in June, St George in April, or potentially Ironman Canada or Wisconsin at the end of the summer or potentially Brazil in late May. Brazil and Cozumel would be the faster races. We’ll presume that Cozumel will be just as competitive as everything else by that point in time. I can’t see how anything can stay stay non-competitive with people wanting to get to Kona, the first year has got to be a fluke.

I don’t know if it’s an advantage or disadvantage for me to choose a tough race or a faster and easier race. My instinct is that I shouldn’t choose a tough run course (StG is a bad idea). Choosing a hard bike course like Wisconsin seems like the strategic option, but all those rolling hills could thrash me just as much as anyone else, there isn’t really a safe bet. Wisconsin also qualifies for an entire year later which is kinda cool. I also might have the opportunity to run Boston the following spring if this marathon game is successful. If I qualified I think I’d like to do it, it would be really fun, that puts the earliest I would be ready to try Ironman well into August because I presume I’d be training to run well in Boston. I think Wisconsin becomes the preference although the financial cost of that doing that one is pretty high, it probably needs to be weighed pros/cons against Ironman Canada in more detail, but I’ve got almost a year before I’d have to sign up. Unfortunately I need to decide on which race to do before I can hear first-hand stories about Cozumel from Stefan.

Big ups to Mr. Dave Roberts for making the Masters A race so exciting to watch! I’ll admit that I probably would be thanking Devin if I raced for Deadgoat for making the Masters A race so exciting to watch… but I don’t race for Deadgoat so the congratulations are strictly for Dave. Ha! John Clarke hung in there like a tough nut and made his bid for the win which was exciting to see. Dave and Devin would have been pretty frustrated if he did indeed get them at the finish but he was too fried. There was also exciting racing going on throughout the field as a group of 5 guys (plus or minus depending on when you count) including Jan Plavec representing Fiera dueled it out for places 7-12. It was clear that they were all racing to their potential and many of them looked to be dieing a thousand deaths, so who cares if they weren’t going for the win, it was great to watch! A bit further back Joe and Darren from Fiera dueled head to head for much of the race, both challenging one another in just the latest match of a few head-to-heads over the past couple weeks. This time it was Darren out on top. The Master B guys raced at the same time and Mark Rumsey of Hardcore took the win. He likely would have been head to head with the lead trio in the Master A group if he didn’t start a minute back with the more seasoned racers. His finish time doesn’t reflect that but we should also consider that he did need to work his way through the vast majority of the younger category over the course of the race. Overall Master A&B was the race of the day to watch!

The women’s race was great as well but unfortunately we watched Katy fly off the front solo and not have Pepper Harlton there to defend her title and give her a run for the money. The race of the day was Bridget Linder vs. Marg Fedyna, for second, who went head to head for another edition of the season-long battle. A crash in the closing section of the final lap gave Bridget the opportunity to go past and hold on for the win. It wasn’t exactly how we wanted to see the race play out but I suppose it’s part of the game when you’re racing on the edge. If you go over the edge you make mistakes. A slip at the dismount into the sand cost Marg the second step on the podium (Who was racing up TWO categories among the elite women!).

The Elite race was also entertaining as we watched Aaron Schooler blow the doors off the competition. It’s nice to know that the guy is a class act, we discussed it on race day and if we had to watch races against someone who was that good all the time and they had a different demeanor we’re not sure how much we would appreciate the talent. Then there was the late charge by Mack Carson trying to tear the last podium spot away from Matt Krahn… which was indeed super exciting. Matt did hold on which is great to see. He has made huge progress since last season.

The two photos are hijacked from Bill Quinney’s Flickr page which has more great snaps of the other races of the day

I have a sense that I spent a vast majority of the last year mentally training for Ironman and not so much physically training for Ironman. When I go back and look at the training log there are very very few sessions in there that were physically challenging to complete. When I look at how I trained 4 years ago when I was just getting into the sport, I was physically challenging myself a lot more than I did this season. Recently I’ve been trying to do so much all the time that the thing that’s limiting me from training better is basically fatigue management. Mental gymnastics to motivate myself into adding more aerobic training load to the table. I never wanted to go so hard one day that I was potentially sacrificing tomorrow’s training. That’s supposed to be the golden rule… but I spent 7 months on the edge of getting too tired. That was almost the only mode of training and it became a total mental game. If I recount what was physically challenging I can list it all for 2010, I can’t do that for last year, it would mean copying and pasting 5 out of 10 workouts each week most months.

Workouts where I got to a limit of what I could do during the 2010 season:

1. One part of one ride at the spring training camp on the bike I totally challenged what I could ask myself to do. The entire rest of the camp I was too concerned with not getting too tired.
2. My first 30km run of the year was a challenge, it was a big step up from what I was doing, muscles could barely handle it past 26kms.
3. Sunday morning bike race way back April was a challenge, I got to race a category above what I normally am allowed into and raced HARD. It would have qualified for the list even if I hadn’t tacked on another 100kms to the back end of it to make an iron-ride out of the day as well.
4. The Calgary Police Half marathon was a challenge, and I succeeded in going sub 90 minutes for the first time ever.
• May had no challenges, not surprisingly I was so stressed out from organizing that race that I had no ability to challenge myself in training, only to do it.
• 40 runs in 40 days was tough but it didn’t challenge the physical limits in any workouts, just mental ones.
5. Highwood pass double traverse: The only time I think my endurance was challenged – completing the 300km ride.
6. Chinook Half was only challenging on the run, I couldn’t mentally cope on the bike with frustration and lack of experience riding my TT rig. Fortunately I then I got off and lit up a great run.
• The Ditch Bonk – challenge? er… no… Stupidity?
7. Great White North. Challenging swim, bike and run. I had spent so much time on the edge of getting too tired that this one really knocked me down for the count. As you probably recall I got smoked.
8. Challenging bike ride 185km two man TT “race” just prior to my mini epic camp.
9. 3×10km poker pacing run during epic camp. No challenging riding or swimming happened all week despite netting 47 hours. Just mentally tough to get through.
10. The 34km run 3 weeks prior to race day was a challenge, largely brought on by the heat.
11. Ironman Canada. Challenged the pain threshold for miles 16 through 26. I’m not sure if I really should be counting this as the race, or just the run. If I use the same criteria as my other rides through the summer this ride wouldn’t actually have made the cut which as a challenging ride. I’m not sure what to think about that. It means there’s still something to accomplish out there.

In retrospect I netted 10 times physically challenging myself in the course of 6 months prior to race day and spent the rest of it on the balancing edge of getting too tired by doing too much. My gut feeling is that this ratio is not correct. Considering that 5 of those were brought on by racing and only 5 were in training on average I was challenging myself in training less than once a month?

I had a good chat with my coach today and he wasn’t overly surprised by this tally. Not nearly as surprised as I was. I mentioned the fact that I had read that Mirinda Carfrae was doing two really focused and challenging bike workouts per week all year and it looks to have paid off at the world championships. His comment was that’s all well and fine but we can’t just look at how the person trained during their last year before the race. We have to look at their whole career. I myself have been saying that Ironman training takes more than a year so I should agree. Sometimes it’s hard to agree with myself though! I did a good job of finding a coach whose philosophy I agree with, so when I now wonder and have all sorts of questions it feels kind of like I’m the one who’s saying to myself “I told you so”.

Often when I read about how people who are better than me train, they have designed a training schedule where there are key sessions to show up for… and you physically challenge yourself each time you go do them. Step 1: Get mentally charged up for the workout. Step 2. Go nuts! I did mentally get charged up for a few workouts this summer… and they all got listed here. I had a schedule and mindset where everything was just a part of the whole and you had to dole out your ability to train carefully so you could do it all. I did get faster on the run since February but I’m not totally convinced that I got a whole lot on the bike or the swim.. I slapped together 3 x 20 hours weeks in a row in February in the middle of winter when I had less than 8 hours a day of sunlight to deal with and the cards were stacked against me. Later on in the summer I was equally fatigued from putting together a string of 20-22 hour weeks. I think that means I was a bit too close to the edge of being too tired for too long. Getting to that edge is important, it makes you strong for Ironman but I’m not convinced I need to go there and sit there for months at a time. Going to visit is nice, but a few weeks visit a few times a season is probably enough.

I made a chart that shows my moving average equivalent hours of work representative of RPE and it starts out when Steven started coaching me at 1.4. We did a 30/30/30 challenge and by the end of it I was down to 1.3. I stayed right around 1.3 all the way until we neared the end of the 40/40/40 at which point it falls off to 1.25 and it stayed there through until late July. During August and my taper it rose up to 1.35 by race day. In comparison to the season prior, I spent the winter “low” at 1.35 and it increased and increased my intensity along with with my training load. Then I overdid it a bit towards the end with the intensity and volume getting a bit out of control at 1.55 and I wound up flat for my season ending race. Along the way though, I had some fantastic performances and I got really really fit. I might have had a higher functional threshold power last year than I did this year. I absolutely would not have been surprised if I had power data to back this guess up. It was not a slouch on the bike this year but I might not be faster. I saw my average speeds from our Icefields Double Traverse last July and I don’t think I could have done any better this year.

What does this trend tell me? I think it’s saying I beat myself down too hard in late May and June. My average training intensity was falling at a point in the season where the “big base” should have already been built. I would think that with 12 weeks to go to Ironman that you should be thinking about picking up the specificity which would mean trading in some of the long long long slow slow slow, for Ironman pace and perhaps paring back a bit of the overall load to do so. I hampered the ability to design things that way by racing a few times during this part of the year. I would have ideally made the turn towards gradually rising intensity at the beginning of June rather than the middle of July. Making that shift earlier probably would have meant I would have have trained with a bit more intensity, stressed the muscles a bit more and been a bit stronger. It would have meant I had a bit more power at IM effort. Maybe it would have meant I could have run faster from mile 16 through to the finish.

		sunny morning breeze riding bicycles in the city waiting for next year

pictures from flickr