Joshua D. Krabbe¹, David R. Roberts².

1. MSc. Specialization in fabrication of tiny thingamabobs and thingamajigs and doodads and doohickeys that aren’t immediately very useful for anything*
2. PhD Candidate. Specialization in sweeping inconsistencies in climate data under the rug

Hypothesis: An investigation of the following trends may yield evidence of the evolutionary eating strategy homo-sapiens might be best served to adopt to coexist with their environment.

Correlation of these trends was calculated based on the month by month data for global climate and annual obesity rates data across the United States of America. A correlation coefficient of 0.354 was determined, which indicates a statistically significant correlation and a probability of error of only 0.502%.

Conclusions: the obvious inference to be made based on this data is that it is an instinctive reaction of the human race to get fatter as global temperatures rise. While the actions of the collective human race have caused an increase in carbon dioxide emissions by burning fossil fuels and cutting down large portions of what was permanent forest, the individual members of the species should demonstrate instinctive behaviour to enhance their chances of survival and hence increase their opportunities to mate and reproduce. The basic tenets of the theory of natural selection of the species imply that the instinctive behaviour of humans when faced with a changing environment is typically the one most well suited to their survival in the long term. The correlation shown above demonstrates that with high confidence (p < 0.006) that the instinctive response shown by human beings when exposed to changing climate is to increase the adipose tissue content of their bodies. The logical explanation for this behaviour is simply that carbon capture and storage, is the method of climate change mitigation naturally selected for by evolution. Future biomimetic applications based on this research may find pertinence throughout the energy industry and may be used to bolster the mean self esteem of the nation.

*This should be noted as further evidence that the behavioural strategies of individual specimens of a species do not always align with the interests of their species. The misalignment in interests and causation, or lack thereof, of this effect remains an active area of research.

I finally generated a power curve…

The workout was a warmup to get the legs going and then 20min at ~250 Watts, then a set of 3×10min at 345 Watts on 5 minutes rest, and then another 20 min at ~250 Watts before a short cool-down.

Many more of these will follow on the blog. I’m currently writing code like it’s going out of style to automate all of this stuff with Octave. I debated spending a bit of money on Training-Peaks to do all of this for me, but realized I wanted to do it myself. It’s more satisfying to run programs that you wrote yourself. And when you’ve got an MSc in Electrical Engineering and your success was largely based on your skills of data processing then it’s obvious that I’m going to wind up feeling limited by the functionality of their data processing engines. I’d rather do my own graphs as I have been doing lately. I think doing this will be quite instructive, and I’ll comment in future about things that I discover along the way.

There were no maximal exertions in this workout, I did the 345 Watts for 10 minutes three times, so all that it really shows is that my FTP is bigger than 320 Watts. I already knew that.

Weekly Updates:

This was a big run training block. In fact it was huge. Together, these four weeks represent 25 hours spent running and 184 miles covered. They brought my run fitness from nothing special in early March after a few disrupted weeks of very poor training (no excuses, but also no regrets about that – details were in Update #4). I put together a series of workouts with great focus, good nutrition, and rather careful attention to not overdo anything. A big help to motivation was that everything had a purpose. I was clear on why I had added everything to my plate regarding training and so when I was out there running I knew what kind of training stimulus I was hoping to apply to my body. Sometimes it was simple, “another 40 minutes of forefoot running in the ecco biom shoes”, which I’m confident has been contributing to greater efficiency and much stronger lower legs. Other times workouts were race specific, training my ability to run marathon pace at the point in my long run where my stored glycogen was on the edge of being depleted. This knowledge of why I was doing things helped get me out the door. And getting out the door and training is an absolute prerequisite to getting to the start line and being ready to race.

[Click to enlarge]

The body has responded. In discussion with my coach after that inopportune gap in my training he encouraged me to not completely rule out the option of an aggressive return to training. If you listen to how you feel and are careful not to stretch yourself to the point of destruction, it’s possible not to start from square one. It wasn’t reckless advice, it was actually exactly the opposite. It was a reminder to be careful about both what I was asking myself to do and how I was responding to it on a daily basis, not just on a week-by-week time horizon. I jumped back into training, and my training stress balance (TSB) on the run went negative (green line at left). Last season when focused on progressing my running but also doing a lot of cycling and swimming I was able to handle with no problems a TSB of -2. I could handle without any extended recovery, dips to -3 during the early season, but later in the year found that I was limited by general fatigue from doing enough to reach those deep depths of TSB. So, I figured that -3 would be a good general target and that I’d see if I could handle dips to -4.

I’ve mentioned before that I like to use different units than the conventional TSS, if you want to compare, one of my units is 1 hour of aerobic activity per week, at mid to high zone 2, which amounts to around 50 TSS, and one hour at threshold amounts to two units, or 100 TSS.

That’s generally how things went, I maintained a stress balance with my running of a bit below -3 for a whole month and I’d stretch it past -4 with my key sessions of the week. There were a couple occasions where I just ignored the extra interval-section of my shorter runs, but I did strides frequently and never compromised on the plans around the long run sessions of the week. Overall, for this period of time, my weekly hours were nothing spectacularly high, in fact they trailed off a bit, as I chopped a bit of swimming out to make sure I could do the running. I was also running a bit faster as the weeks progressed during aerobic conditioning runs and so the total time it took to get the weekly mileage targets was reduced. As a whole, my net TSB was never more than -1 below my run TSB alone. That’s the benefit of doing a lot of aerobic development on the skis over the course of the winter. I was capable of training the run harder by shifting focus without having to add a whole bunch of focus. That strategy was a good one.

The current chronic load at 6.4 hours/week is the same as a CTL of 46 TSS/day. I’ll try to taper my TSB to about 12-18 TSS/day which amounts to getting around 1.5-2.0 on my scale. That’s where I was when I ran well at Ironman, when I ran well at Great White North, and when I ran well at Chinook in 2011. It’s also the same runTSB from Calgary 70.3 in 2009 when I had a dismal performance, but I’ll attribute that to heat and over-reaching rather than poor prep. I can get into that range without much difficulty in the next two weeks, which is exactly what a taper should be:

Expected metrics for race-day:
CTL=6.0hrs and TSB=+2.0hrs
(CTL=43TSS/day and TSB=14TSS/day)

This week:

Next Week:

So, what are the markers of progression?

First, I got my chronic training stress from running higher than it has ever been in my life. That’s the red line above, it’s not ahead of last June by much, only a half percentage, but it’s ahead none the less. That stat is a tough one to move, and it’s not a random fluctuation that I’m at last season’s run fitness. I’ll go back to the beginning of this post: 184 miles in four weeks – that’s why I’m back in ready-to-race fitness.

Secondly and more in depth: Back in mid-February I had my VO2max tested as a part of a research study and found I scored 61.2 L/kg/min. That was alright, I thought it was pretty good for early season actually. That same week I tested my MAF fitness with a 5km TT at 160 bpm which I botched up a bit and ran it with an average HR of 164. In any case, the tested pace of 4:28/km resulted in an estimate of my VO2score of 61.29 on the run. (The formulae for calculating these scores is from Alan Couzens of Endurance corner and the details are here: http://rkp.me/VO2score) That nicely matched the recorded actual VO2max and so I’m working directly with an unmodified formulation of the measurements. This weekend at the St Albert 10 Miler, I averaged a HR of 167 and thus scored a VO2score of 66.3 which indicates I’ve made a fitness improvement of a bit more than 8% over the course of the past two months. That’s indicative of real progress!

One of the things that I think is a bit hokey about trying to measure these things quantitatively is that if you train with a lot of specificity for your testing protocol, then your performance at the testing protocol is going to be skewed in favour of showing that you are better than you might be in reality. There are studies out there that show that your performance in power output over a 1 hour max effort is a good guide for what your performance could be over an ultra-distance triathlon. There’s also studies that show you can estimate your 1 hour max effort quite well by doing only a 20 minute max effort and then adjusting the result slightly. Well, if you start training specifically to perform well at the 20min TT, you might improve your result, but by doing so you are probably also reducing the effectiveness of the estimation that it is for your performance at the much longer race. If you can improve 11% at your 20min speed, 8% of that could be attributed to fitness, and 3% could be attributed to the skill of performing the 20 min test. Only the 8% is going to translate to other measures of athletic capability, your skill for 20min TTing is good if your race is a 20min test.

I made the long explanation as a round-about way of saying. I was doing everything in training that I know how to do that will get me specificity at the marathon test (which is the race). Meaning that when on the weekend I measure that I think I’m in 8% better shape at the moment based on a few numbers, maybe I have also got 3% of marathon skills improvement that doesn’t show up in the fitness testing protocol because I wasn’t practicing to be tested at anything other than the marathon. We’ll see how this works out. I can’t say that I know what my marathon readiness was like in February because I couldn’t test it, and so I can’t tell you after the race in two weeks if I was 7% better or 10 % better, or even 25% better. I do think there’s something to that though. We watched Ryan Hall run a crazy fast marathon in Boston yesterday, but a few weeks ago he wasn’t ready to put together a fast half marathon. Why’s that? He’s got the fitness plus the skills for marathoning. He might have more skills than anyone on the planet, because he coached himself to do it. He attributed it to being strong, and in the post race interview I heard someone asking if he was going to get fast at some short distance stuff so he could be faster in the marathon. His response was a round-about way of saying “no”, maybe he’ll do some faster stuff because he’s interested in seeing how fast he can run 5000m on the track, but to be fast at the marathon he said he needed to be strong. That was encouraging. I wasn’t “fast enough” to be “fast” at the 10 miler this past weekend, that was my limiter on the flats and on the descents. But I was definitely strong enough to keep going, I have power in my legs even when they’re tired. I think that means I’m even more ready for a marathon than I am for 10 miles, that’s my 3%.

In two weeks we will see!

Pat, Erin and I represented the UofA Triathlon Club at the St. Albert 10 miler this morning. Becky was along as a cheering squad, and remarked that I did a better job of Pat than smiling on course, I’ll let her come cheer for us any day. That’s more encouraging than the typical “Wow Josh, you really looked like shit out there” that is typical of some other support crews (I love you too!). Pat was wearing his Fiera gear and no Tri-club gear, I didn’t have any Fiera gear that was weather appropriate, nor did I have and Triathlon Club gear that was weather appropriate. I don’t think Erin has any notion of trying to wear a certain outfit to intimidate the competition, she’ll learn eventually.

The race starts out fast with a nice little downhill to get the leg turnover high and the speed up. I tried to start slow, and I failed, splitting my first mile in about 6:07. That’s a recipe not to negative split your race when your best case scenario is 20 seconds slower per mile. I’d now need to negative split the rest of the race by 20 seconds just to even split the race. These are the kinds of calculations I do in my head when I’m trying to slow myself down. It worked, and I got back down to the 4:10/km pace that I knew was safe and allowed myself to come back “under control” I had turned off the display on HR on my watch because I didn’t want to see it, but retrospectively I had climbed to 170 and this was just pulling it back below there by a small margin. I then started to feel really good, and started to slowly pick up the pace.

I gradually sped up all the way to the top of the hill and then remembered Pat’s advice, don’t go too hard on that downhill or you’ll really struggle on the uphill at mile 7. I kept the effort in check down that hill but the pace was still high. I cruised past the 10 km mark at 40:06 which was a nice treat, I picked up a 10km PR en-route. Problem is I’ve never run a standalone 10km race so my 10km PR is pretty weak. I won’t complain though. I thought for a bit that if the race really goes pear shaped in the final 6kms, do I tell people that I got a PR at 10km or do I keep it a secret that I did some bad pacing along the way.

Negotiations inside my head ended as I encountered the long gradual uphill at 7 miles. I reminded myself that it was probably going to really feel bad somewhere near the top but that I just had to get through it because it would inevitably feel better again between there and the finish. It was a good strategy and kept me from checking the GPS unit for my pace along the way. From there I was surprised by a couple rolly hills where I though things would be relatively flat. The HR was now way up and I was in “hold it together mode”, but I was holding a constant gap to the next guy up the road. He had passed me on the previous downhill so with a downhill finish I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to reel in the 10 seconds he had on me but maintaining the gap was good motivation. Turning north I knew it was less than 8 minutes to go, then into the last mile and it was all downhill. I ran about as fast as my legs could go on the downhill at this point, which isn’t very fast as I haven’t done a whole ton of speed-work. That’s alright though, I was still picking up the pace and was happy about how things had progressed. Corner through to the finish line and could see the clock, I’d be under 65 minutes for sure. Good news.

I may have been more than 10 minutes behind the winner, but I was still first to the massage table. Free massages are a great thing, got the right calf worked on a little bit as it had felt pretty knarly on Tuesday. It felt fine during the race though and it feels fine now. No worries.

Final result: 64:41. That’s a 10 second positive split, which means after my lightning first mile I managed to negative split “the rest of the race” which is good news. Vancouver starts flat, which is a bonus, hopefully I’m no faster than about 7 minutes for the first mile in two weeks. Based on my performance for my 10km split, the reigel formula predicts a marathon time of 3h04m28s and the cameron formula predicts a marathon time of 3h07m52m. Based on my 10mile time, the reigel formula predicts a marathon time of 2h59m43s and the cameron formula predicts a marathon time of 3h03m31s. Those are very encouraging results, considering I will be tapering for the marathon and was not heavily tapered for this race, granted it was a light week.

This profile is why I was surprised to find the south (second) loop to be more rolling than the north (first). Maybe it wasn’t in so bad in reality but it felt awfully up and down as I was nearing an hour of ~threshold HR.

First workout with my Quarq powermeter this morning in the living room. I have the powermeter mounted up to my TT bike for the time being, although it will eventually migrate to the road bike. I need to log some time on the aerobars in the next 6 weeks so that I’m ready to perform well at both the Spring Thaw and at Oliver. So, I figured if I put the powermeter on this bike it will be another reason to be riding it. Don’t worry, the road bike will definitely still get used, it’ll probably just not be used as much. If I didn’t have the powermeter and these upcoming races on the TT bike it might be getting ridden exclusively.

No huge analysis of the power data recorded. I decided to do 4×4min at ~360 watts. This was an underestimate of what I am capable of doing and should be doing for this kind of workouts but I’ve got a run and a swim yet to do today and a 10 mile race tomorrow. Underestimating is alot better than overestimating under these circumstances.

I netted 360 Watts at 97 rpm, 368 Watts at 93 rpm, 362 Watts at 94 rpm, and 366 at 93 rpm for the four intervals.

I weighed in today at 17.18 lbs.

This was the weight with race wheels but no powermeter. I can get below 17 lbs with the acquisition of a new seat.

I signed up for the St Albert 10 Miler after a relatively tough but encouraging weekend of training. This weekend was to be one of two times during my marathon buildup where I ran hard on Saturday and long on Sunday. The idea is that I’ll encounter some pain and suffering towards the end of the Sunday long run which should help to build up a bit of durability in advance of the marathon. That kind of resilience in my muscles should help me keep ticking over once I’m past 20 miles in the marathon and put together a good final 10kms split.

The problem with trying to make yourself a little bit more immune to suffering on race day is that you have to do the suffering during training. Both Saturday and Sunday were serious on pain. Saturday I had sketched in my training plan a 10km run TT to be done on flat (or nearly flat) roads and I wanted to try and run about a 41 minute pace. That’s the kind of pace that a Riegel-formula would convert into a marathon split of ~3:08 and a Cameron Formula would convert into a marathon split of ~3:12. I figured if I could run about that speed in a training run I’d be pretty confident that going out at the 3:10 marathon pace on race morning was not going to be too ambitious. I have been hitting the requisite paces in my marathon-paced portions of my long runs to suggest that I’m on form to squeek out a Boston Qualifying time. This run TT was to serve two purposes. The first being to put some stress on the muscles in my legs in advance of the long run on Sunday and second, to build some confidence.

Note that you can see the four places where I had to come to a stop and do a 180^o turn.

I was not up for the full 10kms and when it really started to hurt at around 4kms I thought I was probably getting close to 6kms. When I reached 6 I thought I probably should be done, and when I got to 8 kms I pulled the plug and stopped my watch. It was a good effort, but the motivation to stick with it at the end of a tough week of training just wasn’t there. My final time amounted to a 4:04 pace for 8kms which is inside of the 4:06 pace I had hoped to do for 10kms. All told, it was a confidence boosting workout for the marathon even though I really was having a tough time breathing hard enough to keep up with my legs.

Sunday’s run was a bit achy right at the start but the sensations turned for the better and I ran a solid hour with Pat and Aaron through the river valley and we did take in a few hills en-route. I then continued on with Pat past the 1.5 hour mark for a ways further. It was at this point I started to really get achy again and some parts felt like I was running aboard disembodied legs. The good news though is that I was able to keep the pace together and never fell apart and really had to slow down from the pace that I started at. I’m now taking a day off to recover before getting back into it on Tuesday and then I have a relatively important session on Wednesday with 6×1kms at about half-marathon pace. It should be manageable. This coming weekend I’m going easy on Saturday and then have my final long run with a marathon paced section where I plan to attempt a full 10 miles in the second half of the long run at marathon effort. Hopefully I can do this without snow on the ground, in which case marathon effort should be at marathon pace. That’s the peak of training, three weeks out from the marathon.

Heading into the marathon I’m going to show up for a couple of the Wednesday night cross country races and tempo one of them in the middle of a medium-long run at around half marathon pace, and just ride out to another and run it at around marathon pace. I will not be racing but going out and doing the exercise in the middle of a race should help me dial in the right effort in race-conditions so that I don’t go out too hard at the start on May 1. It’s a social experiment I guess, we’ll see if I pass my own test! There’s one big effort left after that, I’ve decided to run the St Albert 10 miler as my final big preparation run. Indication from my 8km TT suggests I can probably do it in under 68 minutes. Of course, I’d rather do it in 66. This one won’t be holding back, it will be a max effort 10 miler, twice the pain of 5 miles, no excuses.