One Excuse...

"...is as good as another on any given day." - Coach Fox, multiple times between 2002-05

Every once in a while I have athletes who decide to engage in 'summer,' a strange season of the earthly year, a time filled with many outdoor entertainment activities, including a very strange concept called vacation. During this vacation, the athlete gets into an automobile & drives for several hours to a place where they spend the majority of the money they saved over the previous year on lodging, food & the exact same outdoor entertainment opportunities which they could have enjoyed at home had they decided to stay.

Also, during this vacation, the athlete usually makes a conscious decision to do NOTHING. As a result, they return back to the track on a Tuesday evening after one of these vacations having lost every bit of the hard-won fitness we attempted to develop from their previous vacation, during the period between the autumnal equinox & two weeks after the winter solstice. Following that vacation, they stepped on their bathroom scale & realized they weighed much more than they suspected...as if their jeans couldn't have told them the same message some time in late November.
How these athletes became conditioned to believe a vacation was meant to exclude exercise is beyond my understanding. If you were to ask every single one of them what they used to do throughout their summer vacation as a child, I would wager nine of every ten would tell you they were involved in some sort of unstructured physical activity, like swimming, bicycling, walking, hiking, climbing, & all that good stuff...on a daily basis.

So, how did we go from doing stuff on vacation to not doing a thing on vacation? Mind you, one or two of my athletes actually perform physical labor during the week, so for them, physical exercise is probably more fun than chore. A vacation for them would probably not be harmful. However, the rest of you (myself included) are still on the hook. If you're going to go on one of those vacation things, there's a very good reason for the "take half the clothes and twice the money" advice provided by every travel consultant...it's so you can add at least one pair of running shoes & three outfits, silly. Your employer will thank you. Your co-workers will thank you. And yes, your coach will definitely thank you...not nearly as much as you will, though.

During this time of the year, it's difficult to get fired up about food. Well, unless it's fired up on a grill & sitting beside a cold beverage of choice. Otherwise, most indoor dining is boring. Hardest part about being a person in training at this time of the year is this: You need to get nourishment back into your body, at the least some nourishment within 30 minutes of finishing a workout, but other times during the day, too.

But when the day is divided up into workout, clean-up, commute, work, commute, workout, clean-up, sleep (with a few other small pieces in between), it's a challenge to get the right food in the right amounts into you...especially if you're one of those people who hate eating first thing in the morning, or don't have a stable enough work schedule during the day, or don't have access to a kitchen/refrigerator, or have knucklehead co-workers who raid the fridge. The key is to get what your body needs. Keep it simple.My wife recommended I take a big ol' salad into the office so I could scarf on throughout the day. Nice, but there are days when I'm not exactly sitting in front of my desk doing office things. I could have something a little smaller every so often, though. She made a salad the other morning, which was sitting on the stove next to a couple of bagel halves. I couldn't tell at first what the contents were, so I opened up the lid. Instantly I smelled onions & knew there was no way I could take that in to work.

I don't eat (raw) onions, period. End of story. I can tell if there's one on a sandwich or in someone's lunch across a crowded room.So, I try to get a little something on the way in, but balance it with the wisdom of knowing that eating McBarfle's five days a week is going to make me fat as a pig. My recent screaming about weight & the need to get back down to fit weight made the cartoon above stand out. For those of you who don't know me too well, my dog is below:
...I think you can guess who represents me in the cartoon above. Ah, but it's a temporary phase, one which can be remedied by smarter eating, judicious workouts, & resting as needed.

See you at the track.

Mash-Ups

The World Wide Web is a velvet-lined bear trap, in my humble opinion. How wondrous it is to be able to type in a few terms into a search engine & be overwhelmed with information, misinformation, disinformation & shameless capitalism, all in a matter of moments, depending on the rarity of the item. The fun begins when you start to fork through the, er, stuff, with the intent of "finding the pony" you know is in there. It's definitely living proof pure democracy is the worst form of government, next to despotism, with a representative democracy only one step higher on the ladder.

Actually, the internet might be closer to modern American representative democracy than I care to think. All I have to do is give a few dollars to the right persons - like lobbyists, right? - who will type in the plethora of search tags my site needs to be recognized among the masses. My wife has been working on a series of how-to videos for her work...I've been joking about it, telling her they are how-to-videos. She decided to do something really cute last week, involving a ponytail extension. (A couple of months ago she got her hair clipped into a very serious pixie cut; which for her is fantastic, she has to spend less time shampooing and styling, & it's less hot during our summer conditions. Took me about thirty minutes to get used to it, but after that it was all good.) She finished the video while wearing the ponytail...but started the video without it. Kind of humorous, an allusion to the length of time it could take to accomplish a particular process. She was going to do something else, but I recommended the ponytail.

Of course, she was waiting for friends, colleagues & consumers to ask how she grew her hair out so quickly...we were going to have her mention she answered one of those internet advertisements we all kick into the junk mail folder. The continuation of the joke, however, will remain unspoken in this forum, but I think some of you can get the visual. Ugh.
Suzanne's told me about mash-ups, the joining together of two seemingly incongrous technologies. In music this might be a mix, but I've run into some mash-ups here & there (Judie Tzuke's Stay With Me Til Dawn & Pink Floyd's Breathe is a good example). In 'grit country,' wearing a t-shirt that has to do with racing brings the inevitable question: 'oh, do you do stock cars?' Hm. I'm reading a book with a picture of Alan Webb on the cover; wearing a Timex Ironman watch, Asics running shoes, & I'm carrying a binder with a USA Track and Field logo on it. Probably not.

But, can you imagine if runners began to use the language of automobile racing?
The Cubs must be doing well. I haven't followed anything of the baseball season, outside of the Manny Ramirez-thing. I've more-or-less given up on that particular sport for the painfully obvious fact it's as dirty, if not more so, than cycling. At least when cyclists get caught doing drugs (even the ones for which they're not getting tested, like Tom Boonen & cocaine) they get the snot slapped out of them, then suspended for two years. Dear Major League Baseball: Don't make me go all UCI (wimps compared to the French & Italian cycling federations!) on your butt.

I'm certain my father is tight on his fantasy baseball league & watching what games he can in between working his part-time job (supervising clean-up of roadside rest areas near my home town) & whatever honey-do list Linda has crafted for him. He's not on the Facebook as much as he originally was, either that, or he's more of a lurker than a status poster.

Reading the statuses of some of my contemporaries on Facebook does make me think every so often. Several of my tri-geek friends went out & had a practice triathlon (I guess) at the beach this weekend...yep, on the Fourth of July. Frankly, that's a frightening time to be out on the roads, especially near the beach. I don't know how long they went, or if there were bragging rights on the line...but sometimes it just doesn't matter, y'know?

Perhaps I'm just being cautious, or lazy, or know I'm going to get blown out of the water/off the road by most everyone...I haven't figured it that much. Because I'm coaching entry-level people it's more important for me to (as in the words of John Lennon) Be Here Now. They might not like me jogging past them, saying hello in a chipper 'gosh, I'm loving life right at this moment' voice, but that's the reason I get paid the big bucks. I am getting paid, aren't I?

No? Ah, then it's the scintillating conversation after it's all said & done. We found a new breakfast joint, just in time for me to have to go out and do long rides while everyone is eating. Haven't figured out what channel Versus is on yet, but we have a couple of weeks. We'll have it figured out by the Vuelta a Espana.

Burning Stuff and Making Noise

The last few days have reminded me: No matter how far in the bucket our economy appears to be there always seems to be enough disposable income - and in the case of Independence Day, I do mean disposable income - to burn, in order to say we had a good time. If you had a Sam's Club membership, the fireworks & family-friendly pyro were there in bulk. If you didn't, you could go to the tents near the malls (someone once told me the New Years' and Independence Day holidays brought in enough income for some fireworks vendors they did not have to work the remainder of the year).
First visit to the scales in a very long time this morning, approximately two months into my training for IM FL. Usually I avoid the scales for the same reason I should have this morning; the numbers didn't lie as well as the waistband of my slacks have for a while. Sure, I've had a few fat days, but it's been a while since I've weighed this much. Blame it on the swimming focus. Blame it on the french fried potatoes. Blame it on the beer, of which I have cut back about 25-30%, closer to two a day, & zero on a few days. Of course, as my perspective-holding friends would say, this, too, shall pass. I bet it will.

Our climate provides nothing new to really talk about. We get six months of hot, four months of pretty darned warm, a month of rainy & a month of Northerners calling us a bunch of wimps. However, we ignore them, mock them until they place their pasty, white legs into a pair of long tights, and then go out for a long run. However, we do enjoy kvetching about the infernality in which we live. Some of us even enjoy training in it...as long as the effort is easy enough & we have fluids nearby.

So, I took the first longer mid-week run of my training this week, doing 7.3 miles in a sliver under an hour. No, that's not terribly fast; it's close to what I would need to run a marathon in to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Trouble is that I'll have hopefully finished the swim & and a long bicycle before it. Steven & I use these long runs to compare notes on our training; how he's getting specific workouts done, how I'm getting specific workouts in, level of technology, and stuff like that. Sometimes it amazes us to read the Facebook postings of our contemporaries, especially when they talk about the epic training volume levels they're at right now, four months out from our target event.

I don't know if there's such an animal as gamesmanship among age-group athletes; that smoke-and-mirrors kind of stuff that makes you sit back & give an 'Oh? Really?' response. But, I don't think I need to do a 72-mile ride, followed by a 13-mile run. Not yet. For me it's still burning off the puppy fat, cheese, chicken skin, whatever term you want to use for excess poundage. 'Cause, Lord knows, I would rather not have to carry it with me for nearly 211 miles this autumn.

And it gets old when I have to explain my goal. Steven decided to set a time goal; he even has a wager tied into it. I believe he'll make it, too. Me...all I want to do is finish standing, preferably smiling, bypassing medical, still married & gainfully-employed. That might take me an extra hour-to-two beyond Steven's goal, but then I can provide some sort of barbaric yawp of victory at the finish line. A joyful noise, of sorts.

Wow...that was a long nod. It's going to be nice to not be in the office for a couple of days. No big plans for the holiday, though. Cheaper that way, and it keeps the dog happy. Maybe we'll just hang out on the (covered) back porch and watch people burn up their money while we save a couple of our bucks. Not that we haven't been invited anywhere, though. But traveling (even in town) during the holiday weekend is painful & a tad dangerous.

I was driving down Langley Avenue yesterday afternoon & saw three motorcycle units of the local constabulary, equipped in full battle array, radar equipment at the ready. Made me very grateful I was only about three miles per hour over the speed limit. They were looking for bigger fish, not that they wouldn't have nailed me if I were above the trend.

Once the holiday is over it will be time to start making tight(er) plans for training in the Breeze & in town. One guy has been running with us on the mid-week group, also showing up to train on Sunday with the Mere Mortals. Got to love people with personality. Got to love people with personality who show up.

First Really Crummy Day

"...I recommend biting off more than you can chew to anyone; I certainly do.

I recommend sticking your foot in your mouth at anytime; feel free.

Throw it down; the caution blocks you from the wind. Hold it up; to the rays.

You wait and see when the smoke clears. You live, you learn; You love, you learn;

You cry, you learn; You lose, you learn; You bleed, you learn; You scream, you learn..." - Alanis Morissette (1995)

Steven, can you relate to this after your weekend, bro?

This weekend was the first for a 12-week entry-level triathlon training program sponsored by the local tri club. Great to see over three-dozen of my soon-to-be closest friends sitting on the benches; some were truly first-timers, others first-timers this year, & a few making their triumphant return to multisport. The session was originally intended to be a welcome aboard, with the race director of the sprint triathlon this program focuses toward chatting a little about their race, some individual swim pointers, and on to the water.

Of course, that was the plan, filled with assumptions. The reality saw a more-brief swim brief, covered by Bev, Steven's better half. Brian, the club treasurer & guy in charge, took care of pointers & technical stuff from the dock, while Bev was down in the drink with the neophytes. We keep telling her she's got what it takes to be a good coach...but she's a lot more humble about her abilities.The water was comfortable enough for me to get some wetsuit familiarization time. Did about ten lengths of the sound, worked on sighting, & just kept everything comfortable.

I did say this was the first really crummy day, didn't I?

My weekend plans (remember assumptions from the earlier paragraphs?) went south quickly, as we needed/wanted to get some errands taken care of. I did get two hours in on the elliptical trainer, the equivalent of 16 miles, on Saturday afternoon. Hm. Think that might have been a little too much there, Coach?

Naah.

Au contraire, mon freire. Or, for those of you who live in less cultured areas of the country that's another way to say, 'think again, moose breath.' I ditched my goggles & wetsuit, then pulled on my running stuff (including a belt holding four eight-ounce plastic bottles of sports drink) to go hit the road for 45 minutes-to-an hour. The first two to three miles were all right, & then reality set in. Or, as some would say, 'the man with the hammer' showed up.

Oh, did he show up. The first three miles were at a very comfortable eight-minute-per mile pace. The last three & a quarter were much slower. We (I say we, because Bev decided to hang out with me.) ended up running a couple of blocks, then walking a block on the return trip. While I was a little disapppointed, there was a sense of perspective:

This was the first true brick (well, one discipline into the other) workout in some time.

The weather was very warm on the beach by 9:00a.m.

I had nothing in the tank, & forgot to eat anything that morning.

As Alanis (Morissette) would say: 'you live, you learn.' So, today's a rest (-like) day. Tomorrow we're back on the case.

Simplify!

"...We don't train to accomplish any of what these other coaches have tried to coax you into believing. We train to IMPROVE, and to do our best. We train to perform and to win. And while triumph is no doubt defined differently for each of us, it is far easier to comprehend than anything you've heard here... Sure, it's imperative to understand what training does to your body, but it is far more important to know why you are training and what your training is leading you toward, and to have 100% belief in the process. Simplify!" - Chuckie "V" Veylupek (at some nameless coaching conference, way back when)
Not only local runners use me as their coach. I also coach two or three runners by what I can only describe as remote control or belief coaching. After enough research into what makes a good training plan work (periodization) & a little trial/error on my own (candor), some of my friends have asked me to help them achieve their running/triathlon performance goals. So far it has been effective.

What makes it effective is this: Describing my own workout regimen (these repetitions, at this pace, with this recovery) is enough to boggle their mind, but I've been able to simplify it for their benefit. Without spending a month of three workouts per week trying to learn the language, they've been able to improve & progress forward in their training, strictly because I have simplified it for them.

I'm not training anyone to improve their VO2max score, training stress score, magic mile or any of that stuff. Simply put, I try to help them be (in the words of Daft Punk) harder, better, faster, stronger. The nice thing is that there's only one measure that will honestly prove that on race day...the clock. The SRM won't do it. The HRM won't do it. And no matter what WKO says when all that GPS stuff is uploaded into your PC, the (four or) six numbers that really count are xx:xx:xx. Outside of (to borrow from Disraeli) numbers, d*mned numbers & statistics, the only other thing that matters is whether they make it across the finish line in one piece. If they make it across in a better time than they hoped for, all other controllable factors being equal, so much the better.

Seems pretty simple to me.

Get Some Changing Done

"You've been saying for the longest time that the time has come; you've been talking like you're of a mind to get some changing done..." - Mary-Chapin Carpenter (2001)

The hardest decision to make comes when there's a big change involved; new job, new relationship, new commitment, new routine...I think you get the picture. Most times, these decisions aren't made capriciously, but after soul-searching, counsel & balance of the possible positive & negative outcomes. It's hard to continue to stay the course for sake of staying the course, especially when you know something different can be done. However, it means being honest enough with yourself to say: 'what I've done up to this point in time has not been successful. It's time to take a different approach.'

"...No one knows where they belong; the search just goes on and on and on, for every choice that ends up wrong another one's right..."

So, you have to be pragmatic when the potential remedies cross your desk, so to speak. I had a friend ask me 'so, what do you want to do?' when I first began looking at the options. Once I developed enough clear thought about what was really happening, it was simple to know the what.

I enjoy coaching & providing sensible guidance to runners & triathletes. Some even appreciate the advice & counsel - imagine that. And that's the fun part of coaching; collaborating with an athlete to see how they can prepare for best performances. But to get that level of interaction, there needs to be a certain degree of trust and confidence - both on the part of the athlete and of the coach.

Sometimes the relationship comes naturally over the course of time. Sometimes the relationship is built by money changing hands.

Once the relationship is developed, expectations on the part of both parties follow, especially in the areas of communication & discipline. I've wondered what people would think if I did not show up for a track workout (even after the car accident in January of this year, my wife & I called the cell phones of at least three training group members to let them know what happened). 'Ah, but you're the coach,' you say. 'You're supposed to be there. That's why you were chosen.'

So, why do I coach? Ah, it must be for something. My coach & his coach say it's for love of the sport. And I love the sport, too. But shouldn't the people I coach have that same love? If they don't have it, is it because I haven't instilled it in them? Does love of sport come intrinsically, or as the result of some pot metal/nylon medallion or glass/ceramic beer mug?

"Call it chance or call it fate, Either one is cause to celebrate; Still the question begs why would you wait and be late for your life..."

I guess I coach for the same challenge the athlete has: To make them better on the day. The athlete is the weapon & the battleground. And I am just another guy with a map.

Isn't It Ironic...

"Well, life has a funny way of sneakin' up on you when you think

everything's okay and everything's going right; And life has a funny

way nobody helpin' you out and everything blows up in your face..." "Ironic" (Morisette/Ballard, 1995)

Most of my family knows my struggle with the religious/faith issue. It's not that I'm opposed to it. I lost faith more in my fellow religionists than I did in the scriptural texts which most faiths report to follow. My father-in-law & I probably have more in common that I care to admit, except that he still maintains his faith. Mine, on the other hand, is more than a little bit in need of preventative maintenance.

The nice thing is there are situations which remind me of the presence of a divine creator, their handiwork, & the need to appreciate both. That's where the long(er) bike rides definitely serve their purpose.

I had no intention whatsoever to do anything on Sunday morning, save for drink coffee & engage in mindless reading...which for me means history books or memoirs. However, my friends graciously invited me to go ride with them along the southern Alabama coast, from Orange Beach (Sportsplex was the starting point, below) to Fort Morgan & back. Since my loving wife is out of country, it made perfect sense to keep myself occupied.

Since I didn't run on Saturday morning (worked a 5K on the beach) or afternoon (100-plus degree heat index) I figured the "missed" workout could be made up for by a nice, leisurely ride. Well, the plan was to go leisurely. We were close enough to leisurely for a good portion of it.

Ah, but I digress. Probably the first five miles or so of the ride, & another five after that, was mostly on winding bike paths. Okay, if you're training for a triathlon it's probably going to be a little too technical for the speeds you want to be going, or it will reinforce the need for a comfortable pace. Nice thing about the vast majority of these bike paths was the fact they were tree-lined; the first five was almost completely tree-shaded. So we weren't hammering or anything...definitely enjoying the conditions on the way out. However, I have to admit the heat became quite oppressive on the return trip & no amount of shade was of benefit.

The bridge below was on the first/last miles of the trail...all I could hear in the back of my mind was Phil Keaggy's March of the Clouds. Almost a meditative state for the earliest part of the ride. I guess that is the nicest thing about bicycling. You can put in enough of an effort to feel good about yourself, yet you're not beating yourself up. If you are on a scenic road you might see one or more cool things, nature-wise.

Go off the front for the occasional ten-minute solo pace push & you almost can hear yourself think...of course, as long as your heart rate is low enough you don't hear all that pounding. You get to see stuff at a pace you would never have noticed in an automobile. We were pleased the terns decided to leave us be yesterday morning; the ones around Pensacola Beach are a lot more aggressive than the ones in Alabama. During the brief mid-point stop at Fort Morgan (at the ferry to Dauphin Island) we saw a few dolphins moving through the water. Sometimes the reminders are subtle, y'know?

I had the opportunity to watch a video about three triathletes & their preparation for 2008 Ironman Wisconsin, titled The Distance. Steve suggested I watch it (we'll have to sit down and play it for Suzanne); I was worried at first he wanted to drop some bad news my way with it. However, watching these normal, ordinary people prepare for the same thing I was doing now was pretty entertaining. When you saw them registering for the next years' event even before they had accomplished this years' goal, I realized the very message my friend Christian has tried to remind me: 'it's the journey, not the destination, that's important.'

It's easy to get hung up in the minutiae of training. Steve & I have compared notes over the past weeks; he has a slightly different perspective than I about the training. He's using a heart rate monitor & GPS & high-tech stuff...I'm a little more low-tech, using a heart rate monitor for some workouts (I'm used to working out via perceived effort), a few reference spreadsheets for others, tracking my efforts via another spreadsheet. He's set a specific time goal (well, he has a wager with his wife); all I want to do is finish.

Same journey, same destination.

At the Sportsplex in Orange Beach (and in most every city in Alabama I've visited) the facility looks top-notch. The soccer fields were in fantastic condition; with grass which cries out for you to take off your shoes & run in it (which I think Beverly did after our ride), decent bathrooms, concession facilities, & so on. I asked myself why Pensacola couldn't have something that nice; why was it we had to literally drive an hour into another state to get a good training ride, where we didn't have to worry about broken beer bottles (okay, there was one place near the end of the ride where I saw a lot of broken glass, but...) getting cut off or hassled?

Maybe Alabama cities realize good parks & good recreational facilities are what keep families living there. I realize it takes tax money to run this stuff, & you have to have dedicated maintenance employees, but I don't think you can place a price tag on quality of life stuff.

It only seemed ironic that the local newspaper's headline this morning was City's Parades In Peril. The city council has decided it cannot afford to pay for the city workers to put up/take down barriers, the police to re-direct the traffic, sanitation to clean up afterward, etc. etc. etc., all the stuff having to do with the countless parades here. When it was local road races taking the hit for police coverage the general population did not seem all that sympathetic.

Hm...maybe that's why OB can get Steely Dan, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, etc., to come do concerts & Pensacola gets...monster trucks.