The Big Plan B

*BEEP*

That was the low battery warning signal from my (formerly) trusty Garmin 310XT GPS receiver. The sound was immediately followed by a slight buzz, silence as the receiver shut itself off, & an unprintable comment from my mouth. I guess it wouldn't have been such a bad thing if not for the fact I was driving out to run a tempo run with a group on a Wednesday evening.

My wife asked, 'do you have a charger in the car?'

'My charger, unfortunately, is attached to my computer back at the house,' was my reply. As we continued the 20-minute drive I was stewing in my own juices of stupidity. I know I put the receiver on the charger the previous evening, so how could this be? I resigned myself to the thought of going out for what former triathlete (now triathlon coach) Chuck "Chuckie V" Veylupek calls a 'caveman run.' This would be an acceptable compromise. I took a deep breath, let it out, & returned to conversing with my wife about life, the universe, & everything. You know, the kind of stuff married couples talk about when there's nothing else to do...wink, wink, nudge, nudge...

My wife then pulled out her new smart phone to check her voicemail & realized her phone had been off all day. She had a little trouble turning the phone on & assumed the battery was dead. I managed to reset it, & then realized, 'hey, these smart phones have GPS. If I download a run mapping program (like iMapMyRun) I should be able to keep track of the pace I'm supposed to do for this tempo run.' So, with precious few minutes left before the group was scheduled to leave on the run I tried to download the software. However, I couldn't get WiFi or set up the phone in time to download. That's where the ability to "Plan B" a workout is a valuable skill.

When talking about training I repeatedly have borrowed the John Lennon song line: 'life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.' This is so true as a runner or as a coach. I can lay out a training schedule in macro for 16, 18, 20 weeks out from a race, but more often than not it's going to get adapted, truncated, or...worst of all...pitched in the wastebasket as life takes hold of the stick & throttle. Even the micro level of an evening's (scheduled) track workout gets adapted; heavy cranes & lighting equipment, soccer matches & "facility fascists" can take up part or all of the track & leave an inexperienced (or unprepared) runner - or coach - wondering what to do as a "Plan B."

While in a two-year internship with the Navy I spent periods of time ranging from two weeks to two months at training commands. The assignments had the obvious drawbacks of living out of a suitcase, with access to hotel treadmills, & so on. But I learned how to adapt my training to the conditions. During a two-week assignment to Orlando I learned that light poles along this nice long stretch of road near my hotel were set at approximately 50 yards. So, all I had to do was count the number of light poles for my interval workouts; run three at 5K pace, walk one to recover, repeat six times, jog eight poles...I'm certain you get the message.

Frank Shorter once was quoted as saying 'hills are speed work in disguise.' So, running up a section of hill or bridge for a period of time (or distance, if you know it!), then jogging easy or walking down can provide a great workout. A 300-yard hill near the track facility where we train has three points marked on it; if a soccer match is going to keep us off the track for most or our entire workout I can always go down the hill. Sometimes the soccer matches are not interrupting; I'll do a set on the hill just to break up the monotony.

Training by perceived effort for a long enough period can help a runner develop a sense of pace; after a while you know what a nine-minute per mile pace feels like, as well as an eight-minute pace, & so forth. The most important thing in understanding pace sense is to know how a particular pace FEELS. I always marveled at my coach's pace sense when we would go out on easy runs during the weekend. I had purchased my first heart rate monitor/foot pod combination & was geeking out checking our pace during one run. He asked me at one point what my heart rate was; I looked at my wrist, then told him, to which he replied, 'yeah, I figured that. We're at the right pace.' Sometimes, it is safer to not ask how they do it. They just do it. I've got a few paces pretty well nailed down after eight years of training by perceived effort, so I can tell how hard I'm working give or take a few seconds now.

But I don't have a good sense of time, with the exception of swimming in a pool. I can tell you exactly how long it takes me to swim 50 or 100 yards, even though it feels like forever, give or take a second. (It must have to do with that love of oxygen.). So when it comes to running a particular period of time at a particular pace I'm doomed if I don't have a watch. So rather than the planned tempo workout of eight minutes at the pace I need to run a half marathon, two minutes easy, eight minutes at threshold, two minutes easy - repeated twice - I had to adapt. I decided to count telephone poles; eight at moderate effort, two easy, eight at hard effort, two easy, repeat until the end.

Adapting a workout to meet life's demands: So simple, even a caveman - or a smart runner - can do it.

It's a Rebus, Ya Butthead...

(A tip of the swim cap/cycling helmet/running visor to "Chuckie V" Veylupek. A little more obscure & cryptic than his road sign, but hey! That's the way I am, right?)

So, the end of the calendar year is always great fun for me. Not only does it allow me to scale back the running or cycling I do in order to spend more quality time - running - with my wife, I also get to play my favorite puzzle game, called "What The Heck Did We Do Wrong This Year?"

Well, it's not the official name of the game, but it's the working title for what new twist do we want to try in our training to replace the things that didn't do so well last year? I know, it's not as catchy as Scrambled Eggs, which was the working title for one of the greatest pop tunes of the past fifty years (kudos to anyone who knows the title - I don't have anything special I can give, short of my admiration!), but it will have to do.

Last year I tossed the fairly-well tried-and-true three weeks on, one week off training intensity cycle right out the window for a shorter three/four/five day on, one day off cycle. Unfortunately, I don't control all of the workout factors; I can swim up to six days a week (seven if I wish to engage in open-water!), and I can bike, run or do strength training almost any time I please. But sometimes I like the idea of getting out on a ride, or a social run, with a friend. We're social animals, we humans. While we may not have identical training goals & our physiological make-up varies by chronological & training age, there are times we like to have someone else suffering along with us.

So, this year I have decided to carpe the damned diem...seize the day. There are enough social-like training-like situations where I can get the necessary intensity in without feeling like the Lone Doggone Ranger. Rather than focus strictly on hard mileage/yardage, I've borrowed from a number of guides to gauge the volume & the balance between the disciplines.

The first guide is from Joe Friel's The Triathlete's Training Bible (I have the next-to-most-recent-edition). Since I'm focusing on two IM 70.3 events this year & I'm a middling-to-back-of-the-pack (blame it on my swimming) participant, I'm looking at the middle of Friel's 500-to-700 hours of training per year window. So, when I look at the amount of time I spent this year it's not going to be a big change, time-wise (this makes my wife very happy!). Friel has a week-by-week breakdown through each of the base, build, and prep cycles leading to the event, & the events are far enough apart to give me a chance to re-cycle through base & build in the summer.

Even neater than this, Friel lays out a division of hours per day for each week. Sundays have the most time available; which seems in line with most middle-class triathletes, & the week slowly tapers off in hours for training, with Saturday being the shortest day of the week, where your most intense stuff, or your C & B races, fit in. But there are days where my swim work is 'etched in stone' because of my masters' group, & the twice-weekly Six At Six beatdown is becoming a regular thing again...so there's a healthy chunk of the week taken up. But it's probably a better thing to have a little too little training volume than too much, right? I doubt if anyone ever got injured from undertraining over time.

The second tool is Dan Empfield's aerobic points system. For me to get out & run 8-to-12 miles on the weekend, 8 miles in the middle of the week, & five-to eight miles worth on the elliptical trainer (or treadmill, if I'm not too beat up) may...or may not...be such a good thing, especially in light of how badly I swim. Empfield's point of view, as well as many other coaches is race your strengths, train your limiters.

(If you're strictly running you will be better served by Jack Daniels' points system, which is published in the latest version of Daniels' Running Formula. But if you're a beginner tri-geek you might want to use this guide to keep your training balanced...so you don't spend too much time working on the stuff in which you are already good.)

Empfield's system works like this:
1 mile cycling = 1 point

1/4 mile running (~400 meters on track!) = 1 point

100 meters (yards) swimming = 1 point

I did a little bit of adaptation because of my tendency to beat myself up on the run: If I use the elliptical trainer (with a heart rate monitor!), I'll divide the time spent on the ET by 2.4-to-3.3 (2.4 if the average heart rate is closer to maximum, 3.3 if the average is closer to 50 percent) and give that score to the ET workout. (In essence, it's a way to equate elliptical trainer with cycle!) So, 25 miles of running might equate to 100 miles on the bike or 10,000m (yd) in the pool.

A hard-core runner might not need to develop strength by hitting the weight room, & some triathlon coaches consider hitting the pool to be better than pumping iron. Empfield prefers weights, so, every five minutes pumping weight (after 20 minutes) earns a point. A one-hour session would give you 12 points, but that assumes no lollygagging, definitely a hard-core weight session.

If there's a weakness in your training or you aren't certain how to balance out life & training, or the disciplines for which you are training, it helps to figure out what some of the good coaches are doing or telling their charges...might work for you; might not. We're all an experiment of one. Don't do the same thing over again if you're looking for different results.

Mini-Taper and Some Cool Thoughts For Today

First of all, I am SO glad my wife is back from her two weeks on the road. While I am functional when she is out doing all the cool stuff her business demands of her in order to thrive, survive and all that, it's not all that fun. I'm good for a window of 12-to-36 hours, after that it's pretty bad. I felt, most of the time, like someone (or thing) had beaten the daylights out of me with a rubber stick (under-recovered), even with multivitamin supplementation and whatever extra rest (sleep) I could snatch. Even taking an easy week of training (which I schedule) at the end of the month didn't seem to do the trick.
However, I think I figured it out the other day, after Chinese food at lunch and salad with chicken and strawberry slices at dinner. Because I'm less likely to cook or eat good food while she was out, I wasn't getting either the right stuff or the right amount of stuff to refuel my body. Contrary to popular belief, the furnace may burn whatever you put in it, but it might not burn as well or as long.
So, this week is basically what I would call a "kinda-taper" to prepare for this weekend's triathlon. The goal is to relax and let the body store up energy, but not to get too lazy. Since I did a bike ride yesterday (nearly twice the distance I'll ride this weekend) at about 55 percent of my maximum effort I won't do much else outside of cleaning and tweaking the bike. I'll swim one morning workout and do one race-distance (~600 yards) time trial over the next couple of days; my running will consist of an easy-paced one-hour run tonight, and a four-mile run at high 6:00-to-low 7:00/mile pace - the tempo I'll probably run this weekend.

I haven't taken the time to look at the water temperature for the Gulf of Mexico this weekend, though. I suspect the water is going to be cool if not chilly. However, a ~600 yard swim is not going to merit using a wetsuit. I think if the distance was anything over 800 yards I would consider it.

My old friend Chuckie V wrote on his blog some really neat thoughts about training he picked up from three-time Ironman world champion Peter Reid, at their advanced camp. My take-away from Reid's teaching at Solvang are:
1. Don't mask your fatigue with drugs. Caffeine in particular...but this can also be other stuff (adult beverages, for example). I like coffee, particularly for it's warming effect first thing in the morning. But there have been occasions where I've had my cup and crawled back into bed for a little more sleep instead of trying to slog through my morning workout. Fatigue in one area leads to (over-)compensation in another, which leads to injury.
2. Efficiency outweighs raw speed. While a single 71-second 400 meters on the track is fairly sprightly, it's another thing all together to tie four together into a 4:50 mile...or 12 and a half of them into a 14:50 5K. There's speed in the short, short term and there's speed over distance, a function of efficient, comfortable running.
3. Long runs are underrated. Even short distance racing improves from aerobic fitness.
4. Race day starts long before the starting gun is fired. A single mis-step on eating, drinking, clothing items, the drive, the porta- and warm-up can mess up an entire day.

5. Patience. No race was ever won at the first 100 yards, but plenty of races have been lost there.

Detraining and Retraining

This week has been a quote-unquote easy week. However, I cannot say my body can tell the difference between an easy week and a hard week at this particular point in time. On Monday afternoon my body would have called this week hard. However, after yesterday afternoon's run, my physiology clearly said things were all right and that I was on the right track. Sure, my heart rate was a little higher than I would have liked it for eight miles, but I did the same loop I ran six weeks ago a minute faster, without stopping the watch at two intersections and felt better about the whole thing this time.

I could find a lot of excuses for why I'm not where I would like to be at this time of the year, but I have to agree with my coach's dictum: gains in distance running (and endurance sport) is as much a function of patience as it is of pace.

It's important to get out and do something, even if it isn't directly related to your main sport, as many days in a row as possible. Run, jog, bike, briskly walk, do jumping jacks...because, beloved, the concept of detraining is reality, as real as the rising numbers on the scale and the doctor's chart. Life gets in the way. Business gets in the way. Weather gets in the way. And worst of all, our own laziness gets in the way. My education psychology professor might have had it correct when he told us, one quiet spring evening in grad school: 'If you don't use it, you lose it. If you do use it, it breaks.' But I'd rather Super Glue it together than walk around the track looking for it a second/third/fourth time.

Triathlete/coach Chuck ("Chuckie V") Veylupek wrote something very politically incorrect in his blog, inspired by the attitude of some walkers on the track where he was training a neo-pro triathlete.

"The human body-yours-is the single most amazing instrument you will ever own. You will own it from the day you are born right up until the moment you die; it's the only "thing" you will own throughout that entire span. Don't be ashamed of your body, no matter what condition it's in. Learn to cherish it and befriend it, or the date of your demise may come sooner than you realize. Change your ways before it's too late, and though it may already be too late to ever be fully healthy, it's never too late to try. Diabetes Type II is preventable. Heart disease is preventable. Obesity is preventable. Cancer (to a lesser extent) is preventable. Bad health is preventable. Death is, um, delay-able. Walk on ladies, walk on. But do me a favor: don't despise Angela because she cares about herself more than you do. Your mumbles are as loud as each of your foot-strikes."

I have fun challenging athletes who have developed their fitness over time. I care about the entry-level runners who come to me, but with the fit athlete it means I can pull more tricks out of my little black bag without worrying if they will come up dinged from too much training. Retraining the detrained athlete can be frustrating, both to the athlete and the coach...most coaches would rather not see their athletes regress into that state. That's why many of them have little regard for excuses...doesn't mean they haven't used them at one time or another, but they know what those excuses do.

So, as Chuckie V said: Cherish and befriend your body. Keep it trained. Make your coach use their imagination when developing your next workout. :)