Multisport as a Metaphor for Life

Just back from a long (and often seemingly-lost) weekend in New Orleans. I don't go to NOLA for no special reason; nearly every time (like almost any trip away from home) has something to do with running or multisport. Nice way to go through life, in my humble opinion.

While I'd love to say the weekend was a complete & utter success it was not. I'm still dealing with a serious fear of open water swimming, something which has affected me since last year in Panama City. I had the strangest feeling of panic earlier in the week as we were discussing swim courses & initially attributed it to one-too-many cups of Starbucks. Unlike a twelve-step program, realizing you have a problem is probably not the hardest step.

A couple of things I learned this weekend which might even parallel life:

Bargaining does not work with every adversary. I went out to do the traditional Saturday morning run along Lakeshore with New Orleans' 5:20 club. At the 3.5-mile point, I backed off my 7:30-per-mile pace, looked out toward the calm (at that moment!) waters of Lake Ponchartrain & began to make peace with her. The next morning's conditions were (supposedly) as placid as the day before...but conditions became more challenging in the two hours between arriving at transition & the wave start. I remember someone saying a phrase some time back about running being eighty percent mental & the other half physical. Triathlon, however, is not running. It's one-hundred percent mental & the other half physical. If your head isn't all there it's not going to be a good day.

Always have an eighty-percent solution. Since the IM70.3 NOLA event has attracted many first-time triathletes, the race director left an opt-out option. A great idea, in my humble opinion, especially when nearly 30 persons were either taken from the water or bailed on the swim before the finish of the 1.2-mile leg. I'm not certain how many took the opt-out, but in hindsight, I might have felt worse about the day if I had. Getting in the water & getting my butt kicked was better than not getting in at all.

Attitude is everything. After the obligatory 30 seconds of oh, cr*p, not another day like Panama City...the race staff told me I could still do the opt out. Suh-weet! I hadn't ridden my Softride time trial bike since IM week in Panama City, & really wanted to know how much benefit my new (F.I.S.T.) set-up & new (Gray) aero helmet would provide on what I initially perceived as a wicked good bike course. I was half correct; the bike course definitely had its share of wickedness, two bridges to climb - one right after the other - within the first ten kilometers...this course is an out-and-back, so the same challenges in the first ten would be there for the last ten, when we were fatigued. At first, the wind on the course was relatively light & in our face, but began to increase in strength & shift in direction, leaving few places on the course where a racer would benefit from it. I noted after a slight sluggishness in the bike's handling after the 50-kilometer mark, just a few miles after the mid-point. As the ride progressed, the sluggishness increased, & I knew from looking down at the tire patch that a flat was in my near future. Finally, at 48 miles, I realized the road conditions of the next eight miles plus the mushy tire could possibly lead to a very bad day. So, I stopped to try & repair the leak. After attempting to refill the tire, I found the issue was, er, something deeper...a cracked valve stem extender, literally something I could not repair. Fortunately, the trooper protecting the course was able to call bike technical support...who didn't show for an hour & a half.

When you're in a situation like that you can either become Eeyore & bemoan your fate with a face long enough to eat corn out of a pop bottle, or you can channel Normann Stadler in Kona, circa 2005 ("another flat $&#*^% tire!"). But since I was feeling fairly good to be alive & not in an emergency department, I decided to laugh at my fate. Come on, how many guys run the risk of pulling what I would call a "double DNF" in one days' racing? Not many. Of course, if I had been more smart about the issue I would have pulled off the road at the overpass where there was shade, but I was thinking more along the lines of communication & not so much speed of response at the moment. If I had known it was going to take at least 90 minutes for tech to show, I probably would have ridden up to the overpass & taken advantage of the shade. So, silly me, I stood in the sun & nearly dehydrated myself. Tech, once they caught up with me, got me back on the chain gang again very quickly, with a couple of bottles of water to boot. My buddy Dixie came past about five minutes before tech did, so my goal was to catch him some time before the finish line.

Patience IS a virtue. The one thing I did not want to have on the run was a repeat of Augusta, where I hammered the first three miles & struggled the next ten. I knew if I was aggressive with my hydration & electrolytes during the bike & continued with it as far into the run as possible I might not have a bad day, or at least wouldn't have the kick me to the curb cramping I had from mile seven to the finish at Augusta. The plan was to run ten light poles, followed by walking one, plus I would walk as I took fluid at the aid stations on the course. Since there were stations every mile I did not wear my hydration belt, but took hits from my gel/electrolyte flask every second aid station.

I encountered Dixie at the only bridge on the run course, somewhere between the second or third mile, & passed him like he was tied to a tree. However, he was close enough behind throughout the run we saw each other on every switchback through City Park. Nothing like unadulterated fear a buddy is going to catch up with your butt to make you keep moving as quickly as possible. After the ninth mile there was just about nothing left in the tank, which seemed to be a good a time as any to engage in a brisk walk & see what strength I could recover. Amazingly, I was able to get back on the groove at mile ten, just before the exit of City Park...and just in time for the roughest patch of pavement on the entire run, Esplanade Avenue. I've run up & down Esplanade many times in the past ten years or so; knowing the best of the worst conditioned road I've ever raced upon was going to be a benefit. Again, it was the ten-to-one ratio, & things seemed to work fairly well until mile 13 when whatever reserves I might have had in store were depleted. Of course, by that time you have a new fuel source, namely loud music & cheering spectators. Most of them don't have a clue how bad you feel by that time, & I think they'd gladly give the functioning half of their liver to you if they could.

So, all you can do is suck it up & look like you're really STRONG when all you want to do is sit by the side of the road on the curb & drink two or three beers. Repeating as tolerated.

There's NOTHING like a finish line. But you want to look good for the photographers & the friends who finished hours before you did, so you tighten up the loose fasteners & set yourself up for a strong finishing kick which tells people: 'yeah, I did this, & if they asked me to do it tomorrow I probably would...as long as you're out here waiting for me again.'

Georgia On My (Tri Suit) Back...

For the small number of people who really want to know how the coach fared on his training day in Augusta, GA this last weekend, here we go. I'll provide a brief commentary on the host city, the courses, my performance, some possible root causes/lessons learned and what I might try in order to not have a repeat on a grander (and I dare say, a more painful...) scale in five weeks.

Augusta - Venue
Augusta is definitely Old South, with dry town-style blue laws & that roll up the sidewalk, put out the cat at five o'clock feeling. If you're looking for a race venue in which to party during the days immediately before/afterward, this is definitely not the race to choose. However, if you can handle walking down a tree-lined main drag on a Saturday morning to a bakery for coffee, danish (there are only two Starbucks' in town; one's in the Marriott) & a quiet read of the local newspaper/USA Today, this is your kind of place. Even Monday morning traffic didn't come down Broad Street en masse until about nine o'clock, while we had breakfast at a breakfast joint which did open during the week. Yes, there are dining, drinking & clubbing establishments which open later, but don't expect a boatload of early morning joints nearby.

We stayed at the Ramada Inn, about six blocks from the headquarters hotel, three blocks from the swim start, & approximately 1.2 miles from the transition area. What it lacked in facility quality & neighborhood location - the freight train line, which awakened us at least four times nightly, reminded Suzanne & me of our first place - it made up by proximity to the run course just plain good-hearted attitude of the staff working there.

The courses were, in the opinion of this race guy, fairly good. I truly enjoyed the point-to-point swim in the Savannah River, as well as the rolling, often-tree-lined bike course in the vicinity of Jackson & Aiken, SC. The run course was, however, a mixed bag. If I had been the course designer, I probably would not have run the course over the train line four times each ten-kilometer loop. Yes, I'm being a whiny-butt, because I know what happens every time I try to run over a very uneven piece of pavement when I've been moving for the previous four hours. Can you say calf or leg cramps?

Swim - 1.2 miles - 35:00
Swimming in the 72-degree waters of the Savannah River was nice, even though the water was quite murky, with seagrass, sticks & the like. After the first couple of hundred yards I was forced to either do the side stroke or the breast stroke. If your shoulders aren't used to swimming, even a two-millimeter wetsuit (great for flotation when compared to no wetsuit) can pose difficulties. A couple of panicky moments here & there when I caught a little too much water, as well as the drat! I knew I should have used the tinted goggles moment when the sun finally burst through...all I could tell was I was going in the right direction - downstream - but seeing specific signs was another story altogether.

(Talk about a fun swim venue - you probably could have walked on the levee for the majority of the swim & watched your athlete do their thing.)

T1 - Unlike most other 70.3 events according to what I've been told, this event had wetsuit strippers at the transition area. Nice. The downside was the strippers were in the grass; by the time my wave (23rd of 25) arrived in T1 the nice grass had turned more into nice grass and mud. So, I ended up with a nice coating of Georgia grass/mud/dirt on the back side of my bright yellow tri-top. I know. Waah, waah, waah... I didn't know there was junk all over my back until the bike course, when some 40-44 woman I passed told me.

Contrary to my first triathlon efforts, my time in T1 was fairly short, probably about three minutes at the most. However, I did the same thing I've done in every other event. I broke my right little toe during my first triathlon trying to get into my cycling shoes...it's happened every time since then. When I told my wife later she freaked out. Hey, it's only a little toe. I have nine others.

Bicycle - 56 miles - 3:10
The first 20 kilometers of the bike leg went by quickly; I was probably at 30 km/hour (20 mph) average for it. The first climb on the course did not come until about the 18-mile mark, when I heard the first signs I did not want to hear; grinding noises from my chainring area as I started to pull my way up the hill. That's a certain sign I've got a chain issue, caused by a dry chain...not enough lube...exposed to rain the night before while in transition. Stupid! Should have taken my bottle of chain lube to transition & that extra half-hour of TLC; probably would have saved me a good ten minutes of ride. By the end of the bike leg I was limited to probably four gear combinations which did not make a lot of noise. The last 15 kilometers were the price paid for my folly, as I dropped my chain off the small chainring not once, but twice...the second time on the last incline leading back into Augusta.

When we looked at the course profile, the first reaction was one of shock & worry; there were some serious elevation changes on the course, a couple of hundred feet in difference, in three separate locations. Fortunately, the scale of the course profile was skewed in favor of showing all of the elevation...only three of the climbs were tougher than three percent in grade...and only one was tough enough to make me get up out of my saddle for the climb. Looked at my heart rate on the climbs &found I was expending no worse than 77 percent of maximum heart rate, which means I was probably at the high end of aerobic threshhold.

It was on the bike where the first signs of wheels falling off were noticeable, just after the 40 kilometer marker at the second of two U-turns on the course. I almost overcooked the first one about ten kilometers earlier, but managed to pull it back in. The second U-turn was snug enough to slow me down good. Pushing the pace to get back up to speed (into a steadily-increasing headwind) caused a beauty of a calf cramp, one of those cramps that you cannot pedal through & can barely unclip out to let it rest for about ten one-legged pedal strokes.

(Another one of those rides where I wish I had a basket to pick up all of the stuff which was discarded on the course. Danny Turner said he saw a wad of money on the road...dude, you didn't stop!?)

T2 - much shorter than the lead-in from the swim, thank goodness. Yes, I had to walk the bike through the entire transition area, but since there was low grass, smooth gravel & carpeting it was fairly quick & painless. Took the time to kill off the 20-ounce bottle of Gatorade Endurance Formula I picked up at the third bottle exchange - part of the 60 ounces of fluid taken on the bike course to supplement the 60 ounces (40 of Accelerade/Hammer Gel/water mixture, 20 of straight water) I carried on board - and hit the head.

So the answer, Mimi, is: No. No peeing on the bike. I waited until T2.

Run - 13.1 miles - 2:22
Regardless of whatever plans you make, the run leg of a triathlon is uncomfortable. It all depends on how you define uncomfortable. Compared to my previous half-iron experience, this was not so much a kick in the groin as a slap very, very close to it. The first & second miles were just plain awful, but I knew that was going to happen. That's why (most) people do transition runs, or bricks. The warmth of the run course in downtown Augusta made it almost necessary to play it cautious; I already planned to walk through the aid stations which were located about every two kilometers on the course in order to take enough fluids to forestall cramping. Things seemed to work well until mile four, then the wheels fell off. They did not fall off like my previous half, where I walked for a solid hour; they fell off closely enough to the wagon I could pick them up & replace them. And replace them, I did. Every other block for the next three miles; I tried to go further than a block, or as far as I could until the cramp would start, then I'd take a minute or a block & walk.

(How many stoopid people do you know who take a cell phone on the run at a triathlon?)

Every run course, every race course, has a point on it where the crowds are sparse or nonexistent, the view is dismal, & your body begins to debate very loudly with your mind. My point was somewhere between the sixth & seventh mile, on Reynolds Avenue, heading back toward the Augusta Rowing Club. The bad news was I developed a major cramp in my left hamstring, the kind that makes you literally pitch off to one side, hopefully into something soft & comfortable. The good news was that it stopped me dead still rather than pitching me off into the bushes along the roadway. The real good news was that a fellow participant gave me the one Hammer Endurolyte capsule she had left...which perhaps made the difference between walking/jogging the next 6 miles & just walking the next 6 miles.

And this happened at a point where at least three of the aid stations on the course were beginning to run out of cups, cold drink & sponges. I had to forego aid on the southern side of Broad Street because there were no cups whatsoever. (If you're in a later wave of a large triathlon event, consider yourself warned.)

Finish - 6:20:22
Compared to the last half-iron triathlon, I finished two minutes faster...on a less-challenging swim but a more-challenging bike. If I said I was not hoping for a quicker time, you could call me a liar. But I'm pleased with how things turned out (especially the way I feel days later - sleeping without waking up to cramps from the nether regions are a plus).

Lessons Learned/Training Foci:
Swim - more full suit-swims & resistance training - strengthen the arms for longer wetsuit swims and decrease fatigue. Able to make 1.2 in hour, so no need to panic on longer swim, just do one stroke at a time and stay focused.

Bike - check function (air/lubrication/gears/brakes) both during check-in & pre-race in transition. 90-minute bottles worked wonderfully; set-up either one 6-hour bottle or two 3-hour bottles for IM. Use aero bottle for water. A couple of 3-hour-to-4-hour road or trainer rides should work well to get comfortable in saddle.

Run - carry electrolytes of some sort in fuel belt; don't trust race course to have enough good stuff. Use HEED/Perpetuem and/or Endurolytes. Long, easy-paced (8:00min/mile) runs/ short transition runs over next weeks.

The Right Kind of Currency

I came home Sunday morning, after my bi-weekly 8-mile jaunt around Bayou Texar, & proceeded to ditch my dripping wet running shorts, socks & shoes on the shoe rack & hangers in my back yard. As I opened the back storm door, there was a whirrr & a blur of feathers off to the left at about the height of my head. A bird house which hung off one of our loblolly pine trees since we moved into the house five years ago had fallen in one of the hurricanes we had in the year after our arrival. Because of the fall, it's structural integrity wasn't the greatest; the floor was about half attached. We had it sitting on a metal outdoor shelf for a while wondering what to do with it. It still kind of looked cute, so we hung it up near our kitchen window about three months ago, about the same time we started putting up our patio roof. After the Close Encounter of the Avian Kind, I realized the birdhouse was no longer just a decoration. The bottom of the birdhouse was crammed with pine needles. Obviously, some bird couple has decided to take up residence there. My wife, ever the cautious one, wondered whether we should try to repair the house and re-hang it. However, I'm more than willing to hold off until I know for certain the house has been vacated. Hey, I wouldn't want someone to come in & redecorate (or screw up) my place while I was out, Home & Garden Network be d*mned.

"Life is a budget." - Patricia Quigley, Ph.D., ARNP, CCRN (during aerobics class, ca. 1993)

The quote above probably has never been used in a book, or directly attributed, but I definitely have to give credit where credit is due. Dr. Q is probably one of the main reasons I went to college, developed an interest in fitness, and began working as a coach. During the mid-1990s she saw me in various states of fatigue, dehydration & under-nourishment, & rescued me during one of my more acute crash-and-burn exercise moments, which turned me on to the benefits of sports nutrition.

It's also a great quote when I think about fatigue, stress, work, training. Especially when I'm laying out training plans for my athletes. Like the first principle of economics says, we have unlimited desires but limited resources. There's only so much you can do given time constraints, energy limitations, & multiple task demands. Professional athletes are blessed with not only the gifts of efficient energy distribution, but with the opportunities to efficiently reacquire the energies previously distributed. The rest of us citizens juggle that 40-hour (or more) work week, (seemingly unlimited) needs of family & home, & in many cases, determine if we can be involved in other activities.

By determining how much time do I have to train, runners can make a simple (well, perhaps not so simple) determination of what race distances to focus on. I've seen more than my share of miserable, beat-up marathoners who probably would be happier half-ers...or 10-kilometer runners. Triathletes are even more budget-constrained than the average runner; hard-won performance gains in one of the three disciplines often come at a cost to the other two...regardless of the distance. Lately, I've started to learn you need the right kind of currency to spend in this market.

Ever spend time in a foreign country but didn't have access to their money, and all you had were dollars? Okay, maybe that's not such a good analogy; flip it around. Ever come back from a foreign country to the States, and all you had in your wallet was their folding money? Especially in this town, where people tend to not think about international travel, going into a Starbucks for a latte and trying to pay with 15 UAE dirhams (1 UAE dirham = $.27) is a very bad idea.

'What's this? Monopoly money?'

Your next cup of coffee will be at the Pensacola Police Department, while you're answering a series of questions. Beginning of a very bad day.

While coffee & pastries might work as good fuel for a 40-year-old 5K/10K specialist, it's not quite as effective when the goal is 70.3, or 140.6 miles. I guess you can do it, but it's not good fuel. From all of the people I've ever talked to who have done long-distance triathlon, they have not agreed with the marketing which states America Runs (or Tris) on Dunkin'. Well, Michael Lovato might be an exception.

That same sort of diet (or rest, or beverage...more on that in the future) discipline - or the lack of - is like having a birdhouse with a half-nailed-in floor; it's a matter of when - not if - the bottom will fall out...and you hope you don't have your eggs in there when it does happen. I approach these currency exchanges of a sort with a little bit of fear & trepidation...some 200-plus days out from Ironman Florida.
So it wasn't too surprising to hear my wife's girlfriend complain about her dietary hassles over the past weeks. She has a love, like I do, for sweet things & junk food. Since my wife is more into savory, salty snacks, the odds of having lots of cookies, cakes, pastries & the like around the house are slim. Not that I don't love pretzels or popcorn, it's just gummi bears are higher on my list of favorite food-like substances which must be avoided like the plague so I can hear Mike Reilly shout my name on November 7, 2009. Blessed be my wife, for she has turned me on to sports nutrition bars, namely CLIF bars.

I tried to explain the benefits of CLIF bars to my wife's girlfriend:
1. There are multiple flavors.
2. They have a cookie-like texture.
3. They are made of mostly-organic stuff.

4. The large bars are 200 calories; the new mini-bars are 100.

So, with items like CLIF bar, a person in need to be wise with their diet, or lose a couple of pounds...like me, for performance & health reasons...can exchange the unhealthy stuff they love to scarf on at the office (where I can find whatever I am looking for) or at home with what can best be described as an eighty-percent solution. It's not a chocolate chip cookie or a brownie, but it's close enough for government work. The grains, natural fiber, flavor variety & portion control make it the folding money I can use for my own personal fitness & dietary budget.

Live To Fight Another Day

Up this morning to make my way to the swimming pool...the hammies were oinking, the quads were multiplying their pain response somewhere closer to octaves, and the calves were definitely mooing. The cacaphony of catastrophic proportions - muscle and joint pain at all-time highs - encouraged me to turn back to the (relative) warmth of my bed. Humor notwithstanding, both the missus and I were in a world of pain two days after our marathon experience. I felt guilty for not doing anything today, but if you follow the rule of thumb; no activity for the number of days equal to the number of hours you race, no hard training for the number of days equal of miles you race, well...I still owe myself a day...or two...
The marathon is a humbling experience. I've said this before. Fortunately, I still can smile about what happened on Sunday.
We had conditions on the warm and humid side; not good for marathoning, but nice for Florida in mid-December. My athletes and myself, not to mention 2,000 friends, blew off the line at a couple of minutes after seven to run the full and the half marathon.
I had both my heart rate monitor and my running watch to keep track of my mile splits and my effort. Well, I also wanted to keep track of Suzanne's performance (she had the goal of beating Katie Holmes' NYC marathon time of 5:30) for her own record-keeping. Ah, but enough about her. This is all about me.
The first half-marathon was good for the first eleven miles with splits of 7:30, 7:16, 7:14, 7:24, 7:06, 7:15, 7:12, 7:20, 7:24, 7:26, and 7:29. At that point, I hit a section of the course I had not seen and didn't take the time to look at on Google Earth; I'm usually anal about studying courses because I need to know exactly where I'm going and what to expect on the trip back. The splits went to 7:44 and 7:35.
I hit the half-marathon point with eight minutes to play with on the return trip. The calf cramps began at 14 and stayed to mile 20. I never had them bilaterally, but they would swap off; one would tighten up and cause me to walk for about 30 seconds, after which I could run for a couple of minutes...in time for the other calf to join in the fun. My splits went from 7:30-ish in the front 13 to 7:51, 8:41, 10:25, 9:23, 8:46, and 9:36. I then tried to adjust my stride to keep the calves from firing too much, and had taken in all of my fluid and gels to get glucose to the muscles. After a 12:25 mile at mile 20, I did the math and knew the eight minutes I had at 13.1 had been spent. My right achilles' tendon was swollen and sore from the change in stride mechanics.
At that point I had three choices:
1 - drop out of the race.
2 - push the pace and try to get back on the good side of 3:30.
3 - walk the last 6.2 miles.
None of the three are emotionally or psychologically satisfying, and one of them could have led to some serious long-term consequences. So, in order to pay respect to the course and the other participants who were slogging it out in various stages of ecstasy and pain, I decided to walk it in. I wasn't going to get my Boston qualifier, but it was still a nice day for a walk.
I did learn some lessons from the weekend:
Regardless of how well you think you have trained, 26.2 will beat you senseless if one little thing goes wrong. In my case, I was racing on borrowed training; a base shortened by six weeks because of a fractured humerus, a peak performance months too soon, and a few too many bad training days near the end. I toed the starting line gimpy and fragile, and paid the piper.
However, I was smart enough to quit trying to race when I felt the first danger signs. I'm hurting today, I got lit up by the marathon. I may not do another marathon, but I get to live to fight another day.
You be cocky and arrogant, even when you're getting beat. That's the secret. You gotta play this game with fear and arrogance. -- Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), in "Bull Durham" (1988)

Common Sense Ain't All That Common

The workout kinda reinforced the youth/age thing. I think, short of two guys out there...okay, three...everyone who was out were either dinged up or on the mend. I'm not so certain, looking at the last two repeats of the second set, one guy was not pushing as much as the other was hanging on for dear life. I'll have to ask him later.

Rather than telling me, 'hey coach, I'm a little dinged up today, so I'm going to run it a little less intense than what you're asking,' I've got to watch them self-freakin'-destruct. And it's not the track work that's killing them. It's what they are doing on the "easy" days.

Listen closely - if your easy days are approaching your race pace, then you are going too %(#-#!&^ hard. Easy days are what make you stronger, faster, and better...'cause you recover from the @$$-kicking workout from the day (or two) before.

It's five weeks before the marathon training commences. Of course, I'm still (half) in a sling. I walked much of the workout yesterday out of the sling, getting a little bit of that gentle assisted ROM work. Once I started feeling the tension on the back and shoulder muscles it was time to sling-up again.

I'm getting the first inklings of fear that my marathon is going to be a nightmare. Well, really, a four-week delay in base training isn't going to kill me. What's going to kill me is if I force the progression, go too soon into the next phase. It might mean sacrificing one race of three (5K in September, half-marathon in October, 10K in November) this fall and spending a little more time in cardio.

So, puppy...what IS the goal? For me, it's a Boston qualifier. For me, it's 3:30 - 8:00/mile pace. Smart running for 26.2 miles. As my old coach would say: It's not only PACE, but what fits within...PAtienCE.

It's not only pace, but also patience.