Free Your Run And Your Mind May Follow

There is a point in our commute to work which reminds us what we forgot to take with us from home, if we have forgotten something. The object's criticality determines, at least for me, exactly where this reminder will occur: If it's the identification cards which grant me access to my office and/or my computer I'll remember mere blocks from the front gate. Something less critical like my workout gear, running shoes, lunch, or perhaps money I need to give to someone will come to mind at a point exactly half way there, with no good opportunity to turn around.

Today was a "less critical" day. My Garmin Forerunner 310XT was sitting next to my computer and should have been in my bag this morning when I bolted out the front door. And why did I forget it? Suzanne was checking her bank balances on my computer; it's all her fault.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Actually, I consider the oversight more critical than most persons would.

I use the 310XT and the heart rate monitor to help me track almost every aspect of my workout routine: the duration, distance, type of activity (using Dan Empfield's Slowtwitch aerobic point scale) terrain, route, average HR, training stress score (using Bannister's minutes at percent calculation), shoe used, and current mileage, to name the majority of the factors. All this information is on a spreadsheet, which lets me look at where I am compared to my training goals and limitations. I can see, at a moment's notice, some of the root causes of a training setback, injury, or fatigue issue.

Am I dependent on the 310XT? There have been afternoons I've launched into a three-second piece of purple prose because the battery died or I forgot to bring the receiver unit (while the heart rate monitor strap was securely wrapped around my chest). So, I guess there might be the academic description of dependence there.

I considered completely tossing my planned mid-morning run into the rubbish container...then decided to go out for a run on the same loop without external pace guidance.

Yeah. Let's go by feel, Coach.

I cannot say it was liberating to go out for a run without having all that data available which the 310XT is able to provide. I was able to observe at a few things - the abundance of squirrels on base, for example - which I normally did not pay more than a passing glance because I was trying to either hold my pace back for a fellow runner or trying to keep from pushing the pace too much. The down side of a "no feedback" run was that I only had a time check at the two-thirds point of the run, at the front gate...at which point I had to judge where I was going to end the run. All I had without eating into my lunch break was 60 minutes, which included a shower and change back into my work clothes.

As long as a runner is not time-constrained or data-(over)dependent a "caveman run" can be a refreshing change of pace from the "X-pace for Y-distance" mentality into which many of us have unintentionally slipped.

Just don't expect me to go barefoot.

Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should...

A weekend in a beach town gives many opportunities for a person to see, um, things they might prefer not to. In order to keep this post family-friendly, graphic details will be kept to a minimum. I'm not really talking about tattoo art; who knew Panama City Beach had so many tattoo parlors, or that a tattoo on a certain portion of the body was otherwise called the "Panama City License Plate?" I'm not talking about short shorts (again!), Speedos, or green swim trunks with the little yellow duckies (Agon Swim?), or post-race party observations from the Slowtwitch web site, either.

As you can tell I probably could hold forth for an entire post on one or all of these topics...but it's something a little more mundane.

Ride with a pack of cyclists, especially on a windy day, and you can tell how much more beneficial it is to be suffering with others than to be out there all alone. As long as everybody manages to keep their wheels from crossing one another things are pretty much all right. However, when it comes to triathlon, unless you're of the caliber of those Olympic athletes, the bike ride is an individual affair. Each rider is responsible to take care of themselves and cannot use another rider to shield them from the wind...legally.

Some bike courses, like the ones for Panama City's half-iron and iron-distance triathlon events, have been described in the past as "pancake" flat. Compared to the NOLA 70.3 course I might call them "blueberry-pancake-flat." Yes, there is a bridge over West Bay, but it's the largest "lump" in 56 or 112 miles of Northwest Florida. A "breakfast-quality" bike course doesn't separate the strong riders from the less strong as quickly; this gives Panama City's races the reputation for being a draft-fest. Strong bikers looking for a chance to make a trip to Hawaii have saved up their nickels and dimes for an early-November race...check YouTube for a bike's-eye-view of one section of the ride. Looked like the Tour de France.

The rules for bicycle riding in most triathlons are simple:

1. Ride on the right.

2. Pass on the left.

3. Stay at least two bike lengths back from the bike ahead.

4. If you want to pass, make the pass in 20 seconds, and,

5. If you get passed, drop back two bike lengths before you try to pass them again.

The rules are very simple when you read them to a person. The theoretically-simple becomes the practically-challenging when you tell the person to ride their bicycle this way. Multiply this challenge by several hundred persons on bicycles over a 50-mile stretch of road and the odds are very good someone will temporarily "forget" one or more of the rules.

Perhaps they won't do what they should because they can? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Because Emanuel Kant's categorical imperative (live your life like your behavior would become a universal law) doesn't work well with nearly a thousand cyclists, there I was, riding on the back of a Harley-Davidson. Nine motorbikes and race officials, including my driver and myself, did our best to make certain all these athletes worked and played fairly together.

The first hour was fairly eventful, as two waves of athletes merged with each other about 15 miles into the ride. Most of the time the sound of that big Harley and those nice, loud exhaust pipes were enough to "remind" athletes of the rules and "encourage" them to follow them to the best of their ability. It's much like how we slow our cars down to a couple of miles above the speed limit when we see a state trooper on the highway.

However, the occasional rider sometimes "misses the memorandum" or didn't remember the rules from the athlete's meeting. Not else a guy can do but count off time, identify the rider and take down information; the head referee will sort it out at the end.

Near the end of the morning, we would approach a pack of riders and began to think of the old Irish ballad, "Danny Boy," '...the pipes, the pipes, are calling...' One rider near the back of the line, perturbed at what he thought was happening up ahead, looked at me and gesticulated with his left hand.

I know, friend. Just because they think they can doesn't mean they should.

Harley-Davidson is, quite often, an effective tool when you need to remind a crowd of bicyclists about the rules. Well, unless you're riding one bike length behind a very attractive cyclist.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

It's a lot like road race etiquette and protocol. There are many things which are - while not completely impermissible - are usually not fair to other race participants, and may not endear you to the race director on occasions...things like banditing (even if you don't go through the finish chute), going back up the course after you've finished to pace another racer in, self-seeding too far forward in the pack (especially with jogging strollers). On a personal note, I would even add arguing about the distance of a certified course (The "my GPS says..." argument?) in that short list. Sure, the individual racer can do these things, but it usually makes life a little more difficult for the rest of the community.

Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Unless you find those duckie Speedos in your size.

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.