An tough but productive week

Well this was an interesting week. I'm down in Florida at the first round of my car racing season (http://www.starmazda.com/) and for the first time I'm trying to work in a full Ironman workout schedule in between my various on-track sessions. It took a bit of planning but I managed to get all but one of my workouts done (a shorter swim), which was satisfying.

I learned that to get a workout in between on-track sessions I really need a minimum of 4 hours. When we get off track there's a certain decompression period required, then we talk over the car's handling with the engineer, etc. So the earliest I can really expect to start a workout is 1-1.5 hours after the session ends. Then consider at least an hour for the workout (more if I have to travel somewhere like to a pool) and another hour, at least, before the next on-track session to look at data, video and get myself prepared, there's not much time left. I found this week that it's generally easiest to do the workouts at the end of the day, but that sure makes for a long day.

So in six days here, I was on track 8 times, did 4 rides, 3 runs and 2 swims. And I accomplished what I came here to do and won my class, starting what will hopefully be a successful defence of my Championship from last year.

My first tri ever - UBC

I haven't posted anything for a while, but there's been a lot going on. Since my first post I've basically just been training lots but at lower 'base' intensity. I joined a Masters swim program in mid January that has me in the pool twice a week at 5:30AM. Ouch. Other than that most of my cycling has been alone and running has been alone or with Niki.

Right now I'm at about 12 hours per week and it feels pretty good. Thankfully no injuries yet but a few little pains.

The biggest news is that I've got a coach now, and I'm REALLY excited about it. Just by luck a friend of mine introduced me to a recent Ironman Canada winner who agreed to take me on and be my coach. I am really honoured to be working with him and have already learned a bunch just in the last two weeks. My first official day of training under his plan actually starts today.

Anyway, the UBC Tri was yesterday and I'll post the race report I sent to my coach:

"Swim - No place to warm up whatsoever so I started out at a comfortable pace and I only hit that really uncomfortable period for a few hundred metres. By 500 or so I was in a pretty good rhythm (I'm not saying fast...). I'm not exactly sure what my time was but I'm guessing 32 min. in the actual pool. That's with 30 walls and some very amateurish turns on my part, ducking under lane lines, and we had to get out after 800 and walk back to lane 2 to swim the next 700. Anyway, I've definately got LOTS of room for improvement here.

T1 - We had to walk around the pool, get our change bag, go into a tent, change into our winter clothes, then run 300m to the bikes. My low point of the day was a serious bout of nausea that hit me after I changed and started jogging to the bike. It lasted about a min and then my stomach gradually started to feel better. I'm not sure what caused it...something we'll have to diagnose.

Bike - I found my heart rate elevated quite a bit (+10bpm) at the beginning, which may explain my stomach. I was DOP (a car racing term - down on power) compared to how I felt a few days ago when I rode the course. I have to admit that the run was in the back of my mind and I was a bit concerned about what my stomach would feel like so I backed it off a little bit. I averaged 202w which was good for 20.0 mph, about 1:11 on the bike. The other day I did 225w good for 21.8 mph. I was in some fairly bulky clothes, training wheels, and regular helmet. My stomach still wasn't 100% so I only got through about 3/4 of my gluekos supply.

T2 - This was funny. I'm coming down the hill, get my feet of out my shoes, and ooops, the dismount line is RIGHT THERE with the guy pointing at it. Back brake wasn't enough, front brake was too much, and over the handlebars I'm going right in front of my family. My wife yells 'Oh shit!' All I'm thinking as I'm flying through the air is 'how embarrassing!'. I didn't even feel the impact because of my embarrassment, popped up and kept going. The rest of the transition was much smoother.

Run- I feel this was my best performance. My feet were numb from the cold for the first few k but I still felt pretty good overall after about 750m. I kept a fairly even pace, but there were a few pretty good hills in there where I had to bear down. I felt quite good until at least 8km then started to fade a bit in conjunction with 2 hills that come near the end. Anyway, I averaged 7:15/mile for a time of somewhere around 45 mins.

I didn't eat or drink anything after about the 80% point on the bike and I don't feel it cost me anything.

I'm not sure what the overall results look like yet. This event is funny for the results because they don't break out the transitions. All of T1 (which is pretty long) gets added to the swim, and T2 gets added to the bike."

So that was written before I actually got the results, which had good news and bad news. The good news was that in my age group, M35-39, I had the #1 bike time and #2 run time. The bad news is that my swim was pretty bad, #15 in the group and 38min including T1 time. Even moderately decent swim would have seen me win the age group, but instead I finished 5th.

Overall I was 34th of about 225 people, including men and women. I'll take it for my first ever triathlon but there's still a lot of work to do before IM Canada in August!

Officially entered in Ironman Canada 2009!

Yesterday I received the official confirmation that I'm registered for Ironman Canada 2009. I've been ramping up my training for a few months now but until yesterday I didn't have a spot in the event, so now it's for real.

I've never done a triathlon before so this is going to be quite a challenge. The good news is that I have the time to put in the training, the bad news is I'm not really a runner or swimmer, and only an average cyclist!

My plan is to do an Olympic distance (about 1/4 of an Ironman) tri in March, a Half Ironman in June, and then Ironman Canada on Aug. 30th 2009. Of course with lots of training in between.

When I started the swimming about 2 months ago, it was difficult to do one length (25m) without stopping to catch my breath. Now I can swim 500m without stopping, but not very quickly. Ironman swim distance is 3.8km.

Running is another issue. I can run at a decent pace (say 3h 45m marathon pace) for an hour without feeling tired and feeling like I could just keep going and going, however I'm struggling with lower leg pain (shins mostly) that is limiting my ability to run as much as I would like to. Right now I definately can't run consecutive days, and two days apart is pushing it a bit. I've gone to someone for a running analysis and hopefully we'll get it figured out soon. Ironman run distance is 42km (a full marathon).

I'm confident I can do the ride (180km), the question in my mind is how quickly and whether or not I can stay in the aero position for much of the ride. I'm finding it quite uncomfortable/painful to be in that position...and it's not my back that's bothering me. Something tells me I'm going to be trying a lot of different saddles before this is all over.