The Crack of Dawn

I can't believe I'm up this early on a non-race day. Today I'm meeting a guy from my Master's class to go for a 1.5-2hr ride before work. The good news is that I'll learn a new route that I can bike to straight from home. The bad news is that we're meeting at 5:20am. These are the times when I realize how crazy this whole process is, especially since I'll be swimming this evening. I have an odd feeling that I'll be asleep by 9 tonight. Yep, just like a 5 year old. Hopefully a swig of 5 Hr Energy will get me through the day.

The New Plan for Nailing My Long Runs

As I mentioned in the last post, there are a number of things that I hope will help me actually "run" my long runs instead of shuffling through them.

1. Technique: When I get tired, I tend to focus on pushing off the ground with my already fatigued quads instead of driving my knees forward using my hip muscles. Turns out that it's much easier to propel yourself by lifting your legs rather than doing the equivalent of single leg squats.

2. Hydration: In contrast to the well placed water fountains on the Lakeshore path in Chicago, there are only a few options for hydration along the Harbor here in Baltimore. Since I sweat like I'm on trial, I decided to invest in a Camelback this past week and it made a huge difference in my energy level at the end of my 14 miler on Sunday. Instead of trying to get by on 40-50oz of fluid, I had about 90 oz of water, plus gels and salt tabs to get me through.

3. Recovery: The most difficult part of Ironman training is following up a long 4+ hour ride on Saturday with a 2+ hour run on Sunday morning. Even if my legs aren't too sore, I often lose motivation about 6 mi into my long runs and this is exactly what happened at Eagleman. I did a little research into supplements that actually show promise as recovery agents and found that branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), and in particular, glutamine, have been shown to improve recovery in a number of studies. I picked up some chewable glutamine tablets at GNC last week and I now try to get at least 5g a day. Hopefully, I'll start to see my recovery strategy pay off in the next couple of weeks.

4. Focus: The last thing that I really need to work on to improve the quality of my long runs is my focus (or as my high school basketball coach would say, mental toughness). Often times when I feel fatigued, I don't feel the kind of burning sensation that I get at the end of a race. Instead, it's like my brain decides to slow down and/or walk even though my legs aren't dead. To combat my waning focus, I now try to accept the onset of mental (aka central) fatigue as a natural feeling and then tell myself that there's much more in the tank. My new running mantra is "if the legs don't hurt, then you can go faster."

Can't Believe It's July

Somehow, almost 16 weeks have gone by since I began training for IM Louisville and now there are only 8 weeks left until race day. Ahhhhhhhhhh! I can definitely say that training has paid off and now I actually feel like completing the race will be possible. As a practice for August, I recently completed Eagleman 70.3 in Cambridge, MD (full race report to be posted soon) on what was an unseasonably hot day. Since then, I've just been chugging along with my training and really trying to focus on my run. At this point, I'm satisfied with my swim and biking endurance and I think that I could complete those legs of the Ironman, albeit slowly, at my current level of fitness. After a disappointing run at Eagleman, I had to assess what was going wrong with the run component of my training and came up with the following problems which I'll discuss in my next post.

1. Technique
2. Hydration
3. Recovery
4. Focus

Long Overdue for an Update

It’s definitely been a while since I’ve posted any updates, but I’ll try my best to give a nice synopsis of the past two weeks of training. I’m still settling into my training regimen and trying to get accustomed to the new settings here in Charm City. During the past few years in Chicago, I never had to drive my bike anywhere to ride and I had two pools where I could do my swim training at any given time. Here, my options are more limited in some sense, but I’m hoping that it will make for a more successful season. Though I can only swim during Master’s practice times and I often have to drive at least 20min away for good riding, I’m getting more feedback about my swimming technique and hopefully riding up and over all the hills in the area will make me a stronger cyclist. Speaking of training, what does real world Ironman training actually entail? A typical training week for me looks something like this:

Day	Session 1 (am)	Session 2 (pm)
Monday		Master’s Swim
Tuesday	Patterson Park Loop Ride
Wednesday	Run	Master’s Swim
Thursday	Trainer Ride	Run
Friday	Rest
Saturday	Master’s Swim (early am)	Long Ride/Brick (late am)
Sunday	Long Run

In total, each week has 10 scheduled workouts and so far I’m averaging around 8. Since the first 8 weeks of my program are devoted to building a strong aerobic base, the majority of my workouts are done in Zone 2-3 with sets of short sprints or hill climbs for running and cycling respectively. I’ve been able to see some real fitness gains recently as running has become a bit easier and my heart rate isn’t climbing as high as it usually does at a given pace. Swimming is coming along slowly as usual, but that’s probably because I’ve yet to have a week where I’ve completed all 3 scheduled sessions. Even though the training intensity is mostly easy, I’ve noticed that the cycling hill intervals really wear me out. On Tuesday, I did 10 x 1 min climbs in Patterson Park and my legs were feeling really fatigued until Thursday morning. I’ve also noticed that it takes me about 10 seconds to fall asleep at night and I have no problem sleeping for 9 hours straight depending on when I go to bed. Speaking of bed, I guess I’ll wrap up this post and get ready for an early morning swim workout. Gotta stay streets ahead of the game.

Changing Lanes

One of the major differences between Chicago and Baltimore is that in Chicago, I had no worries about starting and finishing my cycling workouts from my front door. Well, at least the front door of my building as I haven't yet learned how to ride down 3 flights of stairs on aerobars. There were basically only two routes one could take when riding in the city: east to the lake and head north or east to the lake and head south. Even though Chicago lacked riding options and the terrain was mostly flat; riding was definitely convenient.

In Baltimore on the other hand, I have to drive to all the places where I would feel comfortable riding on the road. This presents a problem for weekday morning rides because I'm not a huge fan of losing sleep so that I can wake up early, install my bike rack, secure my bike, drive 20 minutes, ride for an hour or two, and do the whole process in reverse. However, the idea of doing all of my mid-week rides on a trainer is not appealing in the least, so today I decided to suck it up and drive to a "safe" spot.

Last week, while driving to a local park, I spent about 15 minutes driving down Pulaski Hwy. Surprisingly, the highway had wide shoulders and was marked as a bike route to some of the towns northeast of Baltimore. Although the road was extremely busy during the afternoon, I figured that it would be relatively quiet at 6:30am on a weekday. It turns out that this assumption proved only partially correct. The problem was that I had to ride far enough to get outside of the beltway (I-695) before the traffic died down and in the meantime, I had to make sure that I stayed as far to the right of the shoulder as possible. As a aside to any city planners who might happen upon this post, if you have a bike route that bypasses one or multiple interstate on-ramps, build a bridge or underpass or specify a detour so that cyclists don't have to play Frogger with cars, trucks, and semis driving along at 50 mph. Anyway, once I made my way outside of the beltway, the ride was great. Nice rolling hills that required use of most of my gears (a nice change from Chicago) and not too much traffic.


View Larger Map

All in all, it was a good experience and I will now suck it up and spend the extra 5-10 minutes to park outside of the beltway before hopping on my bike.

Off the Chain

So my plan for today was simple. Wake up bright and early at 5:00am, eat breakfast, go to swim practice, and then join the group ride leaving from Tri-Speed. If everything went according to plan, I would have enjoyed about 3 hours of training while also earning my post-workout, pancake breakfast. Steps 1 and 2  went smoothly, though I woke up about 7 different times last night, so it was off to swim practice.

Unlike Wednesday's swim, I joined the group at Meadowbrook this morning. They have a nice 6 lane, 50m indoor pool and in the summer, they open a massive 10-lane outdoor pool as well. Today's swim was mostly composed of varying sets of 300's for a total of about 2400 yds. I guess things went well for about half of the workout, but as is typically the case, I was seriously getting dropped near the end. Fortunately, I was able to hold on until our hour was up, so with my swim in the books and a bagel and some Gatorade in my stomach, I went to meet my new-found riding group.

This would be my first real ride since I've been to Baltimore, so I was really looking forward to riding on the quiet country roads in Baltimore county that I've heard so much about. The ride began on time and I quickly realized that a tri-bike is not the best for riding in these parts. Unlike Chicago, where everything is pancake flat, the roads here are more like a rollercoaster. I hear that Louisville has a similar terrain, so I guess this will be the proper place to prepare for the big day in August. I was able to stick with the group for the lesiurely beginning of the ride, but once we hit the first hill, my bike had a surprise in store for me.

I initially tried to stay seated at the bottom of the hill, but as I started to get dropped, I decided to stand and apply some power. Three pedal strokes later, I heard a loud pop and I thought that I had simply dropped my chain. Instead, I looked down to see that my chain had snapped and looked something like the picture below.

Though most of the group was already pulling away before my chain snapped, Mike from Tri-Speed stayed behind to help. Unfortunately, neither of us had a chain tool, so I was stuck about 10 miles from my car with a useless bike. Mike, however, was generous enough to ride the 30 minutes back to the store, and drive back out to pick me up (Thanks Mike!). Since my chain failed near the top of the hill, I was able to coast back nearly a mile so that Mike wouldn't have to drive quite as far to pick me up. After about 45 min, Mike made it back and we were able to install a new chain at the store. Woo hoo!

Moral of the story: Always be prepared.

Oh, and I ate a bowl of cereal when I got home. The 30 minutes of riding wasn't really deserving of a pancake breakfast. Maybe next time.

My Attempt at a Regular Update

It finally feels like springtime here in Maryland! Today was one of the wonderful two-a-days that are characteristic of triathlon training, so that gave me a chance to take advantage of the nice weather. In the morning I did a nice 5mi run along the harbor to Fells Point. Though I've only been in Baltimore for a couple of days, the nicer areas are fairly interesting and have a lot of character. This evening, I did my first swim practice with the Master's group at Merritt and I quickly realized how I'm lacking swim fitness. Fortunately, I manged to make it through the whole workout for a total of about 2700yds. That's almost 1000 yds farther than any workout I've done this year, so if I can keep this up, I think I'll be in good shape come August. I've got a couple more workouts scheduled for Thursday and Friday, but I'm really looking forward to the group ride on Saturday. I think the high is supposed to reach about 80deg, so hopefully we'll have a decent sized group. I hear that the roads are great for cycling once you get out into Baltimore county, so I'm ready to see if it's true.