2010: Year in Review

While I had substantial plans for 2010, they were largely short circuited by scheduling issues preventing me from hitting my primary targets. Physically I had a good training year, seeing improvements in all three sports and getting in some solid training. Unfortunately, without the races it's difficult to quantify those improvements as those all-out efforts are typically the best way to test things out.

The one thing that I did mange to do very well this year is avoid any injuries getting in the way. I did have some back issues at the beginning of the year, but they were largely a result of trying to do too much mileage during my base period at the end of 2009. I've had a few things pop up since then, but on those occasions I was able to detect them early, back off and prevented them from flaring up. Catching those signs is a good step in the learning process, as straddling the line between avoiding injuries and working out hard enough to see gains is critical to squeezing out maximum performance.

If there is one thing that I do need to learn from this year it's not to put off registering for races. My primary goal for 2010 was to race Ironman Muskoka but the high cost to register had me holding off due to scheduling concerns. With a $300+ registration fee, that's a lot of money to lose if I couldn't make it so I wanted to be 100% sure that nothing would get in the way. Unfortunately, work was unpredictable this year and I kept putting it off until it was too late. The other races I wanted to do this year fell to similar fates, and that resulted in me only getting one 5K in (which I didn't really race).

The Numbers:

Running: 2,247.0km (1,396.2mi) - 188h12m (5:02/km avg.)
Walking: 97.2km (60.4mi)
Cycling: 4,482.4km (2,785.2mi) - 148h30m (30.2km/h avg.)
Swimming: 345.5km (214.7mi) - 138h42m (2:24/100m avg.*)
Total: 7,172.1km (4,456.5mi)
* Note, swim time and averages include breaks and drill sessions.

Relative to 2009:
Running: -447.5km(-16%)/-41h50m(-18%)
Walking: -139.8km(-59%)
Cycling: +423.8km(+10%)/+14h17m(+11%)
Swimming: +164.8km(+91%)

My overall mileage this year was pretty much exactly what it was the year before although the makeup was significantly different. As my focus largely shifted to Triathlons, my running and walking mileage dropped while my swimming and cycling mileage climbed. I'd have liked to see most of those numbers higher than they were this year, but unfortunately scheduling time on the bike and in the water is a bit more complicated than on foot as there are more constraints to work around.

With that said, pretty much all of those totals were effected by the lack of racing that I did this year. Without the races I never built up to the extreme mileage weeks that I normally do, so the miles this year were more evenly distributed throughout the season. For illustration purposes, the following is a diagram from running free online plotting my mileage from this year (Polar's ProTrainer software generated a better plot for last year, but unfortunately I have no way to import my Garmin Edge 705/800 files into it):


For comparison purposes, last years mileage looked like this:

As you can see, the peaks don't quite reach the same levels as last year, but there is less up and down over the year. The other thing that you'll likely notice is the drop off in cycling mileage at the end of this year, as the weather wasn't nearly as accommodating as it was in 2009 near the end of the season. That meant going inside on the trainer earlier, and it always takes a while after that transition to get back into the routine of things.


On the fitness side of the equation, my weight continued to creep up a little higher than I'd like so that will have to be a focus this year. A portion of that is likely upper-body muscle mass due to the addition of swimming into my routine, but I don't think that can account for all of the gain this year. I'm still within the healthy range for my height, but the more mass that I have to drag around the harder I need to work so getting back into the low-160s/high-150s should be an objective.

	01/01/2007	01/01/2008	31/12/2008	31/12/2009	31/12/2010
Weight	240lbs	180lbs	151lbs	166lbs	173lbs
HR-Rest	74bpm	62bpm	43bpm	41bpm	41bpm

2010 Racing History:

• April 3rd Harry's Spring Run-Off 5K 21m35.5s
  

As mentioned above, I didn't really do any significant racing this year. The only event that I did run was the Harry's 5K, but that's more of a social event and I rarely go all out. Given the hills on this course a PB isn't likely to happen, so while I pushed reasonably hard this year it wasn't really a full effort race.


Looking Ahead

As I didn't really hit my objectives for last year, they're pretty much going to carry through into 2011. With that said, the main difference this time around is that I had a chance to build up my swimming and cycling this year so I can go about things in a more aggressive manner. Ideally, I'd like to run a half iron distance race in late June as a test and then build up to an all-out race of the same distance in Muskoka. That wasn't possible last year as I hadn't build up enough, but with this year's training in the bag it should be feasible. As Welland isn't an official M-Dot race, it's a lot less expensive so I won't feel so tempted to go all out on it.

I was thinking about making a BQ attempt at either the Mississauga or Toronto Marathons in May, however doing that would require me to hold off on the above a bit as it would require more focus on running training. Unfortunately, with the threat of the BAA adjusting the qualifying standards I'm leaning away from that idea as there is no sense in putting in that level of effort if I can't get there. Aiming for 3:10 will be extremely difficult, but I think that it's within the realm of possibilities - if that's adjusted to 3:05, however, there isn't much point.

As with last year, I'd like to try and get my 5K time under 20 minutes at some point this year, but it's not a huge priority. My fastest time in this distance so far was 20:55, but that was nearly two years ago and on an injured ankle so 20 minutes should be within reach. With that said, this needs a different type of training that the endurance focus that I'm currently working with, so finding a way to slot it in without disrupting the primary objectives may be difficult.


Either way, I need to look over the race schedules for the year and formulate a plan to achieve those goals. The schedules for the Triathlon season are still tentative, so I can't really get into too much detail until the organizers nail them down. Muskoka is going to be somewhat questionable as the WTC moved the World Championships to the same weekend so it's likely that that's going to be moved around a bit. I'm also hoping that the BAA speaks up sooner or later about what they're going to do, as if I want to make that attempt I'm going to have to start training for it in the very near future.

On the cycling front, I'm also going to have to find a way to get some longer rides in this year. While I got decent overall mileage, my individual rides still maxed out at a little over 100K. I don't like doing much more than that solo, and unfortunately I wasn't able to talk my friends into doing anything longer than that. I'd like to progressively work my way up to at least 100 miles at some point this year one way or another.

2009: Year in Review

2009 has been quite an eventful year for me, with a number of major milestones. I ran my first marathon in May, and while I didn't get the second one in as planned I did manage to parlay that training into a Triathlon. In addition to those major steps, I also managed to get my 5K time below 21 minutes for the first time. I've run a lot more miles than I did in the previous year, and have built up a good amount of experience which should be invaluable for future seasons. Further, I moved my cycling training to a more structured format and introduced swimming into the equation as well.

There were setbacks, of course, with my first real experience in dealing with injuries this year. Fortunately, they were relatively minor and healed pretty quickly with appropriate rest. They did interfere with my training plans a bit, however that is part of endurance training and getting the experience of how to deal with them will be an asset in the future. The upside, however, is that derailing my fall marathon plans helped me to focus more on the Triathlon side which has a lot of promise for the upcoming year.

With that said, at this time last year the plan was simply to do a 30K race in the spring and worry about the full marathon in the fall. Fortunately, after training went well in the early part of the year I elected to use the 30K as a stepping stone and work my way up to the Mississauga Marathon in May. As such, I'm happy to say that I was able to exceed my expectations and I'm a lot further along than I expected to be ;)


The Numbers:

Running: 2,694.5km (1,674.3mi) - 230h02m (5:07/km avg.)
Walking: 237.0km (147.3mi)
Cycling: 4,058.6km (2,521.9mi) - 134h13m (30.2km/h avg.)
Swimming: 180.7km (112.3mi)
Total: 7,170.8km (4,455.7mi)

Overall, that's a little less than 1,300km (~810mi) short of last year's total. The main difference, of course, is that I significantly cut back on the walking sessions that made up the bulk of my mileage last year. Between major increases in running mileage and finding time for the other two sports, fitting in time consuming walking sessions was difficult this time around.

Further, the two (minor) injuries that I had this year took a chunk out of my mileage as well. Aside from the direct loss of time/distance, I also had to gradually rebuild the fitness lost during that downtime which further contributes to mileage loss.

Either way, to illustrate this I put together the following plot of my running mileage over the course of the year (click on it for more detail). It has the weeks of my two 18 week training cycles overlaid on the graph, the 5 weeks of recovery between them. The plot also has markers for each of my races as well as the two injury periods:


To compare progress over the last few years, I've also thrown together a table with a few rough numbers. My weight (yellow line above) has drifted up a bit this year, however I'm still well within the normal range so I'm not worrying about that too much. Most of that built up part way through my first training cycle, as getting used to the fueling requirements of running beyond the half took a bit of learning. I've held it roughly steady since that point, as I think that I've gotten the hang of the right balance. With that said, some of that is likely additional muscle mass as swimming and cycling work groups that previously didn't see much load.

My running index is a little lower (blue line), but that's likely skewed by the walking at the beginning of the year. Polar's running index is a synthetic metric that is intended to monitor fitness levels by looking at exercise telemetry (primarily comparing %VO2Max against pace). Unfortunately, as walking is a more efficient gait than running is it tends to inject higher scores into the plots. Resting heart rate is likely a better measure anyway, and on that front I'm roughly in the same boat as I was last year (slightly lower, but likely within the margin of error).

	01/01/2007	01/01/2008	31/12/2008	31/12/2009
Weight	240lbs	180lbs	151lbs	166lbs
HR-Rest	74bpm	62bpm	43bpm	41bpm
Running Index	?	41	66	61

2009 Racing History:

1. March 15th Achilles 5K 20m55.6s (PB)
2. March 29th Around the Bay 30K 2h27m48.6s (PB)
3. April 4th Harry's Spring Run-Off 5K 22m56.4s
4. May 10th Mississauga Marathon 3h29m03s (PB)
5. September 19th Lakeside II Sprint Tri 1h17m37s (PB)

I didn't run nearly as many races as I did last year, as I was a little more selective about what I wanted to do. Race registration fees can easily add up, and it's quite easy to get carried away the first year out ;) The upcoming year will likely see a few more races as my newly found enthusiasm for Triathlon will push me to enter a variety of events to help build up.

Looking Ahead

Either way, 2009 is now officially in the books and I'm looking forward to what I can achieve in 2010. I'm still working out the details for the overall plan, however the primary objectives are as follows (in order of importance):

1. Build up my mileage in the Triathlon, with the hopes of doing a Half Ironman in the fall. Whether that is realistic or not remains to be seen, however even if I don't get up to the half I want to at least do an Olympic distance race sometime this year.
   
2. Build towards a 3:20 Marathon in the spring as a stepping stone towards the 3:10 I need for Boston. To run a 3:10 I'm going to need more experience under my belt, so aiming for the mid-point between where I am now (3:29) and where I need to be (3:10) should be a good learning experience.
3. Try to get my 5K time below 20 minutes sometime this year. It's a bit of an out-of-band goal, however I got within a minute of that early last year and that was coming off of an injury. I've gained a lot of experience this year, and my fitness level has improved since then so it should be realistic.

As for a specific course of action to achieve those goals, and what races I'll be aiming for I still have a bit of work on that front. I'm mulling through my options at this stage, and will hopefully be able to post a comprehensive plan within the next week or so. I still plan to stick to Pfitzinger for my running goals, but I'm going to have to find a decent book on Triathlon training to figure out exactly what I need to do for those goals.

Happy 2010!

2008: Year in Review

This time last year, I had never run seriously and had trouble keeping it up for more than a few minutes. I started with a learn to run clinic in early January, worked my way up to 5K, then pushed myself through a 15K race and eventually finished a half marathon in late September. At this point, I'm about to start formally training for a full marathon and can only hope that this coming year will be nearly as productive.

Unfortunately I didn't properly separate the running and walking sessions for the first half of the year, so I'm not sure how much each sport contributed to the overall totals. Either way, the basic totals are as follows:

Total Distance on Foot (Running + Walking):	5,698.4km (3,540.8 mi)
Total Distance on the Bike (since Late August):	2,765.5km (1,718.4 mi)
Total Distance Overall:	8,463.8km (5,259.2 mi)

To put that in context, 5,700km is approximately the distance from Toronto to San Francisco through Vancouver ;) With the cycling factored in, add in another leg to Austin, TX. Looking back, that is a staggering distance that speaks to the amount of work that was put into my training.

To outline the progress that has been made over the last year, the following table illustrates some major metrics that have changed significantly.

	01/01/2007	01/01/2008	31/12/2008
Weight	240lbs	180lbs	151lbs
HR-Rest	74bpm	62bpm	43bpm
Running Index	?	41	66

My weight is now approximately where I want it, so the objective for the new year is simply to improve my overall performance for racing purposes. I've outlined my plan in previous entries, and will likely post a more detailed version in the next week or so.