Lakeside II: Race Report

After getting all of my gear ready last night, I got up at 5:30 this morning in order to get down to the race site by 8:00am. The race itself started at 10:00, but there is a lot to set up for a Triathlon and seeing as this was my first I wanted to be doubly sure that everything was in order. Looking at the thermostat, it was 3C when we headed out so it looked like it would be a cool day. I put on my race clothes and then put another layer on top to keep me warm until the race and headed out the door.

Most of my race equipment (aside from the wetsuit and bike) while I was taking inventory the night before. A lot more stuff to worry about than when getting ready for a running race.

We made a few wrong turns on the way, but we still managed to get up there shortly before 8am. I unpacked my stuff and headed towards the race site. Fortunately, the registration tent was already open (it wasn't scheduled to open until 8:15) so I got all of my stuff and headed over to transition. The racks were assigned by bib number, but fortunately few people were there this early so I had my choice of spots on that rack and grabbed the one on the edge closest to the bike exit.

After racking my bike and setting up my transition area, I walked around the various aspects of the start/finish lines to familiarize myself with the layout. It was pretty straightforward, and as my rack was right near the edge of the transition area it was easy to spot from a distance. I took a closer look at the maps they had of the swim, bike and run routes to familiarize myself with the details then headed back to transition to watch my stuff.

Things started filling up quickly after that, so I looked around to see how others were setting things up for any potential ideas. It was still too early to put on the wetsuit, as while it was cool it wasn't cold enough that that would be comfortable outside of the water. As such, I just relaxed and took in the atmosphere to help get the mind ready for the race that was coming.

About 30 minutes before the start, I put on and adjusted the wetsuit just before the organizer's started the pre-race briefing. After hearing them out, I headed over the beach to do some warm ups and familiarize myself with swimming in the wetsuit. I was a bit worried as I hadn't had an opportunity to test it out before the race, but it worked quite well right off the bat and I was able to comfortably do a few 100m sets. As the wave 1 start approached, I headed back into the shallow water to get out of the way. I stood around nervously for a bit, checking all of my equipment and going through my plan for the rest of the race.

After a quick announcement, the starter's horn was sounded and the first wave was off. As the second wave moved forward to the start line, I possitioned myself in the middle of the pack. On the inside edge I was worried about having too much traffic, but on the outside I was concerned about drifting off of the line so I figured that I'd split the difference. The plan was to keep a relatively comfortable pace and not worry too much about pushing it, as this was my weakest discipline and I didn't want to burn myself out.

Swim (600m) - 13:39 - 2:17/100m

Three minutes later our horn sounded and we were off with arms and legs flailing everywhere. After about 30 seconds, it was evident that it would be extremely difficult to maintain a rhythm as there were bodies in pretty much every direction. Every time I was hit or I bumped into someone else, it through off my routine and it became difficult to keep my breathing under control. I eventually managed to push my way out of the main mass and had a bit of a repreive, but I had to push to do that so I was a bit more tired than expected.

When we hit the first bouy, things started getting crowded again so I took a wide line to try and avoid that. It worked well, however it also meant that I was covering more distance than I would have if I'd taken the corner directly. Either way, I took this leg a little slower to get my breathing back under control but it was still difficult. After hitting the second bouy I managed to start getting into a decent pattern again and pushed my way into the shore.

As we got close, people started standing and running. While I knew that I'd be faster if I kept swimming, I was pretty tired at this point so I just got up as well and ran the rest of the way in. Once I got into ankle deep water I unfastened the zipper on my wetsuit and removed the top half while I ran toward my transition station. Fortunately, other than a little trouble finding the pull cord on the first try it came off quite easily before my feet were out of the water so I could focus on the rest of my transition.

T1 (Swim to Bike) - 3:11

When I hit my transition station I removed the lower half of the wetsuit and set it down on the back edge of the towel I had set up. Fortunately, other than a bit of leakage around the neck it has mostly kept my clothes dry so I was in good condition for the next leg. The next step was to get my socks and cycling shoes on, and it's evident that the socks were not a good idea. Trying to get wet feet into socks with nowhere to sit down and nothing to lean on was a clumbsy process and took a good deal of time. After getting the left foot on, I just sat down on the ground to get the right one on as there was no sense in wasting more time.

Once that was ready, I quickly grabbed my race number, watch and sunglasses, then put on and fastened my helmet. I then unracked my bike and ran to the bike start line. I was expecting this to be a bit of a problem, as cleated cycling shoes aren't exactly designed for running on. Fortunately, most of the path to the mounting line was grass and dirt so it wasn't much of a problem. I was able to pass the line, clip in and get off within a matter of seconds.

As noted above, 3:11 is a pretty pitful transition time so this is something that I'm definately going to need to work on. The socks were naturally the biggest problem here, so the next time around I'm going to have to bite the bullet and see if I can pull it off without them. Naturally, it saves a lot of time but I was a bit concerned about getting blisters in the process.

Bike (20km) - 39:04 - 30.7km/h

The bike ride was probably the most enjoyable leg of the race, as the legs were still fresh and I was able to fly past a lot of people in the process which did a lot to boost my confidence. The route was a relatively pleasant one, with only a handful of very small hills to deal with. When I had decent openings I was able to maintain 35km/h paces on the flats and there wasn't really any wind to deal with either.

The tricky part, however, were the passing rules in this leg of the race. Due to the size of the drafting area we aren't allowed to remain in for more than 15 seconds, there were basically only two lanes to work with. On the flat straight segments it wasn't much of a problem, however on uphill and downhill segments lots of people were passing others, so the passing lane was full. In order to avoid getting within the 5m no-drafting zone behind them, that meant that I had to apply the breaks a lot (bleeding off energy) until I could get an opening.

Either way, there isn't really much that could be done about this given the structure of the race. The solution, naturally, is simply for me to get better at the swim and T1 stages so that I can start the bike leg sooner and get out ahead of the traffic ;)

T2 (Bike to Run) - 1:48

At the end of this leg, I dismounted at the line and ran the bike back to the rack. After securing it on the rack, I quickly popped off my helmet and cycling shoes and put on my running shoes. I lost a bit of time here as I elected to use conventional shoelaces and had to tie them, but aside from that everything else went quite smoothly here. There were a few things I could have streamlined a little (eg changing shoes before helmet, so it isn't in the way) but the main improvement I need to make here is getting used to elastic laces.

Run (4K) - 19:58 - 5:00/km

When I hit the run segment, I wasn't really sure how the previous two legs would effect me so I elected to take it conservatively. I've run a 5K race at a 4:11/km pace, and could probably pull out a sub-4 pace over a 4K course, but whether that would be possible after the bike and swim was up in the air. Additionally, due to my time off from injury my heart rate has been a bit higher than normal, and a nagging cold has pushed it up a bit as well so I wasn't sure how a full-blown VO2Max effort would last.

Furthering the complexity of the situation, I made a significant tactical error with my RS800 HRM. I had switched it on at the begining of the bike segment to get heart rate and elevation for the ride, and configured it to also record speed from the footpod. Naturally, on the bike the footpod wouldn't be in range so nothing would be recorded, but I assumed that it would pick it up once I got back and started running. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case as the watch had obviously given up on connecting to the footpod (ie I should have stopped the first workout and started a new one). As such, when I hit the run I had no readout of my pace or distance, and simply had my HR to work with.

As such, when it became obvious that I only had heart rate to work with I elected to not worry about it too much and just take it easy. I caught up to another runner who was going at a comfortable pace and stuck with him for a while. Unfortunately, part way through the second kilometer he started to slow down significantly so I had to drop him and head out on my own. At this point, I was accelerating a bit and felt good so I let myself speed up a bit more. I hit the turnaround point and began heading back.

As I approached the resort, I realized that I only had about 500m left so I figured that I'd open up and see what was left in the tank. As I accelerated I realized that there was plenty left in the tank so I stepped up to a full sprint passing a handful of people. I had to slow down a bit on the final turn as it was narrow and I had to navigate around another fellow, but once I got into the final stretch I gave it everything and flew over the finish line.

It was obvious at this point that I could have easily run a lot faster for most of the run, but until I got to the end I wasn't sure how well my body would have taken it so I played it a bit too cautiously. Naturally, not having my normal pacing information made it even more difficult, as I had to base my targetting off of heart rate which is a little off-kilter at this point. Either way, this is part of the learning process and I'll know next time that the fatigue isn't quite as bad as I thought it would be.

Gun time: 1:17:37 (overall results)
Swim: 13:39 (156/265)
Bike: 39:04 (53/265)
Run: 19:58 (58/265)
Place overall: 88/265 (66.8 percentile)
Place in age group: 6/18 (66.7 percentile)


Regardless of all of that, the race today was an excellent experience and I hope the first of many more. There were a lot of lessons learned here and, by extension, a lot of room to improve. Primarily, I should be able to comfortably shave a couple of minutes off of my transitions (largely because they were so brutal this time around) which is a heck of a lot easier than gaining that much time in any of the three sports.

Naturally, my swimming also has a lot of room for improvement so I'll have to do some work on that. While I've largely got the physical aspects of it in place at this point, I need to work more on technique so that I'm not so easily thrown off by outside influences. I should also try and get some more practice in open water, but that's difficult to do in the off season so that might have to wait a bit.

First Triathlon in the books...

I'm just waiting for the official results (spoiled by marathons where they are updated in real time), but from my own timing I managed to finish in 1:17:43. Will write up a report as soon as I have the breakdown of the various bits, but either way it was an excellent experience and hopefully the first of many. The swim was a lot more challenging than I'd expected, not so much physically, but more psychologically as it was difficult to get into a rhythm in that mass of people. The transitions were a little rough (as expected), but the bike and run segments went without a hitch.

Part of that was due to the fact that I was way too conservative on the run. When I broke into a sprint at the end it was obvious that I had a lot left in the tank. I wasn't sure exactly how the fatigue from the earlier stages was going to impact me so I was renascent to risk an all-out VO2Max effort. As such, I held back a lot in the early portion of the run and didn't open up soon enough. With that said, this was my first shot at this so I elected to be cautious as I wanted to make sure that I could finish strong.


The one big mistake that I did make was that I assumed that my watch would automatically pick up the footpod when I switched from the bike to run segment. Instead, after trying to connect during the bike segment it obviously gave up and didn't pick it up in the run section. As such, I had no pace readouts during the run itself and, more significantly, I don't have any telemetry to look over after the fact. I did hit the lap button when passing the markers so I do have some rough splits, but the only second-by-second data I have is heart rate and elevation. In retrospect, when I hit T2 I should have stopped the exercise and then started a new one. For future races, however, I definately need to get a proper cyclocomputer so I leave the RS800 to the running bit.

More to follow...

Checklists

Just working out the details for tomorrow and figured I'd make up a few checklists to make sure I didn't forget anything. In case there are any Triathletes reading this, I figured I might as well post them up here in case there is something I'm overlooking!

Equipment that I'm going to have to bring along (not including what I'm wearing):

1. Bike.
2. Bike Pump.
   
3. Wetsuit.
4. Helmet.
5. Sunglasses.
6. Swimming Goggles.
   
7. Running Shoes.
8. Cycling Shoes.
9. Running/Cycling Socks.
10. Shoehorn.
    
11. Race Number Belt.
12. Towels (at least three).
    
13. Heart Rate Monitor.
14. Bodyglide.
    
15. Water bottles for Bike (w/Gatorade).
16. Extra Gatorade/Water for after race.
17. Change of clothes for after race.

The plan for the first transition is as follows:

1. As soon as I'm out of the water, remove upper half of the wetsuit while running to the transition zone.
2. Once top of wetsuit is off, remove goggles and swim cap.
3. When I arrive at my bike, drop goggles/swim cap and take off the rest of the wetsuit.
4. Quickly dry off feet with a towel and put on socks.
5. Slip into cycling shoes.
6. Put on sunglasses and helmet.
7. Put on race number belt facing the back.
   
8. Unrack bike and run for cycling start.
9. On the way, switch HRM on to record remainder of the race.

And when I get back, the second transition plan is as follows:

1. After dismounting from bike, run back to the rack.
2. Safely rack the bike.
3. Remove helmet.
4. Take off cycling shoes and switch into running shoes.
5. Rotate race number belt to the front.
6. Head off for the run stage.

I've got some rough plans for how to lay things out, however that is going to depend a lot on exactly how much space is going to be available in the transition zone. Most of the above should be pretty straightforward, but the snag points will likely be around the wetsuit removal and footwear switches. If the transition zone is really crowded, racking and unracking the bike may be a potential problem as well. Those aren't really that bad on their own, but when under time pressure they could easily become an issue.

Final Preparations...

I'm now within 48 hours of the race and am just getting my ducks in a row at this point. I got the last bits that I needed at the Running Room shop after my group run yesterday, and have now tested the Tri shorts both in running and cycling with no issues. I was a bit concerned that the minuscule chamois would be an issue, but on my test ride it didn't really feel that much different than the big thick one in my normal cycling shorts. Naturally, that may be a different story on a longer ride, but fortunately the Triathlon only has a 20K leg so that shouldn't be an issue.

I picked up the wetsuit rental (Nineteen Pipeline) this morning and got walked through the process of putting it on and taking it off by the staff. While it is certainly tight it's a lot less restrictive than I thought it would be. It is obvious, however, that I'm going to need some help getting it on as I wasn't really able to contort my arms enough to pull the zipper up under my own power. Getting it up onto my legs was a bit difficult as well, especially as you have to kind of palm it up to avoid ripping the material. Fortunately, getting it off was no problem at all and that's largely the important part (as you can take as long as you want getting it on, but the clock is running when you're taking it off).

I was hoping to get a short open water swim in today, but my schedule didn't end up working well for that. I'm still hoping to get out tomorrow morning, but I'm not certain that that's going to be possible either. That means that the race will probably be my first experience swimming in a wetsuit which isn't ideal, but as I'm doing this race more to gain experience than to get a specific time I'm not too worried about it. I can always get some practice on Saturday morning when I warm up in the lake :oP


I'm still not sure what my bib number is as the organizer's web site doesn't seem to have any form of confirmation list that tells you these things. I did get a newsletter and it looks like I'll fall into the wave 2 start (three months too old to fit into wave 1), but outside of that I'll have to wait for race morning to get more information. They also don't really have any detailed diagrams illustrating how things will be laid out in the transition zone, so I'll have to do some scouting in the morning as well.

I am also taking the time to pour through the somewhat complex rules that govern these races, and it looks like passing on the bike leg will be a bit interesting. As drafting isn't permitted in Triathlons, there is an exclusion zone of 3x7m around other bikes that you can't enter under normal circumstances. When you are passing, you can enter this zone but you need to clear it in less than 15 seconds which pretty much means that any passing will have to be of the sprint variety. That shouldn't be an issue on the flats and on downhill segments, but on uphills that may be a bit annoying. With that said, I'm not sure how anal they are about enforcing these rules. I do most of my rides solo so I'm used to riding without a draft, but I tend to like to overtake in a more gradual manner ;)


Either way, the main challenge in this race is going to be the transitions as I have little to no experience with this. I've read through pretty much everything that I could find on the topic, and watched another Triathlon to get a feel for it, but knowing what to do and actually doing it are often different things. Aside from direct mistakes, one also has to worry about problems that neighbors create so there can be unanticipated issues that need to be dealt with. This is the big part that makes me wish I had done that Tri clinic, as getting some practice on this sort of thing would have been quite useful.

The other thing that may be a bit difficult will be pacing myself in the water. I've done enough in the pool over the last couple of weeks to be confident that I can comfortably cover the distance at a decent clip, but when one is in a group the vacuum effect can take over. Further, as I have no method of objectively monitoring my pace it will be difficult to gauge exactly how fast I am going, so there will be some recognition lag to deal with here. Unlike a pool, there are no walls to grab, so if I go out too fast and get tired part way through it could pose a problem. As such, I will have to be especially careful to be mindful of how hard I am pushing.


With all of that said, the next matter is figuring out my targets and how I intend to attack the race. I've managed to get myself to a point where I can comfortably cover much longer distances in each of the sports individually, however I'm not entirely sure what effects they will have on one another. As such, any targets that I have are going to have a pretty wide margin of error. If the stars align perfectly and I don't run into any issues, my best case scenario is a finish in about 1:10 (14m swim, 37min ride, 16min run and ~3min for transitions), but I'm likely going to run into some issues so that's unlikely. I've managed those paces continuously in longer sets for all three sports (4K, 80K and 5K respectively), but only in isolation. More realistically, I'm hoping to get in within 1:20 but I won't really be upset as long as I finish in under 1:30. Either way, the primary goal is to finish at this point so I'm not going to be too preoccupied with time (just wanted some ballpark numbers to aim for) ;)

Week 38: Catching Up...

As noted in previous posts, I pulled a ligament a few weeks back and am just in the process of getting back into the swing of things at this point. As there wasn't a whole lot to report, I haven't really been keeping up with the weekly reviews so I'm going to take this opportunity to cover what I've been doing:

Week 34 Totals:
Running: 45.0km (28.0mi)
Walking: 0.5km (0.3mi)
Cycling: 84.1km (52.3mi)
Swimming: 5.6km (3.5mi)
Total: 135.2km (84.0mi)

Week 35 Totals:
Running: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Walking: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Cycling: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Swimming: 2.3km (1.4mi)
Total: 2.3km (1.4mi)

Week 36 Totals:
Running: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Walking: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Cycling: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Swimming: 3.0km (1.9mi)
Total: 3.0km (1.9mi)

Week 37 Totals:
Running: 14.3km (8.9mi)
Walking: 1.0km (0.6mi)
Cycling: 65.2km (40.5mi)
Swimming: 7.3km (4.5mi)
Total: 87.8km (54.5mi)

As you can see, I lost a good deal of mileage after the last few weeks but I'm working on building that back up at this stage. Fortunately, there is no sign of the injury at this point so it looks like it's recovered, but I'm still being careful to make sure I don't push it too hard too soon. After this week I think I'm confident enough to start mixing in some light speedwork to help regain some of my lost fitness, but naturally I'll have to play that by ear.


Since I was anxious to give a Triathlon a shot before the end of the season, I signed up for one next week in Lakeside. As such, this week I focused on ramping things up to prepare for that race. While I won't likely be able to do it as fast as I would have in Orillia (although the swim stage will definitely be better), the main focus at this point is to gain some experience so I can properly race one next season. The transitions and some of the more technical aspects of the sport (multisport pacing, equipment selection, logistics, etc.) will be a challenge the first time out, so experience is a pretty important aspect for these races.

My main concern about this was the swim stage, as the Try-a-Tri distance was sold out by the time I got around to it and I had to sign up for a longer distance. Fortunately, the pools in the area have switched over to their winter schedules so I had a little more time (3 hours vs. 1.5) to play around and experiment with endurance. As such, I headed out on Tuesday with the intention of doing a quick warmup and then seeing how long I could hold out.

After about 750m of warmup (5x50m + 5x100m), I broke into the main set and kept going. Once I got into a rythum, I was able to keep everything in check and wasn't really getting too tired. I was careful not to go too fast as I wanted to focus on distance at this point, and that appeared to help a lot. After about 1:35 of the set, I hit the 4K mark (~2:22/100m) and while I was tired I wanted to try and knock out another kilometer. I did have to slow down a bit at this point, however I pushed through and got to 5K in a little over 2 hours (averaging 2:31/100m for the full distance). I finished off with a slow (~4:00/100m) 250m cooldown set to make it a clean 6K and climbed out of the pool (which was rather difficult in and of itself). While I was wiped after that session (burning about 1800kcal), it did a lot to bolster my confidence.

On Thursday I headed back to the pool, but as Tuesday's session left me pretty tired I planned to take it easier this time out. As such, instead of one big set I elected to do a number of 600m sets to (a) get used to the distance and (b) get a feel for what kind of pacing to expect. After my standard warmup, I pushed through seven 600m sets (was originally going to do five) taking between 14 (2:20/100m) and 16 minutes (2:40/100m) each. I then finished with an easy 50m set to get to 5K and called it a day. I likely could have gone faster, however this pace felt about right as I have to keep the cycling and running stages that come after the swim in mind. Naturally, open water swimming is different than pool swimming so I will have to make adjustments during the race, but it is a much better idea than I had last week ;)


Aside from the swimming, I also started getting back into the practice of doing proper bike rides again. On Monday, I headed up for a ride to Kettleby and back (~50km), which has a good number of decent hills. I made it up to the turnaround point on Jane St., I elected to modify the route slightly and head over to Weston Rd. for some larger hills. While I've taken this route heading north before, this was the first time I attempted it going southbound and the hills are a lot more aggressive that way. The largest of them (Strawberry Hill) took about four minutes of sheer pain to climb, and nearly wiped me out (my heart rate was above 180bpm (zone 5) for most of it). Either way, I successfully made it to the top and after a short break continued on. While there were a few more big hills down the road, they really didn't feel like much after fighting that monster ;)

The fun of climbing hills like this on a bike is that one really doesn't have the option to stop and take a break. Trying to get cold started up an 8% grade is nearly impossible, and cycling shoes aren't really suitable for walking the bike up. The upside, however, is that it forces the rider to stick with it and fight their way up to the top. Unlike running, however, I find that I can recover from those intense efforts much quicker - while it's punishing while you're climbing, 10-15 seconds of coasting after you've crested is all that is needed to be ready to attack another. It does give me a lot of respect for the professionals can consistently knock out 200km/day up the sides of mountains (that make these hills look like speed bumps) at 30km/h for a couple of weeks in the big tours ;)

Week 38 Totals:
Running: 37.1km (23.1mi)
Walking: 1.5km (0.9mi)
Cycling: 121.1km (75.2mi)
Swimming: 11.0km (6.8mi)
Total: 87.8km (54.5mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,873.7km (1,164.3mi)
Walking: 196.4km (122.0mi)
Cycling: 3,077.7km (1,912.4mi)
Swimming: 49.3km (30.6mi)
Total: 5,197.1km (3,229.3mi)

As far as preparation goes, I took some time on Friday to do a little looking around for wetsuits. Unfortunately, finding much information about the various options is extremely difficult. The manufacturers websites have little more than lists of tradenames with no descriptions of how those technologies work, and there aren't much in the way of independent reviews on anything but the top-of-the-line models. The local shops did help a bit, however while they were good at providing general advise (eg higher end suits are more flexible, but also more fragile) they couldn't provide the kind of objective technical comparisons that I was looking for. Given the size of the investment that these suits require, I want to have a much better understanding of the differences before I sink my money into buying one.

As such, I simply arranged to rent one from the shop that was the most helpful and will worry about which one to buy at a later point. The upside to this approach is that I can try one of the potential candidates (a Nineteen Pipeline) in race conditions to get a feel for how well it works for me. As I can pick it up on Thursday, I'm going to try and get at least one open water swim with it on before the race.

Other than that, I've pretty much got everything in order. I do still have to pick up a few small things, but the biggest question will be the logistics of heading down there in the morning. It appears to be about a two hour trip, and as I want to be there plenty early to get a decent spot in the transition zone it's going to mean a very early morning. As such, I'm going to have to get everything packed and ready the night before so there is a lot of planning left to do ;)


As for the next week, the schedule is still a bit up in the air as I'm working outside of the context of a formal plan at this point. I do have to play things by ear to aide in recovery, and with the race on Saturday I have to work in some form of taper as well so it will be a complex week. Either way, my rough plan is as follows:

Mon 80K Ride
Tue 4K Swim (5x600m), 5mi GA w/5x100m
Wed 30K Ride, 6mi (9.6K) Recovery
Thurs 3K OW Swim
Fri 4mi Recovery (AM)
Sat Sprint Triathlon (600m/20km/4km)
Sun 8mi (12.9K) LSD

Signed up for my first Triathlon...

After a strong swim this morning (6K, 5K of which was continuous) I bit the bullet and signed up for the Sprint Triathlon in Lakeside (600m swim, 20km ride and 4km run) in a week and a half. As I noted here, I originally planned to do the Try-a-Tri in Orillia a few weeks back, but an injury threw a wrench into those plans. The ankle is feeling much better at this point, however, and with only a couple of races left in the season I wanted to make the training count for something.

The swim distance is a little longer than I would have liked, but as the Try-a-Tri distance for this event was sold out I had to choose between the Sprint distance or a race this weekend in Wasaga. In the end, I felt that the extra time to prepare would be more important and given the session today I'm hoping that the 600m open water swim won't be too much of an issue. It also means a more competitive field that I'll be in, so there will be more pressure to get everything right the first time.


As for my plan, I don't want to push too hard this time out as it's more to gain experience in the sport than it is to race all out. With that said, when you're toeing the start line the adrenaline has a tendency to take over so it might not end up that way ;) While I've done some bike-run brick sessions, I don't really know what kind of effect the swim will have on me prior to the other sports so it's difficult to peg down what I'll be able to do. Given my training speeds, I should be able to pull it off in around 1:10-1:20, but without knowing how fatigued I'll be it's difficult to say. Naturally, the transitions are also going to be a bit unpredictable as I don't really have a detailed idea of how this particular race will be set up. Plus, with my lack of experience I'm likely to make a few mistakes ;)


Either way, this means that I have a good deal of work cut out for me over the next few days. I've got a pretty good handle on the training end of things at this point, however I will have to look into and buy/rent a wetsuit and grab a number of other items (elastic laces, race number belt, etc.). I also have to figure out exactly how to lay everything out in the transition area, as well as the logistics of getting down to the start on the morning of the race (it starts at 10am, so I'll likely want to be there by at least 8am and it's a couple hours away).

Racing...

The injury threw a wrench into my racing plans for the fall, so at this point I'm working on formulating what I'm going to do instead. The original concept was to do the Orillia Tri a few weeks back and then the Toronto marathon. Naturally, I missed the Tri as I was still limping at the time and the loss of two weeks of training is too far to catch up on this close to a marathon.

At this point, I'm basically back up and running. The swimming hasn't really been hurt much, and cycling-wise I'm not too far behind. I havn't really tested running at speed just yet, however I'll be testing that out tomorrow and see how it goes. With that said, I'm not going to be doing any speedwork in the immediate future, and distances are going to be short while I build back up. The tricky part, however, is that I've always used structured training plans based on target races so figuring out my schedule is going to be dependant on what I elect to do.

In the running sphere, it shouldn't be a huge problem finding alternative races. I was planning on doing the Toronto Marathon in October, so I don't think the half marathon would be a huge problem at this point. I've also heard a lot of good things about the Zoo Run (10K), so I'm seriously thinking about that. Either way, there are a variety of races available over the next couple of months so I've got some time to consider my options.


The Triathlon side, however, is a bit more complicated. As they are dependant on the water temperature, they don't have nearly as long a season so I don't have a lot of time to work with. Looking over the schedules, it's basically down to the next couple of weeks. While I could do the Try-a-Tri in Wassaga next weekend, that doesn't give me a lot of time to get back up to speed dispite the trivial distances involved. The race the following week would work better, but as the Try-a-Tri distance is already sold out I'd have to move up to the sprint distance. The running and cycling bits of that wouldn't be a problem, however as this would be my first shot at open water swimming I'm a bit concerned about that leg.

At this point I'm leaning towards the sprint race, as I think the additional recovery time will be important at this juncture. I managed to swim nearly 3K continuously in the pool this week, which bodes well for my ability to cover 600m in the race. Unfortunately, there is a world of difference between swimming in a controlled pool and in open water so I'm still a little nervous about that.

The other caveat is that I'll have to look into the wetsuit side of the equation as there isn't a lot of time to figure that out. I was likely going to do the race in Orillia without one, but with the extra time in the water and the potential for cooler water in late September that's likely not too wise if I do elect to go down this route. I would have liked to try it out before the race, however it's difficult to find suitable locations to do sustained swims in open water (especially on one's own).


The other option, of course, is to simply forget about it for the time being and just use the off season to strengthen my swimming. I could then jump into longer distances from the start and be a good deal more competitive than I can at this juncture. The problem with this, however, is that I wouldn't get any experience with transitions and any screw ups after a full winter of preparation would be a lot more frustrating than they would be now (where it was simply a secondary objective).

Either way, I have a bit of thinking left to do on this topic but wanted to get it down to help work my way through the options in a structured way. Naturally, I'd be welcome to any outside input that might have a different perspective than I'm looking at it from ;)

Getting back into it...

The ankle has improved markedly over the last three days, so I'm starting to work my way back into my routine. I did a short 15K session on the bike yesterday to see how it would handle the stress, and it worked out great. I stayed close to home and avoided any big hills to be safe, but there was absolutely no pain even with a few hard sprints mixed in to test it out. The upside to cycling is that the cleats lock the foot into moving along a single axis, so it doesn't stress the joint quite as much as walking or running would. It allows me to warm things up an exercise them without too much risk of re-injuring them, so I figured it was the best way to get back into it.


Since swimming doesn't really use the legs all that much, I've pretty much stayed up on my training on that front regardless of the injury. As such, I headed out to my regular Tuesday session today and was pleasantly surprised when I saw the signs notifying us of the change to their winter schedule. Since the swimming lessons are done for the year, they've got more time for their other sessions and this pool has been moved up to a little over two hours. As I didn't know about this ahead of time I couldn't take full advantage of it, but I was able to squeeze in a few more minutes.

Either way, I headed out with the intention of warming up with 5x50m and then 5x100m, then moving to 800m sets to work on my endurance. Once I got going, however, I got into a comfortable groove so I elected to just keep going and see how long I could hold out. In the end, I managed to knock out a continuous set of 2,750m and only really stopped because I was running out of time and needed to do a cooldown. After that, I did a slower 250m set to cool down and finish off before getting out of the pool (doing a total of 3.75K).


Thanks to that, I'm now putting some serious consideration in skipping the Try-a-Tri distance and giving the Sprint distance a shot first. The last race of the season is near the end of this month, but the Try-a-Tri distance was sold out. As such, to do the shorter distance I'd have to do a race within the next couple of weeks which doesn't give a lot of time to get back up to speed. Doing the longer distance would mean a more grueling race, but it would also mean more time to prepare for it. As before, the running and cycling shouldn't be a problem, but my biggest hangup was the 750m swim (vs 400m) stage that starts it off.

With that said, being able to swim a distance in a pool is a bit different than swimming it in open water. Primarilly, in the pool you get a push-off every 25m that gives the arms a bit of a rest, and you don't really have to deal with a horde of people in your way. Further, the 750m distance is the shortest path around the bouys, so without any significant experience in open water sighting I'll likely end up doing a good deal more. On the flip side, the bouyancy of the wetsuit (if I go that route) does apparently make it easier, and the ability to draft off of other swimmers can help as well. How much those various factors balance against one another is my main concern at this point ;)


Either way, I'm likely going to do a walk this evening or tomorrow morning to test things out, and if all goes well I hope to get back to running tomorrow afternoon. Starting out with the Running Room groups is probably my best bet, as my body has never been good at slowing down so being able to go out with a slower group should help to keep my pace under control ;) If that goes well, I'll start the process of rebuilding my running slowly and hopefully get battle ready within the next couple of weeks!

Pulled Ligament

Managed to get in and see the doctor yesterday and it looks like the ankle injury is just a pulled ligament, so it's just a matter of giving it some time to heal and building back up carefully. That's a big relief as I was a bit worried it would be something more serious. With that said, it is going to make that ankle more prone to injury in the future so I will have to pay more attention to the relevant stretches. He also suggested picking up a brace in the meantime, and a few other measures to help it get better.

Unfortunately, I've now been down for 10 days and I'm not quite ready to head back out at this point so the marathon plans will likely have to be adjusted. I'm now within eight weeks of the race, and Pfitzinger's book suggests that a loss of that much training time should prompt a re-evaluation of readiness. I could likely get back up to the point where I could run it, but with the lost fitness I'm not sure that I'd be able to beat my previous time so it's not really worth the risk of pushing it. I'll likely pick some shorter races this fall (probably the zoo run, and possibly one of the half marathons) and just use this as base training.

The Guelph tri is likely out as well, although one of the HSBC races may still be feasable if I'm cautious about it. Unfortunately the Lakeside race that would have been ideal (Sept 20th) is sold out, so it's either Wasaga (Sept 12th) or moving up to the Sprint Tri (the Try-a-Tri is the only race sold out at Lakeside). Worst case scenario, I could just use the winter to build up my swimming (which is by far my weakest link) and then start out with a sprint tri in the fall.


Either way, it's a load off to know that it wasn't something major and it's just a matter of waiting it out. While it's not really necessary, I'm flirting with the idea of seeing a physiotherapist anyway to see if they have any suggestions on accelerating the recovery process a bit. Having someone with a bit more time to discuss the details of recovering would be helpful - the only downside is that it can get pretty expensive if a few visits are required.

Right now the plan is to work my way back into it. I did 3K in the pool today, and will likely do the same every couple of days for the time being as that will keep my cardiovascular fitness up without stressing out the ankle. Fortunately I still seem to be okay on that front, as I was able to complete two sub-6 minute 400m sets but we'll have to see how that translates to the other sports. Once things start feeling a bit better (hopefully early next week), I'll likely start out with the bike and then re-introduce some slow running into my schedule. Once the pain goes away, I'll then work on bringing myself back up to where I was in a somewhat gradual fashion.

One Week...

The ankle really hasn't improved much over the last few days, so I went ahead and got an appointment with my doctor on Wednesday to see what I can do to accelerate it's progress. There isn't any visible swelling, and while it is uncomfortable I can walk on it unassisted so I don't think it is anything too serious. Either way, it's taking a lot longer to heal than my previous injuries so I figure it's wise to make sure that it isn't a bigger problem than it seems.

It has now been a full week since the initial injury, and I'm still not in a position to restart my exercise. Aside from not moving forward, being off for much longer means that I'm going to start sliding backward in my fitness. If I can't get back up and running within the next week or so, I'm going to have to seriously consider the possibility of aborting my second marathon attempt as getting back up to speed is going to be difficult. Swimming did go well last week, and it may be a way to offset losses in the meantime, however I'm thinking it may be wise to hold off on that until I get the okay from the doctor.


Trying to figure out what to do at this juncture is a little difficult. This is my first injury that didn't sort itself out within a few days, so I don't have a lot of experience in navigating the medical system with a sports injury. One of the talks we had during our clinics advised against going to a GP about this sort of thing as they can be over conservative about treatment, however I don't really know any sports-specific doctors at this point so I don't have much choice. There is a place in Maple that a lot of the others from the Running Room go to for stuff like this, however they don't have any MDs, and I'm not sure that physiotherapists are really equipped to make an initial diagnosis.

Taking Notes...

While my original plan was to run the Orillia Try-a-Tri this weekend an injury threw a wrench in those plans. As I never got a chance to watch one, however, I elected to head up anyway to observe and take notes about the various technical aspects of the race. The transitions are likely the biggest potential pitfall, so my focus was to watch how people handled them and what mistakes commonly caused problems.


Either way, I headed up in the morning and got to the start line just before 10:00am - about an hour before the start of the race. The sprint tri started at 8:00am, so that gave me a chance to catch the tail end of that race, as well as watch the registration and setup of the try-a-tri group. As such, as soon as I got to the site I headed over to the transition area for the sprint race and watched those still running the race - hoping to pick up some ideas from the more experienced athletes. Unfortunately, two hours into the race there weren't a lot of people still out there and those that were didn't appear to be in too much of a hurry so there wasn't a whole lot to pick up on.

As such, I headed over to the try-a-tri section and watched people setting up. The first thing that struck me was that the bikes were being crammed in very close together. Even an hour before the race, the racks (at least in the wave 1 section) were pretty much full and people were trickling in and searching for places to set up. This didn't leave much room for people to set up their stuff, and the bikes were so close together that people were having trouble with bits of their bikes getting stuck on their neighbour's frames. If they were having trouble at this point, I was a bit concerned about what would happen during the race when they are fighting the clock.

As the start approached, this only got worse as people were squishing their bikes between others already on the racks. As such, transition areas that people had carefully set up were being moved around by others. The racks near the back end of the section still had a good amount of space left on them, but people wanting to be close to the entry/exit chutes were basically pushing their way in. This was a bit disconcerting, however it's one of those things that is valuable to see happening before you jump in so that you can avoid it in the future ;)

Either way, the transition setup was pretty similar for most people - their helmets and sunglasses mounted on top of the headset, a towel on the ground with cycling and running shoes and a bag near the front for everything else. Lots of people had tupperware containers filled with water to clean the sand off of their feet (definitely a good idea). About half of them appeared to have socks set up, and there were a lot of people out there without wetsuits. Most people hung their bikes from the front of the saddle, however others were hanging them from the back of the saddle or the handlebars depending on the height of their bikes. While the sprint transitions were pretty orderly with bikes on alternating sides, the try-a-tri section was all over the place.


With about 15 minutes to go, I headed over to the beach to watch the start and what warmup procedures people were doing. A good number of people were in the water, and many of them were going pretty far out on their warmups. With a few minutes to go, they were called back in (this race has a beach start) and people lined up in their wave positions. Once the starter's horn sounded, the mass of people headed out and kept in a suprisingly tight formation. While the line was pretty wide, other than a few straglers everyone appeared to be going at a similar pace until the first bouy. At that point, things spread out a bit more as the turn forced everyone to concentrate back into a single column and the traffic slowed things down.

Once the first wave hit the second bouy, I headed back to the transition area so I could watch the leaders do T1. We waited a few minutes, and the first fellow headed in and did a picture perfect transition - quickly losing his wetsuit, putting on helmet, sunglasses and bib then running off with his bike (shoes were attached to the bike). As more people trickled in, one relatively young participant ran into some trouble removing her bike from the rack as it's brake levers were catching the seat stays of an adjacent bike. After yelling a bit and struggling with the bike, it eventually came free - a bit of a testiment to how the pressure of racing can get to you in these circumstances.

Watching a handful of people perform this transition, a lot of individuals elected to leave their cycling shoes attached to the pedals. This is certainly the fastest way to go (one less step in the transition zone, no need to struggle with running on cleated shoes, etc.), however it requires a lot more skill to slide your feet in after you get rolling. I expected a lot of this in the longer races, but I figured that it would be relatively rare in an introductory distance like this. There's no way that I can master this with the time remaining, however it's something that I'll have to practice for the next season.


When the cyclists returned, I turned my attention to them. The biggest problem here appeared to be finding their place, as the empty racks looked a lot different than when they were full. There were a lot of people wandering around; the longer it took the more agitated they became and the less efficient they were at searching for their spot. As such, it's clear that it's critical to remember your exact location and, if possible, use some form of brightly coloured towel/bag/etc. to make it easier. A lot of people lost a lot of time due to this, so it's likely the most important lesson to take away.

As expected, a lot of them opted to use elastic shoelaces to simplify the switch, however most people appeared to have a lot of trouble getting their heels in as there was nowhere to sit down. A simple throwaway shoehorn would have done a lot of good here, so I'll have to think about adding that to my kit. I'm still not terribly crazy about the idea of moving away from conventional laces, however tieing them takes a considerable length of time so there are good reasons to make that compromise.

One other thing that struck me was that very few people bothered to take in any fluids along the way. Most of the bikes didn't have water bottles, and the runners didn't appear to bother with water belts either. I'm not sure if there were aide stations down the road that I didn't see, however for a ~40 minute race I would have expected more people to take in some water during the competition.

As for heart rate monitors, most people wearing them appeared to put them on before the race started and used their wetsuits to keep them in place. With that said, a lot of people swam with tops on so I didn't get a very wide sampling of what people were doing on this front. Either way, I guess this is another strong arguement for picking up a wetsuit ;)


Either way, it helped a lot to watch the process for once and gave me a better idea how things will play out. Asside from the information, knowing what to expect along the way can do a lot to boost confidence and avoid panic during the race itself. As for the lessons learned, the main take-away points that I got from this event are basically as follows:

• Get to the race site really early and familiarize yourself with the exact layout of the different areas. Knowing exactly where your bike is without the aide of reference points that may not be there when you arrive back in the transition area is critical. Further, look at the entry and exit chutes so that you know exactly where you will be running (a lot of people had to be chased by by marshals for going the wrong way during T1).
  
• Furthering the above, set up the transition area as soon as possible as it appears to fill up very quickly. As the race start approaches, hang around your bike as much as possible to dissaude others from squeezing in and messing with your setup. Additionally, selecting a somewhat sub-optimal position may be a better bet as the density of bikes will be lower than that first few rows (ie time lost due to additional running is ofset by not having to work in such a crowded space).
• If at all possible, try to set up your bike alongside someone else that you know. There were a lot of jerks who knocked down adjacent bikes during their transition and just took off without bothering to do anything about it. Being flanked by people that you trust not to mess up your stuff has the potential to reduce the probability of problems like this.
  
• Focus on remaining calm in transition, regardless of what was happening. The girl noted above who had trouble getting her bike free lost a good deal of time because she was just mindlessly tugging at it rather than figuring out what the problem was and addressing it. There is a lot of pressure on you when in this scenario, so it is totally understandable, but staying focused will almost always result in a better outcome.
• Bring along some sort of bright and easily identifyable towel or bag to make finding your place in the transition zone a bit easier. Memorizing position in absolute terms (X racks down, Y meters in) will help, but with the adrenaline coursing through your system having a simple visual cue as a backup appears to be a very useful idea.
• A lot of people ran the race without a wetsuit and appeared to not have any trouble, however the vast majority of the first group out of the water were wearing them. It's hard to tell if that's a cause (ie the wetsuit made them that much faster) or effect (stronger swimmers are more likely to invest in one), but it's a strong indication that it's a good idea.
• The more competitive athletes in this race all used dedicated triathlon shoes, and left them attached to the pedals rather than putting them on manually. I'm not going to bother with that at this point as I need some practice doing this, however it is obviously something that I'm going to need to look into.
  
• As for the socks issue, it appeared to be split down the middle for both races so it doesn't appear that there is a clear winner here. With that said, the people who did have socks didn't appear to have much issue putting them on so that's likely the route that I'll take.
  
• There is a pretty wide variety of different people running these races. While I expected a lot of mountain bikes and people doing it just to finish, I was suprised how many people were running this race who had already done triathlons before. Given the type of race and prior finishing times, I kind of figured that this distance was pretty much only for first-timers, but when the announcer asked for a show of hands before the start a surprising number of people indicated that this wasn't their first shot.

Regardless, it was a productive day and I'm glad to have had an opportunity to watch one of these races before jumping in. I would have much rather have run the race today, however unfortunately that wasn't in the cards at this point. I'm hoping to make it to Guelph in a couple of weeks, however that's going to depend on how the ankle heals up over the next little while. If not, there are a couple of other races in the HSBC series, or I could simply postpone things until next spring.

The one thing I do have to say at this point is that I do find myself enjoying the variety that triathlon training is bringing to my schedule. While the Toronto Marathon is still my primary goal, I was almost more excited about this race than I was about that. Doing a distance again to improve time is enjoyable, however it's not the same thing as reaching for something new that you havn't done before.

Interuptions...

While the ankle has improved, I'm still limping around a little so I haven't tried to get back on the horse as of yet. I did do a swim without any issues last week, but in order to ensure that I don't set things back any further I've avoided running and cycling. It's leaving me a bit stir crazy at this point, especially with many of my fellow runners doing various races this week (especially the Midsummer Night's Run).

I am a bit concerned about my training at this point, as I'm down five days at this point and will likely lose at least a week out of this. Getting back up to speed for Guelph shouldn't be a huge problem, however losing this much time in my marathon program is potentially a big issue for hitting my target. My biggest problem in the last cycle was injuries forcing me to miss several of my 20 milers, and I'm already down one due to heat and may lose the second one next Sunday if this persists much longer. Either way, there isn't a whole lot that I can do about it at this juncture, so I guess that I might as well just roll with what happens ;)


Either way, I've elected to make the trip up to Orillia tomorrow anyway in order to get a chance to watch one of these races and hopefully pick up a few pointers. The transitions are likely going to be the biggest issue I face in these races, so seeing what other people do (and what mistakes tie people up) has the potential to be quite instructive. It's a bit of a long ride to just go and watch, but at this point I think it's worth it. The only question left is whether I want to get up really early to watch all of the distances (the Sprint Tri starts at 8am), or just head up for the Try-a-Tri (11am) ;)


With all of that said, good luck to everyone running races this weekend! The temperatures look pretty good, although I'll have to keep my fingers crossed that the rain stays away :)

Ankle Injury...

I'm a bit late on this report as things have been a bit disrupted this week. While I missed a few cycling sessions due to weather and logistical concerns, I did manage to squeeze out most of my planned mileage asside from my long run. The temperatures on Sunday were pretty brutal, so I elected to push the marathon pace run back to early Monday morning. When I headed out, however, the inside of my right ankle was a bit tight but it was getting better as it warmed up so I pushed through. Unfortunately, when I hit some stop lights along the way the pain came back - it would go away after about 30 seconds or so, but it persisted each time I needed to stop.

When I got past the warmup and increased my pace, it became evident that my gait was a little off so I elected to abort the run to prevent any further injury. In the end, I managed to get 7.3K in with the final 1800m at race pace. Stopping turned out to be a good move, as I was limping around for the rest of the day so it was more than a little tightness. Over the last few days, it's gotten markedly better but it's still there so I'm not ready to go back to running. I was hoping to get back on the road tomorrow, however I don't think I'll be back until at least Saturday.

I was a bit stumped as to what caused it, however. The pain is just below and behind the ankle joint on the inside of the right foot, which seem to be a common running injury and is just used for stabilizing the joint. I havn't been running on much uneven terain lately, so I'd expect to have problems in other areas first.

Either way, this morning I headed out for a swim as it allowed me to get back to work without stressing the leg too much. I took care to avoid pushing off with my right leg, which slowed me down a bit as it meant that I had to finish each length on the appropriate side. Either way, I fought through and pushed out a little over 2.3K, including a 400m set (mostly composed of 100m sets, however).

It was, however, quite evident what the cause of the injury was though once I got going. When pushing off the wall after a length, a lot of force passes through the ankle and I clearly recognised the muscle groups that were in use. The running likely agrivated the problem, however the initial injury was likely caused during one of my swimming sessions and just wasn't noticable. As such, I made sure to push off a lot lighter than normal this time around - which is likely a good idea anyway as I won't be able to do that during the race ;)


Regardless, it is clear that I won't be able to do the race this Sunday. I may be back up and running by that point, but I wouldn't want to push myself into race conditions that soon after an injury. That's not a huge problem, however, as there is another race in Guelph in two weeks, so I'll likely just reschedule my target for then. Asside from getting back into race shape, it will also give me a little more time to improve my swimming a bit more. I might head up to Orillia anyway just to watch the race and potentially pick up some pointers, although that's a bit of a long drive just to spectate ;)

As I missed writing up a review for last week, I've totalled up my mileage for the last week and inserted it in this post:

Weekly Totals:
Running: 45.0km (28.0mi)
Walking: 1.2km (0.8mi)
Cycling: 84.1km (52.3mi)
Swimming: 5.6km (3.5mi)
Total: 135.9km (84.4mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,832.3km (1,138.5mi)
Walking: 194.6km (120.9mi)
Cycling: 2,891.4km (1,796.6mi)
Swimming: 28.8km (17.9mi)
Total: 4,947.1km (3,074.0mi)

9 Days to Go...

I'm now just a little over a week away from my first triathlon, and starting to get a little nervous at this point ;) Running races are relatively simple affairs, the complexity comes in the training that you do to prepare for that race. With triathlons, however, there is a whole lot of logistical complexity in getting to the start and setting everything up. Further adding to this complexity is that the legs of the Try-a-Tri distance are so short that the time spent in transitions will be extremely significant so every little detail has to be carefully worked out.


At this point I'm kind of kicking myself for not signing up for that Running Room Triathlon clinic. My main reason for not doing it was that the talks were on Saturday mornings and conflicted with my existing cycling group, however due to weather and scheduling issues we really haven't met up all that much in the last little while and I've done most of my long rides solo. As such, I could have easily gotten my mileage in by riding up to the shop (~30K), attending the talk and doing the group session then ride back home and got roughly the same mileage in.

Had I gone down that route, I would have been able to get some proper open-water swim training in as well as decent practice with my transition technique. Those two aspects are likely to be the biggest issues that I'll face in this race, as the run and cycle legs are trivial distances given my training and I've gotten reasonably comfortable swimming the required distance (375m). I've pieced together some information from various sources on these topics, but it's apparent that having face-to-face instruction on these aspects would have been a significant benefit at this point.


Either way, hindsight is 20-20 and it's easy to look back and see what one should have done but it's impossible to work around that. As such, there are a few details that I have to work out within the next little while:

• Whether or not to use a wetsuit for the race. While there are significant benefits to using one (insulation from the cold water, buoyancy, etc.), I havn't had the opportunity to swim in one before and I'm a little retiscent to try something new on race day. Further, having to strip off the wetsuit will take some technique, and may erase any gains by increasing the transition time. I had the opportunity to do some open water swimming in Lake Erie a few weeks ago and was comfortable in just a swimsuit, however I'm not sure what the water temperature in Lake Couchiching will be next week (the current heat wave may help on that front).
• Whether or not to mess around with socks. Many triathletes skip putting on socks after the swim as they can be difficult to slip into with wet feet. Without them, however, there is the risk of getting blisters in the cycle and run legs of the race, which could potentially harm my training beyond this event. I could split the difference by getting a pair of triathlon shoes for the bike leg (they have more padding than road shoes, and generally a simpler fastening mechanism) and then slip the socks on in T2 when my feet have dried out.
• Whether to stick with my existing shoelaces, or switch to elastic laces common to this sport. The elastic laces allow you to quickly slip into the shoes without a shoehorn and save you from having to tie them in transition. The downside, however, is that they aren't as firm as conventional laces so the shoes will move around a bit and can throw off one's gait. The run leg is only 2.5K, so I'll likely be running near a 4:00/km pace for that leg and any little issue could become a significant problem. At the same time, however, the ~30 seconds it takes to tie shoelaces translates into 12 seconds per kilometer ;)
• When to put the heart rate monitor on during the race. I could start off with everything on before the swim, however the HRM strap may move around with the arm motion and the altimeter port on the wrist unit will likely get clogged up with water. Naturally, it would be functionally better to put them on in T1, however that eats away valueable time during the race itself. The easy answer would be to just forget about it, but if I want to do more of these races in the future it's important for me to have as much data as possible so that I can improve in later races.
• The logsitical details of getting up to the race site, what I need to bring and how I'm going to set it all up. Fortunately, the try-a-tri race starts at 11am so there is a good ammount of time to get up there early and make sure everything is in place. Ideally, I'd like to get up early enough to watch the longer races that go on before to get an idea of how the more experienced triathletes deal with the specific setup of this race site.
  
• Finnally, I have to figure out how hard I want to push for this race. This is my first shot at the Triathlon, so my primary goal is just to finish. At the same time, however, I do want to challenge myself and see how well the body deals with the rigors of all three sports in rapid succession. Looking at the results from last year, if I don't seriously mess up the transitions I have the potential to get within the top 10 at a race like this, but whether I want to push that hard is the main question.

With all of that said, the other option that I do have is to fall back to the Guelph race to buy myself a couple of additional weeks to prepare. I selected Orillia largely because it gave me enough time to train and fell on a recovery week in my marathon training (for a pseudo-taper), but part of me would like to have the extra time right now to work out the details. Physically I think I'm ready for the race, but I am a little concerned about the logistics at this point :oP

Week 33: Review

Like last week, this one saw some significant disruptions due to a mixture of vacation scheduling and weather. As I was out of town for Tuesday and Wednesday, I ended up having to move things around. Given the mileage I was looking at this week, I had no choice but to skip Tuesday's 7 miler and push Wednesday's 12 miler back to Thursday. I was able to get Friday's 10 mile tempo run in, however the combination of those two runs left me pretty wiped.

When the weekend came around, there was the threat of extremely hot weather (40C (104F) with humidex) on Sunday when I had my first 20 miler scheduled. Normally, I would have switched the Saturday and Sunday runs around to deal with this, but with the two heavy runs on the days before that simply wasn't practical. Monday's weather was going to be a little better (more rain, but slightly less heat), so I elected to do Saturday's recovery run as scheduled and simply push back the 20 miler a day.

That ended up being a mistake, as Monday worked out to be about the same temperature as Sunday. Long story short, I ended up having to call it quits with a little under 9K to go, which further hurt my mileage total for the week and took out one of the critical 20 milers. Either way, I've got a marathon pace run coming up next week and another 20 miler the week after that so hopefully I'll be able to get back on track.

Either way, the Thursday and Friday runs went extremely well so I did get some good training in one way or the other. I did lose a good deal of potential cycling mileage due to the changes in my running schedule, as well as one of my swimming days - but running is still my highest priority right now so those sports take a back seat. Fortunately, I did manage to get the 100km group ride in on Monday, so that offset the losses on other days quite a bit.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 66.5km (41.3mi)
Walking: 2.9km (1.8mi)
Cycling: 121.2km (75.3mi)
Swimming: 2.8km (1.7mi)
Total: 193.4km (120.2mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,787.3km (1,110.6mi)
Walking: 193.4km (120.2mi)
Cycling: 2,807.3km (1,744.4mi)
Swimming: 23.2km (14.4mi)
Total: 4,811.2km (2,989.5mi)

Due to the long run yesterday, I've had to make some modifications to this week to avoid any problems. As I felt that it was important to get a recovery day in after such a grueling run, I wanted to stick to swimming and cycling today. Unfortunately, the weather made the cycling impossible but I was able to get a good swimming session in. To step back into it, I'll be doing today's 6 miler with the group tomorrow, and will do the mid-week 14 miler on Thursday. To ensure adequate recovery time, I'm planning on skipping Thursday's 6 miler and then continuing on with the plan as described.

This week is expected to continue being pretty hot and humid, although nothing compared to what we had over the last couple of days. Hopefully things will cool off in the next week, as the majority of this summer has had some pretty nice temperatures and I'm not a big fan of having to slog through more of this humidity. With that said, after the rain finishes up today the remainder of the week is expected to be pretty stable so I will welcome some more dry weather (and the ability to do things as planned).

Upcoming Week:
Tue 2.5K Swim
Wed 30K Ride, 6mi (9.6K) Recovery
Thurs 14mi (22.5K) LSD, 2.8K Swim
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 100K Group Ride, 6mi Recovery w/6x100m
Sun 16mi (25.7K) LSD w/12mi (19.3K) at Marathon Pace

Feeling better about the swim...

I ended up going to a different pool than normal due to logistical reasons, which meant that I'd get a shorter session than normal. As such, I figured that in lieu of the shorter distance I'd likely be covering I should focus on stretching out the distance that I could cover continuously. While I have no problem swimming nearly 3K at a reasonably fast pace, I've still needed to take breaks every few lengths to catch my breath. While that's not a huge problem in a pool, it is potentially a huge issue in a lake with other swimmers surrounding you at all times ;)

While this pool isn't really ideally set up for length swimming, the upside to that is that others stay away and there is a lot less traffic to deal with. Doing continuous sets in traffic can be difficult, as the turnarounds can be problematic when one swimmer is overtaking another. That can, in turn, break up the rhythm and make it difficult to keep fighting when you're tired and just want to grab onto that wall.

As such, I started out by sticking to 50m sets, and began working in 100m sets periodically. I've done these sorts of sets before, so this wasn't too difficult. When I got comfortable, I elected to do a number of 100m sets back to back. After successfully doing four full sets with about 10 seconds rest between them, I figured I should try to push it a little more. As such, I set off with the intention to keep going as long as I could - at the time I figured I'd last about 200-250m or so, but as I hadn't gone into this territory before I really had no idea.

Once I got into it and stopped worrying about how much I had left in the set, I got a lot more comfortable and settled into a pretty good rhythm. I easily pushed past 400m and kept going, hitting 500m, then 600m and eventually getting to 750m. At that point, my arms were beginning to get a bit tired so I elected to call it at that point and take a break (had I done the math though, I likely would have hammered another 50m out).

After about 30 seconds I felt a lot better, and figured that I'd do another 100m set and then see what I could do after that. When I hit the 100m mark, however, I was still feeling pretty good so I elected to keep going once again and push through to 500m. I took about 20 seconds to rest at that point, and then headed out again to do another long set. I managed to get down another 325m before the lifeguards informed me that the session was over (the clock still showed 3 minutes left, but I wasn't really going to waste energy arguing with them) ;)


Either way, thanks to the significantly reduced number of breaks I had clocked in 2,525m in 68 minutes, which is less than 300m short of what I can usually do in the 90 minute sessions I usually get in. Over the entire session, I averaged a 2:42/100m pace - nearly 20 seconds faster than usually. Further, the 750m set only took 15 minutes, working out to an average steady state pace of 2:00/100m. Unfortunately, I didn't explicitly time the other sets (hard enough to keep track of everything else) however they would have been done at a similar pace.

With only a couple of more weeks before the Orillia race, I had been having serious second thoughts about my capacity to pull of the swim stage and was thinking about pushing my goal back to a different race in Guelph. This has done a lot to boost my confidence, although it's not quite the same thing as the push-offs one gets in the pool every length do make it a little easier. I'll have to try to do more of this sort of session over the next few times out to cement my stamina, however this has reduced a lot of the stress that I was feeling about it ;)

RunSaturday Entry

Brutal Heat...

I kind of ended up backing myself into a corner this morning, as I pushed back my 20 miler from yesterday to today as the weather reports indicated that it would be cooler. Unfortunately, it ended up being about the same around here, so I was left with little choice but to head out into the 40C+ (104F) temperatures and fight through it. Due to a couple of heavy runs near the end of last week I couldn't push it to Saturday, and with another heavy week coming up I couldn't really push it to Tuesday either.

At first it wasn't too bad, with the humidex floating around 38C (26.3C ambient + 93% humidity) and overcast skies it wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was bearable. While the heat wasn't a big problem, the soupy air was still pretty difficult to breathe which made things significantly more difficult than I would have liked. Either way, I focused on controlling my pace to make sure I didn't push too hard and create a problem, although it was difficult to put down that mental focus in an environment like this. I wasn't able to slow myself down as much as I would have liked, but I was still quite comfortable and my fluid reserves were doing pretty well.

Unfortunately, about 45 minutes into the run the clouds parted and the sun started shining through. The ambient temperature had creeped up into the 30s at this point, and while the humidity was a little lower the humidex was well into the 40s. As such, the sun beating down on me was making things considerably more difficult and my heart rate was running a bit higher than I would have liked. I started taking in more fluids to offset this, and that worked well for a while but it also meant that I was draining my supplies faster.

Just after the 14K mark (about 1:15 into the run), I stopped into a 7-11 and picked up another bottle of Gatorade to refill my bottles. Once topped off, I continued on but at this point the heat was beginning to hit me harder than it had before. I tried to refocus on backing off the throttle a bit, which helped, but the humidity meant that my sweat wasn't evaporating so my core temperature was climbing and making it more and more of a fight.

Just before the 18K mark (~1:33), I pulled into a community centre to cool off a bit and get some water. When I restarted, it was evident that it was going to be extremely difficult to get in the full distance as my HR was continuing to run significantly higher than normal, and the rest stops weren't really doing a lot to help with that. As such, I refocused my aim to make it to the Running Room shop and then play it by ear - if things continued along the route they were going, that would give me the option to abort and call for a pickup.

Over the next few kilometers I ended up burning through the Gatorade that I had left, and things were getting progressively more difficult. I took a few short breaks to allow myself to cool down, but looking at my heart rate it was evident that it would be unwise to try to get the full distance in - while I could likely have done it, it would have significantly increased recovery time and potentially hurt the quality of the other runs this week. As such, I sped up a bit over the last few kilometers and headed over to the shop. Once I hit the 23K mark, I fell back to a walk, then stopped out front and did my stretches. I popped in, made my call and then bought some more Gatorade and cooled off while I waited.


As much as I hate quiting early, especially on these critical 20 milers, I have to look at it from an overall perspective. I could have restocked my bottles at the RR and continued on, but doing so would have left me significantly depleted and likely would have hurt more than it would have helped. In retrospect, heading out on Sunday morning would have likely been the better bet - the temperatures were about the same, but the skies stayed overcast so there was no sun to fight with. Either way, I made the decission that I did based on the best information that I could find - unfortunately, weather forecasting is an inexact science so it's difficult to work around problems like this :(

Detailed Telemetry

Heat and Humidity...

I'm officially scheduled to do my first 20 miler of this training cycle tomorrow, however the weather has thrown a bit of a wrench into those plans. The forecast is calling for humidex values over 40C (104F) tomorrow, as well as thunderstorms and heavy rain in the morning and late afternoon. I can deal with the rain (although the electrical activity is a concern), but given my issues with carrying enough fluid over the last few weeks that would be a hard combination to try and pull off.

Ideally, I would have done the long run this morning instead and avoided the problem altogether. Unfortunately, I had to push Wednesday's 12 miler back to Thursday, so between that and the 10 miler on Friday (six of which were at Tempo pace) my legs weren't in any shape to go that distance today. After the 5 mile recovery run this morning, they're feeling a lot better but they're still not 100% at this point.

As such, I'm strongly considering deferring this run to Monday morning and possibly doing Tuesday's 6 mile recovery run tomorrow instead (so Tuesday is free for recovering from the 20 miler). It's still going to be in the mid-30s then, and there will likely be some heavy rain to deal with, so it won't be ideal. Between those two scenarios however, I think the latter will be more beneficial to my overall training - as slogging through those temperatures would likely do more damage than good (considering the race is in October).

The one other downside with this plan is that I'm scheduled to do 14 miles on Wednesday, so that will likely be difficult two days after a 20 miler. I'll likely work around that by doing the 20 early in the morning and the 14 in the late afternoon, as that should buy me a few more hours of recovery. I would move it around as well, however next Sunday calls for another marathon pace run so I don't want to mess that up ;)

Either way, I'll be gathering up all of the information I can tomorrow morning and play it by ear - but if things stay the way they are suggesting, I'm likely to go down this route. Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do about the weather so it's just a matter of working around it at this juncture ;)

Week 32: Review

The weather reports this week were pretty bad, however the actual weather worked out quite well so when I did get a chance to get out things generally went pretty well. Unfortunately, my schedule this week has been a bit mixed up as the family is taking a couple of weeks off work for some summer vacation stuff, which makes fitting in all of my training sessions quite difficult.

The threat of rain on Monday scared me off of attempting the ride scheduled for that day, which in retrospect was foolish as the grey skies didn't really materialize into anything. Given the weather, however, I did elect to head out to the pool a day early to make sure that that wasn't missed. We were out all day Tuesday, which meant that I had to pull a double on Wednesday to fit in both a 10 miler and a 4mi recovery run. As such, I didn't really have any time to go out on the bike on that day either.

We again went out on Thursday, so I pushed my 11 mile run and 2.7K swim back to Friday again making it impossible to fit in a cycling session. As we were planning on heading out on Saturday, and I had missed the tempo bit of my 10 miler earlier in the week, I elected to do both 5 miles at tempo pace and four of the eight scheduled 100m intervals during Friday's session. After a 2.2K warmup, I did the 5 mile tempo segment finishing the last mile or so on a local track. I then did a slow lap to cool down, and proceeded to do the intervals at that point (running on the straights, recovering on the corners). I then did the remaining ~5K at a slow pace to catch my breath and get home. It was a pretty grueling session to say the least, but it got most of what I needed to do in.

On Saturday I naturally ended up missing my scheduled 7 miler with speedwork, but with an 18 miler the next morning there really was no way to make that up so I let it go. I did manage to get half of the intervals in on Friday, and combined with the tempo run it likely had enough of an effect. I did, however, manage to get a bit of open water swimming in while the family was cooling off at the beach. I wasn't able to get out as far as I would have liked (not wanting to get mowed down by boats and/or jetskiis), and I have no idea how much distance I covered, but other than having some trouble going in a straight line it was actually pretty good. I didn't have a wetsuit, however other than a few small pockets of cold the water temperatures were quite comfortable (~23C), so it wasn't too much of a problem.

Sunday's 18 miler went as scheduled, and other than having to refill my bottles a couple of times to fight off the humidity it went quite well. I tried to focus on slowing myself and had thought that I'd done so quite well during the run, however looking back at the telemetry I still averaged a 5:05/km pace over the duration which is much faster than I should be going (Pfitzinger suggests doing these runs 10-20% slower than targetted race pace, which would correspond to 5:13-5:42/km). I'll have to continue working on that, however slowing things down when your body wants to go faster is a lot harder than it would seem ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 70.2km (43.6mi)
Walking: 2.5km (1.6mi)
Cycling: 16.5km (10.3mi)
Swimming: 5.8km (3.6mi)
Total: 95.0km (59.0mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,720.8km (1,069.3mi)
Walking: 190.5km (118.4mi)
Cycling: 2,686.1km (1,669.1mi)
Swimming: 20.4km (12.7mi)
Total: 4,617.8km (2,869.4mi)

While the cycling mileage was pretty pitfull this week, that's a bit misleading as the cycling group scheduled our ride for this morning rather than last Saturday. As such, we did a little over 100K today which likely should be accounted for in last week's schedule (as we're still planning on meeting up next Saturday for another long ride). Either way, this upcoming week will likely be pretty heavy on the mileage side so it will likely make up for last week.

As we're still on vacation, next week is likely to see some disruptions as well, however I'll just have to work around them as I did last week. With my first 20 miler of this training cycle coming up on Sunday, however, I'll have to be a little more diligent to fit things in where I can. I will likely miss a few of the shorter rides to make room, however right now running (due to the marathon) and swimming (building a base) are a higher priority at this juncture. As such, the following is a rough plan for the week but it's likely to see some significant changes ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 100K Group Ride
Tue 7mi (11.3K) Recovery w/6x100m, 2.7K Swim
Wed 30K Ride, 12mi (19.3K) GA
Thurs 50K Ride, 2.7K Swim
Fri 10mi (16.1K) GA w/6mi (9.7K) LT
Sat 100K Group Ride, 5mi Recovery
Sun 20mi (32.2K) LSD

Week 31: Review

Just finished up a wet 38K ride on the bike a few hours ago, which was pretty much par for the course this week. The last few days have seen tonnes of rain around these parts, and it's done a good deal to mess up my schedule ;) I elected to skip Friday's ride as the weather was unpredictable, and swapped around my long ride with my long run as things were supposed to be better today than yesterday. Unfortunately, that didn't end up being the case and today was pretty much wet the entire day (in retrospect, doing things as planned likely would have worked out perfectly).

As I'd only logged about 66K on the bike so far this week, however, I decided that I had to get out there anyway and at least make it to 100K. I watched the weather radar carefully, and tried to pick a gap in the storm system that would allow me to get in as much time as possible. It worked out well for the first 21K or so of the ride, however after that point the rain started coming down hard. I pulled into a gas station to get cover from the rain, and contemplated whether to continue on or call for someone to pick me up. The rain slowed down a bit after a few minutes, however, so I set back out.

Naturally, at this point the roads were wet again so I had to play it safe and keep the speeds down to avoid any problems (bicycle brakes don't work so well when the rims get wet). It didn't take long before it started pouring again, however, but there wasn't really anywhere to take cover so I kept going. I elected to take a slightly longer route home that ran through more urban areas (so there was somewhere to stop if necessary), which ended up being a good call as the electrical activity started picking up a bit. I popped into the plaza where the local Running Room shop was and took cover until things calmed down, and then set off to do the last 8K of the route back home. By the time I did get back to my place, I was thoroughly soaked and my lower back was coated quite well in road grease ;)

The one thing that was good, however, was that the sunglasses I picked up a few weeks ago did a lot to make it easier to deal with this weather. When traveling at 30-40km/h down the road in rain, the water can be a serious problem to maintaining visibility in conditions where you need as much situational awareness as possible. This was the first time I've used them in the rain, and my prior experiences with other sunglasses in this scenario have been that the lenses just get saturated with water and do more harm than good. Fortunately, Oakley's hydrophobic coating appeared to do wonders and the water just rolled right off of the glass which made things a lot less difficult than it would have otherwise been. I just wish there was a way to get this stuff on my car's windscreen ;)

I was supposed to do a 4 mile recovery run today as well, but after that session I didn't really feel like getting soaked all over again so I elected to skip it. This week was a recovery week anyway, and as recovery runs aren't really intended to apply training pressure the cycling and swiming I've been doing should achieve the desired ends. Other than that, however, I managed to get all of my running mileage in this week, including the 12 miler I did yesterday. While the stifling humidity made it a bit difficult, the relatively short distance meant that it wasn't much of an issue.

As for swimming, I covered most of the details in my previous post. Managing to squeeze in two sessions this week did a lot of good, and I'm going to try and do the same thing this week. Further, I managed to improve my technique and push myself a little harder this time around so I've made some significant progress. I've got the overall endurance aspect at this point, so it's just a matter of nailing down the pacing and breathing aspects so that I can do it continuously. I'm covering a lot more distance than I will have to in the race itself, but doing it in a pool and in a lake are two very different things.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 53.1km (33.0mi)
Walking: 1.3km (0.8mi)
Cycling: 104.3km (64.8mi)
Swimming: 4.6km (2.9mi)
Total: 163.3km (101.5mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,650.6km (1,025.6mi)
Walking: 188.0km (116.8mi)
Cycling: 2,669.6km (1,658.8mi)
Swimming: 14.6km (9.1mi)
Total: 4,522.8km (2,810.3mi)

The upcomming week is looking like it's going to be pretty unsettled as well. They are pretty much calling for rain every day, but the weather reports have been hideously unreliable lately so it's hard to tell whether that will actually pan out. If it does end up being as bad as predicted, however, I might take the opportunity to bring the bike down to the shop to get the drivetrain cleaned off. It's getting a bit messy at this point, and the water that got run over it today likely washed away some of the lubricant so getting all of the grease off and a fresh coat of clean oil on would likely be a good idea.

I'm hoping to squeeze in two 90 minute swimming sessions (vs. one 60min and one 90min I did this week), and will be focusing on trying to keep going for longer between breaks. Ideally, I'd like to try a few 200m intervals this time mixed in with a good number of 100m segments. Naturally, my ability to do this will be dependant on the traffic level in the pools and I might have to make the jump to a faster lane to pull that off.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Ride
Tue 10mi (16.1K) GA w/5mi (8K) @ LT, 2.7K Swim
Wed 30K Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Thurs 11mi (17.7K) GA, 2.7km Swim
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 100K Group Ride, 7mi (11.3K) GA w/8x100m
Sun 18mi (29.0K) LSD

Swimming Progress...

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been able to swim significant distances in the pool but have had some trouble doing so without taking breaks. As the triathlon's swim stage is done in a lake, there are no walls to grab onto so that is something that I have to work on. As such, this week I've been doing what I can to force myself to take shorter and fewer breaks wherever possible to get myself out of the habit. Further, in an effort to accelerate my progress I also elected to try and get two swimming sessions in this week as there is precious little time left ;)

I headed out for my first session on Tuesday at a smaller pool in the area. It only has 12m lengths which is a little annoying, however it's not as busy as the other pools so it gives me a little more freedom to do my thing. After the first 10 lengths, I only allowed myself to take a break after a minimum of four lengths (48m) and resolved to keep any breaks as short as possible. That worked out surprisingly well, and I was feeling strong throughout. As the session progressed, I started mixing in a few sets of six and eventually eight uninterrupted lengths which helped a lot to boost my confidence. As the end of the session approached, I did five sets of eight lengths to help work on keeping my stamina up.

In the end, I managed to squeeze in 154 lengths of the pool (1,848m) during the one hour that we were allowed in the pool. I was still feeling strong by the end and would have liked to keep going for a little longer, however they have swimming lessons after the length swim so they kick us all out of the pool at that point ;) Either way, that brought my overall average pace up to 3:15/100m, which is significantly faster than the 4:12/100m pace I've been doing until now.

I headed out for my second session today in the larger 25m pool, however thanks to the crappy weather there were a lot of people out so the traffic made things a bit difficult. As they were doing lifeguard training in half of the lanes, only three were open to the public. While we started out with only two people in our lane, we got up to five within ten minutes or so which got a bit more crowded than I'd like. Adding to the complexity, two of those people were going pretty slowly and one was all over the map with his pacing so I pretty much had no choice but to stop after each length to open up a big enough gap not to run into them. On the upside, however, it sometimes forced me to push a little harder than I would have otherwise in order to pass the slower guys and avoid the traffic.

Fortunately, after about an hour the others tired out and left so I had the lane to myself for the last half hour or so. That was tempered a bit as the lifeguards started pulling the lane markers out with about 10 minutes to go, so I only got about 20 minutes of good swimming in. Either way, despite the issues I still managed to nail down a faster pace than Tuesday, covering 106 lengths (2650m) in 1h20m for an average pace of 3:01/100m. I took breaks a lot more often than I did on Tuesday, however those breaks were a good deal shorter so it added up to a better total. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get in any full 100m sets during the session, but it was a good workout either way.


As I mentioned in my last post, I'm pretty sure that the breaks are more of a psychological limitation than a physiological one at this point. When running or biking, you want to avoid taking breaks, however you know that you pretty much can do so whenever you'd like. In the pool, however, the only real opportunity is when you hit those walls, so when you start to feel a bit tired you begin to question whether or not you'll be able to make the next length. Mix in the fact that the more fatigued you get, the more difficult it becomes to maintain your breathing rhythm and it can be hard to push yourself to the next level. These two sessions appear to re-enforce that, and I'm hoping to be able to continue working on it until I can push through 400m without interuption.


As I wasn't able to do everything that I wanted today, however, I did take the opportunity to focus a bit more on my technique which should help a bit as well. Primarily, I focused on the position of my hands during the entirety of the stroke - making sure they entered the water perpendicular to it's surface, and moving my wrist so that they were pushing more towards my back than down. It was surprising just how much more power I was able to produce with such a small adjustment. Additionally, I also tried to exhale more air during each stroke so that I could focus more time on inhaling during the breathing stroke (versus wasting time exhaling what was left). That appeared to help as well, however it's difficult to quantify how effective it is without the longer sets.

Either way, swimming is certainly a much more complicated sport than running or cycling. Technique forms a critical component of how well you can do, and in many cases can easily be more significant than physical capability. While I'm relatively confident that I'll be able to get myself to the point where I can swim the race in August, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to need quite a bit longer before I'll be as comfortable with it as I am with the other two sports ;)

With that said, I only started back to swimming six weeks ago and I've definitely come a long way during that time. If I can keep up with two sessions per week for the remaining four weeks, hopefully I'll be able to maintain my current rate of progress and I might be able to surprise myself ;) Mix in a little race-day adrenaline and one can often pull off things that would otherwise seem impossible!

Week 30: Review

A bit late on this update as I've been pretty busy over the last little while. Either way, last week went pretty much as expected. I did end up being busy on Tuesday with some family stuff, so I ended up pushing that run back to Wednesday morning, which meant that I missed the bike ride scheduled on that day. Weather wise, we were pretty lucky (there were a few days that threatened rain, but little came of it) so there wasn't too much in the way of unexpected problems along the way.

On Thursday I elected to try out a different pool to get a feel for the different options in the area. In addition to being a newer building, it's 25m pool was better optimized for lap swimming and they offered a 90m length session rather than the 60 and 75 minute sessions that other pools around here offer. Either way, I hopped in as soon as the session started and it was just me and a couple of others so we all had our own lanes to start. After about 15 minutes a few more people came out, so we had to shuffle around a bit but there was still plenty of room for everyone.

As before, I forced myself to take shorter breaks and take them less often which helped a lot in getting me comfortable with the sustained swimming I'm going to need for the tri. I did force myself to do a few 100m sets uninterrupted, and they went a lot better than expected (although I still did need a good break after them). For the second half of the session, I tried to make sure that I did at least two lengths (50m) before taking any breaks.

Unfortunately, for the last 30 minutes of the session the pool started to get a bit more crowded which slowed me down a bit - skewing the average pace a bit on the low side (averaged about 4:12/100m). As I don't really have any way to time myself outside of total time taken vs. total distance covered, it's difficult to get an idea of how fast I was going. Either way, I felt a good deal stronger and it's nice to have a little more time to get the exercise in (although I'd ideally like to find a pool with 2hr+ sessions).

Both Friday and Saturday's bike rides ended up going really well, maintaining average speeds of 31.4km/h and 30.6km/h paces for the duration of the rides (35K and 80K respectively). Thanks to the cooler weather and overcast skies, I felt strong for the duration and was able to successfully attack some of the more difficult hills without switching down to the small chainring. Unfortunately the threat of rain on Saturday meant that the group didn't get together again, so I was solo for both of those rides.

Sunday's run was scheduled to be a 16 miler with 10 miles at marathon pace, but as I accidentally did the MP bit during last week's run I elected to just do a normal LSD. While the temperature was reasonable (23C), the humidity was extremely high when I headed out (~68%) which made it pretty difficult. I think I didn't hydrate sufficiently after Saturday's sessions, as I was quite thursty for the duration of this run, which added to the difficulty. I drank all four 8oz bottles of Gatorade that I brought with me, and ended up taking in another four bottles of water (refilled them along the way), so it wasn't due to a lack of fluids during the session itself. Oddly it didn't seem to be correlated to speed, and slowing down seemed to actually make it worse - as such, I elected to cut off the run at 15mi and simply did the last mile or so at an elevated pace.

Either way, I felt fine as soon as I stopped so it didn't really end up being a problem. The sessions that I've done since have been fine, so it was likely just a bad day more than anything else. The one catch with doing all of this suplimentary training is that I have to keep a closer eye on hydration and fueling than I would if just running. The differing muscle groups mean overtraining isn't a huge concern, however with a 2.5hr/1600kcal ride on Saturday my water and glycogen stores have to be carefully managed.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 71.2km (44.2mi)
Walking: 3.4km (2.1mi)
Cycling: 158.8km (98.7mi)
Swimming: 1.9km (1.2mi)
Total: 235.3km (146.2mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,597.5km (992.6mi)
Walking: 186.7km (116.0mi)
Cycling: 2,565.3km (1,594.0mi)
Swimming: 10.0km (6.3mi)
Total: 4,359.5km (2,708.9mi)

Starting this week, I'm going to try and get two pool sessions in to start stepping up the intensity and better preparing myself for the race. I'm seeing significant improvements now that I'm forcing myself to keep going for longer, but to keep the training pressure on I think that I need more than one session per week. I think a lot of my trouble keeping going is more psychological than physiological (ie as you get more and more tired, that wall is more and more tempting), so it's just a matter of forcing myself to keep going. Ideally I'd love to give a 50m pool a shot at some point, unfortunately there don't appear to be any of them in this area. There are three of them in Toronto proper, however two of them are closed because of the strike and the third (at UofT) is going to be going down for maintenance early next month so it won't help a lot either (and it's a pain to park around there).

Some open water practice would be ideal, but it's difficult to find a lake where you can swim for a decent duration without having to worry about getting mowed down by boats ;) I did run into a fellow swimming across Wilcox lake (it's too small for proper powerboats) during my ride on Saturday, however he didn't appear to be particularly happy with the water quality so I'm not sure if I want to try that one out ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 35K Ride
Tue 8mi (12.9K) GA w/10x100m, 1.9K Swim
Wed 30K Ride, 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 8mi (12.9K) GA, 1.9km Swim
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 100K Group Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 12mi (19.3K) LSD