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

Week 29: Review

Aside from Monday and Saturday, the weather was excellent this week. There wasn't too much rain, and the temperatures were generally pretty comfortable (vs the brutal heat we've had in the last few weeks). I did miss my Monday ride as it was threatening to rain for most of the day, however it didn't actually add up to much so I likely could have gone out without any issues. Either way, the legs were a bit tired at the end of last week so the rest day probably helped more than it hurt.

On Wednesday the weather was near perfect and while I set out to do a 30K ride I ended up doing a little over 40K. In the afternoon the group again wanted to do 13K, so I also ended up getting in some extra mileage. We did it a bit faster than I had planned (5:10/km vs. 5:30/km), but it was still relatively comfortable so it didn't pose a huge problem. The extra mileage turned out well, as I ended up having to cut my 10 miler on Thursday short due to time constraints (had to get to the pool).

Due to time constraints I also missed the bike ride on Friday, as the grass was in need of a cut and I had to go downtown in the afternoon. While down there, I also took the opportunity to pick up a pair of Oakley Jawbones as I've needed something to protect my eyes when out on the bike (both from debris and UV), and they appeared to be the best match for my requirements. I took them out for my ride on the weekend and am certainly happy with the investment (will post more on this topic later).

On the weekend, the weather report was calling for rain on Saturday so I elected to switch my long ride to Sunday, and do my long run instead. There were some pretty severe thunderstorms in the morning, however it cleared up in the afternoon so it worked out quite well. In retrospect, I would have easily been able to do my ride in the later part of the day, but the weather reports were calling for a second band to come through around 2pm so I didn't want to take a chance of getting stuck out there.

Either way, I headed out around 3pm for my 15 mile run, and while it was hot I managed to fight through it. The only caveat was that since I was doing this run out of sequence I hadn't explicitly checked the training schedule and shortly after the 5 mile mark was unsure of whether this week was supposed to be my marathon pace run or not (checking afterwards, it wasn't). As I still had about 10 miles to go, I figured that I'd play it safe and do the rest at MP (ie 4:45/km). Up until this point the heat wasn't much of an issue, but naturally once I accelerated it began to catch up to me. I'm not sure if it was the heat itself, or simply the fact that I didn't have a chance to mentally prepare for the extra effort ahead of time, but the remainder of the run was quite difficult.

Shortly before the 15K mark I stopped quickly at a convenience store to refill my Gatorade bottle to ensure that I didn't run out. That worked out quite well, as it avoided the scenario I've run into in the last couple of weeks and took away the stress of having to run the last bit of the run without hydration. While the marathon pace segment was demanding, I was able to fight through and maintain a slightly higher than planned 4:41/km pace for the duration. I did allow myself to slow down a bit through the hilly segment, however I made up for that near the end of the run when I didn't have to budget my energy anymore. Naturally, that average shows that my pacing is still a little uneven, however it was a significant improvement from last week and there was a lot less yoyoing.

On Sunday, I headed out for my 50 mile ride at about 2pm. The temperatures were much better than the previous day, although there was a strong wind coming out of the west that would make the return trip quite demanding. I was a little worried about the legs being tired after yesterday, but with the tailwind in the first segment of the ride they had no problem keeping up with the targeted pace despite the net positive grade. I took a slightly different route than last week which depressed my speeds a bit (it took me through a residential area, so I had more stop signs to deal with), but despite that it was quite a pleasant ride and I managed to pull off an average of 29.0km/h so it was quite productive as well.

When I returned home, I still had a 4 mile recovery run planned but with a couple of miles still in the bank from Wednesday, I figured I'd do a 2 mile brick run instead. As such, I quickly changed out of my cycling clothes and into my running stuff, and headed out for a lap of the subdivision. I was expecting it to be pretty difficult after the ride, but it was actually suprisingly comfortable. The ride meant that the legs were well warmed up before I started, and the muscles were still in pretty good condition so it was more of a fight to keep my pace down than it was to keep going. Overall, I managed to maintain a 4:45/km pace over the route before heading inside.

On the swimming front, I forced myself to take shorter breaks this week and it helped immensely. Previously, whenever I lost my breath I'd stop long enough to fully recover, whereas this week I only gave myself a short break and forced myself to deal with laboured breathing. Breathing in the water requires a lot more control than it does when running and cycling, so learning how to keep it under control when under heavy loads is an important aspect that I need to work on. Either way, I managed to average a 4:06/100m pace versus the 4:30/100m pace that I've been doing in previous weeks - still quite slow, but a significant improvement nonetheless. I also managed to work myself up to doing six lengths uninterupted, which is a lot better than the two or three that I was able to do in previous weeks. That's still a long ways off from being able to pull of 375m continuously, but that's what training is for ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 67.8km (42.1mi)
Walking: 2.1km (1.3mi)
Cycling: 134.5km (83.6mi)
Swimming: 1.7km (1.1mi)
Total: 206.1km (128.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,526.3km (948.4mi)
Walking: 183.3km (113.9mi)
Cycling: 2,406.5km (1,495.2mi)
Swimming: 8.1km (5.0mi)
Total: 4,124.2km (2,562.7mi)

This week is looking pretty good weather-wise as well, so hopefully I'll be able to get in all of my sessions for a change. As I did the 10 mi marathon pace segment yesterday, I'll likely count it as done and simply do the 16 miler scheduled for this Sunday at the normal long-run pace. I probably won't be able to fit two pool sessions in this week, but I'm hoping to switch over next week to help improve my progress on that front.

As for cycling, I'm again hoping to get back together with the group on Saturday morning. We were actually going to do it this week, but the weather through a wrench in those plans. The thunderstorms made it impossible to go out when we would have liked, and scheduling complexities didn't allow us to work out an alternate time. Keeping my fingers crossed that next Saturday's weather will be a little more stable ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 30K Ride
Tue 9mi (14.5K) GA w/5mi (8K) @ LT
Wed 30K Ride, 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) GA, 1.6km swim
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 100K Group Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 16mi (25.7K) LSD

Week 28: Review

Came up a little short this week as I ended up missing both of my recovery runs due to scheduling issues. Wednesday was Canada day, and I was out with the family for the entire day so there wasn't an opportunity to get out. On Saturday, I was busy in the morning and had to do my long ride in the early afternoon. As such, I planned to do the 4 mile recovery run right after to make for a brick session and get a feel for the combination of the two sports. Unfortunately, I ended up heading out a little later than I would have liked and was concerned that running that close to the long run on the next day.

On the cycling front, I missed the Wednesday session for the same reason as Running, and the weather limited what I could do on other days. Swimming was a little short as well, as I got to the pool a little later than expected and only had 45 minutes before they kicked us out. Either way, the sessions that did get fit in were harder than usual (thanks to headwinds on the bike and time limits in the pool), so regardless of the reduced mileage I got in some good training.

This morning's run started off pretty well, with decent temperatures (~23C/30% humidity) but that quickly changed. The humidity stayed within reason, however the temperatures rose to a much warmer 28.8C by the end of the run. While not as bad as it's been in the last few weeks, I'm still not completely used to it so it took it's toll. After the first hill, my heart rate wasn't recovering as quickly as usual so I was running at higher levels than I should for a long run. As such, I took a few breaks along the way to keep the HR in check.

Adding to the complexity, I also ended up running out of Gatorade (despite bringing a little under a liter with me) after the last major hill. Combined with the heat, that made the final stretch quite difficult and I ended up stopping about a quarter mile short of my target to avoid overshooting my house and adding a ~1K cooldown walk at the end. Will have to remember to bring some more change along with me on future long runs so I can stop and refill my bottles at the halfway point (my hydration pack can only carry four 8oz bottles).

Either way, I managed to average a decent 5:00/km pace for the 14 miler. My heart rate averaged 160bpm, although it hovered at around 170bpm at points (the average was depressed partially by the breaks) so it was still pushing well beyond the mid-to-high 150s I usually target. I should note that while my HR was high, aside from the last bit my perceived effort wasn't noticeably heavier than usual. Had I not been wearing the HRM, I likely wouldn't have bothered with the breaks.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 51.2km (31.8mi)
Walking: 8.6km (5.3mi)
Cycling: 109.9km (68.3mi)
Swimming: 1.0km (0.6mi)
Total: 170.7km (106.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,458.5km (906.3mi)
Walking: 181.2km (112.6mi)
Cycling: 2,272.0km (1,411.8mi)
Swimming: 6.4km (4.0mi)
Total: 3,918.1km (2,434.6mi)

I'll be busy tomorrow morning and it looks like the weather will go downhill in the afternoon so I'll likely not be able to fit in a ride. Other than that, this week should hopefully go according to plan. Running will continue to scale up, and I'm hoping to squeeze out another 100K ride on Saturday. As far as swimming goes, I'll likely hold at the one mile level and just focus on building stamina and speed. Given the proximity of the triathlon I'm hoping to work on switching over to doing two sessions per week.

Upcoming Week:
Mon Rest
Tue 8mi (12.9K) GA w/10x100m
Wed 30K Ride, 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) GA, 1.6km swim
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 100K Group Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 15mi (24.2K) LSD

On other fronts, I finally managed to get out and try on the Oakley Radar and Jawbone sunglasses for the bike. Out of the two, the Jawbone appeared to be a slightly better match - the Radar's top frame appeared to obstruct my vision a bit when in lower positions whereas the Jawbone arched up and stayed out of the way. They had a model called Radar XL that resolved this issue, however taller bridge looked a little goofy so it wouldn't really be useful for anything other than cycling.

The main catch with the Jawbone, however, is that I'm not sure how well ventilated it would be compared to the Radar. The Radars have an open frame design allowing more air to get around the base of the lens, whereas the Jawbone has a more closed-in design. Most of the Jawbone lenses are vented so that should help a bit, but it's difficult to judge this sort of thing inside of a store. The other caveat is that the Jawbones are still hard to find at this point, so getting specific styles/lenses is tricky at this point. My preference would be to get the Transitions version of the glasses that change their transmission level depending on light levels, but I've been unable to find them anywhere.

Week 27: Review

As predicted, this week was incredibly hot and gave me my first real taste of running/cycling under sustained high temperatures this season. While I was doing a good deal of running last summer, I was only training for a half marathon at the time so I wasn't doing the volume or intensity that I am now. As such, I was burning through Gatorade and water to fight my way through all of the planned sessions.

Cycling isn't too bad in this weather, as at the speeds one travels there is a pretty healthy wind to evaporate the sweat and help cool down the body. The only caveat is that on the really hot days (such as the 34C/60% humidity we had on Wednesday), when you inevitably come up to segments where you have to stop (traffic lights, stop signs, etc.) the heat can really hit you. It's kind of a weird feeling to dread the breaks in an exercise session, but on days like this that 30km/h headwind is the only thing keeping you going ;)

Either way, I did end up making some adjustments this week due to the conditions. The group had to do a little over 12K (~8mi) on Wednesday, so I ended up doing that rather than the 10K recovery run I was looking at. With the humidity, however, the thick air made it much more difficult than it would normally be - while we were running at a general aerobic pace (~5:00/km), my heart rate reached tempo levels in the last few kilometers. We took a couple of brief walking breaks as well, as one of our group members was having a lot more trouble than the rest of us.

I was scheduled to do a 10 miler on Thursday, but as the 8 miles done the day before were extra (Wednesday was supposed to be a rest day in Pftizinger's schedule) and it was still pretty brutal out there I figured I'd just make up the difference. As such, I took a five mile course and split it up into 1 mile warm-up, 2 miles at GA, 1 mile cooldown and then walked the final mile. The net result was to put me a little ahead of scheduled mileage for the week and I didn't have to burn myself out once again ;)

Saturday's long ride went quite well, as some rain had come through on Friday night and knocked the temperature and humidity down a bit. It was still well into the 30s with the humidity taken into account, but that was a lot better than we'd had earlier in the week. At about the 25K mark, I popped into a convenience store to resupply my fluids before it became a problem - drinking a bottle of Gatorade and refilling my depleted water bottle. Other than various traffic stops along the way, I managed to complete the entire 70K ride without any further breaks. As I took care to avoid the urban areas that have slowed me down on the last few rides, I was able to comfortably maintain a 30km/h average speed even with some pretty significant hills (cumulative ascent was over 3000 feet). This was a bit of a shorter ride than I've been doing on Saturdays, but with the first of the Marathon Pace runs the next day I didn't want to push it too hard this weekend.

As for Sunday's long run, I was dreading it a bit for most of the week. This would be the first time since Around the Bay that I've run a significant distance at this particular pace (4:45/km), so I was concerned that it would be difficult. They were also calling for significant quantities of rain, so I was concerned that that would just add to the difficulty. Fortunately, while it was pouring when I originally planned to go out the radar showed an opening that would hit at around 4pm so I elected to push it back. This worked out well, as when I headed out the rain was mostly gone (a little drizzle, but nothing significant) the sky was overcast and the temperature was a comfortable 21C.

I programmed the watch to give me a 6km warm up, which would just get me past the big hill prior to launching into the 8 mile marathon pace segment. I'd have to do that hill at pace on the way back, but hopefully by that point I'd be well into my rythum and able to push through. I kept my pace under control during this segment, and was especially careful on the climb to keep my heart rate under control. At the top of the hill I ended up hitting a stop light which gave me a bit of time to recover prior to doing the last 600 meters at recovery pace.

When the watch beeped to signal the start of the marathon pace segment, I accelerated and still felt quite good. I looked down at the readout and saw I was going at a 4:20 pace so I put on the brakes a bit and pulled myself back to the 4:45 pace I was targeting. This continued to proove difficult, and I spent a good deal of the first couple kilometers looking down at my wrist to keep myself at the right pace. Despite the yoyo pacing for the first 3K or so, however, I managed to keep my average pace in the right ballpark - averaging 4:41, 4:43 and 4:42 respectively. I was still feeling good and was partially relieved that my problem was the body wanting to go too fast rather than having to fight to speed up ;)

After that point, however, I got into a residential area where I had to pay more attention to my suroundings and couldn't monitor the watch as closely as I would have liked. The end result was that my pace continued to slip into the high 4:30s, although it stayed pretty stable there. As my heart rate was comfortably within zone 3 I didn't worry too much about it and played it by ear. I was still feeling quite good even with the faster pace, which did a lot to boost my confidence. I continued this for the next little bit until I got back to the hill.

Going down, I was careful to monitor my heart rate to make sure that I'd be able to power myself back up without having to slow down. My pace was still a bit fast, however that was more down to gravity than it was to effort ;) Once the incline started switching it became difficult to maintain pace so I decided to punch it. While it was difficult at the start, once I got up to speed it actually ended up getting a lot easier and I managed to push past the apex of the hill at a healthy 4:13 pace. Suprisingly, even with that push my HR only peaked at 176bpm (~81%) and I was still feeling pretty good. Fortunately, at this point I ran into another stop light that gave me a chance to recover a bit before finishing the last 4K of the marathon pace segment.

Once I got going I was back into the yoyo routine of trying to keep my pace where it was supposed to be. Unfortunately at this point the clouds were breaking up and the sun started shining through, so the temperature and humidity were climbing fast. Thanks to this, the last 3K of the MP segment was probably the hardest part of the run - however I managed to fight through (although it was quite a relief when the watch beeped to signal that it was over). With the hard part done, I did the last 2K of the run at a recovery pace and added a brief 400m walk at the end to help cool off.

Either way, it felt quite good to get such a strong effort in this time around and has shored up confidence in my ability to maintain the pace required for a 3:20 marathon. I have a lot of work to do in getting a feel for this particular pace, as the extra speed isn't a huge deal for an 8 mile segment but would be catastrophic for a marathon distance. That will just be a matter of more practice with it, however, as my gravity toward the 4:30 pace is likely simply because of the tempo runs that I've done over the last few weeks.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 59.2km (36.8mi)
Walking: 3.9km (2.4mi)
Cycling: 176.3km (109.5mi)
Swimming: 1.6km (1.0mi)
Total: 241.0km (149.8mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,407.3km (874.5mi)
Walking: 172.6km (107.2mi)
Cycling: 2,162.1km (1,343.5mi)
Swimming: 5.4km (3.4mi)
Total: 3,747.4km (2,328.5mi)

This upcomming week is going to be a bit tricky, as the rain is back for a good portion of the week which will mess things up a bit. Given the weather today I elected to skip the cycling session (although in retrospect I likely could have pulled it off in the morning). Wednesday is Canada day so I'll be busy with family for most of the day, so regardless of the weather there's no way I'll have time for a bike ride (and I'm not even confident I'll be able to fit in the scheduled run). Fortunately, the weekend looks like it will be good at this point so I'm going to try to load a lot of the cycling mileage at the back end of the week.

Upcoming Week:
Mon Rest
Tue 10mi (16.1K) GA
Wed 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Thurs 8mi (12.9K) GA w/4mi LT, 1.6km swim
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 100K Group Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 14mi (22.5K) LSD

The other thing that I'm going to have to start looking into is getting a good pair of sunglasses for use on the bike. I've ridden through a few swarms of bugs in the last week or so, and regardless of how small they may be they make quite an impact at 30-40km/h ;) The tricky part is that cycling glasses are difficult to do right as they have a lot of constraints to deal with - they have to be small and light so they're comfortable and don't obstruct your field of vision, but they also have to be strong enough to take high-speed impacts from debris kicked up by cars/trucks. Doing a bit of digging it appears that Oakley's glasses are the best balance, however they're a bit pricey for what they are so I'm still looking around at alternatives as well. With that said, I don't mind paying a bit of a premium if they are genuinely better as it's the type of thing that could last me for a while.

In other areas, I've elected to just push on with my own training for the Triathlon. The clinic would have been helpful, but the scheduling conflict with my group rides was a big problem. Going beyond 100km is extremely difficult to do on one's own, for both safety and logistical reasons (rides of this length generally benefit from a lunch stop at the apex, and without someone to watch the bikes that's difficult to pull off). I would have liked to get some experience with simulated transitions and mass start swimming, but as I'm not really aiming to be competitive in Orillia I can work around those shortcommings.

Week 26: Review

This week was my first one back into the marathon training schedule, and while the individual runs were longer the total mileage was actually a bit less than last week. Naturally, there were more aggressive sessions in there as well (including my first LT run since the marathon) and it felt good to get back into the routine. Unfortunately, the weather added a bit of complexity as there was a lot of rain, so I had to move things around a bit.

While the schedule called for a rest day on Wednesday, I didn't want to miss the group session so I went out anyway. We ended up doing almost exactly 7 miles and while it was raining pretty heavily the whole time, it was actually surprisingly pleasant as the rain helped to cool things down a bit. The group was pretty fast this week, averaging a little under 5min/km with a fast spurt at around 4:20/km near the end. I had originally intended this to be a recovery run, but this worked out just as well ;)

Looking at the weather reports, however, Saturday was looking worse and worse so I was a bit worried about fitting in my cycling sessions. I had naturally missed the Wednesday session, and was likely to miss Friday as well so I really needed to get the long ride in somehow. As such, I decided to move things around a bit so that I could do the ride on Sunday when it was supposed to be clear (albeit hot). Had I simply moved the sessions back, however, that would mean five days of back-to-back running so I needed to make some more complex adjustments. Given the 7 extra GA miles I banked on Wednesday, I elected to simply add 2 GA miles to the 4 mile recovery run (moved from Saturday to Friday) and then doing my 12 mile run on Saturday morning.

Fortunately, that panned out and I was able to squeeze everything in as planned. I did do a lot of running in the rain this week, but unlike biking it doesn't really pose a safety hazard so that's not too much of a sacrifice. Naturally, this means that I hit my running target for the week but my cycling mileage was way down (120km done vs 185km planned).

Sunday's long ride went quite well, although the heat and humidity certainly upped the difficulty factor. I was busy in the morning, so I couldn't go out until nearly 3:00 - as such, the sun was shining at full bore, the temperatures were approaching 30C and the 75% humidity wasn't helping either. Fortunately, on the bike you get a built-in 30km/h wind to cool you down so other than going through a lot of water it wasn't too bad. I did hold back a bit to avoid any trouble (averaging only 29km/h vs. the 30-32km/h I usually do for this distance) which probably wasn't necessary, but I didn't want to risk anything.

While I was at it, however, I took the opportunity to check out the Aurora Running Room and ask a few questions about the Triathlon program I was looking at. I already got some great information from another blogger (who is already a participant), however I wanted to get an idea of exactly where the store was located (it ended up being about 35km), as well as getting some more detail about the schedule and how it would overlay with my existing plan. It certainly looks pretty good, but the main caveat is that the seminars are on Saturday mornings which clash with my existing group rides. I was hoping that possibly the rides in the session could replace those, however it doesn't look like they'll be hitting my current mileage any time soon. Still have to think about it a bit, as the swimming sessions would be quite useful but I also don't want to mess up my cycling training either.

The other upside to this was that I was able to top off my water bottles while I was there, so I left with an ample supply to help deal with the heat. After that, I headed south a bit for a ride around Wilcox lake and then took a bit of a circuitous route back home. I managed to get a good 50 miles (~80.5K) in this time around, and it felt quite good despite the heat and humidity I had to deal with. It's looking like the group rides will be back up and running next Saturday, and hopefully we'll be getting in some decent mileage on some new routes ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 53.1km (33.0mi)
Walking: 1.1km (0.7mi)
Cycling: 119.9km (74.5mi)
Swimming: 1.4km (0.9mi)
Total: 175.5km (109.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,348.1km (837.7mi)
Walking: 168.7km (104.8mi)
Cycling: 1,985.8km (1,233.9mi)
Swimming: 3.8km (2.4mi)
Total: 3,506.4km (2,178.8mi)

The upcoming week is looking like it will be pretty decent. While it's going to be quite hot, there isn't a lot of rain forecast so I'll likely be able to stick to the plan pretty well. I will have to make sure that I drink enough fluids, but other than that it will hopefully do a lot to get my body used to this kind of weather so that I can fight my way through the summer ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Ride
Tue 8mi (12.9K) GA w/10x100m, 1hr Swim
Wed 30K Ride, 10K Recovery (Group)
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) GA
Fri 30K Ride
Sat 80K Group Ride, 5mi (8K) Recovery
Sun 13mi (20.9K) LSD w/8mi (12.9K) at Marathon Pace

Longer term, I also have to work on selecting some intermediate races this season to act as tune-ups for the bigger ones. The Midsummer Night's 30K in August is likely to be one of them, but I'm hoping to fit in a 10K and at least one more 5K along the way. I'm also flirting with running the half marathon again at the Scotiabank waterfront marathon, however I'll have to see how everything lines up with my training. The triathlon stuff will make these races a little more complicated, but I'll have to see what I can do ;)

Week 25: Review & New Targets

Was a pretty good week this time around, and while the weather again interfered with a few of my rides I did manage to get my first 100K ride in yesterday. As expected, it was certainly a long way and the route that I selected had a few nasty hills to make it that much more difficult. Either way, despite the fact that it took almost 3.5 hours to complete (3:29:09 to be precise, about 6 seconds longer than my marathon) it was an enjoyable ride with some pretty nice scenery. With that said, I ended up doing this ride solo (the group didn't materialize this week) and it was a bit of a concern going that far out on my own.


One thing I do have to remember for future attempts, however, is to bring some gels with me on rides like this. Fortunately I didn't have any problems this time, but my records show a consumption of over 2100kcal which is dangerously close to the limits. I saw the numbers getting up there at about the 80K mark, and as I was running low on fluids as well I made a quick stop into a convenience store and grabbed a Gatorade and a couple of cookies to help refill the tank a bit. Finding an appropriate store was a little difficult, however, as one has to worry about where to put the bike when you go in (another thing that's much easier with a group).

Due to the energy consumption of yesterday's ride, I elected to push today's 11 mile run back to the afternoon as I wanted to squeeze in another meal to make sure that my stores were sufficiently refilled. Unfortunately, today was a pretty hot day so running later in the day didn't help with that. When I set out, the thermostat was reading 29.4C with 60% humidity and as my body's still not really used to running in the heat yet that made things pretty difficult. I brought along 16oz of Gatorade, and unfortunately with the heat I ended up running out after 13K. As I approached the 10 mile mark, I elected to just cut the run short to avoid running into any problems. I did some additional mileage on Wednesday, so I'd still have more than enough to cover my weekly target.

I also managed to squeeze in my second swimming session this week which went a good deal better than last week. I'm still horribly slow, but I think I've got most of the kinks worked out so it's just a matter of building some upper body strength and a little more endurance in the pool. I'm still a long way away from being able to race in the water, but I've still got some time to work on that one ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 56.7km (35.2mi)
Walking: 3.2km (2.0mi)
Cycling: 142.7km (88.7mi)
Swimming: 1.3km (0.8mi)
Total: 203.9km (126.7mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,295.0km (804.7mi)
Walking: 167.6km (104.1mi)
Cycling: 1,882.9km (1,170.0mi)
Swimming: 2.4km (1.5mi)
Total: 3,347.9km (2,080.3mi)

Last week marked the end of the recovery phase of my marathon training program, so I'll be restarting the Pfitzinger 55mi/18wk program again this week. Working the rest of my activities into the schedule is going to be a bit challenging going forward, but with the mileage still relatively low that won't be a huge problem for the time being. Tentatively, my schedule will be as follows however I may need to make some adjustments depending on the weather and other logistical details.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Ride
Tue 8mi (12.9K) LT w/4mi (6.4km) @15K Race Pace, 1hr Swim
Wed 30K Ride, 10K Recovery (Group)
Thurs 9mi (14.5K) GA
Fri 30K Ride
Sat 75K Group Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 12mi (19.3K) LSD

When I ran my first marathon back in May, I managed to chew through my long term goal (finishing a marathon before my 30th birthday) so for the last few weeks I've been trying to figure out what goalpost to set up for the next little while. When I went into marathon training, my intention was more to get that notch into my belt and be done with it. The sheer ammount of work required to train for one of these races is daunting for someone who has never done it before (4.5 months of nearly continous training), and the thought of doing it over and over again is almost unimaginable ;)

As my training progressed, however, I found myself enjoying it and, while it was undeniably a lot of work, once you got into the routine of it it wasn't all that bad. The few short distance races that I did during my training showed marked improvements as well, so hitting all of those little mini-goals along the way helped to make it more enjoyable. When I actually ran the race and crossed that finish line below my target, however, I found myself focusing on what I could do better the next time around and wanting to give it another shot.

At the same time, after working cycling into my routine I've been tempted by the idea of playing around with giving Triathlons a shot. Over the last year and a half, I've steadily increased my targets and aimed for longer and longer distances. The marathon is about as far as I realistically want to run at this point, so aiming for bigger targets means going in a bit of a different direction. A few months ago the idea of an Ironman was pretty much insane, but at this point the concept is kind of floating around in the back of my head in much the same way that the marathon did a year ago.

Either way, after a bit of playing around with various ideas I'm likely going to split my attention a bit between achieving two different goals. In the short term, I'd like to work my way into qualifying for the Boston Marathon and I've got to shave 18:04 off of my time to get there. As such, I'm looking at targeting 3:20 at the Goodlife Toronto Marathon this fall and then, hopefully, working my way down to 3:10:59 at Mississauga next spring. Those are both pretty aggressive goals, so if I have to scale back my plans I don't mind doing that - but getting to 3:10 is not an easy goal, and one has to push pretty hard to get there.

The longer term goal is to work my way into doing some Triathlons. I'd like to attempt a short distance race later this summer to get a feel for the sport - not so much to run it competitively, but to get some experience with the transitions and see how well my body takes to it. Tentatively, I'm aiming at the try-a-tri (375m swim, 10K ride, 3K run) in Orillia in late August as the date and location work well for me. The bike and run legs are short enough that they shouldn't pose too much of a problem (even with tired legs), but the swim will require significant improvement and the transitions will likely be pretty messy the first time out.

Ultimately, I'd like to work my way up to an Ironman but thats a long ways off and will depend critically on how well the shorter races work out for me. Either way, I likely won't begin to really ramp up the triathlon side of things until the Boston goal is achieved. I hope to pull off a few short to medium distance Tris next summer to further my experience, but I won't even begin to think about the longer distance ones until I'm clear to focus 100% on them.


The tricky part at this point is to figure out how to integrate my training to accomodate both of these goals. While my running is strictly regimented by a formal training program, my cycling and swimming have simply been done by feel. If I do want to get serious about this, I'm going to have to find some sort of formal program that is flexible enough to deal with the running requirements that my primary goal will require.

The one idea that I've been flirting with is giving the Running Room's Triathlon program a shot. Their Aurora store has a clinic that started last weekend targetting the Orillia race, and their running programs did do a lot to help me when I first started out. The caveat, however, is that (a) that store is a good distance away from here and (b) I havn't really been able to find much information about how their program is structured. It has to deal with athletes with a wide range of backgrounds, and whether it can be sufficiently flexible to deal with my requirements (ie weak swimmer, relatively strong runner/cyclist).

Cycling Computers: Revisited

About three months ago I was looking at various options for replacing my bike's basic cyclocomputer with something more capable. Unfortunately, things got busy after that point and I never got a chance to do much more research. After getting back on the road for a while, however, the limitations that weren't so big of an issue on the trainer re-asserted themselves and brought this consideration back to the forefront. As such, over the last few weeks I've been doing a little more digging and re-examining my options.

Shortly after the last post, I was strongly gravitating towards the Polar CS600X but it wasn't available at the time. Thanks to some pro-active assistance from Chris at Polar USA, I was able to get confirmation that the CS600X with power is available in this country so it's just a matter of finding a retailer at this point. In the meantime, however, I've heard a lot of good things about the Garmin Edge 705 from local bike shops and riders that I've met out on the road so I'm reconsidering that option as well.


The other unit that I've heard good things about and didn't consider last time around is the Velocomp iBike series (specifically their Pro and Aero units). In addition to the basic cyclocomputer features, these units provide power readings using a relatively novel solution that measures opposing forces rather than measuring the drivetrain itself. Using an air speed sensor and a multi-axis accelerometer array within the head unit, it measures the various forces resisting movement (primarily aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance) and backsolves the amount of power necessary to maintain the speed the bike is traveling at.

Naturally, the power readings do make some assumptions that more direct measurements don't have to deal with. Primarily, when one changes positions during a ride their drag coefficient will change but the system has no way to know that this is happening. As such, when going down on the drops power will be overestimated and when sitting up to drink, power will be underestimated.

With that said, most people that I've talked to that have actually used the system appear to be impressed with it's accuracy. Part of that is likely down to the fact that one typically spends most of their time in one position so the impact of this is likely less significant than it would seem at first glance. Either way, Polar's measurement mechanism has significant sources of potential error as well and as the other power options aren't really realistic at this point this may be somewhat moot ;)

The one thing that has me intrigued by these devices, however, is their ability to record both the air and ground speeds of the bike. This provides a detailed log of the intensity of head and tailwinds, as well as a way to quantify the effects of drafting positions during group rides. This information can be extrapolated to an extent from heart rate and power data, but as other things can influence those values the air speed readings can be quite instructive (especially for a relatively new rider such as myself).

Further, their iAero head unit can actually provide estimates of your aerodynamic drag coefficient each time you coast (with the addition of an aftermarket ANT+ power meter, it can even provide a continuous readout). If accurate, this would allow me to experiment with different positions on the bike in order to determine exactly how efficient each of them are. At common cycling speeds, aerodynamic drag becomes the dominant force the rider is fighting against so the ability to fine tune one's position is potentially a huge feature.

The problem with the iBike products, however, is that their user interface is pretty crude compared to Polar and Garmin's products. Velocomp elected to use a simple three-line fixed element LCD, which is fine for the numeric information readouts but has severe limitations for the on-device menus. This is likely due to the fact that they appear to use the same hardware for their various models and differentiate based on firmware. As such, their design had to be profitable for their $199 Sport model and compromises had to be made to reach that price point. As a user, however, justifying paying $799 for this type of user experience is a bit frustrating. The biggest annoyance with their implementation, however, is that the user cannot select which pieces of telemetry are shown on each of their pages - one is stuck with the groupings that Velocomp offers.


Either way, I'll continue to do a bit more digging but wanted to get my thought process down here. Like anything, there are significant pros and cons for all three choices here and it's just a matter of figuring out which compromises are the least significant for my needs. Naturally, if anyone has any experience with these products I'd welcome any input on the topic!

Week 24: Review

Managed to get a good deal of work in this week, although I did miss my Monday cycling session due to weather concerns. Rather than take the day off, however, I elected to go out for an 11K power walk (~8:17/km pace) so that the day wouldn't be a total loss. Walking used to be the mainstay of my schedule, and I kept it up in the earlier stages of my running but with the miles that the marathon training schedules require I havn't had the time to mix them in alongside the running and cycling. When time permits, however, it's a good way to squeeze in a few extra miles without the training load that running would impose.

Aside from that, I also got around to doing my first proper swimming session in a long time after my run on Tuesday. The last time I did any significant number of lengths was nearly 18 years ago, so naturally my technique was pretty rusty. I've certainly done some swimming since, but most of that was recreational in nature with little in the way of sustained efforts required for lengths. Breathing was naturally my biggest issue, and loosing track of that meant that I had to take rests frequently to let it catch up. I had no problem breathing over my right shoulder, but for some reason I was having a lot of trouble taking in air over my left. While I likely could have had a better session just sticking to the one side, I didn't want to reinforce bad habits so I forced myself to alternate.

Regardless, I managed to put down a little under 1100m in around 1h15m (including breaks as I had no way to time and record individual lap times), which is pretty slow but not too bad for my first time back. It did take a good deal out of me, however, as the cycling and running sessions on the next day were pretty difficult. That's somewhat to be expected, however, as swimming involves very different muscle groups than the other sports and I have a lot of work to do before I get my fitness up in those areas. I do have to find a proper training program to get myself to where I need to be, however for the time being I'll just go out on a regular basis and log as many miles as possible to iron out the wrinkles ;)

The one thing that is a bit frustrating is that I don't currently have any mechanism to record my telemetry from these sessions. I've used my heart rate monitor for walking, running and cycling and it was an invaluable tool when getting started in those sports as I could gauge the proper effort when I had no experience in figuring that out by feel. Unfortunately the 2.4GHz band that Polar uses for communication between the heart rate strap and the wrist unit can't penetrate water, so it won't function in this environment (both parts are submersion rated, but they don't do much good when they can't talk to one another).

I was looking at the Suunto Memory Belt (which stores HR data in the heart rate strap itself) a few months back, however from what I've seen it appears to be difficult to keep in place unless you are wearing a wetsuit. Swimovate's Pool-Mate device looks interesting, however without a way to upload the data to a computer its utility is limited (as it can only provide averages, and not detailed plots). Will probably have to wing it for the time being, but I'll keep my eyes open for electronic aides that may simplify this sort of thing ;)

Aside from that, I managed to do all of the runs as scheduled. We did an 11K group run on Wednesday rather than the 8K scheduled as the others needed a bit more distance, so there's an extra 3K on my weekly totals this time around (makes up for the 2K I missed last week). Either way, it was apparently national running day in the US on Wednesday so I'll chalk it up to celebrating alongside our southern neighbours ;)


I was playing with the idea of trying out a 100K ride on Saturday, however time constraints limited me to the 75K route that I did last week. Upped the pace a little versus last time (30.5km/h vs. 30.1km/h), although a lot of that was again gated by the traffic on Rutherford so I'll have to find a better return route. The group ride didn't materialize again this time around, so it was a solo ride once again. Either way, I'm hoping to give a 100K ride a shot this upcoming Saturday as the 75K rides have worked well so far ;) Just keeping my fingers crossed that the weather lines up to permit that!

Weekly Totals:
Running: 51.2km (31.8mi)
Walking: 11.9km (7.4mi)
Cycling: 137.4km (85.4mi)
Swimming: 1.1km (0.7mi)
Total: 201.6km (125.3mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,238.3km (769.4mi)
Walking: 164.4km (102.2mi)
Cycling: 1,740.2km (1,081.3mi)
Swimming: 1.1km (0.7mi)
Total: 3,144.0km (1,953.6mi)

The upcoming week is the last of my recovery program, so I'm going to have to solidify the details of my next training cycle in the next few days. If I do elect to go with the Toronto Goodlife Marathon (which I'm pretty sure will be the case), the 18 week program will begin as soon as this one ends. I'm roughly flirting with aiming to do the tri-a-tri race (375m swim, 10K ride, 2.5K run) in Orillia at the end of August, as it should give enough time to get a decent swimming base in so that I can get some experience with the transitions prior to (hopefully) racing some proper triathlons sometime next summer. Either way, I'll likely have another post tomorow or the day after with details on what I'm aiming on doing with the summer and fall seasons ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Ride (probably not going to happen)
Tue 7mi (11.3K) GA
Wed 30K Ride, 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 1hr Swim, 30K Ride
Fri 8mi (12.9K) GA w/8x100m
Sat 100K Group Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 11mi (17.7K) LSD