Shawn Burke's Blog

Rinse and Repeat

2008-08-12T23:32:12-07:00:00

Ironman Canada 2008

Well here we are again. Ironman number four is 10 days away. Wow, that was quick.

Since I last wrote, I've gotten a few weeks of solid training in as things have continued to come around. It's pretty clear to me, at least in this case, that an Ironman full recovery for me is between 5 and 6 weeks. It wasn't until the last week or so that I really felt like I was going well. The geek in me really wants to understand what the physiology behind this is. How is it possible that it takes that long and what's the mechanism?

Anyway, things have come around and that's what matters. Just this week everything has started to really click and I'm finally swimming and running reasonably again. Yeah, whatever.

Life in general has been crazy. Work is very busy and taking a lot of my time and attention. I had to make an emergency trip back to Illinois for a family matter. Not much down time this summer.

Race Execution and Pacing

Two weekends ago, we went over to Spokane for the Troika Half Ironman. This race is three weeks before Ironman Canada, which makes it a perfect dress rehearsal and capstone "workout" for the last training block. Having the race in home-town Spokane is fun for me, easy for the family to see, and logistically easy with a place to stay ready to go. Last year, however, this race was a disaster of small errors that led up to one very unhappy, and not very fast, day. I really wanted to atone for that meltdown and prove I could race the Half distance effectively.

I've turned a corner in my approach to racing over the past few months. The change for me basically happened on the run at Ironman Coeur d'Alene, where I went out with a different strategy than prior IMs, and one that led to dramatically better results. My approach has been to race a more balanced, patient, and well-paced event. In some sense I'm racing "easier" but I think that mind set actually allows me to go faster. By being more relaxed, I'm able to focus on form and execution, which is a much better place to be then constantly battling the pain.

The idea is simple: try to maintain steady pacing across the entire distance. This is especially true on the run where running 15 or 30 seconds per mile faster in the first third of the run can cost you 1-2 minutes per mile in the last third of the run when the wheels some of. So the idea is postponing that meltdown (or avoiding it) as long as possible. The same can be said for the other legs. Basically, a pace that seems easy at the beginning of the leg is likely to seem very hard by the end. And maintaining that "easy" pace, for me at least, will deliver a very solid result. If you can stay disciplined and avoid the fade.

Here's what's happened.

At the Seafair Sprint Triathlon, I decided I was just going to swim solid, starting out well easier than I thought I "should", and I wasn't going to bother with drafting or worry about what other people were doing. The result was I swam over two minutes faster, on an 800m course, than last time I did the race. I was coming off two big training weeks and had a sub-par bike and OK run, but still ended up only about 80 seconds off the podium in my age group. I'm not exactly training for sprints. Quick shout out to Scott Greene for winning his very-tough 35-39 age group. Stud. Given the situation, I felt good about this result.

So back to Troika. Last year I swam too hard and really struggled in the last 500m of the swim in absolute agony. This upset my stomach badly and I never really recovered. Bad tummy means too few calories going in, and that's just not going to work. This year I just went out and swam steady and as close to the buoys as I could. I swam a minute faster than last year on much less effort. On the bike, I started out easy for the first 20 minutes then built into the ride and was strong all the way through; 8 minutes faster than last year. On the run, I set a solid but maintainable pace and held it until it about mile 12, which is close enough to gut it in. I was 20 minutes faster on the run than last year. So, yeah, I'm fitter and last year's result was a bad example, but this was a much better way for me to race and snagged me a 2nd place in my age group. I actually had fun out there and look forward to next year.

So I've got that going for me. I was also surprised how quickly I bounced back from this race and how little soreness I had over the following day or two.

Completing the Double Header

On to Canada. So that's the groove I'm going with. Race more relaxed and just count on my fitness to do the work, especially when it starts to hurt.

But it's just a race. If anything else, I'm looking forward to getting back up to Penticton and seeing some friends and family and getting some rest. We've got two friends doing their first IM, so it'll be fun to observe the "first race" experience through their eyes again. And many of us in the group have the potential for a breakthrough day up there.

What's at stake

2008-08-11T18:47:08-07:00:00

I can't resist. This is important.

If you happen to know someone who is considering voting for John McCain just ask them to spend five minutes and two seconds watching this:

That's it. 5:02. It probably won't change many minds, but it's hard to ignore. If they don't buy it, fine. But we should be crystal clear on what is at stake here.

There's a very difficult-to-understand mess going on Georgia (no, not the Atlanta kind), and McCain continues to talk about Georgia joining NATO and NATO issuing a "strong response" to the Russians. What's going on in Georgia is a messy, confusing mis-mash of history and politics, and John McCain (whether he knows it or not, I’m not sure which is worse) is basically arguing that we get involved in a war with Russia. See, if you're a NATO member and someone attacks another NATO member you are REQUIRED to defend that member. And you thought gas prices were high now.

You can take all the other crap of the last 8 years and put it aside for a second. People need to understand that a vote for McCain is a vote for more unending, expensive, poorly managed, foreign-policy disasters that kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the process, period.

That is what is at stake this November.

Pick. One.

Ironman Recovery

2008-07-15T17:41:58-07:00:00

I really need to find a good resource to explain why recovery from an Ironman is so dramatic and takes as long as it does. I'm still struggling to wrap my head around how it can be that different from long training days where you're doing 2/3 of the volume (with much less running, of course).

Here's what I'm talking about.

It's been over three weeks from the event. Since then:

The first 7 days after the race were pretty much completely off from training. Towards the end of this week a wave of delayed fatigue tends to hit you.
The next 7 days were light, with a little bit of running towards the end of the week.
The third 7 days was a 12-hour training week with just a little "real" work sprinkled in, it was good to get moving again.
My Heart Rate has been through the roof every time I've trained - 10-15 beats higher than I'd expect for a given pace/exertion. My HR is typically very predictable. I can't figure this one out, though a buddy who did the race is also experiencing this.
My running is 45-60 seconds per mile slower than normal, even more if I was to run at my normal HR.
My swimming has gone completely to crap. I'm a mess in the pool; any worse and the old ladies with hair nets and kick boards will be out pacing me.

So there you have it. The only bright spot is that I'm coming back into form on the bike pretty well.

In the pool, I just can't seem to find the technique that I was swimming with before the race. I'm about 5s slower per 100y than I was easily swimming before the race (that's a lot). I think all that swimming with a wetsuit makes you a lazy swimmer. I've got 15K in the pool this week, so I'm hoping that will whip me back around and I'll rediscover how I was swimming at camp. But its frustrating as all hell.

The run progression is fairly similar to what other post-Ironman periods has been. It takes about a month for me to run "normally" again, which in my case is any longer run at a low HR (< AeT) at pretty close to 8:00 miles. Before the race I was comfortably doing 2+ hour runs at that pace/effort. I'm about 20s/mile slow right now.

I'll know that I'll get there over the next few weeks, so I'm not whining about it. It just takes time. But it's just amazing what an impact the race seems to make on your body. It's easy to think that this stuff is mental but there seems to be some pretty hard data to it. And most of the soreness from the race, for me at least, works itself out within 72 hours. Three weeks seems like such a long time.

The lesson here is to be careful with your recovery and let it happen. I don't think you can force it, and you're very injury prone in the process.

Ironman Coeur d'Alene 2008 Race Report

2008-06-27T18:20:15-07:00:00

"Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness one of the greatest spectacles in all of sport!"

These are the muddled words I hear over the loudspeaker while standing on the beach with 2100 other athletes minutes before the start of Ironman Coeur d'Alene (IMCDA) 2008. And I kind of seize on that word "spectacle", because spectacles are great for the person watching. They're not always so great for the people in said spectacle. Oh well, let's get on with this thing.

Just like at Ironman Canada last year, there was no real warning for the athletes. At some point the announcer is talking and the cannon goes off rather suddenly. Start the watch, here we go.

I was a little concerned about the beach start. So many athletes packed into such a small space and rushing into the water can be...unfriendly. But honestly the start wasn't bad. People made their way into the water in a fairly orderly fashion. What happened over the next 61 one minutes was anything but. I had prepared myself for a rough 5-10 minutes as the swim got going, but there was just no open water to be found at any point. I'd get a good swim stroke going, then I'd run into somebody or get clocked in the head or the arm or have someone up on my legs. Deep breaths, long strokes, stay relaxed.

The swim course is a 2-lap rectangular swim. Between the laps you have to get out, go over a timing mat, then get back in. It was very slow on the way out and faster on the way back in, due to a current and some wind that was picking up. The scrum never really broke...

IMCDA was my third Ironman in 16 months, with the prior one being in Canada in August 2007. After IMC, I took some down time and then worked out a plan with my coach for the 10 month training cycle. Run a lot over the winter, targeting a January marathon. Race the bike a bit in the spring, targeting a month of racing. Continue to focus on improving my swim. All of these things did their jobs and I've gotten much better across all disciplines. Looking back at my training logs from last year, the differences are pretty dramatic. I was really looking forward to IMCDA and what an Ironman would be like as a fitter, more experienced athlete.

We arrived in Coeur d'Alene, ID the Thursday before the race. Having grown up in nearby Spokane, this was almost a home town race for me. The weather obliged and we were treated to sunny, mid-70s weather as we kicked around the town and got ready for the race. Deb found an amazing house to rent about 3 blocks from transition. A five minute walk. And that's if you got stopped at the light. Two other couples joined us (not racing) and it was all Ironman, all the time. My last few workouts went well, but I wasn't as focused on this race mentally as prior races. It wasn't over confidence as much as some kind of "it'll work out" attitude. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my checklists from prior races so we kind of had to re-invent everything. It seemed like it was under control. I was ready to just get out and race, but it never seemed real that the race was just days away.

...about half way through the first lap of the swim, I felt my timing strap working its way off my ankle. I swam inside the buoys, flipped over and tried to pull it off. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it wouldn't come off anyway. So I flexed my ankle to hold it, and swam the rest of the lap with it the way it was. This was awkward and didn't help my pace but it worked, and I fixed it on the way into the next lap. This was a good taste of how the rest of the day would go. Small, irritating issues that were fortunately manageable.

I got out of the water a 1:11, my slowest Ironman swim by two minutes. After hoping to swim 1:02-1:04, I was not so thrilled with this number, but it was clear to me that it was slow for everyone so I didn't worry about it and went on my way. I was just happy it was over with, and was looking forward to the non-contact portion of the race.

It took about 15 minutes to get my legs moving on the bike and the first two hours were great. I was riding my target power and it was like I was shot out of a cannon. I was passing hundreds of people and riding comfortably. I hit the first turn around - 34 miles - with an average speed of 20.7 miles per hour, even after all of the hills in the prior 15 miles. This was going very well - I felt like I was holding back, big time. Right on plan. The CdA course is hilly headed up north, then flat to slightly downhill south back into town. I was looking forward to doing 22 or 23 miles an hour all the way back into town...

Saturday night before the race, we had a nice light pasta and chicken dinner and were in bed by 9:30. Everything was done and we weren't rushed or doing last minute things. We slept well, but were woken by pouring rain a few times during night. June 22 is the longest day of the year. That's good when you're waking up at 3:45am. It was almost light by 4, and the skies had cleared. Perfect weather. I couldn't manage to get my planned 1,000 calories down and gave up at around 600. I felt miserable for the next hour. Breakfast is the worst part of Ironman.

Deb and I went down to transition and had some confusion about where we were supposed to put our special needs bags, and we couldn't find a body-marker. Fortunately, the long lines at IMC taught us a lesson and we brought a magic marker and marked each other after seeing how other people were done. This was kind of fun and made for a good back up plan. We got our stuff situated then went to stand on the beach and wait for the start. No real hurry and we had plenty of time.

...my great progress on the bike wasn't to last. The wind that had caused the Rumble in the Lake was blowing directly north. And we're riding south. Doing 20 miles per hour into it was hard work. Before long I started to feel it a bit on the bike. At mile 40 I realized that I hadn't taken any electrolyte tablets - had totally forgotten about them. Not a disaster, I just got them back into my plan. But my stomach was getting unhappy again and I was again getting behind on calories.

I bumped my wattage goals down a bit and tried to get into a rhythm. My heart rate was still very low, much lower than my exertion would have predicted. I was starting to suffer. I just kept at it, and things continued this way for the rest of the bike. Low HR. Bad stomach. At about mile 70, my left aero bar pad and bracket broke off almost completely so I had no where to rest my elbow (when I told people this, it seems everyone saw it in the road "oh, that was yours!"). Through the hills on the 2nd lap I was really dragging ass and some people I'd dropped got back up to me. At about mile 80, my back started getting tight and sore. I kept trying to force feed myself my calories, it was ugly. As we headed back into town, I picked up the pace again. I figured the damage was done and that I should just get it over with...

If there's one thing that I'd really worked on, it was my running. I had run very close to a 4 hour marathon at my other races but really lost a lot of time in the last few miles when I'd run out of gas. I wanted to avoid that and have a good run without a 6-8 mile death march at the end. From talking to other people, it seemed the key was being very conservative early on and then building into a pace. Most people are used to going fast on the bike and then they run too fast. This catches up with you quickly. I did a couple of runs after my long rides where I would run as easy as I could. I was surprised to see that these runs would end up at somewhere near an 8:15 pace, which works jusssst fiiiiine, so that's what I was shooting for.

...T2 was a great set up at this race. My buddy Owen was volunteering as a bike catcher and was there to take my bike. He asked me how I was and I gave him a 5 word executive summary of my experience over the last 5 and a half hours. It's a direct line from the bike drop off, through the bike-to-run bags, to the tent, to the run start, so its a very efficient process. I had my fastest Ironman transition ever at 2:15, and this included walking from the bags to the tent (bike cleats plus basketball court, not so good for running). I think I got between 1100-1200 calories in on the bike, maybe less. I assumed I was going to get crushed on the run when this ticking time-bomb of calorie deficit caught up with me. Hey, what the heck. Let's go find out!

What's funny is that I hadn't really recon'd the run course at all. I knew it was pretty well flat, I'd run the main part of it, but was kind of foggy about how you got from transition to that main part of the course. Most of the course follows the lake (incidentally, it goes along the same route as the bike course) and it's on a nice asphalt trail that's flat (no road crown) and smooth. For two sections of the course -- about 4 miles total of a 13 mile lap -- I was basically exploring. This made it a little more interesting. Immediately out of transition, I see my buddy Scott Greene coming the other direction. He'd passed me on the bike (expected) and I was glad to see he was 10-or-so minutes up the road on me. We made eye contact and gave each other a nod on the way by.

The transition was so quick, I actually had transition legs, which was new for an IM. No problem. I hit my first mile in 7:46, then two miles at around 8:05, then settled in for 6 or 7 miles at 8:15, literally holding back as much as I could muster. I was frantic about my calorie situation, and was taking in as much as I possibly could. Water, coke, and gels. My HR was still oddly low. After about 10 miles I'd forgotten about my experience on the bike. I was running pretty comfortably. It was mostly a mental game more than a physical one - "okay, that wasn't so bad, let's run one more 8:15 mile". I needed to go to the bathroom but kept putting it off, trying to run one more good mile. At mile 11 I stopped (coincidentally the aid station we worked last year), used the bathroom, then stretched my quads and groin. This helped immensely, and I decided I'd do it again at mile 20. As the miles clicked off, I started to slow a bit to 8:30 miles. This seemed OK as my HR was stable and I was keeping good pace and passing a LOT of people, many of whom were in my age group, which mattered. I kept seeing friends on the course and off. Teresa Rider and Ben & Cindy Bigglestone were down on Lakeshore Avenue (not together but near each other) and were giving me an earful each time I went by. It was awesome.

Before I knew it, I was to mile 20 and I stopped and stretched again for 20 seconds or so. Deb passed me going the other way on her first laps and I thought maybe I could catch her (one of these days...). Mile 21 has a nasty uphill that I walked the steepest part of. It was the right thing. I was running low on gas, and on the downhill I immediately caught and passed the people that ran the whole thing. At mile 22 I wanted to stay with a guy in my age group and ran a harder mile, which really turned the screws on how I felt.

At mile 23 it's just a 5K to go - so close - and I could see the top of the Coeur d'Alene hotel by the finish off in the distance. I knew that all I had to do was run 9:30 miles or better to get in under 10:45. Easy squeezy, right? Not so much, it was getting ugly. At mile 25 I saw Ben, Cindy, and Teresa again. One of them yelled "just two miles to go!" Wha...? I thought about it for a second and knew they were wrong but ran down the road muttering "no...not true...one..mile...just ONE mile..." like Rain Man. It's here where I really started to hurt. It's amazing that after all that ground covered, 26.2 miles is just a little too far. Each little uptick in the road seemed like Mt. Everest.

IMCDA has an amazing finishing stretch, Sherman Ave, slightly downhill with thousands of people along the road and in the bars and restaurants. I trudged up the last little hill and turned onto Sherman. My coach, Scott was there and gave me a high five. At IMC, I kind of trudged to the finish line and I didn't want that to happen again so I sucked it up and ran as well as I could to the finish with my head and shoulders high. My biggest regret from the day is not slowing down just a touch to take it in a bit more. But I was worried about someone from my AG catching me. At the time, I was busy trying to figure out how far it was from the Ironman banner to the finish line. It's like 100ft, but that's what I was worried about. It's all a blur now.

The marathon made my day. I only really suffered for a few miles and I cut 15 minutes off my last IM marathon and finished the day 1:11/5:39/3:47 for a 10:44 total time, 10 minutes faster than IMC 07 on a much, much harder course. I was 330/2588 overall at IMC and was 168/2066 at this race. Likewise I improved to 21st in my AG, versus 63rd at IMC and 37th at IMAZ. Time aside, this was a much better race.

As mentioned in my prior post, this race took me a few days to chew on. At some level, my training had been going so well that I had an idea in my head that I'd be able to cruise the swim and the bike and then go let it rip on the run. Obviously, that's a stupid thing to think. We're all incredibly good at fooling ourselves, aren't we? Racing, almost by definition, hurts. And it should hurt.

Sunday in totality was really, really hard. My coach pointed out to me that "you don't need to feel good to go fast", which is a hard but important lesson to internalize.

Even just 5 days out from the race, I'm already itching to train again after I rest and recover. An easy swim in the pool this morning felt really, really good.

As always, I'm incredibly blessed to share this experience with my lovely and talented Ironpartner Deb who just tore it up out there on Sunday, knocking another 35 minutes off of her time. And the support that I get from my friends and family - Mom, Dad, Paul, Susan, Casey, Owen, Polita, Mark, Ann, Steven, Courtney, Joyia, Wayne, the whole CpC gang, Ben & Cindy, Teresa, and SJ, is truly amazing.

Monday morning we walked around Coeur d'Alene, looked at pictures, loaded up the car, and said goodbye to another Ironman. I headed back into work Tuesday morning, careful to avoid any stairs. And I had tater tots for lunch. Mmmmm, tater tots.

Post-Ironman Haze

2008-06-24T16:16:58-07:00:00

I'll write more later when I've got more time and energy. I figure most of you reading this saw the results from Sunday, I'm 10 minutes closer and that's nothing to sneeze at. But just a quick thought that came across when I was writing to another friend about the race...

This race seemed much harder than my first two. I think part of it is because the "Wow!" factor wears off and you're out there trying to compete for minutes and seconds against very capable competition. Because you're actually racing - against yourself and your limits and your fellow athletes - it's a bit more stressful. For some reason, the full enormity of the difficulty of an Ironman struck me in a way it hadn't in races prior. I crossed the finish line and said "I'm not sure I want to do that again."

But all relationships have their ups and downs, right? Ironman is much more than race day. It's just race day that holds the whole thing together.

I realized the best part of Ironman is the day after. Yesterday morning, a group of us had breakfast at a local Coeur d'Alene greasy spoon and told war stories as we limped back and forth to the car. Regardless of how each person's day turns out, there's a special bond that's formed between the folks that just went through the experience. It takes a few days for most people to get their head around their race and their perspective on it, and sharing it with friends is an important part of that process. Everyone fights their own private battles out there.

Then we went back to the house and cleaned up a bit - I had to go up and down the stairs on all fours - then took a slow walk to the expo hall to look at Kona qualifiers and race pictures. We had a nice snack in Coeur d'Alene and joined all the other stiff-legged Iron-geeks in their finisher hats and T-Shirts. Then we went to A & W on the way out of town and got a root beer float, a large fries, and some burgers. All of which I ate in about 5 minutes. That served as a good reminder of how my stomach felt all day on Sunday, but that's another story. The day after is this time warp when nothing else really matters - the exact opposite of the race day time warp where nothing else matters.

It all balances out in the end.

Ironman Coeur d'Alene Race Week

2008-06-19T16:24:29-07:00:00

What a difference a week makes. When the long-range forecasts started reaching this weekend, things looked bad. Cloudy and showers. I wasn't so concerned with the weather on race day. I train in crappy weather most of the time anyway, but I did want it to be nice for hanging out and relaxing during race week. Given this area hasn't had more than two consecutive days of nice weather since early May, I didn't have my hopes up. Fortunately, the forecasts were wrong. Today it's sunny and mid-70s. Shazam.

So here's how Ironman week usually goes.

You show up on Wednesday or Thursday.

Thursday morning they start having hosted swims. They set up some music and a tent where you can check your backpack or whatever. Usually you start seeing people you know and you go through the standard stuff. How've you been? How are you feeling? Gonna race well? It's a nice way to start the week.

We showed up at the swim this morning at 7:30. A little earlier than I wanted to, but Deb's coach was getting folks together, so she swam with that group. Some of my CpC buddies showed up later and we swam for about 30 minutes.

As I mentioned in my last post, people have been getting all freaked out about the water temperature. Guess what? It's a little chilly. Guess what? You'll live. Honestly, its not that much colder than what we've been swimming in back in Seattle. Hopefully people will stop yammering about it now.

Registration opens at 10 on Thursday, and is open on Friday as well. Today, since we swam so early, we got a bike ride in, then headed down to registration. Registration usually has a pretty long line but today was a snap - not sure why this race had less of a line than the two we did last year. Anyway, in registration, you get your race packet, sign a bunch of waivers, get weighed in, and get your athlete's bracelet. Along with your race packet are all your bags (swim to bike, bike to run, dry clothes, etc.), your bib numbers, and numbers for your bike and helmet.

After registration, you walk around the expo and see the various vendors tents. It's fun to peruse, but it's the same companies at most of the races.

Then you go into the swag tent that has all the outrageously expensive Ironman gear that you tell yourself you're not going to get any of, but you break down and get some anyway. At each race, I like to get a pair of pint glasses - something I'm guaranteed to get use out of. The swag tent is some kind of judgement-suspension zone where you're very tempted to do things you wouldn't do otherwise. I need to build some kind of a business based on emotional purchases.

After that gauntlet, things wind down quickly. I spent some time in the ART tent getting a knot worked out, one that I developed on the drive over yesterday.

My schedule for Friday before the race is free of workouts, and then you're just waiting for Saturday to check your bikes in. And the waiting isn't so bad, especially in this weather.

Come Sunday, if you're so inclined you'll be able to follow results on line at Ironman.com. I've got bib number 501, and Deb's rocking bib 1984.

Hmmm, nap time.

Take Three

2008-06-10T22:29:47-07:00:00

Confession. I consider quitting Ironman at least two or three times a week, sometimes more. Almost all of that consideration occurs between 5:45 and 6:00 in the morning. I've embraced the fact that I have very little capacity for positive self-talk in those first 10 minutes or so of the morning. We all have our personal prioritization around basic needs: sleeping, eating, resting, getting our groove on, etc. And if there's one thing for certain, it's that as I get older, sleep gets higher and higher on that list. Early in the morning, particularly with my habit of staying up later than I should, training always feels like a stupid thing to trade for sleep. I rarely have kind words for Ironman at 5:52 am, especially when it's dark and raining half the time.

Fortunately, I usually get over it pretty quickly. When I first started in triathlon, I was very racing focused, and the training was an ends-to-a-means. Today, racing still motivates me, but I've developed a great deal of attachment to training.

And races sneak up on me. Ironman Coeur d'Alene is in 12 days. My third Ironman in a little over a year. My training is quickly falling off into my taper. I've got a total of 30 minutes of training on my schedule for this weekend. 30 minutes! What's funny is I have this weird anxious feeling in my stomach when I think about it. But...but...what will I do with the rest of the weekend? I'm totally serious...it's like I can't think of anything else. This blog post is a cry for help.

This race has come around quickly for two reasons. One is that I've been so busy. Between training, a new role at work, and attending to the various basics listed above, the days just click right on by. But the second reason is that I've really been enjoying (most of) my training. It wasn't long ago I thought that maybe I was pretty close to my limits and all this work was just wasted time. What's seemed to happen over the last three months has totally changed my perspective there. Now I have no idea what the limit is, and a good feeling I'm not that close to it. I'm trying to enjoy that feeling before the next plateau shakes some reality into me. But it's incredibly motivating to have a string of workouts where you look at the numbers afterwards and go "nahhh...really?" It's those moments that keep me coming back for more.

But the reality is that next week we'll be headed to Coeur d'Alene. One thing that's often overlooked is that doing an Ironman is an extremely logistics-heavy exercise. There's so much stuff to bring from equipment to nutrition to extra clothes to tools. Fortunately this race (and IM Canada) are driving distance so it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. Packing for a race where you need to get just the right stuff packed and onto the airplane is extra stress. It's like a Space Shuttle launch.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting over there and seeing some people that I don't get to see very often. We're staying in a house with two other couples: one couple are IM veterans, and another couple are building up towards IMC as their first race. Fortunately none of them will get tired of non-stop tri-talk. It's going to be a lot of fun. Once again, we'll be able to walk to transition on race morning, and this one might be the closest. That's three-for-three! And, being a native of nearby Spokane, I'll have a full contingent of friends and family nearby as well.

The entire Ironman experience really is an amazing thing, and something I'd recommend to anyone. There's something special about having that bracelet that gets you into everything and identifies you as an athlete, and there is just nothing like those minutes when you leave transition and quietly file out onto the beach, hear the National Anthem, and scan the thousands of spectators around the swim area. All I usually hear is my breathing and my heart beating. A weird thing happens in those few moments before the cannon goes off - it's like a switch in your head flips and your normal day-to-day self gets put on the back burner. There's a long list of cheezy cliches here that fit: game face, go time, race machine, all business, you've heard them all. But that's pretty much how it goes. The start of the swim usually sucks. Oh, another time I usually consider quitting Ironman: the first 5-10 minutes of the swim. Maybe this time I can keep the "geez, this is bullshit!" thoughts to a minimum and stay focused. Just. Think. Swimming. The rest of the day is pretty groovy and fun until about mile 85 or 90 on the bike when you want off of that bike like you won't believe. Then the real fun starts. It's all high-fives and Fonzies until around mile 16 or so on the run. Know this: Ironman doesn't start until the 1/2 way mark of the run. Up until then it's just a long training day. See, who wouldn't love this stuff!

I've been working out exactly what my pacing and data (power, heart rate) targets are for the race. Given that my fitness has been in flux, I'm kind of guessing on some of the numbers, but I'm pretty confident that they'll work out better. One thing I've been pretty good at historically is eyeballing my splits and pace for upcoming races and being very close to those on race day. So I've got an idea of where I think I'll end up, but I'll keep that to myself for now. I'm looking forward to finding out.

Weather you like it, or not

2008-06-07T22:39:52-07:00:00

It was cloudy, rainy, cool, and generally shitty today again here in the Northwest. Seattle isn't known for it's great weather, but many of us put up with months and months on end of dreary drizzle for the incredible summers we, uh, sometimes have here. Except we didn't really get one last year, then had an especially cold and wet winter, snow in April, and mid-50s and raining since then. I counted 5 days over 70 so far this year, and 4 of those came in a chunk. Normally the good weather doesn't really break until July 5th, but this is getting really old. Deb said it best when we were in Del Mar for the marathon in January: "umm, why don't we live here?" Sigh.

One thing I wonder about is how much of it is perception. Maybe every year is generally crappy, but the big difference is that now I'm out in it barely dressed for 15-20 hours a week? Fortunately I'm surrounded by a control group of normal people who've noticed the same thing. And I guess the berry farmers are having troubles because the berries aren't growing like normal due to the cold temperatures. Ah ha! Proof!

Update: I'm not imagining it. Coldest spring since 1917.

There's a point to all of this. Ironman Coeur d'Alene is two weeks from tomorrow, and the scuttlebutt around the Ironcooler in these parts is good old Lake Coeur d'Alene and how it's faring due to the (1) above-average snow pack in the mountains, and (2) lack of sunshine to warm it up. So the water's going to be colder than normal, but there's a lot of folks around here in a full-on panic. Yes, the water is going to be cold, people. If nothing else, it's gotten everyone out into the lakes around here a bit earlier. My buddy Scott talked me into doing the end of our long swim yesterday in Lake Samammish sans wetsuit. It sounded crazy, not only to me but to the people standing on the beach watching us do it. But it wasn't so bad really. The hardest part was not having a wetsuit on after floating around in one after an hour. I felt like Sinky McBrick.

Honestly, my bigger concern for IMCDA is that the weather is going to turn around and get really warm without a chance for acclimation. Both times I've been at camp in Palm Springs, that first run off the bike in the sun is a real eye-opener. This year the schedule was for a 40 minute run off the bike. It was mid-90s. I don't know if any of us made it much longer than 30 minutes, I sure didn't. If that happened on race day, that would be bad news. It did in 2006.

So we'll see. The long range forecast shows it getting almost to 70 about a week out from the race, so I guess it could go either way. There's lots of things that are out of ones control on race day, and this is just one of those things. I'll do what I can to prepare.

I'm well into my taper now but I'm still only vaguely aware that race day is almost upon me. It's weird, I think I was in full-on-OCD mode two weeks out from my races last year. I'm sure that by next weekend I'll be spending more time thinking about logistics and stuff like that. Or maybe not.

CpC May Training Camp

2008-05-26T16:50:37-07:00:00

There's always those joke lists that start out with "you might be a redneck if..." or "you might be a yuppie if..."

In the spirit of not taking any of this too seriously, I'm quite confident that any sort "you might be over-committed to a hobby if..." would hit a little close to home.

You might be over committed to a hobby if...9 days of nothing but hard training in the desert is your idea of a vacation.

With Ironman Coeur d'Alene (someday I hope to spell that right on the first try!) just 5 weeks away, I headed down to Palm Springs for the Counterpart Coaching (CpC) May training camp. This is the same camp I did last July, 5 weeks before Ironman Canada 2007. My coach is affiliated with CpC, with his buddy Mitch Gold being the main force behind it.

You might be over-committed to a hobby if...it's your main source of broadening your social circle. Last year's camp was great - not just for the training but for the great friends I made there. As adults, we don't often get a chance to spend extended time with people who share common interests. Even in the work environment, time together is intermittent and haphazard. What's great about camp (really) is that you spend over a week around a set of people almost 24/7. It's a very bonding experience and makes the racing culture so much more interesting when you know people across the country that are working towards the same goals you are. I met two really great guys at last year's camp who were doing Ironman Wisconsin. Normally I wouldn't pay much attention to that race, but I tracked them online all day. When I saw them come across the finish line on the live video feed, I was the guy standing in my living room cheering at the computer screen.

An on race day, it's even better to see people out on the course. Shooting words of encouragement to someone else has a great way of making you forget your own state, if only for a moment. This camp was focused on IMCDA so all of these folks will be out there racing; it'll be a lot of fun. We had one camper headed to Ironman Lake Placid too...

Anyway, I got down to camp on Friday, May 9th. Since I was there a bit early, and was on the plane with another local camper, we got a "bonus" swim on Friday. We swam a little hard but both had cramping problems after about 3400y. It was odd that it happened to both of us at a similar time in the swim. Something to do with the travel...

The purpose of camp is to push yourself and train in a way you can't back home. Camp provides everything you need - they shuttle you around, they feed you, they set up the workouts. You just eat, sleep, and suffer. Good times. No work, no errands, no distractions.

Over the course of the week, I logged...

Total: 36:45 training time

Swim: 5h / 16000y

Bike: 25h / 469 mi

Run: 6:45h / 48.3 mi

And here's the schedule for camp:

Sat: 4 hour ride, 30 minute run

Sun: 2:30 run in Joshua Tree National Park (photo above), 2 hr easy bike later in the day

Mon: 3000y swim, 105 miles on the bike on a hot, windy day

Tues: 4300y swim, 1 hour run

Weds: 3.5 hour ride in Joshua, 50 minute run

Thurs: Swim 5000y, Ride 35 miles, run 40 minutes

Friday: Big ride around Big Bear - 107 miles, 7 hours, 12K vertical feet of climbing

Saturday: 41 mile ride up Idyllwild, a large mountain near Palm Springs, then a 90 minute run

You get the idea. The reward of all of this is the incredible food that's served each night. Meals are served at Mitch's house and are home cooked since "all you can eat" is a given. After the workouts, we'd clean up at the hotel, then get picked up for dinner, have a beer or glass of wine, then eat ourselves silly. Usually we tried to get into bed by 10 or 10:30. Rinse and repeat the next day.

What's the point of all of this, you ask? Good question. Any fitness is based on the concept of over-reaching (aka overload). You push your body a little past where it's used to going, and it causes an adaptation in response to that over-reach. That's how you get fitter. There's lots of ways to do this: through volume (longer workouts or more of them), or through intensity (working out harder). These concepts aren't completely interchangeable: you can't necessarily get the same adaptations via intensity that you get from volume. Ironman is heavily geared towards volume. But there are only so many hours in the day, so we try to find ways to over-reach within the time we have.

So camp is mostly a mondo-example of this. You pound a bunch of volume, and some intensity, into your body when you have little stress or distractions, and time to rest, recover, and refuel properly. Or that's what they tell you. I wasn't sure if this was terribly effective for me last year. It wasn't obvious to me that camp made me a lot fitter. This year seemed different.

A few anecdotal observations...

Many of the workouts - particularly the swims - didn't crush me like they did last year. I was dreading the swims going into camp because they were so painful last year. This year was completely different. The swims were hard, but doable, and I didn't feel wrecked afterwards, even though I'm swimming quite a bit faster.

I had kind of a low point in the middle of the week (Tues/Weds) where the fatigue was getting to me, and the constant wind on our bike rides was dragging me down. I readjusted my mind-set on Thursday and that helped a lot. I saw much better results on the bike and felt like I actually got fitter through the week.

I ran well at camp. The guy I roomed with - a fast guy named Scott Greene - and I had very compatible running paces. Most of the runs are in the hottest part of the day after a bike ride. At the start of each run we'd say "okay, nice and easy this time" but we'd end up at more of a race cadence. We logged some good miles and I really bumped my confidence in the process. It will be fun to see him go well in June.

The ability for your mind to dictate your physical perceptions shouldn't be underestimated. When I started getting tired later in the week, it was easy to say "wow, my legs are smoked, I can't ride hard today" and I would really feel that way. But when I decided to actually give it a go, I discovered I wasn't in as bad of shape as I thought I was. In fact, on Friday we did our "epic ride" with a climb called Waterman Canyon out of San Bernardino up to Rim of the World. This is a monster climb - about 7000 vertical feet over less than 20 miles. I made a decision to give it a good go and had one of the better climbing days I've ever had. It's in there when you need it.

Finally, it was fun to look at my training logs from the camp last year to compare against this year. I don't want to jinx myself, but I'll just say the difference was much bigger than I expected it to be. Hopefully that carries over to race day.

After camp, I had a few days were I was super-tired. I got some good sleep and now I'm back at it, with just 4 weeks until IMCDA.

Lots of camp details at Sean Hackney's blog.

Long Term Gains

2008-05-07T23:00:00-07:00:00

There's a quote that I just love. I think I've used it here before, it's from Gordo's blog and worth calling out again:

...we all overestimate what we can achieve in the short-term and underestimate what we can achieve in the long-term.

As I think back on many aspects of my life - education, work, relationships, athletics - this resonates deeply. And it's a lesson that's easy to forget in day-to-day activities with the natural desire for things to happen quickly.

I suspect all of us can think back of so many examples of this. Given effective habits and a good dose of discipline, things really do happen. Sometimes we hardly notice the progression. I often step back and take notice of how much many things have changed for me, even over just a few years, and it really is an amazing thing.

If I think back to my early racing days - especially after a hard effort that resulted in an "ok" result - it was so tempting to say "this is as fast as I can get". Ironman training has exposed me to time frames that I never even considered viable in the past. It was easy for me to think "I've been training my ass off for 4 months and I'm not improving...maybe this just isn't working." Little did I know that 4 months is nothing in terms of physiological adaptations.

There is, of course, a ceiling for all of us, but I'm struck by how hard it is to know what or where our ceilings really are. And how critical it is to have people around to remind us of this. Even very successful people can do a lot of self-limiting thinking.

In 2007, I trained and raced very hard over a period of almost 11 months. I had some really good results, but it took so much effort to get there, it seemed impossible to go faster. Intellectually I knew that I was already in a better place than many people who'd been working at it for a few years. And I had many, many examples of people who had improved dramatically beyond where I was after a slower start. But some part of me still didn't believe it. How could I do that much better given the effort I'd put in?

Over the winter, I kept consistent on my cycling and swimming (kind of) but really focused on my running. I really did improve and felt good about the marathon that I ran off that training. On running, I've heard over and over "it takes a long time to get good". But the negative selft-talk is powerful: seeing some people around me who quickly improved far beyond where I was at challenged me to believe that I could get there. It seemed so easy for them.

As the spring rolled around, I've been running a bit less and spending more time on the bike and in the pool. Going back to February, I was getting frustrated about both. I felt like my bike fitness had slipped significantly. And I really felt like I wasn't improving in the pool. I was stuck.

But in late March or early-April something happened - almost suddenly. And across all three disciplines. I started having rides with power numbers I hadn't seen before - seeing average power on 3 hour rides over 200 watts. While I had to push all-out to swim a 300 in better than 4:30 in February, I was comfortably turning out 300s in 4:25, often as part of longer sets, and was repeating 400s right at 6:00. And my "easy cruise" running has pace dropped from the 8:30s into the 8:05-8:10 range. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced and I spent most of April thinking it was a fluke of some sort. All of these things seemed out of my reach just a few months ago, and now they're becoming normal. In most cases I don't feel like I'm going any faster, or harder, but I am. And to top it all off, I recover from the efforts much more quickly.

So far, it's not a fluke. I'll often have runs that feel slow and sluggish, but come home and see that my pace was much faster than I thought. It's hard to place faith in this happening because you never know how, if, or when it will get you where you want to be.

I guess the point is that you can get a really long way but just chipping away. That house, that job, that promotion, that weight or fitness goal. Just keep chipping away; you may get farther than you ever thought.