So as advertised, not much training going on last week. Work early in the week and then Anders, Alex, Judy and I went out to Park City for four days of snowboarding. Unfortunately the snow was very poor and our much anticipated Heliboarding trip was cancelled. We did get out and board each of the four days but my legs were real beat up from having to deal with alternating icy and slushy/grabby conditions. I only ran once while I was there as I just decided to embrase my down week.
Stats for the week:
Swim: 2500 yards
Bike: 93 miles
Run: 10 miles
Snowboarding: 13 hours
SBR time: 7:48
I'm now up to NYC for 3 days of meetings so still difficult to get locked back in. I did get up early, beofre my train, and swam and rode my trainer so that was nice (and overdue). with any luck, I'll be able to run tonight along the East River. The weather is nice and I hope to be able to hit several big days come Thursday....
The lack of training is a bit of a set-back and I'm a bit heavier than I'd like to be but all-in-all this is nothing to worry about given the March timeframe. The weekend after next, I race both a triathlon and I have the cherry blossom 10-mile run so that will be a good test and a solid training experience. I don't have high expectations but am eager to jolt my system a bit and give myself a clearer picture of where I stand. One thing for sure, I'm motivated to train hard now, am relatively injury free and just need to be able to find clearer calendar space to get after it....I wouldn't mind hammering out a 25 hour week just to do it--maybe the 1st week of april.....we'll see.
Longer term, it does look pretty certain that in mid-June I will participate as part of an 8-person relay team in the Race Across American (RAAM), a coast-to-coast bicycle race. I'm part of a team of CEO-types who are racing in support of the CAF (challenged athletes foundation). We have a CAF athlete--an Iraq Vet who lost part of one leg--participating on our team. while not anything like the challenge of a solo RAAM effort, I should get 400 or so miles of riding over the 5-6 days it'll take our team to ride across the country. More on this later.
Also, anders and I are trying to lock down on a post Christmas alpine expedition--we are looking at either Aconcaugua (largest mountain in South America) or Vinson (largest mountain in Antartica). The complicating factor is Ander's HBS schedule. We hope to get this locked in at some point this month. If I were to do one of these it would give me a pretty bang-up end of the year to look-forward to:
9/29: SkipJack Long Course (1.2/66/10)
10/13: Kona
11/18: Ironman Arizona
12/26-1/?: Mountain Expedition
Many miles necessary before those 4 and I hope to put some of those in over the next few weeks.....
Monday, March 19, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
slideways?
OK--March is fun, challenging and interesting. what it is not is condusive to tri training.....
Turns out I will spend 4 or maybe 5 full days in DE this month--today was my 2nd....
Lots of work but lots of fun as well...was down in Naples with my Mom and Jen much of lsaweek and am leaving for snowboarding with Alex, Anders and Jude tomorrow morn...
Plus a TON of work
so not so much training wise....
last week:
swim: 7000 yards
bike: 151 miles
run 35.5 miles
time: 16:36
this past week wasn't so bad and I had some quality sessions (3X10 @ 256/257/265 on the CT) and some nice runs in Naples and some open water swimming....
still, I wanted to lose 5 pounds over the last 3 weeks and I've gained about that so I am 10 pounds fat....
However, my workouts are very solid and I can't wait to get back into it....hopefully my March slide will just be a slideways...
Turns out I will spend 4 or maybe 5 full days in DE this month--today was my 2nd....
Lots of work but lots of fun as well...was down in Naples with my Mom and Jen much of lsaweek and am leaving for snowboarding with Alex, Anders and Jude tomorrow morn...
Plus a TON of work
so not so much training wise....
last week:
swim: 7000 yards
bike: 151 miles
run 35.5 miles
time: 16:36
this past week wasn't so bad and I had some quality sessions (3X10 @ 256/257/265 on the CT) and some nice runs in Naples and some open water swimming....
still, I wanted to lose 5 pounds over the last 3 weeks and I've gained about that so I am 10 pounds fat....
However, my workouts are very solid and I can't wait to get back into it....hopefully my March slide will just be a slideways...
Sunday, March 4, 2012
easy street
So I did not run the race this morning. Went to a dear friend's 50th up in West Chester last night and ended up dancing away until midnight. They had some nice IPA and I felt a little selfish as I thought about not being there party wise for Irv's 50th and slinkin down at 4 am for a half marathon which really (I mean--really) doesn't matter. so I danced and had some IPA and got home at 1am and slept in. this is not say that doing the half would have no value--actually, it would have been great and really helpful for gauging my fitness but I felt focusing on Irv was the better course....I'm either getting old or more mature (although there is a disticnt chance I'm getting older and less mature...)
Truth be, my bod feels a little overworked....maybe I'm getting older and less able to deal with training or maybe the 3 week illness that has totally sidelined my wife has partially felled me....in any event, I wanted this week to be an easier week and so it was....
Interesting enough to me I still feel guilty, both backing off and not racing. I'm experienced enough to know this is really lame thinking--I'm 54 years old and need easy weeks and need to focus on a few select races but it's hard to back off....but still I did...
I'm glad but I'm still a little surprised by my down energy systems....I ran 48:30 for 6 today and didn't want any more....
I've been here before--it's all about Kona on Oct 13th and then killing it at Zona 5 weks later so I can get back to Kona....everything else is mindless blog flotsam and jetsam....
Week totals:
Swim: 6500 yards
bike: 178 miles
Run: 23 miles
Time: 17 hours
Looking ahead, March will be a decidely mixed training month which is probablty what is best....if I get the feeling in late March and come out wanting to kill it--that is most certianly for the good!
more later!
Truth be, my bod feels a little overworked....maybe I'm getting older and less able to deal with training or maybe the 3 week illness that has totally sidelined my wife has partially felled me....in any event, I wanted this week to be an easier week and so it was....
Interesting enough to me I still feel guilty, both backing off and not racing. I'm experienced enough to know this is really lame thinking--I'm 54 years old and need easy weeks and need to focus on a few select races but it's hard to back off....but still I did...
I'm glad but I'm still a little surprised by my down energy systems....I ran 48:30 for 6 today and didn't want any more....
I've been here before--it's all about Kona on Oct 13th and then killing it at Zona 5 weks later so I can get back to Kona....everything else is mindless blog flotsam and jetsam....
Week totals:
Swim: 6500 yards
bike: 178 miles
Run: 23 miles
Time: 17 hours
Looking ahead, March will be a decidely mixed training month which is probablty what is best....if I get the feeling in late March and come out wanting to kill it--that is most certianly for the good!
more later!
Saturday, March 3, 2012
race tomorrow
Running in the B&A Half-Marathon tomorrow down in Severna, MD. Off to a friend's 50th BD tonight--home late I'm sure and then up at 4 am to make sure I'm down there for the 7:30 am start. I'd like to run well but it doesn't matter if I don't. It's just an early season high quality work-out at the end of the day. I'd think I'll be somewhere between 1:39 and 1:44....
We'll see!
We'll see!
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Feb totals/easy week
Here the totals for Feb:
Swim: 32050 yards
bike: 723 miles
Run: 151.5 miles
Time: 78:37
Good solid month. Last year my Feb SBR totals were: 33750 yards, 567 miles bike, 111.7 miles run. so up quite a bit vs. last year yet I still feel like I'm taking it "easy"--all good!
That said, body is weary and am definitely just chilling out this week....hope to race sunday and then get back on it....
Swim: 32050 yards
bike: 723 miles
Run: 151.5 miles
Time: 78:37
Good solid month. Last year my Feb SBR totals were: 33750 yards, 567 miles bike, 111.7 miles run. so up quite a bit vs. last year yet I still feel like I'm taking it "easy"--all good!
That said, body is weary and am definitely just chilling out this week....hope to race sunday and then get back on it....
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Last Week
A little late in getting the stats from last week up. here they are:
Swim: 8250 yards
Bike: 170 miles
Run: 40.7 miles
Time: 19:37
My last five run weeks have been: 45.6, 29.5, 41.0, 40.0, 40.7. This is a lot of running for yours truly. I took a day off last week and despite that really began to feel a bit of weariness and joint achyness. I'm still mentally motivated to run but my 54 year old body is complaining a bit. It's not bad aches but there is a good chance if I keep at it I could get myself into a bit of trouble...therefore, I'm going to back off a bit this week. I took today off from running (although I did ride 64.8 miles...lol!). I'm going to go easy, run-wise, the next few days as well. I need the rest and I'm racing my first race of the year this Sunday when I do a Half-Marathon down in MD.....
I'll return to the whole question of how to manage my run training in a subsequent post...
Swim: 8250 yards
Bike: 170 miles
Run: 40.7 miles
Time: 19:37
My last five run weeks have been: 45.6, 29.5, 41.0, 40.0, 40.7. This is a lot of running for yours truly. I took a day off last week and despite that really began to feel a bit of weariness and joint achyness. I'm still mentally motivated to run but my 54 year old body is complaining a bit. It's not bad aches but there is a good chance if I keep at it I could get myself into a bit of trouble...therefore, I'm going to back off a bit this week. I took today off from running (although I did ride 64.8 miles...lol!). I'm going to go easy, run-wise, the next few days as well. I need the rest and I'm racing my first race of the year this Sunday when I do a Half-Marathon down in MD.....
I'll return to the whole question of how to manage my run training in a subsequent post...
Blue-Collar Triathlete: The Local Race Dataset
As I mentioned in a couple of prior posts, I've been working on my triathlon race database and analyzing various things to see what I can learn and then hopefully apply to 2012 and beyond. I finally figured out how to get all of my Tri data off of my old PC/Lotus 123 environment and onto my Mac/Excel modern day worksheet management system. It gives me the luxury of doing analysis during my frequent train trips to and fro NYC and Excel allows me to do a bunch of analyses that were much too cumbersome before. Nice to join the modern era!
One of the more useful data sets/analyses I've been working on is a dataset of all of my "local" triathlon races. When I just include local races, I'm basically excluding the 24 races that I've done with the WTC (IM or IM70.3), ITU World Championships, and the USAT National Championships. The value of excluding these races is that they are so large and the fields so competitive that it really distorts comparisons from one year to the next. For example in 2010 I raced at Kona and did quite "poorly" compared to that august group. In 2011, I didn't race at Kona so if you compare 2010 to 2011 (average-wise) it looks like I improved quite a bit--in fact, I just raced against a less competitive field (on average) in 2011 than in 2010.
So by excluding the big, competitive races I'm "left" with 90 "local" races. Here the competition, while of course different from race-to-race and from year-to-year is much more consistent. For example, 59 of these 90 races are local New Jersey races--Lake Lenape, Stone Harbor, Avalon, Hammonton, Marlton, Tuckahoe, etc. I believe that by focusing on these races only, I can get a reasonable comparison of how I'm doing against the local competition from year-to-year, and by each of the individual disciplines.
The other thing about this dataset is that it really captures the bulk of my everyday triathlon racing experience. Yes, I do get to go and race big races (Kona and Zona this year), but the vast majority of my triathlon experience is much more blue collar--racing the same crowd week in and week out. I also like this dataset as a way to measure how my competitiveness changes over time in the real world--of course I have a lot of training info which tells me how fit I am (what my FTP is or what my 100 yd repeat time is, etc.) but what I really ultimately care about--at least from a racing perspective--is how competitive I am and how that's changing as I become ancient.
So here is a summary of the local race dataset--my 90 local races over the last 11 years. You'll see two groups of summary data--my comparison on an overall race level and my comparison on an Age Group level. The numbers on the left give the total number of people (overall and Age Group) I competed against each year as well as the number of those competitors I BEAT in each year broken out by Swim/Bike/Run and for the race as a whole (Total). The numbers on the right then translate those summary numbers into the % of people I beat each year by SBR and for the race overall. You can click on the chart to see it more clearly or if you want to download it (I know no one ever would!):
So what does this data say--a lot in my view! Here are some of the thoughts I have:
Swim
If you look at the % of people I beat in the swim leg, overall, you see that I enjoyed a modest amount of improvement up through 2007. Swimming is the most technique oriented of the three disciplines and I had the least experience in it prior to starting triathlon so this is not surprising. Even though I was getting older, my technique was getting better and I was getting relatively faster. In 2008 I worked a bit more rigorously on technique and had a nice bump in performance. 2009 was my "laid-back/no IM year" but in 2010 I made a huge investment of time focused on practicing technique. Even though I backed off my swim training volume (as compared to 2007), I was much faster and more competitive. Indeed, despite realtively modest training volumes, I'm now in the top 10% of the field both from an overall perspective and from my AG. with respect to the latter, I'm now frequently the first out of the water.
This is a huge competitive change for me, especially given how my run has fallen off. Even though the swim is a very small part of the overall triathlon picture, this has helped me in a number of races. For example, in races where the bike and run courses are loop courses (no out and back), getting out of the water ahead of my AG competition and then doing my thing on the bike means that stronger runners were never able to see me and had no idea how far up the road I was. A classic example of this was my victory at the Pine Barrens Sprint in 2010 when I put 1:55 (over a half-mile swim) on Adam Singer and got out ot T1 before he hit dry land. I put some time on him during the bike and despite him running a minute per mile faster than me he never saw me during the race and I won comfortably. who knows, if he sees me, he might run me down. Even in loop courses, my swim has improved enough that I can now win AG races on the strength of my swim alone. For example, last year at Annapolis I bested a 38 person AG by posting the 2nd fastest swim and beating my main competitor by 2:33 in the swim. Even though he outbiked and outran me, I still was able to win by 36 seconds.
There are other examples, but I simply would have been far less competitive had I not made the big improvement in my swim in 2010--I for sure would not have won 9 races those two years. Indeed, the swim was such a positive driver of my competitiveness in 2010 and 2011 that I was actually able to improve in my AG (and overall) despite turning 53 and then 54. I'm excited about taking this swimming improvement up into my new 55-59 YO AG.
MY improvement in swimming effectiveness in 2010 and 2011 is probably the single most significant thing I've accomplished from a training perspective as a triathlete. I'm proud of it!
Bike
Unlike the swim, for whatever reason I've been blessed with a natural affinity for cycling. I do work hard at it but I was pretty much, from the start, extremely competitive on the bike. To illustrate consider the number of AG competitors I faced on the bike versus how many I beat from 2003 (my 2nd full year) until 2009:
2003--I beat 125 competitors/1 beat me
2004--I beat 204 competitors/3 beat me
2005--I beat 250 competitors/ 2 beat me
2006--I beat 215 competitors/4 beat me
2007--I beat all 105 competitors
2008--I beat 141 competitors/1 beat me
2009--I beat 126 competitors/2 beat me
Now in 2010 and 2011 4 and 8 people beat me respectively (but during the same time I beat 327 competitors) and some of this is due to my aging up in my AG. Also some of it, has been due to a conscious decision on my part to try to hold back just a bit--in the early days I was more interested in my bike split than the race as a whole--because it was the one thing I was good at back then.
Still at the end of the day, I've raced 27,703 people in local races and out rode 26,644 of them. Only 1059 people have gone faster, which is just 3.8% of the people I've raced locally. The bike is the heart and sole of my triathlon success--I just need to be careful to keep it that way!
Run
Now the run is a different story! when I first started triathlon, I thought given my run background that my running would be my natural strength. I was wrong--very wrong. IN the early days and up through 2007, my run was better than my swim--although both were not that great. IN 2009 my underinvestment in running began to hurt me and my running over the last couple of years has been my major competitive liability. There is a good chance that this is because I'm old, have a crappy left knee, big and for whatever other reason, going to become an increasingly ponderous runner.
This is probably the right explanation. But I'm holding out hope that maybe my fall off in 2009 was due to my conscious decision to cut back for a year and my relatively poor performance in 2010/2011 was due to my injury problems each year--2010 was my bike accident that tore my hamstring in April and last year was my knee flare-up that shut me down for a good 4-6 weeks in April and May. I wonder if I can keep running hard AND stay uninjured that maybe I can drive my relative run performance back up into the 80%+ range. If I can then who knows, I might win a few more races....I hoping but prepared for less than positive news on this front....I'll probably know by June, if I stay healthy and uninjured until then....
Overall
My bike remains the bedrock of my triathlon competitiveness. I turned back the clock a bit with the improvement in my swim--2011 was actually one of my most competitively effective years--on the local level. MY run is a problem and it could become even more so, but I have a hope that maybe, if I can stay the course and not get injured, that 2012 could really be a breakthrough year for me--on the local, blue-collar triathlon circuit anyways.....this is the most interesting question facing me during the early part of the 2012 racing season....
I can't wait to see what I learn from the races ahead of me!
One of the more useful data sets/analyses I've been working on is a dataset of all of my "local" triathlon races. When I just include local races, I'm basically excluding the 24 races that I've done with the WTC (IM or IM70.3), ITU World Championships, and the USAT National Championships. The value of excluding these races is that they are so large and the fields so competitive that it really distorts comparisons from one year to the next. For example in 2010 I raced at Kona and did quite "poorly" compared to that august group. In 2011, I didn't race at Kona so if you compare 2010 to 2011 (average-wise) it looks like I improved quite a bit--in fact, I just raced against a less competitive field (on average) in 2011 than in 2010.
So by excluding the big, competitive races I'm "left" with 90 "local" races. Here the competition, while of course different from race-to-race and from year-to-year is much more consistent. For example, 59 of these 90 races are local New Jersey races--Lake Lenape, Stone Harbor, Avalon, Hammonton, Marlton, Tuckahoe, etc. I believe that by focusing on these races only, I can get a reasonable comparison of how I'm doing against the local competition from year-to-year, and by each of the individual disciplines.
The other thing about this dataset is that it really captures the bulk of my everyday triathlon racing experience. Yes, I do get to go and race big races (Kona and Zona this year), but the vast majority of my triathlon experience is much more blue collar--racing the same crowd week in and week out. I also like this dataset as a way to measure how my competitiveness changes over time in the real world--of course I have a lot of training info which tells me how fit I am (what my FTP is or what my 100 yd repeat time is, etc.) but what I really ultimately care about--at least from a racing perspective--is how competitive I am and how that's changing as I become ancient.
So here is a summary of the local race dataset--my 90 local races over the last 11 years. You'll see two groups of summary data--my comparison on an overall race level and my comparison on an Age Group level. The numbers on the left give the total number of people (overall and Age Group) I competed against each year as well as the number of those competitors I BEAT in each year broken out by Swim/Bike/Run and for the race as a whole (Total). The numbers on the right then translate those summary numbers into the % of people I beat each year by SBR and for the race overall. You can click on the chart to see it more clearly or if you want to download it (I know no one ever would!):
So what does this data say--a lot in my view! Here are some of the thoughts I have:
Swim
If you look at the % of people I beat in the swim leg, overall, you see that I enjoyed a modest amount of improvement up through 2007. Swimming is the most technique oriented of the three disciplines and I had the least experience in it prior to starting triathlon so this is not surprising. Even though I was getting older, my technique was getting better and I was getting relatively faster. In 2008 I worked a bit more rigorously on technique and had a nice bump in performance. 2009 was my "laid-back/no IM year" but in 2010 I made a huge investment of time focused on practicing technique. Even though I backed off my swim training volume (as compared to 2007), I was much faster and more competitive. Indeed, despite realtively modest training volumes, I'm now in the top 10% of the field both from an overall perspective and from my AG. with respect to the latter, I'm now frequently the first out of the water.
This is a huge competitive change for me, especially given how my run has fallen off. Even though the swim is a very small part of the overall triathlon picture, this has helped me in a number of races. For example, in races where the bike and run courses are loop courses (no out and back), getting out of the water ahead of my AG competition and then doing my thing on the bike means that stronger runners were never able to see me and had no idea how far up the road I was. A classic example of this was my victory at the Pine Barrens Sprint in 2010 when I put 1:55 (over a half-mile swim) on Adam Singer and got out ot T1 before he hit dry land. I put some time on him during the bike and despite him running a minute per mile faster than me he never saw me during the race and I won comfortably. who knows, if he sees me, he might run me down. Even in loop courses, my swim has improved enough that I can now win AG races on the strength of my swim alone. For example, last year at Annapolis I bested a 38 person AG by posting the 2nd fastest swim and beating my main competitor by 2:33 in the swim. Even though he outbiked and outran me, I still was able to win by 36 seconds.
There are other examples, but I simply would have been far less competitive had I not made the big improvement in my swim in 2010--I for sure would not have won 9 races those two years. Indeed, the swim was such a positive driver of my competitiveness in 2010 and 2011 that I was actually able to improve in my AG (and overall) despite turning 53 and then 54. I'm excited about taking this swimming improvement up into my new 55-59 YO AG.
MY improvement in swimming effectiveness in 2010 and 2011 is probably the single most significant thing I've accomplished from a training perspective as a triathlete. I'm proud of it!
Bike
Unlike the swim, for whatever reason I've been blessed with a natural affinity for cycling. I do work hard at it but I was pretty much, from the start, extremely competitive on the bike. To illustrate consider the number of AG competitors I faced on the bike versus how many I beat from 2003 (my 2nd full year) until 2009:
2003--I beat 125 competitors/1 beat me
2004--I beat 204 competitors/3 beat me
2005--I beat 250 competitors/ 2 beat me
2006--I beat 215 competitors/4 beat me
2007--I beat all 105 competitors
2008--I beat 141 competitors/1 beat me
2009--I beat 126 competitors/2 beat me
Now in 2010 and 2011 4 and 8 people beat me respectively (but during the same time I beat 327 competitors) and some of this is due to my aging up in my AG. Also some of it, has been due to a conscious decision on my part to try to hold back just a bit--in the early days I was more interested in my bike split than the race as a whole--because it was the one thing I was good at back then.
Still at the end of the day, I've raced 27,703 people in local races and out rode 26,644 of them. Only 1059 people have gone faster, which is just 3.8% of the people I've raced locally. The bike is the heart and sole of my triathlon success--I just need to be careful to keep it that way!
Run
Now the run is a different story! when I first started triathlon, I thought given my run background that my running would be my natural strength. I was wrong--very wrong. IN the early days and up through 2007, my run was better than my swim--although both were not that great. IN 2009 my underinvestment in running began to hurt me and my running over the last couple of years has been my major competitive liability. There is a good chance that this is because I'm old, have a crappy left knee, big and for whatever other reason, going to become an increasingly ponderous runner.
This is probably the right explanation. But I'm holding out hope that maybe my fall off in 2009 was due to my conscious decision to cut back for a year and my relatively poor performance in 2010/2011 was due to my injury problems each year--2010 was my bike accident that tore my hamstring in April and last year was my knee flare-up that shut me down for a good 4-6 weeks in April and May. I wonder if I can keep running hard AND stay uninjured that maybe I can drive my relative run performance back up into the 80%+ range. If I can then who knows, I might win a few more races....I hoping but prepared for less than positive news on this front....I'll probably know by June, if I stay healthy and uninjured until then....
Overall
My bike remains the bedrock of my triathlon competitiveness. I turned back the clock a bit with the improvement in my swim--2011 was actually one of my most competitively effective years--on the local level. MY run is a problem and it could become even more so, but I have a hope that maybe, if I can stay the course and not get injured, that 2012 could really be a breakthrough year for me--on the local, blue-collar triathlon circuit anyways.....this is the most interesting question facing me during the early part of the 2012 racing season....
I can't wait to see what I learn from the races ahead of me!
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