Coronation Sprint Tri RR

My schedule is insanely busy over the next 7 days so if I don't write this now, it may never get done.

Preamble:
I first tested my knee the week before the race.  I ran for 15min off the bike at 4min/km pace to see if the knee would hold up.  It passed the test, so later that week I wanted to be sure Groat road hill wouldn't set my knee off, so I did 90 sec hill repeats descending from 4:30 - sub 4min/km pace.  I felt a tickle or two, but for the most part it was holding up.

I got my long run in on Friday morning and Saturday I did an hour on the bike in full race gear to make sure everything was in working order.  I'm racing in almost all new gear this year.  New aero helmet, bike, I still have my 404 Zipps, but I'm sporting a wheel cover in the back, got my first 1-piece tri suit and new race flats for the run.  I always figured an aero helmet would feel weird, so I was surprised that it really didn't feel that much different then my normal helmet.  Good thing I did test my race wheels on the new bike, the shifting is horrible.  The index shifting needs adjustment and I couldn't get into the upper third of my rear cassette, which maybe slightly important since the race is basically 4 hill repeats.  I fiddled with it a bit, and I got 9 out of 10 gears to work, but the index shifting is still messed, usually nothing happens when I click down a gear, then the next time I click it, it would jump two gears.  Note to self get that fixed before next race.

This was my first time racing Coronation.  I was SO happy to find out that I didn't have to be there until 9:30!  I love the St. Albert Sprint, but I have to get up so early to check in and setup then have to wait 4 hours for my swim start.  The whole family came out thanks to the reasonable start time, and we managed to leave on time for the 45min drive to the pool.  Once I got there, I heard our swim could start early, so it was get setup, get changed, and onto the pool deck, so there was no time for nerves!

Swim:

One thing I dislike about pool swims is that we usually have to just jump in and go straight to race pace, no warm up.  Our swim went good, no traffic jams or lazy bastards just wanting to draft the whole time.  One poor guy must have messed up his swim time because he was swimming at a 2:00min/100 pace where the rest of us were at a 1:32-1:35 pace.  I ended up getting stuck behind him breaststroking for a bit and once when another swimmer was passing him, we crashed arms together.  The swim went well until the last 200m, I started to fade as my shoulders were starting to burn.  I always convince myself NOT to dig deep in the swim, as I should save it for the bike and run.  T1 was good, it was the first time I used elastics to hold my shoes in place on the bike and I did the flying leap onto the bike.  It all worked out OK.

Bike:

The bike felt great.  Better then great actually.  I was cruising up and down the hill and everyone I passed looked like they were standing still.  I figured out the which gears to use on the uphill after the first repeat then each lap felt faster then the last.  Minus the gear skipping issue, everything was awesome.  When I came back into T2, somehow my shoes got covered and I couldn't find them.  I was wandering around the bike racks looking my stuff until I finally clued in that our race number was on the rack.  My shoes were covered by someone's towel, so I lost a bit of time but I was ready to see what my legs had left (once I put my socks on).

Run:

First time I ran without my Garmin since in a race since 2003.  So my legs felt OK but I had no idea if I was running 4:15min/km or 3:45min/km.  I had planned to play it safe on the run, and keep it below the red line.  I just wanted to get through the run without hurting my knee and not needing a week to recover from the effort.  I also have to run corporate challenge on Wednesday and I need to get a couple more runs in before Wasa Lake Tri.  Running down the hill was OK, again I didn't push super hard, I want to make sure I wasn't going to have to walk back up the hill.  Running back up the hill wasn't that bad but again, with no Garmin I was second guessing how fast I was running.  I also found out the hard way where I need to apply body glide on the 1 piece tri suit, I wasn't willing to go for a test run in the uni-tard before the race. 

Post Race:
I knew I did well after the race, I was guessing top 5.  I knew anything under 1:30 would be a good time.  I'm not sure if they did awards afterwards, but my cheer squad was hungry and growing restless so we packed up and headed home.  Monday morning I felt a bit stiff, but nothing bad.  I call this feeling in my legs 'happily smashed'.  Will try an EZ run tomorrow morning.

You know what, this is THE most boring race report I ever wrote.  I had to restrain myself from deleting everything and just writing:  It was awesome.  The End.



Bring on Wasa.
(Note to self, get shifting tuned on bike)

Lowered expectations: Part 2

I was pretty bummed out with the injury when I wrote my last post.  When things start going bad its so easy to start listening all negative thoughts in your head.

My goal this year was to qualify for the Age Group Worlds in London 2013.  But qualifying was just half of it, if I didn't think I could finish in the top quarter, I wasn't going to go.  I'm not traveling all that way to finish in the bottom half.  To have the Maple Leaf on my jersey means something.  I'm going to represent our country and to show the world what us Canadians are made of!

So the key number I had picked out to determine if I was material for Worlds was a 2:05 Olympic at Wasa.  Then by the time Worlds came around in 2013, I would be getting close to the 2hr mark.

But now with the injury at Easter, all this started to crumble.  I didn't leave any room for error or setbacks in my master plan.  But now things are finally coming back together.  Wasa will be more like a 2:10, but I'm OK with that now, because I know what I did wrong this year and I wont make the same mistakes next year.

The first part of the recovery plan was to get fit on my TT bike.  All I can say is that I should have done it sooner.  My original position on the TT bike wasn't good at all.  It felt like I had no power and it turns out that's because of the way I was positioned, I was forcing my hamstrings to deliver power.  No wonder it felt foreign. 

The Retul bike fit was neat.  Instead of measuring your position in a static position (i.e. no pedaling) the sensors placed on all your key joints take the measurements over the course of a 15sec motion capture.  Mind you Retul is just a tool, you need it in the hand of an experienced fitter to make proper use of it.  Before I got on the bike, they checked my flexibility and checked my body for any miss-alignments.  My hamstrings are way too tight and they recommend that I not ride so low in front.  Also, my feet are pitched in ever so slightly so I now have a thin wedge under my cleats to compensate.  My original position had me too far forward and my seat to low, which wasn't giving me the proper knee extension. My knees were also too far ahead of the balls of my feet which was causing the hamstring engagement.

Once we started moving me around on the bike, the Retul system really showed its worth.  As we made one change, we just needed a new motion capture and we can see how the one move changed all the other measurements on the bike.  As we moved the seat up, that cause the front end to drop so we just kept targeting the same back angle and had to move my stem up.  The Retul also let us do things that you can do on a static fit, like how does my position change with effort.  We ran a capture at 150W and another at 300W and we can see how I choke up on the bars and slide forward on the saddle; neat.

They got me moved up and back on the bike and now I can feel that my quads are firing.  It sounds cliche but it was night and day different.  I've only been on the road once since the fit (mostly due to rain) but I feel the positives on the indoor trainer as well.

My run is slowly coming back.  I took 3 complete weeks off running in order to give myself time to heal.  Two weeks ago I graded my run at a dismal 55% of normal, but this week I finally bumped that up to 85%.  I'm at the point where I can start adding some volume and hopefully I'll be back to 100% before the Edmonton ITU.

So its Coronation this weekend.  No taper, I'm training through as I feel like I need to get some more quality work in before Wasa.  Two weeks ago I knew I was good enough to start Coronation, but I figured it was going to be Swim / Bike / Jog.  I know I'm better then that now, but I'll be aiming to hit the swim and bike really hard and see what happens on the run.  I also feel like I would do better racing on my road bike with the 4x hill repeats on the course but I'm forcing myself to use the TT bike.  I haven't tried climbing out of the saddle on the new bike, so its going to be a learning experience.

My swim is in a good place right now.  I just swam 15:20 for a 1000m solo time trial this morning.  Coronation is in a 50m pool, so my time will be 20-30sec slower just because of that change, but having people in my lane to push me (as well as draft from) might bring my time back down near 15:30 (hopefully).  I have no idea what my bike will be like, I haven't raced my TT bike yet, my club time trial was rained out last week and that was supposed to be my test run on the new machine.  Run strategy is simple, go at what feels comfortable.

So things are improving.  Life has NEVER been busier for me, so its been a real challenge getting through the day over the past couple months.  We are counting down the seconds to the end of the school year!  Hopefully Sunday goes well and I keep the positive vibe going till Wasa.

Focus on what I can do.  Not on what I cant.  (Repeat it over and over again)

Lowered Expectations

I've been trying to write something for hours now and I keep deleting whatever I write.  So there is no easy way to say this but here it is.

My eyes got bigger then my stomach.  I've bitten off more then I can chew.  I've set my goals so high that I'm going to frustrate myself trying to achieve them.

One thing is clear.  10 hours.  That's the most I can train in any given week, often its much less.  There is a big disconnect between my goals and that 10 hours.

Also I need to have a balance between work - family - training.  I can't enjoy a training session when I know I have work that needs to be done or that I would rather been at home.  If I'm out training when I feel like I should be somewhere else, I never have a good workout.  Work has been busy and I want to spend more time with my family so my training time is even further stressed.  Had I not already signed up for 3 triathlons already, I probably wouldn't do one this year.  I've joined a cycling club and I want to focus on that. 

I thought this year was going to be the best year ever.  I'm coming back to triathlon armed with a killer run and there was no reason I couldn't return my cycling back to the levels I was at two years ago.  Heck, I've even knocked at least a minute of my 1500m swim.  Well that's what I thought.  The problem with my improved run is that I know how much work I did last year to get down to a 37min 10k and what I've found is that if I am to maintain that level of running, there is no time with my 10hr time constraint to bike more then once or twice a week.  So, I'm going to do it the other way, I'm going to focus on the bike due to the club and run when I can and see what happens.

I want to be able to give 100%.  I want to race at my full potential and right now with the time issue, I feel that I'm only working on two sports and the other one is on the back burner.  Its hard to feel like your giving it your all when you are always neglecting one leg of the race.


I'll see what happens at the races this year, but right now, all my long term plans just got wiped as I really don't know what I want to do.  I want to do something, but I'm just not sure what that is.

Damage Control

I chose not to start this morning at the St. Albert 10 Miler.

Here is a rough time line of what happened leading up to this decision.

Starting Easter Long Weekend
Friday / Saturday: Did hard tempo work in the TT position, felt like I needed to 'catch up' for having not biked much in March. At the end of the Sat workout I did start pushing on the outside of my right foot while pedaling an noticed some discomfort at the knee. I made a mental note that I may want to see if I need a wedge under my cleat.
Sunday: My run was supposed to be a long run with intervals buidling from 1 to 9 minutes. On the 3rd interval I felt it in the knee, on the 4th I ran through it hoping it would get better, on the 5th I pulled the plug. The pain is only there when I run fast. Slow/easy wasn't a problem, so I ran 45min more slow/easy. Tried some strides at the end and bam, instant knee pain. It feels like a range of motion issue, it only hurts when I open up, at 5min/km I'm fine.

Monday / Tues: No bike or run, just swim.

Wed: Ran an easy 20min in the morning. Ran some strides at the end, all seemed OK. Decided to run XC in the evening. 2k warm up with strides was OK, ran the 4.5k race with no knee pain. Problem solved?

Thursday: Swim only.

Friday. Had the day off. Wanted to ride in the road position outside, but our weather dictated I had to bike indoors. On the trainer, did easy work in the TT position, barely got my HR above 120. I noticed a bit of discomfort in the knee, but it was only at the beginning. I averaged about 60 watts less then what I would consider a decent trainer ride.

Saturday: Repeat 20min EZ run in the morning, just like I did on Wednesday. At the end of the run, did some strides. By the 3rd one my knee was locking out when I accelerated. Again no noticeable issue until I try to run fast. Massaged the shit out of my calf, IT band, and surrounding area. Hoping for a miracle by Sunday morning.

Sunday morning: I was packed and ready to go, but decided to try a 10 minute jog and then run 5 strides. The 10min EZ, had no issues, but on the 2nd stride I could feel it. The 3rd one the knee started locking out. Jogged for a couple more minutes, tried one more stride just to be sure, and sure as shit the pain is still there. I could EZ jog the race just for the race recon, since I've never raced it before, but I didn't see the point.

So I've gone through the anger and denial that comes with this kind of setback. I wondered why do I need to do this? Why do I need to set my goals so high that I'm just setting myself up for failure? Why am I injured before the season has even started? What did I do wrong????

As from the sequence of events, I squarely blame biking in the TT position. I rode hard for 3 months this winter in the road position without incident. Its only since I switched that I'm having issues. So now I need to get off the negative and get a solid plan together as my next race is Coronation, so I have until the end of May to get this fixed.

First Thing. Get the inflammation down in the knee and IT band. Get a massage this week. Need to undo the damage first.

2nd: Focus on what I can do for now, swim.

3rd: Get a bike fit in the TT position. Shelf the TT position until after a fitting.

4th: My gut tells me that my knee problem wont happen in the road position. I need to first establish a baseline, being able to run for 20min and finish with some strides without any pain. Once I can run back to back morning with no knee pain, try riding in the road position and see how the run goes the next morning.

5th: Once I can bike again, lift the RPM and ride in an easier gear. After the bike fit, let's ease into the TT position again, keep it easy and avoid mashing the gears.

I've got 6 weeks until Coronation, so lets call the next 3 weeks a 'recover' block and then 3 weeks after that a 'build-back-up' block. And since I'm limited on the bike/run for now, I'm expecting big things out of my swim.

Also while I'm taking it easy, I should catch up at stuff around the house and at home. Polish off the honey-do list which will hopefully leave me with more 'free' time once I'm ready to hit it hard again.

Will report back in 3 weeks.

Pre St.Albert 10M Post

As per almost all my previous races, I feel the need to predict whats going to happen on race day. Had I wrote this last week, it would have been a different story, since I didn't hurt my knee until this past Sunday.

I hurt my knee after doing back to back hard bike workouts. These WOs were the hardest I've attempted since switching over to the TT position. After 3 months on the trainer in the road position I had no issues, but since switching to the aerobars, I haven't found a position in which I feel like I'm generating decent power like I was in the road position. I think I may need to be fitted for the TT position.

Back to running. The day after back to back hard bike sessions, I went for a run and I felt pain below my knee as soon as I started to open up my stride. I've been doing what I can to help speed up recovery via foam rolling and massaging it with a tennis ball. After resting it for two days, the big question was should I run XC on Wed night? I decided to give it a go because if my knee was going to hurt during XC, I can probably save myself the hour drive to St. Albert on Sunday since it probably wouldn't be better before then.

Thankfully my knee passed the XC test. I wasn't really in the mood for XC, after my 2km warm up I really didn't feel like racing at all. I found myself going backwards on the start, probably because I was afraid to push it right away. I slowly picked it up as the minutes ticked by and my knee was doing OK. We got onto some single track on the way back and I was glad to be stuck behind someone as it gave me an excuse to ease up a bit. Right before the finish there was a long steep downhill and I took it very easy down the hill. I had survived the race so far, I didn't want to wreck my knee in final moments. I gave up 3 positions because I let up, but its not like its the Olympics or there was money on the line.

Thursday was just a long EZ swim, but Friday I had the day off and I wanted to get a long EZ bike in. As soon as I was back in the TT position, I could feel my knee again. I took a long slow warm up and the discomfort slowly disappeared. So the question is, how will my legs feel tomorrow when I go for my traditional 20min of 30/30/30 (hard/walk/jog) run on race day eve?

So as long as everything is OK tomorrow morning after my run, this is want I think might be possible on Sunday. For some reason I keep seeing 1:01:30 in my mind. I don't think I'm ready to take a crack at breaking the hour, especially with the fear of injury riding high on my mind. My season is just starting, I can't be left on the sidelines now. The magic pace for the hour is 3:45. I have done a session of 5x 2k at 3:40 pace, but my test 10k was only a 38:30 albeit in very ugly conditions. I've seen the profile for St. Albert and its a series of long uphill and downhill grades, so it will be a bit tricky to pace. I've seen the names on the confirmation list and there are a bunch of guys that can run 59min so I'm tempted to 'stay on their wheel' and just see what happens. This will be my first time running in this deep of a field, so who knows what will happen. I've always done better in deeper fields, because when I cant see anyone ahead or behind me I usually start easing up. With more faster runners on course, I should avoid running alone and zoning out.

So I haven't decided yet to go for broke and shoot for sub 1hr or bust, or just play it safe and get a respectable ~1:02. I might not make this decision until after the 1st mile or the first uphill section. :o)

Anyway, I wish I had more time to blog. I've had an amazing breakthrough in the swim (finally). When you drop a full minute off your 1500m time, I must have done something right! I just haven't had time to explain what I've figured out!

I also need to plan my hard efforts better. I'm hammering too many workouts and I've been increasing the intensity of my WOs to try to make up for missed sessions. I also cant wake up every morning at 5am to get an hour WO in. Lack of sleep and working out is a loosing battle. Starting this week, I am getting Wednesday nights for training. I rarely workout on weeknights. Once I get home from work, feed kids, do homework, bath time, book time, bedtime, then make lunches time, its usually 9pm and that's the only hour I get to hang out with the Mrs. all day long. I'm finding it was easier when I was just running 5-6x per week last year. Now I'm trying to get 3-4 swims / bikes / runs in per week and there just isn't time. I've always found that I have time for two sports, as I'm always neglecting one of the three disciplines.

Anyways, if I survive St. Albert, I'll back off and neglect the run for awhile and focus on the swim/bike for a month. Then hopefully I'll have this knee on the mend, and can start ramping up the run a couple weeks before the Coronation Tri.

I'm still betting on 1:01-02 for Sunday. I'll probably chicken out on trying to break the hour.

March Already?

Is it March already? I guess so! That means it's the last zero racing month on the calendar. I guess since I raced right until December last year, the period of time since last donning a race number hasn't been as long as previous years.

The last two months of training have been great, and historically they usually are. Why? It comes down to one thing -- no yard work. Yard work on an acreage not only is a huge time sucker but can also be quite exhausting. Many zero-training days aren't recovery days if you're working hard outside. So I've made the most of my time and really focused hard on the bike. I barely did any biking last year so its been almost a year and a half since doing quality work in the saddle.

So in early January I did an aerobic ramp test on the bike - increase wattage on the bike every two minutes and record my HR, keep going until I go over 150 beats/min. So on the chart below the red squares are the Jan test and I added my worse and best test ever on the chart to see where I stood relative to those extremes. The blue squares are the test at the end of Feb and I can argue that they are the new high water mark.



I was not expecting this big of a jump in only two months! But I know that over the next two months, I won't see this level of increase again, it has something to do with the law of diminishing returns, or the 80 / 20 rule. But in the end, that fact that I'm pushing the same Watts for a given heart rate as I was in my prime of my 2010 season erases all my doubts that came with being off the bike for so long. I'm excited about the bike this year, it was always my best split before the running sabbatical, and I wouldn't be surprised if I can out split my run this year at a race or two.

The swim was the other sport I didn't do much of last year either. I've had a good two months in the water so far and, like the bike, I'm seeing good progress. I believe I'm right near where I was in 2010 as well. However, that isn't good enough, I need to improve on the swim. If I was doing 70.3, I would be happy with a 31-32min swim and spend more time on the bike/run, but in the Olympic distance the swim is a bigger percentage of the total race. If I'm only swimming 24min for 1500, I could be easily 5-6min behind starting the bike. When you think about how fast you need to go to claw back 5-6min, on a decent cyclist or runner, you'll be putting in a lot of extra work to make up for your losses on the swim. I really need to be able to break 23min this year.

Back in 2010 I focused on swimming form to improve, but I over did it. I became an over-glider and I was taking a long, strong, pull and gliding lots between strokes. Whenever I tried to speed up, it messed up my stroke timing and I wouldn't go much faster.

In my short 2011 season, I was convinced that I needed to get used to a higher stroke rate first, then work on making it more efficient. I got faster that year, but on longer swims, I would tire and fade badly.

This year, I'm burning the candle at both ends. One, I'm working on increasing my slow and easy pace. Two, I'm swimming at a higher stroke rate, but only pushing it as far as I can go without feeling like I'm trashing about. I haven't started smashing all my PBs yet, but I've swam 25min for 1500, 6min for 400m, and held sub 1:25 pace for a couple 200s so far this year. I'd really like to see my best 400's come down to the 5:45-50 range this month.

And for the run, I've managed 100k of easy running in the first two months this year. I just did my first interval session this week and I'm actually surprised how well it seems to be coming back. At the beginning of last year, my EZ runs used to be 5:20-10 pace. By the end of the year, I was usually under 5min, around 4:50. This year, I've picked up where I left off and I've found myself running 4:40 it times. I'm not pushing the pace on these runs, I just run EZ and every now and then I glance at the Garmin just to see what pace I'm at for shits and giggles.

March is run focused. I'm determined to do the St. Albert 10 Miler and I need to ramp things up. If I have to slash WOs due to time constraints, I'll be cutting out time on the bike. Once the 10Miler is done, running will take the back seat and biking will return to the main focus.

Things seem to be falling into place. I've signed up for Wasa Lake in early June and I'm in for the Edmonton ITU Olympic distance race so I can fight for my London qualifier spot.

We'll see what happens in March and I'll report back.

2011 Year End Totals

I finally got my log updated and totalized my 2011 numbers. No surprise here, I did a lot of running! Biking was basically at an all time low, I rode outside for 7.5 hours in total for 250km. To put this in perspective, by the end of February I should eclipse my cycling numbers from 2011. That shows either how little I did last year or how motivated I am this year to kick ass on the bike. I really want to see 2000pts on the bike for 2012, which maybe hard since I'll probably spend 3 months off the bike (Aug, Sep, & Oct).

Interesting enough, if you total the points, I have increased the total training load over the last 3 years. At the rate I'm going, I should hit 6000 points for 2012, especially if I decide to do a fall marathon.
2009: 4756 pts
2010: 5308 pts
2011: 5596 pts

I've actually had a great 6 weeks of training to start this year. January was a great swim month and my times are starting to fall inline when I was swimming my best two years ago.

I wasn't planning on running until next month, but I've been easily getting out 2-3 times a week with this mellow winter weather we've been having. If this weather keeps up, I should be game for the St. Albert 10 Miler. I'm not going to push myself to do well at the 10 Miler, if I feel like it, I'll do it. No need to be injured early in the season, that happened last year and nearly ruined my summer.

I've had a bunch of blog ideas in the past couple weeks, but I forbid myself to write anything until 2011 was wrapped up.

Should most more often now that I'm back in Tri mode and training hard.