anti-social media guru

via Strange Maps

Picking a radio station to set your alarm to is one of the most difficult decisions you can make. I'm not exaggerating. Waking up badly has the potential to affect your whole day. When you pick a radio station you're always taking a chance—there may be a commercial, an annoying song, an obnoxious radio host—you never know what the odds of having a good day are until you've spent weeks or even months with the same station.

This morning my choice of jazz.fm was finally justified. It's usually hit-or-miss for me. Their hosts are pleasant, but the music can range from old-fashioned, to festive, to absolutely sublime. I caught the tail-end of this song this morning, which falls into the sublime category. Absolutely gorgeous. Double Rainbow by Stan Getz with João Gilberto.

I've heard a bit about how the Gilbertos are nearly considered royalty in Brazil, but I really don't know exactly who they are or why. After a bit of googling, it's surprising that that song even exists.

Brazilian João Gilberto created the genre of bossa nova in the 50s. In the 1962 he and American Stan Getz came out with one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. The Girl from Ipanema became the post popular song from the album Getz/Gilberto. It featured João's then-wife, Astrud Gilberto, who had never sung professionally before.

Following the release of the album, Astrud and João were divorced and Astrud became involved with Getz. It's been suggested that the latter may have happened before the former. Astrud and Getz lasted only as long as Getz' interest in bossa nova turned back to cool jazz.

It's surprising that João would team up with Getz again ten years later with the album The Best of Two Worlds. Even more surprising that João would let Getz get anywhere near his new wife, Miúcha, who did the uncredited vocals on the album. The first track on this album is Double Rainbow.

What I didn't realize is that João and Miúcha's daughter is Bebel Gilberto, who was my first exposure to Brazilian music. It all comes full circle.

It's a bit cliché to take out your day's frustrations in a workout. I've had many days where I wouldn't feel like going to the pool, but as soon as I got a couple hundred metres into a workout the background noise would just fade and my workout would become my only focus.

Let's just say today I had a little harder of a time to focus. It was very tempting for me to sit on the couch and crack open a beer, but instead I pulled out my new love Dana and took her for a hard ride.

I rode down to my Cherry/Commissioner's/Leslie/Unwin loop and started off with one medium intensity lap.

Home to Loop: 7.18k - 16:26 - 26.2 km/h - 128 AHR
Lap 1: 6.36k - 11:55 - 32 km/h - 151 AHR

On the second lap I dropped down a gear (the loop is nearly completely flat) and kept the same cadence (in fact I kept an average of 103 for nearly all laps).

Lap 2: 6.36k - 12:04 - 31.5 km/h - 150 AHR

Lap three I felt like pushing a more of a high intensity lap. Back up one gear.

Lap 3: 6.36k - 11:34 - 33.0 km/h - 160 AHR

Lap four was my time trial. I went up one more gear.

Lap 4: 6.36k - 11:05 - 34.4 km/h - 172 AHR

Lap five was a cool down lap, then I intended on going home. But by this point I couldn't get myself to go straight. There was some unfinished business—I pushed for another strong lap. Aside from the heart rate variation (cardiac drift?), it was an identical performance to the first lap.

Lap 5: 6.36k - 12:34 - 30.4 km/h - 157 AHR
Lap 6: 6.36k - 11:55 -  32.0 km/h - 162 AHR
Loop to home: 7.16k - 20.5 km/h - 138 AHR 

Total: 52.5 km - 1 hour 48 minutes.

That was all I was planning on doing until I saw the front door of my apartment. I wasn't ready to call it a day, so I ran in, dropped off my bike and threw on my running shoes. 

I was just going to do a quick 2k loop around the block. I wanted to just get a short brick in to get a feel for it, but once I started running I had this uncontrollable need to keep going. I started running south toward the lake, but when I got held up at a light I made a right turn. 

For the first 3k I didn't look at my Garmin at all. I had no idea where I was going, when I was going to stop, what my heart rate was, and I didn't care. I just kept running. It started to drizzle and rain. It wasn't nice out at all. I didn't pick a pretty route. I kept on running.

There was another runner on the opposite side of the street. I was slowly gaining on him until I caught up, passed him, and crossed the street right in front of him. That felt good.

Around the 5k mark I had a look at my average speed—11.2 km/h. I didn't think I had held that kind of speed for so long before, but I wasn't sure (since the bike computer has no pace display). This is where I set my goal of 10k.

There are a lot of things outside my control right now. But right there, right then, the only thing I could do was take the one thing I had control over and own it. I was going to finish that 10k run.

With 2.5k left I ran past the point in the road where I felt my tendon rupture last year. I tried to maintain my form as well as I could—I wasn't going to let that happen again. It started raining harder, and the sidewalk ended. I ran down a big hill, trying to contain my speed. Trying to take advantage of the hill without making my injuries worse. When I got to the bottom of the hill my stride was so long I couldn't control myself anymore. I had 1k left, and everything started to hurt.

From my IT bands to my tib post, to my quads to pretty much everything below my waist—everything was screaming out in agony, but the only thing I could do was keep running.

When I got back to my apartment there was no crowd, no cheering, no medal, no chip time. It didn't matter that Thursday I'm getting the results of my MRI, which could very well keep me from running ever again. It didn't matter that I had my personal best 40k bike split or my best 10k run ever. It was just me sitting in a puddle with steam coming off my body. All that mattered was that I finished.

10k - 54:49 - 5:28 pace

Fuck you Monday—I won this round.

Kid: Piggyback me! Piggyback me!

Me: I can't piggyback you.

Kid [jumping up and down]: Piggyback me! Piggyback me!

Me: I can't piggyback you this year.

Kid [grabbing my arm]: Piggyback me! Piggyback me!

Me: Have you gained weight? You must be at least 50 pounds more than you were last year.

Kid: I'm 40 pounds now.

Me: Exactly. Last year you were like what, minus 10 pounds? That's why I could carry you—you were actually helping me.

Kid [pinching my hand]: Piiiiiiiiggy back me!

Me: I hurt my foot last year, I can't piggyback you. 

Kid: Piggyback me! Piggyback me!

Me: If I piggyback you for the whole race I will probably need surgery.

Kid: Piggyback me! Piggyback me!

Me: Okay, don't you think you're being a little selfish here? If I put you on my back it's very possible that I will completely rupture my tibialis posterior tendon. Do you know what that means? It means that I will have to go to the hospital. They're going to cut my leg open, and rip out what's left of that tendon. Do you know what a tendon is? You see how you can move your small toes separately from your big toes?

[I make a motion with my hand, moving my thumb separately from my other fingers]

Tendons do that. Now they're going to rip out a good tendon—the one that moves my small toes, and they're going to put it my ankle where they just removed the broken one, then they're going to screw it in place with screws. Then they're going to take the tendon that moves my big toe and attach it to the short piece of the tendon that they didn't remove, which moves my small toes. So after four months of painful recovery whenever I try to move my big toe, the rest of my small toes will move too. All the time. Just like this.

[I make a motion with my hands where all my fingers move together]

kid: I'm tired. Let's go back.

[correction: All the charts have restedness mislabelled as hurtness. Oops!]

Swim: 2h 41m - 8,327 m (3:15 and -7,906 m)
Bike: 11h 20m - 295 km (-13:23 and - 7 km)
Run: 3h 41m - 23.68 km (+3:21 and + 19.38 km)
Strength: (not really tracked)
Weight: 157 (+2 pounds)

Despite having a couple really awesome races, September really wasn't all that much to report about from a training perspective.

Swim
Swimming has been pretty much non-existent all month. Not much to say. I lost a lot of fitness this month again. The consolation is that swimming has started back up with Ayesha again, and I'm hoping to get back into shape much earlier this year than last. I think I needed a bit of a break anyway. That's my story, and I'm going to stick to it.

Bike
Interesting stats with the biking. I covered almost the same distance than I did last month, but it took me less than half the time! I'm not even sure how that makes sense. I know I did a lot of transportation and recreational riding last month, and this month has basically been just racing and riding at race pace, but wow!

Now it actually makes sense to post a progress chart.

Not much riding during the middle of the month, but I've picked it up well in the end. 

Run
After last month things have been going relatively well. It still hurts, but not as badly as it could. There's a lot more distance this month, but probably about the same amount of time was spent actually running. Most of it was walking.

Strength
I didn't do enough, nor did I log any. But now I've made a plan to do a relatively full set of work with the swim bandz and some body weight stuff at the pool right after swim. There's time to do it, so I might as well.  

Weight
I gained two pounds. I think mostly muscle. But maybe not. I'm not stressed out about it—I needed the energy when I needed it. Plus there was a lot of recovery food in there. Maybe a bit too much. I keep saying it every month, but this month I'm cutting. That's the plan. 

My injury
Meh. I've got a followup appointment next week. Maybe I'll have an awesome report on what kind of surgery I'm going to be going in for. Wheeee. Ugh. 

Next month
I'll be doing regular swimming (straight into three times a week again), and I'll be starting a proper bike training plan. For the running I'll wait until next week. That's it! 

I was planning on doing a lap of the Ironman Muskoka course on Sunday. Now I'm not so sure.