anti-social media guru

Signing up for Ironman St. George wasn't as impulsive of a decision as it may have seemed. Granted, the only times I mentioned it was during a half-drunk post-swim get together, and in a post-run endorphin rush (my first run since my half ironman in September).

My last monthly training report was back in September, which wasn't all that encouraging. My fitness was tapering down without anything to train for, and I was unsure about the status of my injury. After that I gained another six pounds. When the new year hit, I focussed on increasing my fitness and starting over again. It worked much better than I expected.

Weight:

These seventeen pounds made all the difference in all three sports. Even my swim improved. My swim positioning was better, my bike climbing ability skyrocketed, and I was actually able to run. I was aiming to hit 150 pounds, but somehow I was on such a roll I accidentally dropped another five.

It's actually been hard to maintain 145. Not because my body is trying to gain all the weight back, but because I'm having trouble eating as much food as I need! I haven't been eating much garbage, so the actual volume of healthy foods is so high that I actually get bored of eating. Compounding that is all the training I've been doing. It's a nice problem to have for a change!

Swim:

Here's my performance management chart from TrainingPeaks. If you haven't read one before, the blue line represents the chronic training load. Basically the longer and harder you work, the higher it goes. It gives you an idea of how fit you should be. The pink line is also training load, but short-term. The yellow line represents how tired your body is. The lower it goes, the more susceptible you are to injury and overtraining. Ideally it would be close to zero. Anyway...

It's been a steady climb, especially since I've started swimming three times a week. Mondays and Wednesdays are with Ayesha, and Fridays I've been working on my endurance sets. I usually do 1000m sets, ranging from 3500 - 5000 m total. I've only broken two benchmarks from last year though, but they were beat very well. I had a 1:28 100m and a 41:28 2000m. I'm still in shock about my 100m time.

Bike:

This is the reason I signed up for St. George. If you see that spike in the middle of March, I had just finished a 160k ride, part of it with someone who had signed up for the race. The next day I did another 60k with an Ironman Mont Tremblant competitor. I was feeling pretty good on the Monday, and looked over the numbers. I would probably be in good enough shape for the swim and bike, and the cost was surprisingly low. 

I've been feeling really good on the bike. On top of it, the race has my name in it. So why not? On the right of the chart you can even see Saturday's 180k training ride to close out the quarter.

Run/walk:

Well, it's improving, right? I was feeling great when I first ran that 5k. So two days later I did it again, and ended up injuring my achillies. I really didn't think I woudl be able to do much, but it's been getting easier and easier with the lighter weight. I changed my shoes back to the ones I used in Syracuse, and that also helped. 

The last couple weeks, I started with walk training. That has been working out surprisingly well. Last week I did two hours for 14k, then last Sunday I managed a 21.1k walk, where I hit up a few bike shops.

I'm feeling pretty confident that I will be able to walk the entire marathon now. 21.1 was hard, but doable. 

Totals:

My volume has really been ramping up. Considering I had a relatively slow start this year, I'm pretty happy with how well my body has taken to it.

Swim: 27.94 hours - 88.8 km
Bike: 74.9 hours - 1685 km
Run/walk: 6.3 hours - 47.6 km
Strength: 4.12 hours

Wow, 1685 km on the bike! For reference, last year I did 1999 km total. My highest-mileage year was 2009 with 2348 km. I will beat that total by May!

Total time

Weekly training volume.

When I finshed Syracuse last year I was tired, but I'm pretty sure I could have done another go round the course. Now I'm in better shape than I've ever been. It only makes sense to take advantage of that. This is going to be awesome.

"The trick is to keep losing weight until your friends and family ask you if you've been sick. then you know you're within 10 pounds. If they start whispering to each other, wondering if you've got cancer or aids, you're within 5. When they actually do an intervention, you're at race weight." - Slowman

Recently I hit my final goal weight, almost seven years to the day from when I started. It was a much longer process than it needed to be, but aren't most things in life that are worth it? 

Since then, I've just been getting faster and faster climbing hills on the bike, and much faster when I'm actually able to run. I haven't been doing any run training (averaging maybe 2 km per week), but my pace has jumped dramatically.

There's this one hill near me that I've used a few times for hill training. It's more of a run hill than a cycling hill. Last night I did four laps of it. I'm trying to become more comfortable descending while in the aero position, and I'm going to have a lot of climbing ahead of me this spring.

When I climbed this hill in 2010 as a part of a training loop, I did it in 2:28 at an average heart rate of 148. Last night I did the exact same climb in 1:43. That's about a 40% improvement.

My run pace has improved a similarly. There's a short run loop near me that's just over 2 km. In 2010, my pace on this loop was in the 5:30 per km range with a high 170s average heart rate. Last year just before the half Ironman, I managed to do it at 4:45 at 166. Last night: 4:30 at 159. This is with no training at all!

Last night was the best feeling run I've ever had. When I started off my strides were short, my turnover rate was high, and I was still able to breathe through my nose for the first bit. Then I experimented with a longer stride. It was all behind me: I was still minimizing my impact with a mid-foot strike, but feeling my glutes engage. My form felt better than ever.

I actually felt bad running this fast down Yonge Street. There were people jumping out of my way. Before they would give me encouraging looks like "you can do it, buddy," but this time they were like "get off the sidewalk, asshat!"

I've been reading Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald. Summarized in one sentence the book says "lose weight until you stop going faster." It goes on to give examples of how and why to eat healthier, and how to realize you've reached your goal.

My problem is right now these gains haven't stopped. I've reached (and then surpassed) my goal weight, and I keep getting faster. This is despite training with a significant calorie deficit. It's starting to show in my face, and while it may be normal for professional endurance athletes to have cheekbones, I've never seen them on me before.

The problem is mainly aesthetic though. My body is telling me that it likes this. My injury doesn't feel like as much of a factor, and I'm actually able to stand for longer periods of time without my flat feet killing me. As great as it feels, I don't want to look sick.

When do you know you've reached your racing weight?

I'm going to make a big effort to properly hydrate today to avoid the avoid the inner thigh cramps I get during swim after hard bike efforts. This is shaping up to be the first proper build cycle I'm going to complete, instead of just the random training I usually do.

Next week's recovery is going to be so sweet. I feel like I've been making some serious progress, especially with swim. It'll be nice to take the week off to only do six hours of slow workouts and some testing.

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.