From Rust to Ironman

Where is the limit?

2013-05-18T10:44:00.001-07:00

I first came across Josef Ajram in the same moment that I first learned of the Ironman, in a free video that came with my Power Breathe device. I've always had a small amount of curiosity to see what the latest "locura" he has come up with is - be it completing five Ironmans in 5 Hawaiian islands over 5 consecutive days (the Epic 5) or an Ultraman - but my own resistance to falling into that trap of having your goals determine you rather than the other way round made me hesitate to buy his book. The shop assistant in the tiny airport in Asturias told me that "it was very popular" and that was enough to tip the scales in favour of it being my inflight reading material for the flight back to Madrid.

The philosophy behind Josef's brand "Where's the limit?" is very simple. As he has tattooed around his neck: "I don't know where the limit is but I know where it is not". Contrary to what I imagined, neither he nor his book is all about going further, longer or harder than before but rather a way of life which I found I could relate to. In fact his book is quite unlike similar "adventure" books in the sense that it actually recounts what some people would call a failure, but which Josef absolutely refuses to label in such a defeatist way. As he puts it, to call something a failure is to stop there, wallowing in self-pity, to limit yourself. Instead it is an opportunity to learn - like my much less glamorous experience in the Lisbon Half Ironman recently - and, in this way, he shows that you can always redefine the scope so that the limits are never reached. Just because he had to pull out of his third consecutive Ironman in his bid to complete 7 in a row, it doesn't mean that he has found his limit because he can (and I'm sure will) always try again. By this token, the only real limit is our own mortality. Perhaps in Josef's case, the only limit is the space he has left on his body to tattoo his achievements.

"The limit is definitively your next challenge, be it sporting, professional or personal... Having a goal is what makes you enjoy it. If it weren't for this, time would just pass with no particular purpose. Will I manage to find my limit? I am sure that I will NOT. Finding it would mean having no objectives and having to live an existence based on inertia."

This really resonated with me. I believe that, in order to be "happy", we have to have a purpose (or several purposes) and to use every minute of our time to try to move forward in accordance with that, even if that means lying on the sofa watching a film as a rest from training or learning something new. I've not read any of the books on the subject but I suppose this is the concept behind "Mindfulness". By contrast, I sometimes think of a case study written by the neurologist, Dr Oliver Sachs, in which a man reached such a level of "enlightenment" that he would inspire people just with the inner peace that he transmitted via his beautific smile. He even started to look like Buddha: his hair fell out and he became so large that he couldn't get out of his chair without help. It turned out that he had an enormous brain tumour, the size of a golf ball, pressing on his frontal lobes. He had effectively been lobotomised. If happiness is related to the successful pursuit of goals, the answer is not to circumvent frustration and disappointment by making those goals easier to achieve. If that were the case we would end up like Dr Sach's "Buddha".

At first sight, Josef seems like an anomaly, with tattoos that would look more at home on a DJ than a broker and an equal passion for competing in ultra distance events as for playing the stock market. I actually don't find it that much of a surprising mix, only that you have to be very authentic and self assured to get away with it. The stock market and the stopwatch are both completely objective masters which you either beat or get beaten by; there is no room for interpretation or excuses and, what is most important, it is just down to you and no-one else. All my life I have also been attracted to goals that are indisputable and, for example, much preferred Maths at school to English as I knew how good (or bad) I was and didn't depend on someone else to tell me. Goals like running a Marathon are a good metaphor for real life objectives and I have no doubt that many of the values carry over. But in real life, things are much more complicated and depend on lots of people, responsibilities are diluted or confused and not everyone agrees on what the objectives are or even whether they have been met. There is a temptation to either invest only in those indisputable objectives or to try to convert fuzzy objectives into indisputable ones. This second option is clearly the best alternative but, taken to extremes, can sometimes pervert the objective too far from its original cause. I don't think Josef can be criticised for hiding from the real world because he has managed to make a very successful brand out of his way of life as well as earning a living from it. As far as I am concerned, that is what I consider his most impressive achievement.

Josef is understandably a bit prickly when it comes to people who don't know him criticising him and by effectively making a brand out of himself, he is a very easy target. He is the first to admit that he is not the best in any one thing he does but that is exactly what makes his book interesting reading. How much can we learn by reading the autobiography of some outlier: an athlete, entreprenuer or artist who has been blessed with qualities in the tails of the distribution for which we might make up the mean? Josef seems much more approachable, more human because of the mistakes which he openly admits to, his outbursts of frustration and because he chooses not to hide behind a celebrity smoke screen. But make no mistake, this is exactly what makes him an outlier in what he does in fact do best: being Josef Ajram.

Its worth looking beyond the tattoos, beyond what seems like a selfish and perhaps pointless pursuit and beyond the images of someone who makes a living from "day trading" and giving this little book a chance.

Back to life, back to reality

2013-05-16T07:26:00.001-07:00

Like a newly released prisoner who prefers not to venture outside his house, as a "free man" I sometimes end up training harder than when I am following a specific training plan. Monday was no exception as I decided to "commute" to work running, only the day after my 5K race. My legs felt pretty good all things considering but the 26 kilometers there and back definitely took their toll. On the way back home I conspired to pass by the Decathlon store to pick up race numbers for all the family a bike "race" that will take place in Pozuelo on the 26th of May. When I came out of the shop, a man asked me for money and then, to my surprise, he asked me where I got my Vibram Five Fingers from. As it happened, the shop was within pointing distance of where we were standing. When he asked me how much they cost though, he was a bit disappointed as he had expected them to be around the 15 euro mark.

The 5K race on Sunday reminded me how much I enjoy taking part in shorter races, for which you don't have to (necessarily) spend months preparing for, so I signed up for a couple more races. One is a 10K race through the centre of Madrid this coming Sunday, in which at least 7,000 participate. I ran in the first two editions and it is always a pleassure to be able to run on wide roads that are closed to traffic, something that happens in Madrid with surprising frequency compared to other major capital cities (even the London Marathon avoids the most emblematic parts). The other race I entered is the Santander Carrera Solidaria which, this year, is held in Madrid, Seville and (of course) Santander in parallel. Last year, I actually made it on to the podium, not for being third in my age group but for being the fastest employee of Banco Santander. In case any fellow work colleagues are reading this and take this as the gauntlet being thrown, I will not reveal which distance or indeed in which city I will be defending "my title"...

On Tuesday I decided to give myself a little treat. At lunchtime I went on my Mountain Bike cross country to Villaviciosa de Odón, a small but picturesque village near my work. One of the best things about Villa is that, thanks to the local university (Universad Europea de Madrid) - where, in fact, I used to train - it benefits from a disproportionately large number of bars and restaurants, even for Spain. I had a lovely lunch of goat's cheese salad and "chopitos" (baby squid) before heading back to work.

El Castillo de Villaviciosa de Odón

That evening I went for a run with the dog. We've been going for a 15-20 minute run every other day but Emma (a boxer) still has trouble pacing herself and before long switches from bounding ahead to shuffling with her tongue hanging out. I suspect that as it gets hotter I will have to find some way to give her something to drink. After a bit of investigation on the internet turned up that there is quite an active circuit of dog-human running races that go by the collective name of cani-cross. Unfortunately, the end of cani-cross season coincides with the end of my season for much the same reason: the heat.

They say a good workman never blames his tools but it is also true that a good workman never has bad tools. It seemed a bit ridiculous to be working on a fantastic carbon fibre triathlon bike with a fancy torque wrench and a set of allen keys from an everything for 1 euro shop. The only thing worse than your allen keys rounding off is having them round of your bolts. I decided to invest in some serious allen keys. These babies are made of nylon(?) and are hard as nails. They also have a round end which is incredibly useful if you are not able to get directly at the bolt, which is the case of those pesky little bolts inside the nose cone of my tri bike. They arrived just in perfect time for the Bank Holiday on Wednesday - being San Isidro, the patron Saint of Madrid, it meant I got the day of work but that the shops in my village on the outskirts were still open. Which was just as well, as you'll see in a moment.

You call that an allen key? This is an allen key!

What better way to start of the Bank Holiday than to do a bit of DIY? I had been waiting for this moment to put my tri bike back together after its journey to Lisbon a couple of weeks ago. What a delight it was to use my new tools! I almost wanted to take it to bits again just to be able to put it back together again! And how much more confident I feel now about those bolts in the nose cone and, in particular, those holding the seat post which worked loose during my triathlon. I was just admiring my work when I noticed that one of the bar end shifters had worked itself slightly loose. Not to worry, another chance to use my allen keys! To get at the tightening bolt, you have to disassemble the whole mechanism and then turn the bolt counter-clockwise. The only bolt on the whole bike (other than the one fixing the seat to the seat post) that is not an allen bolt is the one holding the shifter together: it requires a flat headed screwdriver (or a small coin, I suppose). Somehow I managed to cross thread the bloody little shit and, as a result, could no longer get it to tighten sufficiently to hold the shifter together. I kept relatively calm. I took the other shifter to pieces to see whether it was a problem with the bolt or the nut or both and then had trouble putting that one back together. It was remeniscent of some kind of fiendish puzzle like the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser: lots of tiny pieces that could only be put together in exactly one way.

Only the Japanese could invent something like this. Still, I was grateful at least that there was only one way to put it back together, which with patience I finally managed. I was left then, with the screwed screw so I took it down to my local bike shop, Mr Schmid, where I was met with not with ridicule but the sympathy that only fellow cyclists can offer and they promised to do everything in their power to convince Shimano to provide me with a replacement. In the worse case I may have to buy a whole new set. This is where triathlon helps you see the positive side of things: something breaking is always a good excuse to upgrade... Just as well this didn't happen when I put the bike together in Lisbon.

Mecagoen

To blow off a bit of steam after hours of wrestling with a small piece of highly custom metal, I jumped on the treadmill to do 8 series of 4 minutes at 3:40 pace (16.5 kph). By now this feels quite easy but it was enough to make me feel like I "deserved" the massive meat feast that a friend prepared for us at lunchtime.

Today I did a "spinning class" and for once I actually did as the depilated instructor bade me do, which meant spending most of the time standing up out of the seat. I've never been much of a fan of Bonnie Tyler (in fact I am shocked that I even knew that "I need a hero" was sung by her) but I really wanted that awful turbo charged version of the song to end as soon as possible. The only small mercy was that the instructor refrained from singing along, something which he is prone to do. The rest of the week I will take relativley easy so that I can run on fresh legs in my 10K race on Sunday.

1ª Carrera Popular Ciudad de Pozuelo - 5K

2013-05-12T11:19:00.002-07:00

After 6 months of preparing Marathons and Half Ironmans, I decided to go to the opposite extreme of running a 5K race with no specific preparation whatsoever. I couldn't really resist taking part in a race that was taking place barely a kilometre (and a down hill one at that) from my house. The fact it started at a reasonable time (10:25) made it that much easier to squeeze into my weekend although, by this time, the sun was starting to assert itself.

I rolled down to the start line on my bike hardly having to pedal and found that there was already a hive of activity with some kind of open air aerobics class, a live band and about 1,500 runners warming up for the first edition of the Ciudad de Pozuelo 10K / 5K race. I saw a number of familiar faces from my work as well as spotting David López, one of the guys who went on the training camp in Morocco with me a year and a half ago, as he toed the start line of the 10K race (he went on to finish second). I had decided to take part in the 5K race.

The course is a loop along main roads that were closed to traffic but consisted of a steady climb with a couple of steeper sections that served to spread us out a bit. Of course, what goes up must come down, so the way back was gravity assisted but, as usual, never enough to compensate for the price paid going up. I managed to work out that I should just be able to beat my best time in 5K and, if I was really lucky, I might even be able to get a podium spot in the Veteran category... It's always hard to tell other runner's ages, especially when you are running with your tongue hanging out.

Just as I was in the final straight, literally counting down the seconds from 100 until the pain was over, someone decided to pick exactly that moment to cross the road. To be fair, I think their idea was to walk right up to me, wait for me to pass, and then cross immediately behind me - but when you are in the final throes of a competition, the last thing you want is someone to distract you and make you have to watch out for them. I mean, for f´s sake, could she not have crossed in the 21 second gap in front of me or the 8 second gap behind me or - better still - just not crossed the wrong side of the finish line at all? I shouted "get out of the way" in Spanish in such a way that she looked a little startled. The problem with local races is that she could turn out to be the parent of one of my son's friends, a colleague at work, etc... Sorry for shouting but I can't always control my actions at the end of a race.

As I crossed the line in 18:05 - a Personal Best time by 7 seconds! - I heard the announcer say that they were waiting for the second Veteran to be confirmed so I thought I was in for a chance. In the end, I finished in 14th position overall and 4th in my category, so I got that bitter-sweet reward of being just shy of getting a trophy to take home and impress my kids with.

People always say "a 5K race? That must be easy for you, an Ironman, etc" to which I explain that the shorter the race, the faster you run it and the more agonic it is. My lungs feel as though I've swallowed a blow-torch. Still, it's nice to be able to pull a best time out of the bag in a week when I have hardly been able to walk for most of it. The recovery after my odyssey in Lisbon last week has been the slowest and most painful that I can remember (not counting problems with raw skin that can usually be prevented). It's always the way, the worse the race goes, the tougher it is to finish and the longer the recovery.

I sat getting my breath back talking to a fellow runner about the merits of running in Vibram Five Fingers (he did ask me...) as a friend, José Miguel, crossed the line of his first ever running race (and one that I had encouraged him to take part in). Hopefully it will be the first of many.

This week has been a bit of a difficult week mentally as well as physically. It is all very well to cheerfully say that I am going to cut myself some slack but it is another to refocus my goals so that I don't suffer from that gnawing guilt with every gramme that I put on or every minute less of training. The goals now are longer term (don't worry - I'm talking about after summer, not about "retiring"!) and the immediate ones are of a different nature - no less important but certainly less measurable: enjoy sports and the family and recharge my batteries. A few low key races like today will definitely help the ego fend off the guilt trips and they come at a fairly cheap price in terms of training time (not to mention entry fees and travel expenses). The only problem is that, as it gets hotter I have to accept that my performance will most likely drop as it usually does. Having such great weather in Spain has its down sides...

And now for something completely different...

2013-05-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

Just as last year I think my formula of 6 months "on" (specific preparation for competitions) and 6 months "off" (training to keep fit and for enjoyment) worked pretty well, I am going to take a break from structured training until after the summer. This way I give myself a bit of a respite from the pressure of "having" to do such and such workout on a particular day as well as a break to my family who have to put up with my (ever more) occasional bad moods or listlessness.

I would have liked to have finished on a more positive note than a "Personal Worst" time in the Lisbon Half Ironman but actually there is a lot to be positive about. A few years ago I synthesized the phases I had gone through as an athlete in a post as follows:

1. Anger
2. Competition
3. Boom-bust
4. Age denial
5. Long term goal
6. Running for running's sake

Although, at the time, I thought that I had "reached the final stop of my journey", I would add a few more now to that list:

7. De-obsession. How can you de-obsess without obsessing about it? I realized that behind the obsession was a underlying fear that my drive for doing sport would evaporate as suddenly as it appeared and that I would go from Ironman to sofa-man. Once I had recognized this fear I could begin to see how irrational it was. I stopped counting calories and taking supplements and I neither got fat nor slow, if not quite the opposite. Instead, I started to trust myself.

8. Self sufficiency. When I first contacted Jonathan, my (ex-)coach, my main reason was that I needed someone to moderate me, an independent advisor who would reign me back in if I tried to push myself too far too soon. I came to depend on the structure that his training plans provided me like a drug - I'd get very nervous as I was coming to the end of one and would hound him incessantly for the next one - and, in some way, I suppose I used this to externalize the inconvenience my training caused to my family. When Jonathan went to Mexico, I ended up inventing my own training plan for the NYC Marathon that never was and went on to get PB times in 10K, Half Marathon and Marathon as a self-trained athlete. It's not to say that I have nothing left to learn from Jonathan or anyone else for that matter, but I have found it tremendously satisfying to take full responsibility for all aspects of my training. It also helps me be more flexible and to be able to adapt my training to my specific needs in the moment.

9. Holistic approach. I got back into running when I was going through a bad patch, a kind of "mid-life crisis", and it became an extra source of self-esteem and one over which I felt I had more control (for the most part) than with other aspects of my life. That's the beauty of a sporting challenge: it depends almost entirely on you and no-one can question the validity of the result. In real life, of course, things are never quite so cut and dried. Sporting achievements definitely carry over into other arenas but - unless you happen to be a professional athlete - it is probably not a good idea for everything else to revolve around them. How can you dedicate the necessary time and energy to training without it being a number one priority that everything else has to fit around? As long as there is a reasonable upper limit to the time and energy required, in practice it doesn't come into conflict with anything else and there will always be an opportunity to fit it in even if you allow it to be pushed around by other priorities. The implication is that you have to limit your ambition accordingly. In my case, this means NO Ironman (at least until the kids have left home...) and I might even have to accept not being able to compete at my full potential in Half Ironmans but at least I have found a way to fit competitive Marathon training in with the rest of my life. By the same token, I also seem to have found a way to not allow the disappointments bleed into my family or my work life but rather to see them as an opportunity from which to learn.

Having just said that I am taking a break from competition, I have in fact got a 5K race this Sunday where I live (assuming I can actually walk by then). Taking part in a local race is very different from spending months specifically preparing for it.

I've also bought a "doggie jogger" leash for the dog so that we can go running together. Hopefully it will help her to be calmer in the house and - who knows - we might even end up establishing some kind of canine-human bond, it has been known to happen. I also want to take advantage of the temporary relaxation of my regime to go on cycle rides with my neighbour, to run alongside the kids on their bikes, to play "padel" (a kind of cross between real tennis and squash), to go on rambling runs with colleagues at lunchtime, to go hiking, to commute to work, etc.

This seems like a good moment to make a "cut" and, as I have done with two previous volumes of this blog, make myself a book using Blog2Print. Here's to volume 4...

Lisbon Half Ironman 2013 Race Report

2013-05-06T04:05:00.001-07:00

The short version

Disappointing physically but proud of myself mentally.

The medium version

I did a time of 5:19, 35 minutes slower than last time. I did a best HIM swim time of 36:11 and a best HIM bike leg of 2:29:34 but I got cramps as soon as I started the run and did my slowest ever Half Marathon of 2:07:38.

The long version

It was very hard to leave the family behind in Asturias, even though the weather was a bit grim. I’d enjoyed my 3 days of “carbo loading” – eating what I felt like, when I felt like with a leaning towards pasta, rice and chocolate – but I could even see the impact of all that associated water retention (1 gram of water per calorie of stored glycogen) and so could my bathroom scales (87kg). By now I am used to the guilt trip as a result of going from being very conscientious about what I eat and how much I exercise to suddenly seeming to “let myself go” in both regards.

The day before the race I did my customary 20 minute run (watching “Osombie” which I can recommend as being one of the worst films of the last few years, in which Osama bin Laden comes back as a Zombie) and drove to the airport. As soon as I was on the motorway, I realized that I had forgotten to fill up the car with petrol. I thought of the months of preparation, not to mention the cost of the hotel, the race inscription, all that would go to waste if my car broke down now. Still, I kept my calm and told myself that there was no point worrying about it until it happened and, in any case, I made it to the petrol station in the airport and wisely decided to fill up in case I forgot to do so on the way back.

I’d packed everything so ingeniously so that, other than the bike box which I had already sent through oversized luggage (for an extra €35), I only had a small backpack to carry. The bike pump caught the attention of the security guard as my bag passed through the scanner so I had to unpack everything, perhaps not so ingeniously after all. But the pump which was essentially a two foot long bar of metal with a sharp metal stand that would have made an excellent weapon was not the object of concern, rather my torque wrench. Again, I kept my calm and asked ingenuously whether it was considered dangerous but of course the real worry was that I might start to disassemble parts of the plane and use them to make some kind of makeshift weapon in the style of The A Team. I don’t want to seem facetious, in the end it is a perfectly reasonable rule that I should have been aware of - that you are not allowed to take any kind of tools on a plane in hand luggage - but thankfully I was allowed to take it on board.

Once in Lisbon I made my way to the humble expo (by this I am referring to the few stands that were set up for the triathlon and not the Paque das Naçöes Expo itself) and bought a CO2 canister in case of a flat tyre (as I couldn't take compressed gas on the plane) as well as some cereal bars for the bike leg. Then it was back to the hotel to put the bike back together again. It had faired pretty well but there was a small chip in the carbon from I don’t know what. It was much harder to put together than it was to take to pieces (isn't it always the way?) and I wasn't too confident about the bolts holding the nose cone and the seat post in place. The nose cone bolts can only be accessed with a long Allen key (no fancy torque wrench here) and I was worried about the Allen key rounding off leaving me with a problem to undo it for the trip back home. I realized that the guys in the bike shop had put some kind of substance to lock the bolts in place which made them much harder to turn. The bolts on the seat post are the teeniest tiniest bolts in the world and are much more prone to rounding off so I didn't manage to tighten them to even close to the very low 2 Nm maximum recommended torque.

Looking sultry

Considering this was to be my third participation in the Lisbon Half Ironman, I very nearly skipped the briefing – after all, I had never been to one before. I was impressed by the level of detail in which we were explained everything but soon realized that, unless I somehow found myself in pole position, I wouldn't need to remember any of it on the day. Compared to previous years there appeared to be an extra twiddle on the end of the bike course to make the distance up to 90 km, perhaps due to the transition area having moved. There were a lot of extremely detailed questions, mainly from the German contingent, and I couldn't help thinking that there wouldn't be quite so many in the Spanish / Portuguese briefings.

Everything organized by transition

On the day of the race itself, I got up at 5 am and had breakfast with Dani. His understandable nervousness before undertaking his very first Half Ironman served somehow to make me feel more relaxed and, hopefully, some of that rubbed back off on him. I’d already put Body Glide in all the places that I know from experience get rubbed raw as well as a special paste (that smells rather like fish paste) on my neck which my friend Carlos managed to procure me from Brazil where it protected me from the uncompromising friction of my wetsuit in the full Ironman I did there.

Fish paste

We went down to do the bike check in and leave all the stuff ready for the transitions. The transition area was much better and more impressive than in previous years. I had enough time to go back to the hotel for a bit of quiet contemplation, all the while with that nagging sensation that I had forgotten something…

The transition area

Back at the course, the gun went off for the “Battle of the sexes” which was a slightly longer than Olympic distance Triathlon (strictly speaking a quarter Ironman) in which the women were given a head start of 12 minutes. This turned out to be exactly long enough for the first woman to be exiting the water just as the gun went off for the men; I expect the men caught her up on the bike and the run. At 8:20 it was the turn of those of us doing the Half Ironman distance and we had just a few minutes to get used to the (cold) temperature of the water. I never warm up or even practise swimming the day before because, rather irresponsibly, I’d rather just do as little swimming as possible, although I'm sure it would probably have helped. The start was very hectic in spite of there only being 500 of us (compared to the 1,800 last time I competed). Someone swam right on top of me and used me to propel himself forwards. This pissed me off because I figured that, if he was so fast and competitive, why hadn't he started much further forward? So I grabbed his ankle and gave a little tug to say “fuck you too”. I don’t know whether it was the same guy or someone else but, just at this moment, someone very intentionally put their hand on my swim cap and dunked my head under water. If it was the same person, he would have had to stop and double back – a case of “swim rage” if ever I saw one – and if it was someone else altogether then they fully deserved the “c” word that I shouted at them. In the water – just as behind the wheel or behind a computer screen – you are anonymous and people behave much more primitively when they know there can be no comeback.

Only minutes into the race I was panicking and hyperventilating, breathing to both sides with my neck out of the water like a kid doing doggy paddle. I was so close to packing the whole thing in that I thought of calling out to a boat to get me the hell out of there. But the thought of the embarrassment I would suffer having to explain to Dani, to my kids, my work colleagues – and you, dear reader – was even stronger than the overwhelming urge to stop (interestingly, I don’t feel the same pressure from my wife or my parents). So I waited for the flock of flapping arms to subside and started off on the 1,900m slog. I decided not to overexert myself – after all, I was unlikely now to get a good time (although one always overestimates the time lost in the moment) – but at least I would take a good line to each buoy. Eventually I found my rhythm and started to overtake people and, bit by bit, I started to feel better about the whole thing. By the time I got to my beloved bike, I was tired from the swim but I think that I had expended less energy than in previous years.

For some reason I registered my country as Spain

Once I was out on the highway I really started to fly on the bike. My heart rate was still on the high side from the swim and took some time to settle down to the 153 bpm average I was aiming for. Unfortunately I had set things up in such a way that I couldn't easily read my watch from the aero position, which was tucked behind my water bottle along with a couple of moral boosting messages from my kids. Nevertheless, the pace felt like the right balance between tolerable and challenging and I was able to maintain it fairly constantly throughout (hills notwithstanding).

They say you should never try something new in a race. I had come up with the idea of taping a couple of packets of High5 Energy Source 4:1 powder to my bottle, that I could mix on the go with the water handed out by the organization. In practice I thought I would lose too much time trying to get the stuff to dissolve in the tiny chamber afforded by my refillable front mounted bottle and, at one point the packets came unstuck and started flapping about, so I yanked them off and threw them to the side of the road. Unfortunately, I also yanked the bottle out of its mount in the process and it also went flying. I did a quick calculation of minutes lost in going back for it versus cost of the bottle (it’s a “special one” with a straw) and decided to stop. Luckily, this happened where there were some spectators and someone kindly went back for it. In between them having to wait for a break in the oncoming cyclists to safely cross the road and jogging back to me, I suppose I must have lost about a minute. In an Ironman™ event, this would have led to my disqualification as outside intervention is prohibited, but not so in Lisbon. I soon caught up with those who zoomed past me including an Irish guy on an Isaac bike who I had been “playing tag” with for the past half an hour or so. I notice that I rode with a much higher cadence than most people around me and while “Isaac” would overtake me going uphill I would take him back going downhill and on the flats. I felt a couple of twinges of cramp but I remembered that I had felt this last time and, as long as I backed off slightly, they would go away.

The bike course is relatively fast but it has to be said that between the annoying hill at one end, the number of tight turns (that I had to take very wide as the turning circle on my bike is very wide) and the patches with cobble stones, it all adds up to having to go that much faster on the straight, flat and smooth stretches. The only good thing about the cobble stones was that I would have less bolts to undo when it came to packing up my bike. I started to hear an ominous clanking sound coming from the depths of my bike and wondered if we would make the 90 kms in one piece. Just as well that I had had to cut my seat post to length because otherwise my seat would have slipped down. In fact, the bolts now not holding the seat post in place were only really useful for one thing and that was for hanging the bike up my its bike seat, as you are required to do when you finish the bike leg of a triathlon. Again, the rules were interpreted in spirit and not to the letter and, after consulting a referee, I hung the bike up by its brake levers and put on my visor, Fuel Belt and running shoes and set off for the run. On the bike I had managed to eat two Powergel Endurance cereal bars and drink 750 cl of High5 Energy Source 4:1 as well as 9 High5 Isogels and, in the end, had thrown away the only water that I took from the refreshment station. In the Fuel Belt I was carrying a further 4 High5 Isogels.

I was glad to be able to stand up after two and a half hours almost entirely in the aero position. Now for the run – my strongest discipline! After only a few steps my legs suddenly seized up completely. I was frozen with my quadriceps contracting as if someone else was activating them with a remote control. The image of Mark Allen, standing stark upright in the Ironman as his eternal rival Dave Scott sailed past, came to me. I squatted down as best as I could and stayed there until the contractions abated. I couldn't believe it – cramps in kilometre 0!! I had 21 kilometres to go, this was going to be long and painful. This is where I can say that I am proud of myself because I didn't get angry or upset, I just took it (literally) in my stride. I felt a bit hard done by as I didn't think I “deserved” to be hobbled after all the training I had done. Perhaps it was just an extreme version of the famous “jelly legs” you get after transitioning from cycling to running. I took a couple of salt tablets in the hope that they would at least work as a placebo. Yes, I felt I could start to run now – even though the pace felt very slow, my watch was telling me that I was turning out kilometres in 4:20 which, while it wouldn't lead to a Personal Best there was every chance I would get faster as the race wore on.

But it wasn't to be. The cramps came back and this time they weren't going away. A pattern soon emerged in which I would run some 500 metres, my legs would tighten up dangerously and I would stop, walk and then run again. I seemed to end up stopping in exactly the same places on each of the four laps. One of the things that is motivating when running a fixed distance is that the faster you run, the less time you have to suffer – often the most persuasive reason I have to push myself is just to make this suffering end sooner. This works in the opposite direction when you are slowing down. You tell yourself that you just have to put up with the pain and discomfort for one more hour but after half an hour, you now have 45 minutes. It seems like it will never end and time dilates like the bastard it is.

Unlike under the cloak of anonymity of the swim, other runners gave encouragement and advice – one even slapped me on the bum to get me going again (a male athlete in case my wife is reading this). With just 3 kilometres (but 20 minutes!) to go, I saw Dani for the first time and he caught me on one of my standing breaks. “No te pares tío!” (Don’t stop mate!) he shouted, to which I replied “Ya he parrido 50 veces” – I was so tired I couldn't even conjugate my verbs properly any more but, somehow, what I said was more appropriate: instead of saying that I had stopped 50 times already, I said that I had given birth 50 times. At least Dani looked like he was going well, especially for being his first.

Just as I had played tag with “Isaac” on the bike, when I stopped I was overtaken by a man who was, to say the least, top heavy. I would pass him only to be forced to stop again by the time he shuffled past. I thought, that guy has a massive disadvantage (excuse the pun) – for him to finish this it is going to require an even bigger effort than for me: if he can do it, then I can. I realized something very important in that moment. There is a word in Spanish which neatly sums up the act of bettering oneself: superación. I had taken that to literally mean improving my times - maybe not in every race - but to be generally getting faster. In doing so I was snobbishly putting myself above those who “just finish”. What I hadn't realized was that this was, in itself, a get-out clause: if things didn't go to plan I could just throw the whole race and put it down to bad luck, a bad day. I realized that superación means improving yourself and not just your times. Finishing this race was vitally important for me to be able to learn from it and improve as a consequence. Not only that, but by not beating myself up about it, I was also improving myself in other ways, ways that would not only help me towards faster times in the future but also in other aspects of my life. It’s not as though I was slacking and that I deserved a good bit of auto-flagellation. I also realized something else: getting angry with myself was itself a way of avoiding facing up to the reasons why this might have happened and doing something about fixing it.

So what did go wrong? I believe that exercise induced cramps are due to one of two things: under-preparation or overcooked pace. Looking back at my last training log, I rather optimistically put a “tick” by the training objective of converting myself from a Marathoner into a Triathloner in the space of 9 weeks in spite of having no evidence to this effect. When I signed up for the race, I had intended to spend several more months preparing for it – after all, two years had gone by since my last triathlon – but then the temptation to squeeze in another Marathon was too much to resist (nor do I regret it now). Just because I was in very good shape, it doesn't mean I was in very good shape for a Half Ironman. Specifically, I think that I skimped on two types of workout: one, the long bike ride which I substituted with a long run or tempo run and, two, the weights session.

It’s also possible that the heat was a big factor: last time round, when I did a time of 4:44, it was much cooler and even rained a bit. I'm not sure how much I believe in the theory that cramps are due to electrolyte imbalance from heavy sweating (although I do sometimes take salt tablets, just in case) but I do think that hotter conditions mean you expend more energy cooling yourself down, especially if you are a large person like myself, and it is therefore much easier to overcook the pace. Lastly, I might have benefited from wearing thigh compression, as I did last time. In case Emilio – to whom I had lent my thigh compression for his Marathon des Sables and who returned them to me this morning – is reading this, I take full responsibility as I had already decided that I wouldn't run with them.

Now back in the hotel, I treated myself to a nice lunch, had a wonderful siesta and finally got around to packing up the bike before going for a celebratory meal with Dani and his wife in a surprisingly cheap and good all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant. My flight was leaving at 9am the following day and the queues in the airport were impressive, especially as I had to queue up first for my boarding pass, then to pay the €35 for the bike and, finally, to deposit the bike in the oversize luggage chute. This time security said nothing about my pump (the torque wrench was safely wrapped up inside my wet suit, in the bike box) but they made a fuss about my liquids and creams which I had wrapped in one of my mum’s plastic hair nets for want of a sealable bag. The sealable plastic bag dispenser required a €1 coin and I had given all my spare change as tip the night before, so I had to decide which one item I was going to keep. As the special fish paste from Brazil had done nothing this time to prevent a sore on my neck I opted to keep the Body Glide and said goodbye to the rest.

Another reason for finishing was to be able to teach my children the lesson that I had learned. They had already progressed from asking after every race I entered if I had won and losing interest when I told them in which place I had finished, to saying that they hoped I would get my best time, as they knew that that was my objective. When I explained to them that it was really important to finish, especially when things were going badly, Luca said to me “You’ll always be my champion daddy”.

Lisbon Half Ironman Weeks 8 and 9/9

2013-04-30T05:16:00.001-07:00

Into the final straight the natural question to ask is how well my training has gone and, more specifically, did I meet my

Training Objectives
- Convert endurance from Marathon training into endurance for an event that will last between 4:30 and 5:00 hours √
- Maintain as much as possible running speed from the last year of running focussed training √ See below for how my "aerobic test" went
- Practice swimming technique and get used to swimming for up to an hour without stopping √
- Improve upper body strength x I have become very lazy about weight training lately...
- Get used to aero position on the bike √ This has gone better than I anticipated - I've even managed to tolerate an hour and a half on the turbo trainer without breaking which I find harder than riding on the roads.
- Develop bike speed √ The high intensity intervals I did once a week should have some positive impact.
- Take advantage of commuting by bike when possible √/2 Strictly speaking I did commute "when possible" only that the weather has been so bad that it has not really been possible (because there is a stretch I have to cycle in my work attire) very much of the time.

I'd also add another objective that wasn't part of my original list:
- Train respiratory muscles with Power Breathe √ I've progressed from 30 breaths at 1.5 to 30 at 4 (out of 10 on the level 3 device)

It seems a shame now that we (finally) have such gorgeous weather here in Madrid, that I should have done virtually all my training this week indoors; the only exception was my leisurely commute to work by bike on Wednesday. (Actually, the weather has now returned to the cold, grey and wet days we've had most of the year so far.)

On Wednesday I also went for a swim, including 20 minutes at a pace I felt I could maintain over the Half Ironman distance. According to my Garmin swim, I swam an average of 1:56 per 100m, which translates into a sub 37 minute swim leg. Considering how much time and effort I have put into swimming lately, I'm satisfied with that kind of pace. If I want to improve any more, I will have to be more consistent and also mix in more variety (specific strength, speed, endurance and technique sessions). What I did find interesting, was that I naturally switched to a 4 beat kick pattern - as if the 6 beat kick that I had been using lately was over-the-top. I expect that this will feel even more natural in a wet suit which provides extra buoyancy thus avoiding the need to kick quite so often. The 4 beat kick is an asymmetrical pattern where you kick 3 times during one arm pull and only once during the other. The single kick is like the kick in the Total Immersion style and is used to rotate the body and is coordinated with the arm pull; the 3 kicks are timed to coincide with the pull, draw and push back.. I would have thought it would be more important to keep the legs high by kicking 3 times while breathing but it felt more natural to me to kick only once on the side to which I was breathing, probably because I could breathe more effectively this way. Or, seen another way, I could kick more effectively while holding my breath much in the same way as you breathe in between strokes while rowing, for example.

I spent a fair amount of time this week getting used to the aero position on the turbo trainer: I did one "easy" session of an hour and a half as well as some intervals of 15 minutes at Half Ironman pace and the bike section of my "brick". The idea this week in general has been to reduce volume by boiling the training down to its essentials, so I have increased the proportion of higher intensity while at the same time converging that intensity to Half Ironman pace. The brick, for example, consisted of an hour at HIM pace on the turbo trainer, followed by half an hour running at 3:50 pace (15.5 kph). It is always harder doing workouts on the turbo trainer because of the boredom and the lack of natural breaks from hills, corners, roundabouts etc. What also made the brick harder than normal was the mains electric shock that I got from touching the treadmill while wearing socks soaked in sweat - it made me shout out involuntarily. Regular readers will recognize this as one of my regular rants: I have lived in three different houses in Spain and in all three of them I have received electric shocks from touching toasters, microwaves, ovens, hi-fis. I guess I am more susceptible as I tend to go around in bare feet much more than most people. I can't help thinking that the 3 pronged plug we have in the UK, with it's explicit earthing, is a superior design to the European version.

That just left the other big "workout" of the weekend: that of packing my triathlon bike up into a small space for taking on the plane. While we are on the subject of "rants", what was Mr Allen thinking when he designed an alternative to the Phillips screw that was so similar to a circle that either the keys or the bolt would easily get rounded off? Still, I kept my calm and managed to dismantle everything without any disasters (unlike that time I tried to change the nose cone assembly). I had trouble figuring out which way the pedals were threaded (until I realized that you could actually see from the thread that was poking out) and worked up quite a sweat to get them off. There is an aspect of packing that I have to admit I quite enjoy and that is when there is a happy coincidence that conspires to optimize the space occupied. In this case, the "camel toe" of my Adamo seat was perfect for clasping the frame of the bike, thus holding the seatpost nicely in place. Lastly, I let the air out of my tires and swapped out the skewers for some crappy ones that I don't mind getting broken by the brutish baggage handlers. I definitely notice that I am much more patient when I have less volume (and not necessarily intensity) of training. My family notice it too...

I found my own packing list from last time to come in handy

The last time I did one of my aerobic tests - running 7 kilometres at a heart rate of 172 bpm (my Half Marathon intensity) - I did it on very tired legs and therefore got a tired result. I thought I would effectively end my training cycle on a (hopefully) good note by seeing how I fared on fresh legs. I happened to choose about the only rain-free window of the whole day which, otherwise, was a perfect temperature and similar to the temperature in which I've done my previous tests this year. It was, however, a bit blustery but, being a circuit around a tartan track, what was a head wind in one direction was a tail wind in the other. I was very pleasantly surprised to do my best time for this test ever, of 25:39 - this equates to a Half Marathon time of 1:17:19 (in theory...). Even if it is not realistic to extrapolate to the Half Marathon distance, it is worth pointing out that this was exactly the same pace that I ran my fastest 10K race in December and there is no question of GPS error here as I ran 20 laps of a 350m circuit (actually, for once the GPS was spot on - it normally adds an extra 200m or so erroneously). It felt completely under control with by breathing never getting laboured and I didn't find myself having to slow down towards the end in order to keep my heart rate at the prescribed level. I also took the opportunity to do a dress rehearsal with my Vivobarefoot Ultras - which I haven't used since the Marathon in Valencia last November - as well as an alternative to the BreatheRight nasal strips I usually use in competition.

I've no idea whether "dilating the nasal cavity" has any benefit on performance or not but it certainly feels like it does. On the one hand, I can't believe that the extra amount of air that can enter through the nose can compete with opening the mouth ever so slightly more (although I once remember arguing with someone who claimed that it wasn't physically possible to breathe in through the nose and the mouth at the same time). But maybe there is some other reason for it. For example, perhaps it influences our perception of effort. It's not quite the same thing but it is equally unexpected - when we dive into cold water we experience something known as the "dolphin reaction" which is a sharp inhalation in response to our noses being immersed in cold water: I suppose the intention (if evolution can have intentions) is to take one quick breath before going under water. Or maybe it's just the placebo effect. The problem I have with the BreatheRight strips is that they always come unstuck during a race and start getting on my nerves. They are also not very cheap at around 2 euros a pop. I usually end up using two of them per race because the first one invariably comes unstuck right away. I thought I would try the ClipAir nasal dilators which are a little rubber thingy which you insert in your nose.

At first sight they look as though they would restrict the airflow but they are somehow soothing and I might even consider wearing them during the night (rumour has it that I am a snorer). In a packet you have three different sizes and I went for the largest. It felt pretty good during the run but as I got sweaty it started to slip down gradually. In practice it means you just have to push it back up again every so often - a bit irritating but better than the BreatheRight strips which you have to replace once they come unstuck. Also, in a triathlon it's much faster to shove a little rubber gizmo in your nose than to put what is essentially a plaster on top of it. I have seen some people starting the swim of a triathlon with a BreatheRight strip or similar already in place and have wondered how long it manages to stay on and how. I've even considered supergluing one on (maybe that is their secret).

The last dress rehearsal was to go for a swim with my wetsuit, particularly to get used to the effect on my kicking (as the legs floar more) and to practice "sighting", or looking up regularly to check that I am still on course. The problem with swimming in a wetsuit in the pool is that you get very hot, so it's not really practical to do any kind of workout. It always amazes me how much difference the wetsuit makes. I think it is especially effective for people who don't swim particularly well as it covers up all our mistakes. Swimming comfortably I found myself covering 100m in 1:47 and, making an effort I perceived to be similar to the pace at which I swam 20 minutes earlier in the week, this dropped to between 1:30 and 1:35.

Tonight we go to Asturias which, unfortunately, looks to be where the rain is also going. All that is left is a 30 minute easy run tomorrow and a 20' sharpening run the morning of day before the race. My training has gone very well, I'm feeling pretty good just a slight runny nose and my big toe is still giving me some problems from when I tripped over back in January. If all goes well I will hopefully be able to beat my best time of 4:44 in the Lisbon Half Ironman on Saturday. My goal is to beat my best time for all of the legs of the triathlon individually: swim 36:23, bike 2:32:54, run 1:24:18. The transition times could also do with being cut down - I'm not sure why my T1 (first transition) time of about 5 minutes was noticeably longer than those around me - but I'm not going to try anything fancy like a jumping onto a moving bike or anything like that.

Tune back in on Saturday if you are curious to see how I got on.

Monday: nada not even nadar
Tuesday: 90' aero position on turbo trainer
Wednesday: commute by bike, 40' swim (10' easy, 20' @ 1:56, 10' easy)
Thursday: 3 x 15' aero position on turbo trainer @ 150-155 bpm
Friday: easy 60' swim, 30' run (15' @ 4:00, 15' @ 3:45)
Saturday: 60' aero position on turbo trainer @ 150-155 bpm + 30' run @ 3:50
Sunday: CLEAN AND PACK BIKE!
Monday: 7km @ 172 bpm (25:39)

New York Marathon 2013?

2013-04-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

I waited like an excited kid on Christmas day for 12 noon EDT (6 pm Madrid time) and by 12:03 EDT I had already applied for the 2013 New York Marathon. I've paid my $11 for what is now the fourth time and I find myself again in a lottery to see whether I get to run this year or not. I'm not sure whether the odds are better in the general lottery or in the one which I am in, for people with a qualifying time, for which there are only 2,000 slots and priority goes to those qualifying in NYRR races. I suspect my changes are slightly better but still far from certain - I tried to get the organizers to give me some idea by asking them how many time qualifiers they had in a normal year and, of those, how many were from NYRR races but, of course, they didn't answer as this information is worth a lot of money in terms of $11 "lottery tickets" that people like myself might otherwise not have bought.

Well, if not this year then next year for sure!

Lost lanes

2013-04-23T00:34:00.001-07:00

I have to make the disclosure that the book I am about to recommend is written by a friend of mine but that shouldn't make any difference: Jack Thurston is the presenter of the Bike Show on Resonance FM (104.4 in the UK) so he knows a thing or two about bikes. He's even been interviewed by my favourite blogger, BikeSnob NYC - what higher accolade is there in the biking world?

Lost Lanes is a collection of original cycle routes around London and the south of England with lovely photos (if only the weather was that good all the time) and interesting and engaging descriptions of the routes, together with recommendations for pit-stops (both for the bike and the stomach). The routes are grouped into different categories: for kids, for gourmets, for history, for hills etc, so it covers pretty much all the bases. Oh, and this being the year 2013, the book comes with downloadable tracks you can store on your GPS devices to ensure you don't get lost.

It has to be said that a lot of books of this type have been written but I can't say I have ever seen one in which so much thought and care has been put into the selection of the routes themselves. The descriptions really make them come out of the page and have even got me thinking about organizing a family holiday around them some time in the future. There is one route that I am particularly interested in trying - although probably running as part of training for a Marathon - which goes alongside the Regent's Canal, along the Greenway, through the Docklands and past the Millenium Dome.

You can preview the first pages of the book here.

Lisbon Half Ironman Week 7/9

2013-04-22T05:10:00.001-07:00

This was my "peak week" from which I worked backwards when I was designing my training plan. The key session was the brick on Sunday - more on that in a moment - but it has also been a good moment to see what kind of shape I am in. I started the week off with a very fatigued lower back and contractions around my left shoulder (which is separated by a torn ligament from an accident years ago) so I decided to see a physiotherapist. Mónica showed me some strengthening exercises (which I only found time to do once) and put on some Kinesio tape which I found helped.

Swim

I don't have too high expectations of my swimming as I haven't really been training very long or hard but I am starting to see some return on my investment. Now I have got the hang of my Garmin Swim watch (updating the firmware also helped) I can see a positive correlation between increased effort and pool speed and I am even seeing my times improving. The biggest obstacle for me as far as swimming goes has been a lack of motivation which I think stems from not having any way to measure my progress, however slow and humble that might be. The Swimnovate watch I used previously doesn't allow you to upload data to the computer for analysis (although the Pro version does) neither does it make it easy to see at what pace you are swimming the intervals.

On Monday I swam the Half Ironman distance (1,900 m) without stopping at a very comfortable pace (starting very easy and gradually working up to a sub HIM pace) and in less than 40 minutes. This might sound horribly slow but, considering that my Half Ironman swim times have been around 36-38 minutes in a wet suit drafting off other athletes and working much harder, I think that I can safely say that my swimming technique has improved. Another thing will be to see whether that translates into a faster time when I have to contend with the churn and chaos of thousands of other swimmers not to mention the tendency I have to veer off course.

On Wednesday I did a workout which was just the right level of challenge to feel satisfying without being too taxing. The idea was to break the Half Ironman distance into ever smaller chunks which I would swim at ever increasing speeds. Interestingly, the Garmin recorded the first two sets as a mix of freestyle with a bit of back stroke and breast stroke thrown in: I think that my technique became more consistent as I warmed up and swam faster. I was pleased to be able to swim each set faster than the previous and the total time (ignoring rest periods, of course) was 37 minutes, not much slower than my best HIM swim time of 36:23.

Swim Stroke	Distance	Time	Avg Pace	Avg Efficiency	Avg Strokes	SPM
Mixed	540	11:37.1	2:09	44	9	21.9
Mixed	460	09:17.1	2:01	41	9	21.8
Freestyle	360	06:56.4	1:56	39	8	20.3
Freestyle	260	04:40.8	1:48	37	8	21.6
Freestyle	140	02:22.6	1:42	35	8	22.7
Freestyle	100	01:39.0	1:39	34	8	23.6
Freestyle	40	00:34.0	1:25	29	6	22.9
TOTAL	1,900	37:07.0	1:57	40	8	21.7

On Friday, buoyed by my recent swimming success, I decided I would do a set of 15 minutes at my best guess as to what my Half Ironman pace would be. Normally the swimming pool is practically empty on a Friday but, 10 minutes into my 15 minute set, I was interrupted to move into another lane as a group class was starting which required the use of three of the six lanes of the pool. It would have been nice to have had some kind of warning. Slightly pissed off, I started a second interval of 5 minutes and just two lengths away from the end, I found my lane blocked by a guy who had just joined our lane and was standing next to the other person at the wall. I suppose I would have had to have stopped anyway, as we would have to pass from being two people going up and down each side to three people going round in circles, but the feeling of "circuitus interruptus" was so overwhelming that I tore off my swim cap and goggles, throwing them to the side and stormed out of the pool. I was a bit embarrassed afterwards at my obvious display of frustration but I find it hard enough to control my emotions at the best of times let alone when my heart rate is up and I am suffering. You have to be extra careful in the work gym not to piss other people off as you never know whether that person will be your boss in the future or not...

Bike

I went to work on my mountain bike on Thursday as well as doing my series (intervals) on the spinning bike at lunchtime. Over the last few weeks I had built up to doing a set of 9 lots of 4 minutes at a heart rate of around 170-172 bpm. I found this so tiring that I was a bit of a zombie afterwards - not helped by the fact that I continued to sweat profusely long after showering and donning my suit. I couldn't face even riding my bike back from the gym to the office so I convinced a friend of mine to give me a lift there, so tired was I. By home time I was feeling a bit better and, although I took it easy at first, I was sprinting through Pozuelo to my house by the end. The workout did take a bit of a toll on my back, though, so I limited my training on Friday to a short swim: the important thing was to be ready for the weekend.

So, as I've already said, the big workout of the week - no - the training cycle, was the brick of 2 and a half hours cycling and 1 hour running, including a fair amount of HIM intensity. Perhaps not the best day for it, being the day after my birthday (which, by the way, was appropriately "Record Store Day" - before being a triathlon-nerd I was a deejay in my spare time)... In an attempt to make the workout more appealing, I signed up for a local 10K race taking part in the forest that I often cycle through on the way to work. I figured that I could get up early, do my ride, run the 7 km to the start and treat the race as the higher intensity part of my workout. Dani gave me the idea as he was coming all the way from his house just to take part.

Now, in spite of having a degree in Mathematics, I have never been very good at subtraction. And I can't blame the G&Ts that I had the night before, because this plan was hatched some days prior to my birthday celebration dinner. Some way through the ride, I realized that I wasn't going to arrive before 10:45 am, in time to pick up my race number and toe the start line, but rather an hour after that. But then I thought that I had perhaps confused the start time and that, I had in fact, done the subtraction correctly, and that I had the time of 11 am in my head as the start time for setting off from my house after leaving the bike. It just so happened that it was a small detour to swing past the start on my way back home and, to my dismay, I arrived just before the start (during the 30 second silence in honour of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing) wearing my cycling shoes. I actually seriously contemplated leaving my bike with a race official and running the race in my socks! I realized that this would not have been a very wise idea, especially with my triathlon coming up, so I set off home and prepared myself mentally for doing my run on the treadmill instead. This meant thinking about what film I was going to put on this time in order to take my mind off things. I chose an unfortunately very bad recent adaptation of Hansel and Gretel* (according to IMDB, there were 5 made in 2013 alone) which had the double inconvenience of making my run even more boring as well as making me quite hungry watching people wolfing down cakes and sweets. Again, like last week, I had a gnawing urge to stop running as I was tired, bored and uncomfortable, but it wasn't too difficult to get to the end if I just waited for the time to pass. I was very tired in the afternoon, but not as tired (or indeed grumpy) as last week which was just as well as my parents were staying with us.

Unusually flat (in the middle) for Madrid

As far as the ride itself went, I did the middle section of an hour at an average pulse rate of 148 bpm (a bit on the low side) and an average speed of 34.1 kph, which translates into a HIM bike time of about 2 hours 38 minutes (without aerobars). It is very difficult to ride to a particular pulse rate because of its slow reaction to hills - I suppose this is why the power meter was invented - but I plan to race at about 150-155 bpm for the bike segment of the Lisbon triathlon. I got a bit lost a couple of times and ended up overtaking the same guy twice who then immediately latched onto my back wheel like a limpet both times. I know it shouldn't really bother me, but it does. I find it disconcerting that someone can keep up with me so easily when I am working that hard even if, intellectually, I know that the drafting effect is giving roughly a 10% advantage. Even so, I don't like the idea that they can hear how hard I am having to breathe. I took the same route back as I did last week but, this time, the annoying long hill was nothing like as daunting or energy sapping. The whole ride was just over 80 kms (and 500 m climbing) at an overall average speed of over 31 kph.

Run

As usual, Tuesday was series day both in terms of running series (intervals) and catching up on the TV series "The Following" that I put on while I ran on the treadmill. The ladder workout - which consists of running 1 minute, 2-3-2-1-2-3 at equivalents of 19, 18 and 17 kph - has become progressively easier the more times I have done it. The first time was in a gym in Canary Wharf with an incline of 1%; since then, as my treadmill isn't as powerful, I have replicated it using speeds of 18, 18 and 17.5 kph with inclines of 4.5%, 2.5% and 1%. I remember that the first time I did this version of the workout, I felt quite stiff the next day. Perhaps as a result of the hill running I did in Morocco and Andalucía, my legs are more accustomed to this. Whatever the case, I felt up to doing three ladders this time: it was hard but not overwhelmingly so. In fact, I even felt up to doing a mid tempo run the next day of 15' at Marathon pace (15 kph) followed by 15' at Half Marathon pace (16 kph).

The only other run I did (apart from the brick) was an hour and 40 minutes on Saturday morning. I was quite tired by this point in the week, I have to say, so I considered leaving my Garmin GPS watch behind, which I thought would only demoralize me. It was supposed to be an easy run and the rhythm shouldn't have been important, but I knew I would compare myself to the surprisingly fast 90' I did two weeks before. In fact, as I started running, I thought of writing on this blog that I was feeling my new age of 41 as an excuse. I ran down to the Casa del Campo where my route was cut ever so slightly short by yet another triathlon which was taking place there - I had to make up the extra time with a little loop around my house. I always find it psychologically much harder to keep on running once I have got to my house, rather like that time in the Marathon leg of the Brazil Ironman when I had to run past my hotel before getting to the finish line. However, I was very surprised to see that I had not only run the Half Marathon portion in less than 1 hour and 30 minutes, but I had run the whole way at an average pace of 4:10 per kilometre. It's a fairly hilly course (233 metres of climbing in 24 km) and some bits are quite technical, making it all the more surprising. I expect that if I had had my heart rate monitor on, my pulse would have been outside my aerobic zone by some way but - you may have noticed a shift in my philosophy lately - I am thinking more along the lines of "train slow, race slow; train fast, race fast" these days.

To be honest, I don't think that any one of the paradigms is right for everyone all of the time. "No pain, no gain", "train fast, race fast" or so called polarized training (only low or high intensity) are one-size-fits-all approaches. At the end of the day, there are conflicts between training speed, endurance and strength so the balance is always going to be tricky. The advantage of being a self-trained athlete is that I can play around with what suits me best. I think that the two most important things to take into account are consistency and variety which are as much in competition with each other as speed, endurance and strength. Consistency is necessary for your body to adapt to a training stimulus; variety is necessary if you want your body to continue to adapt and improve. For example, if you always run for an hour at 12 kph, you will become very efficient at doing just that, but not so good at running a 10K race flat out. In sports physiology jargon, I believe these two concepts are known as specific training (consistency) and base training (variety). So, right now the "train fast, race fast" mantra seems to be working for me, so I will stick with it until the marginal gains run out; maybe then I will return to polarized training. For now, I am interested to see whether I am able to coach myself to a Personal Best time in the Half Ironman, after having done so in all the other distances I run. (Not to take merit away from Jonathan, my ex-coach, from whom I have learnt a hell of a lot.)

Monday: 1900 m swim
Tuesday: 3 x (1'-2'-3'-2'-1'-2'-3' @ 3:10-3:20-3:30) run
Wednesday: progressive 1900 m swim, 30' run (15' @ 4:00, 15' @ 3:45)
Thursday: commute by bike, 9 x 4' @ 170 bpm on spinning bike
Friday: 30' swim (15' easy, 10' + 5' @ HIM pace)
Saturday: 100' run @ 4:10
Sunday: 2 h 30' bike (including 60' @ 150 bpm) + 60' run (20' @ 4:30, 40' @ 3:50)

* I thought this review from IMDB of the Hansel and Gretel film I saw was so good that I would copy it here (I hope that neither the author nor IMDB mind):

Oh My God., 2 February 2013

Author: Gilad Mitrani from Somewhere near you

Oh My God. This movie sucked a**. I feel as though I should kill myself now. This movie cannot be unseen. I will forever remember it as the worst movie i had ever laid eyes upon. My IQ burned by 20 points while my sense refuses to comprehend why was such an awful movie was ever written, filmed, acted, edited and finally released to the unsuspecting audience. The characters were unified in their stupidity, the character buildup was forced and felt unnatural. The visual effects seemed to have been created by an 8 year old boy using MS-Paint (and not in a good way). The acting was absolutely shameful and degrading. I feel sorry for all those involved in the making of this waste of time in film disguise.

hear my words, those responsible for the movie need be avenged!

WHY GOD? WHY!?

Lisbon Half Ironman Week 6/9

2013-04-15T01:15:00.001-07:00

I've come up with a theory as to why I find cycling hard so painful and yet I am able to maintain that level of discomfort for much longer than the equivalent while running. I think that my brain is "calibrated" to the sensory feedback from running - Dr Tim Noakes' idea of a "Central Governor" that uses this information to produce a sensation of effort and discomfort that forces us to slow down, both to avoid wasting energy that might be needed later (to outrun a lion for example) and to avoid irreparable damage. When running a Marathon we may somehow find the energy to run the last straight faster even though only minutes before we had been feeling so exhausted that we couldn't possibly run any faster. And, even if you then collapse over the finish line having spent what seems to be every last drop of energy, you still have enough left over to get back to the hotel. The idea is that the Central Governor is the key to how hard we can push ourselves and, ultimately, to how we pace ourselves in competition: training at intensity not only changes our physiology, it "re-calibrates" our brain in the depths of the subconscious to a new level of effort. So, based on this theory and the fact that I have done less high intensity training on the bike, I think that my brain generates a higher level of discomfort for a level of effort that is, in fact, easier to maintain than it seems. Perhaps all our brains are evolutionarily wired to running which is more energetically demanding and damaging to our muscles, tendons and bones than cycling. This might explain why the Tour de France is so widely considered to be a suffer-fest, even for those highly trained cyclists that take part in it. As far as I am concerned, I just have to remember that the pain in my legs will be relatively higher for the bike leg of the Half Ironman and that I will be able to maintain it for longer than it seems.

I do have another theory, though. On the bike I usually train in a particular heart rate zone. At first it seems impossible to get my heart rate up to where it should be because there is inevitably a lag. I find myself gritting my teeth and breathing harder in an effort to persuade my heart (and my head) that I really am working as hard as I am supposed to be. The fact I am focussing so much on how hard I have to work makes it seem much harder. On the other hand, if I run at a particular speed, at first it always seems surprisingly easy - the sensation of difficulty creeps up slowly on me and it is psychologically more bearable.

I had decided that this week I would do one of my aerobic tests, where I run 20 laps around the 350m running track all the while trying to keep my heart rate at a maximum of 172 bpm. Normally I try to do this test on fresh legs but, this time, I was already quite tired from the hard session on the spinning bike the day before, not to mention the accumulation of fatigue from the rest of the week of training. Nevertheless, I thought it would be interesting to see how I fared especially as a triathlon is all about running on tired legs. I had to slow down much more markedly and my heart rate was noticeably higher than usual so, in the end, I was over 30 seconds slower than last time, which translates into one and a half minutes over the Half Marathon distance. I'm not sure this really tells me very much so I'll probably do one last test (this time on fresh legs) just before the race, to see how my running speed has been affected by my triathlon training.

In fact, I was so tired on Friday - or rather, my back was - that I very nearly cried off my training on Saturday. I had real trouble getting to sleep because my back just felt tired in whatever position I was in. For once I'd actually arranged to train with a friend so I was a bit loathe to let him down by being a pansy. Luckily I woke up the next day feeling much better.

On Saturday morning I drove down to Griñón, on the way out to Toledo, to go for a ride with Dani. As its relatively flat round where he lives, I decided to take out the triathlon bike for a spin, complete with disc wheel and tubulars (if I had got a puncture, I would probably have had to call a taxi). It was so nice to have a change of scenery as well as some company. Buying my triathlon bike was a bit like having an orgasm - almost immediately afterwards all my desire to compete in triathlons vanished. Dani, with his enthusiasm for competing in what will be his first Half Ironman in Lisbon, reminded me of the excitement of taking part in a triathlon and re-charged my batteries to some extent. What also helped was having the best weather we have had in Madrid all year - a glorious day of sunshine which, together with an excess of wine, was a bit too much for me in the end and, as a result, my after lunch siesta lasted all the way through until the morning.

I woke up on Sunday not in the very best frame of mind to attack my most important workout of the week - the "brick" - but, again, it was a beautiful day so it was much easier to get out of the door. This time I took the road bike and managed to design a new route which avoided going through Brunete. I have nothing particularly against Brunete, but it is very difficult to go anywhere far on a road bike from where I live without passing through there and I have come to despise the rolling hills between Boadilla del Monte and Brunete that sap my speed and energy. I know most cyclists relish hills but, as you probably know, I hate them. What is the point of going down if you know you have to go up again? (It's probably not a very good idea to ask what the point of anything to do with cycling is.) This route inevitably had its hills but at least they were different ones. I was pretty tired by the time I got home and was seriously contemplating changing the brick into just a bike ride (i.e., skipping the run altogether) but I had everything set up to watch a film on the treadmill (Cube Zero - the prequel to the Cube films that amazingly I had not already seen). Training for triathlon feels so different from what I remember Marathon training to be. It didn't feel hard per se, running at 15.5 kph after nearly 3 hours of continual exercise, but the discomfort and associated desire to stop were more present in my mind than the effort needed to keep going. I thought of my friends who had just finished the Marathon des Sables and of what it must have been like to trudge for hours and days through the hot sands of the unchanging Sahara desert. The Marathon is just short enough to still be a race but anything longer feels to me more like a test.

Monday: 40' swim, 80' turbo trainer (including 60' aero)
Tuesday: 2 x (1'-2'-3'-2'-1'-2'-3' @ 3:10-3:20-3:30 etc)
Wednesday: 45' swim (15' easy + (3 x 5' HIM pace + 5' easy)), 45' aero position on turbo trainer
Thursday: commute by bike, 10 x 3' spinning @ 170 bpm
Friday: 7 km @ 172 bpm (27:02...)
Saturday: 120' triathlon bike
Sunday: 145' bike (including 50' @ 150 bpm) + 60' run (30' @ 4:30, 30' @ 3:50)

The most expensive running shoes for a professional Marathoner

2013-04-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, while you or I may be able to acquire these shoes for a little over €100, a professional Marathon runner would have to be prepared to pay thousands of euros to compete in them. This is because they would have to renounce the juicy sponsorship deals that the likes of Nike and Adidas pay them to cross the finish line while showing off their products.

Look at the size of those things

For example, Patrick Macau, the current Marathon World Record holder runs in Adidas Adizero Adios shoes which promise to be "feather light" at only 210 grammes each. The Vibram SeeYas, on the other hand, only weigh 136 grammes. There are, of course, other things to take into account than pure weight but I personally don't count among those their soft, energy absorbing soles. While it is true that elite Marathon runners have to tolerate both much larger volumes of training than I could imagine doing as well as much higher velocities which translate into significantly higher ground forces, they are also in correspondingly better physical condition. They also weigh much less, have much better natural elasticity but (probably) have less actual brute force leg strength than I do.

There seems to me be an extended myth that the cushioning of running shoes somehow returns energy. What I find bizarre is that this claim is made at the same time as saying that they help absorb energy and therefore prevent injury. One day if I find myself with a lot of spare time I'll try to work out the physics of it but my intuition tells me that the key here is elasticity: how much energy is returned and, most importantly, how quickly. Think about dropping a cricket ball on a hard floor, how quickly and high it bounces back. Then drop a tennis ball. Now a chicken sandwich. The elastic response of the sole somehow has to have packed into that relatively small space the same or better efficiency as the Achilles tendon, not only in terms of energy return but also in terms of rate of energy return. In a recent study of the physiology of elite Kenyan runners compared to non-athletic Caucasians, a significant difference in terms of elasticity of the Achilles tendon was noted, evidenced by higher rebound heights and shorter contact times.

In terms of unnecessary extra work done, the Adidas shoes - which, it must be said, are probably amongst the best of a bad bunch - require approximately 42,196 x 0.825 * (0.210-0.136) = 2,576 Nm which is equivalent to Patrick Macau having to climb an extra 46 metres vertically or about 19 flights of stairs after crossing the finish line of the Marathon. According to Ed Frederick - who, ironically enough, worked in the research department at Nike in the 80s - shaving 110 grammes off the weight of each shoe would lead to a Marathon time between 2 and a half and 3 minutes faster. If true, that would put Patrick Macau with his Marathon PB of 2:03:38 tantalisingly close to breaking the 2 hour barrier.

I look forward to the day when Marathons are run in true minimalist running shoes or, as Bikila did in the Olympic Marathon in Rome, barefoot. (For those of you who don't know the backstory, Abebe Bikila was a last minute substitute for the 1960 games for the injured Wami Biratu. Even back then the runners had to wear shoes made by the sponsors - in this case, Adidas - but they didn't have any in Bikila's size, so he decided instead to run the Marathon barefoot rather than in an ill-fitting pair. I find it quite ironic that it was because of a running shoe manufacturer and not in spite of one that the World got to see that it was possible to run a Marathon barefoot and win in record time.)

Maybe we should launch a Kickstarter project to sponsor the top Marathon runners in the World to wear whatever shoes (or not) they want to run in.

Lisbon Half Ironman Week 5/9

2013-04-08T01:25:00.003-07:00

I have a confession to make. I have gone back to one of my old habits. No, I haven't started smoking but I have started biting my nails or, to be more precise, biting my nail. I've at least managed to contain the damage to one nail but the habit has actually been creeping up on me insidiously over the last few months until I finally admitted to myself that evasive action was needed. That stuff that you paint on your nails that tastes disgusting is not enough - the point is that nail biting is a form of self harm which can be quite painful, so an unpleasant taste is hardly going to make any difference. I am having to wear a plaster on that finger until the nail becomes "regular" enough not to annoy me. Only then will I be able to break the vicious circle of being upset with myself for biting my nails and biting my nails because I am upset with myself.

This week was a return to triathlon training after a nearly two week long interruption due to travelling to London and holidays in Morocco. Unsurprisingly, going back to the swimming pool felt very much as it did when I first started up after the best part of a year of not swimming: boring as hell. I thought a bit about why I found swimming so boring and came to the conclusion that it was primarily a lack of motivation due to not being able to see any progress. Being an "early adopter" I of course already had a swimming watch which would count the laps for me and even the number of strokes I was doing per lap but it is extremely fiddly to use and offers no real means to analyse the data. With my birthday coming up, I decided that my wife's present to me would be the Garmin Swim watch and I would convince her to give it to me early...

So on Friday I was excited to get into the pool with my new watch. It is certainly much more intuitive to use but it does have a few drawbacks* as far as I am concerned. Firstly, it would be useful to be able to set up an alarm that beeps every certain number of laps or minutes: my goggles always fog up so I can't read the display very easily and I'd rather try to get "into the zone" and just swim without wondering how much further... It may be a question of configuring it properly but another feature which is important to me is to be able to see how well I am doing when I am resting at the wall; for some reason, the totals for the previous interval are not shown when you are in pause mode, only a bunch of zeroes for the interval you are about to commence. However, the most significant problem I had with it was that it didn't recognise my strokes as freestyle! This is because I have resisted learning how to do one of those fancy flips at the end of each length. I hate doing turns at the wall because I either get water up my nose, end up veering off in some random direction or feel as though I am running out of breath. Still, it's about time I learned to do it properly and the watch has given me the perfect reason to do it. Once the data is uploaded to the Garmin Connect webpage, it is very easy to analyse and it doesn't matter too much if a length here or there was mis-measured; it is still possible to measure quite accurately your speed and efficiency.

Although that brings me to my other gadget related news. While driving through some winding roads in the south of Spain en route to Morocco, one of the kids "vommed" on my computer and, since then, the trackpad has been behaving as though there was a colony of ants underneath. Apple were quite happy to replace the trackpad under the guarantee until they spotted the "water" damage. Now it will turn out to have almost been cheaper to have gone by plane (although, of course, the kids easily could have got sick on the plane). Until I get it back (any day now) I won't be able to analyse my workouts in much detail.

Probably the only workouts worth mentioning were the ones I did at the weekend. I went for what was supposedly an easy run of 90' on Saturday and ended up running slightly more than a Half Marathon in that time. Perhaps it was because the Madrid Half Marathon was being run on Sunday and I wasn't able to compete because it didn't fit in with my training plan. I was quite surprised that the run turned out to be so fast as it felt easy and had a reasonable amount of hills (not to mention some steps you have to walk up and down, adding at least 20 seconds each way). To think that it wasn't all that long ago that running a Half Marathon in less than an hour and a half was a goal in itself.

On Sunday my family decided to go skiing in the Sierra mountains of Madrid and I decided I would give it a miss. This meant that I had the luxury of being able to dedicate my whole day to executing my training plan of a "brick" of 2 hours cycling followed by 50 minutes running, including some Half Ironman intensity (40' cycling and 30' running). I got up leisurely, had breakfast and arranged everything for a smooth transition: I would do the run on the treadmill so I set up a film to watch (Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead"). Everything went pretty much to plan in spite of getting a bit lost on the bike and going on to a roundabout a bit too close to an oncoming car (I was too focussed on pedalling hard). Then I went for an extravagant lunch in a very pijo restaurant as a treat and finally flopped into bed for a siesta, waking up only minutes before my family returned from the slopes.

When I drew up my initial training plan for the Lisbon Half Ironman, I worked backwards from the hardest brick that I planned to do in training and made every week revolve around the brick, including a couple of quality workouts for running and bike speed. With the two week break from triathlon training, I had to skip a couple of bricks meaning that the jump in difficulty from the last one to the one I did yesterday was relatively large. The tiredness I felt (and, to be honest, still feel today) was quite different to the fatigue from training for a Marathon, which is much more muscular; this feels more like a depletion of energy and reminds me of how I felt when I was training for the Ironman. When training, I try to avoid taking in any gels and even try to keep my drinking to a minimum (although I will admit that I had a couple of biscuits between the bike and the run yesterday) but I may have to consider taking in some kind of energetic supplement as the bricks get longer and harder.

Monday: 60' easy swim, 60' aero position on turbo trainer
Tuesday: 70' run (2' @ 3:45, 3' @ 4:30)
Wednesday: 3 x (10' easy + 5' HIM pace) swim, 45' turbo trainer (15' easy, 15' HIM pace, 15' easy)
Thursday: 12 x 2' @ 170 bpm spinning bike
Friday: 30' swim, 30' aero position on turbo trainer
Saturday: 90' run @ 4:14
Sunday: 120' bike (40' @130 bpm, 40' @ 150 bpm, 40' @ 130 bpm) + 50' run (20' @ 4:30, 30' @ 3:50)

* UPDATE: After installing the new firmware on my Garmin Swim, at least two of my grievances with the device have been resolved. It is now possible to see the totals from the previous interval while in "rest mode" and it seems to recognize my idiosyncratic swimming style as freestyle much more of the time. In fact, after struggling to do the bloody somersault turns, I resorted back to my usual push-off and it seemed to work even more reliably. It would be nice if, as many other users have also commented, Garmin added time / distance alerts.

Lisbon Half Ironman Weeks 3 and 4/9

2013-04-01T02:17:00.000-07:00

It's always harder to fit in training when travelling or on holiday. In fact, it's also harder to update this blog, which explains my absence around these parts lately. I've been in London for another conference and then we went down by car all the way from Madrid to the Middle Atlas in Morroco for our Semana Santa (Easter) holidays.

I had to switch back into "running mode" as triathlon training really isn't very practical if you have neither access to a bike nor a swimming pool; running is also more time-efficient. One aspect of triathlon training that I have mentioned before on this blog is that you can cram in more training sessions per week by using one sport to recover from training for another. In other words swimming and cycling help you recover from running, running and swimming help you recover from cycling and cycling and running help you recover from swimming. In fact, last Saturday was the first day I had off from training in a month! It is worth remembering that "recovering" from training isn't just for "wimps", it also means adapting to training stimuli - in other words, this is the whole point about doing the training in the first place.There is, however, a common denominator to running, cycling and swimming and I find that my back gets fatigued after a while. I remember that this was the only physical limiter I encountered during my training for the Brazil Ironman: I wouldn't describe it as back pain exactly, but as a sensation of extreme tiredness that no position provides any relief from. I suppose that all the hours in the car didn't do my back any favours either. Then, with the return to pure running training, it was prudent to have at least one rest day per week; I ended up taking two partly because it is always harder to find time and motivation to train when on holiday.

A rare opportunity to dry out my kit

On the more positive side, a change of scenery injects a fresh sense of enjoyment into training. Also, most of the places I ran were very hilly which will have helped build up much neglected leg strength, as well as being at altitude which supposedly stimulates the growth of oxygen-carrying red blood cells (although for this I believe you have to be at altitude for longer than a few days). We ended up going to Ifrane - a slice of the Swiss Alps in the heart of Morroco - which is where many elite Morrocan athletes train as it is at an altitude of about 1,700m. We stopped to have a look at the athletics track where, a year and a half ago, I went as part of a training camp with my trainer Jonathan and an elite Morrocan athlete, Youness Ait (Half Marathon in 1:03!). Thanks to my Garmin watch, we were able to go on a trek with the family, re-tracing the cross-country route we ran that time. I would have liked to have gone to see Youness - who has since had to return to Morroco where, unfortunately, he is currently unable to make a living from athletics - but Midelt was just too far from where we were staying.

Another thing that is very difficult to control on holiday, of course, is what you eat. I've yet to see how I have faired in that department as my bathroom scales have run out of batteries, so often have I been weighing myself lately. I remember being quite shocked at how much the other guys on that training camp controlled what they ate: I'd assumed they were so skinny and light due to their genetic make-up and the amount of training they did.

I did manage to do a good quality interval training (series) session in Fez. I found a nice kilometre long stretch of boulevard with a wide pavement; the only downside was that it was pouring with rain at the time. I hit all my pace targets and more except for the very last set of two minutes at 3:20 min/km (18 kph) which I completed at a pace of 3:28, partly due to tiredness but also due to loss of traction from the wet pavement and having to avoid turning cars etc. I got the impression that people looked much more at what I was wearing on my feet than is usually the case in Europe - maybe people are more accustomed to sizing up status by the quality of one's footwear or perhaps my bare legs simply attracted attention. Of course, my Vibram Five Fingers caused a ripple of giggles wherever I went. I'm very happy with the Spyridon model which I have been using to train in - they seem very robust and are equally good on rough terrain as for running fast on asphalt.

I've also continued to use my PowerBreathe device fairly religiously - 30 breaths twice a day - and have progressed steadily from 30RM (30 Repetition Maximum or "failure to get a satisfying breath after 30 reps") at a load of 1.5 to a 30RM load of 3.5. I've found it helps to try to use my diaphragm to initiate the breath (in fact, this is exactly what the inventor of the device, Alison McConnell, encourages you to do) but it is absolutely not true that you don't break into a sweat when using it! It may be very convenient to be able to carry the device around in a pocket and the training itself only lasts a few minutes but the only problem is that it is not something you can really do in public, not even in the gym and especially not in a public toilet unless you are extremely un-self-conscious. I find that the car is usually the only place private enough (not while driving, obviously!) but it is better to use the device while standing up rather than sitting down.

Of course, the main casualty of my weeks away was the "brick" (Bike-Run) that is to triathlon training as the long run is to Marathon training. Still, I have another 5 weeks to build up to my longest planned brick of 2 and a half hours bike + one hour run.

Week 3/9
Monday: 2x60' aero position on turbo trainer
Tuesday: aerobic test 7km @ 172bpm (26:24) + 45' swim
Wednesday: 20 km @ 4:09 (London)
Thursday: 20 x (30" max + 30" rest) on indoor bike (London)
Friday: 45' @ 4:21 (London)
Saturday: -
Sunday: 90' run with hills (Ronda)

Week 4/9
Monday: 60' run with hills (Chefchaouen)
Tuesday: 60' @ 4:09 (Fez)
Wednesday: 8' @ 3:38, 5' @ 3:32, 2' @ 3:17, 8' @ 3:43, 5' @ 3:38, 2' @ 3:28 (Fez)
Thursday: -
Friday 75' progressive run at 1,300-1,700m altitude (last 20' @ MP) (Azrou)
Saturday: 120' @ 4:40 at 1,300-1,700m altitude (Azrou-Ifrane)
Sunday: -

Lisbon Half Ironman Week 2/9

2013-03-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

In spite of getting another head cold (probably from being underdressed when I ran with Chema Martínez) to the point of completely losing my voice, I am quite pleased with how this week has gone. Apart from doing a couple of reasonably hard quality sessions (9 x 1,000 running at 17 kph and 2 x 6-5-4 minutes at 150-160-170 bpm on the spinning bike) I managed to ride an hour without breaking the aero position on the turbo trainer as well as swim for an hour without stopping. I also did a couple of sessions in the pool mixing in a bit of Half Ironman pace for example, 4 x 10 minutes easy + 5 minutes at HIM pace or 2 x 15 minutes easy + 15 minutes at HIM pace. It's hard to say whether this would really be my pace but, in the pool, it worked out at the equivalent of about 35 minutes for 1,900m.

Just as in Marathon training the long run is the pinnacle of the week's training, the most important workout for a long distance triathlon (in my opinion) is the "brick" which, this week, consisted of 90 minutes on the bike followed by 50 minutes running, of which the last 20 minutes were run at 3:45 min/km (16 kph) pace. Round here it is fairly hilly so there is no such thing as an "easy ride" and, in any case, I've decided to do my lighter rides at 130-140 bpm (as opposed to the 123 bpm at which I did mostr of my Ironman training two years ago). I'm not 100% convinced that my thresholds on the bike should be so much lower than for running and I'm also not convinced of the benefits of really low intensity riding, especially when I don't really have enough time to dedicate to it. The reason why the aerobic and anaerobic thresholds should be lower is because less muscle mass is used in cycling compared to running. On the other hand, when you are climbing on the bike it has more to do with running than cycling on the flat as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, most of this week I'll be in London at another conference. I just hope I get my voice back by Friday when I have to give a talk. As far as training goes I guess I won't get much of a chance to cycle or swim but that's OK by me...

Monday: 2 x 15' easy + 15' HIM pace swim + 30' aero position on turbo trainer
Tuesday: 9 x 1,000 @ 3:45 running
Wednesday: 3 x (10' easy + 5' HIM pace) swim + 8 km running
Thursday: commute by bike + 2 x 6'-5'-4' @ 150-160-170 bpm on spin bike
Friday: 60' swim + 60' aero position on turbo trainer
Saturday: 75' running
Sunday: 90' bike + transition to 30' @ 4:30 + 20' @ 3:45 running

Total hours: approximately 11.5

Another barrier broken

2013-03-14T07:33:00.002-07:00

Although this one is a bit of a silly one. I've noticed lately that my weight has been going down - its around 83 kilos right now - but after a particularly sweaty session, I was seeing 80.5 kilos and I thought it must be possible to break the 80 kilo barrier. Today sweated loads doing my series on the spinning bike and, just for good measure, spent about 5 minutes in the sauna afterwards. Here is the result

That's me + iPhone (without iPhone I weighed 78.8 kilos!)

To put this in perspective: I haven't been this side of 80 kilos in 20 years! Although I should say, that when I did last weigh less than 80 kilos it was without having to lose several kilos in sweat beforehand.

Running 1km+ with Chema Martínez

2013-03-14T04:54:00.000-07:00

As a result of buying a couple of "Buffs" I was entered into a lottery in which I stood to win a training session with Chema Martínez, the former European 10,000m Champion.I was only one number off winning a slot (I had 230 and 231 but 232 was one of the winning numbers) so I thought nothing more of it. Nevertheless, I was offered someone else's winning number (presumably they weren't as psyched as me to run with a top Spanish athlete) and so I had to actually go home for my running kit as I had only planned to go swimming. I was in such a rush that I forgot that, in Spain, being changed and ready at 12:45 means something different to its literal translation into English. Before we headed out of the door, there was a quick photo-op in which I felt like a superstar, having all the cameras flashing at me, or rather at Chema who was standing by my side.

I asked him if the new fashion in elite running circles was to run with untied shoelaces and he remarked on my equally unusual choice of footwear, saying that he thought they were very "aggressive". He told me that he had difficulties even adapting to his racing flats before a major competition due to a plantar fasciitis but then he runs about three times as many kilometres a week than I do (as well as a lot faster), so it's perhaps not surprising. Still, I am waiting for the day that Vibram or Vivobarefoot sponsor a top athlete - maybe then we can see some records fall.

The other thing that struck me about seeing him in the flesh is how skinny he is, especially his legs. They must be so efficiently packed with muscles because, at first sight, you wonder how he has the strength to run up a hill, let alone run 10,000m in 28:08. He told us that he currently weighed 62 kilos but that his "racing weight" was 59 kilos. I wonder where he can possibly lose three kilos (although his shoes would be a good start).

We set off at a fairly good but obviously easy pace and ran about 7km in a group. Everyone in the group was clearly used to running (unlike the time we ran with Fernando Alonso, who evidently has a wider fan club). In fact, I wasn't even the only one running in Vibram Five Fingers - the two of us made for a fairly unrepresentative sample of the general population.We then stopped for a session on running technique in which he emphasized all the aspects which are common to any school of running technique: balance, posture, coordination, active landing on ball of foot. Having said that, we ended up doing some pretty ridiculous drills. The drills weren't ridiculous in themselves, of course, but I at least felt and must have looked so.

To finish off, we ran "1 kilometer more" with him and this time he let rip. OK, he was probably just jogging (or "trotting" as they say in Spanish) but we got up to around 18 kph (downhill but into a very strong headwind...). Of course Chema took the full brunt of the headwind and I tucked in behind him and another guy from the group. It was a nice illusion to think that we were there really in contention for a win but of course nobody even bothered to challenge him, we would only have been either shown up (unlikely) or it would have been like when your dad let you win your first game of chess.

I've heard a lot about Chema's charisma but it was nice to experience it at first hand. He seems genuinely to enjoy his sport and the social aspect of it. In fact, while he was having all his achievements read out in the photo shoot, he interrupted to describe himself as "un corredor de populares" (someone who likes to run local amateur events). Actually, in the last race I saw him win, he was dressed as Santa Claus... So now I have run with Chema Martínez and Fernando Alonso, I have only to run with Mariano Rajoy...

By the way, you can buy the Buff as well as other merchandise from "Corre 1km+" from this website but, unfortunately, they only deliver to Spain and Portugal. I have to say that the Buff is a fantastic invention.

Results of VO2 Max test

2013-03-12T02:11:00.002-07:00

The results more or less tally with what I would expect: my anaerobic threshold is definitely around 178 bpm (this is the point when my breathing takes on a life of its own) and I would expect my aerobic threshold to be higher than it used to be. It's interesting to see that my RQ (Respiratory Quotient) or, what is strictly speaking the RER (Respiratory Exchange Quotient) - the ratio between volume of O2 inhaled and CO2 exhaled - is exactly what one would expect. A RER of 100% means that the body is deriving all its energy from carbohydrate metabolism, a value of 70% means all the energy is coming from metabolism of fat and so a value of 85% equates to half and half, which is what you would expect at the aerobic threshold. When I did this test 5 years ago, however, the RER at maximum effort was 124% and 100% at my aerobic threshold. Some of this could be due to metabolism of proteins but it is more likely to be due to the CO2 being hotter and occupying more volume as a consequence. I believe that this is one of the reasons that RER is not considered to be a reliable measure of metabolism while exercising. (Incidentally, Wikipedia says that animals can have a RER > 100% if they are storing energy in preparation for hibernation!) The RQ, measured in "moles" (quantities of atoms), is a much more accurate guide but is obviously much harder to determine. Anyway, the point is that my organism has obviously adapted to burning more fat over the last 5 years, which would also help explain how I was able to run a Marathon at my aerobic threshold velocity recently but I was a long way off running a Marathon at my then aerobic threshold pace 5 years ago.

Compare with 5 years ago, the most significant difference, of course, is the velocity at which I ran. This means that my Running Economy has improved. That doesn't really tell you anything you didn't know before because, by definition, your Running Economy is how fast you can run per rate of O2 consumption at a particular threshold, so it conveniently encapsulates everything that VO2 Max tests can't tell us. Another thing that has clearly improved is the rate at which my heart recovers after exercise but, more importantly, my aerobic threshold both as a percentage of VO2 Max and as a percentage of maximum heart rate has increased. This means that I am able to perform at closer to my maximum levels while still being "aerobic".

Just as the training recommendations I was given 5 years ago were extremely optimistic (I would say they are more or less right for how I am now) the new recommendations are equally bullish:

It suggests that I do my easy runs at Marathon pace, my long series at the pace at which I do my short series and my short series at 20 kph! Still, the important thing here to focus on are the relative aspects.

Powerbreathe, Breathe Strong

2013-03-11T06:56:00.000-07:00

Back in the days when I was even more obsessed with training than I am now, I bought one of these:

Actually, now I come to think of it, watching the free DVD that came with it was the first time I had ever heard of an Ironman. Little was I to know then, that I would be bitten by that bug. Needless to say, I have barely used this gadget since I bought it.

As Alison McConnell (inventor of Powerbreathe) says in her book, "Breathe Stronger - Perform Better", this is an example of where common sense prevails over science in that common wisdom has it that breathing limits our performance (unlike, for example, the idea that doing stomach crunches somehow "burns" abdominal fat). Science for a long time has maintained that there is no performance benefit to be gained from breathing training, based on the fact that our blood (at sea level, at any rate) is always at least 99% oxidized.

Alison argues that, while it may not be possible to increase oxidation of the blood, the breathing muscles themselves can be trained to better resist fatigue - again, contrary to the scientific assumption that the breathing muscles, unlike any other muscles in our body, are somehow super-evolved or super-trained to never fatigue. Specific tests show otherwise and, it turns out, that it is more critical to train the inspiratory (not inspirational) breathing muscles than the expiratory ones. This is because the inspiratory muscles must work harder as the lungs expand, while the expiratory muscles benefit from elasticity (and, to some extent, gravity) so the inspiratory muscles will always be the first to fatigue. Training these muscles has been shown to delay fatigue and even increase depth of breathing but, interestingly, attempts to train both inspiratory and expiratory muscles in the same breath cycle have had little or no impact on either, perhaps due to the added difficulty associated with performing the exercise. The reason she offers to explain why these muscles are not sufficiently trained as a by product of functional training is that the stresses are only enough to stimulate an adaptation at the end of a race or maximal effort which is for too short an amount of time to really have an effect.

The next question she tackles is whether breathing muscle fatigue affect performance in sports. Firstly, of course, there is the obvious idea that we feel discomfort with breathlessness and tend to slow down as a result. But what I found extraordinary is that recent studies have demonstrated something called the metaboreflex which is a reduction in the volume of blood to the limbs caused by breathing muscle fatigue! It seems that evolution has built in a physiological mechanism to slow us down, perhaps to avoid catastrophic failure in the breathing muscles. A third consideration is that the breathing muscles are not only used for breathing but also for core stability and, in some cases such as rowing, they even contribute to the propulsion itself (by the stiffening of the trunk). While the expiratory muscles are often well trained by those wanting to have a "six-pack", the inspiratory muscles are overlooked.

The training itself involves setting the Powerbreathe device such that you can only just manage to complete 30 breaths. These breaths should be as fast and as deep as possible (as the rib cage and lungs expand, the force required increases) and let out slowly. I had to start on 1.5 (out of 10!!) on my device (which is level 3) and am now on about 2 after a week or so. The scientific studies show an improvement of 2-4% in speed in a time trial versus 20%-50% increase in time to failure across a number of sports (running, cycling, swimming and rowing) after as little as 4 weeks of 30 breaths, twice a day. Arguably, the best benefit should be seen in swimming where there is no option to breath with a higher cadence when more oxygen is required and the depth of breathing is much more significant.

I'm not sure whether I will really notice a benefit but the book is certainly convincing. I haven't seen many people talking about using Powerbreathe but the science behind it is relatively new and has yet to penetrate the public domain (although there is, predictably, already an iPhone App available!). If it just helps me in those final few hundred metres of a race when I have sometimes started to wheeze out of breathlessness, then that is good enough for me. It is a relatively small investment both in terms of price (around 50 pounds) and time (6 minutes a day). I'll let you know if I manage to get much higher on the scale of 1-10!

Lisbon Half Ironman Week 1/9

2013-03-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

My idea for this week was to be a sort of anti-taper: not too strenuous but enough to get me back in the swing of training again. I also wanted get a feel for the different intensities on the bike, now that I don't really have anyone or any tests to guide me. If I have had doubts about doing so much low intensity running, I have never really been convinced about training on the bike at such low heart rates, even if they were scientifically measured. If the goal of low intensity training is to train the body to burn more fat than carbohydrate, I feel that I am doing OK on that front after my Marathon experiences recently. On the other hand, if the aim is to ensure that the high quality sessions are performed adequately then I don't think I need to worry: I am training much less than my body is capable of absorbing at the moment. I can't help thinking of what multiple Ironman World Champion Chrissie Wellington says about this topic: "If you train slow, you race slow". It is the opposite philosophy to that of her male counterpart Mark Allen who famously trained at very low heart rates.

Another challenge this week was to start swimming again. The first session on Monday was torture, even at a slow pace. I felt like it would never end, it was tiring and the guy with a hydrodynamic disadvantage due to an oversized belly in the lane next to me was gliding past me. The second session was much better so I hope that swimming 1,900 m at a reasonable pace will seem a lot less daunting by the time the race comes around.

I did a fair amount of quality work this week. On Tuesday I did 8 lots of 4 minutes running at 3:40 mins/km (16.5 kph) and on Thursday I had the VO2 Max test. On Friday I did some series on the bike. I had planned to do two lots of 6, 5 and 4 minutes at heart rates of 140, 150 and 160 bpm respectively. I ended up hitting heart rates about 10 bpm higher, finishing at well over 170. As I say, I'm still not completely convinced that my thresholds should be lower on the bike than while running, even if the tests say it is so.

On Saturday I ran for an hour on the treadmill, going from 4:30 min/km (13.5 kph) to 4:00 min/km (15 kph) while watching Stitches, an extremely gory comedy / horror film. My wife ended up watching it by accident and was a bit perturbed by her husband's choice of entertainment. It helps me get through the boredom and discomfort of running on the treadmill, what else can I say? On Sunday I did my first "Brick": an hour on the turbo trainer in the aero position followed by 15 minutes running at 4:00 (15 kph) and 15 minutes at 3:45 (16 kph). Incredibly I managed to get a puncture while riding on the turbo trainer! Discounting this unwanted interruption I was able to ride for about 15 minutes at a time in the aero position, taking just a minute break to recover. I'm more confident about being able to tolerate this for 2 and a half hours than I am about the swim at the moment!

(By the way, I was unable to finish watching the film I put on for my brick ride - Excision - not because it was too gory, but because my headphones were giving me an electric shock in my ears due to all the sweat. It is not a very nice sensation, I can assure you!)

The New York Marathon Resolution Resolution

2013-03-08T00:49:00.002-08:00

So, finally, the guys at NYRR have published the conditions for entry to the 2013 New York Marathon over at ingnycmarathon.com. But, as usual, they have managed to do so in their usual ambiguous style. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking on my part but I interpret

"Applicants who would have qualified for the 2013 Marathon entry by being denied entry three consecutive times..."

to mean those who were denied entry via lottery in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and / or those who were denied entry via lottery in 2009, 2010 and 2011 but unable to run in 2012 because of the Sandy Super Storm. I fall into this latter category but I, like everyone else in my situation, was given the option to get my money back, which I did. So if the intention is to include people like myself, there will be a backlash from those who chose instead to pay again for guaranteed entry in 2013. I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't be eligible for guaranteed entry in 2013 although there is a clear bias towards those who have shown a consistent commitment to NYRR.

The other possibility open to me is to get in on my qualifying time of 1:19:03 in the Getafe Half Marathon that I ran on the 27th of January. For my age group of 40-44, this is well below the cut-off of 1:23:00 and is within the window of 1st January 2012 to 31st January 2013. They have not changed the previously published qualifying times (that were already a step up from those which applied in 2012) but they have given guaranteed entry to only those qualifying in NYRR races while limiting to a total of 2,000 runners who may obtain entry with a qualifying time. Those, like myself, who have qualified in a non-NYRR race will be picked out of a hat. The odds don't look too good to me; I would have preferred them to have made the qualifying times more strict but, again, their aim seems to be to reward loyalty rather than quality.

I'm not in a particular rush to run the NY Marathon. After all, I have patiently waited 4 years so a couple more years won't hurt. I will be going to New York in June for work so I'll get my dose of the Big Apple this year irrespective of whether I get lucky or not.

UPDATE: The lottery entry does not apply to people like myself, who opted for their money back. It's to be expected I suppose - I mean, someone's got to lose out and we were given the (albeit expensive) option to run it this year, paying again. My only complaint would be that in my opinion the people who get in via qualifying times should be ordered by how much they beat the qualifying time by, rather than randomly selected, similar to the selection process for the Boston Marathon.

Cardiac stress test / VO2 Max test

2013-03-07T11:11:00.001-08:00

Now that I no longer have a trainer, I also no longer have periodic VO2 Max tests although, for a completely different reason, I have been doing a number of cardiac stress tests which follow a similar protocol. I decided to pay a visit to my local Reebok Sports Club where, 5 years ago I did a series of medical and physiological tests to make sure I wasn't literally going to kill myself by training too hard. The results I got at the time were surprisingly good considering I had only stopped smoking and started exercising 4 months previously. I remember that they thought that the spirometer (which measures lung capacity) was broken because the reading it was giving was "too high".

There were several reasons for wanting to go back. Firstly, I wanted to take a snapshot of where I am now, after having recently achieved personal best times in 10K, Half Marathon and Marathon, so that I can use the results as a benchmark in the future. I was also curious to see how much I had improved in terms of thresholds, maximum heart rate and VO2 Max, etc., in the last 5 years. Although I have done a number of tests in the interim, very few of them were conducted up to my maximum because I typically had a competition looming for which it wasn't convenient to push myself too hard. The cardiac stress tests I had done recently also fell short of my maximum because they were based off the inaccurate formula of 220-age for maximum heart rate. What I was mostly interested in, though, was to see whether the abnormality that had been detected in my heart function (a CRBBB - a tongue-twisting Complete Right Branch Bundle Block) was something that I had developed in the last five years - perhaps as a direct result of my training - or something genetic. I'll also admit that I relish any excuse to go to the Reebok Sports Club - it is by far the swankiest gym I have ever been to and you never know if you are going to see someone famous...

According to the records, the CRBBB was not present in the tests I did 5 years ago. As last time, I was connected up to a cardiogram and made to wear a mask which measures the rate of oxygen - carbon dioxide gas exchange in my breathing. In other words, I did a cardiac stress test and a VO2 Max test at the same time. The O2 - CO2 exchange is a way of measuring what proportion of your energy you are deriving from metabolising carbohydrates or from fats. From this you can estimate where your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds are which are useful indicators for training purposes. The device is also able to measure the absolute volume of O2 that you are able to make use of or "burn" - this is the famous VO2 Max (once it has been divided by your weight). Unlike the other cardiac stress tests I had done recently, the protocol was to increase the speed while keeping the incline at 1%, until I could no longer keep pace.

When the doctor stopped the test, I felt as though I could have gone through at least one more increase and so I was still giving her the "thumbs up" - I felt sure that I couldn't be at maximum heart rate, especially as I hadn't been anywhere near that level for years. I was also convinced that the treadmill speed was much less than the 20 kph that I actually finished at. It turned out that both my O2 consumption and my heart rate had plateaued so continuing the test wasn't going to tell us anything we didn't already know. Compared with 5 years ago, my maximum heart rate had dropped a couple of pips to 190 bpm, my VO2 Max had increased from 68.02 ml/min/kg to 68.92 ml/min/kg and the speed at VO2 Max had increased from 18 kph to 20 kph. Some of my improvement in VO2 Max comes from a slight loss in weight but, relative to the general population, I should have expected a general decline in VO2 Max, rather than an increase. Actually, I just checked it - the difference is exactly due to my change in weight but the measurement of litres of O2 per minute was rounded to the nearest 0.1 (5.7 litres/min in both cases).

The CRBBB showed up on the cardiogram, of course, but the doctor said that it was very common amongst athletes and that I shouldn't worry about it other than doing regular checkups. From my own Googling, it looks like the Complete RBBB is still relatively uncommon in athletes (3%) while an Incomplete RBBB is much more common (9%); in both cases the incidence is higher than in the general population (in total about 1.5% of people between 40 and 65). I had thought that the word "block" meant that one of my arteries or veins was actually blocked but what it really refers to is a slightly faulty electrical system. When the heart beats, there is a concert of coordinated electrical impulses which cause it to pump blood around the body. The block refers to a delay (which, if it is greater than 120 ms, is considered to be a "complete block") in the electrical impulse to the right ventricle. According to the article I mentioned, this seems to be associated with a dilation of the right ventricle as a specific adaptation of the heart to exercise. The way I understand it which, of course is likely to be completely wrong, is that the right ventricle is not activated directly but more as a consequence of the prior sequence of contractions; a Left BBB is much more serious, however. The only thing to be careful about is that the defect is not due to some degenerative type of heart disease which might lead to more serious problems further down the line.

Disclaimer: If you have a similar condition then you should know better than to trust anything written on the internet rather than a qualified cardiologist!

Barefoot running... yawn!

2013-03-06T09:37:00.000-08:00

Why is it that everything has to be taken to extremes? I suppose just the term "minimalist running shoe" is an extreme by definition and I'm not quite sure what "barefoot running shoes" are other than an oxymoron. When I see so much nonsense about things that I consider I know a fair bit about, it makes me wonder how much I take for granted when I read about something I know nothing about.

The latest trend seems to be "barefoot bashing" with a whole slew of articles saying something along the lines of "barefoot running is not the panacea we thought it was". I don't think anybody - not even Chris McDougal in "Born to Run" - has ever seriously claimed that running barefoot or in minimalist shoes is the solution to everything and for everyone. They have, however, questioned the claims of the running shoe industry that more cushioning and less flexibility is better and - guess what - the running shoe manufacturers have responded with more flexible and less padded options.

I was passed this article from the New York Times today by a friend. It quotes a "scientific study" in which half of the participants are given a pair of Vibram Five Fingers to run in while half continue to run in their usual trainers. The supposedly clever bit is that the VFF group is told to gradually adapt to minimalist running by only running one mile in them the first week, two miles the second, three the third and then as much as they like after that. After 10 weeks - surprise, surprise - the VFF group showed signs of stress fractures.

What is "scientific" about that? How long does the body need to adapt to running with minimalist running shoes? Can you safely mix running in normal shoes and minimalist shoes or should you train in progressively more minimalist shoes? Is running one or two miles in minimalist shoes enough to stimulate training adaptations such as stronger muscles, bones and tendons in the lower legs and feet?

I can't really say whether minimalist running shoes are the solution, I can only speak from personal experience of my experiment of one. After basically making the same mistake and suffering the same consequences as the participants in the aforementioned study, I first re-learnt how to run on the balls of my feet and then gradually reduced the cushioning of my shoes and increased the flexibility over a period of about two years. I haven't had a single running related injury (touch wood) in over three years since that time I tried to make the transition too brusquely. This time around it wasn't my goal to be able to run a Marathon in Vibram Five Fingers but it became a natural consequence of the direction I was going in.

Would I recommend minimalist running to someone else? Well, it depends. Many people ask me about it and I have a few friends who are at various different points along the same path that I trod: some of them have already found their optimum and are staying there; others have gone all the way just short of barefoot. But they are in the great minority of my running friends. I tell most people that you have to have a very good reason for making the change because it takes a lot of time and patience and therefore a lot of faith. I think it is one of the best investments I have made and am convinced that I am much faster and injury free as a result and, most importantly, I believe that I have done my knees an enormous favour that will keep them going well into my old age.

All this has reminded me of something. When I first started to run (after many years of inactivity) I thought that some pain was part of the training process and that it was not only OK to run through it most of the time but that it was a necessary evil. Now, with hindsight, I can say that pain is absolutely unnecessary - in fact, if something hurts while you are running then you should stop and, if something hurts before, then you shouldn't even start. The runners in the VFF group should not have been given a rigid prescription - after all, everybody responds to training differently - but absolutely should not have run with pain, which they evidently did.

Headphone killer

2013-03-06T00:39:00.002-08:00

I used to get through headphones more quickly than I got through running shoes until I bought the Senheiser PMX80

which, for some reason, have lasted for about 4 years and still appear to be going strong.What kills the headphones is the sweat and I sweat much more than the average person when I am working out. Perhaps Senheiser inadvertently created the equivalent of the everlasting light bulb and have withdrawn this model from the market as a consequence; I don't know whether the more recent models are as resilient. Being waterproof is not necessarily enough to protect against the evils of sweat: sweat can transform into vapour and is also corrosive. One of my iPods has been visibly eaten away around the headphone socket: the sweat must have condensed on the headphone cable and run down to the socket.

I also used to kill iPods and have got through several of them - especially the early iPod Shuffles - but it seems as though Apple has managed to solve the problem as - touch wood - I haven't had to replace any for years. The reason I wanted to change headphones is because I like to be able to change the song I am listening to while I am running. I usually have a playlist of songs that are all between 175 and 185 bpm to synchronize with my cadence but not all of those songs are good for running to.

So I bought myself the Jaybird Freedom Wireless Bluetooth headphones when I was in New York back in November last year.

These guys are so bullish on being sweat-proof that they offer a lifetime replacement guarantee for sweat damage. They may come to regret this now that I have a pair. I would say that I have worn them running around 10 times since I bought them and they have already conked out. Luckily, I bought them in Best Buy who I was able to call and get to send me an email copy of the receipt (which, of course, I had thrown away or lost). The headphones are very cool but if I am going to have to send them back every few months they will lose some of their appeal. With the next pair I will restrict myself to only using them outdoors where I sweat much less (due to the cooling effect of the air).

If any companies are looking for a beta tester to test their supposedly sweat-proof gadgets, then look no further, I'm your man...

Training plan for Lisbon Half Ironman 2013

2013-03-04T09:08:00.000-08:00

Race Objective
I would like to try to beat my best time of 4:44 (36:23, 2:35:20, 1:24:18 + 8:26 in transitions). As the whole point of doing this triathlon is to try out my (now not so) new triathlon bike, I'd like to push the bike leg and hope that the miles I have in my legs from running will carry me through to the finish line. I don't expect to improve on the swim but, equally, I don't see why it should be any worse; the bike, I reckon I can shave off 10 minutes and another 4 from the run (taking into account that the course is about 800m short). My realistic but challenging goal would be to break 4:30 but I will be happy with any improvement, especially on the bike leg. Bear in mind that I did the time of 4:44 in the middle of training for an Ironman, for better or for worse.

Training Objectives
- Convert endurance from Marathon training into endurance for an event that will last between 4:30 and 5:00 hours
- Maintain as much as possible running speed from the last year of running focussed training
- Practice swimming technique and get used to swimming for up to an hour without stopping
- Improve upper body strength
- Get used to aero position on the bike
- Develop bike speed
- Take advantage of commuting by bike when possible

I'd like to dedicate around 12 hours a week to this for the next 9 weeks with an absolute top of 15 hours at the peak. One advantage of triathlon training is that you can use one sport to help recover from another: in other words, less days off. In any case, unlike the training plan I drew up for the Marathon, I don't have a clear idea of how much of a Triathlon training load I can handle nor where my thresholds are, so I will have to improvise somewhat. Working backwards from the "peak week" (#7), this is a best guess. I'll see how the first few weeks go (especially on the bike) and may have to make some adjustments accordingly.

Key Workouts
- Swim for 45-60 minutes, 3 times a week
- Turbo training in aero position for 60-90 minutes
- Series (intervals) and threshold runs
- Series on spinning bike
- Longish run of 90-100 minutes
- Long brick (Bike and Run) including sections at Half Ironman intensity
- Aerobic test (7 km at heart rate of 172 bpm) to gauge progress

Quality, week by week
Week #1 - Series (Run), Series (Bike), Progression run, Brick
Week #2 - Series (Run), Series (Bike), Long run, Brick

Week #3 - London, Series (Bike), Aerobic test, Brick

Week #4 - Semana Santa, Series (Run), Progression run, Brick

Week #5 - Series (Run), Series (Bike), Long run, Brick

Week #6 - Series (Run), Series (Bike), Aerobic test, Brick

Week #7 - Peak week, Series (Run), Series (Bike), Long run, Brick

Week #8 - Taper, Series (Bike), Threshold Run, Brick

Week #9 - Taper and Lisbon Half Ironman, Series (Bike)

Series (Run)
Week #1 - 8 x 4' @ 3:40
Week #2 - 9 x 1k @ 3:30

Week #3 -

Week #4 - 2 x (8' @ 3:45 + 5' @ 3:40 + 2' @ 3:20)

Week #5 - 70' of 2' @ 3:45 + 3' easy

Week #6 - 2 x 1-2-3-2-1-2-3 @ 3:40-3:10

Week #7 - 2 x 1-2-3-2-1-2-3 @ 3:40-3:10

Week #8 -

Week #9 -

Long / Threshold Runs
Week #1 - 60' progression @ 4:30-4:00
Week #2 - 70' easy

Week #3 - aerobic test 7km @ 172 bpm

Week #4 - 80' (60' easy + 20' @ 4:00)

Week #5 - 90' easy

Week #6 - aerobic test 7km @ 172 bpm

Week #7 - 100' easy

Week #8 - 15' @ 4:00 + 15' @ 3:45

Week #9 -

Series (Bike)
Week #1 - 2 x (6' @ 140 bpm, 5' @ 150 bpm, 4' @ 160 bpm)
Week #2 - 3 x (6' @ 140 bpm, 5' @ 150 bpm, 4' @ 160 bpm)

Week #3 - 20 x (30" max + 30" rest)

Week #4 -

Week #5 - 12 x 2' @ 160 bpm (hills)

Week #6 - 10 x 3' @ 160 bpm

Week #7 - 9 x 4' @ 160 bpm

Week #8 - 3 x 15' @ 150 bpm (aero)

Week #9 - 20' easy + 20' @ 150 bpm (aero)

Brick
Week #1 - 60' bike + 30' run (15' @ 4:00 + 15' @ 3:45)
Week #2 - 90' bike + 50' run (30' easy + 20' @ 3:45)

Week #3 - 100' bike (incl. 20' @ 150 bpm) + 60' run (40' easy + 20' @ 3:45)

Week #4 - 110' bike (incl. 30' @ 150 bpm) + 60' run (30' easy + 15' @ 4:00 + 15' @ 3:45)

Week #5 - 120' bike (incl. 40' @ 150 bpm) + 50' run (20' easy + 30' @ 3:50)

Week #6 - 130' bike (incl. 50' @ 150 bpm) + 60' run (30' easy + 30' @ 3:50)

Week #7 - 150' bike (incl. 60' @ 150 bpm) + 60' run (20' easy + 40' @ 3.50)

Week #8 - 60' bike @ 150 bpm (aero) + 30' run @ 3:50

Week #9 -

A typical week will be:
Monday - Swim
Tuesday - Series (Run)
Wednesday - Commute, Swim
Thursday - Series (Bike)
Friday - Swim, Aero position on Turbo Trainer
Saturday - Long run / Threshold run
Sunday - Brick

Recovery

2013-03-04T01:38:00.000-08:00

I didn't feel too bad after the Marathon but that doesn't mean that it is necessarily a good idea to rush back to training as it would be a fairly good recipe for injury. On the other hand I find that doing something helps me recover more quickly than doing nothing, so I just did what I felt very comfortable with every day. This started off with a bit of light pedalling on the static bike, walking on the treadmill with a steep incline and some swimming.

By Wednesday I felt up to cycling in to work and I was itching to use my road bike as it had been months since I had last ridden it. I didn't choose the best of days for it as it actually snowed most of the day but luckily I missed most of the bad weather and the roads were relatively dry by the time I went home. I felt ready to run again by Thursday and on Friday I even did some weights for the first time in months.

I rode for an hour on Saturday morning on my Triathlon bike on the turbo trainer. It is still an effort to maintain the aero position (I suspect it always will be) but I found that I could tolerate it fairly well if I rode 4 minutes of every 5 "aero" with 1 minute "sit up and beg". Over the next weeks building up to the Lisbon International Triathlon, I'll try to extend this to an hour and a half with much fewer breaks from the aero position. As I don't have a power meter (nor do I think I will ever buy one unless they come way down in price and hassle) I'm keeping track of how fast my cycle computer reckons I am going and controlling such things as my heart rate and the pressure of my tyres. Of course, the average speed is much higher than it would be if I was on the road, battling against the air, but the important thing here is not the absolute value but the relative improvement.

We spent the rest of the weekend in Ciudad Real with my in-laws. They told me that there was a 10k race on the Sunday but, after investigating, it turned out that the inscription period had already closed. I also wasn't sure that it was a terribly good idea to race a 10k only a week after the Marathon. So instead I made the race part of my training for the day: I ran 10k at around 4:20 min/km pace before joining the start of the race (right at the back of the pack) and then gradually increased my pace. By the end I was running at Half Marathon pace (3:45 min/km) and, although I stopped short of the stadium finish because I didn't have a race number, I would have finished well under 40 minutes. In the end I couldn't keep my competitive spirit at bay as I had actually planned to run it in 45 minutes. Still, it was a good training session and I feel back to normal now and ready to start my 9 week training programme (which I still have to write!).