Check Point

Saturday, I got on Haint for my second round of Trainer Road.  I chose the Free 30 workout again, as I’m not ready to do any serious riding yet.  I am finely tuned to my crotch muscles, and they are telling me to TAKE IT SLOW.

Still, I was able to put more of an effort into this one, raising my power threshold by almost twenty percent.  I would have thought that all the running I’ve been doing would have kept my cycling muscles in pretty descent shape.  Reality, strongly evident by my heart rate reaching into the 150s, indicated otherwise.  I’ve got work to do before I give the 6 week base training plan a go.  This week, I want to ride twice for 45 minutes, then we’ll go from there.

That afternoon, I went back to the pool try out my Tempo Trainer Pro.  This was a Christmas gift from my daughter, and I’ve been wanting to try it out.

There are three different ways to use this beauty.  You can set it to beep every stroke/stride, or you can set it to beep at every interval.  I thought I would try some bilateral breathing exercises and hit the wall every 24 seconds, for a pace of 1:36 per hundred yards.  After setting the digits, I stuffed it into my swim cap and took off.  I think I managed to stay on target for 6 of the 10 100’s I wanted to get done.  After that, I winged it.  Can’t take this training too seriously at this point.

The tempo trainer is a definite winner.  I can use it on the run to hit my 90 strides on one foot per minute, and I can use it on the swim to pace my intervals/strokes.  I love the fact that I was hitting the wall at exactly the interval I wanted.  I’m looking forward to using it some more in the future.

Backing up a bit, last Thursday, I went to the gym to do a graduated run test.  Basically, I warmed up for a mile, then at the 10 minutes mark, I began increasing the speed on the treadmill by 0.2 mph per minute. 

I did not look at my Garmin the entire time I was running.  My goal was to hang on for dear life, or I reached 9 mph, which ever came first :-)  You can see there around 12 minutes that my HR spikes up into zone 2.  This points out my aerobic threshold (AeT).  The jump in Zone 4 where I went anaerobic is a little harder to assess.   The last time I took this test, my result was a long gradually rising line with no clear indicators.  LOL.  Based on my AeT, and the fact that I ran almost a mile in last year’s Zone 5, I think its pretty safe to say my zones, for running at least, haven’t changed all that much from last year.  Not to worry though, I’m going to test them again.  Often!

My goals for this week:  6 miles in the Vibrams, and a long run on the weekend with Teh Bug.

Have a great week, y’all!

Wes

A. F. E.

Sometime around Wednesday of last week, the s*%t literally hit the fan.  My head was suffering from an intense fog like state.  I’m reasonably sure, no make that positive, that it was alcohol addiction.  That night I passed out around 8 PM on Dee Dee’s shoulder.

Thursday morning, I woke up feeling…  better.  I was refreshed, and my head was a good bit clearer.  I worked from home Thursday, and since Dee Dee was off work, we went to Canyon Burgers in Woodstock for lunch.  I had the option of a chicken, turkey, or vegetarian burger, but I decided to go with the meat.  My “no red meat” diet is a choice, not a moral issue.  I’ll cheat when I wanna, and it were good.

Speaking of cheating, Dee Dee and I had a date night Friday night.  We went to Outback Steakhouse for the second time eva.  I drank a bit, and enjoyed a rather healthy fish dinner.  My lack of alcohol over the previous two weeks made me a light weight.  That whole “use it or lose it” thing is totally true.  My poor kidneys were not ready for a stress test.  After more wine on Sunday, it took me until Wednesday to recover.  Needless to say, my beer cheat night this weekend is cancelled.

Since I’ve started feeling better, I have come to the (probably duh) conclusion that my bad drinking habits has had such a negative effect on my training.  I coined the term Alcohol Fueled Endurance.  See, I work in computers, and I was in the military.  Three letter acronyms are a way of life.  AFE is fine if you are happy with it, but I realize now that it pretty much made me feel like crap.  All the time.  I have resolved to work harder to break this habit, and maybe turn it into one that is more healthy.  We shall see.

A friend of mine introduced me to TrainerRoad.  It’s a rather neat concept.  It uses the known power curve for your trainer, along with your Ant+ cadence and speed sensor to generate a power reading.  I’ve been dying to try it out.  Last night, I dragged Haint out of the basement and hooked her up to the trainer.  After installing the software, I spent a few minutes registering my heart rate monitor and speed/cadence sensor.  It was stupid simple.  After clicking go on the Free 30 workout, off I went.

OK.  So I haven’t been on my bike since July, but this is cool.  I picked Cycle Ops 4 for my power setting.  I assumed that meant the Cycle Ops was on setting 4.  I don’t really care if it’s exactly accurate, just that the numbers go up and down as I work harder/easier.  As you can see, I held a nice range of 115-120 for the first 20 minutes of the workout, then I started to dial it down towards the end.  The power output responded accordingly.

Very.cool.

The web site has seven training plans, and I believe over a hundred workouts.  I even exported my workout as a TCX file and loaded it into SportTracks 3.0 for further analysis.  This digit boy is a happy camper!

Oh yea.  I ran a couple of times :-)

Happy training!

Wes

Operation No (Red) Meat

Week 1

I thought it might be interesting, if not down right appropriate, to document my transition from a meat eating red blooded American triathlete to a vegetarian American triathlete.  If this stuff doesn’t interest you, come back later :-)  I may actually do something soon (in the next 5 weeks of so) other than maintain my running base.

Transitioning to no (red) meat has been pretty easy.  As a matter of fact, over the last 7 days, I have only had chicken once, going practically meatless that entire time.  Giving up beer at the same time has been “interesting”.  In general, once I cut myself off from beer, it takes 2-3 days to restore my sleep pattern and feel well rested.  The first night is particularly bad.  I’m usually dehydrated and suffer from insomnia.  Once that passed, I started to feel pretty good, at least my body did.  My brain has been in some kind of fog.  Again, I think the beer/alcohol is mostly to blame.  If you don’t believe that alcohol has a negative effect on you, let me be a witness.  It does.  My brain, over the past 25 years, has gotten quite used to the flood of carbs/sugars and alcohol.

Around day 6, I felt better.  Just in time for me to eat some chicken :-)  Truth is, I wanted the chicken to help me in my transition, but I probably didn’t need it.

Finding no (red) meat recipes to eat has been relatively simple, and I have been enjoying the taste of new dishes.  Some of the things I have prepared include:

• A lentil based marinara sauce
• sautéed cabbage
• black bean burger
• black bean fajitas
• sautéed collard greens and tofu over rice

and I even ate vegetarian at the Mexican restaurant last night.

Everything they say about eating vegetarian has been correct, so far.  The food has been tasty.  I haven’t felt stuffed, like I’ve over eaten, and while at times I have found myself hungry, I have always managed to make it to the next meal or snack.

In order to ensure that I’m meeting my nutritional requirements, I’m taking a multivitamin, fish oil, and tracking my calories on a popular web site.  I am attempting to keep a proper 20/20/60 ratio, but so far, it has panned out, more often than not, that my fat content has been in the 30% range.  After perusing my food log, I realized that I am not taking in enough fruit!  Brilliant.  Fruit is all carbs, no fat and no protein.  My dedication to my digits is already paying dividends!  For the most part, I’m not having any problem taking in between 80-110 grams of protein per day.  My target is 114.

Through all this, I have definitely been running.  There has been no change to my schedule.  I’ve even run twice in one week in my Vibrams.  I really need to get one of my Vibrams runs up to 5 miles, and that is the next step in that process.  In the mean time, I’m going to keep my base long run where it is now (10 miles), and let that carry me through the half marathon in March and my first tri at the end of April.

So, in a nut shell, that’s where we’re at :-)

Wes

Healthy

First of all, welcome to 2012.  May your year be exciting, in a good kind of way, and prosperous.

With my race schedule in hand, I sat down and did something I haven’t done often.  As focused on the digits as I am, I have never really sat down and laid out an annual plan.  The first year in triathlon, I winged it.  The next two years, I was coached.  The year after that, I followed block periodization, no annual plan required, and last year, my triathlon season ended in July.  That’s hardly a year’s worth :-)

Utilizing a free resource, from www.trainingbible.com, I sat down to map out my year.  I plugged in Monday, January 2, 2012 as the first day of my “year”.  I then went and plugged in each of my six races, and assigned them a priority.  It looked something like this:

• Georgia Half Marathon – A
• West Point Oly – A
• Callaway Gardens – C
• Tri the Mountains – A
• Fall Cree Falls Oly – B
• Augusta 70.3 – A

With that done, I set about assigning the tradition “periods” to my training year.  To make a long story short, it ended up being a convoluted mess.  I mean, I was fine up to the West Point Oly, and Tri the Mountains, but after that, it just got difficult.  I just wasn’t quite sure what to assign the weeks after an “A” race leading up to another race of a shorter distance.

Finally, it dawned on me to Keep It Simple, Stupid.  Really, my only annual goal for 2012 is to go sub-6 at Augusta.  Therefore, it behooved me to make that my most important race of the year.  Those other ones just didn’t matter.  I decided to start backwards from Augusta, using a 3 week (old peeps) cycle for each block, and have two blocks of everything except for  the Peak period.  I’ll be damned if that training season didn’t end three weeks after West Point Oly.  Throw in a Preparation Block, and the first part was done.

Counting back from West Point to the Georgia Half Marathon is seven weeks, an almost perfect fit for a Time Crunched Triathlete training program.  Throw in a four week transition period prior to the Georgia Half Marathon, and I just gave myself six more weeks of nothing but running and cross training.

I love my coach (me!)  :-)  Now, my race schedule looks like this:

• Georgia Half Marathon – C
• West Point Oly – A
• Callaway Gardens – B
• Tri the Mountains – C
• Fall Cree Falls Oly – B
• Augusta 70.3 – A

Imminently more reasonable, dontcha think?  and I don’t have to freeze my buns off getting ready for my first triathlon of the year.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s move onto the topic of today’s blog post:  Healthy.  That is my New Year’s Resolution.  I want to work on developing the healthy and positive aspects of my life in all the things that I do:  family, sports, money, relationships, my job, and just work hard on making improvements and becoming the kind of person that I want to be.

One aspect of this resolution is certainly nutrition.  I have started operation “No Red Meat”, and so far so good.  I would really like to cut out all meat, but I just don’t think that is doable at this time.  Baby steps right?  No sense in jumping off the cliff.  I’m also trying to cut out beer and liquor this year.  Stop laughing.  I want a power meter.  I’m thinking about using that as the carrot to encourage me to make healthy decisions.  Let’s see…  If I spent $20.00 a week on beer and liquor, how long would it take me to save up for that power meter I’m craving. I dunno, but at some point, I should probably do the math!

Here’s to a great 2012, y’all!  Let’s commence to rockin….

Wes

Merry Christmas

Have yourself a merry little Christmas. 
Let your heart be light. 
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

I am still alive.  Admit it.  You’ve missed me.  Do not worry.  I have been busy.  The kids have been out of school, so I’ve been slumming it a little bit in the morning.  Add in a slow period at work, and things have just been kind of dog lazy.  I could get used to that.

I’ve still been trying to run three times a week, and I have been very successful.  I am now up to three miles in my Vibrams!  but only once a week.  I’m going to try and expand that out to four miles before adding a second Vibram’s run.  I can certainly tell the difference between running 3 miles in my Vibrams and running 3 miles in my K-swiss.  All the little muscles in the lower half of my legs are just bitchin, but that is the point, right?   Strengthen those muscles without hurting myself.  So far so good.

After work today, I am off for 10 whole days.  Some of that time might include a trip home to see my our families for New Years.  We’re trying to figure something out with the dogs.  From Christmas Eve till at least Wednesday, I am off with nothing but time on my hands.  I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve been sitting here at work planning out my triathlon season for next year.  Right now, I’m looking at 6 or 7 races, depending on whether or not my pals come into town to do the Chickamauga Marathon in November.  I’m running the Georgia Half Marathon again this year, with Dee Dee.  Then, I’m going to hit up the West Point Oly at the end of April.  They moved it this year from June.  No more sweltering heat runs!  Woot!  After that, it’s back to Callaway for my sixth or seventh time (who’s counting?).  July has another trip to the Blue Mountains for Tri the Mountains.  August was a bit perplexing, but I decided on the Fall Creek Falls Olympic again.  It was a fun race, and I’d love to head back north to Tennessee.  Finally, I’m going to wrap up my season with a half, and the target is Augusta 70.3.  I have a bone to pick with that one.

Tie all that in together with Dee Dee’s plans, and it looks to be a busy year.

While all that is fine and dandy, tis the season…  to eat, drink, make merry, and bring joy and happiness into the lives of those you love.  Thank you all for another wonderful year.  I wish you and your family a safe, happy, and wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Wes

Barefootin (and quick steppin)

My last weekend of soccer related activities is OVA!  I do have one more match coming up this Sunday, but for the most part, I’m about to be inundated with free time.  Yes.  Teh Bug is glad, as am I.  Sunday morning found me standing in the dark outside the stadium at Kell High School.  There were buses and teams in the parking lot, but nobody inside the stadium.  Given that the teams were from out of state, they weren’t quite sure how to get in.  The lights weren’t on or anything.  To make matters worse, the field wasn’t even set up.  Not good for a very important tournament.

In short order, I ended up with four teams inside the stadium.  I knew there were soccer fields in the back (two to be precise), so I hopped in my car and drove back there to confirm the field was set up and ready to go.  There was another lone referee back there, but the field was indeed lined and properly marked.  After getting the teams situated, we commenced to footballing.  Of course, on my field, we had to delay 15 minutes for more daylight, as no one was there to turn on the frickin lights.

All in all, it was a good day of soccer, if a little dry.  In the three games in which I participated, only one goal was scored.  The high light of my day was when the coach of a highly ranked team from California told me that my match was “the best he’d had in years”.  The crew did a fine job.

I had to run by the headquarters at the Embassy Suites before heading off to my adult match at 3 PM.  I managed to nab some lunch.  When I showed up at the field, I noticed the crew was short.  I ended up running the line for half a D-1 match before my own D-3 center.  I guess you could say I got my running in on Sunday.

Monday, I could feel it too.  I try not to hobble.  The best way to recover sore muscles is to put them through a normal range of motion, but Tuesday, I wasn’t feeling very “normal”.  Still, I felt compelled to go run and run I did.  Since it was raining, I opted to go to the gym and hit up the treadmill.  My normal “easy” run is 4 miles now, and this time, I remembered to bring my Vibrams.

To begin with, I warmed up for 4-5 minutes before settling into a 6.5 mph pace.  After 1.5 miles, I put the treadmill on its lowest setting, changed into my Vibrams, then hopped back on again and revved the engine.  I ran another mile before switching back to my trusty K-swiss.  Running a mile was probably a bit risky, but I managed OK, and my legs were ready to be done!

One of the things I noticed during this exercise caught my attention.  While running at 6.5 mph in my K-swiss, I was maintaining about 89 steps per minute with one foot.  When I switched to my Vibrams, I was running 95 steps per minute at 6.2 mph.

There is some insight here…  Let me explain.

A lot of people who injure themselves running, find salvation when they switch to minimalist shoes.  I think too much credit is given to this “natural method”, when in reality, it is a change in form, required by barefoot running that is the cure.  If you haven’t tried to run barefoot, give it a go, even if its just for a couple of hundred yards.  You will quickly learn a couple of things.  Running on your heels hurts, and to lessen the impact, you need short quick strides.  Both of these things are conducive to developing a mid-foot strike.  Even if you don’t plan to switch entirely to running barefoot, once a week will help strengthen your muscles and improve your form.

With that in mind, I have decided that I am going to run this years Guns and Hoses 5K in my Vibrams, and maybe the Georgia Half Marathon as well.  I say maybe because I don’t know if I’ll be ready to run a half marathon in Vibrams by March.  Since I’ll be pacing Dee Dee, it should be OK.

Happy hump day, y’all!

Wes

Flitting Aboot

I have discovered fresh (ly unfrozen) fruit and yogurt.  WT?  Where have I been?  I’m on a mission to improve my diet.  Yes, I know.  That means a major curtailment on beer.  I’m actually doing pretty good on that front.  After my marathon, went through a case or so, but hey…  We all need to let go at sometime!  My short term goal is to include healthier choices in my diet.  My long term includes giving up red meat, then most meat (except seafood), then meat entirely.  Not sure if I’ll make it that far, but we shall see.  I’m currently in the research phase, with Operation Give Up Red Meat scheduled to begin at the first of the year.

Matthew’s soccer season is winding down.  He had his last practice at a high school in Cobb County.  I’m liking my fitness membership.  One of their facilities was about 10 minutes down the road.  I jumped on one of their treadmills in front of the ESPN TV.  See, I can learn :-)  Rather than do my ho-hum usual workout consisting of:  warm up, run x minutes at y pace, cool down, I hit one of those little program buttons.  I chose:  Random Hills.

How much do you weigh?  185 lbs (ok, plus a little Thanksgiving fat)

Max speed you would like to go?  7.0  (about an 8:30 pace)

Max elevation?  4.0  (unsure about this one, so thought 4.0 was conservative)

How long would you like to run?  40 minutes (or 4 miles, which ever comes first)

The treadmill took me through a warm up, which was nice.  Ya know I’m a digit guy, and the warm ups always skew my main set pace.  After about four minutes of warm ups, the random hills began.  The machine had me run at 7 mph at a 0 incline, and a 6.0 mph pace at a 4% incline.  I think I did 6.7 mph at 1.5% and 6.3 mph at 3%.  Each interval lasted for 2-3 minutes.

I was pretty amazed to be somewhat comfortable at the 7.0 mph pace.  I even took the time to check my heart rate using the little handles.  After it warned me about measuring heart rate over 4.0 mph, it said 151 bpm.  LOL…  That made my eyes widen!  That used to be the bottom of Zone 2 for me, when I was heart rate training.

After running my 4 miles in 37:40, hit the weights again for about half an hour.  I’m just getting back into it, so I’m very careful about how much weight I take on.  Today, my hammies are NOT happy with me.  Gonna give them a day or four off before getting back to it.

And that’s the plan for December.  I’m going to run, fairly frequently, but only because I wanna, and I’m going to throw anything else into the mix that strikes my fancy, like 4 full 90 minute soccer matches this Sunday!

Have a great weekend!

Wes