From Stone Age To Computer Age

Thanks to blogging compatriot Josh, I'm now signed up for trainingpeaks.com, an automated coaching/training tracking system (Thanks, Josh!). I've known for years, in broad general terms, how to periodize and peak for goal events, and I know the importance of logging your training volume, and I've done both in somewhat unsophisticated (yet effective, at least in my opinion) ways--mostly involving logging my volume in a notebook and keeping my general plan in my head--but this has a lot of automated features in both the monitoring and the planning department, and this is improving my training sophistication. My annual training plan doesn't kick off until next week, according to "Hal" at trainingpeaks, so everything I'm doing now is theoretically unimportant, but I'm logging now just to get the feel for the system. Based on your A races, trainingpeaks works backward and sets up the annual training plan for you, starting from the "anatomical adaptation" phase, in which you do strength training to get your body for the training stresses ahead, right up through the base, build, peak, and racing phases. Next week, my first two workouts are a strength training workout and a session of strides on grass, so I know what's ahead. The web site also includes an expansive menu of workouts that it designates for you based on where you are in the training cycle (including a glossary, thankfully).

As for the tracking, this is a screenshot of what I reported from my morning workout:



  


As you can see, we list fairly detailed data: Ratings of our physical well being, heart rate ranges, routes, which bikes (or shoes, in the case of runs) and a tag that correpsonds with a workout from the trainingpeaks menu.

So far, I'm pretty satisfied. Yes, it's pretty cookbook-y, in the sense that it's busy telling me what I need to be doing five months from now based on only a little bit of data--but I'm always free to ignore what trainingpeaks is telling me for a given day.

So, if you like what you see, throw Josh a little love: contact him through this web site and he probably would be happy to take you on as a coaching client using trainingpeaks.

Getting To Zero

I had an interesting conversation today with central Maryland triathlon coach David Flynn, trying to learn more about his approach to fueling for iron-distance and other long- to ultra-distance events. David is writing a book right now, so he probably would like to preserve a full exposition of his ideas for the book, but he did discuss with me his methods.

What David factors into his calculations that nobody else does is the speed of the athlete. So, for a long- or ultra-distance event, David develops a spreadsheet that uses the athlete's weight, rate of speed, and the duration of the event based on the speed they're traveling. "Humans are like automobiles. You need to know all three. It's the only way of doing an accurate energy assessment," he says. He builds in some assumptions about the athelete's level of glycogen stores, and also assumes that 50 percent of the energy will be derived from fat. From that basis, he tries to derive how many calories the athlete will need, and a feeding schedule to match intake with output. The goal is to finish the race with a net of zero. With the CheseapeakeMan experiment referenced before, he says he was able to identify when one of his athletes participating in the experiment hit the wall, based on a missed drink bottle or two.

Again, all other training guides use duration as the only factor in the energy consumption calculation. Factoring in speed is something fairly innovative, if not revolutionary. As David puts it, "I wonder why it's not in any triathlon book in print."

If you're interested in hearing more, David can be reached here.

Not Gathering Dust

Over at Duathlonblog, I've been doing some posting on a recent Inside Triathlon article on the decline and fall of duathlon in America. Since IT doesn't post their content online, I did a public service and posted it online for my readers (at least until the cease-and-desist letter comes). If the topic interests you, go have a look.

Triathlon Results

Detailed personal results are done now. No real surprises, other than both my bike (26th fastest) and run (22nd fastest) were about equal relative to the rest of the field. That means I finished the swim in 331st place, but it settled nothing in terms of the final finish, given that my 30th overall finish was only a little bit behind my overall bike and run splits. I surrendered something like four minutes to the fastest swimmer, but he also was able to bike and run faster than me, too.

If I had time, I'd analyze cumulative bike, T2, and run times of all the folks ahead of me and identify how many of them I lost to because of my swim. I'm guessing it's only a couple.

Nutrition And The Ironman

Central Maryland triathlon coach David Flynn ran an interesting experiment with some of the athletes he advises at the recent ChesapeakeMan iron-distance triathlon in Cambridge, MD. David doesn't put his content online, but sends it out via email, making it next to impossible to link to it, so I'm going to quote liberally and then send you over to David himself.

(T)he goal of this test was to test a calorie model for race intake such that Scott and Patrick would have better performance than their peers. ... In this case, we charted the calories needed for both Scott and Patrick per race hour per event based upon the latest calorie charts using their weight and predicted race speed. They assumed an 11 hour effort, swimming about 30 minute miles, 20 MPH on the bike and 8 minutes per mile in the marathon. ... Our pre-race assumptions were that Scott could carry 1500 calories (90 minutes worth) in stored muscle glycogen, and anything he ate or drank would be useful 1 hour later. Further more, we assumed half of his race calorie need would come from stored fat after his initial 90 minute pre-race store was expired.

We did a post mortem on the race to get the actuals Scott ingested, and created column H. As you can see, Scott was at minus 99 calories just before hour 10 of the event. This is the wall people talk about, but one missed yogurt smoothie at the run transition was what had the wall come so early.

As a result of this test, both Patrick and Scott added significantly to the calories they planned for the race without the chart. Even so, they both fell short of the charts goals, but Scott followed it closest.

Interestingly, Scott had the fastest time of this group of six, and new comer Patrick was second fastest. Those not in the study finished between 15 and 60 minutes after Scott. All are accomplished Triathletes, and I by no means mean to take anything from their accomplishment in finishing a race this long, by implying diet make the key difference in performance.

But, in fact, I believe this kind of detail that I have been using all season is now proven to work on others. I firmly believe after this test that it IS possible to dramatically predict a racers caloric needs, if I have their speed and weight.

Most coaches and nutrition advisers that I'm aware of use weight and time exercising as the only variable in predicting the nutrition needs of athletes in ultradistance events, so adding the twist of the speed is new to me. I'll be interested in seeing further research into this.

Another interesting twist: David's choice in nutritional products.

We planned 260 Calorie Yogurt Smoothies (the highly fortified Yoplait ones I use) which out class any gel on the market.

I'm staring at an empty bottle of peach-flavored Yoplait Nouriche SuperSmoothie on my desk right now. Yup, it's pretty powerful: 260 calories, 0g fat, 55g carbohydrate (42g sugar and 5g dietary fiber), 10g protein, a decent vitamin and mineral profile. The lack of fat tarnishes its star a little bit, particularly for multi-day events. Its top ingredient is milk, however, which would make me nervous using it in a race (plus it needs refrigeration, reducing its usability in a long event in which refrigeration is not feasible). Also contains sugar and high fructose corn syrup, the current vogue demons of the American diet. I can't necessarily criticize it, but there are some warning signs to me.

But beyond that, David has brought to my attention some new things to consider as I try to conquer my own demons in competition nutrition.

Out Of The Water ...

... but nearly not. The ocean surf was so rough I don't think I would have liked to have been out on a boogie-board, much less swimming a quarter mile in it. Long story short: Rough surf had me swimming Tarzan-style, head out of the water, for what had to have been the first three minutes of an eight-minute swim. I wanted to keep my head up to make sure I wouldn't be slammed by a breaking wave unaware. If I did 100 strokes with good form through the entire swimming part of the race, it would surprise me. Luckily, we were pushed up the shore to the finish, making it pretty elementary once we cleared the break zone. Just swim, sight, swim, sight (more sighting than swimming), make the turn on the last buoy and wait until the waves pushed you onto the shore. The most impressive sight -- 100 red-capped swimmers rising a huge swell as they rounded the first buoy ahead of me.

On shore, a top 40 bike clawed me up to the pointy end of the race, and a top 30 run landed me a 30th place finish (though well down in the age group). Text file is here (no photos yet, but that should be pretty hilarious). I'll link directly to some individual stats tomorrow. Right now I want to have a beer and relax.


UPDATED: Forgot to mention--in the brief warm-up we were allowed, a wave yanked my heart-rate monitor off, so it's probably down in Davy Jones' locker. Should you be in Cape Henlopen, DE, in the near future, and come upon a Polar Coach watch, and it's still working, well, contact me through this blog.

Into the Water

I'm competing in a triathlon this weekend, something I don't care to do too often because my swim is so lousy. But after the last one, which my neighbor talked me into, I started mouthing off, and before I knew it he had entered, so I felt obligated to, and from thus stupid macho challenges are born.

Anyway, I really don't have a race plan. I plan to survive the swim, which while it will likely be wetsuit legal, is still going to be an ocean swim. (I've only been pool swimming, which gives me no reference point for my relative strength and mental abilities in murky and disorienting ocean surf. Meanwhile, it's not like I've been killing myself on the bike and run lately, so I don't know my strength there, either.) The relative length of the swim compared to the rest of the race, however, gives me a definite leg up in that I won't lose too much time to better swimmers. On the bike and run, I intend to try and appreciate the beauty of the park and town through which the race passes.

One side note: Cape Henlopen is well known for being a ground for horseshoe crabs to lay eggs in the springtime. To wit:

The most incredible spectacle at Cape Henlopen comes in May close to the time of the full moon. It is during this time that endangered horseshoe crabs, prehistoric arthropods that have remained unchanged for 360 million years, come to the beaches to mate and lay their eggs. The small green eggs are laid in nests between the high tide and low tide lines and a single female can lay 80,000 eggs during the mating season. It is around this time that hungry shorebirds flying north arrive along the shores of Delaware to the waiting feast just a short distance under the sand. By the end of June the birds have doubled their weight and the horseshoe crabs have returned to the bottom of Delaware Bay.

Housekeeping

I've won the golden ticket from Wordpress to use their new hosted site, and because I like it better than blogger, I'll be moving the Crosseyed and Painless blogging activity over there in the next few days. If you come over here and don't see any new content, look for it at http://jgardner.wordpress.com/.

Alotta Pilates

I've begun taking a mat pilates class. I didn't really seek pilates out, but it happens to be offered four times a week at the gym in the building where I work (which I belong to for sheer convenience's sake, simply to give me a place to shower and dress after bicycle commuting). All classes are free there, so it's that much more convenient. It's in the middle of the day, which doesn't interfere with my training schedule (unlike the twice-weekly yoga class, which is after work). So it really is simply a matter of convenience over any particular faith in pilates as a superior technique for strengthening and stretching.

Joseph Pilates' methods were first most popular among dancers, according to this brief history of pilates, which also goes on to say "he drew a following with dancers who took to Pilates for its ability to create long, lean muscles and a strong, streamlined physique. Legends Martha Graham and George Balanchine were among his clientele." For a beginner like me, accustomed to using brute force, the deft, dancer-like movements required of quality pilates practice is as much a challenge as the strength one must demonstrate to complete the exercises. A good hourlong class helps me also detect tightness and imbalances that must be evened out to have a complete fit body. An area that seems to be a challenge for me is in the hip flexors--not in holding the legs up, but rather holding my trunk upright while seated on the ground with my legs held out in front of me.

Now I'm not of the opinion that one must necessarily do strength training in order to be a good runner or cyclist--plenty can and do succeed quite well without it. But when fatigue sets in, having good trunk strength can help you maintain good form, averting the slowdown that can come with poor form.

Having done both yoga and pilates, I can say that I prefer yoga by just a little bit--the relaxation that yoga engenders is what I look for in any workout I do that doesn't involve my bicycle or running shoes. However, I must say that pilates is a much more efficient use of time in terms of improving flexibility and trunk strength.

Tatyana is my teacher. I don't know much about her, other than that she has an eastern European accent, perhaps Russian. If I knew the studio from which she was hired, I would link to it. She also is knowledgeable about yoga because we've done some yoga poses to warm up for pilates workouts.

I've purchased this DVD to help me in my practice, especially the days (like Thursday) when work appointments will take me away from my hour with Tatyana. For more about Joseph Pilates theories, check this out.

What Are Intervals? (Part Deux)

In an earlier post, I discussed the issue of recovery time in intervals in reference to an October Running Times article (I can't link because they don't appear to put current content online). The November issue has a report from Pete Pfitzinger that I think ought to clarify things for RT readers.

The optimal ratio of hard running time to recovery time depends primarily on how intensely you run the intervals and only secondarily on the length of the interval. Thus, cruise intervals, which require only a modest amount of recovery time (e.g. 30 second to two minutes) because the intensity is only moderately high, have a relatively high work to recovery ratio, about 5:1. VO2 max intervals are shorter but faster than cruise intervals, with reatively longer recoveries (e.g. 90 seconds to three minute), resuting in a work to recovery ratio of 1:1 to 2:1. Because shorter repetitions to improve your speed are run at an even higher intensity, the recoveries are comparatively long, with a work to recovery ratio of 1:2 to 1:4.

There's not much more I can add to this, other than to recommend that you go buy the issue or go down to your mailbox to see if it's arrived.

(Disclaimer: I do not work for Running Times, although if they're hiring ...)