Review of Jim Gourley's "Faster: Demystifying the Science of Triathlon Speed"

I was rather disappointed with this book because it didn't cover a lot of the physiology involved with performing at peak speeds. It was fairly mechanical in nature and while it was complete from a physics standpoint, it didn't apply the physical concepts to the practice of triathlon to the extent I was expecting. In sum, the book's final chapter is really all I needed to read.

The book was helpful in some ways though, and there are a number of things I want to employ from this book. I am recording them here so I remember them:

1. Swim: Triathletes should try to keep as much of their body out of the water as possible. This reduces drag, since there is more drag in the water than in the air. Wet suits aid in keeping an athlete near the water's surface, so maybe this is what the author is talking about. Otherwise, I'm having trouble visualizing a swimmer exposing a lot of his body surface to the air while still maintaining a good swimming posture and form. Indeed, wearing a wet suit decreases drag by 10% and has been shown to save a swimmer enough energy to increase cycling efficiency by 12%. Wet suit thickness between 3 and 5 mm is best, as the thicker the suit, the greater the buoyancy. My wet suit is 1.5 mm in the arms, 3 mm in the torso, and 4 mm in the legs.

2. Swim: Pressure drag is the most significant element (80%) of total drag, so a swimmer should minimize the surface first passing through the water. This means streamlined arms while gliding. This means a horizontal body position to reduce the amount of surface traveling perpendicular to the water. This means kicking from the hips to keep the legs from producing too much extra drag.

3. Swim: technique matters. The career swimmers are faster than triathletes because they place their arms, legs, head, and torso precisely in the most efficient positions. It's not brute strength; rather, it is body position that ultimate produces the most propulsion. I will set up a swim lesson with Josh to polish up my freestyle stroke. There is a note here that strong swimmers are actually faster in wet suits without sleeves because the sleeves alter arm position. I own a fully sleeved wet suit and I like it a lot. Even though I am a stronger-than-average swimmer, I won't get a new suit.

4. Swim: Most propulsion comes from the arms (not legs). Ways to produce the most speed include faster arm movement underwater and increasing the surface area of your hands by separating fingers by about 8 millimeters. I already spread my fingers, so no adjustment is needed in this area. As for faster arm movements, I think Josh has told me to do that. It's worth trying. This does not necessarily mean a faster stroke rate, though. I can still glide between strokes, assuming I can minimize pressure drag during the glide. A wet suit actually helps reduce stroke cadence by 14%.

5. Swim: Drag can be substantially (20%) reduced by dragging other swimmers. This can be accomplished in two ways. First, you can follow another swimmer directly behind, which is best, but also hard to do because you really have to tailgate them (your arms enter the space just behind their kick). Second, you can be offset 1 meter next to them, so that your hands are in the same line as the first swimmer's shoulders. I can definitely do this, but only if the two of us can swim in a straight line (and I'm not good at that).

6. Swim: Data show that if I go all-out on the swim, I'm likely to suffer on the bike later. Slowing down to 80-85% swim effort can avoid this effect. I will try to remember this strategy, since I tend to go as fast as I can during the swim.

7. Swim: Just a note relating to my swimsuit choice for competition: tighter fit is better because it limits muscle deformation, which reduces drag.

8. Bike: Make sure your bike is in excellent working order because this segment represents the greatest time investment during the race. I will do what I can with maintenance during the cycling season and, if necessary, take the bike into the shop a couple weeks before my Ironman to attend to any last maintenance or adjustments.

9. Bike: Strong legs are much more important than a "fast bike," so spend money on what makes YOU faster, not what makes your bike faster. The author uses this to make the case for training with a power meter, since it will teach me the level of effort necessary to produce the most force under various road conditions. It will also protect me from overworking my engine and burning out too quickly. I looked up the price of a power meter, and I don't see many options below $700, which is half the price of a new bike. I don't find this a reasonable purchase because heart rate and pedal cadence can be used to gauge my level of effort. Indeed, I recently read in another source that heart rate is a direct correlate of oxygen consumption, which itself a direct correlate of power generation. The book also notes that Strava can take the bike GPS data and calculate power for a ride segment, after the fact. I looked into this, and it is not true. If you don't use a power meter on your bike, all Strava will do is give you your average power per ride. This would give me a single number, and I don't think that's useful. In sum, I will take HR training very seriously as I do bike training, because I can monitor HR during my ride and try to keep it as consistent as possible. This is pretty much what power is use for: consistency in effort. 

10: Bike: A lot of people are concerned about the weight of their bike and components. However, the human rider represents the greatest proportion of weight, so to experience the best gains in speed and power, a rider should lose weight when appropriate. Even 2-3 pounds of bike weight does not save much race time (maybe 5 seconds per mile at a 4% grade...which is fairly steep), particularly on flat race courses. Conclusion: lose body weight instead of bike weight, and really, none of this is as important as reducing drag.

11. Aerodynamic drag is reduced considerably at speeds more than 15 mph when one transitions from the hoods to the drops of a road bike. Further reduction in drag is very significant at 20 mph when one transitions from the drops to the aerobars, pulling arms in, and curving the back. Savings occur at slower speeds than 15 and 20, respectively, but those are easier numbers to remember. I will use those thresholds to dictate my body position.

12. An investment of 10% of bike cost should be spent toward a professional bike fit. For me, that gives me a budget of $1,200 x 10% = $120. I'm pretty sure a professional fit costs $175 or more, so maybe getting one will be an extravagance. I plan to do it anyway.

13. The position of the rider on a bike is 57% more important than the bike model (in terms of drag savings), so by improving my riding position I am pretty much getting a bike that is much faster, without actually having to buy a new bike. A fancy helmet represents only 25% of an improved bike position. Likewise, wheels reduce drag by only 25% of an improved ride position.

14. If I ever do buy a fancy helmet, research shows that the ones with shorter tails and steeper taper angles are better than the super pointy alien heads I like to make fun of. Air ventilation holes make no difference in terms of drag, so the more the better.

15. If I ever do buy fancy wheels, deeper rims is not always an advantage. Headwinds favor shallow rims, but cross winds favor deeper rims. The author did some calculations and determined that headwinds are more likely to be encountered than those that hit the bike from a cross angle, so my shallow rims are just fine. (what is my rim measurement, anyway?) compare to p. 99...Ok, and what about the increasing popularity of wider tires? That actually makes sense, given that a wider wheel slides through the air better than a narrow wheel with a tire that bulges out from the wheel on both sides. All in all, the best disc wheels will save 20 watts of effort, which saves about 2 minutes for every 25 miles of distance. See, 8 minutes is just not worth it on an IM race.

16. Tire choice makes an easy difference in drag reduction. The text is a equivocal on the significance of it, though. In one place, the author says that wheels reduce drag by a fraction of a unit, while tires reduce drag by a fraction of a fraction of a unit. This seems to indicate that tires don't matter. But later, the author shows that good tires can shave a minute off a 25-mile race, which is certainly small, but measurable nevertheless. It's easy and inexpensive to buy fast tires, so I will make sure I upgrade each time I race. (I still have my race tires from last time, and those may still be good)

17. Tire pressure of 110 psi is ideal for minimal rolling resistance. I already inflate to that pressure.

18. Clean the chain often. The author says to degrease it each time, and then lubricate with any oil--it doesn't matter what kind.

19. The race number stuck to your bike creates drag and it will be minimized by having it positioned stiffly to your seat post. I already do this with zip-ties.

20. Run efficiency is increased as we reduce the vertical displacement of each stride. That is, less bouncing up and down as I run. I think I am pretty good in this area already. I also want to maximize the distance covered per step and reduce the time spent in contact with the ground, says the author. However, he proposes a solution to all three of these things by saying: "shorten stride and increase cadence to 180-190 steps per minute." But ok.

21. As runners fatigue, their cadence drops and they spend more time on the ground per step. Both of these act as positive feedback on energy requirements so that fatigue then generates more fatigue and performance plummets. This promotes the idea that pacing is very important throughout a race so that I never get fatigued.

22. The most efficient runners minimize vertical displacement to the point where their feet only come 7.5 cm from the ground. I'm not saying I'm an efficient runner, but my impression is that I don't have a lot of vertical displacement.

23. Body weight is an important factor in running in the area of heat dissipation. Heavier runners don't dissipate heat as well, so they have poorer endurance. This is the reason why there are athenas and Clydesdale categories. Anyway, this is also another reason to shed pounds if I want to be the best triathlete I can be.

24. There is a fair amount of discussion of running shoes in this book, with the conclusion that scientific studies have not found any performance differences between cheap shoes and expensive shoes, nor between brands or sole designs. The author says to choose a comfortable inexpensive pair and replace the shoes often, soon after 300 miles. As a rule of thumb, therefore, I will replace my running shoes after 350 miles. Shoes degrade at this point, and studies show that the runner's foot and body start to alter running form to adjust to the change in cushioning, and "not in a good way." Indeed, even if a degraded shoe did not have a negative impact on foot architecture, the studies show that runners in worn shoes spend more time on the ground per step (see #21 above).

25. Running on a treadmill: Set the treadmill at at least 1% incline to better mimic the workout you get when running outdoors.

Alternative pool in West Virginia

My last post was about the prospect of our pools shutting down again due to the worsening pandemic. I said if that happened, I'd take dryland workouts more seriously than before. And that's still true. However, my wife doesn't handle the word "no" very well, so when the governor's orders came down, closing all fitness centers as of Saturday morning, she went on the search for alternatives. She found the Aquatics Center at Mylan Park outside Morgantown, WV. It is a new facility where the swim teams at WVU compete, and the competition pool is open a lot of hours to the public each week. West Virginia is so far not experiencing the surge of coronavirus (and it's a more conservative state), so its facilities are still open. Further, Pennsylvania travel restrictions allow for trips out of state if they are for less than 24 hours. So, we went. Admittedly, we are still supposed to reduce non-essential travel, and this excursion doesn't qualify as "essential," no matter how my wife tries to parse it. Nevertheless, from a public health perspective, the Morgantown area has fewer cases of COVID-19 than our home county, so what we did was relatively safe.

So now that I've gotten that off my chest (I'm a stickler for rules and feel bad if I don't follow them), let me tell you a couple more things about this workout. First, the day became frustrating when, after a 1.3 hour car trip, I sat in the driver's seat in the parking lot and stretched my back. It was a natural thing to do, but when I did, I felt a pop and knew immediately that I had torn a muscle fiber in my upper back. This is a chronic injury that happens an average of once per year. My last incidence was more than a year and a half ago, so I guess it was time. Sometimes the injury is so severe that it keeps me in bed for days afterward. More recently, the injuries are mild and only sideline me for a day or two. The problem is, I never know which kind of injury it is until the next day.

I didn't know if I could swim, but I tried and it worked. I was very gentle and didn't do any flip turns, nor did I stretch my arms out front like I have been trying to do. A day later (as I write this), i can report that my injury was mild and I can return to working out tomorrow. Yay!

The facility is an exceptional one. It is smaller than the Spire Institute in Ohio, but seems to be built for the same kind of swimmers: high-caliber competitive athletes. Olympians would be comfortable training there, as the pool is state of the art, best I can tell.

As I said, I didn't do any hard swims there, and regardless of my back injury I hadn't intended to. This day was supposed to be a long run on my workout calendar. I wanted to accommodate my wife on this spur-of-the-moment trip, so I just figured I'd do a treadmill run at home when we returned. I didn't. You see, this day (yesterday) was the very last day of my maintenance training plan. I've been following Phil Mosley's 12-week triathlon intermediate maintenance plan, and it ended today. This was to get me fit enough to start serious Ironman training for IMLP in July 2021. I've now purchased the 30-week advanced masters long-course training plan, and that will start at the end of this month. Therefore, I'm in-between plans, and so today, as I'm recovering from the muscle pull, I did no workouts! I actually felt fidgety, which is a good sign. I'm looking forward to more training. Despite what I sometimes write, it's the training that is really my favorite part of this ironman life.

Will my pool shut down again?

The coronavirus pandemic is getting worse and worse by the day. Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, has just announced that all pools and gyms will close beginning December 12. I don't live in Allegheny County, but I live nearby, so I'm wondering when and if this becomes a statewide mandate like last spring. I'm a huge proponent of staying safe and reducing risk, so I will not complain if my pool access is prohibited. However, I need a plan. 

Last spring, all pools were shut down for about six weeks. At the time, I was training for Ironman Lake Placid and swam a little over 18,000 yards in the month of February. I was using the pool at our local YMCA. Then, halfway through March, the facility closed. I just shrugged and kept running and bike riding until the end of May when I learned that IMLP was cancelled. If it wasn't for my wife's almost obsessive need to swim, I would not have started to swim again until the pool at my college opened up in the fall. But Shannan is a stubborn one, and she convinced me to go with her on the hour-long drive to Moraine State Park each week during the summer to swim in the lake. I'm not complaining here. I'm glad we did that. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention what Shannan was doing during the spring shutdown. She bought an outdoor pool and set it up in March when the air temperature was still cool and the water was even colder. She wore her wetsuit and strapped a bungee around her waist, and went swimming in the pool. I was very impressed with this...though not impressed enough to join her. That water was too cold.

I'm writing about all this now because I need to figure out what to do before the college pool shuts down. In the month of November I swam almost 13,000 yards, and my planned yardage will only increase as I once again begin training for IMLP. It really is too cold now to set up the backyard pool. First, the water will freeze, but more importantly, the pool has a fatal leak and needs to be replaced. Open water swimming is out as well, due to the cold weather. So that leaves dryland workouts. I really, really, don't like those because I'm not confident I'm doing them right, and they don't seem hard enough. No wait, those aren't my true concerns. I guess I'm just not convinced they are worth it. I don't see how exercising my arms with an elastic band is doing the same thing as swimming laps. 

I know, this is my own stubbornness talking, and my concerns aren't even true. Swimming is, in one sense, a cardiovascular workout. If I cannot swim, it's not necessary for me to make up the deficit because I'll be doing biking and running to keep my heart and lungs and blood vessels in top shape. Swimming, in another sense, is a strength workout for muscles, and if I take time off from that, my muscles will miss it. It is this aspect that can be made up--at least a little--with appropriate dryland workouts. My plan, therefore, is to find dryland swimming workouts to do and do them. If I am unsure of how to do them, I will study them. I might even video myself to see if I am doing them correctly. And if I need to purchase more gym equipment, let's go. We just bought a treadmill. I might as well add to the collection. 'Cause who knows how long this pandemic will go on. I want to be optimistic, but I'm really not. Vaccine distribution won't proceed as smoothly as predicted since no one has experience doing it on such a giant scale.

I'm writing about that nowIt reopened for a time over the summer but it was under such financial burden that it closed again. Today the YMCA is open for a few activities but it's on life-support and if it comes back to life, it won't be until late 2021. 

Two Days' Rest

I slipped a little. I took a break from workouts both Wednesday and Thursday of this week. It is so hard to stop the sliding! I will get back on the horse tomorrow. Shall I promise myself a double workout day? Yeah, I think I can do that. I promise to do two endurance workouts (swim, bike, or run). I will. To be honest I was tempted to do a weight workout as one of the two, but that's not "getting back on the horse." 

I'm pretty happy with TrainingPeaks. I bought a maintenance training plan that will take me through early December. Last year I was using TriDot, and though I soured on that company, one of the things that really worked for me was the weekly Tridot score.  If my score went below 80, it made me feel guilty! TrainingPeaks doesn't have that scoring system, but it does have green, yellow, and red boxes that form around the workouts I do to indicate how well I achieved the workout goal. TrainingPeaks also has the big, messy graph that shows the peaks and valleys of my training over time, and I DO feel pressure to keep my progress heading in the up direction. My two-day slide shows up as a tiny drop. I can use tomorrow to fill that in and get my training headed in the right direction.

The blue line shows my overall fitness level calculated by TrainingPeaks. The large mountain at left is what I built for IMMD in September 2018. A smaller mountain in the middle represents the training I did for the Air Force Marathon in September 2019. The slightly taller peak at right is the training I did for IMLP that never happened in 2020. I stopped training in late May when I learned the race was cancelled. Finally, the small but steep hill at far right is the progress I've made since the last week of August 2020 as I start working toward what will hopefully be IMLP 2021.

Oh, I forgot to say why I skipped a couple workout days this week. The answer is I expected to do an indoor bike ride in the evening. However, I spent time in the early evening reviewing a student paper that really needed attention due to an impending deadline. Then, late in the evening was the Vice Presidential debate and while I could have biked during that time, it was more fun watching it with my wife in the living room rather than downstairs by myself. When I spend part of the evening doing school work, I feel like I should spend the other part of the night with my wife. I have no idea whether she knows that these decisions are conscious calculations on my part. In sum, I spent the time doing other things besides a bike ride. Workouts at this time in my fitness cycle don't get first priority. 

As for today's skipped workout, I feel pretty burned out from a rough week (and it's only Thursday!). I just didn't feel like it. Besides, my choices were either get up early to do it (but that's not going to happen after staying up late to watch the debate!) or do it tonight after choir rehearsal. Nope. Too tired. Kind of depressed.

Tomorrow is another day. Middle finger to COVID. I can do this.

What I've missed by not working out for 3 months

After taking three months off from traithlon training, I've started up again. At least, I've gone running twice this week. I hope to increase that to three workouts next week and four workouts after that, and five after that. But who knows. It's really hard to start again, and I don't know why. It indicates I don't really love it, right? If I loved this triathlon thing, I'd look forward to training. I would have missed it.

It's true that there are some things I've missed: 

1. I'm not fat and haven't gained much weight (7 pounds in 3 months; but I'm no heavier than last winter), but my abdomen is definitely softer than before. I worry about how I look in photos.

2. I miss the weekly schedule and workout goals. I was using TriDot and it would suggest a workout for me each day, and of course sometimes I'd have to rearrange the days to fit all the workouts in. Training gave me a sense of purpose. These last three months I've forgotten how much I like to "worry" about my sports equipment and my diet in order to be the most efficient athlete I can be. Also, TriDot would give me an incentive to meet a numeric score for each workout, and I liked the "competition" with myself to earn those scores. I was often really, really good at getting high scores by having my pace and heart rate precisely match what was suggested by TriDot.

3. Obviously, I've missed the races. IM Lake Placid was canceled. Presque Isle triathlon was canceled. The spring olympic Mighty Moraine Man was canceled. Doing those virtually just didn't excite me at all.

4. When my family went to Lake Placid on the weekend when the race was supposed to occur, I saw at least one athlete all decked out in his trisuit, running along a highway. I expected to see more, but didn't. Anyway, this guy stared straight ahead, was clearing going at race pace, and was probably doing the whole race on his own. Since I had family with me on the trip, I didn't want to do anything like that, but ever since I returned home and realized that a couple of my closest people are still doing their races (wife Shannan and friend Geoff), I've put a lot of thought into the fact that I could do a whole Ironman on my own, and it would represent a considerable endurance feat in a unique way. To be honest, I'm actually more interested in this now than competing in the actual race planned for July 2021.

5. Time alone and independence. When I stopped training at the end of May, I was just starting to do the long bike rides and runs. These get me out of the house for hours at a time and take me to different places. Until just now, i had forgotten how much I like that. I get to make all my own decisions when I'm training. I still really love my independence, even after being married for 5 years.

So now, I have to keep it going. Three workouts next week! I'm also about to pull the trigger in signing up for TrainingPeaks. I won't go back to TriDot because it let me down during the pandemic by adjusting things to account for the loss of swimming pool access. Maybe I'm being unfair and giving it some blame for how life has changed. Regardless, it's time to give something else a try. I plan to sign up for the premium TrainingPeaks and then download a "maintenance" workout plan for the next 14 weeks (Phil Mosely's 20-week plan can be ended early). Then I'll start Phil Mosely's 32-week full length triathlon plan on December 1st.

And if the pandemic is still here in 11 months and I don't get to go to Lake Placid, I've got an idea for doing it all myself, using campus as a transition zone.

Middle finger to COVID-19

I have 11 months to train for my third Ironman race. I'm starting this week. Of course, the pandemic changed my plans to do it this year. If the worst happens again, and there are no races in 2021, then I'll figure out a way to do an Ironman virtually. I didn't consider a virtual race this summer because doing it on my own just didn't seem to push me forward in any way. I felt motivated to do my first Ironman in 2016 to see if I could do it (I did it!). I felt motivated to do my second Ironman in 2018 to see if I could do it faster (I didn't). I signed up for my third in 2020 to see if I could do a challenging course with lots of hills. Despite there being a lot of hills around my home, I didn't think a virtual race this summer would really accomplish anything. Perhaps I was wrong. I think doing a virtual race of 2.4 mile swim plus 112 miles on the bike plus a 26.2 run, done in sequence on the same day by myself, sounds like a different kind of challenge that I will do in 2021 if the real race at Lake Placid gets cancelled again. Doing it virtually won't give me the finish line experience of a real race, but it would give me a sense of accomplishing something which the pandemic can't take away. So here's my middle finger to COVID-19! You're not going to stop me anymore. 

By the way, here's a photo of Dan's cousin, me, Geoff, and Dan after the Presque Isle sprint triathlon in 2013. This is what showed up on my Facebook newsfeed and prompted me to write this post.

Review of Knuiman et al. 2015

Knuiman, P., M.T.E. Hopman, and M. Mensink. 2015. Glycogen availability and skeletal muscle adaptations with endurance and resistance exercise. Nutrition and Metabolism 12:59.

There isn't anything special about this article by Pim Knuiman and collaborators, but at some point I printed out a copy and read it because I thought it would be useful. It's a review article. It starts with background on what effect starting exercise with low amounts of stored glycogen (while fasting, weight loss diets, or just many hours since a meal) had on muscle adaptations following the exercise. In endurance exercise, studies have shown that mitochondrial biogenesis increases to a greater degree in this condition, but only when glycogen is only mildly depleated.

Also in the background material I found some interesting facts about the distribution of glycogen within muscle. There is glycogen stored within the sarcomeres (5-15%), within the myofibrils (5-15%), and between the myofibrils (75%). Each location uses the glycogen to fuel different molecular processes.

I learned that in general, moderate intensity endurance exercise (30-65% VO2 peak) is predominantly fueled by fat, whereas exercise exceeding that degree of intensity is fueled more by carbohydrate. I had heard that before, but somehow in my mind I reversed it until reading it again here. An interesting note is that this is just a general rule, and that well-trained individuals will have different abilities to use fat and carbs at different levels; they have "greater metabolic flexibility."

The article later addressed resistance exercise and confirmed the general rule that exercise + protein ingestion = muscle hypertrophy. This is not as true for endurance exercise, only because the protein gain (which is real) is simply replacing the protein lost during the exercise (known as the "interference effect"). In any case, protein consumption with a small amount of carbohydrate is important following exercise of all kinds, either to increase or simply maintain muscle mass, strength, and efficiency.

There is a general understanding that when one does both endurance and resistance exercises in one day, the endurance exercise should be conducted in the morning at a somewhat depleted glycogen state, and the resistance exercise should take place in the afternoon (since depletion wasn't shown to be important), followed by a high-protein meal.

Fourth MS150 bike ride

My friend Dan and I participated this weekend in the MS150 "Escape to the Lake" bike ride from Moraine State Park in western Pennsylvania to the shore of Lake Erie in Conneaut, Ohio. We rode 64 miles on Saturday and 62 miles Sunday with an overnight stay at Allegheny College in between. There were about 500 riders on the route with us, with plenty of support from volunteers. Rest stops were placed along the route every 12-15 miles. It appears I actually gained about a pound of body weight because I ate more snacks at the rest stops than burned calories!

 

This was Dan's and my 4th time doing this charity ride and the weather was best this year, with only gusty winds to complain about. It was indeed brutal riding in that wind at times, but it was still better than the year when we had to ride through a thunderstorm!

 

I did not train for this ride. Before this weekend, I had logged just 21 miles on my bike since January 1. I have been having a hard time staying motivated to do workouts since my 2018 Ironman in September, and this has concerned me. However, the bike ride was fun and I am happy I still have cycling legs even if they've been inactive for many months. As they say, "it's just like riding a bike," and my body knew what to do. It's not just the mileage but also the handling skills. It felt really natural. So this was a great ride for several reasons: (1) raised funds for needed research on a disease that affects millions, (2) strengthened the bond between good friends, and (3) helped me break through a fitness slump. Please pray for me that I can follow through and enjoy being an athlete again.

 

A ride in the rain

I think about 45 of my 57-mile bike ride today was in the rain, followed by a 20-min run, also in the rain. The temperature was 61. It could have been miserable, but once I warmed up, my spirits were good. I am thankful for the fairly large network of paved recreation paths in Pittsburgh; without it, I would have had to worry about other drivers' visibility and traction besides my own.

August 2018 update

August totals: 18 miles swimming + 338 miles biking + 75 miles running = 437 miles. Well, it's time to reckon with the truth about my Ironman preparedness. Compared to 2016 when I did my first one, I have a deficit for the year in the amount of 373 miles of swimming, biking, and running. This represents 16% of my total. In August alone, I have a deficit of 25 miles, all of which is running. This is entirely Kennywood's fault. On July 31, the inertial forces of a roller coaster caused me to smash my knee into the metal seat in front of me. My knee is 90% better now, but pain and a forced limp caused me to limit my mileage. Well, the reason doesn't matter much, now does it? I feel unprepared for the run segment next month at my race, and since I should be entering my taper soon (the period before a race when an athlete decreases volume, allowing the body to recuperate), I shouldn't do too many more long runs. Ironman is as much a mental endeavor as it is physical. I'll have to work on my confidence in September!

July 2018 update

I'm in trouble with my ironman training. This July I managed to swim 11 miles, bike 198 miles and run 57 miles. This sounds good until one considers that in the same time frame in 2016, when I was training for my first ironman, I swam 18 miles, biked 389, and ran 90. Two vacations this July and a greater dedication to family activities and home projects have reduced my mileage this year. I've got no regrets, but I'm getting worried now.

June 2018 update

June fitness totals: swimming 8 miles, cycling 233 miles, running 65 miles. I'm almost exactly where I need to be for my Ironman training. Compared to 2016 when I was doing similar training, I am 10 miles behind schedule, but that's negligible.

May 2018 update

In May I swam 4 miles (not much!) and biked 187 and ran 41 miles. The biking and running totals are more than I did in 2016, the last time I was preparing for an Ironman triathlon. My 2018 mileages are nearly equal to my mileages at this time in 2016, so I'm doing well with my training. Yay!

April 2018 update

Ironman Maryland is 22 weeks away! I'll be ready. My April workout totals:Swimming 7 miles + Cycling 65 miles + Running 77 miles = 148 miles. What the?! I have never run so many miles in one month.

March 2018 update

One week from now my competitive swim season will be over. I'm excited. But I'll still swim each week for triathlon season! Here are my March totals: Swimming 12 miles + Cycling 97 miles + Running 38 miles = 148 miles. This total is about 20% less than last month, but that's ok. My bike's been in the shop and my foot's been sore. Gotta take care of those things to make way for a big spring.

2017 Mileage

I kept up with a baseline level of fitness in 2017, but I logged the least amount of mileage in biking, running, and swimming since 2011. This will change significantly as I prepare for IRONMAN Maryland in 2018.

September update

In Sept 2016, I swam, biked, and ran 248 miles. In 2017 this month, the total is 54. #RestYear #EndsNow #IronmanOct2018

AMYMSA Champs at Spire

Race: Masters swim meet, championship
Date: April 8-9, 2017
Location: Geneva, OH

This past weekend was my Master’s Swim Association Championship Meet at the Spire Institute near Geneva, Ohio. I had a good feeling going into the meet; I thought I was going to do well because I felt prepared and strong. I even posted to Facebook the day before we left, saying “I’m going to kick butt at champs!” This ended up being completely and undisputedly true.

Event#3: 100-yard Individual Medley
I swam this in 1:11.78, which was a new personal best, breaking my old record set in February 2014. I kicked this old record good, lowering my time by 1.98 seconds, a decrease of 2.7%. My friends report I was first in my heat at the halfway mark but my competitors caught up during my breaststroke. This is ironic because I had made plans about my butterfly (“use a smaller kick and faster stroke rate”), backstroke (“kick fast and keep my hips up”), and freestyle (“take fewer breaths”), but I didn’t have a strategy for my breaststroke. I thank Arianne Winkleblech for helping me improve my backstroke kick in practices last month.

Event #5: 50-yard Butterfly
I swam this in 30.06, which was a new personal best, breaking my old record set in November 2014. I kicked this old record good, too, lowering my time by 1.52 seconds, a decrease of 4.8%. I have reinvented my butterfly stroke this winter, making my kick smaller and increasing my arm stroke rate. I could do this consistently during the first 25 yards in practice, but I had had limited success at the 50-yard distance. Today I did the new stroke the whole distance. I actually placed 2nd in my age group, beating out the reliable powerhouses of Daniel Pruzinsky and Ben Mayhew. Ben was gracious and supportive, while also expressing great surprise. Me too, Ben. Me too.

Event #8: 100-yard Butterfly
I swam this in 1:12.50, which was a new personal best, breaking my old record set in January 2013. I thought this would be an easy record to beat because I had never swum in this event since I set that old record. Surely I have improved in 4 years! I lowered my time by a whopping 7.74 seconds, a drop of 9.6%. I have more I can improve upon; I noted a bad turn at the 50-yard mark, and I started taking too many breaths during the last length.

Event #10: 200-yard Freestyle
I swam this in 2:27.86, which was a new personal best, breaking my old record set in February 2016. The improvement was 0.59 seconds or 0.4%. My dive felt great and I felt very powerful until I got to the 100 yard mark. Then, I nearly missed the wall. My toe barely brushed across the touchpad and I lost all momentum. Daniel Pruzinsky and I were in adjacent lanes and while at first he and I were neck-to-neck, this poor turn caused me to drop well back from him. Not only did a bad turn slow me down, but the next 25 yards of swimming were spent thinking about the mistake and wondering if I would get disqualified (the officials at this meet were actually giving out DQs), rather than what I could do to minimize its impacts. I thank Josh Gurekovich working with me this past week on my dives.

To sum up my first day of Champs, I set new personal bests in all four events. Three of these were substantial improvements resulting from changes I made to my butterfly stroke. I did some other things differently in the last few weeks of training that may have also made a difference. I will list these later in this post.

When I was a new swimmer in 2010, it was commonplace to set new personal bests, but it has been harder to set them now that my stroke techniques have matured and the small inefficiencies that developed early in my career have become ingrained and harder to squelch. Swimming is a highly technical sport, and tiny adjustments in body placement significantly impact speed. Somehow at this Championship meet, I made a few adjustments that made a difference. My great success from Saturday continued into Sunday.

Event #13: 500-yard Freestyle
I swam this in 6:50.24, which was a new personal best, breaking my old record set last year at Spire in April 2016. I kicked this old record good, lowering my time by 14.12 seconds, a decrease of 3.3%. My goals were to keep my pace steady from lap to lap, concentrate on having streamlined turns, and to stay ahead of all my competitors in adjacent lanes, since all had similar seed times as me. During the race I saw that I was leading my heat from the start, and I tried to slow down just a little so I wouldn’t burn out. I didn’t need to do this. I had practiced this swim over and over during my practices in the preceding month so I would probably have been fine going a little faster. I felt strong throughout, and I was not breathing hard, which helped me stay under the water longer at each turn. I smiled underwater when I saw the official standing over my lane, ringing the bell. This was a signal to everyone that the fastest swimmer of the heat had one more lap. Guess who that was? It was me! And I promptly got distracted by my giddiness and screwed up my last turn, right under the official’s nose. I thank Shannan for counting my laps and cheering me on.

Event #19: 50-yard Freestyle
I swam this event in 27.00 seconds, which was a new personal best, breaking my old record set last year at Spire in April 2016. I lowered my time by 1.38 seconds or 4.9%. This magnitude of improvement rarely happens in a 50-yard race; there is simply too little distance over which small changes in technique can have a cumulative effect. I really couldn’t believe what I saw when I looked at the timing board and saw 27.00. How did I do it? I had a great dive, strong arm pull, and I took only two breaths.

Event #21: 50-yard Breaststroke
I swam this event in 37.56 seconds, which ended up being 0.20 seconds slower than my personal best, set in November 2015. It’s too bad I couldn’t go 7 for 7 in terms of setting records, but the way I am looking at it now is that I’m leaving an easy record for me to beat next time. I went into the race with some mixed emotions, so my failure to swim it fast was probably a result of psychological factors instead of physical factors. Coach Josh thinks my breaststroke is my best stroke out of the four (breast, back, free, and fly). However, others whom I trust saw an issue with my head movement that could be improved. I learned about this on the day of my race, so during warm-ups I practiced the breaststroke with less head movement, and a fellow swimmer walking by my lane actually complimented me on how “smooth” my stroke was. I had not sought out this feedback, so I thought I must have fixed the problem. I think I probably did, but it was not enough to set a personal best. I don’t care. With so many fallen records in this meet, I am content.

In sum, I set 6 personal bests out of 7 events. My average improvement was 3.6%. I cannot wait to compete again to see if I can keep lowering my times. To do so, I have to figure out what I did this year that could have resulted in such success. Here is a list of things I think could have made a difference:

1. I wrote up a list of things ahead of time to concentrate on during each event. This helped me focus. Many athletes forget how important it is to mentally prepare for a race.

2. I shaved my chest and wore a swim cap. There isn’t a lot of data out there on whether or not this produces a measureable effect; it may reduce drag in the water, or it may be the placebo effect. In any case, the effect is estimated to be 1-2%, so this could account for only part of my success.

3. I asked my coach to work with me on my dives the week before my swim meet. This likely helped a lot on my 50- and 100-yard events, where the dive accounts for a significant part of the swim.

4. I sought out advice on my backstroke and freestyle kicks from Arianne a couple weeks before my swim meet. This helped my 100-yard IM.

5. I did extra weight lifting for more than a month in advance of champs. I think this accounts for a lot of success, especially in my butterfly stroke.

6. I practiced the actual events I would swim over and over during my practice sessions, even if they were not at race pace. I’m not sure I have done this in past years. My practices are usually more geared to freestyle. I know I did not change my practice volume (I did about 10 miles per month in the three months preceding champs).

7. My body weight is about the same as it was last year at this time, but I have more fat now (12% instead of 7%) and less muscle mass (42% instead of 44%). I was training for my Ironman last year; the numbers don’t lie!

8. I did longer warm-ups on Saturday before the afternoon session (500 yards); I also swam 300 yards to warm-up on Sunday morning, and another 300 yards before the afternoon session. I timed these much more carefully than usual to be within 30 minutes of my actual races.

9. I have been running long distances (5-7 miles) once a week since February. My overall mileage is no different from last year, so I can’t think of why that would make a difference in my swimming performance. Still, it’s a change of pace that is worth noting.

2017 Goals

I think I finally have a goal for my training in 2017. I've been lazy so far this year so I needed to make some goals. Please ask me how my training is going so I have some motivation to actually do it. Nothing fancy this year; just two half-marathons and several sprint/olympic distance triathlons.

longest training ride

Every Paved Trail in Pittsburgh, plus a section of the Montour Trail: 91 miles in 6:01, average speed = 15.1 mph.

I felt good, considering the length of the ride. My legs had plenty more in them at the end, but my back was really sore from the riding position. Four eventful things happened on the ride: (1) At 1.0 hours in, it started to pour. The rain lasted about 30 minutes. Then, another hour later it rained again, so I was soaked for half the ride. I didn't mind too much. I got a little cold toward the end, but otherwise the rain made the ride interesting. (2) 2.5 hours in, I started getting muscle twitches that indicated to me a lack of salt and/or potassium. The snacks I carried didn't contain much of these electrolytes so I stopped at REI and bought some salty snacks. (3) Soon after my visit to REI, I was riding through Schenley Park and into Oakland. There were railroad tracks at a slant and signs there reminded me to take the tracks at a 90-degree angle. I was lazy and did them at maybe a 60-degree angle. This was good enough for my front tire, but my back tire slipped out from beneath me and I skidded onto my side. I got small areas of road rash on my shin, thigh, and ankle; my right cycling glove tore; and my bike's handlebar tape is cut up. I'm really surprised that that is all that happened to me and my bike. It was quite a spill! My chain started making high pitched noises after that, but I think it was just from having the rain wash away all the chain grease, and I only started to notice it after my fall. (4) I got my third flat tire in a month. Great, just great. I'm getting well practiced at changing a flat, but this is also making me really worry about getting the next one. I now constantly look down during my ride to see if my tires are still ok.