Man with a plan.

I got off the phone with Jim this morning and am feeling good about our conversation. I wasn't sure where to go from here. We reviewed my injury status and we both agreed I need to get healthy. I also told him that I won't have any races planned at least until after July and even then I think it'll be just some MTB racing and the Sprint Xterra at Snow Valley. What we came up with is a two week training block of some base-like cycling training with 2xweek strength/core training.

That's still training six days a week but much more manageable than 3 2xday multisport in a six day training week. This is something that I've been wanting to do for a while anyway, that is, focus on the bike. Everywhere you turn there is advice telling us to train the weakness. That's probably true but I think there is a lot of room for improvement in my cycling. I consider it a strength at this point and because of that I haven't given it the time to really break through. Since I train with Power, it will be pretty easy to monitor the progress.

As I get healthy and am able to get back in the pool and running on a regular basis, I think I want to continue with a similar type of workout block. Like laying out swim, run or bike focus blocks that allow a good amount of focus in each sport paying particular attention to technique.
I think that's a good amount of time to develop some positive muscle memory without risking overtraining/overuse related injury. The bottom line is to develop a schedule I can live, maint/gain some fitness, improve my skill level and have more fun.

There is a lot to be said for triathlon and the training, but it is the very idea of being able to train in a different sport every day that can become the most difficult part. It echoes the newly surfaced idea that multitasking reduces productivity in the workplace. Yeah you can do all these things at once but how well are you doing them. It's as if you showed up to work every day and worked on a different project each day. So when you sit down to work, you get the "so...where was I". If your a professional athlete or sponsored without a day job then you can put 100% of your effort into shifting gears and managing your life around the training. For me and just about everyone else, it's training around my life which risks the feeling of spinning your wheels that much more. To further illustrate, I've got about 4-5 house projects going on right now. None of them are done. I'm working on them all at the same time. If I just focus on one project and finish it before I start the next one, I'll have continuity be better able to anticipate problems and a lot less trips to Home Depot.

Back to making sense, I actually did get back in the pool yesterday. I was jonesing for a workout and swimming makes me feel awesome. My shoulder felt great. I took it easy for starters but also worked on initiating some of the technical refinements that will hopefully keep me injury free from here on out. I've talked about some of the potential causes of my problems but the one I'm keying in on is increasing roll onto my right side (non-breathing). I worked on spending more time gliding on the right side, which allowed be to roll more, opening up the recovery. This is just one aspect that needs to change but it was good to get some positive feedback.

I'm gonna go get on my bike. I love my bike(s).

Retooling

Well I'm officially over it. That is, with the depressing day I had yesterday. I went to at least watch some of the athletes who were able to race. I walked the two blocks to where the bike course hits the top of the hardest grades. Oh yeah and I could see the swim course from my house also. But I walked over with my wife and baby and cheered on as many people as I could without blurting out my strategy for that particular climb. I pretty much had it figured out to the Watt. Oh well. Later on, we went to the mountains and I took the epic out for a flat spin on some fire roads. I had to do something. My hip was feeling better but I kept it real easy.


I don't know exactly where I'm going to go from here. I don't have any more races officially planned and don't know if there will be for a while. My professional and personal lives have been pretty much been marginalized since January. For one thing I need to get totally healthy. This means getting into some PT, chiropractic and strength training. Just to note. The strength training I beleive has been my achilles heal through all this training and racing. I was training with Pilates up until February and had to cut it out of the schedule for time management.

Spectator.

It's Saturday afternoon and I'm officially not racing in San Diego International. I'm pretty bummed about this decision but I think it's best in the long run. I've been fighting off some shoulder problems as I've written about it ad nauseum. I figured I'd rest it for a couple of days and focus on the bike and run which was fine given SDIT was only a 1000m swim but the run was 10k. On Wednesday I had a 60 minute ride with some race pace intervals. I took it to the trainer so I could easily control my effort but also noticed some popping on the outside of the right knee. No pain, just the common tight IT band stuff that goes away with some warmup/stretching/massage. I warmed up and cooled down about 20 minutes each and stretched well in all planes. I felt pretty damn good otherwise.

Thursday I had a swim and a 30 minute run with some RP intervals. Obviously I skipped the swim and stretched my shoulders pecs and lats. In the afternoon I hit the run. Something was up I could tell within about 5 minutes. I run without music and am very aware to listen to my feet and breathing. My right footsrike was loud and slapping. Nice and soft on the left. I tried a couple of things like switching sides of the road, shortening my stride. I started feeling little bee-sting like twinges right around the outside of the knee, no signature IT band pain but enough to stop and stretch a couple of times. I still hit the intervals. During the last 10 minutes my hip, primarily TFL started really heating up. This whole time I wasn't worried at all because I was in taperlike mode and not overeaching at all so it couldn't be an injury, right? Well an hour later after the run my "hip" was really sore. I still didn't worry as I got right on the foam roller and tennis ball.

Friday was a day off and I couldn't do anything if I wanted to. I was practically limping on account of the soreness. By this time my shoulder was feeling a lot better, clicking and popping had subsided and no real dull pain like the days prior. I'm still thinking okay if I take Friday and Saturday off I'll probably still be cool to race. I wasn't panicking yet just trying to ice and massage my damn right leg thinking this can't be happening. If it wasn't better Saturday morning I was making other plans for Sunday.

I woke up this morning and took a hot shower and did some stretching. The first couple steps out of bed were not bad. It just felt like the day after a long run kind of. I put on my shoes and figured I'd do some light jogging, like once around the block to check it out. I got to the end of the street and walked back. That was all I had to do to realize if I show up and race, I could easily inflame the IT band and watch all my fitness go down the toilet for the next two months. My wife is a Physical Therapist and I've had full on ITband syndrome before. We talked at length about the situation and she (not signed up to race of course) recommended not racing. I recognized that ITBS had not manifested but also was aware of the warning signs. The writing was on the wall. I couldn't help fantasizing about overcoming obstacles, ribs, shoulder and hip to lay down a solid PR after all that "rest". It's all fanasy and a dream now as I'll be sleeping in tomorrow. I've only missed one race due to injury or illness, that was back in 2003 LJ half Marathon.

I'm looking back at my training and the plan is not suspect. What is becoming more obvious is how that big hit I took in the side found it's way through my body. I probably should have been getting chiropractic 2x week to have my body settle back in properly. This is where I'm heading. My PT checked my pelvis and it has a pretty pronounced posterior rotation on the right side. I'm going to wait for the muscle tension to subside a little then hit up the chiro.

Too many grains of sand.

If you've been reading my training blog at all lately, the last 4 weeks have been pretty much a bust. I've had some good training but mostly my workouts have been compromised, limited or hindered by my rib injury on some level. I've been feeling better and have been trying to psyche myself up through positive outlook but I don't think there is anything more frustrating than trying to get to the starting line of a so-called "b" level race when you're not 100%. By "b" level race I mean one that was not necessarily scheduled to coincide with the major build and peak phases of periodized training plan. Is that the only definition of a "b" race. I can think of some others.

This is the race, that if it was an exam, you only study hard enough to get a "B".
Lack of fitness will probably cause you to "B"low up or "B"onk.
It's only a "b" race so I can "B"low off this last interval.
What should I have for "B"runch after the race?
"B" is for beer that you drink for recovery.

By nature I don't believe any of the last definitions but I have visited their relevance in such a situation.

Then why the cynical outlook? My shoulder is injured now. I mentioned the shoulder problems from my last open water workout. Well, I went to the pool to do some speedwork, 10x100 all out. I warmed up well and felt the stress very early. I gave the shoulder some more time to warm up and payed very close attention to my technique as I normally do. Wide entry with the hand flat or slightly thumb up. Easy pressure on the catch and initiating with the elbow up on the pull straight back to the hip. Low, relaxed recovery. All checked out, but still I had pain. I did one 100 at race pace and shut it down, finishing with 200 very easy to see if the pain would subside. NO! What next? and What happened?

I was laughing when I re-read the baby in the arm theory, still plausible but not likely the source. More likely is that my stroke has been breaking down over time. I'm thinking early when I got back in the pool after the acute period of my rib injury had subsided. I still had some discomfort which may have caused some compensation. Shutting down the pec's or the abdominals could have caused the supporting shoulder muscles (rotator cuff) to work way too hard. This could easily lead to overuse syndrome and hopefully not complete tendinitis. Though I do have the signature clicking and popping in the shoulder. I have to believe the fact that this is the same side as the rib injury and is definitely related on some level.

At this point I'm still telling myself I'm on the line Sunday. I'm a little conflicted as a competitor,
honestly knowing that I won't be 100% unless a miracle happens between now and my next swim workout on Thursday. The only saving grace is that the cycling and running have been going pretty well.

Tuesday's
fifty minute run included 5x 2 minute efforts at sub 5k pace. Done as a fartlek I averaged 6:05 pace for these efforts and averaged 7:40 for the whole run. This was a tough workout but I was pretty happy how well I recovered and got back on pace. The only thing is that I even felt some pain in the shoulder during the later parts of the run.

I already talked about the swim so I'd rather not revisit that rant.

So at this point I am day to day, waiting to see, not digging it.

Just a post.

Today is a day off. Getting ready for the final surge into race mode. With San Diego International on Sunday, I'm fired up to finally feel completely healthy. The training has been going very well this last four days. I'm not exactly sure where the fitness stands at this point. The training hasn't been perfect and I'm about 2 pounds heavier than wildflower. This all can hopefully be overcome by a well executed race effort. This will be my focus this week as I tackle this final week of training. Concentration on super clean diet, and plenty of good sleep are two of the things I can control while mentally preparing. I'll be trying to stay thinking about one thing during the race, what can I do right now to go faster? For one race hard. Run harder. There's not much more I can do about the fitness, so race execution is what it's all about.

Just to recap the training


Thursday was another day off.


Friday
was a day for open water swim. the best scenario was to hook up with the tri club swim at the shores, but that wasn't until 6pm and it was supposed to get windy. Swimming in choppy water is good for overall preparation but not going to do me any good for the protected race venue. I headed out to find some clean water and drove up to the shores but the wind had already come up and was whitecapping at 10:30! Back down to Sunset Cliffs for some protected water. The kelp beds knock down the chop but not the surf. The water temp was up and was really smooth.

The first 20 strokes felt great then I started to get some premature fatigue/discomfort in my left shoulder. This happens from time to time and usually goes away after about 15 minutes. It didn't. I fought it off the whole swim, trying everything short of severely modifying the stroke. The only thing that helped was breathing to the left side. I've struggled trying to execute this in the pool and have not had the skill or the patience. I started to get it. Ten strokes on each side, not a bad rhythm. At least now I think I could do it if I had to. I swam for 45 minutes which was a good swim, just not a great confidence building workout. I think I know what's causing this to show up. Sounds crazy but I hold my baby in the left arm. Sometimes until my bicep is burning. It stresses the shoulder a little too. I'm going to consciously switch arms and see how it goes. The other factor is that I could be arming it too much with the left side, not engaging the lats and pecs. Just an educated guess. Always something to work on.



Saturday
was the long run. I normally run on Sundays but I think Jim moved it up to push it further from race day. I like that theory. I felt really good on this 90 minute Z1-2 run. Fresh and controlled. I averaged 8:20's with HR avg 143. It did start to creep in the last 20 minutes but nothing beyond expectations. Max HR 160. I think my technique and efficiency are improving and I'm looking forward to the test on Sunday.



Sunday
was Father's Day and took advantage of training when I wanted and recovering how I wanted. Nice! I took off for my 2 hour ride and prerode the course including some 15-20 minute efforts at close to race pace. I was a little fatigued from the run Saturday so the power wasn't as high as I'd seen, but not bad. Normalized power was 230W for the whole ride. Avg Power was 200W. I'm looking to average about 220-230W for the race effort. That'd be a good ride.

All in.

Enough with the drama. These posts were starting to get too depressing full of explanation or excuses depending on how you look at it. I'm committing to race on the 24th no matter what. I'm feeling good enough to train, I'll be good enough to race and that's that. It's too easy to get complacent and start believing all the personal complaints that bounce around on a daily basis. The training has been going well this week despite a few adjustments in location. My sacred pool is drained for maintenance. (sounds like a metaphor but it's not, I swear) Fifty meter skatepark.


Monday
was a much appreciated day off. There is a certain amount of guilt that goes along with being more consistent in taking your off days than with the rest of the training. Considering the circumstances I'll take it.


Tuesday
I was tired right after I woke up. I went in for the weekly massage and just felt like sleeping.

I checked the ocean by my house as I wanted to get in the ocean to do my swim workout which included 3 x500 T pace intervals. The water was full of kelp and seaweed locally so I headed up to LJ shores to battle the tourists for parking. The water was a little lumpy but the swim lane buoys were up which helps with siting. I swam easily for the first ten minutes then hit my intervals just going by stroke count and time. My stroke count is about 20 per fifty and that worked out pretty well to do 7:30 500s. It was tough swimming fast in the chop because when you need air, you need air at T pace, not a mouthful of water or a skipped breath. Nothing but reality for race situations. I finished out the swim doing some surges then 5 min easy/bodysurfing. Not a bad workout. It felt good to get back in the ocean.


Later in the afternoon I got on the trainer for an hour workout. This was not a magic day for me on the bike but I know it's in there. You just know. 10 x 90 seconds broken up into 30 second efforts then shifting up. 1:1 recovery.


Today, Wednesday.
I had some threshold work in the pool. I bit the bullet and drove up to the JCC to hit the 50m pool. They changed it around so now it's 25 (yd?). You really appreciate the long course swims when you go shorter. That's a lot of turning around. It was hard to judge my T pace on the short course but I started at 1:30 for 400 then faster for each 300,200,100 at race start pace at 1:20.
I felt pretty strong and smooth in the pool escpecially compared to the ocean swim prior. Like boarding on the groomers versus moguls. I hung out and watched the masters workout for a few minutes just to check the faster swimmers. A lot of fast guys with lots of technical flaws, go figure.

Later I got out for a 30 minute run with some 20s accelerations beyond race pace. I was working on technique in 5 minute sections. Really concentrating for 5 then off for 1. This seems to work well for me to break the run into smaller portions for improving technique, cadence, lean and arms.

I've been looking ahead at the training going into race day and it looks really good. This will be the first race that I'll be close to being undertrained (on paper). This of course due to my injury and subsequent inconsistency in some of the workouts. I consider this an interesting opportunity to race really fresh. This will be like a sprint distance effort, aggressive. I plan on attacking the swim, pounding the ride and running hard. I'm really familiar with the course. I've got the engine. Finally can say I'm looking forward to it.

Patience is paying off

I haven't posted in over week because I've been feeling less than inspired by my race preparation. But today I am waking up after a big weekend feeling better about San Diego International in two weeks. I have been patient to get through the frustration of training while injured and not get too far ahead of myself. It's been tough at times wanting to pull out figuring "I go big or not at all". Other times I just do what I can and enjoy it. I'm in a place where my ribs are day to day and I have two weeks to decide whether I'll toe the line. I'm feeling surprisingly fit, considering the spotty training. There is some hope.


Training recap.

Sunday.
My long run was scheduled for 2 hours. This is the longest run I do and this one was at some intensity Zones1-4 and some 5 on a hilly course. I really wanted to run, and hit my route out to the point (SDIT bike course, I know this like the back of my hand) and down a walking trail, which is like one mile of trail at 6-10% grade. I was basically running how I felt and it wasn't until after I reached the top of the trail on the way up that I started feeling the 4 hour ride from Saturday. I still hit a negative split on the way home from my checkpoint but was shelled getting back towards home at 1:45 where I planned a cooldown for 15 minutes. My legs hurt and I decided to finish my cooldown on the trainer for 25 minutes to keep the engine going but give some relief to the quads and solius. My last long run was 1:30 and I figured that 1:45 was close to 10% increase of that, for injury's sake. Feeling my legs today that was a good recovery technique in addition to kicking it on the couch with the legs up watching the Padres. Ran with very little discomfort otherwise.


Saturday.
I'm so stoked I got to finally ride some new areas near our place in the mountains. I'd only previewed the ride on Google earth and figured 4 hours was enough time to get lost and found. I'd been trying to get someone to recon this with me for a long time and I finally got my buddy James schedule to align with mine. The kid is up for anything. We found a lot of stuff that was great and some that allowed us just to spend time in the saddle. I felt really good on this ride I don't know if it was the energ-ease that I took prior or what. The only problem was this hideous squeak from the bottom bracket that kicked in about 30 minutes into the ride. It made the epic sound like a beach cruiser and I'm sure was robbing power, but I was really afraid of breaking down in the backcountry. I mean deep. nobody. We made it back after a brutal 1300 foot climb during the last hour. Pitchy as hell, inhaling face gnats. Other than that we did a little over 5000 ft of climbing total, (5000 on the MTB feels like 7500 on the road) in about 3:30. I lubed my chain when I got back, fixed. DER! Beautiful day. awesome country. we're going back!


Friday.
I had an open water on the schedule, but couldn't make it at 6:00pm with the triclub. I hit the pool for some longer tempo sets:

200 WU
500(30S)
1000(60S)
500
200 kick
200 CD

This felt good and was definitely a confidence booster not to have too much pain.


Thursday.
I was supposed to race the Aquathlon but couldn't pull the strings to get to the race at 6:00 pm(baby action) in addition to not feeling too hot on account of the ribs. I got in the trainer workout I skipped on Tuesday. It went REALLY well and have a new respect for trainer workouts. I'm really happy to see such improvement on the bike. It was a Tempo workout consisting of 4x6 minutes. I was trying to keep the workout from getting too far into LT so I stepped them up 10W per int. just to keep an eye on HR. I haven't tested Power zones on the bike in a while so I have to go by feel/ballpark.

Thats:

241W

250W

260W

285W Average Respectively.

HR barely reached 160 except the three minutes on the last interval.

Wednesday.
I did a swim and a run down at the strand. I did them consecutive to test myself for Aquathlon.
I was hurting pretty good on the run. My legs were still hurting from Sunday and my chest was aching. I got in an hour run after 2400m in the pool.

Tuesday.
I'd had enough. My schedule was tighter than ever and my ribs weren't getting any better so I decided to take two days off in a row to see if that helped. I had a swim and a trainer workout planned but I figured if I was still going to race at least I was more confident blowing off the trainer workout. How much more could I lose taking an extra day off?

This next week will be pivotal to determine my fate for race day. If I'm feeling good by Saturday, I'm all in. If not it's a wait and see scenario. Trying to stay positive.

Roller coaster. not the fun kind.

What a total roller coaster. One day I'm waking up feeling great the next I can hardly take in a deep breath. I've been managing to stay relatively on schedule, with the running being the most difficult, discomfort wise. I'd been kind of testing it all last week and decided to save it for my long run yesterday. I was able to get in some decent swims but had to modify some intensity as the deeper repetetive breaths wear on me. Cycling has been solid. I've been getting in all the workouts as prescribed and am definitely feeling stronger from focusing on that aspect of my game. That has been the only thing to keep me going mentally. Quick recap of the workouts:

Sunday. long run.

I wasn't sure how this would go. I really wanted to run as I hadn't gone out in two weeks! I had 110 minutes planned and I felt that was pretty stacked. My legs felt good and ribs were okay until about 10 minutes into the run when my breathing got a little harder. Finally some searing pain both in the front and back of the cage. I stopped turned around and walked. I started running again when I started to feel better. pain again in 2 minutes. I started modifying my breathing going deeper in the belly. some relief. hmmm. I ran right back by my house and refused to go back to the barn, I was feeling better. I stretched this one out to 90 minutes cutting it short due to building pain levels. It ended up being a pretty decent 60 min unstructured fartlek as I would feel good for a while then have to dial it back. It felt good just to run.

Saturday.

I had a tough bike workout. 2 hours 30 minutes including sprint intervals. These hurt. 3x20 second sprints all out followed by 5 mins to HR 5b. Three intervals total. I averaged about 800 watts on the sprints, max 960W. Average wattage for each 5 min interval was:


301

276

256 HR Max 172 on all three.


No doubt fatigue was setting in along with the lactic cement that filled my legs during the sprints. It felt good to be finished with this workout. I was done.


Friday.


Trainer workout. Custom one hour focusing on single leg and some turnover drills. These are hard especially trying to get lower on the SLD's. Not quite in the aero position but low on the horns. I don't know if I could do more than one set in the aero...yet. I was supposed to get in an open water swim here too, but I wanted to give the ribs a chance to heal to see if I'd feel better.


Thursday.


1:30 bike. Rode SDIT course working hard on uphills trying to get a sense of what kind of wattage I can sustain without gettin out of hand. I threw in 3x tidepools hill at zone 4. I proved to be a lot stronger than last year at this point, but throw in that swim and it's a different story.
The rest of the time was spent at Z1-2.

60 minute swim one hour following the ride. 2000m total. I was swimming through a bit of discomfort the majority of this swim. It never got too intense but I also didn't do anything too close to threshold. I switched the swim and bike around because I knew from Wed. that I'd be a little sore from the swim to comfortably get on the bike.

Wednesday.

First day back to swimming since Xterra. I had a big swim planned and knew after the warm-up that all I was going to be able to do is aerobic swimming trying to breathe easily. I got in 1700 m
with 400m of kicking. It felt good to get in the water but I was a little disappointed that I had not come as far as I thought in the healing department. I was in some tolerable pain in the later parts of this swim but still not good enough to hit the run planned for the afternoon. It hurt to breath deeply and/or jog when I got back to the car so I called it off. Cruise intervals were not happening that day.

Today is a much appreciated day off. My legs are a little sore from the run from two weeks off but unfortunately so are my ribs. damn. I'm trying to keep it all in perspective. Getting a lot of work done.