Swimming Breakthrough

I got in the pool yesterday and swam 1,000 yards straight (all freestyle). I wasn't the fastest, but I got to the point where I can keep going and going without getting out of breath. Back in the beginning of December, I would be spent after about 3 laps.

This is a big confidence boost because now I feel I can go swim the first part of my Sprint Triathlon in May  (500 meters) without being utterly exhausted for the bike.

My two major enemies were boredom, and after about 800 yards, my neck started hurting (I only breathe from my right side). I averaged 2:00 /100 yards through the first 450 yards, and then it tailed off to 2:10/100 yards by the end. I felt like I could have kept going, but I met the goal I set out to do and I didn't want to screw up my neck.

Critical Mass Houston

I went to Critical Mass last night, which was my first-ever group ride. Critical Mass is a monthly group ride, whose nominal aim is to of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to cyclists, direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city streets on bikes."

The ride attracted a wide variety of riders, though largely it was the hipster crowd. There was probably 300-400 people. The ride met at Market Square Park downtown and then the organizers decided a path, everyone took off through downtown. If a light at a major intersection is red when the first people approach it, people usually stopped, by they wouldn't stop if it turned red while everyone was going through. Cars waiting would miss their green and some would get mad. One guy kept inching foward until he hit a girl. She was okay but shaken.

As a regular working/family guy training for a triathlon, I found the ride to be unsatisfying and nerve racking.

• Didn't really like the whole blowing through red lights, though with 300+ rides it would be extremely difficult to stop at every light with all of those people. I think this increases cyclist animosity than promotes cycling awareness.
• A lot of riders don't hold any sort of line, and can dart off toward you from the side, or stop quickly in front of you.
• The changes in roads or lanes, combined with the mass of people, their tendancies to swerve, and sudden stops, made me feel like I was constantly in high alert mode while riding to avoid a crash. This was more nerve racking rather than a relaxing social ride. This is made worse by people heavily drinking, whose crashed.
• The area we rode in wasn't the best part of town, it was late at night, and there was a decent chance that drivers were drinking or high.  All-in-all I didn't feel comfortable or safe.
• When we were moving it was slow, about 10mph, so for me it was like: pedal-coast-pedal-coast, so it wasn't really a good workout, although 3 hours on a bike will help my butt get more accustomed to longer rides.
• There were still frequent stops with lots of people, and sometimes it was on a steep uphill, which makes restarting difficult especially given my next issue.
• The final problem was largely my own making. I bought clipless pedals yesterday afternoon. I had planned on putting my platform pedals back on by I ran out of tme. While I did practiced clipping in and out, I was thrown off by quick stops triggered by a sudden stop or a guy on a bmx bike cutting in front of me. If I knew I was stopping, I didn't have an issue, but these surprise stops left me struggling to clip out to avoid a crash. One time my hard leg ejection, caused my chain to come off. By the time I got my chain back on the group was long gone and I was alone in the middle of the ghetto. I managed to link up with one or two other riders, but then it was difficult to catch-up when you hit light after light.... in the ghetto. One of the girls in our straggler pack said "I'm so scared right now". Luckily we followed the right route and met up with the larger group at mid-point stop at Herman Park.

My favorite part of the night (besides the beer at the end) was the trek from the Heights to downtown (and back) with our group of about 8 folks. Seeing downtown at night from the Heights bike trail was really nice. I think I would prefer an organized ride with like-minded road cyclist such as one of the training rides for the MS150.

February route, sort of: It was right at 20 miles, plus our little group's trek in from the Heights and back, which made it to about 28 miles. Our little group veered off towards the end to avoid waiting for the slow moving train.

 We had to wait for a train so here is photo of some of the riders

Training Update

February has been busy so far - I've only had 2 complete rest days. Overall, I feel like I am making progress, but sometimes I doubt I will get to where I want to be by race day.

 

2nd Brick
6.3 mile ride coupled with a 1.7 mile run. This is quite close to what my super-sprint will be in 4 weeks. My first brick was miserable, but recently I had heard to spin at a lower gear and higher cadence soon before you finish. I think it helped compared to my first brick, but of course, it isn't the same as running with fresh legs. I felt slow on the run (it felt like it was about 9:40/mile), although I was huffing and puffing like I was going faster. Turns out I was running at 8:30/mile, which is about my max aerobic threshold. I think the higher cadence from biking makes your legs continue to turn over at a higher rate. 

Run
I've been using spare time to bike more rather than run. Two reasons: 1) given I started by only running, overall I've run about 40 more times than I have biked. 2) My run speed over 8:30/mile is reasonably close to the middle of the pack. My average biking speed of 16-ish mph is at best the 90th percentile.

 

Bike
Learned to ride in drops and relatively smoothly transition from hoods to drops. The first time I tried riding in the drops was definitely awkward - it was very difficult to transition without think I would lose control over the bike. However, a gave it another shot a couple weeks later and it was noticeably better. Over the next several rides, I've been practicing that transition and it is getting smoother (but not always smooth). The big thing is that I found I like riding in the drops better!

 

Swim

1. Last week, I did a little experimenting with stroke cadence and time. I definitely tend to be an overglider, so I wanted to collect some data to see how to improve. My easier/endurance effort cadence is around 46 spm, and I average about 30 seconds per 25 yards.  When I first tried to increase the cadence, I really ended up just increasing my arm accelerating through the water. My speed increased to about 0:25/25yds, but it still took about the same number of strokes per length. So my cadence was faster, but only by a small margin. The next time I tried to have a very higher cadence regardless of form. Cadence increased dramatically, but my time per 25 yds didn't improve. Conclusion: I think I should continue to work on force/stroke and be able to repeat that over 500m and then gradually increase my cadence.
2. I also practiced sighting more. I first closed my eyes the entire length to see if I could swim straight. Nope. About halfway, I crashed into a lane line. I repeated it with the same result.
3. Today, I felt like I hit a milestone in swimming. In my triathlon swimming group, we had to do, 2 x 300 sets with a short break in between. I was going at an easier pace (about 2:05/100 yards), but I never felt exhausted.  We did 1,750 yards today and I was still feeling good at my last 100 yard swim (1:58).

6 Month Anniversary of Tri'ing

It has been 6 months since I decided to get off the couch and start running....err, mostly walking. At the time, I was about 30 lbs overweight and my size 36 pants were getting extremely tight. My goals were to lose weight and get in-shape: not just for me but to provide an example of an active healthy lifestyle for my kids as they get older. I don't want them to get fat playing video games non-stop.

I first started running and dieting. I knew I wanted to get into triathlons, but I wanted to prove to myself and my wife that it wasn't a fad before plunking down the money for a bike. So my goal was to do two 5Ks. At first it was hard and progress was slow, but I found the Couch to 5k program and that made a path forward clearer. However, every incremental step seemed daunting; when I could run 2.5 miles, running 3 miles seemed impossible.

I only had one 3 mile run before my first 5k and it was at a 10:39 pace - breaking 30 minutes seemed impossible. Three days later, I hit 29:20. A month later, I shave a minute off that time and six weeks after that, another minute was shaved off. When I first got in the pool, I could only do 3 laps (25 yd pool) of freestyle before having to switching to backstroke. On Monday I did 32 laps without stopping (yes, it was hell).

6 Months by the Numbers (some August 2012 data are estimates):

I have to remind myself of my progress, because the next incremental steps still seem so daunting. After biking 15 miles last Friday, running a 5k seemed impossibly daunting: "Oh no, I only have 11 weeks until my big (full sprint) triathlon!" However, 11 weeks was the same amount of time from going from couch to my first 5k. 

I read a quote by Mike Pigg who was asked if he was frustrated or felt cheated by not winning Ironman (a persistent stomach bacterial infection prevented him from continuing in the extremely long distance events): "No, I don't have nightmares about it. Different people say you have to win to win. My philosophy is you have to give it your 100 percent and you're a winner. That was my 100 percent. Why have any bad feelings about your 100 percent?"

That is that attitude I want to carry forward. I squeaze as much exercise into my week as I can, given other commitments. I exercise about 5-6 times/week, each for about 40 minutes to over an hour, time permitting. This is despite whether conditions are not ideal:  I run when it is drizzling, I bike when its cold, I swim when the kids have woken me up multiple times over night, etc. So I will continue to give 100% during training and will give 100% during the events. After that, who cares about how my time compares to other people?

George Bush Park

So it was a beautiful day and I had part of a workday off, so I headed over to George Bush park. It is out by I-10 and Highway 6, so it is about 20-30 minute drive for us inner-loop folk. What it offers, though is a 22 mile out and back ride without any stop signs or traffic lights.

There are a few places to park, but at Highway 6 / Briar Forest there is parking lot and it is on the eastern most end of the trail.

Mile 1: Slight uphill about a 0.2% grade
Mile 2: Slight uphill about a 0.2% grade
Mile 3: Flat - you actually enter George Bush park
Mile 4: Shallow uphill about a 0.1% grade
Mile 5: Slight downhill about a 0.2% grade

Mile 6: Shallow downhill about 0.1% grade

Mile 7: Flat
Mile 8: Flat
Mile 9: Goes over a wooden boardwalk, gets bumpy

Mile 10: Flat

Mile 11: Very windy with tight turns.

On the way back, when you are tired, even the 0.2% grade feels like the Col du Tourmalet. In all fairness, per bikecalculator.com, you would lose about 0.75 mph on a 0.2% grade, given the same other variables, so it's not nothing, although 0.2% sure sounds like nothing.

 Mile 3: This is when you actually enter George Bush park

 Mile 3 (anothers) be careful of a few narrow openings if you are a novice rider.

Most of the travel is qute scenic

The boardwalk on mile 9: It gets quite bumpy

Mile 11. Either the turnaround or the start if you parked on the west side

Now the Hard Work Begins

During the first several times I went swimming, I saw a rapid improvement, but that has since slowed. About 3 weeks ago I swam a set of 550 yards at a pace 2:25/100meters. Today in my tri-swimming group, our last set was to time 300 yards and I finished at a pace of 2:25/100 meters. Granted this was after swimming 1500 yards, but we did have a brief rest. Bottom line is that there was no miraculous improvement.  As in previous sets of longer than 100 yards, my first 100 yards is about 2:05 and my second set of 100 yards drops to 2:20. 

I've got both form and endurance work to do.  On endurance, I was the fastest in the slow lane, while we were doing sets of 100 or less. When it came to the set of 300 yards and after 100 yards, I had a marathon runner on my heels.  

As for form, Swim Smooth outlined 6 swim types. The video on overgliders really nailed me. Some key takeaways:

• Often tall male swimmers
• Struggles to breathe bilaterally. Typically breathes every two strokes to one preferred side (unilateral breathing) with distinctly more rotation to the breathing side.
  Overgliders have a slow stroke rate, ideal is about 76 spm. (Mine is about 50 spm.)
• Distinct dead spot in stroke
• Have idea that they should be heavily rotating, (but causes legs to scissor kick apart, slows them down)
• Overgliders tend to have an engineering or analytical background
• Focus too much on every stroke, trying to make every stroke perfect
• Takeaway: Swtch off and focus on rhythm of stroke.

Today, I tried working on faster turnover, but then I end up pulling early with my left hand as I breathe from my right side. I also often feel that when I turn to breathe, my legs start to sink. I did find a small glimmer of hope. I found that if when I rotate to breathe, if I snap the movement it seems to work better. Of course, I'd get into the rhythm and then need to turn around and I'd lose the rhythm. I'll need to time it next time to see how it works.

The Effect of Jogging Stroller on Running Pace

Okay I am completely redoing this post now that I have better data. We just ran in a 5K on Saturday, with the kids in jogging strollers. I have recently picked up a couple off Craigslist, but since I often run at 5am, I only tried it out once.  I've been curious as to the impact of the stroller on the running time.

My original post had too many variance: it was hotter, I was feeling ill etc. Today was a good comparison. It was 55 F and I was feeling good. As is everywhere in Houston, the terrain was flat.

A week ago, I timed the first mile of a training 5k, where I was trying to make mile split as fast as possible, but knowing I still had 2 more miles to go. I hit 8:29. The beginning of the race was crowded with walkers, so the mile 2 split was 8:58 and the mile 3 split was 8:57 per my trusty MapMyRide ap.

So given that data, I think it is roughly 0:25 - 0:30/mile. 

Same Power: Flats vs. Hills

I've been experimenting with bikecalculator.com, an awesome resource for folks who like numbers. One question I had was "Is a hill, with the difficulty of the uphill and ease of the downhill, equivalent to a flat portion".

Short answer: No

Long answer: No. I was suprised. Take someone generating 150 watts, riding on the hoods over the course of a mile. On a 2% grade, it will take him 31 seconds longer to do a half mile up and half mile down over the time it would take him if it was a flat mile (3:28). If it was a 4% grade, it would take him 1:47 longer.

A note on grade: 4% seems relatively small but it is the grade of the steep roads most people know of. I used this site to calculate grade and google earth to look and distance and elevation.