Equipment Malfunction

What are some of the most annoying things that can happen to you in the sport of triathlon? Hmm, let's see. Here's a quick list below.

-- Flat tire (check)

-- Flat tire on downhill at 30+mph on your first group ride with a new cycling club (check)

-- Flat tire on downhill on a hot day and getting stung by a yellow-jacket while changing it (check)

-- Elbow/foot to face during swim (check)

-- Getting sick before or during training or a race (check)

-- Forgetting necessary equipment for a bike, swim or run (check)

As of this morning, I can now add one more:

-- Completing a time trial and realizing only at the end that your brake pad on the front wheel was rubbing ever-so-slightly.

Unfortunately, check.

The whole time on the bike, I couldn't quite figure out why my speed seemed less than awesome considering how hard I was working.  It was too loud to hear the telltale "thhppt...thppt...thppt" of the brake scraping the rim earlier in my TT because of the freeway traffic along the I-5 bike path.

On the upside, my heart-rate didn't cross into zone 3 until the final 10 minutes of my 45-minute sprint.  Why?  I'm having a very hard time getting my heart rate up while pedaling flat in the aero tuck.  is this normal?  What am I doing wrong?  How can I push harder?  How can I go a little faster?  Besides make sure my brakes aren't holding me back?  Maybe it was fatigue too, which is entirely possible.  I do know this, given my anticipated swim and run stats, cycling between 20-23 mph probably isn't going to get me to the national championships in Alabama.

On another note, I'm having a hard time keeping my front wheel straight when I place it in the skewers before rides.  This undoubtedly is contributing to the brake pad problems. I've tried putting the wheel on from the front of the bike so the alignment is straight.  I've tried from the top down.  I'm always pushing the wheel either to the left or right of the brake pads.  How can I be better about this?  Any tips/tricks?

I won't be getting back on the bike until Sunday.  And thankfully I only had one workout today to complete since my Fortius swim was optional.  Still, that's 8.5 hours of training since Monday.  And tomorrow, I've got a two hour trail run before volunteering at Coach Gerardo's middle school for a career fair.  I hope my legs will propel me through what has been one of the more challenging weeks of training in a long while.

And slightly annoying, too.

167 days and counting.

From the Sea to the Mountains...

The late KABC-TV anchor, Jerry Dunphy, used to open his newscasts with a greeting along the lines of "From the desert to the sea, or wherever you may be, good evening."  (I know that's not exactly it.) That's what my day of training felt like today.  It started at 6:30 a.m. in Santa Monica for my first ocean speed circuit with the LA Tri Club.  We -- and by "we" I mean about 100 other folks -- met at Tower 26 off Ocean Park and Barnard Way, where we then swam out to a buoy about 250 yards offshore and triangulated back to the lifeguard tower.  We jogged the distance from the tower to the entry point, with the goal of completing at least three loops in the typical one hour allotment.

I was still feeling pretty crispy from the Fortius swim the evening prior, but had enough in the tank to complete three loops with fairly little effort.  The water was cold but manageable and especially salty.  I don't remember the water being as salty in Marina del Rey and Malibu. I'm not sure why that is.  I didn't really know too many people at the swim, but friendly faces Byron, Bob, Mo and Liana made my first experience pleasant.  Bob reminded me that some workouts just require you to show up and log the time.  This would be one of those days.

Of course, my training didn't stop there.  To conclude the day, I rejoined the LA Tri Clubbers at Griffith Park earlier this evening for our weekly brick.  We "only" had 1.75 hours instead of the usual 2.25, but it might as well have been that long based on how my legs felt and my heart-rate performed.  My bike ride was pretty pathetic, though I stayed mostly in heart-rate zone 2 on the climb up Mount Hollywood and managed to get out to the Griffith Observatory and back in just over an hour.  That's kind of encouraging since I didn't exert much effort but still got up the big hills without much trouble.  Still, I just didn't have much power in my legs and I have a 45-minute time trial tomorrow.  I need to find the extra power for that one.  Fortunately, my run was a pleasant surprise. Though I didn't feel great, I managed two sub-eight-minute miles at the end of he run, even getting down to around 7:30 without coming close to heart-rate zone 4.  I didn't expect to see that kind of progress after beating myself up the past few days.  I hope I can build on that moving forward.  We'll find out on Friday, when I have a tempo two-hour trail run with the last 5-8 miles in zone 3.  Wheee!

Perhaps the best part of the day came in the middle, when I visited the dermatologist.  A year ago at this time, I literally was receiving some very light radiation treatments on my face for some pre-cancerous growth on my nose.  Today, I received a 100% clean bill of health from the skin doctor, noting that I was progressing "perfectly."  Considering how often I'm outside, this was a huge relief.  I've been much better about using quality sunblock whenever I can, and it clearly has made a difference.  I can only urge my friends to please do the same, and PLEASE get checked out by a dermatologist.  Or at least have someone monitor your body for unusual moles and pigmentation.

We covered the sea.  We covered the Hollywood sign.  We covered Griffith Observatory.  We ran trails.  We ran on the road.

I think we did Jerry Dunphy justice today.

168 days and counting.

Answering a Question I Don't Want to Ask

I've slept for close to 10 hours each of the past three nights. During that span, I've biked nearly 95 miles, ran about 15, hiked another three and swam (only laps).

It was hot and windy for a good portion of those miles.

Total training time: 10 hours, not including the 2.5 hour hike.  That's between 3 1/3 and 4+ hours a day since Saturday.

Am I over-training?

Judging by my sleeping patterns and how my body feels, yeah, a little.

Can I stop?  Hell no!  I'm an addict.  I'm routinely training 15 hours a week right now -- sometimes more, sometimes less.  I know I should take a moment and reassess but with the Breath of Life national qualifier Olympic triathlon coming up on June 27 and Vineman 70.3 a few weeks later, I feel like I'm training for the high season.  I figure there will be time to rest in late July after Vineman.

That leads me to today's workouts.  I was supposed to run with Stephanie early this morning, at 6:15.  That time came and went quickly, with a fly-swat to my alarm and another two hours of sleep. I managed to fit my recovery run in on the treadmill at lunch.  I literally only ran just over four miles in 45 minutes.  To say I was dragging would be an understatement.  A friend of mine who trains at the gym religiously pointed out that sometimes you just have to log the time.  That's what got me through the workout.  Some days are just bad days.  In her words, "as long as you have one good day of training a week," that's about all you can ask for.

That seems like such a strange concept to me.  I want every workout to be my best.  That's what I expect and demand from myself.

Maybe I should ask my body nicely more often?

Despite my legs feeling like anchors, I'm heading to the pool in an hour for an evening edition of the Fortius-coached swim.  Steph is joining me, which is exciting and a little frightening all at once.  I want to show her how much I've improved in the water but I hope I have enough fuel in the tank to do it.  On top of that, I need to conserve enough energy to make tomorrow morning's 6:30 a.m. ocean speed circuit with the LA Tri Club in Santa Monica.  Followed by a brick at 5:30 p.m. at Griffith Park.

I think if it sounds like over-training, it probably is.

In that case, I've answered my own question that started this blog post.

I know I should do something about that.

I just can't promise that I will.

169 days and counting.

Dear Arizona: See You in November

(Pre-post apology.  I missed blogging Friday and Saturday.  The hotel we stayed at wanted $15 for internet, which I think is insane.  And we got back from Arizona last night at midnight. So this is a SPECIAL Memorial Weekend round-up!)

You'd think that after more than six months of blogging practically every day about Ironman Arizona, I'd get the sense that the journey is real.

I'd have thought so too, until I actually drove up to Mill Avenue and Rio Salado in Tempe on Saturday to preview the bike and run course.

But a funny thing happened as I drove down Rio Salado into the parking lot of the Tempe Beach park.

I got goosebumps. Big ones.  Hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, saluting the course.

Maybe it was the Linkin Park song on the radio ("What I've done") hitting just as I pulled up to the main intersection.  I think it was the gravity hitting me that this whole charade isn't a pipe dream, even with all the training that has gone into it.  The dream is real, it lives at a real intersection, and in six months it's me against time and the elements.  Right here.

It doesn't get any more real than that.

If I thought all this was a dream, reality smacked me in the face as soon as I got on the bike.  At 8 in the morning it was close to 80 degrees. By the time I finished the bike ride it was in the low 90s.  By the time I finished the run, I was pretty much dehydrated, even with drinking more than a liter of water, consuming multiple Endurolyte pills, gels and Clif Bars.

Note to self: Training nutrition in California does not equal training nutrition in Arizona.

The bike ride was the culprit.  I didn't sweat during most of the ride.  Why?  Well, the constant cross-wind that felt mostly like a headwind swept any moisture I had right off my face, leaving a film of salt on my skin and all over my jersey.  (Speaking of, it seems that the winds are at their harshest looping back off Shea Boulevard on the Beeline Highway and coming back into Tempe on McKellips. The only semblance of a tailwind seemed to come roughly halfway back on the Beeline Highway.  Please, someone correct me if I'm mistaken.) My college years in Tucson had taught me to always hydrate even when I'm not sweating, so I actually had consumed nearly two water bottles filled with Hammer Perpetuum during the nearly 2.5 hour ride.

It wasn't enough.

I found that out the hard way during the run.  I couldn't figure out why my heart-rate wasn't dropping from heart-rate zone 3 even when I was supposed to be in zone 1 for the first 20 minutes. At first, I thought it was a good sign since I felt fine and refreshed. Guess I didn't need zone 1.  Wrong.   The remaining 40 minutes of my run were to be in zone 3, which quickly turned into zone 4 despite my best efforts.  All the while, my speed was roughly one-half to a full mile-per-hour slower than usual.

The funny part about this unfortunate dichotomy  was my inner monologue the entire duration of the run.  Literally, in my head I was talking trash to the bike and run course.  In fact, I was planning my official response on Twitter, of all things.  It went something like this:

"Dear #IMAZ course, your oppressive heat and nasty crosswinds don't scare me. Your ass is mine in November. Hugs, Ryan."

Turns out that doesn't fit in 140 characters. But you get the idea.

I even went as far as likening my training in Scottsdale/Tempe as like Rocky training to fight Drago in Rocky IV.  I could literally replace screaming "Drrrraaaaaggggooooo!!!" atop the mountain with "Irrrrroooonnnnnmmmmmaaaaaaannnnnn!!!!!"

"You ain't so bad!"

It wasn't until later in the afternoon, after about at least three additional bottles of water, Gatorade, and a Myoplex protein drink, that I realized the folly of my ways.

But, I WILL be ready in November for Arizona.  No matter what it brings.  Even if the bike course is 80% cross/head winds.  Even if there's a heat spell.  I will be ready.

***

And for those of you who read my blog because you want to know more about wedding planning with Stephanie, here's your special update.  We had a great time in Scottsdale.  One of our favorite restaurants and site venues, Sassi, lived up to its expectations in every way.  The food is truly outstanding (the veal chop, pizza di carne, and orecchiette pasta are my big recommendations), the views are stunning and the price is a bargain. We're not sure about the actual wedding location on the property so we're going to continue scouting locations.

We also checked out the Fairmont Scottsdale, which had really great room deals and a truly all-encompassing resort that could make for a fantastic destination wedding.  We need to do more research on this location, but it's still a contender.  Whether we'll be able to handle the heat and critters in September remains to be seen.  Both Steph and I were apparently attacked by a spider lurking in our bed on Friday evening, as Steph has nine welts all over her arms and legs to show for it.  That would seem to be a strike against Scottsdale.

And now, the weekend continues.  Steph and I are going to practice some yoga for a while and then tomorrow we'll hike Escondido Falls in Malibu before meeting my folks for dinner.  And of course, there's three hours on the bike, re-enacting the eighth stage of the Amgen Tour of California. On my tri bike.  Oh yeah!

It's been a fantastic weekend of discovery, insight, and relaxation.

And PS: Arizona Ironman, your ass WILL be mine in November.

173, 172 and now, 171 days and counting.

Work-Life Balance

Today is one of those moments where I'm so glad I have work-life balance.  When the two intersect and blend harmoniously, life is so much better.  Of course, I only know this to be true after years of emphasizing (OK, over-emphasizing) the "work" part of the equation.  It's only taken me close to 15 years in the workforce before I found a better balance.  Along with one heck of a company that I've called home for 6.5 years now. I was responsible for helping manage a big news announcement from our company this morning.  Normally, this would mean putting my life on hold (possibly for up to a week in advance) to plan and obsess over every detail myself, along with executing and following up.  Fortunately, I have a great group of teammates and have finally taken to heart that my job is no longer to "do" as much as it is to help plan, manage and motivate.  (That's a hard lesson to learn for a competitive guy like me.)  As a result, I was still able to squeeze two quality workouts in -- one before work at 6 a.m. in the pool, and another at 6 p.m. in the gym with the weights.  In between, my team and I worked hard to stay on top of the news cycle.

The pool workout was pretty grueling.  We had a series of sprints between 50 and 100 yards to establish our T-pace for the workout.  Then, we added a few seconds to it and tried to hit a specific time with little rest over the duration of the sets.  It pretty much rocked me.  At the end of the day, I blasted through five sets of three different exercises, with two sets of 15 reps for each.  I was pretty spent after the lifting and about 10-15 minutes of abs work.

In the end, as I sit here with my head spinning after an exciting and exhausting day, I'm thrilled about how everything turned out.  The announcement was a big success, with a potentially delicate situation that I believe we turned into a positive with our fans and the press.  But I'm just as elated about being able to fit in my training without feeling stressed out about either my work or athletic performance.  Neither suffered.  If I can continue to maintain this kind of mental and physical balance over the long haul, I think it can only enhance my overall quality of life.

Which is good, considering Stephanie insists on me living as long as she plans to!

I'm trying, honey.  I'm trying!

176 days and counting.

Pictures Worth 1,000 Words

Sometimes, pictures are worth a thousand words. I've got several of 'em today. More details tomorrow, but chew on these for now!

Yep, I made it to the Amgen Tour of California!

After my Zuma swim got cancelled due to strong rip currents and surf warnings...from two lifeguards!

I got in a little trail/road run after finding a great parking spot near the King of the Mountain checkpoint!

I've got a SICK video of all the cyclists riding by the checkpoint but it's too large a file to post here.  I'll think of something.

Oh, and on the way back to the car, I met Chris Lieto -- three-time Ironman winner and second-place finisher at the 2009 World Championships. Damn Word Press won't let me post the photo because the file's too big.

I'd say it was a pretty good day!  And that's not including the home-cooked meal Stephanie made along with our date night movie of Pixar's UP.

Does it get any better than this?

178 days and counting.

1,000 Yard Stare Saturday

I've got the 1,000-yard stare down cold today.  That unmistakable look worn by those who have pushed themselves either to their physical or mental limits, or both. Four hours on the bike with a monster climb followed by an hour run can do that.  (Thank goodness I opted to bring the road bike today and not the tri bike!)  I haven't uploaded the Garmin data yet, but I think I burned north of 2,000 calories today.  The amazing thing to me is that I didn't even come all that close to completing a 70.3-mile distance and I'm pretty spent.  Granted, I dipped into heart-rate zone 5 on the bike and zone 4 on the run a little too.  But still, I didn't swim, biked two miles longer than the standard Half-Ironman 56 miles, and essentially ran half of a half-marathon.  Total time: roughly 4:50.

I know I'll be fine in less than two months when the starting gun at Vineman goes off.  But getting to that point now is harder than I realized.  I'm climbing a new fitness peak after plateau-ing the past few weeks.

Speaking of climbing, my Fortius teammates and I slogged our way up the big peak on Portrero Road.  Most people carefully steer down that road at very cautious speeds.  The climb was most certainly the steepest I've ever encountered, and it didn't help that I was accidentally in my big ring -- which I didn't realize until the peak when I started my descent and tried to switch into that gearing.  Darn it, I was already there!  That would explain the 35-45 rpms up the hill and feeling like I was going to tip over at any moment. The upside, of course, was the next big climb of the day -- "baby" Portrero hill by Sly Stallone's house -- was much, much easier.

The "toughest luck of the day" award went to none other than Fortius teammate and friend Mike.  He got a flat as we started our big Portrero climb... and then a bee flew into his helmet on the way down the hill and he got stung on the head!  As weird as that sounds, almost exactly the same thing happened to me in 2008 when I was a rookie rider with the San Fernando Valley Bike Club.  The only difference was that I got stung by a yellow jacket, and I was all alone.

For me, the best part of today's bike ride was cycling on some of the roads on tomorrow's final stage of the Amgen Tour of California.  The same streets I ride on regularly will now be considered holy as the likes of Cavendish, Shleck, Zebriskie, Leipheimer and all the other amazing pros blast through them.  I can't wait for them to show me how it's really supposed to look.

That's all I got for today.  I'm going to watch the Amgen Tour of California time trials on Versus, go to Fortius Coach Ray's house to try on our new K-Swiss sample racing team kits (woohoo!) and get ready for Stephanie to head back into town after a night out in Palm Springs with her best friend.  Go go go!

One last note.  I'm inside of six months until Ironman Arizona on November 21.  Yet my blog countdown is WAY off.  I'm nine days off.  So, I'm resetting my countdown clock to 179 days and counting with this post.

Wait for it...

179 DAYS AND COUNTING!!! Less than six months to go!

You Might Be a Triathlon Addict...

Remember Jeff Foxworthy's hilarious "you might be a redneck..." rants? I think I've got a variation, albeit a slightly less humorous one.  It came to me just now while I was sitting on my couch(on my day off from training) watching Stage 6 of the Amgen Tour of California...for the second time today.

"You might be a triathlon addict..."

Here goes:

You might be a triathlon addict if you watch the live online stream of a cycling race and then go home to catch the HD TV version, just for the amazing views and cyclist interviews.

You might be a triathlon addict if you realize that shaving your chest is no longer "manscaping" but rather a necessary step to reducing your swim time.

You might be a triathlon addict if you spend 30 minutes in a Sports Chalet to pick out the perfect swimsuit...since the last two were thrown out mercifully by your fiancee because people could see your butt crack.

You might be a triathlon addict if five minutes in a bike shop for Co2 cartridges turns into 30 minutes because you're debating whether you should put anything but Italian components on an Italian-made frame.  The answer is no.

You might be a triathlon addict if you get just as geeked up meeting and befriending an age-group triathlete pro as you would a football, baseball or basketball star. That happened to me this week, courtesy of Caleb Sponholtz on Team Sirius.

You might be a triathlon addict if you're planning to leave work early on Monday to meet Mark Cavendish at a local bike shop.

You might be a triathlon addict if you check the waitlist for the Vineman 70.3 practically daily even though you know the likelihood of being admitted to the race is all but guaranteed and has been for weeks. Better safe than sorry, I say.

You might be a triathlon addict if you sob like a melodramatic teen girl watching the Ford Ironman World Championships DVD.  Did that earlier this week.

You might be a triathlon addict if in your free time you link corporate sponsors up with elite amateur and pro triathlete teams.  Been doing that with Jack Black's Performance Remedy line of men's skin care products.

You might be a triathlon addict if you think of multi-tasking like transition times, looking for every possible opportunity to shave unnecessary wasteful time out of your day.

You might be a triathlon addict if you shave your legs.

Guess I'm not a triathlon addict then!  Ha!

Yet.

188 days and counting.

Refrigerator is Closed

I remember with great fondness watching Lakers games as a kid.  And as much as I'd like to say that's because of Magic, Worthy, Byron, Kareem and Cooper, my real favorite was listening to Chick Hearn announce every game with his unmistakable style and flair. Nothing could beat his signature sign-off when the Lakers were about to put another opponent away in the waning moments. "The refrigerator is closed, the butter's hard, the eggs are cooling and the jello's jiggling!"

As I flop on the couch after a rather challenging few days of training, I realized my body feels like the contents of Chick's kitchen.  My legs are hard, like lead.  My muscles are aching, twitching, moving all over the place like jello.

The door is closed!  It's over.  I'm done.

Day off tomorrow...thank goodness!

Today's workouts, combined with not enough sleep from the night before, have left me drained.  I completed a 1,000 yard time-trial at the end of my Fortius swim this morning at 6.  The good news is that I shaved at least 25 seconds off my last time trial of the same distance, good for a new T-pace of 1:57 (compared to 2:00-2:05 when I first started).  I'm convinced I can swim a faster 1,000, but just prior to the time trial I had finished 9 x 100s at easy, medium and fast intervals with only :30 rest at end of each fast set.  When I returned home to eat breakfast, I fell asleep for 45 minutes before rallying to get to work on time.

Tonight, my run consisted of cruise intervals featuring 3 x 8-minute build-ups to heart-rate zone 4 and 5a.  The beginning of the run felt like the end of most of my workouts -- it took a solid 15-20 minutes to get relatively loose.  But, I rallied and did the work.  Sometimes, that's what I think this is all about.  Simply acknowledging the pain and moving past it.  Overcoming.  Outlasting myself and creating a new threshold.

That's victory enough.

***

I can't help but comment on the Lance Armstrong-Floyd Landis controversy.  A few of my friends and family have asked me what I think, since I'm their resident "crazy cycling expert."  Here's my take:

Cycling is an allegedly dirty sport.  While it seems to have been cleaned up a fair amount, doping is a constant problem. And it was probably worse over the past several years.  That said, I really want to believe Lance. He's essentially the last of the sports heroes out there that people can look up to as an inspiration.  He has given thousands upon thousands hope, and that means a lot.  That said, if cycling was filled with dopers and dirty experiments, and you had one man absolutely dominate that sport during that period...how can you not at least wonder how he did that completely clean?  Now I totally get that his VO2 threshold is much higher than anyone else's.  I get he's a cancer survivor and can deal with pain on a level that most everyone else on the planet cannot.  Still, is that alone enough to dominate the way that Lance has during his career?  I honestly don't know.  Part of me doesn't want to know.  I want to be entertained.  I want to be amazed.  And as sad as it is to say, sometimes I just don't want the curtain pulled back too far to show what's really going on.  My entire childhood of sports heroes has been mowed down because they all did drugs of various types.

Can't I just have one guy left to look up to?

Please, Lance, please be telling the truth.

189 days and counting

I WILL Finish

If you are a triathlete, are thinking of doing your first triathlon, know a triathlete and wonder why the hell we do what we do, or have a penchant for the dramatic, then you must watch the 2009 Ironman World Championships DVD. I thought the DVD was a consolation prize for not being selected in the 2010 Kona Ironman lottery.  How wrong I was.

A few weeks ago I started watching the DVD during a bike trainer session.  This morning, I finished the video.

Maybe it's better put that the DVD finished me.  I was emotionally drained as they showed the final few finishers cross the line -- staggering, delirious, pained.  Some joyous for barely making the cut-off time.  Others absolutely crushed for missing their goal after spending 17 hours trying their best.  The Ironman can be quite cruel. Trying your best simply isn't good enough -- if you don't hit that 17-hour deadline, it's as if you didn't even show up.

Watching competitors' dreams either exalted or annihilated tore me apart.  I sat on the couch eating breakfast, feeling a wall of emotion flood my eyes.  The tears started pouring down my face as footage was shown of a man with one leg completely breaking down on the final few miles of the marathon, even with his entire family trying to encourage him with every step.  Another woman, 76, called her friend to pick her up during the bike ride because she was having trouble maintaining her balance.

All these tales led me to do things in front of a TV I don't normally do.  I clapped with people finished.  I shouted encouragement as if I was in the stands.

And I found myself repeating one phrase over and over until I was practically sobbing: "I WILL finish."

"I WILL finish."

"I WILL FINISH!"

"I WILL finish."

I can't tell if I was trying to convince myself I'd finish my Ironman no matter what, or that I was above the physical and mental breakdowns and those images of demise and dejection won't touch me that day.  I think it's a little bit of both.

It doesn't really matter though.  What struck me as the DVD ended was just how vested I am in this journey.  It is a statement about who I am.  A competitor.  And I want this so damn bad.  I really hope nothing will stand in my way on November 21.  But if it does, I will most certainly remember this morning on the couch.  I will remember the tears.  The visions.  My solitary oath.

I WILL FINISH.

191 days and counting.