Wildflower Wrap-Up

Tonight's brick workout at Griffith Park represented my last "real" training session before the Wildflower triathlon this Sunday.

How do I feel?  It's a mixed question.  This morning, I would have written that I felt slightly more fatigued than usual.  Tonight, I'm more optimistic. Most notable is that my right knee isn't hurting at all despite climbing to the Griffith Observatory and running a few miles after.  Lately, my knee had been acting up on the run and sometimes during the bike, requiring ice and extra stretching.  Tonight, no discomfort.  That's a plus!  It's been weeks since I felt that good after a workout.

The ride itself was a little tougher than I expected though.  I found myself pushing a little harder than I wanted, but it was mainly because Frank joined me and I wanted to play catch-up.  In the understatement of the year, I am a little competitive.  Fortunately, Fortius teammates Mike and Richard playfully yanked me back and in their own way reminded me we were supposed to be tapering. Point taken.

Perhaps the best news of the day though was Coach Gerardo's email that tomorrow's 6 a.m. swim workout is cancelled, meaning I get a training off-day since nothing else is scheduled.  Woohoo!  I am so excited to sleep in, though I'll need the extra time to pack for the weekend.  Despite the lack of workouts, tomorrow will still be packed with triathlon goodness. I'm likely buying a set of race wheels to go with the triathlon bike I don't own yet.  They're Hed Jet 6 and 9 wheels.  More info on them tomorrow once the transaction is complete.  And I've got a pre-race massage with Fortius massage therapist David at 6:30 p.m.  Since it's so close to the race the massage will be light and circulatory, mostly a relaxer.  Can't wait.

Even though Wildflower is in just a couple days, I can't help but notice how relaxed I am.  I've trained at Lake San Antonio. I've done more than 10 triathlons now.  I'm experienced.  I'm healthy.  Well-rested.  What's there to be nervous about?  I know the course will be challenging, but it will probably be one of the most fun triathlon weekends I'll ever have.

210 days and counting.

Tough Tuesday

I figured after a Mellow Monday that I'd have all kinds of energy to train today. False.

Maybe it was the sushi, tempura and teriyaki chicken I downed at 9 p.m. last night following yoga practice.  Causing me to pee at least three times that I can remember during the course of the evening (in the toilet, mind you). Maybe it was the delayed effects of my Sunday workouts.  Probably a combination of both.

Whatever it was, when I entered the pool this morning for our twice-weekly Fortius coached workout, I quickly realized I wasn't in top form.  I suppose the first indication of what was to come should have been the gauntlet of sprinklers that teammate Nico and I dodged to avoid being drenched in our sweats.  It was like a timing puzzle in a video game.

Inside the pool, I dragged almost from the get-go.  My lane's warm-up 400 was cut short -- probably because I was too slow!  From there, my teammates and I proceeded to slog through two sets of 400-yard sprints (100 build, 200 fast, 100 race).  This proved to be an especially frustrating experience.  Last week, I felt I had a breakthrough in technique that allowed me to swim faster.  In other words, I could keep up with the faster swimmers.

This morning, I was brought back to reality.  Both Ann and Jenna asked if they could pass me in between sets.  They might as well have said, "Dude, get back to the slow lane where you belong!"  I was holding them back. Not a good feeling, but I knew it was true.  And there wasn't much I could do about it at that point.  I was tired.

The rest of the hour-long session didn't go much better.  In fact, things degenerated to pure comedy at one point.  Megan, our swim coach and teammate, was trying to teach how to scissor kick.  Ann, Lisa and Jenna all knew how and were quite effortless.  I looked like I was being electrocuted, spasming wildly while trying to avoid swallowing loads of water.  Turns out that's especially difficult when everyone is laughing at you!

It became such a comical distraction that Megan sent me to my own lane.  Talk about a demotion!  I was sent to my "special place" for the rest of class, for private instruction on how to stay afloat while scissor kicking and gliding on my back.

I'm not sure what the point of all that kicking and bobbing was, but I do know it tired me out much more than expected.  When I came home after the workout, I crawled back into bed.  I was done with workouts for the day.  Cancel that 45-minute spin session.

I'm trying hard not to put much stock into today's debacle of a workout.  I'll chalk it up to fatigue and just needing a bit more rest.  After all, I did train two hours extra last week compared to what was scheduled.  And everyone has a bad performance every once in a while, right?  I  mean, as a Lakers fan, I just point to Kobe and what's going on in our playoffs right now. (BTW, I predicted the Lakers would win in six.  Now, I think they'll win in seven.)

Of course, nobody will compare me to Kobe, or in this instance, Michael Phelps.

I'm going to shake off today's practice and focus on tomorrow's brick workout.  I'll have had more than 24 hours rest and should be good-to-go.

211 days and counting.

Mellow Monday

There are workout days like yesterday, where I swam, ran and practiced yoga practically back-to-back-to-back. Then there are workout days like today, where I enjoyed an easy yoga session at the end of a long day.

Sweet!

Even sweeter was Stephanie joining me at Black Dog Yoga tonight for class and sushi after.  Since we've been engaged, our schedules have been so packed that we rarely spend quality "date" time together during the week.  Tonight was a welcome exception.  Except it makes it harder when you're trying to suppress a yoga fart in class!  (Fortunately, I concealed my gas.)

And so begins my taper to Wildflower.  Counting this evening's mellow pseudo-workout, I've got six days until the big race.  Including the race itself I've got six hours of training this week.  Six!  That's at least half my normal training load.  Since I'm healthy this time (unlikely the LA Marathon), I'm not sure what to do with myself.  I'm almost giddy with the extra free time.

Tomorrow I've got the Fortius swim at 6 a.m., followed by a 45-minute spin on the trainer. I can handle that!  Let's see if this taper thing works when I'm healthy.

212 days and counting.

Just Another Manic Sunday

So how was my Sunday? Swimming and running and yoga, oh my!

Followed by a special dinner in Newport Beach with Stephanie's family celebrating Mr. Van Schaik's 63rd birthday.

Just got home. Absolutely exhausted! Non-stop action from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. will do that.

But it really was a great day. It started off with my longest ocean swim ever, a 1.5-plus mile jaunt in Marina del Rey with my Fortius Teammates and the LA Tri Club.  I was surprised at how easy the duration of the swim was, though I wasn't pushing hard.  Richard and I stopped a few times to chat, spot our pier marker and look or other swimmers around us.  Coach Gerardo even made a cameo swimming with us, still basking in his rightfully deserved glow of a 3:15 Boston Marathon time last Monday.

After the swim, it was time to run for an hour.  Most of the group was going to eat breakfast but I needed to fit my workout in since we had plans this evening.  My Fortius teammate, Paul, joined me for the run or I would have been on my own.  Paul is competing in his first full Ironman, St. George, this coming Saturday, along with our teammates Lisa and Christina.  We talked a lot about his thoughts going into St. George.  His preparation.  His mental state.  His goals.  What's next.

It's funny, but even though I'm not competing this coming weekend in St. George, a piece of me will be there.  Only I and and a few others really know the hard work that Paul, Lisa and Christina have invested in this massive achievement.  And while each of them fully deserve the accolades that come with competing an Ironman, a small part of me feels like I'm attached to the experience too.  Like a bench player on a basketball team that never sees actual game time but knows his contributions in practice make the starters -- those who do actually play -- better.

I capped off the training portion of my day with a 1.5 hour restorative yoga session at Black Dog.  The deep stretches, especially in my shoulders and hips, hurt and softened me in the best possible way.  I'm returning again tomorrow night for a 7 p.m. session, along with Steph.  The rest of my training week is quite light in preparation for Wildflower.  Ah, Wildflower...I had forgotten about you for a few days.  Let's hope this taper goes better than my LA Marathon training.

G'night all.

213 days and counting.

2 For 1 Special

Technology was not my friend last night.  But of course, it was my own doing.  I left my laptop at work and my back-up wasn't able to log-in to my blog site for some reason. Lucky for you, today is a two-for-one special!

As I may have mentioned, I tweaked my right inside knee slightly climbing all those hills at the Wildflower training camp.  So yesterday, I took it pretty easy outside of the pool for my hour tempo intervals run.  Inside the pool, well, that was another story.  My friend and Fortius swim coach, Megan, pushed us hard during our 6 a.m. practice.  Among several drills, we did 10, 100-yard sprints at race pace with 10 seconds to rest between each 100.  My approximate pace was between 1:50-1:55, which if accurate, represents a 10-15-second improvement from my early 2:05 T-pace.  Still, my stroke is a mess.  When I'm not crossing my body on the follow-through, my arms are entering the water too early.  If I'm doing those things correctly, then I'm not rotating enough or kicking from my hips and not my lower legs.  Or keeping my head down.  Or gliding enough.

I have so many things to think about during each stroke, it's amazing I don't drown under the weight and pressure of it all.

Now I know what it must feel like being a professional baseball player at the plate batting against a four-pitch hurler.  Too many things to consider besides just swinging the bat.

Of course, like that baseball player who plays for the love of the game, I drag myself out of bed at 5:30 in the morning because I've grown to love being in the water -- no matter how twisted my technique may be.

There would be no water for me today though.  Instead, I had a brick session.  This was made more complicated since my car is in my father's repair shop for normal maintenance, and my Colnago is in the shop for a tune-up.  The compromise was to ride on the trainer at varying degrees of difficulty for 90 minutes and then immediately running hills for the next 45 minutes.  All before 9 a.m., when I need to race the clock to make it in the office by 10.

The bike ride was largely uneventful, made more enjoyable by catching up on The Pacific on HBO.  (Side note: I feel silly complaining about swim technique after watching a mini-series about the inexplicable hardships the Marines endured during WWII in brutally inhospitable jungles throughout the South Pacific.)

My only real concern is the soreness in my right inside knee.  I've never had knee trouble in my life, but after all the climbing we did at Wildflower I think I strained a quad muscle or hamstring.  The tightness in either muscle is pinching the convergence point of three muscle groups on my knee, reducing my flexibility.  The more I pedaled, and climbed in a higher gear, the more my knee acted up.

What was strange though was that my knee didn't hurt as much when I ran perhaps my most challenging local hill not residing in Boney Mountain or Cheseboro Park.  From my condo on Dickens Street in Sherman Oaks, I climbed Woodcliff Road at Valley Vista all the way to Mulholland Drive.  This was literally 20 minutes straight of steep climbing, approximately 1,200 feet if Google Maps is correct. I don't even know why I chose that route this morning.  Especially with my knee feeling a little funky.  Guess I was bored of the usual 'round-the-block runs I've been doing for more than a year now.  It's great to know that I can make it to Mulholland and back home within 45 minutes at a fairly relaxed pace, especially with Wildflower looming.

The only downside of my training today came not frm the workouts but from the recovery.  I had Abby, our company massage therapist, work on my right leg for 30 minutes just after lunch.  Surprisingly, it felt worse after, tighter, than it did immediately after the run and throughout the morning.  Why is that?  Over the past several hours, my knee has remained tight though it's a little more relaxed now that I'm on the couch typing.

Tomorrow is my training off day instead of Friday. I have a business trip in Northern California. Perhaps the extra day's rest is coming at the perfect time?  I hope so.  I really want to avoid another LA Marathon scenario where I can't perform to my potential at races due to circumstances beyond my control.

I'll remain positive, for now.

232 and 231 days and counting.

Wildflower Preview

It's been two days since I returned from a Fortius Coaching training weekend at Lake San Antonio, site of the famed and fabled Wildflower triathlon.

I'm still trying to find the right words to describe my experience there.

I've only completed eight triathlons.  But Wildflower is poised to be the grand-daddy of them all -- the Rose Bowl of triathlons.  The scenery -- picture flowing Texas prairies interspersed with creeks and mountains in the distance -- challenging course routes and abundant wildlife combine to offer an experience that almost makes you forget you're pushing your body to its physical limit.

Almost.

While I could spend hours writing about the relationships I either formed or strengthened with Fortius teammates, I'm going to focus instead on the course itself.  It deserves its own tribute, after all.  I also promised my friends who haven't been to Wildflower that I'd share what I learned.  Selfishly speaking though, I want the images of the myriad hills burned in my head on race day.  I'm going to need that kind of recall.

Wildflower has a reputation for being the second-hardest triathlon course in America.  After swimming in the lake's chilly, murky water, biking both the Olympic and long course routes and running the Olympic course, I can't imagine how difficult our nation's hardest triathlon course would be.

I'll start with the swim.  The good news is that the water temperature should rise a few degrees by May 1.  The bad news (for me) was that this weekend's water temperature was in the mid-high 50s. But that's not going to be the tough part of the swim.

That honor would be reserved for running up an approximately 100-yard concrete boat ramp from the swim exit to the bike transition area.  I can think of few things as fun as just emerging from the water, cold, slightly dizzy and drenched, only to look up at about a 3-5% grade separating you from your bike.

Coach Gerardo suggested not running up the ramp but taking a bit of extra time to settle the heart rate.  An especially wise decision considering the first few miles of the Wildflower Olympic course (which I'm registered for) are a climb up and out of the main park area.  The grade reaches about 8-9% as I recall, so it's important to start the bike ride A) in the low gear coming from T1 and B) with as low of a heart-rate as possible.  There are mostly gentle rollers from Interlake Road onward to the turnaround point, though a few big hills loom towards the latter part of the first 12-13 miles.

According to Gerardo and our training weekend cycling coach, Derek, one of the other big keys to a successful Wildflower bike ride is conserving enough energy on the first half of the ride to achieve a negative split time on the second half.  This is made a little easier as more of the return ride is downhill.  However, don't be fooled...there are a few big hills, especially around mile 15 (if I recall correctly) and the second-to-last portion of the course -- as you re-enter the park.  Make sure you have enough energy for a strong finishing kick.  You'll need it, but you'll be rewarded with a steep, fairly aggressive descent -- the same hill you battled to get out of the park will suck you right back in for the run.  If you're feeling fatigued take your time rolling down that hill.  That's how accidents happen. Trust me, I've been there in the past.

Side Note 1: For those of you doing the Wildflower long course, I salute you.  I rode the long bike course but didn't have the pleasure of running the long course.  That was fine by me.  The long course bike ride is actually a lot of fun, if you pace yourself.  I rode it in a fairly leisurely 3:52, but am glad I did.  Best advice: Save yourself for mile 41, a long (potentially painful) hill known simply as "Nasty Grade."  Need I say more?  Remember there's a follow-up climb to Nasty Grade, and once you start the descent from both, you can begin to drop the hammer if you have enough energy left to do so.  But again, as you'll see below, leave room for the run!

Ah yes, the run.  If you've completed the Firecracker 10k in Chinatown, you fondly recall the first three miles of the race are a spiraling uphill to the top of Dodger Stadium.

The Wildflower 10k course is tougher, to the tune of about 4.75 miles of climbing before you get a real break.

The good (and bad) news is that unlike the Firecracker, you'll see what's in front of you for most of the uphills.  Maybe it's best that you don't see it?  For me, I kept my head down and focused on what was in front of me, which was hard considering all the wildlife and vegetation that were seemingly cheering (mocking?) me along the way.

Side note 2: The deer at Lake San Antonio went to the New York School of Pigeon Behavioral Sciences.  They are unafraid of humans, will essentially pose for pictures and don't get squirrely unless you approach within 10-12 feet. Which, by the way, is a bad idea on general principle.  Deer look harmless but will totally ruin your day.  Or so I've heard.  Not something I want to test out, especially because they travel in groups at the lake.

Back to the run.  If you have trail-running shoes, you may want to bring them.  A good portion of the 10k run is on dirt -- a welcome reprieve from the concrete.  During the final mile, you'll head back to the pavement to run down the steep embankment you biked previously.  This will wreak havoc on your quad muscles but you probably won't feel it until after the race, given the euphoric feeling of completing one of the country's toughest triathlon challenges.

Although I didn't go all-out on the Olympic-distance bike or run, based on my practices I'm guessing it will take me about 3:09-3:15 to finish the entire course, not including transition times.  I'm budgeting about 35 minutes for the swim (though I'd love to be faster!), 1:40 on the bike and if all goes well, about a 54-minute run.  I ran almost immediately following biking the Olympic course so this seems pretty reasonable.

By comparison, I am capable of swimming about a 30-minute mile with a current, 1:10 or possibly less on a 25-mile bike ride and around 50 minutes or slightly less for a triathlon 10k run.  My past Olympic-distance triathlons have ranged from 2:44 to 3:00 (my first Olympic tri).  You can see my budget for this race will be a lot more conservative.

In the end though, the best part of the camp wasn't the preparation or the knowledge of the course.  By far, it was trading stories, insights and one-liners with my Fortius teammates.  Picture going to sleep-away camp but for triathletes.  And with much better food.  It was the ultimate weekend getaway for the obsessed weekend warrior athlete: eat, sleep, train, stretch, repeat.  No cell phones.  No internet access.  Just Triathlete magazine, good company, fantastic scenery, and challenging training.

Aside from having my fiance by my side, what more could an Iron Mad Man ask for?

I returned from Lake San Antonio completely physically and mentally rejuvenated for Ironman training.  I've got the Newport Beach triathlon this Sunday, but my mind is totally locked into May 1-2.  Wildflower.  Oh, it's on baby.

233 days and counting.