One Week Down, A Lifetime To Go

It's been a little more than a week since I moved to Colorado and I've thoroughly wiped myself out.  After not having the time to get regular workouts because of work and commuting I've been making up for lost time. In the past week I've done 3 runs, 2 bike rides and 1 swim. I even shot some hoops (which I also haven't done in a long time!) I'm now thoroughly wiped out and it feels great! Unfortunately I had forgotten the fulfillment I get from regular training and ending the weekend completely spent.

The first week of work was spectacular! Peaksware is filled with an incredibly passionate and authentic group of people who all seem to thrive as much as I do on either swimming, biking, running or all three! It's no wonder TrainingPeaks is so successful - I guess that is what happens when you put a bunch of passionate and driven athletes together and get them working on products that help other athletes be their best!

Colorado is everything I thought it might be. It is a beautiful part of the country filled with people who love the outdoors. During a two hour ride on Saturday I must have seen 150 other cyclists, and even more throughout the rest of the day while I was getting errands done throughout the day.

As week 2 starts the lesson I've learned is that I don't need to catch up on my training all in one week! Besides, going from living at sea level to living at 5,400 ft above sea level necessitates that I take several weeks to acclimate!

Stay tuned!

My Tipping Point

Photo Credit: Go GratitudeI'm a big fan of Macolm Gladwell's book by the same title as this post in which he described what the tipping point means as they relate to a group's momentum toward something - an idea, trend, etc - until it reaches the "tipping point". Until the momentum in a way becomes self-perpetuating because a critical mass has developed.

Over the course of this spring I'm noticing a lot of similarities with the tipping point in how I was approaching my training. I've been participating in various types of races for a long time and after discovering triathlon have turned up the volume on the amount of training I do each year in preparing for goal races.  For the past several years, even though I'm not a competitive athlete in the sense that I'm trying to make the podium, the idea of beating my best time or moving up the rankings in my age group has been an important motivator to keep training consistently.  I've approached the calendar year like a true competitive athlete by staying fit in the off-season and following a periodization plan in an effort to build, peak, recover and do it all over again for the goal races I establish.

One definitive trend I've noticed from year to year is that my motivation level changed significantly after signing up for a race. Even if I was planning on a race but hadn't yet signed up yet, the act of clicking submit on the race entry seemed to trigger a physiological reaction that brought me right from early spring until the end of the season. This annual process had become so routine that I never put much thought into it until now.

Why now? It's now almost May and I have yet to sign up for race. I have some plans and goals but haven't clicked the submit button on any of them yet.

Despite this I trained all winter, to the point where I over trained and injured myself forcing me to take several weeks off.  I rode the trainer in the basement and got more than my money's worth from my Netflix subscription, I got to the pool to keep my swim stroke consistent and I ran, a lot, always outside. I ran in blizzards, sub-zero temps, freezing rain, you name it.  I hadn't signed up for a race. I hadn't done that kind of off-season training unless there was an Ironman in the near future. Why the disciplined schedule? 

My conclusion after having lots of time to ponder the question during many hours or training over the past several months is that I reached an internal tipping point. Call it a critical mass of experience or a desire to stay fit or even just the joy of exercising. At some point it became more important to me to just experience swimming, biking and running than to use them as a vehicle to reach some destination (finishing the race). Maybe it was my first DNF last year, maybe it's reaching a birthday with a zero in it this year. Frankly, I'm not sure of the reason and maybe it's a combination of several.

I do still have goal races I want to do this year and in the future (and it will be interesting to see how I react after actually signing up for those races), but for now I'm grateful to be in a place where I train to have the experience and not just to get ready to race. 

A Perspective on New Year's Resolutions

I'm a big fan of the Bike Snob NYC blog. While his perspective can sometimes be controversial, this was written in a recent blog post, and I think it's a truer way way to position "new year's resolutions" than many want to admit.

"Change is a cumulative process and it consists of subtle gradations; it's not something that happens annually at the stroke of midnight. Nonetheless, just as the bicycle industry releases new models every year, we undertake "resolutions" as though we can change ourselves in annual increments. Ultimately, whether it's a bike or ourselves, the result is the same: we wind up with a bunch of hastily-applied "improvements" of dubious value which will most likely be phased out by the time the next model year rolls around. Still, it's human nature to create reference points and plant metaphorical staff gages in the river of time, and so as the new year approaches we find ourselves reflecting on all that has passed."

The message to me is it is good to have a long term perspective on your goals, look at them often and set a goal when it seems approprite, not only at the end of each year.

What it takes to do an Ironman

With over six months of training under my belt I thought it would be interesting to look at the aggregate of my training over that time period. I'm a little obsessive about keeping track of my training so putting the numbers together was pretty easy. Here are my numbers since I started my "official" training on a sub zero 10 mile run on New Year's Day.

Swimming:

• 66 hours
  
• 166,000 yards (that's about 94 miles)
  
• 49,500 calories burned
  

Biking:

• 148 hours
• 2660 miles
• 140,600 calories burned
  

Run:

• 98 hours
• 625 miles
• 98,000 calories burned

Thanks to the input of @IronmanJourney (check out his Ironman training blog), I'll put these hours into some frame of reference. I finished my first Ironman in 13 hours and 55 minutes. My goal for this race is to finish in under 13 hours. Aggressive, but looking at my previous times, its possible as long as weather conditions cooperate.

As simplistic as these numbers are, I do believe it truly is what it takes to do an Ironman. I tried to capture some of the personal characteristics we develop through training on another blog I write for. Take it from someone who used to think that a 5k road race was a challenge, as long as you have a plan and put in the time, virtually anyone can do an Ironman.

A reminder, help to raise money for Bretton Woods Adaptive! Only a few more days to make your tax deductible donation.

The ride I'll never forget. A 120-mile ride report.

I've had a few "epic" rides during my cycling and triathlon days but last Saturday's July 4th ride topped them all.

It was the peak bike weekend for my Ironman training which meant a 120 mile ride "in the mountains" per my training plan. Being in NH the White Mountains were the natural choice, plus there is a century ride already mapped out. All I had to do was find another 20 miles to do.

So, the route was taken care of. Now to actually ride it.

I used Map My Tri to plot the route. A great feature of the site, besides being free, is the elevation information. It told me the ride had about 5,300 feet of climbing. A little short of the 6,000 I'll face in Lake Placid but it's the closest thing to mountain climbing I can find and not make a weekend trip of it.

The route included

• Bear Notch - approximately a 3 mile climb
• Crawford Notch - long gradual 15 mile climb that gets steeper the longer into the climb you get and concludes with a 1 mile section at 13% grade
• Franconia Notch - a comparatively easy 5 mile climb and then a long downhill into the town of Lincoln.
• The Kanc - a very challenging 11 mile climb that includes a few switchbacks and no respite to the steep grade. But, the reward is a very fast 20 mile descent into Conway.

I did the ride with my buddy and Ironman training partner, Paul, and was happy to be able to experience the ride with a good friend. It made for a different and better experience.

As hard a ride as it was, it wasn't what really made the ride "epic". Here's why:

• The ride started in the sun, probably around 60 degrees and little to no wind.
• As we began to climb Crawford Notch we go through our first of two July 4th parades and it also begins to sprinkle. The further up we go, the harder it rains.
• After the Crawford Notch peak, its a nice flat ride past Bretton Woods and the Mount Washington Hotel. Normally there would be beautiful views except we were focused on staying up right as the hail started to come down! That's right, it hailed!
• After the hail it "just" downpoured for a while. We stopped at Fabian's country store across from Bretton Woods to refill our water bottles, which we definitely needed. However, being soaked to the bone, not moving and creating internal heat and then starting back up we were shivering and absolutely freezing in our tri-shorts and tri-tops.
• After making the turn on Route 3 towards Franconia Notch the rain slowly came to a stop and held off during our descent through the Notch into Lincoln. As an aside, having the sun made this a gorgeous ride. I've never cycled through this notch, only driven, and being able to bike by Cannon Mountain and the site of the Old Man in the Mountain was a special thing.
• As we roll into Lincoln towards our last big climb (the Kanc) we go through our 2nd July 4th parade and then see the clouds, hear the thunder and see the lightning. I'll ride in some pretty tough conditions, but one thing I don't mess around with is lightning so we played it safe and pulled under a store awning and watched the skies open up for about 30 minutes. It was some of the hardest rain I've ever seen. Thankfully it was warmer than up near Bretton Woods and we weren't quite as cold from not moving.
  
• At this point we've been riding for about 5 hours and still have 35 miles to go including 15 of it uphill. We are anxious to get going again. After 30 minutes the thunder and lightning appears to have stopped (even though its still raining pretty hard) so we head out. Even though my legs are spinning I'm absolutely freezing. I think the storm brought in some colder air. Paul and I said to eachother we'd actually like to start climbing just to get our heart rates up and warm up.
• After about 5 minutes, we hear thunder again and have to pull under an awning for about 15 more minutes :-( Finally we said screw it and started the last 15 mile climb even though it was still pouring.
  
• While it felt good to climb and begin to warm up, after being on the road for 85 miles, going uphill at that grade was a physical and mental challenge but we made it to the top.
• The problem with making it to the top is now we had to go down, fast, and though the rain had slowed the roads were still very wet. I tried not to think about the thin tires on wet roads hydroplaning at 35 MPH but it was not easy.
• As we traveled down the mountain, the sun came out, roads dried up and by the time we got back to the car it was beautiful.

How did we celebrate finishing our epic ride? We went for a short run :-) Afterall, Ironman is only a few weeks away!