A foolish consistency

My Cervelo P3 Carbon

A few years ago, I figured that if I'm going to be serious about triathlon, I'm going to need a serious triathlon bike. So after a year of consideration (hey, am I really serious, or what) and checking out several other bikes, I decided "yes, I'm going to be serious" and bought this bad boy:

This is my 2007 Cervelo P3 Carbon (aka P3C) with Dura Ace crankset (replacing the stock FSA crankset), Ultegra brakes (replacing the stock house brand Cervelo brakes), VisionTech R-bend carbon aerobar clip-ons (replacing the stock alloy clip-ons), and a pair of Zipp 404 clincher wheels (not dimpled, but cool black and white logos that match the bike), and a Profile Designs Tri Stryke TI saddle.  You also see the XLab FlatWing behind-the-seat bottle mounts and CO2 cartridge mount system. 

Since I took this photo, I've raised the seat 5mm and flipped over the stem, lowering the aerobars about 10mm, giving me more of the "drop" necessary for an efficient aero position.

Every time I ride this outdoors, I'm stunned by the difference between this and my 2003 Trek 5200.  It flys downhill effortlessly, it glides along on the flats, it's just flat out a fast bike.  I'm definitely serious now.

Max VO2 Testing

Earlier in the week I had my max VO2 (also known as VO2max) and lactate numbers tested at Harriot Sports Performance in Seattle.  These numbers will tell me how big of a cardiovascular "engine" I possess, and how efficient my system is at producing energy, and Jill (my triathlon coach) will use them as a basis for my workout planning for the next few months.

I brought my Cervelo to their offices on Western Avenue, where Todd and Russell set it up in a trainer stand with a CompuTrainer to measure power output.  The test began with a 10 minute warmup, then wearing a mask I did the max VO2 test.  This test started at 100 watts, then every minute the wattage ("effort") was increased by 20 watts until I maxed out halfway through the 320 watt set.   The heartrate plus data from the oxygen mask sensor gave the max VO2 numbers.  The wattage was lowered, then a series of blood tests are done at timed intervals as I increased my effort level and heart rate.  These tests gave my lactic acid levels.  All this resulted in a set of numbers that I'm still working to understand.

It turns out that I have a max VO2 of 60.6, which is apparently a very, very good number.  I've read that this number is mostly genetically determined, and only marginally improved by exercise (although being a couch potato can hurt this number).

So what this says is that I've been a slacker all these years.  My VO2 Max is only marginally below "elite cyclists and runners" level, according to various sources I've read.  Apparently I deserve a "not working to ability" note on my report card.  Jill says that my goal should be to develop leg strength to cycle and run equal to my VO2 max number.  I foresee a lot of interval and tempo work in my future...

Also, it turns out that I have an efficient fat burning system, at least at lower heart rates.  This lines up with my own perceived effort, which says I can "go all day" at heart rates lower than 136 bpm.  My goal here is to move that drop-off point in zone 2 over into zone 4.

IMAZ 2007 - five weeks out

Only five weeks to go, so I'm into the heavy volume weeks. 

Last week was a run focus week totalling 7550 yards swimming, 76.9 miles riding, 44.4 miles running.

Saturday morning I did a 500 yard TT after a 2100 yard swim set, and my T-pace was 2:00. I'm happy about that, because although that's still slow it's significantly faster than last year's 2:35. My work on developing a better pull is working...

After 2.5 hours of yardwork Saturday afternoon, I went for a 3 hour, 20 mile run. 9 minute pace, 141 average HR.

Sunday was raining too hard, so I tried a long, easy pace ride on my CompuTrainer, simulating the IMAZ course. Aargh. I can run 3 hours on a treadmill (music or DVD to keep me company), but for some reason easy pace on a bike trainer kills me even with a DVD. I bailed at 2.5 hours and then ran 6 miles on the treadmill at 10 minute pace.  I tried reading on the treadmill, but the magazine print was too fine and my head was bouncing too much to be comfortable.  I've ordered a clamp-on book stand via Amazon; I'll let you know how that works.   

Normally I have music or a DVD on while running.  I'm mid-way through the second season of The West Wing.  Easily one of the best TV series of the past decade, even if it did go downhill after Sorkin left.  As I watch these one after the other, I've noticed a certain lack of variety in the dialog.   I think Sorkin should have worked harder on giving each character a more unique voice; the dialog seems interchangeable.   Or perhaps all Ivy-educated, liberal political functionaries do all sound alike.

IMAZ 2007 - six weeks out

Aargh.  Another non-normal training week.  I came down with a cold late Tuesday and by Thursday it had turned into a heavy cough and congestion.  Thus I skipped my Thursday workout as well as the mini-tri and interval ride on Saturday.  I even stayed home from work on Friday. 

Sunday I went for a 113 mile ride from Bridle Trails down past Orting and then back to my house.  This was a group ride for Jill and two groups of her athletes - Mark and Shannon training for IMAZ (along with Jill and I) and Jason, Char, and Michael training for Ironman Cour d'Alene.

I had a fantastic ride - a "best ride ever" day - on my new Cervelo P3 Carbon.  This is my second outdoor ride on the P3C, and I tweaked the aero position by flipping over the stem.  This was just as comfortable and a lot more aero.  On the second half of the ride, I raised the seat about 4mm which also improved aero position and leg extension when sitting up.

This bike is just plain fast!  This was my first group ride with it, and thus I had some comparison points.  It really picks up speed on the downhill - without pedaling, gravity alone accelerated me way past the other riders (most on road bikes with clip-on aero bars).

In the middle of the ride on Interurban, Jill had us ride at AeT + 15 which is 159 bpm for me.  My splits per mile were all in the mid 19 mphs, with a 20.5 mph miles.  And this was despite having many road crossings in this stretch.  On the way back, the goal was to ride it at AeT+10.  My splits were similar with a couple 20s.  I got a bit hot at one point, with a 21.1 mph mile at 157 average bpm.  I was just enjoying the steady speed at this point.  I was practicing keeping aero while sighting forward - not always an easy task.

Past Orting, we were on a fairly new trail, wide, smooth, and flat with no intersections.  Jason and I flew down this section at average speed of 22.3, with my average HR at 160.  On my Trek, I would have been happy to do this in the mid 19s.

On the way back, the rest of the group was returning to Bridle Trails for their 112 mile ride but I split off to ride the rest of the way home.  My guestimation was a bit off and I ended up with 113 miles, with the last mile the 400 foot climb from Newport Way up to my house.   Tri bikes are not made for climbing, and I know my Trek with it's Ultegra triple would have been a lot easier.

The thing about the 78 degree tri bike position is that it saves your legs for running by engaging your muscles differently than the more relaxed 73-74 degree road bike position.  I did a 30 minute treadmill run when I got home, and while my legs were tired, they weren't nearly has bad as they could have been.  It seems to work.

IMAZ 2007 - seven weeks out

The trip to Toronto really put a crimp in my training plans.  I was scheduled for a recovery week anyway, but that means shorter, lower intensity workouts, not a lot of days off.  I did get in an hour run on Wednesday and a little bit of a strength workout Thursday morning, but had no other workouts from Monday to Friday.

Saturday morning I joined my triathlon team for a Bridle Trails run.  I am not a fan of trail running, but Jill loves to run the trails in the 482-acre park.  It's a horse and hiking wilderness park, which means "brown stuff is mostly mud, piles of green stuff are definitely not mud".   Great. 

Here's a GPS track of our four hour run:

The outer loop is about a 45 minute run at our 11 minute or so pace.  We warmed up for a half hour, ran for 3 hours, then walked / jogged for the last half hour.  I ran in my old, worn-out running shoes that I keep as general "wear to the gym" shoes.  The trails were extremely sloppy, and I almost had my shoes yanked off by the mud more than once.  Cleaning them was out of the question; I chucked them at the end of the run.

This morning I swam for the first time since last weekend; after warmup I did an easy 32 minute 1500 yard straight swim.  And this evening, I did an hour on the Computrainer followed by a 20 minute run on the treadmill.  Thus, my totals for the week are at least non-zero.

Toronto's CN Tower

During my recruiting trip to Toronto, we managed to get in a little sightseeing.  We visited the CN Tower and walked on the Glass Floor, looked out through the open air (but screened in) Observation Deck, and the enclosed Look Out level .  We also visited the Sky Pod, which is the upper portion of the CN Tower, below the TV antenna, and it's the world's highest observation deck at 1465 feet.

Below is a shot looking down through the Glass Floor.  It's fairly freaky to first walk out on the floor.  1100 feet straight down.

Below you can see the Toronto City Centre Airport.  I watched a small Cessna do touch-and-goes from significantly above its pattern altitude.  In the foreground, you can see that the small bay between island the airport sits on and the mainland is full of floating ice.  We watched a small ferry move through the water for a while, leaving a path in its wake. 

 

Below you can see the top of the main level of the CN Tower and Rogers Centre (formerly the SkyDome), the world's first stadium to have a fully retractable roof.

Recruiting in Toronto

I spent the majority of the week in Toronto doing campus recruiting with my colleague Warren.  This was another multi-day, long-format interview trip where we offer candidates a position after several local interviews, rather than a short format "flyback or no flyback" trip where the candidate does the full loop in Redmond.

I was impressed by the overall quality of the candidates we saw.  Each had plenty of knowledge, passion, and problem solving skills.  I believe all of them were from either the University of Toronto or the University of Waterloo. 

I enjoyed the outbound flight, which was on an Air Canada Embraer 190 built in Brazil.  This was my first trip on an Embraer, and I liked the plane.  It' small (100 seat range, 2 rows of 2 seats, center aisle) but not too small, and modern, with each seatback having a full entertainment system including widescreen LCD.  I managed to do some work on the plane as well as watch most of The Prestige.

Theresa came along on this trip and enjoyed herself with sightseeing, shopping, and fine dining while I worked.  She even got a first class upgrade on her ticket out - when Air Canada offered me a free upgrade to get me out of the last row of the plane so the flight attendants could use it to rest, I gave it to Theresa.  I'm not stupid...

We did a little sightseeing with Warren on Tuesday, before the evening recruiting dinner.  Wednesday we interviewed all day and had another recruiting dinner in the evening, although I did squeeze in an hour run in between.  Thursday we interviewed all day, and in the evening Warren, Theresa and I went to dinner at Le Papillon with Warren's uncle and family and several family friends.  I had French onion soup, lamb, and some traditional crepe dessert.  Excellent food and excellent company.

We then saw The Overcoat at the CanStage Bluma theatre.  I enjoyed the production immensely.  It's a dance and mime production with no spoken word, telling the story of a man leading a dull life until he acquires a beautiful overcoat.  I would love something like this to be available in Seattle.  Sigh. 

After the show, we wandered a bit until we found the nearby Esplanade Bier Markt.  One thing I love about urban environments like Toronto is that by simple wandering, you can find wonderful restaurants, bars, and events.  The Bier Markt had a live band (playing mostly 80's rock), a dance floor, and my favorite - a broad European beer menu.  I had several, including this fairly odd Belle-Vue Kriek cherry flavored beer.  It's a wheat beer that's aged for three years, then cherries are added before another year of aging.  I quite enjoyed it, although I would describe it mostly as "excellent cough syrup".  An acquired taste, I'm sure.

IMAZ 2007 - eight weeks out

Looking at the calendar today, I was somewhat startled to see that Ironman Arizona 2007 is only 8 weeks away.   The last three months have zipped by - storms, power outages, holidays, family events, work, training.   I thought I'd at last blog about my current progress toward IMAZ 07.

Since December, I'm been working with Jill Fry, a local triathlon coach.  Last year I used Mark Allen Online, which was effective enough, but I wanted a more personal touch only local coaching can provide.  She has me on a much more aggressive training schedule that I think the software would have provided or I would have done on my own.  Last year about this time I was doing much less rigorous workouts.  Plus she organizes group rides and swims with her other clients and members of her "JFT2" triathlon team. 

We communicate workout details via the Training Peaks site.  I enter in the details of my workouts, and she comments on occasion.  The software is rudimentary in some ways but works.   You can go read the weekly totals of my workouts here.

My training has been progressing smoothly in general, but it's been challenging to get in all the workouts.   I've sacrificed the run workouts most often (per Jill's advice) because I need to work the least on that.  But I can't afford much of that in the next 8 weeks, not if I want to deliver the best possible performance.

Swim

After IMAZ06 I took too much time off from swimming, and I've been paying the price.  Today I did a straight 2000 in the pool, and it felt great.  This was the first swim that made me think my performance this year will be better (faster) than last year.  I was on a 2:05 100-yard pace for the 2000, and the last few 100s were right on 2:00.  I felt like I could just keep going today.  

 

Bike

My cycling has come back strong.  I kept my riding up since IMAZ with various events including the STP over the summer (which I failed to blog about and should).  The big spike on the chart below includes a century ride the JFT2 team did from Bridle Trails to Orting and back.   And yesterday I went on a 67 mile ride with my new toy, a Cervelo P3C.  More details on that in a different post.

 

Run

My running is still strong, despite having some short weeks as you can see below.  This week will also be short; I skipped a bunch of runs to help keep a mild cold I was fighting from turning into a full-blown illness.  Too much of that going around the office.

 

I'm going to try to be better about blogging.  They might just be short notes, but at least that's more than radio silence.

2006 Seattle Marathon Race Report

Another PR (personal record) of 3:50:13 (chip time).  Woohoo!

Weather: Cold (37F or so), raining, solid overcast, no wind.  Not as bad as it sounds, since I was well layered (4 layers on top, nylon leggings, gloves, running hat).  I did a test run on Friday around the Phantom Lake area and wore the same outfit, replacing one of the two lightweight upper layers with a heavier shirt.  I was actually a little warm for the first 10 miles or so, so maybe I didn't need to do that.

Course:  As I expected, much hillier than Portland's course but not as hilly as the Seafair course in Bellevue.  The course (PDF) starts at EMP in Seattle, runs through downtown, across the I90 floating bridge to Mercer Island, back to Seattle and down Lake Washington to Seward Park, then north on Lake Washington through Lechi and the arboretum back to finish at the Memorial Arena in Seattle Center.   The latter part from Lechi to the end is the hilly part, with two fairly good hills which I mostly walked.  Large portions of the course I've either driven or bicycled, so all was familiar. 

Vibe: This was a more "get down to business" kind of race for the runners.  Perhaps it's because I was with a faster crowd - most everyone around me seemed highly focused on getting the race done.  The inclement weather was probably a factor as well. There were a lot of marathon and half marathon walkers chatting up a storm, though.  The course was wide enough most everywhere that there were no issues with runners vs. walkers and people getting in the way.

Support: I enjoyed the packet pickup and Expo at the host hotel (the Westin Seattle).  Well organized.  Good exhibitions at the Expo; in fact I should have bought another pair of my running shoes but didn't think to do so until I'd left.  I did buy a running hat and another race number belt, the kind that holds gel packets in place.  Good deals.

The course itself was clearly marked with good aid stations well stocked with what I use (Gatorade Endurance and Gu).  The roads were all closed or wide enough for runners on one side and cars on the other and well coned; there were no issues at all with car / runner interaction.  All in all, great race support.

Race: I raced the plan from yesterday and though my heart rate was high my perceived effort was sustainable, so like in Portland I didn't bother with worrying about heart rate and only used that to guide my efforts on hills.  After the huge clot of runners at the front thinned out, I was immediately on a fast pace with the 3:45 pacers in sight most of the way.  I passed them at the 13 mile point in Seward Park and never saw them again, even though I finished after 3:45. 

I kept up an 8:15-8:30 pace most of the way, and at mile 15 reset my goal finish time to 3:50 instead of 3:57.  I had only one set of cramps (both hamstrings, one right after the other but not too bad, up a hill near the arboretum) until the last few yards before finish line, where my right hamstring cramped again.  My finish photo will probably show me looking a lot worse than I deserve -:)

My limiter on this race was leg endurance at this speed.  They just pooped out at 22 miles, and it was all I could do to maintain a 9 minute pace.  Earlier in the race I had seen a family holding a sign alongside the course with the phrases "Courage to Start, Strength to Endure, Spirit to Finish".  I found that very motivating to think about for the last 4 miles as I pushed through the exhaustion.

Results: 3:50:13 chip time, 3:50:41 gun time, 1:51:01 first split, 1:59:40 second split (clearly, the hills plus dead legs), 80/196 in my age group and 451 of about 1323 male marathon runners. 

Oh, and by the way - who am I kidding?  Of course my finish time is important!  Even though this was a 'B' race, as soon as I tasted that PR I wanted it.  And that was about mile 5!  I vowed after the leg cramp incident that if it happened again, I'd throw in the towel and walk.  But I didn't back of my pace.  "Spirit to Finish!"

Another long run tomorrow

I'm running the Seattle Marathon tomorrow for the first time.  I understand it's a "moderately hilly" course, whatever that means.  The Seafair Marathon course in Bellevue is supposedly tougher.  I shall find out.

This is a "B" race for me while I train for Ironman Arizona 2007, so my time is less important than a good race-effort run while avoiding injurying.  Thus, my race plan is:

• Plan for a sub 4:00 finish (3:57 or so)
• If I'm feeling strong at 17 miles, pick up the pace slightly, if I'm feeling injured, drop it down. 
• Go for a sub 150 heart rate to start, with 165 tops by the halfway point, then 175 by mile 20 tops.  If my heart rate is lower than that, push my pace up.
• Have a strong, no injury finish!

For the last 5 weeks I've been doing a lot of long runs intermixed with tempo runs (mostly aerobic base training), so I'm feeling good about endurance and pace for this race.  Unfortunately, I was silly about my shoes and let them wear out badly.   About two weeks ago I had some ball-of-foot pain on my left foot and pain in my right knee after a 15 mile treadmill run.  Stupidly enough, I did some tempo runs then a 12 mile run a week later and had the same pain.  Then the "duh, my shoes are from last February" realization hit and I figured I'd better buy some new ones.  A rough calculation shows I put about 600 miles or so on those shoes.  Although I got great mileage and results from my Asics GT-2110s, I decided to move to Asics Kayanos because of the promise of a little more cushioning in front.  I've put about 30 miles on them and so far so good with no knee pain after a 12 mile run, an 8 mile run, and then a couple of 5 mile runs as I've tapered this last week.