Sometimes I think of lots of things to blog about and then sometimes I need to work at it. Today I have lots of stuff to blog about. It started with a good nights sleep. I felt great this morning and for most of the day, better than I've felt in a long time.
For the past week I've noticed that my arms are losing strength and shape, specifically my bicep vein is disappearing. As I kid I never had a bicep vein and wished I had, all the action stars and strong guys did. Frankly, I never thought I was genetically capable of getting one. Then two years ago, after strictly following the Mark Allen Online suffering program, I started to get one on each bicep, and which guy doesn't want a bicep vein?
In the past week I noticed they were gone and I knew the reason. Last month I was only in the gym lifting weights three times because of racing, tapering and recovery. I also needed to swim more and eat and drink less. I was getting soft. I went to the pool at lunch and decided to lift weights first and then swim. Normally I swim and then feel too tired to lift weights, so I pulled the old "reverse-e-ola".
My arms could feel they hadn't been in the gym in a while. At one point my triceps were "burning" from dumbbell pullovers. I forced them through the pain. When I finished I was going to go for my swim and my arms were so pumped I could hardly open the lock on my locker door. However, I did see in the mirror that my bicep veins were back, at least for that moment.
As I was opening my locker, I was listening to my iPhone and I must have given out a "big sigh" because the old man next to me said "you sound tired". Prior to him saying that, I was trying to convince myself to swim later tonight when my arms weren't so pumped. For some reason and I don't know why, that exchange got me to push myself into the pool. I told him "no, I'm not done yet" and put on my bathing suit.
I didn't swim like an "IronMan", I swam like I had "IronArms". It was the weirdest sensation. Swimming with absolutely no strength or form. I did the warm up and kept going. It got better, but not by much. The entire swim felt awkward and I wanted to quit more than a few times but "sucked it up" and kept asking myself "do you want your bicep veins back or not". I completed the session, but it wasn't pretty. I was swimming 1:50's per 100 meters (three weeks earlier I was doing 1:32's) but I finished strong with my last set being 1:45 and it was a major "burning, burning hurt" to even do that. It was a swim I soon won't forget.
Doing a swim and weight session today made up for Monday's missed sessions. Now I needed to do a bike or run speed work session tonight. I was so close to putting it off one day but I couldn't visualize how I could get them both done in the next couple of day's. If I can't visualize how I'm going to fit in both workouts, it can't be done. So I did the next best thing...
I changed into my running gear, still wearing my dress socks and headed to the track. I figured if you're a real athlete, "you don't care if anyone sees you training in dress socks". Truth be told, I was just to tired and lazy to change them, although I could say I did it as a favour to Alice and the environment "by not creating more laundry", but that would be a lie.
I could have done my speed work session from home because it was time based intervals, but I like the track better. I don't have to try and figure out where the turnaround should be and whether I'm going to turn too early or too late. I also like going to the track for speed work just because it feels like the right place to do speed work. I feel like a "real" athlete.
When I got to the track it was pitch black. At first I thought I was the only one on the track until I saw a couple with a dog come walking around the corner. The only reason I saw them was from the red glow of the woman's cigarette as she slowly rounded the corner. They left soon thereafter and I was all alone in the darkness. Early on I could tell why people don't run in dress socks, they were sliding a lot in my shoes and I wore through the bottoms by the time I was done.
I ran hard, but not as hard as I could. I didn't want to injure myself. I focused on form and keeping up a fast leg cadence. I did my first 12 minute interval averaging a 6:27 pace and my very last 1 minute interval was at a 5:47 pace. I got progressively faster for the entire run. That's the story of my life, the harder it gets, the faster or better I perform, whether its triathlons or life. It was weird running all alone in the blackness and not even being able to see the track, except for the painted white lane lines.
As I was warming down a young kid was standing on the track looking at the glow of his phone. No problem. What I didn't realize was that he was warming up to run, and about 5 minutes later he scared the crap out of me when he passed by me. It was completely unexpected. Then, as I was leaving, some young girls were also coming to workout and started doing sit ups right in the middle of my VIP stretching area. I was wondering what's up with that? It's starting to get busy as it gets later. It was a "reverse-e-ola".
I'm really enjoying the pictures on Johan Stemmets blog. If you haven't seen them, it's worth the visit. He's racing the Ironman in Hawaii this weekend and has been training and posting pictures from Hawaii all week. I did the race 21 years ago and all the photo's and energy he writes about seem to be exactly the same as when I did it. He's taking me down memory lane and it's great to see the Ironman atmosphere hasn't changed. He was even in the athletes parade with the South African team, I can remember doing the same on the Canadian team. I find myself checking his blog at least a few times a day looking for any updates.
Normally I don't care about the Ironman and find out who won when the magazines come out a month or so later, but this year I'll be tracking it the entire time to see how Johan and Maryka Sennema do. My prediction is Craig Alexander to win for the men and I think Chrissie Wellington (my favorite triathlete) will not win for the women, there will be an upset. I hope I'm wrong Chrissie.
Weights - 45:00
Long Swim - 1:05:19 / 3000 meters
Speed Run - 1:09:08 / 8.84 miles / 7:47 pace
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2 comments:
I am a novice triathlete, long time long distance runner and mountain biker. I currently run, lift and bike (pools are closed here) but was thinking about how big weight room meat heads can never run seem to run anything over 400m competetively. Do you think that weight training helps a triathelete go faster or does extra muscle just look better? (which isn't entirely without value too) I wonder if your freaky fast swim times from before had anything to do with resting from weights, and have read (Runner's World mag) that Africans often do so well in marathons because they almost never do weight training and that it causes you to lose the 'spring' in your legs from the arbitrary training/work. Maybe lifting builds muscle that can then be trained into efficient fast or slow twitch fibers. I can't ever see 250#s of muscle being efficient for long distance racing, though.
I'm not an expert, but I'm following Mark Allen's training principles and have started to learn more along the way. I know he's is a big proponate of weight training and said once he started doing it it helped him win 6 Ironman titles.
From personal experience, being over 40 year old, I've found weights highly beneficial. Under Marks plan I typically do 2 sets of 15, twice a week, not a lot of heavy weights that build big muscles. I've went from a 6 hour half Ironman in my 20's to a 4:41 in my 40's. I find it they do help my endurance.
The other thing is that I've found I rarely get injured. i attribute that to weights and stretching.
My recommendation is that if you are over 30 years old, you really should lift weights. Also, check out www.markallenonline.com and there might be some good info in there.
Hope this helps.
B
P.S. I don't know if you watch UFC, but I was shocked to hear that Tito Ortiz, over 200 lbs, ran a 19 minute 5 km. Those guys are in great shape, I guess they need the endurance:-)
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