Talking and training...

Yesterday I picked up a new SwiMP3 player to replace the one I got for Christmas. The owner of Sport & Swim called me and said that he spoke to Finis and that they had identified a volume problem with the first generation 1 gigabyte models. Which is what I had.

I charged it up and loaded all the songs again. Immediately I could tell the volume difference. It was night and day. It was at least 4-5 times louder than the one I returned. I was so looking forward to trying it out in the pool today.

Unfortunately, I couldn't. I fully charged it over night and when I unplugged it from the charger this morning, I forgot to put the waterproof cap on the charging receptacle. I was standing at the edge of the pool, all excited that it was working, ready to jump in and at the last moment realized I left the cap at home. DOH!!!

About half way into my swim, Kevin showed up. He's a good swimmer and a couple of months ago he told John Barclay I had more power and endurance than anyone in the pool but no technique. I told him I took a workshop a month ago and to let me know if he thought I've improved.

I got the thumbs up. He said I used to be a "hack swimmer" and now I'm much smoother and look like I know how to swim. He also gave me a few more pointers, which I appreciated. Before he left I asked him to video tape me with my camera so I could assess my stroke.

When I looked at it, I was surprised how relaxed and slow I looked, yet I was swimming at a 1:30 per 100 meter pace. I also noticed that I could stand to glide more. In the water it feels like I'm gliding for a long time and on the video it doesn't look the same way. I'm going to work on reaching longer. I don't look like a great swimmer yet, but I've definitely improved. I do look a little more graceful. Not as much thrashing and splashing.

The swim went about 20 minutes longer than usual from talking and learning from Kevin. It's a good thing work is slow and I'm caught up. Normally, I would have had to reschedule my weight training session to get back to work. It was on that fine line of time and I decided to stick around and do the weights, rather than come back tonight.

About halfway through the weight training session I ran into Steve and we started talking for about 15 - 20 minutes. We had a good talk and I enjoyed it, but now I was cutting it really close. I still had stuff I needed to do at work before the end of the day.

I ended up getting both sessions done. I felt like I had two good workouts and was still able to get all my work stuff done. Albeit, I had to stay late to finish, but that's okay it was great catching up with Kevin and Steve.

Tonight is pizza night and "eat what I want night". Alice makes the best homemade pizza. I have a long ride and run this weekend and need the energy. Plus, I allow myself one night a week that I don't go crazy counting calories.

This morning I decided to weight myself for the second day in a row and I was 183.8 lbs. Almost 1 lb less than yesterday. Which makes sense, my pants are now much looser than a week ago and I'm even starting to get a two pack.

Weight wise, I'm going to do what Simon at tritwins.blogspot.com suggested. I'm going to weigh myself everyday, and on the same day every week, calculate the average for the week. He says that will give me a truer representation of my real weight. I like that approach. It seems more honest.

Tempo Swim - 1:06:21 / 3000 meters

Weights - 45 minutes

183.8 lbs 22.2 BMI

Even steven...

I been weighing myself once a week on Thursday mornings. Today my weight was exactly the same as last week, 184.6 lbs. Before Christmas it was 184.2 lbs.

At first I was a little discouraged, but the more I thought about it, the less discouraged I felt. After all, this past week included New Years Eve, which was over 5700 calories of food and drink, and up until Wednesday morning I was still on anti-inflammatory pills, which cause water retention.

If I didn't weigh myself this morning I would have thought I lost weight. My pants are feeling looser and I can see a difference in the mirror. Since Tuesday I eliminated breakfast and my energy level has gone up and I feel more in control of my diet.

With that said, I still have to be careful about what I eat. I haven't really been cutting back and I'm eating about 2700 calories a day, which is supposed to give me a 1.3 lb weight loss a week. The big test is going to be next Thursday morning. If I don't drop at least 1.3 lbs by then, I'm going to have to cut back on the calories. My goal is to drop at least 10 lbs before Ironman China, which is only 65 days away.

Today I did my regularly scheduled tempo run to test out my hamstring. All went well. I felt a little soreness, which I think was because I hadn't done a lot of running in the past week, but no strain or pain. The next big test is going to be on Sunday's long run. I postponed my lunch hour weight training session to tomorrow so I didn't put added stress on my hamstring before I ran today.

I also tested out my new Garmin 310xt GPS and Heart Rate monitor. It arrived today. The first positive thing I noticed was the size. It's a smaller face than the 305. I liked that it came with power adapters for all types of voltage and I won't have to buy a power converter for China. The software mirrors the 305, but it does have some new interesting looking stuff I need to read up on.

Once I started my run, the heart rate monitor wasn't working properly. It started shooting up to 200 bpm. I thought "is it the watch? or is it me? Did I take the 305 back because it didn't work, when in fact it's me or my surroundings?". I was a little discouraged to say the least.

As I ran, I realized I forgot to wet the transmitter before I got started. I then stopped, grabbed some snow in my hand, lifted my shirt and rubbed the snow under the transmitter until it got wet. Viola! It started working perfectly! For the rest of the run I had no problems, other than I hit the lap button instead of the start/stop button and it started counting laps every 5 minutes.

Another unexpected benefit was that the watch vibrates, lights up and beeps when you exceed your maximum heart rate. It is impossible to miss the alert and the alert is much more aggressive than the 305. It forces you to bring it down quickly or you'll get irritated real quick.

Overall, I was happy with the watch and I was happy with the run. I was surprised I ran as fast as I did, all things considered. Although, about 2 hours after the run, my legs felt a little sore. Which I guess should be expected. I'm just glad I'm back running again.

Tempo Run - 56:03 / 11.80 km / 4:45 pace / 140 avg hr

184.6 lbs / 22.2 BMI

Cycling might be the problem...

My ultimate goal in life would be to simplify. I mean simplify everything. Basically, get up in the morning and have very little to do. Have the bills on auto pay, downsize to a smaller house with less stuff so less can go wrong, and have a passive income.

I'd like to just get up, drink my coffee, check my email, train, relax, watch some TV, play on the Internet and do work for about an hour or two a day, three to four days a week. To keep it interesting, I'd travel and do races all over the world. That would be my dream situation.

Obviously you can tell I had a lot of "stuff" to deal with today. However, without eating breakfast, I've had more energy than normal and it helped in getting a LOT done today. I was super productive. Nothing feels better than finishing the day and having everything done on your "A" priority to do list. That doesn't happen very often.

I was even able to slip out at lunch time and return my Finis SwiMP3 player. It didn't work as advertised and the technical support with Finis was terrible. I had multiple emails back and forth and when they started telling me I should try to up the volume on the original MP3 file I started shaking my head. What? How do you go to the original file and up the volume? The straw that broke the camels back was when they told me I should look at getting earphones. What? The concept was that you don't have earphones.

At that point it was time to take it back. I was a little concerned I wasn't going to get a refund because I was dealing with a small swim store. It seemed at first they were resistant to give me a refund. It's never a good sign when an employee has to get the owner when someone wants a refund. The owner could tell I was irritated and gave me the refund. I'm not sure I would have got a refund if I wasn't, to put it mildly, as forceful as I was. I wasn't taking no for an answer. In many ways, for peace of mind, I prefer dealing with larger companies with a strong refund policy. Especially for higher priced items. There's no "will they take it back" anxiety.

My left hamstring felt really good today. The rest and the hot bath on Monday seemed to really help. I did my tempo bike ride tonight and by the time I was done my right hamstring was a little sore. I've now realized what the problem is, it's the bike. I think my cycling has really improved and I need to push it hard to get my heart rate up. By pushing it hard to get the heart rate up I'm putting a lot of stress on my muscles.

It's a weird problem because I've never experienced it before and I don't know what to do about it. I'm going to have to talk to MAO. I have a feeling that if I can figure it out and not get injured, I may have a break through year on the bike. Especially if I get my weight under 170 lbs. Tomorrows run will be the first real test to see if my hamstrings is better.

Tempo Bike - 1:30:03 / 54.06 km / 36.02 kph / 139 avg hr

Making adjustments...

Last night I decided to change my eating habits. For years I never ate breakfast and never craved food in the morning. Some people need to eat in the morning to keep their energy up, I never did.

About 2 years ago, I started forcing myself to eat breakfast because the experts told me I should. The first thing I noticed was that once I started eating breakfast I found it more difficult to lose weight. Most days, I'd have to force myself to eat in the morning, as I don't have a natural urge to eat.

I believe that the body needs a break from eating so it can focus its energy on recovery and repair and not just digestion. I think the body should have a good 10 - 12 hours of not eating, basically a fast period. I've tried to stop eating at 8 pm and then eat breakfast a 8 am, which would give me a 12 hour fast period. I can't do it. I've come to accept I'm a late night snacker. Why fight it.

I've come up with a solution. Basically I'm going to adjust my eating schedule to my natural rhythm and not eat breakfast in the morning. I'm going to continue my late night snacking, which ends at around 10 - 11 pm and not eat until 10 am - 12 noon the following day. This will give my body a 10 - 12 hour fast.

I know if experts are reading this post, they may want to leave a comment that I shouldn't do this and that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day", etc, etc, etc. Common sense says "one size doesn't fit all". I think that it is important that we educate ourselves on the diet theories, but ultimately we need to evaluate our own situation, our natural inclinations, and adjust our diet structure accordingly.

I didn't eat breakfast today and I felt great. I didn't feel hungry at all this morning and my first meal was a sandwich at lunch time. As a matter of fact, two interesting things happened. I had more energy and alertness than normal and a cold sore I felt coming on yesterday and was lingering this morning, was gone by lunch time. I think this was because my body wasn't busy digesting food and was able to start detoxing my body.

I'm not a trained nutritional expert and I don't think that matters. I think the best approach is to listen to your body. Sometimes knowledge can hold you back and stifle creativity or experimentation. Even though I'm going to stop eating breakfast, if I wake up really hungry, I'll eat. I also think that your body will tell you what you need to eat by it's cravings. I do reserve the right to be wrong and I'll keep everyone posted on how my new plan works for me.

Training wise I had another great swim. Much easier mentally than the last one. It was also much faster overall. Some of the highlights included 12 x 25 meter warm ups at 20 - 21 seconds each. A 200 meter swim averaging a 1:37 pace; 300 meters averaging a 1:39 pace; 600 meters averaging a 1:43.7 pace; and a second, back to back 600 meters averaging a 1:49.3 pace. I was super happy with the swim, it was my best ever average pace for 3000 meters. Near the end of the session I could feel my arms were tired and it was tough to pull strong. I just tried to swim as hard as I could while trying to maintain proper technique.

With my hamstring injury, I'm juggling my workouts this week and decided to do my weight lifting session after my swim. I definitely couldn't push the weight I'm used to. The swim took a lot out of my arms. For each upper body exercise I had to reduce the weight I normally push, although I did make sure I didn't rush any of the reps. I also didn't do any legs exercises that would stress my hamstrings.

Hopefully by the end of the week my hamstring will be strong enough to continue with my regular training schedule. I aborted the moderate bike ride I had scheduled for tonight. On the MAO program a moderate session is of medium importance, unlike a tempo/speed or long session which are high in importance. My cycling is so strong right now, that not doing tonight's ride will have no negative long term effect and can only be recovery positive.

John P (@johnproc) sent me a tweet today curious about the resistance level I have on my bike trainer. I assumed he thought my average speeds seemed high and wondered if it was because of a low resistance level. Fair question. I don't know if it is high or low, although I've tried to set it up so that it is the same as if I was on the road. With that said, it really doesn't matter.

I follow the MAO program which is based on heart rate thresholds. For my long rides, I need to keep the heart rate under 143 bpm. I typically average 135 - 138 bpm. If the resistance is low, you need to do a lot of fast spinning to get it up or if it is high your cadence will be low and you'll be pushing . In either event, you are getting a great benefit. Speed is not an important measurement, heart rate is what is most important. For me, whatever the resistance, I focus on heart rate and keeping the cadence at 90 rpm and gear up or down accordingly.

Mark Allen mentioned that the year that he had his biggest improvement on the bike was when he did two indoor trainer sessions a week. In reality, riding a trainer in the required heart rate zone is harder than riding outside. When you ride outside you typically have terrain, like hills that give your legs a break throughout the ride. When you ride inside you are pushing constantly with no rest.

Experts agree that you can get more of a leg workout in less time indoors than outdoors. The common number seems to be a 25% difference. For example if you do a 4 hour ride outdoors, you can get the same benefit with a 3 hour ride indoors. For my winter training, MAO has told me I can reduce every second weeks long ride by 25% without foregoing benefits. I haven't yet done this, but I can if I want to. For now I want to push myself mentally and improve my fat burning system. But if I feel burnout coming on, I'll definitely make the 25% adjustment.

Long Swim - 3000 meters / 1:00:30

Weights - 40 minutes

Phantom or real???

I did my first run since Thursday and was nervous about my hamstring injury. My plan was to do an hour run. Once I got going, it felt okay, but tight. I'm not sure if it was a normal tightness from not running since Thursday, or tight because of the injury, or if it was phantom tightness. Regardless, I decided to cut the run short and do only 30 minutes. Better safe than sorry.

I got the rest of my Ironman China training schedule from MAO today. I wished I had it last week. Had I, I wouldn't have tried to make up Sunday's long run. The next 10 weeks is brutal.

I have a long ride, at least between 5 - 7 hours, every week for the next 8 weeks and a 2 - 3 hour long run every week for the next 8 weeks. After seeing the schedule it became apparent it wasn't necessary to try and make up that long run.

I also realized that the most important thing to do right now is let my hamstring heal. Even if it takes a week or two to completely heal it shouldn't negatively affect my Ironman fitness. I still have lots of training and lots of speed work coming up. Coach Luis said to take care of the hamstring now so it doesn't become chronic. Good advice.

Last week was the first full week I've kept track of my calories eaten versus calories burnt. 25,161 Calories Consumed, 15,419 Calories Burned. Even with eating 5700 calories in one of those days, at least I burnt a lot of them off. Now that holidays are over and I'm on the beer wagon, my calorie consumption should be less and hopefully I'll start dropping weight soon.

Easy Run - 32:30 / 6.02 km / 5:23 pace / 125 avg hr

Two more PB's since the New Year...

Today was a scheduled 6 hour long bike ride. Last night and the day before I wasn't feeling well and wasn't sure how I'd do. Last night, around 11 pm, I couldn't control my hunger and had to call Domino's.

I justified it two ways. The first was that I felt weak and needed food to fuel today's long ride and the second was that I ordered a veggie thin crust pizza with no cheese and didn't think it would be too many added calories.

The difference in calories from a pizza with cheese versus a pizza without cheese is amazing. A regular slice of domino's pizza is 280 calories, a veggie-thin crust-no cheese is 95 calories. Best part is that without cheese, it still tastes great. I learnt about ordering pizza's with no cheese when I used to work as a kid delivering pizza's for Domino's.

Today I was on the bike just after 10 am. It was the first ride on my new seat and I was hopeful that it was going to be comfortable. I started the ride off watching the Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington. Best part was I've never seen it and it ate up 3 hours of the ride.

I used a new strategy to get through the ride. I decided to take short 3 - 5 minute breaks every hour. I did this for two reasons. The first was because I heard from a winner of RAAM that biking on a trainer is a harder workout than riding outside because your constantly pushing on the pedals, there's no downhill rests and it's a good idea to take a 5 minute break every hour to give your legs a rest and get something to eat and drink. I figured if it works for him, then I'll try it. The second reason was that I wanted to give my butt a break from my new seat and give it some breathing time to adjust.

Surprisingly, my legs felt really strong the entire ride. I even held back a little because I didn't want to push it too hard and possibly do more damage to my hamstring. The tough part was the mental fatigue. To overcome, I played mental games with myself.

After the first 2 hours of constant riding, I started to take a break on the hour. I'd go upstairs, eat something and drink some water. At the 3:15 point, I took a 15 minute break and made myself some lunch, a ham sandwich and mushroom soup. When I got back on the bike I pretended I haven't been riding and that I just getting started on a 2:45 ride today. The key is not to think of the entire time ridden, but just focus on doing the next hour.

Getting back on that bike after a 15 minute break was tough. It took a while for my legs to get their power back. When I'm riding, the endorphins take over and mask the pain. When I stopped and restarted, it took a while for the endorphins to kick in and mask the pain again. It's a lot easier physically to keep riding than to stop more than 5 minutes.

Instead of looking at time, I would just look at the calories burnt and take a break at 900 calories, which is roughly an hour. For the second half of the ride I watched the movie 25th Hour with Edward Norton. The last 6 minutes of the ride seemed to take a long time to count down. That's what happens when you clock watch, time goes slower.

I was really happy with the ride. My legs felt surprisingly fresh afterwards. There was no hamstring soreness afterwards. My average speed equaled my Ironman Louisville bike split. I set another two PB's in the past 3 days, it was the longest indoor bike ride I've ever done and my fastest average speed on a long training ride.

The bike seat was okay. It's definitely better than the old one, but it's too early to determine how much better as my butt needs to get used to it. I do like the fact that it's not putting pressure "on the boys" and my sit bones seem to be sitting perfectly on it when I ride sitting up. I'm already happy I switched and I'm told it should feel even better after 7 rides.

I did learn somethings on today's ride; Cold, sour green grapes are really hard to eat on the bike. The cold hurts your teeth and the sour makes it tough to eat more than one grape every 3 or 4 minutes. There was a lot of wincing when I'd eat one. I also learnt my Timex jersey, which I love, leaves compression ring marks around my arms after 6 hours of riding. It's already been 90 minutes after the ride and the rings are still there.

Long Bike - 6:00:15 / 201.60 km (124.99 miles / 33.5 kph (20.77 mph) 134 avg hr

It's hard not to eat...

My plan was to take today off from training and rest my hamstring. It sounded like the right thing to do yesterday and then this morning I was re-evaluating the plan.

Before I did anything I went to "Wheels on Bloor" and bought a new bike seat. I was looking at the ISM Adamo Racing Saddle and the Selle SMP Strike Pro Saddle. The guys at the shop recommended the Adamo. They've heard nothing but good things from people who bought them. It wasn't cheap, it ended up costing me $300 with tax.

Two days into the New Year and I've already spent $300. Then the guy started talking to me about a power tap to keep track of my wattage and that is like $2000 and up. He, like many others, say it's a great tool to get faster on the bike. We talked a little more about how expensive triathlons are and he suggested it was about the same as golf. Maybe so, depending on the cost of the Country Club membership. So much for thinking I have everything I need and not having to spend much money this year on triathlons.

I had them put the seat on for me, it would have taken me forever and I probably would have screwed up my bike position in the process. As they were putting it on they did a quick check and noticed that the rear sprocket was loose and wondered who put the chain on. They said it wasn't far away from all the gears coming apart. I told them the chain was put on my the support vehicle in Clearwater.

These guys at Wheels are good, they notice everything. They also do free bike fitting and suggested if the seat doesn't feel right to bring the bike back and they'll re-adjust my position and if that still doesn't work they'll take the seat back and give me others to try.

Before I left I tried the seat out on the trainer and had them look at my bike position. The guy thought I was sitting a little high but other than that looked good. We left the height were it was to see how the seat feels in the exact same position as my old one.

The seat itself feels much different than a regular seat. It's like sitting on half a seat. "The boys" are hanging loose, no pressure on them. It felt promising and more like the seat I had on the Quintana Roo, which I used to ride on the nose. If I can get it to feel comfortable on the trainer, apparently it will be more than comfortable on the road. I watched a video on it and they said it can take up to 7 rides for it to feel comfortable.

I ate fairly well yesterday and it wasn't easy. It's amazing how fast 2700 calories add up with so little food. Today was extremely tough to stay on track. I was doing so well until 4 pm and then had 4 bowls of cereal. The good news is that I was still able to keep under my 2700 limit for the day.

I emailed MAO and Luis suggested I don't train today if I feel injured. So I didn't. Tomorrow I'll get back at it with my long bike ride and I'm looking forward to trying out my new seat. I glad I didn't train, at around 2 pm I started feeling very fatigued. It was the same feeling I had in the pool yesterday. Obviously my body is telling me something. I feel like I have a complete lack of energy in the chest area.

At around 4 pm I was feeling really weak and that's when I became a cereal eating machine. Then I had a 2 hour nap and felt a little better when I woke up. I think part of the problem is that my body is out of whack from the holiday's. It's been a lot of eating and drinking to the max and no regular routine. This Christmas and New Years must have been great because I'm so glad the holiday season is over. Providing I don't eat anymore today, I've had two successful days of eating.

Recovery Day - Rest sore Hamstring

Cool Video - Amazing what this entire School coordinated and how they did it.