Sunday, July 18, 2010

He did it...

Today was the big day, after Reid finished his swim, he would collect on our $1000 bet.

The bet was he couldn't do swim club training for 90 days without missing a workout. Technically, he won the bet two days ago, but I didn't tell him and figured a couple more days of training wouldn't hurt.

It's amazing what someone can do when they are motivated enough to do it. I have come to learn that I have a son that is motivated by money, which I think is a good thing, it should serve him well as he gets into the work force.

He's constantly weighing the "effort to the benefit" ratio and doesn't get caught up doing things for pride or ego. I wished I'd known how to do that when I started the workforce. After all these years, I'm not even sure I've learnt it now. I've always been one of those, "I'll make it work or I'll show you" kind of guys.

I've got to say I'm REALLY PROUD of Reid. He started off fat and very out of shape. He could hardly run 1 minute without stopping. What was helpful was he loves swimming. Right from day one, he had a 2 hour swim workout and didn't complain, as a matter of fact, I got it on video where he says, "I love it".

Fast forward 90 days and he's a different kid. He's only lost about 4 lbs but he looks much slimmer. He's gained weight and it wouldn't surprise me if he grown a little taller. I think he's now around 5' 7", 183 lbs and he's constantly standing on his tippy toes to show me how he's almost my height.

I'm also proud that Reid didn't waste his winnings on buying disposable stuff. He ended up buying a 32" TV, a high-end pair of surround sound earphones and a lazy boy chair. All stuff that he will have for years to come and will be a constant reminder of his accomplishment. They are trophies really.

We are also going to open a bank account for him and he's got $90 left that he's going to deposit. Truthfully, I think he's doing it just to be able to use a debit card when he buys stuff. He thinks it's cool to buy with a debit card.

I love the fact that the TV will last for years and when he does move out, he'll be able to take it with him as a constant reminder of the shape he got himself into. That is, if he moves out. The way Alice treats him, I tease both of them that I'm not sure if he will ever move out. She does EVERYTHING for King Reid.

I remember buying my own waterbed when I was 15 years old. My dad thought me buying that bed was a waste of my money at the time. When I was kicked out of the house, I proudly took my waterbed with me. It was cool knowing it was mine, I paid for it and it was coming with me.

When or if Reid slips in his training or health, I'm sure he'll still be watching that TV. I can envision the possibility of him watching TV, in his lazy boy, with him being fat and out of shape. He then fixates on the TV itself and remembers that he was in shape at one time and it helps motivate him to get back in shape.

What is so funny, is Reid is now calling Alice and I, his "room mates". He's now wanting a little fridge and microwave for his room and then he can live in his room like he's in a college dormitory. He say's it a way of him learning to be self-suffienct without yet moving out, so he'll be prepared when he does.

Changing subjects, on Saturday, Alice was googling the name of Reid's coach, she wanted to know his swim background. I use the world coach lightly, the guy has never directly coached Reid or any of the other kids and is not listed on the website as a coach.

Although, when he introduces himself, he introduces himself as Coach Russell. When I first met him, I was expecting him to introduce himself as "First Name / Last Name". Even his email correspondence is Coach Russell. So we just referred to him as coach Russell.

There is a reason I'm doing such a long, detailed explanation of his involvement. I don't want to get him in any trouble for something he didn't do. I just find what Alice found out an interesting story about an interesting guy.

First off, he's old school. When Reid wanted to join, he gave Reid the "come to Jesus talk" and told Reid to "think about it first and understand it is a big commitment".

He doesn't suffer fools lightly and is proud of the fact that the Dolphins swim club is the best in Ontario and top 5 in Canada. Which is pretty amazing for a club of only 80 swimmers. Parents we've spoken to, that had their kids in other clubs, said this one is by far the best and their kids have improved immensely. Two of the coach's kids are elite level swimmers and one is even an Olympian.

When you meet the coach, he's an intriguing guy. He's probably in his late 50's. He has gold lower teeth and has an old school tattoo on his forearm . Reid even says he has a big mushroom tattoo on his chest.

Since we moved to Burlington, Reid has had some interesting experiences with Sports. The first hockey team he joined at 10 years old, he had a parent jump over the boards, grab him by his jersey and start yelling and shaking him on the ice after the game. He parent felt Reid cheep shot-ed his kid. They ended up banning the guy from the rink and police got involved.

So now back to swimming. Alice was googling to find out Coach's credentials and came upon a huge list of articles about "Cecil Russell" and his past. Click here to a link to one of the Articles and you can google more if you like.

So now Reid has another sports story. He can say he joined a swim club that had a more than interesting person involved with it. With all that said, I can't stress how much I like this guy. He has 6 kids, his wife is the head coach of the club and you can see his passion for swimming.

One thing that makes sense now is, within the first month of Reid joining the club, I got a call from him asking me to remove a video from my You Tube channel. He was concerned that it looked like he was coaching in the background, which he wasn't, he was just walking on the deck. He also didn't want the secrets of the type of training they do to be leaked out. The video was only about 20 second long.

At first I thought this is one crazy and paranoid guy, but now it all makes sense.

With all that said, it's too bad Reid didn't want to continue with the club and I'd have no problem keeping him in the Dolphins. As a matter of fact, I'd recommend the club to anyone. Reid says he would have continued with the club if the workout times didn't interfere with his "friend time" and when he gets to high school, if there is a swim club, he'd definitely join.

It's too bad Reid didn't want to continue with the club and I'd have no problem keeping him in the Dolphins. As a matter of fact, I'd recommend the club to anyone. Reid says he would have continued with the club if the workout times didn't interfere with his "friend time" and when he gets to high school, if there is a swim club, he'd definitely join.

We are now on to the next bet. On August 8th he is going to do a triathlon (500 meter swim, 10 km bike ride and 4 km run). If he does it, I have to buy him a cell phone that he can use to text his friends. Truth be told, I don't mind buying him one for texting. Since entering school he's had a reading and writing learning disability and anything I can do to promote him learning how to spell and write correctly is all good by me.

Training wise, I did a bike ride. I didn't feel like it, but pushed myself out the door. I weighed myself today and was at 189 lbs. At least 5 lbs of it is water retention from two days straight of eating big bags of movie theatre popcorn.

I was also very proud of myself today, I ate perfectly and I mean perfect. It was the first day I can remember in a long time when it was fruit, vegetables and lean meat. It was NOT easy. I got a little help from Mr. Sleep. Just as I was craving junk food so bad, I was able to sleep the urge off.

Mod Bike- 1:22:23 / 44.24 km / 32.22 kph

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Getting ready...

Today was family day, no training. Alice and I took Reid to look at 32" TV's and recliners. If Reid completes tomorrows swim and run sessions he wins the $1000 bet.

He plans on using the money to create a gaming mecca in his bedroom. He buying a 32" TV LCD TV, top of the line $165 earphones with surround sound and a lazy boy type of recliner. Essentially, everything he needs to get out of shape and fat.

I spent most of the day price shopping at stores and on the computer for TV's, Kegerators, recliners and fridges. I've decided I'm going to make my own Kegerator using a small apartment sized fridge. I think it will look cool having a stainless steel Kegerator with a tap on the front.

This evening, Alice stayed home while Reid and I went to the movie "Cyrus". It was a decent movie. Definitely not a movie Alice would have liked. When we got home, Alice wasn't making a lot of sense. I noticed she had a rum and coke and just figured she was a little drunk.

I should know better by now. Alice wasn't drunk, she's diabetic and her blood sugar was low. With Reid and I going to the movie, none of us ate a proper dinner tonight and she was paying the price. Good thing Reid was there to help out and get her some orange juice.

Even after all these years I miss the obvious signs. When she slipped on the stairs I should have known her blood sugar was low. Instead, I was chuckling at her drunkenness and was yelling up the stairs, "it looks like someone was partying while we were gone". Doh!!!!

The worst part was, as Alice was in a low blood sugar state, she's instructing Reid on what to do. Not until she was back to semi-normal did I even realize something was going on. I was distracted by the computer and TV. Alice was saying to Reid, "the best thing to get me is a regular Coke if you see me like this". She was training him for future. When I heard that I realized she had low blood sugar.

I've got to say, I'm not proud of the fact I didn't recognize it. It's not like it happens very often, Alice is excellent at keeping her blood sugar in check. In fact, she's so good I often forget she even has diabetes. It does bother me that I was SOBER and missed the signs. A diabetic with low blood sugar is no joke.

I don't have a lot to say today, but I do have a WHOPPER of a story I'm going to unleash tomorrow. It can't be released until then, for reasons that will become obvious. It's surreal and unbelievable, even by Training Payne standards.

Alice, Reid and I couldn't stop talking and chuckling about it all day.

Taper Rest Day

Friday, July 16, 2010

Proud of myself...

I had one awesomely productive day today. I was on a roll and got my head into some stuff I haven't been able to attack for a couple of weeks.

It's a great feeling being on top of everything. There's nothing better than being organized and in control. Even all of my email boxes are empty.

Training wise, I felt a burnout coming on yesterday and it got worse today. I tried to go out for a 3:30 ride this afternoon and made it 4 minutes before turning around and heading back home.

My legs didn't have any power and I couldn't get my heart rate over 100 bpm. From experience, I knew training today would have been a complete waste of time. In fact, it would have been worse than "garbage miles", it would have been "set-back miles".

Even though I'm on the MAO program, after Ironman China I started to make adjustments during the taper phase. If I find myself burning out or losing power, I rest. Not training today was an easy and guilt free decision. Without question, it was the right thing to do.

When I got home from my 8 minute ride, I still had my heart rate monitor and it read 44 bpm as I sat up from the kitchen table. Sitting completely still, I'm sure it would be in the high 30's. It hasn't been that low in a long time.

For the rest of the afternoon, I felt more burnout coming on and romanticised about sitting on the deck and having a few beers to help reset the mental button.

I emailed Jamie and said I was debating having beers. He emailed back, "you'll regret it". I took that as a sign. I knew he was right and it was the push I needed to abstain. I went to the movie "Inception" instead. I hoped watching a movie would be a helpful distraction.

Had I drank beer, even though I planned on only having a few, past history shows it would have turned into a lot more. Then, for the next few days my resting heart rate would through the roof and I would have sabotaged myself of having the best race I could have at IMLP.

I took the lesser of the two evils and pigged out on movie popcorn instead, which is much easier on the system than beer, with no next morning residual effects. The movie did help me escape my burn out while I watched and I came out of it feeling mentally better than when I went in.

Right now is a critical point in my race preparation. It's important I don't push myself to train unless it feels like the right thing to do. This past week, I've gotten a taste of my old power on the bike and I know I have more of it in me if I play my cards right. If I was a video game with power bars on the screen, I'm down to a 4 on 10 right now.

My number one focus is to get that power bar to 10, or as close as possible by IMLP. In the past, I've forced myself through every taper workout out, which did more harm than good. These next 8 days are going to require a keen sense of intuition. I'm going to monitor my body and adjust accordingly. Clean eating and no drinking is going to be a big part of getting my body fully charged up.

I'm feeling really good right now. Disaster was averted today, with rest and no beer. Thanks Jamie. I also feel much stronger than I was three weeks ago at the Welland Half Ironman. Right now, there's no greater feeling than knowing I can't get any faster by training more. The only thing that will make me faster is training less and healthy eating.

I can feel I'm on the bubble, I still have enough time to do everything right to be fully ready to enjoy the IMLP experience on my terms. I'll be honest though, I'm a little scared about that bike ride. Climbing isn't my strong suit, I'm more of a power cyclist.

I weighed in this morning at 183.4 lbs from 185 lbs yesterday. I know it's not accurate and tomorrow won't be either. With all the salt in me, it's causing water retention and I feel like I have Fred Flintstone feet.

Taper Rest Day

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Motivation by Speedometer...

The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was brush my teeth and have a shower. As simple as that sounds, it's not something I've been doing regularly since I started working from home.

It's too easy to wake up, pour a cup of coffee and start working and before you know it, it's noon.

I'm also finding each day is blending into the next. In all seriousness, I woke up on Tuesday and didn't know if it was a weekday or weekend. It was the weirdest sensation. It's like waking up and not recognizing your room.

Yesterday, I decided I need to start the habit of showering the minute I wake up. There's no more going downstairs to the kitchen table until I'm sparkly clean. Today was also the second day of weighing myself. Even though I ate lots of ice cream last night, I still managed to lose 0.4 lbs and weighed in at 185.0 lbs.

This morning, I wanted to watch one of Reid's summer swim sessions. He only has two more left and he wins the bet. In anticipation of his win, Alice is taking $1000 out of the bank tomorrow for Sunday's presentation. I think Reid wants to use part of his winnings to buy a 32" TV for his room.

Yesterday, I registered Reid for the Kids of Steel triathlon and found out the distance is longer than I first thought. Because his birthday is in November, he'll be thirteen and racing against fourteen and fifteen year olds. The race is now a 500 meter swim, a 10 km bike and a 4 km run. It's some semi-serious mileage for a "little pecker head".

Reid figures he's going to have fun with the race and has picked up a cowboy hat, vest and mustache that he plans on wearing where he can during the race. He also picked up some plastic Texas long horns that he wants to tape to the front of his bike.

Speaking about bikes, Reid's already upgraded to carbon fibre, he's now riding my Limited Edition Trek 5900. His initial motivation was to have a bike with a speedometer that works so he can see how fast he's going. Today he said he got up to 36 kph and he said he loves the Trek.

He's now constantly going for rides throughout the day. All I hear is, "I'm going biking, I'll see you in a little bit".

Before I let Reid ride the bike, I told him it's a special bike. Aside from the $8600 it cost me back in 1992, it was the exact same model that Lance won the tour on. In fact, it was one of the only times they offered the same bike style Lance rode as a production model. Everything is the same, even down to the paint job and decals.

It's a great bike, it rides as smooth as silk. Reid loves how you switch the gears with the brake levers. He must love it, he did about 16 km of riding on it today.

I had another strong day of training. I had one of my fastest bike speed work sessions and I was only feeling about 75%. I then read Matty O's blog post about his police involvement last night and he mentioned he loves Special K and can eat bowls of it. The next thing I know, I had 5 bowls of Special K and passed out on the couch in a sugar coma.

Recently I've been feeling like a polar bear. The only difference is that they get shot with a tranquilizer gun and are put into a coma sleep, whereas my tranquilizer is from self-induced sugar overloading. The result is the same. As I sleep on the sofa, anyone could pull up my lips and check my teeth or tag my ear without fear of reprisal.

This may sound obvious, but tonight I've officially realized that simple sugary carbs are evil. Not only do they tire you out, but they take away your motivation to want to train. After all that sugar, I had to really force myself to the track and Reid agreeing to join me helped.

Even once I started the training session, I wanted to quit right up until it was over. I felt so crappy. I can't remember eating a food that has had such a negative physical and mental effect on me. They sure don't show that part on the commercials.

Special K is not your friend. It Krushes your motivation and makes you feel like Krap. It's a Special Killer.

Speed Bike - 54:06 / 30.20 km / 33.5 kph
Speed Run - 45:11 / 9.29 km / 4:52 pace
185.0 lbs


Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Water cramming...

The first thing I did this morning was weight myself. I was 185.4 lbs. Ideally I'd like to be about 181 lbs for IMLP. I'll be posting my daily weight until IMLP.

I ate so well all day until post dinner, when I had that Aero McDonald's McFlurry and the half carton of Heavenly Hash ice cream. It immediately put me in a two hour sugar coma.

The upside of being in a sugar coma is at least you can't eat. I'm going to take the "my body must be craving something in the ice cream" excuse, as opposed to, "I have no will power and dieting hurts too much" excuse.

I did two training sessions today. The first was a 4000 meter swim, followed by weights. At this stage of the game, I normally don't do weights, but I decided I needed to strengthen my arms for swimming.

I've only been swimming about once a week for the past few weeks. I hate swimming. No matter how much I swim, I only race about 3 seconds per 100 faster than if I swim two times a week. I also find I can get my swimming speed back if I do three or four sessions within a week.

My plan is to get about 4 more good swims before IMLP and I should be ready. Biking and running is a different story, you can't make up any missed workouts for those sports, so I haven't. Based on trying to achieve my blistering pace of 1:47 - 1:50 per 100 during a race, I should be able to get there with a three or four good swims before next Sunday.

I also did weights today. I did 2 sets on the upper body and 1 set on the lower body. Over the last three years I've learnt what works for me and what doesn't. Too much rest and taper doesn't work for me. Doing upper body weights will really help with my swim strength. For the lower body, I did low weight and only one set. Other than helping to strengthen my hip area, my lower body doesn't need weight training.

Overall, I was happy with today's training. I don't know how fast I swam in the pool because I forgot my watch, which is probably a good thing based on my fragile swim psyche.

Mod Swim - 4000 meters / 1:21:00
Weights - 40 minutes / end & Chisel

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Reid Goes Old School...



I did it!!! I finally got Reid to commit to doing a triathlon. It wasn't easy, it took months, but he wants a cell phone so bad he agreed to do one.

For the past month or two, all he's been asking for is a cell phone and I kept telling him I'd get him one if he did a triathlon. He'd then say, "It's not fair, you never made Alyssa do a triathlon in order to get her cell phone".

Then I'd get into the, "Your not Alyssa, you need to worry about yourself and not others".

I'd then say, "Robert wouldn't have a problem with the bet" and he'd say, "Fine then, I don't want a cell phone" and I'd say "Fine, cause you ain't getting one unless you do a triathlon".

At this point, Alice would usually jump in and say, "I'm sick of all these bets, why does everything have to be a bet?" I'd then reply with the king of all retorts and say, "because".

(Before I continue, I want to explain who "Robert" is, I don't think I've ever told the story of "Robert". Robert is the name I recently gave the miscarriage Alice had. I remember telling Reid that he wouldn't be born if Robert lived, that we were quitting at two and he was lucky Robert got flushed down the toilet. Alice then told me that the toilet had nothing to do with it, that she went to the hospital).

Today was a major turning point. Reid was talking about bike riding and I asked him if he wanted to try my Trek. He said "sure". When Reid says "sure" in a nonchalant way, I've come to learn it means, "F#cken A".

The only problem with my Trek is it doesn't have pedals. Then I realized, hey, what about my 1986 Centurion. It has the old style "rat trap pedals". I asked Reid if he wanted to try the Centurion and he said, "sure".

I pulled the bike out of the crawl space in the basement, pumped up the tires, lowered the seat and in no time Reid was riding. He was a little nervous at first and rode the sidewalk and wasn't sure about how to use the gears. It didn't take long and he was riding pretty good.

He was surprised how fast the bike went. I asked him if he wanted me to get my bike and go for a ride with him? He said, "sure". We started riding and got up to a high of 27 kph. I told him he was doing great, that "27 kph is how fast John Barclay does the Ironman". Reid seemed proud of himself.

We did a couple of kilometers around the house and when we got back he asked, "How far is 10 km?" I knew why he was asking, it's the biking distance of the kids triathlon I was trying to get him to do. I said, "do you want me to show you how far 5 km is?" He said "sure".

The ride ended up being 4.3 km and we averaged 20 kph. He kept asking me "if MY back was sore?". His was. When we got back in the house, he kept asking me questions about the kids triathlon. He was asking, "How long is the swim again? How long is the run? How much time would it take to finish the swim? Is the swim in a pool? How much time would it take to finish the run?"

I told him "It'll take you about an hour total". Then he started asking me questions like, "okay, if I do this, I get a cell phone right?" I could tell he was warming up to the idea of doing it. He was a little nervous about the open water swim and I said, "I'll go with you to do some open water swimming and I'll take you on some hills in the escarpment".

That's all it took, he finally agreed to do it and we shook hands and made "the cell phone bet". The race is the Barrie Triathlon on August 8th. It's a 350 meter swim, a 10 km bike and a 3 km run.

They also have an Adult sprint an hour after the kids start. I decided not to do it, I don't want to miss watching him "suffer and finish". Years ago, I raced when Alyssa did her one and only triathlon and I later regretted not being able to watch it from start to finish.

I'm glad Reid decided to do it. He's in the best shape of his life right now. He now running 40 minutes, 3 times a week. He's swimming 4 times a week. He's doing weights 3 days a week AND he's riding his bike for no reason on a regular basis. There's no better time for him to do a triathlon. He'll also be able to put it in his Renaissance Man knapsack.

On the training front, I had a great bike ride today. I felt very strong and no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't get my heart rate over 140 bpm. There was some hills that I'm used to climbing at 19 kph and today I was climbing them at 30 kph effortlessly.

I resisted pushing too hard as I'm now in my taper phase and I didn't want to beat up my legs. I will say, "This was the best bike ride I've had since February in Palm Springs, it felt so damn good and enjoyable. I didn't ride in the small front chain ring once".

My diet is also going reasonably well. I do great until the evening and it seems I can't resist one indulgence. Yesterday it was movie popcorn. Tonight it was about 5 small chocolate ice cream cones. But other than that, I ate like a rabbit all day.

I definitely noticed that since I started eating small, controlled portions, my heart rate has dropped like a stone. Starting tomorrow morning I'm going to weigh myself daily until IMLP. I need the motivation of seeing that scale go down, or up.

Mod Bike - 2:24:08 / 79.02 km / 32.89 kph / 120 avg hr

Monday, July 12, 2010

Who would have thunk...

About 15 minutes into today's long run I was thinking how fortunate I've been to be fairly injury free for a long while.

I was almost getting to the point where I was cocky and wondering if I've trained myself into becoming an injury free machine.

Then 30 minutes into my run I started to feel some hip pain on my right side. The first thing I thought of was, "John Barclay and his hip problems".

I asked myself, "Am I too now going to have to get a hip replacement? Did I wear my hip out with all the training miles?" Of course you never expect the least, you always expect the worst.

I was also thinking this is bad timing with IMLP less than two weeks away. It wasn't acute pain, so I kept running, hoping it would go away. It didn't. During the run, I developed a theory that my sore hip must have been from taking Sunday off and doing nothing but lying on the sofa. Maybe lying around all day shifted things?

I cut the run short by 30 minutes and called Alice to pick me up. It still wasn't a sharp pain, but it was a 5/10 on the pain meter and I didn't want it to get worse.

During the evening Alice, Reid and I went to the movie "Get him to the Greek" and I noticed I was getting hip pains on the other side. Or at least it felt that way, I couldn't tell if they were real or phantom pains. The one positive, is that when I walk, I don't notice any discomfort whatsoever, which means it can't be that bad.

I was actually debating whether I should go to the gym and do some weight training to strengthen and stretch the area. I decided to wait and maybe do it tomorrow. It just shows that resting, with very little movement, isn't always a good thing. Next time on my rest days I'm going to walk further than from the couch to the fridge and back.

Today I started a diet program that Reid's coach gave him. It is designed for competitive swimmers and can help you lose 7 lbs in one week. I followed it religiously, except for the big bag of movie theatre popcorn, which was probably 2000 calories. Other than the popcorn, I can't remember eating such small portions and so healthy in such a long time.

Long Run - 1:32:22 / 17.77 km / 5:10 pace