Knowinig that I may not be able to swim or race another triathlon for a while, I really wanted some affirmation of where I’m at running-wise, since I was a little fatigued during the run in my past two triathlons.  I had looked for a 5k run near here but was unsuccesful.  Luckily, when I went for a bike ride on Friday with a friend, she mentioned a 5k in Menlo Park, which is is basically next door.  So, despite some tired legs from the 50 mile bike ride yesterday, I raced at the Oak Knoll Otter Run 5k, which benefits the local school.  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I think my training indicates I could run around 15:00 rested, but was hoping to at least run around 16:15.

The race went much better than expected!  I still don’t feel like I have a lot of speed or “kick” in my legs, but I definitely have some strength.  I don’t believe this race was on a certified course, but all the mile markers seemed pretty accurate.  It was just the last tenth of a mile that I think was a little long.  I went 15:40, which is just 2 seconds off my official 5k pr from 9.5 years ago.  Given that the 2 loop course was probably just a tad long and that on the second lap I was running around all of the fun runners, I’ll take it as a “virtual pr” :).  My splits were 4:51, 4:59, 5:03, :47.

Next up for me is a 4 week base training phase after having done more quality work the past few months.  I might not be able to swim for awhile, so I’ll try to make some gradual increases in my bike (shoulder permitting) and run volume.

On Saturday,  I rode the bike course and swam at Barton Springs.  That was a really nice place to swim - it’s a a natural spring that they dam up and was really clear and just the right temperature for open water swim practice.  On Sunday. I did an easy run and swim at the hotel pool before going to the elite pre-race meeting.

Pre-Race
This race didn’t end up starting until around 1:00pm, and by that time it was already above 85 degrees in the shade.  By the time we finished it was over 90 degrees and probably well over 100 out in the open.  It was definitely hot out there, but I managed to have near perfect nutrition and hydration before the race - much better than Oklahoma City the week before.

Swim
I got a nice swim warmup in of 800-1000m, and that’s about all the warmup I didn’t except for the 8 minute easy ride downhill to the race site.  It was so hot, any exercise beforehand would have just fatigued me for the race.  Initially, I wasn’t sure if I was even going to be able to do the race since my shoulder was getting progressively worse.  Once the race starts and adrenaline is flowing, though, you don’t notice the pain as much.  This was an in-water start, and they had a line of rope keeping us from jumping the gun.  Unfortunately, when the start gun went off, the rope didn’t go up quick enough, and I got a little tangled up in it.  I thought I got a decent start, but was getting tangled up with some people I’m faster than over 1500m but maybe not over 300m.  After the first turn around around 500m in the race, I finally broke free of some of the slower swimmers.  However, the main pack was about 25m up at that point.  I went hard but couldn’t catch them.  Over the next 800-1000m I soloed the swim and only lost another 25m.  I felt strong the entire way and didn’t feel like I was ever struggling.  It’s too bad I missed the main group, but my sprint speed may have been compromised by my bad shoulder.

Bike
I had a good transition and started the bike thinking there was a chance I might be able to make up the 30-40s gap.  However, that’s a lot of distance out on the bike course and would have been impossible for me by myself.  Two other athletes bridged up to me, and I rode really hard with them the first lap.  By the second lap, a group of 5 caught us and we then caught another group of 2, making around pack about 10 total.  It was a 5lap course up and down Congress Ave to the state capitol building and back along the river.  Once our pack was solidified, I knew any amazing effort on my own wasn’t going to bridge the gap to the main group (more than a minute ahead at that point).  I also didn’t want to cramp up and really wanted to have a good run, so I tried the strategy of mainly staying towards the back of the pack, pulling through every once and awhile.  Some others had the same idea, so we gradually lost more time, but not too much.

Run
I took it easy at the end of the bike and didn’t rush into T2 like a lot of people do.  I wanted to make sure I wasn’t red-lining it at the very beginning of the run and cramp up.  Luckily, this run was a huge improvement over Oklahoma City the week before.  I was able to keep a pretty good pace and was mainly only hindered by general fatigue.  There was the slightest hint of cramps beginning, but I ran strong the whole way.  I finished in 21st, passing several people along the way.  My run of 33:28 was within a minute of a lot of the faster runners in the US, so I was happy. 

Overall
This was a huge improvement over Oklahoma City.  I’m really happy about that because I don’t know when I’ll be able to race again given my shoulder injury.  I just need a little faster 500m swim speed, and I can make the main pack.  If I don’t work much in that group, I’ll be even fresher for the run and be in a position to place top 10 or better.   The past two races have been an affirmation that I’m on the right path training-wise and just need to continue working, and I’ll continue to make improvements. 

Swim
The swim was in the Oklahoma River - drainage ditch turned into a river a few years ago.  They have world class rowing events in this body of water, but this was the first swimming event they had held.  Considering I got one of the last starting positions available, I felt like I had a pretty good start.  I went out strong, but a gap to the leaders opened up after the first set of turns around 300m in.  There were two other guys around me at the time (I think Manny Huerta and Victor Plata), so I just dropped backa bit and drafted off of them.  The rest of the swim actually felt pretty relaxed, and although I missed the main lead pack, I came out at the front of the main chase pack.

Bike
I had a good transition and got on my bike pretty well.  There was a large group of athletes behind me, which turned out to be good because I hadn’t setup my bike shoes right, and it tooka little more effort to get my feet inside.  It was a 4 loop course around the state capitol and the first lap or two were pretty hard.  There were about 5 guys off the front of the main pack, but our group was gradually chasing down the main pack.  With about 5k to go on the bike we caught the main pack, and it was a pretty easy ride after that.

Run
Unfortunately, I worked a bit too hard on the bike despite my best intentions and was cramping up even at the end of the bike.  The entire run was basically a concious effort to not cross over the threshold where my hamstrings and quads would just seize up entirely.  It felt like a jog, but I just couldn’t go any faster.

Overall
Part of the problem with the race probably related to my nutrition during the day.  The race started at 4pm, and it was hard to figure out when and how much to eat and drink.  I think I drank too much coffee in the morning and didn’t digest things as fast I thought I would.  In the end, I finished 29th place.  Place-wise, it wasn’t what I wanted, but I accomplished a lot and was really pleased with a couple things.  First, I had a pretty fast swim, finishing ahead of a lot of people and not feeling like the 1500m was too long a distance (great endurance base).  The only thing keeping me out of that main group from the beginning was a faster 300-500m swim start.  Second, I finished the bike with the main pack.  Although I wasn’t able to take advantage, I was finally in a position to be competitive at the start of the run.  With a strong run, I could have easily been in the top 10, and that would have been a great result.

With just 3.5 weeks until my first major race of the year, I was worried how it would affect my training.  I took 3 or 4 days completely off from swimming at the time and to this day still haven’t done any upper body strength training.  The rest seemed to help some, and I was at least able to continue doing my key workout sets.  So, even though my volume went from around 28km/week down to 15km, I was still fairly confident since I had a huge base behind me and the key workout set times were still comparable to before.  Unfortunately, it really has only gradually gotten worse.  I made it to the Pan American Championship race in OKC barely feeling like it was ok to race on.  After that race, it got a lot worse but eased up just enough that I could race in Austin on Memorial Day at the CapTex Triathlon.  It was even worse after that race, so I went to see Dr. Eakin the following day.

Dr. Eakin said I was at a turning point where I may need to have surgery.  I went ahead and got an MRI done on Friday and will find out the results next week.  Part of the problem is that my shoulders have become imbalanced from so much freestyle swimming, bicycle riding, and typing at a keyboard.  I need to work on keeping my shoulders and scapula “set” properly.  The best case scenario is that by my doctor’s appointment on Thursday, it feels better and I can go to a physical therapist to make sure I’m doing exercises correctly.  Next best scenario is another cortisone injection and then working on the strengthening exercises.  That’s probably the last injection I could get, though, so I would really need to make sure I do everything possible to prevent having the problem recur again.  The worst case scenario is that there are bone fragments or excessive cartilage destruction that would require surgery.  The doctor said it would just be a 6 week recovery time, but I’m a little weary of such an invasive procedure unless absolutely necessary.  In any case, I need to work on correct strengthening and shoulder positioning, which probably would have prevented these problems in the first place.

April 12, 2008 - 4:50:00
June 14, 2008 - 4:23:00
August 30, 2008 - 4:00:00
March 28, 2009 - 4:06:40
April 18, 2009 - 3:47:53

Here’s the route and a representative picture along the coast.  Unfortunately, there was a lot of fog over the ocean up to about a quarter of mile inland, but otherwise it was sunny and warm.  It was pretty cool to see the fog sitting there when I was descending down the mountain.
 
          

I took splits at some key points - at the intersection of Page Mill and Skyline (almost to the top of Page Mill), at the general store in Pescadero (stop to get a cinnamon roll and chocolate chip cookie), after finishing the climbs on Stage Rd and Highway 1 at the turn onto Tunitas Creek, at the top of Tunitas Creek, and then down Kings Mountain to home. Here are some comparison times between March 28 and April 18:

Page Mill - 59:47, 53:43
Pescadero - 60:09, 54:32
Stage Rd - 37:27, 35:53
Tunitas Creek - 46:41, 42:51
Kings Mountain to home - 42:36, 40:52

Now for the good stuff. This was my first time using the Powertap outside, and I’ve included all the intervals below. This was pretty much a continuous ride, except for the break in Pescadero to get something to eat. I set the graphs to display rolling 30s averages. It records data every second, but it looks really choppy if you don’t do any smoothing to the data. If you include the zeros (coasting), my average watts was 235. If you remove everything below about 30 watts, it is close to 280 watts. I have no idea how this compares to other people, but it’ll be interesting to see how I progress with this.

The Entire Ride:

To the top of Page Mill:

To Pescadero:

Stage Rd and Highway 1:

Tunitas Creek:

Kings Mountain to Home:

The Powertap software also shows your peak power over various intervals from 1 second to 2 hours. I’ll have to do a workout focused specifically on seeing what my maximum values are at some point, but here were what they were during this ride (includes any time spent coasting with zero watts…which really only affects the 60 and 120 minute values):

1s - 973 watts (3 hours 30 minutes into the ride!!!)
5s - 812 watts
30s - 492 watts
1m - 414 watts
5m - 341 watts
10m - 330 watts
30m - 308 watts
60m - 277 watts
120m - 256 watts

My racing schedule next month is still a little bit up in the air.  I had been training towards the Pan American Championships in Oklahoma City since starting my season late last year.  Unfortunately, the ITU has set a field limit of 75 athletes and right now there are only 10 US athletes on the start list.  The good news is that more spots should open up in the coming days.  The bad news is that more than 40 US athletes requested starts, and although there is the possibility for USA Triathlon to make some discretionary selections, most of the starts will go down the ITU points list…and my point total is zero.  I’ve beaten several people on the list in the past and feel faster than ever, but there isn’t anything I can do about it at this point.  I was hoping to use the Oklahoma City race followed by the Capital of Texas Triathlon in Austin on Memorial Day (9 days later) as a launching pad to get a bunch of ITU points.  I may have to settle with just getting points in Austin now.  If I don’t end up on the start list in OKC, then I may just race in the age group race Sunday morning.  It’s not ideal, but since I’ve planned my training around doing a race that weekend, it may be the best thing.  Plus, it’s possible that if I’m in OKC and there is a late scratch, then I may be able to get a start.  I’ll find out soon if that’s possible.

I bought a bunch of new equipment for this year to help in training and racing - a BlueSeventy Helix wetsuit, Trek Madone 6.5 Pro with Dura Ace  7900, Powertap Pro+, InsideRide e-motion rollers, Nike Lunar Trainer and Racer shoes, and some new race goggles for the swim.  I’ll have to write more about each of these sometime in the future, but they’ve been working amazing so far.  The combination of the new bike with PowerTap and rollers vs. my old bike with the CompuTrainer has made comparisons a little difficult so far.  I have a long ~4 hour bike ride planned for this Saturday, and hopefully I’ll get a better sense of just how much of a difference some of this equipment is making.

Swimming has continued to be my primary focus.  I was averaging around 30,000m per week for two weeks of harder training, and then ~15,000m during a recovery week.  As I’ve added more intensity to the bike and run, though, I was feeling a little bit of accumulated fatigue, so I’m backing off by a couple thousand meters per week.  Hopefully that leaves me better rested and ready for the key workouts.

The past two weeks have produced some pretty good workouts.  In a speed focused workout I did 4×25y at 100y pace with 25 easy recovery, 4×50y at 200y pace on 1:00, 5×100y at 500y pace on 1:30.  The 25’s were in ~12s, 50’s were in ~27s, and 100’s were in ~58s.  I was feeling a little fatigued during my race pace workout, but still managed 2×150m in 1:49-150, 4×300m in 3:42-44, and then 1×100m in 1:10.  Those times should drop considerably when I’m shaved and rested.  On Monday I did a 2000y tempo swim, looking up to sight once per 50y.  I held a pretty steady 5:35/500y pace and went 22:22 overall (I think 18:25 through 1650y).  Tonight I did an endurance swim and just went 6000y straight.  I didn’t jump in the pool thinking I was going to go that far straight, but I felt pretty good and just kept going.  The first 1500y was in ~18:40, then I went through 5000 in 1:00:30, then I did the next 500 in 5:51.  At this point, I was at 1:06:21 and was thinking it would be nice to finish 6000 under 6:00/500y pace (1:12/100y).  So, I went harder the last 500 (5:27) and finished in 1:11:48. 

Leading up to the race, I had two solid weeks of race-specific training.  I did less reps than I will do in subsequent cycles since I wanted to make sure I eased into it without getting injured.  I did a 22:30 2000y tempo swim (lifitng up to sight once per 50y) and did some 300y reps in around 3:12-13.   The end of this past week was pretty tiring.  Wednesday night I did a 7200y swim with 5000 straight in 1:00:50.  Then I combined a tempo effort and long run on the treadmill - 2×10:00 at 5:27 pace with about 1:30 easy in between and then aerobic effort afterwards to bring the total to 10+ miles.  Finally, I finished up the night at around 10pm after doing some strength training.  Thursday afternoon I went for a 7-8 mile run and then did a 3 hour ride on the trainer at a pretty high aerobic effort.  I was feeling really, really fatigued on Friday and just did a 2700m swim as I didn’t want to be completely tired for the race.

I didn’t have much “spring” in my legs and arms during the race because of all that training, but overall, it felt pretty good.  I had a nice 500m swim in the San Francisco Bay (it was cold!) but my start wasn’t the greatest, and I ended up about 8-10s behind a few of the leaders.  I started the bike in 3rd and gradually lost some ground.  It was my first time riding outside in a few months and the first time riding with the aerobar setup since October, but I think the Thursday night long ride had much more of an effect than that.  Luckily, I had a good T2 and felt decent on the run.  Again, there wasn’t much spring in my legs, but I held a nice strong pace and gradually got faster.  About 200m from the finish I full on body slammed someone running in the opposite direction but did a quick 360 in the air before going all out for the finish.  I held on barely to win by just under 2 seconds.  My transitions were actually around 40 seconds faster than the guy I beat, so I guess transitions can actually win or lose a race!  Knowing the training I put in the past two weeks, the race was definitely a good sign for where I’m at and where I can get to before my next race in May.

After the race, I went and did a 6200y swim at Stanford and did some strength training.  On my way to the gym I noticed a fencing match going on.  It was the NCAA Western Regionals and it was the last match to determine who would go to Nationals.  I only saw the last couple minutes, but it was pretty intense and full of emotion!  It was tied 14-14 at the end of the time limit, then they took a quick break during which the Air Force coach got a red card for talking back to the ref or something (the lady I was standing next to said that was the first time she’d seen that in 10 years).  Then the two athletes lined back up for the final point.  I don’t know fencing terminology, but they went back and forth for a little bit faking each other out before finally the girl from Stanford scored the winning point!  The whole thing was pretty dramatic and exciting - I’ll have to go watch more in the future!

In fact, I just finished up one of my largest base building phases ever.  Prior to this past week’s lighter training volumes, I managed 62 hours of training over the course of 21 days.  In all, that consisted of 102,600m of swimming, 466 miles of biking, 87 miles of running, and 6:30 of strength training.  It’s kind of funny that my 60+ miles of swimming volume is approaching my running volume, but I’m still really focused on improving my swim, and the run will come along as long as I stay healthy.  After putting in 20+ hour training weeks, the 10 or so hours I did this week felt really, really easy.

That’s a good thing, as it means I’m recovered and ready to begin some more race specific training.  The next four weeks the plan is to do 2 two week cycles.  I have 4 key workouts in swimming, biking, and running and 4-6 strength training workouts in each of those two week cycles.  I’ll drop my swim volume down to 28-30km per week, bike volume to 6-7 hours, and run volume to 3:20-4:00.  I’ll keep the number of reps in the key workouts smaller to begin with to see how my body responds.  After 4 weeks, I’ll take a recovery week, and use the information I’ve obtained to plan training loads leading up to my key race in May in Oklahoma City.

The only race I plan on doing before the Pan American Championships in Oklahoma is Stanford’s Treeathlon in 2 weeks.  It’s a sprint race, and it should be nice to get a feel for racing again.  I’ve come in 2nd overall two out of the three times I’ve raced, so hopefully I’ll win this year!

The greatest risk will be the switch from primarily endurance and aerobic training to some more race specific training in a few weeks.  To mitigate that risk, I may transition into the faster training a bit more slowly.  That will ensure my bones, ligaments, tendons can withstand the additional force.  I’ve already started to do some strides a couple times when running and some shorter, quicker efforts in the swim.  The high school next to where I live has an astroturf football field, and I’ve used it a couple of times for barefoot strides.  Running barefoot helps to strengthen the foot and astroturf must be one of the most ideal sufaces - as soft as grass but with much less risk of twisting an ankle.

Training since Monday has been great.  I did another 2:30 ride on Thursday, 21,500y of swimming Monday-Wednesday, and one of my longest runs in the past 8 months - all of 55:00 (around 8 miles).  I haven’t felt any pain when running, but I think my sesamoid bones are a little tender, so I’m being careful.  Saturday and Sunday should be a little lighter in terms of training.  1:00 bike and strength training on Saturday, a 35:00 run on Sunday, and around 6500m of swimming spread out over the two days.  Next week will largely be a repeat of this week except that I’ll be doing a little more of everything (around 2:00 more total).