Ryan Bickerstaff

Well, 15 days into the new training year, and I have my first setback. Sometime last week I think I slept on my shoulder funny, and it has been bothering me slightly since. It hadn’t affected my training until today, though. Although a little tired, my swim yesterday went just fine and I didn’t have any problems. Today was a different story. My left shoulder was hurting and popping pretty much anytime I moved it or put pressure on it. I thought I may be able to “warm it up” by going swimming, but after 1300 yards of pain and popping on almost every stroke and flip turn, I figured it would be best to call it a day in the pool after doing another 400y of kicking. My best self-diagnosis is an AC joint sprain. Normally that type of injury occurs when you land forcefully on your side, but I’m thinking that if I slept on it funny for several hours, it could have put extra strain on the joint. Then, with swimming and strength training I may have pushed it over the edge. I have an appointment at SMI (sports massage) tomorrow, and I’m going to see about getting in to see a doctor before I head back to Oklahoma for a couple of weeks on Friday. The doctor is likely just going to tell me to rest it, but sometimes it is best to know exactly what you’re dealing with and also get an expert’s opinion on the best way to treat it quickly and effectively.

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Intuit had its annual Holiday Party on Saturday, and it was a nice break from training to go up to San Francisco City Hall for the event.  Due to the economy, I think they scaled back a bit (no chocolate fondue fountain!), but it was still really nice.

The CEO and founder giving an introduction:

 
The Latin dancers finishing up a dance on the steps inside:

A view from the second floor balcony where the casino games were:

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The first two weeks of this new triathlon season have come and gone without much to note, which is a good thing sometimes.  At the beginning of last year’s season, I was really focused on swimming a lot more than I ever had.  Until my foot started hurting in June, everything seemed to be going great with running, too.  I got a little bit of a late start with biking, and although I did some strength training pretty regularly, I was always doing the same thing without much of a progression plan.

I’m doing much better this year as I’m organized and have a pretty solid plan for all three sports and strength training.  I have the first 12 weeks planned out, consisting of primarily aerobic training.  I’ll be doing some shorter faster efforts along the way based on a lesson learned last year.  I think one of the reasons my foot started hurting was because I went from almost 100% aerobic running with normal training shoes to faster workouts in racing flats.  I have some new running shoes that work well in both aerobic runs and workouts, so by mixing in some faster work occasionally, the transition to race preparation workouts should be less jarring on my body.

My planned weekly schedule is along the lines of:

Monday: Bike, Swim
Tuesday: Run, Swim, Strength Training
Wednesday: Run, Swim,
Thursday: Bike, Strength Training
Friday: Run, Swim
Saturday: Bike, Swim, Strength Training
Sunday: Run, Swim

My swim progression through the first 12 weeks of the season is planned to be (in kilometers): 26, 28, 30, 14, 28, 30, 32, 15, 30, 32, 34, 16.
Comments: This is somewhat along the lines of what I was doing last year, but I am really dropping off in volume once every four weeks.  I think this will help my body rejuvenate and better adapt to the training workloads.  Plus, since I’m being more consistent with biking, I’ll probably need the rest even more. 

My bike progression (in hours): 4, 5, 6, 2.5, 5, 6, 7, 3, 6, 7, 8, 3.5.
Comments: The past year I tried to get in 6 hours a week, but it didn’t happen very often.  By easing into it and starting off more gradually, hopefully it’ll be easier to be consistent with 6 or so hours a week during the racing season. 

My run progression: 2:00, 2:20, 2:40, 1:10, 2:40, 3:00, 3:20, 1:30, 3:20, 3:40, 4:00, 1:50.
Comments: I need to be gentle with the running given my foot problems the past year.  I was doing 4:00 per week consistently during aerobic training prior to my foot injury, and I was having a lot of success.  So, as long as my foot is willing, I’d like to get back up to that level.  The difference again this year will be doing faster efforts occasionally so that my foot adapts to the extra force gradually.

My strength training progression: there are several sport-specific exercises I do plus some core and hip stabilizer exercises I do.  I will be doing 3×15-18 @ a 20 repetition maximum weight level.  In weeks 9-12 I plan on starting some plyometric exercises as long as everything else is going smoothly.

If I manage to do all this, my non-recovery weeks will range between 15 and 24 hours.  24 hours is around my lifetime maximum, but I plan on trying to be smart and readjusting training levels if necessary.  Most likely I’ll take volume off the swimming if needed because I think the marginal benefit in doing 30,000m instead of 34,000m isn’t as much as the extra hour of biking or running.  Keeping with the strength training will provide more long term benefits, so it’ll also be a focus.

If all goes according to plan, towards the end of February or the begnning of March I’ll be ready for race specific training in prepartion for the Pan American Championships in Oklahoma City in May.

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After the San Francisco Triathlon I started a restoration period.  I had been going pretty much nonstop, at least with swimming, since the end of last September.  I still did at least 30 minutes of swimming, biking, or running every day the past three weeks.  I’ve noticed that training motivation has a bit of an inertia aspect to it.  When you’re going strong it’s hard to stop, but when you start taking a lot of rest, it can be harder to get back up and running smoothly again.  Thirty minutes a day is my way of keeping things really easy while staying relatively fit.

I went back home to Alva, Oklahoma a week before Thanksgiving.  The change of pace and environment was a nice complement to the restoration period.  It was warm enough that I could bike and run outside.  For swimming and strength training, I worked out at the Wellness Center.  It’s a pretty nice complex and all of the equipment works great.  The only problem is that the 25y pool is kept at around 88 degrees, I think, which is really warm.  I have to slow down quite a bit to maintain an aerobic effort.

On Wednesday we drove up to my grandma’s house outside of Kansas City.  Sprint has a Thanksgiving Day 5k run on a certified course on their campus, and I ran in that on Thursday.  Out of the 5000 entrants, I finished 8th in 16:08 (5:12.51, 5:15.70, 5:14.62, 25.66).  I was only hoping for a 16:30, so I was pretty happy.  Considering that since July 1st I’ve run less than 300 miles, when I finally get my volume and intensity back up to respectable levels, I should be in a pretty good position to run a lot faster.  Halfway through the 5k I felt my foot start to hurt again, which wasn’t the best thing to feel, but it was a pretty minor sensation, and with the rest since then, I’m hoping it was just because of wearing racing flats.  As I continue strengthening exercises, hopefully the pain goes away for good.

So, today was the first day of my 2009 triathlon season and to start things off, I rode about 1:25 in the morning and did a 5100y straight swim in the evening.  I’m still figuring out what races I’ll do this coming year.  I’ll probably do the Stanford sprint “Treeathlon” in March.  My first major race will be in Oklahoma City in May.  That will be a pretty exciting race because it is in my home state and the bike course does loops around the state capitol building.  Then, it looks like the continental cups in Geneva, NY and San Francisco will both be in July.  Nationals is in August, so my major races will be over a lot sooner next year.  Hopefully I do well enough in them to be ready for a World Cup, but we’ll see how things go…definitely a lot of training between now and then.

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My last triathlon of the year was yesterday on Treasure Island. It was nice to finally be able to do this race. Two years ago I was sick, and last year I had injury a month or two earlier and decided to just refocus for this year. I wasn’t 100% going into the race, as I had only gradually worked up to 30 minutes of running since getting an injection in my foot last month. So, given that I hadn’t run a 10k since the Scott Tinley’s race a month ago, I didn’t have many expectations for the run. However, I hoped to finish the swim with the first or second pack and stay with it during the bike. Here’s how it ended up playing out:

Swim
The swim was in the San Francisco Bay, which was reportedly 56 degrees…a bit chilly. It was in a little protected harbor, so the waves weren’t that bad. It’s still a bit of a shock when jumping in, though, especially on your unprotected face. I only warmed up in the water for about 50-100m. In retrospect, maybe I should have done more, but I was worried about losing body heat and losing energy trying to keep warm before the start. My start position was right in the center of the pontoon. For some reason, my reaction time was really slow on this start. Either because I was cold and stiff or my weight was shifted backwards, I was already a half body length back when I entered the water. I wasn’t able to get clear water, and the next 30-60 seconds was a bunch of thrashing/pounding/kicking with other people. I had an ok position 500m in and was towards the back of the pack up until somewhere between 1000-1250m. Sometime during the last third, I think I swerved off a bit, and lost contact with the pack. I tried going hard to catch back up but just didn’t have the energy.

Bike
Due to losing contact on the swim, I exited the water about 10 seconds behind the last person to make the main bike packs. The bike was pretty flat except for a short hill towards the end of each of the 6 laps. However, with 20-25 turns each lap (120-150 turns total), it was pretty technical. I was hopeful that I’d be able to go hard and corner faster than the groups and catch back up. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out (15-20s is quite a bit of time to make up if you aren’t super strong on the bike). So, I ended up riding the whole bike by myself. Not exactly the most fun thing, but I needed to finish without getting lapped to be eligible for the Tri-California Series prize purse. I ended up losing about 6 minutes to the packs on the bike, but there wasn’t much I could do after the swim result.

Run
Knowing that I had lost so much time on the bike, there wasn’t much I could do on the run. I just started out easy and tried to work into a good rhythym. I managed to pass one person to move up to 25th place. My run wasn’t that much slower than the bulk of the run times, and since I haven’t done really any hard running since the end of May, and I worked by myself on the bike, I was happy with how it felt…knowing that I’ll be going a lot faster when I get a bulk of run training underneath me.

Overall
By virtue of my finish place and certain other people not finishing too many places ahead of me, I held on for 9th place in the Tri-California Series. That earned me $500 which was a nice consolation prize considering how the day went. If I had raced Pacific Grove, I would have earned more points and ended up with an extra $500-$1500, but that race was the week before Nationals, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t wear myself out for it. Maybe next year I’ll do all the races…we’ll see.

This race really just came down to the swim for me. Time-wise, I wasn’t that much slower relative to the other people I compete against all year. I think not making the pack was more bad luck than an overall sign of where my swim is at. I’ve definitely improved the past year. Just a week and half ago I did a 1650y tempo in 18:10, splitting 5:31,5:30, 5:31 per 500y. It’s easier to see progress in the swimming pool. I just need to figure out a better way to translate that into the open water, especially with wetsuit swims where I tend to not do as well. It’s hard to simulate the start of one of these races when you’re training by yourself, but I think I can work to find a way to swim more regularly in the open water where visibility isn’t as great. I think the ability to sight bouys, swim straight, and keep a steady relaxed stroke simultaneously is pretty much essential to do well. I definitely hope to improve in that area next year.

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