Tag Archives: triathlon

Friday Fitness Notes

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Swimming. My freestyle has always been, shall we say, slipshod. My nieces have yelled hurtful things at me, Coach Smith has barked at me from the deck and gestured wildly. All to no avail. Then I watched this underwater freestyle pull video and something clicked. Thanks to Gary Hall Sr. I’ve been dropping time in my twice weekly naked (no pull buoy or paddles) 1,000 yard swims. Probably too late for London though. Typical April 2011 workout—1,000 free; 400 kick; 400 drill; 12×100 IM every third free (yikes, this week on a very leisurely 2:00), 500 free paddles/buoy.

Running. Those Boston times were obscene. I disagree with the experts on the inevitability of a sub 2:00 marathon. Dropping another 183 seconds is going to be excruciatingly difficult. I just don’t think the pace of improvement over the last decade is sustainable. I’m going to go so far as to say I will not live long enough to see a sub2. I’m running about 30 miles a week. Enjoying the morning light which means more trails. Here’s a picture of my “best listener” running partner after the “paw wipe-down” and in the middle of the morning chore.

The labradude earning his keep

Cycling. Three very fast training rides with the local team recently. Road strong and held on for the first two and got dropped early on the third this week. No excuse, just got caught sleeping and when the gap formed, I didn’t have enough snap to close it. The Costco potato chip/swiss cheese pre-ride snack probably didn’t help. Then I made the mistake of flipping through my April 2010 log and found out I’m not ahead of schedule, I’m behind. It’s looking like I’ll log somewhere around 400 miles this month. I suppose I could use the weather as an excuse, but I’m already forming a fair weather reputation. DG pulled up next to me shortly before I was dropped Tuesday night and chided, “Kinda iffy weather for you isn’t it?” The good news is I’m in RAMROD, as is Supplement, Lance, and DG. This is where I might write that it will no doubt be the summer highlight, that is, if my 25th wedding anniversary wasn’t this summer.

In related news, I watched Ironman NZ while cycling indoors earlier in the week. Make that Nutrigrain Ironman NZ. Forced advertising on swim caps and elsewhere. I know resistance is futile, but for me at least, it takes away from the whole event. As if the participants aren’t paying enough already. My family gets tired of me watching Ironman races on Universal Sports (greatest channel ever, even better than Oxygen) and Lance regularly rips me for not toeing the line. Maybe I’d swim 3,800 meters, then cycle 180 kilometers (the metric is just to ruffle Lance’s American sensibilities), and then run a marathon if I could find a low-key, non-descript, non-commercial race setting.

I know what you’re thinking. “What’s stopping you from swimming 3,800 meters in Ward Lake, cycling 180k all over Thurston and Lewis counties, and the running out to BHarbor and back?” When it comes to avoiding Ironman, I always have an answer. When I beat my brother’s and Lance’s studly Ironman Canada times, they’ll both say my time isn’t official.

Weekend Notes—December 18, 2010

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Miscellaneous notes unrelated to the blog’s laser focus on questioning education conventional wisdom.

• Saw a great documentary on Yao Ming five years ago. He’s very personable and likable. Since seeing that film I’ve followed him. It’s disappointing to learn he’s out for the season and that he’s probably played his last NBA game. China’s Bill Walton sans the scruffy beard, unrivaled college education, and Grateful Dead vibe.

• The GalPal turned 50 recently. Sometimes a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Fifteen’s gift tells you everything you need to know about what it’s like to live with a teenager.

• For me at least, swimming is very different from running and cycling in that I have to think about my form all the time. I get lazy and revert to muscle memory which means my elbows aren’t high enough, I cross over a bit, my stroke gets too short, and I don’t complete my stroke underwater. The challenge is trying to change these flaws simultaneously. The obvious answer is to work on one at a time, but sometimes when I try to add an additional correction in, the previous fix unravels. And the harder the set and the deeper in a workout, the worse my form. I’d probably be better off just doing slow drills for a month. Whatever I do, I swim nearly identical splits. Today’s 100’s were 1:25’s with toys (paddles/buoy).

• Just when I thought Lance was over the 2009 Black Hills Triathlon, he wants me to commit to racing the Boise Half Ironperson with him. He’s dastardly. It has a noon start. I’d begin the run around 3:3op in Boise in mid-June. I was born in Boise and I love symmetry. Maybe, like a Pacific Northwest salmon, I should return to and die in Boise? I’d rather do this race.

• The more minimalist in orientation I become, the less I like traditional Christmas gift giving. I know I should focus on the spirit of the giving and be more appreciative, it just seems most gifts don’t fill any real need and unnecessarily contribute to clutter. If you’re still wondering what to get me, massage gift certificates are $47 at the Briggs YMCA.

• It’s nice having Eighteen home from college. She had a great first trimester. Proud of her and just hoping and praying I can hang with her in the pool Monday.

• In the shocker of the week, I created a twitter account (@PressingPause) and as of today, I have one follower. Look out Linkedin and Facebook.

Thanks for reading. Have a nice weekend.

Where’s the Romance?

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LOVE this guy’s blog; however, I shouldn’t profess my fondness for his blog that way because “You can’t love something,” moms says, “that can’t love you back.”

But as brilliant as Ray’s blog is, there’s something lacking. The same “something” lacking from online triathlon forums like this one—romance.

Not the candlelight hot under the collar type for which the word is normally associated, but the unbridled joy that sometimes accompanies moving outdoors in nature.

Ray, sports science companies, and other triathletes are turning triathlon into a science in which every workout is endlessly sliced, diced, and analyzed.

As a middle adaptor of the personal technology the tri-scientists obsess over, I’m not immune from their privileging fitness science over the aesthetics, art, and romance of swimming, running, and cycling. Consequently, when I run there’s a gadget in my running shorts pocket that bounces signals off satellites so I know precisely how far and fast I’ve run. When I cycle, I lean on my bicycle computer to determine what kind of ride it was based upon whether I achieved a higher than normal average speed.

But there’s no computer that can capture the beauty of a late summer lake swim when the water is glassy and the perfect temperature. No reason to try to measure the rhythm of a long, smooth stroke. No counting of strokes and no measuring of heart rate required.

Nor is there any gadget on the market that can capture what it’s like to run at dawn on golden leaf carpeted Northwest trails in October in a foggy/low light mix. Why even try to quantify how alive I felt last Thursday on my pre-dawn solo eight-miler around Capital Lake. The Capital Dome was lit up and the lake surface was bespeckled with reflections of the Deschutes streetlights. Spectacular.

How do you measure what it’s like to run under the lighting of a full moon or cycle with a friend along the Sound on an unusually warm October afternoon? It’s these experiences with nature and good friends that make me feel alive, not my average watts. And it’s these experiences that clear my mind and strengthen me for day-to-day life.

I’m fortunate to have a great running posse, but lately, since I’m in marathon-mode, I’ve been getting in a few solo runs each week too which has been nice. During one last week, I spent a few of the miles replaying an argument the Galpal and I had stumbled into the previous evening. Reluctantly, I had to admit that the video replay in my head provided inconvertible evidence that I was mostly responsible for the dustup. So when I walked in the house, I apologized. The GalPal was so taken by my (rare) selfless gesture, she violated her strict “no sweaty” hug policy. All of which set me up for a candlelight hot under the collar type of evening. And that my friends is what’s known as the “running romance multiplier effect”.

Credit me when you use it.

Weekend Notes

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U.S. OPEN

• I was off Friday and spent some of the day prepping for 17’s Graduation Open House and some fantasizing about being at Pebble Beach. As great as the visuals were, listening to Chris Berman do the U.S. Open is excruciating. I’m sure he’d be a fun guy to play poker or watch football with, but he obviously did not grow up playing golf. I can take “We’re all just Dustin’ in the Wind Johnson” but I can’t take the “He shot a 9” and “That’s the second snowman there of the day!” and the “back, back, back” urging of a short putt. No one shoots anything on an individual hole. One MAKES a nine. And pros occasionally make eights, not snowmen. This is a MAJOR, not the Bristol Municipal Club Championship. Listening to Dick Vitale is soothing by comparison.

• Also on Friday, very interesting ruling involving Paul Casey’s chip on 14. Brutal uphill chip with zero margin of error. Casey hits it a tad chubby and in frustration hits/repairs the divot a few times. In the ensuing ten-fifteen seconds, the ball backs all the way off the green, eventually to almost the exact spot. Viewers alert the rules officials that Casey has improved his lie. Penalty? Rules officials huddle with Casey after the round, review the particulars of the two shots, and ask him whether he hit/repaired the divot in order to improve his lie in case the ball returned to the exact same spot. Based upon his body language they didn’t think so, and so they weren’t surprised when Casey confirmed that. There really was no way Casey could have known the ball would return to exact same spot. The rule is it’s a penalty if there’s intent is to improve one’s lie. I hereby declare that before wives rip husbands and daughters ban fathers from speaking in public that they adjust for intent.

WORLD CUP

• After reading the comments about my “it’s poor form to complain about officiating” post, I’ve changed my mind. Merty’s comment in particular reminded me of the NBA/FBI/Tim Donaghy fiasco. I’m sure there’s far more $ coursing through World Cup matches than NBA games. Maybe the Malian ref who blew the call at the end of US/Slovenia is cut from Donaghy cloth. So here’s my revised axiom. Whenever athletes are amateurs, it’s poor form to complain about officiating. The corollary is “The younger the athletes, the poorer the form.”

SCHOOLING

• I understand it’s sociocultural/historical roots, but I’m still amazed at how prevalent individualism is in our schools especially when future success will inevitably hinge on interpersonal intelligence. The OHS awards assembly and graduation (where the same award winners were feted a second time) reminded me of that. Why is it that teamwork and groups are only emphasized in extracurricular activities? Our success in solving pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges hinge mostly on team/group work. Sarason’s concept of the “regularities of schooling” comes to mind. A “regularity of schooling” is some feature of teaching and learning that we no longer question, it’s just accepted as the natural order. For example, we always assign grades to each individual student and we only award individual student achievement. This also calls to mind Sarason’s “ocean storm” metaphor in the Predictable Failure of Education Reform. Lots of wind, waves, tumult on the surface during an ocean storm, but no change in water chemistry, temperature, etc, on the ocean floor. The ocean floor is the teacher-student relationship. How would teaching and learning change if we tempered our individualism and focused at least some of our assessment efforts on small group academic achievement?

• During his grad speech, the OHS principal honored the top ten students. A slide of the students flashed above. He said, “good job girls” with no sense of irony or urgency. I’m in the middle of a related article in the most recent Atlantic magazine titled “The End of Men”. Highly recommended.

• Byrnes Postulate (be sure to credit me). The more meaningful the curricular objective and related classroom activity, the more difficult to assess the associated student learning. Granted seems obvious, but I suggest that postulate informs more of what’s wrong with the “standards movement” than is first apparent.

WORLD POLITICS

• Heard an interview with the author of this book. He persuasively argued that no single nation can singlehandedly solve the immigration challenge. Made perfect sense, but it doesn’t seem as if anyone is acknowledging that. In fact, it’s true of most global issues today, but there are at least two serious impediments to thinking more globally and acting more in concert with other people in other nations to address pressing global issues like global poverty, environmental crises, and terrorism/war. First, the U.N. has a lot of negative baggage associated with it and there are wonderful NGOs, but few truly global alternatives. And secondly, no country/region (in the case of the EU) really wants to be take the lead in compromising their relative sovereignty.

FITNESS MALISE

• It’s 12:56p Sunday, we’re on the cusp of the summer equinox, and I’m sitting at my desk in half a cycling kit, staring at a cold, wet, dark gray landscape with 57 miles on the odometer for the week. Pathetic. I started down the street at 9:50a only to turn around when it started to rain. Mother Nature is testing all cyclists’ mental health this June. Look for some to start snapping. I was supposed to be Lance’s domestique on Mount Saint Helens today and then opted for a 10a club ride. Now I’ve performed the rare “double wuss”. My problem is I have nothing I HAVE to train for, not a single event on the calendar. I don’t even think I’ll do our local Oly triathlon in September. I’m 280th on the RAMROD waiting list. This is a desperate cry for help. Someone tell me what event should I do next and why? To add insult to injury, 14 informed me that if I had stayed in bed, her sister and her would have made me a “Dad’s Day” breakfast.

Why Exercise?

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I once had a colleague, a smart scientist, who said research showed exercise extends people’s lives the same amount of time spent exercising. If that’s close to correct, and if you excercise 5 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for forty years, that’s an extra 13 months. If that seems paltry, he’d agree, which was why he chose to be sedentary.

I don’t exercise to extend the length of my life as much as I do to improve the quality of it. Most of the time I enjoy the activity itself, the swimming, running, and cycling, especially since I have great training partners. Long story short, exercise improves the quality of my life on lots of levels.

Last Sunday I was traveling all day and on Monday and Tuesday I wasn’t able to squeeze in a workout. Felt completely out of whack. Finally rebooted with a 5 mile run along the edge of Storm Lake Tuesday night. Travelled all day Wednesday, so four days, and one five mile run. Salvaged the week by hitting it hard Thursday-Sunday.

Sunday’s ride was especially nice. Longest ride of 2010 thus far. The numbers, 63.27 miles, 3:34:11, 17.7mph avg, max 42.5, 2,954′ of elevation, 4,057 calories. Morning resting heart rate, 48, 52 in the middle of church (so I drifted during the sermon, what else is new). Great riding with Lance except for the hills he added on. His front tire exploded mid-ride. Loudest flat ever. Embarrassing the lengths he goes to to force rest.

The pictures.

In the peloton, you are what you eat and drink

Ready to roll

Dropping in on 81st Street

Line of the day, "Don't throw that away, I'm going to patch it."

Lance's elaborate rest stop ruse

Self portrait mid-ride

Calorie replacement. . . stage one

Calorie replacement. . . stage two

Calorie replacement. . . stage three

Calorie replacement. . . finishing kick

April Miscellania

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• The wife got me with a pretty good April Fools, said the new car “wasn’t starting in the morning” and “we should have someone look at it.” I had to return serve. So a few hours later I told her “Good news, the NYT is reporting that young trendsetters are dying their hair gray.” She laughed heartily until I said “April Fools!” That fact that it wasn’t a joke, is now the joke. That’s just the multi-layered way I roll.

• Got some rare direct blog feedback at dinner last week. One of my sibs said indignantly, “Why should anyone care about the details of your fitness routine?!” I explained those posts are primarily for Lance. Consider them optional, not required reading. Lance NEEDS to know how hard to work to maintain his running and cycling superiority.

• So here’s my indignant sib-adjusted fitness report for March. Battled a micro-tear in one calf and then threw my back out lifting/twisting dumbbells to and from the rack without my legs. Lost about a week. Swam 23,900m; cycled, 340; ran 97. WOM (workout of the month) was a 33 mile ride and 2.25 mile run with my 22 year old uber-niece who is about to kick some serious butt at the College Nationals Triathlon in Texas.

• March Madness update. The WSJ computer and I are currently in sixth or seventh place out of eleven in the office pool. If Duke wins, I will probably end up on the podium, but no one remembers who came in second. The first five participants don’t even follow college bball. I’m actually glad computers apparently can’t quantify something as complex as a 64 team tournament. It won’t be the same when it goes to 96 teams. Classic case of less being more. Of course this year I wish it had been 196 because then UCLA might have qualified.

• This recent David Brooks essay is one of my favorites of his of all time. Brooks got killed by the most recommended commenters. I found some of their comments perceptive, but most of those were of the “Look at me, I caught you being inconsistent” variety. No one is always perfectly consistent. Many of the most recommended comments struck me as weakly argued, mean-spirited, knee-jerk liberalism. I’m a liberal, but not a fan of knee-jerkism of any variety. Very easy to criticize especially so indirectly. I give Brooks credit for courage. He knows he can’t win when it comes to most NYT readers.

• Personal record for blog readership in March 2010; however, no reason to get carried away, you’re still a member of a select group. For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, people never comment on my personal finance posts, so I think I’ll retire that thread. Even though readership is up, commenting is not. Maybe I’m not angry enough? Maybe I need to tap my inner-Glenn Beck. Also, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, I can’t get many readers to follow the small number of links I sometimes include. Case in point, you didn’t even open the previous Brooks’ link did you? I know everyone is pressed for time and I appreciate the fact that more people are at least logging on and skimming posts.

• Turns out I was exaggerating when I wrote that I’d pay anything for an iPad. I have not ordered one yet not because I wanted to read the reviews that were just published and let the application/software dust settle a bit. I anticipate buying one sometime before the summer equinox, but as a card carrying late adaptor, if so moved, I reserve the right to postpone the purchase indefinitely. Not owning one won’t stop me from adding “Sent from my iPad” on the bottom of my emails. Faux tech cache. Sometimes I amaze myself.

• Speaking of email, publicly admitting that I suck at it in my last post proved cathartic. Oddly, it inspired me to turn over a new email/internet leaf captured in this sticky note. Three days later, I’m stickying to it. Now email is not the boss of me, I’m the boss of email!

The note doubles as a logo cover, sorry Apple