Tinkering

Fairly certain this will always confuse me

Since starting triathlon, I have turned into somewhat of a tinkerer.

The first place it manifested itself was my bike. Anyone who has read my previous posts will know that as soon as I signed up for the Canberra Half Ironman I got myself a shiny new bike.

What they won’t know is that I went in intending to get a service for my OLD bike, decided that would cost so much I might as well just get a new one, and ended up making a total impulse buy on the spot. Awesome.

Cue 6 months of stressing that I had bought the wrong size bike for me, with constant readjustments of seat height, stem length, cleats and aerobars.

This was coupled with a misplaced sense of pride that given I had got myself into this mess, I would be the one to sort it out. No going back into the bike shop for me.

So basically every time I hit the road I would end up running through this mental torture about if I would be able to squeeze out another 1% in performance for a 1mm shift of some as of yet undetermined piece of kit. Or even worse, if it was all in vain because my bike was designed for a bigger Ross.

Maybe if I just adjust the seat height?

Eventually I bit the bullet and went in to a bike store to get their opinion. Basically, the gist of it was this – you are an idiot, your bike is fine.

Touché.

And they were right. Since then the love hate relationship between my bike and has been consigned to the past (I hope).

The whip

Well now it’s hit a bit closer to home. It’s no longer the equipment that’s the issue, it’s me.

This year, due to my horrific inflexibility and desire to remain injury free during my training, the tinkerer in me decided to make touching my toes one of my New Year’s resolutions.

For whatever reason this goal has been on the back burner from January to August, but a couple of weeks ago I decided to get stuck in.

No sooner had I started then, after years of care free running, all of a sudden, on a longer run last weekend, my knee decided to rebel and cause me all sorts of grief.

Cue lots of further stretching, foam rollers and lots of rest, but to no avail.

Learning a lesson from the bike scenario I decided to go get myself looked at. Luckily when you do triathlon one of the bonuses is friends who are physios (Thanks Edel!). The final outcome is yet to be determined, but after being put through my paces it looks like the ITB, or Iliotibial Band, is the likely culprit.

To get me back up and running Edel ended up giving me my first ever acupuncture session, some homework to do in terms of ‘glute activation’ and sent me on my way. Hopefully it does the job.

So, in spite of the fact I started stretching in a bid to avoid injury, keeping myself injury free now feels a bit like tuning a piano – I have absolutely no idea how to do it, and I just wish I could put it back to what it was like before.

So be careful what you tinker with!

Ross

Highlight of the week: Feeling good on both the bike and the swim. Did a 2km swim of my own accord for the first time in absolutely ages, and had a good hit out on the bike on Tuesday morning before work.

Lowlight of the week: While it was a relief to find out what was causing the pain when I run, and getting a plan to sort myself out, it does mean I am going to have to give this year’s City to Surf a swerve.

To marathon or not to marathon

I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

When I started this blog, I hoped it would be an upward trajectory of increasing awesomeness as I got closer to my ultimate goal of Ironman NZ.

Unfortunately it hasn’t quite turned out like that.

To give me some markers and things to aim for along the way, I signed up for a few races including the SMH Half Marathon, City to Surf, the Sydney Marathon and the Husky Olympic (with a view to adding more athletic endeavors as I go).

It all started well enough, taking ten minutes off my half marathon PB back in May.

But since then my nice settled existence has been somewhat disrupted, and all of a sudden early morning exercise has been replaced by boozing, eating out and not all that much in the way of sleep.

I have reassured myself that in the grand scheme of things, better to get it out my system now than when I am in full blown training lock down.

But it has left me with a bit of a dilemma – I now only have 8 weeks until the Sydney Marathon, having done next to no training, and the furthest I have ever run in one go is still 21km.

So at this point I basically have two options, do I A) sack it all in, or B) attempt to condense what should be a 16 week training program into half the time?

Obviously neither of those options is particularly appealing, as it is anything but a black or white decision. In fact, when I started writing this post I still wasn’t entirely sure either way.

But the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that my ultimate goal is the Ironman and I would therefore much rather chalk this one down to experience than risk running at less than 100% and potentially setting myself back either physically or mentally (or both).

Ross

Highlight of the week: I am finally back in the game. Managed to do swim, run and bike sessions in a single week in the first time since forever.

Lowlight of the week: Realising just how much work my swimming needs. I did my first ever squad session on Saturday and it turns out everything I have been doing to date is the equivalent of a light jog around the block. Saying that, it was awesome fun and I can’t wait till next week.

Swimming in Sydney

Given that I have the attention span of a 4 year old, I can often find swimming lap after lap in the same swimming pool a fairly tedious exercise.

Luckily for me Sydney is a swimmer’s dream.

Not only does it have some of the world’s most iconic beaches and a harbor famous the world over, but tucked in and around the city are also some pretty special swimming pools – meaning that I always have the option to mix up my routine and head somewhere a bit different.

Within spitting distance of home and work I am lucky enough to have all of the below:

My favorite of all the pools in Sydney, the Andrew Boy Charlton, or ABC as it is otherwise known.

Home aka Bondi Icebergs. Within rolling distance of my front door, and an awesome option for when the swell is too big to swim the bay

Redleaf Pool – Less of a pool, more of a net in the harbor to keep out the bull sharks

Bronte Pool – couple of bays down the coast

Price Alfred – the new kid on the block. Only just opened after years of delays, meaning that it’s free swimming till November!

The North Sydney Olympic pool – the only one I am yet to actually swim in! I am currently couch surfing just around the corner, but it is unfortunately having a refurb, so will have to tick it off another time

So while London definitely has some awesome outdoor lidos (or outdoor swimming pools as they are otherwise known), I think it is fairly evident why the move from London to Australia has done wonders for my motivation to get outdoors and do some exercise!

Ross

Highlight of the week: Writing this. Have had a fairly eventful month that has definitely interfered with my training and routine – some personal drama, couch surfing and getting up to speed with a new role at work. Hoping this post is marks a return to normality!

Lowlight of the week: For the first time in as long as I can remember, I got a man cold. So for the time being I have swapped outdoor activity for a blanket and some Lemsip.

Drugs in Sport (and Triathlon)

2012 was the year that I lost my sporting innocence.

It was in the back end of 2012 that USADA released their report on the US Postal Team and Lance Armstrong, outlining how they ran ‘the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping program that sport has ever seen’

It wasn’t that I was an Armstrong groupie, far from it. But, when somebody had maintained for years that they were innocent, had never tested positive (publicly at least) and had gone to the extent of suing people for libel, at the very least you want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So when the USADA report was released, and Armstrong subsequently did his damage limitation on Oprah, to say I had become more cynical about elite sporting achievements is perhaps an understatement.

And unfortunately, while Lance has become the poster boy for EPO, the problem of performance enhancing drugs in cycling was around before he came onto the scene. In fact, at one stage, Lance was seen as part of the solution rather than the problem.

Having only started taking an interest in cycling over the last couple of years, my knowledge of the cycling pre-Lance was limited at best.

It was only after reading David Walsh’s book, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’, that I found out that cycling has already been through a doping scandle on this scale just over a decade ago. The 1998 Tour de France was overshadowed by the Festina affair, where one of the team assistants was found with large quantities of doping products in his car, revealing a culture of drug taking within the sport.

As a result of the fallout from the Festina affair, the 1999 Tour was named the ‘Tour of Renewal’, the premise being that it would herald a new beginning for cycling, free of doping.

The reality didn’t turn out quite like that. Not only did the peloton clock speeds greater than the year before (when a drug free peloton should have been slower), it was also the maiden victory for a cyclist who would go on to dominate the sport – Lance Armstrong.

So when cycling has already been through one false dawn, you can understand why journalists are still questioning the likes of Wiggins and Froome on the subject today.

Sadly, the Armstrong affair has not just tainted my view of athletic brilliance in cycling.

The words used to describe Armstrong in his heyday went something along these lines: once-in-a-lifetime, extrodinary, insprational.

Are those not the exact same words we use when we describe someone like Usain Bolt? I am not for one second suggesting that Usain has doped, but sadly for him (and me) the negative light from the Lance Armstrong saga stretches far beyond just the world of cycling.

Which brings me to triathlon.

It is fair to say that triathlon has not had doping scandles on the scale of those faced by other sports. This can be attributed to that fact that, by and large, triathlon is still a fringe sport. It does not offer the fame or financial glory offered by the likes of the Tour de France.

But triathlon is now one of the fastest growing participation sports globally. It is also becoming increasingly mainstream, with the likes of the Brownlee brothers now household names in the UK post the Olympics.

Given that increased participation and marketing reach typically bring more dollars, it would be foolish to assume that the sport is immune from the pressures that give rise to performance enhancing drugs.

Ross

Highlight of the week: Thanks to some tips from my swimming partner, Andrew Wiltshire, whose claim to fame is the towel he got from Commonwealth Games trials for New Zealand (it’s a great towel), I finally feel like I am getting to grips with the swim.

Lowlight of the week: Realising that the stereotype of year round sunshine in Australia is a massive PR stunt. It gets cold, and it rains, and it gets dark early. All of which cause massive problems for my ongoing training.

Swimming: Inspiration not Perspiration

Swimming is the discipline that puts the fear of god into 99.99% of triathletes. The other 0.01% either swam competitively growing up, or were born in Australia, where it is compulsory to be awesome at all water sports (I love a good stereotype, and factually correct statistics).

We all know we can run, and we all know we can ride a bike. Sure we might have to go reaaaaallly slow, but if things don’t go to plan we can just plod our way to the finish line.

But in the water if things don’t go to plan, it means getting rescued by a 15 year old on a kayak.

The cycling and running legs also have rules and social norms around things like personal space. These do not apply whatsoever to the swim. If you need any proof, check out the video from IM Melbourne earlier this year – http://bit.ly/12NU2Hl

So given that the swim is absolutely the most terrifying part of the triathlon, most people throw themselves into the training with gusto.

They jump into the pool and try swim as far as they can in every session. They focus on stamina rather than technique, hoping that eventually the body will get used to the longer distances and they will miraculously become a better swimmer.

But, from my experience, that is exactly the opposite to what you should be doing.

When I trained for my first ever triathlon, the prospect of a 750m swim kept me up at night. I signed up with three friends and while it was never officially a competition, the fear of embarrassing myself meant I was pretty dedicated with my training.

I used to go to the pool around the corner from my work every lunch time and drag myself as far as possible. I say drag because that’s exactly what I did. In my mind I didn’t have enough time to practise technique, the race was too soon for that.

After a few weeks of much effort and little progress, I realised that if I carried on at this rate I would never make it. I could do no more than 5/6 lengths in a 50m pool without feeling like I had died. Something had to give.

So I did some research and came across Terry Laughlin. Terry created a programme called Total Immersion, which completely changed the way I thought about swimming.

Total Immersion’s philosophy is that trying to pull yourself through the water is absolutely useless, and that instead you should be focused on making yourself as streamlined and efficient as possible. The antithesis to how I had viewed swimming previously.

So, with the triathlon fast approaching, I ordered his DVD off the internet and set about trying to teach myself how to swim from scratch.

I kept going to the same swimming pool, but instead of doing laps I headed to the baby pool and did the drills I had watched the night before on my laptop.

At the beginning it was VERY frustrating. I was putting in all this effort, looking like an idiot doing drills by myself in the kids pool, without seeing any returns.

But slowly it started to click, and I started to see some real gains. I didn’t become a faster swimmer overnight, if at all, but I found myself able to do the distances without feeling like I was running on empty. Also, in stark contrast to how I had felt before, I actually started to enjoy myself.

By the time it came round to raceday, I was pretty confident I would be able to survive the swim, if nothing else.

As it turns out, the swim ended up being my strongest leg of the entire race. On the day, thanks to Terry, I was the first of my mates out of the water with a fairly respectable time of 16 minutes for the 750m.

So my beginners advice: if you are currently training for a swim of any distance, ditch the the repetitive lap swimming and focus on technique. Not only will you see real improvements in your ability, it will also become much less of an ordeal and altogether more enjoyable.

Ross

P.S. My lead coming out of the water was very short lived. My mates caught me within seconds of the start of the bike and the next time I saw them was at the finish line.

Highlight of the week: After a couple of weeks of inactivity I have finally got back into my routine. The fact that this is a highlight shows that I am fast slipping into middle age.

Lowlight of the week: Going for a long ride after a pretty heavy long weekend. By the time I got home my spirit was crushed and my ego battered.

Pretty apt …

Sure a couple of my mates would subscribe to this.

I wish ….

Eating on the go

‘Ironman is a bike race with a swim warm-up and a jog to the finish (wrapped around an eating contest)’
Joe Friel, triathlon coach, author and knower of things Ironman

Joe uses the above quote to demonstrate where your priorities should be when you are training for an Ironman.

The premise being that you spend over half the time on the bike, and you should therefore focus on the bike leg if you want to have an enjoyable / successful day. It just so happens that the warm up means swimming for an hour and a half, and the jog to the finish is a marathon.

But while the prospect of the distances involved is definitely daunting, it is the final part of the quote that I am struggling to get my head around – the eating contest. It is also the part of equation that can mean the difference between going the distance and making friends with the paramedics.

According to people who know lots more than I do (if it’s on the internet they must be experts, right?), Ironman competitors typically expend between 6,000 to 10,000 calories during the course of the event. To put that in context, the calorie requirement for your average day is between 1,500 to 2,500.

Burning calories at this rate is unsustainable, meaning that competitors have to aim to replace around 30 – 50% of the calories burned per hour, which equates to 200 calories at least.

This, if you do the maths (or math if you were born on the wrong side of the Atlantic), means eating more during the event than most of us would on a typical day. While doing exercise.

But what does that mean in terms of food per hour?

I am no calorie counter, and had literally no idea if 200 calories is a lot of food, because it certainly doesn’t sound like much. After some digging around, it turns out the Guardian have published a series of pictures of what 200 grams looks like in different types of food – http://bit.ly/W1bkgu.

So, if I want to finish an Ironman, it would mean consuming the equivalent of the following, every hour, while racing:

Obviously you don’t actually eat a plateful of celery every hour, but you get the point. It goes to show just why refuelling is considered one of the key disciplines of an Ironman.

Which brings me to my next problem; I can’t eat or drink on the move. At all.

Twelve doughnuts over twelve hours, sitting at my desk, would barely register as abnormal. But trying to do that while on the road is a completely different ball game.

My current refuelling technique goes something like this: run up to the drink station, come to a complete stop, try to take on what I need while avoiding those who have mastered the drive-by method, before finally getting going again.

This is evidently going to need some work over the next couple of months.

Ross

Highlight of the week: I finally got back on my bike on Thursday after a week of inactivity, and it reminded me just how much I love it. After kicking off with a 6am ride I was buzzing for the rest of the day.

Lowlight of the week: Travelling to Brisbane for work. Conference food and staying in a hotel totally messes with my routine.

Running – You’re Doing It Wrong

Until fairly recently, I, like most people, subscribed to the conventional wisdom that training for distance races is just a case of getting the miles in.

But since reading ‘The Art of Running Faster’, and running the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon for the second year on Sunday, I am starting to see things in a different light.

The book provided the theory, while the half marathon was the practical.

The author, Julian Goater, was big in the running game back in the eighties. He won all sorts of titles for cross country and track racing in middle distance races (5/10km or thereabouts).

When I googled his name, this came up. I am not sure if he is actually in this picture, but if he is, I hope he is the guy on the far right with the ‘fro.

If I was to sum up the entire book in one sentence, it would go something like this; if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

Or put another way, if you want to make progress in your running ability, you need to stop doing the same run you do every week and expecting to improve, and stop running longer distances at a slower pace convinced you’ll be able to turn it on come race day.

In the book Julian outlines how improving your running involves working on:

1 – Speed – Getting used to turning your legs over at a greater speed, much like a cyclist on the pro tour
2 – Suppleness – The looser you are, the further you move with every stride
3 – Strength – Working on the strength of your entire body, not just your legs, giving you the ability to power yourself through a race
4 – Stamina – Teaching your body to deal with the prolonged distances on the road
5 – Skill – Learning how to run efficiently. Much like swimming, proper running technique is something that can be taught
6 – Psychology – Making sure you are in a good place mentally will have a massive impact on your ability on the day

The reason why the long, slow slogs are not an effective way to train is that they only work on one of the six – stamina.

If you really want to kick on a gear, he stresses the importance of working on all six simultaneously, and has some great tips for how you can do exactly that, including hill repeats, intervals and my favourite of all the running jargon – fartleks.

When I was training for the half marathon, I certainly didn’t follow Julian’s advice by the book (excuse the pun). He suggests that runners train up to two times a day, and incorporate multiple sessions into each week. I was doing two sessions a week at most.

But I did take on some of the principles that he advocated, primarily variety. Last year I did plenty of mileage, but the majority of it was at a pretty slow pace, with a focus on getting in the kilometres so that I would be confident I could go the distance on race day.

This year, my main session was interval training with the BRATS on a Wednesday night, focusing on running distances of no more than 800m at a faster than race pace, with a longer run on the weekend if I had the time / inclination.

While the sessions themselves were definitely more challenging, I ended up doing a lot less work over all and still ended up beating my time from the year before by a pretty sizable margin.

So, thanks to Julian, I have learnt that if I want to run further and faster – ditch the one dimensional shuffle and mix it up a bit.

Ross

Highlight of the week: Doing the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon in 1:27:03, considerably faster than I was hoping for, and shaving 11 minutes off last year’s effort

Lowlight of the week: My training lowlight is the fact that since the half I have done basically nothing. But it’s not really a lowlight, because I have loved every second of it.

Loving it.

Can anybody do an Ironman?

Or more specifically, could you do an Ironman?

Most people don’t reckon they could, and primarily it’s because they don’t match up to the terminator that everybody thinks of when you mention the word Ironman.

And given that a 4km swim, 180km bike and a 42km run is viewed by most people as something extraordinary, it therefore seems reasonable to assume that the people who do it must be too.

Certainly the terminators do exist. Not in the going-back-in-time-to-kill-your-mother kind of way, but rather running, cycling and swimming at speeds most of us could only dream of.

But those are the guys and girls that typically win the race (or at least come close), so it seems absurd to rule out the possibility of ever completing an Ironman because you don’t measure up to an elite athlete.

Not your average Ironman

When we talk about just getting to the finishing line, I am going to stick my neck out (particularly given that I haven’t even done one yet) and say that almost anybody is physically able to do an Ironman; the bigger question is the mental side of it.

My experience would definitely support that point of view. The members of my local club, the BRATS (Bondi Running and Triathlon club), come in all sorts of different shapes, ages and sizes. Plenty of them have done the distance, and even more are currently training to take one on. There is no standard Ironman ‘look’.

The BRATS. They’re a friendly bunch.

And to make sure my personal experience isn’t the exception that proves the rule, I decided to dig around and see what data there was on the World Wide Web about what the ‘average’ Ironman competitor.

Turns out that information is more difficult to find than you might imagine, but what I was able to find out is that the biggest age group in most races is 40-44, the oldest participants are in their 80’s and there is a pretty even split between women and men (60/40).

Not quite as scary as we initially thought.

But what happens if you have been dealt a bad hand? What if you have no legs? What if you are massively overweight? What if you can’t see?

They all seem like pretty legit reasons for not doing an Ironman. But for most of them, you will be able to find someone who has given it a go.

The most famous example being Team Hoyt. They are a father and son team consisting of Dick, the father, and Rick, the son who has cerebral palsy. His condition would stop most people in their tracks, but thanks to his dad, who pulls / carries / pushes him as he goes; Rick has completed hundreds of endurance events.

At this point I would love to include their video, but I can’t as I am still on the budget friendly version of WordPress, so here is the link instead: http://bit.ly/4jv6L.

And there are plenty of other inspirational stories out there – Scott Rigsby, who lost both of his legs in a car accident, Patricia Walsh, who lost her sight as a child after an operation to remove a brain tumour and John Maclean, who became a paraplegic after getting knocked off his bike.

These guys certainly don’t have the best physical attributes for an Ironman, far from it. But through years of training and endeavour, they have been able to overcome their limitations to take part in an event that has become the benchmark for endurance.

So, in answer to my initial question: can anybody do an Ironman? I reckon most people are capable of doing an Ironman. The better question would be do you want to do an Ironman, and if so, how much?

Highlight of the week: did a 17km practise run of most of the route for next weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon. Based on how it went, I am in with a shout to do less than 90 mins on the day, provided everything goes to plan.

Lowlight of the week: Hearing how well Tom and Turfey did in Byron. They both smashed it, would have been an awesome race. Oh well.

Ross

P.s if anyone wants some insanely geeky stats about running / triathlon, check out www.runtri.com. It made me lose all sense of time for a bit.