Learning how to stay well
1737 days agoWell what?
Well what?
What is a bagel?
1740 days agoWill: What do you call that? Stephanie: A hearty meal!
Will: What do you call that?
Stephanie: A hearty meal!
The great vapor scraper paper taper caper
1741 days agoA child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. It is taper time again, far too soon after just a few days of solid training. ...
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
It is taper time again, far too soon after just a few days of solid training. Maybe this post will help remind me that I’m not invincible after races even though I feel like I am, and that I am invincible before races even though I feel like I’m not.
This morning, five days out from my longest race in over a year and less than fifty hours removed from life best swim, bike, and run performances, I’m nursing a psychosomatic head cold. Which is to say I feel like death, but only when I think about racing on Sunday. I will get past it. That said, it does suck and I hate it. You spend all this time dealing with and preparing for the physical challenges that race day will bring, and even some time preparing for the mental challenges that race day will bring. But who prepares for the mental challenges that taper brings? Should training even include that, or is that giving too much credence to something that’s “just in your head”? Fortunately I’ll probably never know.
I am still learning to embrace, or at least accept, the physical pain of training. Not the “oh god, my legs hurt, wish I could slow down” pain but the more or less constant ache, slightly lightheaded foggy feeling of never really being at your best. The full-body throbbing when you’re lying down, the fact that it takes upwards of an hour into a workout to start feeling good. These are all warning signs – “You are near the edge” – and I understand that they are to be cautiously embraced.
One day I will have taught myself not to worry about things I cannot control. I practice, maybe not more than everybody else, but as much and as carefully as I can. I know there is no such thing as 100% prepared, and that “as ready as I’ll ever be” is an unidentifiable state. But the mental difficulty, the uncertainty, is still a huge issue for me though. I worry about not performing up to my capability, not being aware of my limits, making a stupid pacing mistake, making a stupid eating mistake, and making a really stupid equipment mistake.
And I’ve gotten a lot better at dealing with these uncertainties in training. I’ve gotten through any number of tough workouts in the past few months simply by knowing I could do them. If I stopped to think about why, I’d have no reason. No data to back up my belief, nothing that you could say would indicate a breakthrough – and I know better than to stop and think about why. There is no why, there’s only this belief and confidence. I don’t know where it comes from or how to summon it, so on days when it isn’t there I’m shit out of luck.
Ah well. Taper is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?
Handy-dandy guide to exercise intensities.
1744 days ago“It was eleven more than necessary.” -Jacques Anquetil, after winning a race by twelve seconds. I was having a bit of a throb this afternoon between workouts when a sudden brainstorm...
“It was eleven more than necessary.”
-Jacques Anquetil, after winning a race by twelve seconds.
I was having a bit of a throb this afternoon between workouts when a sudden brainstorm hit. Often when talking with someone who’s relatively new to triathlon or running I’ve found myself attempting to explain the appropriate intensity of, for instance, a tempo run or a threshold run. So here is my handy dandy guide to intensity levels. If you follow this, you’ll get really fit without having to spend all of your time ruminating on percentages of your VO2 max. You still can if you want to, but it won’t be a necessary part of the program.
- Not Easy: This is your basic workout level. If you get out the door to go for a run, this is the pace you go. Since it’s a “work out” and not an “easy out”, the pace is more strenuous than what you would choose for, say, walking up a flight of stairs. Some people call this “zone 2″.
- Somewhat hard: Also known as “tempo”. Here’s how you do a tempo run: Go to a half-marathon intending to run as fast as possible. Drop out after seven miles. That was a tempo run. Don’t get pedantic with me on this, you can do a tempo run of just about any distance from two to fifteen miles. We’re working on an effort level, or a pace if you’re more experienced.
- Quite hard: Sometimes referred to as “threshold”, but less so lately since people started asking “Threshold of what?” If you want to think of it in terms of an actual threshold, it’s the point where if you worked any harder you would have to stop after a minute or so. A good way to find your pace for a threshold run is to take the average of miles 2 through 4, inclusive, of a 10k running race. A good way to find your effort is to think of mile 5.
The special secret I will now let you in on is this: these are all you need. You don’t even really need “somewhat hard” and “quite hard” to be separated, but it’s convenient to have two datapoints on the continuum for specificity. If you work out in such a way that you’re not being lazy but also not killing yourself, you won’t have to worry about whether you’re doing it right. The important thing is that you’re out there. Improvement happens automatically.
My gosh, I really was sick
1745 days agoA gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn’t. After a really lackluster couple days of training last weekend, I reached the inevitable conclusion that I was actually...
A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn’t.
After a really lackluster couple days of training last weekend, I reached the inevitable conclusion that I was actually sick and not just being lazy. I started a course of antibiotics late on Sunday morning and the effect was nearly instantaneous: two good workouts on Monday, yes, count them, two good workouts in a day for the first time in weeks. Because I’m just so tickled about it, here’s the rundown:
- Monday progression run.
- Tuesday 30′ zn3 bike
- Wednesday 60′ zn3 bike
- Thursday long run
- Friday 60′ zn3 run
Yep, FIVE days in a row of quality workouts, good power numbers, second workout of the day still feels good, etc etc etc.
FINALLY!
Yeah, that’s all I have to say about that. For now.
Will vs. Yogurt: Yogurt 3, Will 0
1750 days agoNorman, Will is not going to throw you off the pier! I went back to the grocery store the other night, because that’s where they sell groceries. Steph was out of...
Norman, Will is not going to throw you off the pier!
I went back to the grocery store the other night, because that’s where they sell groceries. Steph was out of town (she’s back now!) and I was out of bread, yogurt, sugar, condensed soup, ice cream, and other necessities. Grocery shopping doesn’t really worry me any more; I’m practically a grown person, and generally I manage to get through the grocery store without major error. Since I am a child of the internet generation, I also know how to work the self checkouts. However, since I am a smug bastard about it, I always get stuck behind the one moron who just doesn’t understand the phrase “please place the item in the bag.” As an aside, whoever you are, in case you are reading: it means “PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM YOU JUST SCANNED IN THE BAG, YOU NITWIT.”
But the complexity of yogurt remains beyond me. Other grocery items require a solution in two dimensions, usually brand and flavor (ie. “Cheese: Tillamook, Pepper Jack” or “Energy Bars: Powerbar, vanilla”). But yogurt requires a solution in four dimensions:
- Brand: Store brand, because all the other yogurts are too damn small. If you’re not getting more calories out of your food than you expend opening it, you’re really wasting your time eating.
- Flavor: Peach. Yum.
- Stratification: None. Fruit on the bottom yogurt is more like two different kinds of food, yogurt and jam. Yogurt and jam are both great, but blended yogurt is more delicious.
- Aspartame content: None! What is the deal with sweetening yogurt? You can get unsweetened yogurt, which is not that delicious; sugar-free yogurt, which is like fruit flavored yogurt only disgusting; normal yogurt (which is always called “low fat” even though it’s more or less impossible to buy higher fat yogurt in any US grocery store); and “Fat Free” yogurt. It is this last one, “Fat Free”, that continues to cause me much anguish. “Fat Free” yogurt, I guess in a lame attempt to try to taste more like a “diet” product, is partially sweetened with aspartame! What the hell?
And the packaging for the different types of yogurt is exactly the damn same. Which is how I managed to come home with fifteen containers of aspar-freaking-tame-sweetened peach yogurt instead of fifteen containers of delicious, wholesome, healthy peach yogurt.
To illustrate my frustration, I visited their website to get a picture of the offending yogurt, to illustrate how poorly differentiated its features are. Shamefully, although the show photos of fifty-nine different varieties of yogurt, not one of them is of their house brand.
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Damn.
Rubber band ball on my desk.
1752 days agoQuestion: Is it even possible to have a sinus infection if you don’t have gobs of green snot? What the hell? Still sick, and more of a party pooper than ever....
Question: Is it even possible to have a sinus infection if you don’t have gobs of green snot? What the hell?
Still sick, and more of a party pooper than ever. I rode 3 hours this morning pretty mellow with Andy and Bill, then worked from home before going for my ninth consecutive crappy run. Today’s crappy run was better than yesterday’s crappy run, though. Because it was a lot shorter. Ah, bad workouts. I tried taking a couple of days off, but it didn’t seem to make me healthy any faster. So now I am loaded up on every vitamin, decongestant, and painkiller I could find in the house, including Tylenol PM.
So this will be a short update, before I pitch face-forward into my pudding.
Steph is still gone, visiting her grandparents as I mentioned. Right about one whole day now. The evidence is pointing toward “don’t leave Will home alone” so far. Left to my own devices I am evidently a danger to myself and others. Well that may be too strong an assessment; a danger to the furniture and the drywall, at any rate. The kitchen walls look great orange. It really attracts your attention. And it’s easy to clean!
My main project today was grocery shopping. I had a grocery list when I left for the store. But I also had kind of a hankering for pudding. Now I have 3 loaves of bread and twelve kilos of pudding. Those were a bitch to carry in from the car, but it was worth it, because … pudding!
Ugh. Bed time.
Aha!
1753 days agoFighting fire with fire is stupid. Smart people fight fire with water. Steph has gone to California for the weekend to visit her grandparents. I’m jealous, of course, but I could...
Fighting fire with fire is stupid. Smart people fight fire with water.
Steph has gone to California for the weekend to visit her grandparents. I’m jealous, of course, but I could have gone too if I wasn’t so wrapped up in training right now. But I’m a big dork, and I’m feeling pretty sick, so I guess it’s just as well that I’m not with them getting everyone sick and beingthe big whiny party pooper that I always am when I don’t feel well. Ah well. They will have a grand time visiting together, and maybe both of us can visit together later this year.
So I’m on my own for a couple of days. I’ve already eaten four pizzas and undertaken the following home-improvement projects:
- Replaced all lightbulbs in apartment, because you never know which ones are close to burning out. I dragged the dining room table all around the house and stood on it, naked so that there would be less weight on the table, to change each bulb. High ceilings.
- Cleaned out both remaining pint containers of ice cream. It was no problem, really. I’m glad to do it.
- Chipped remaining feathers off of bathroom mirror. How the hell did those get there in the first place, anyway?
- Break for a venti quad-half-caff, soy foam, extra hot, two pump double cup high-maintenance feng shui caramel-cinnamon mocha dolce fatte latte. Yum.
- Drilled a great big hole in the wall. Because, I have this drill. The hole is 30.5 centimeters across (I also have a ruler, with a built-in level. Awesome.) My first project for tomorrow is to find a 30.5 centimeter diameter fishbowl to put in it.
My apartment is going to look AWESOME when Stephanie gets back. She won’t even recognize it!
Hmm, how bout that.
1754 days agoI have been battling a weird problem with my sinuses for the past several days, making me feel less than super. After a string of pretty ordinary workouts last week (which...
I have been battling a weird problem with my sinuses for the past several days, making me feel less than super. After a string of pretty ordinary workouts last week (which I bitched about below), I had to take a couple days off to convalesce. No big deal in the grand scheme of things, I hope. I’m still planning to go to Florida next month to race in the new Tri 101 series race there. Hopefully they won’t cancel it, or anything weird. I guess if they do, I’ll find another race to do, or go surfing or something, because it would suck to fly all the way to Florida just to hang out in a swamp.
I managed to get back on my bike yesterday, for a pretty bread-and-butter trainer workout. Paulo has had me in training zones that correspond to an FTP of 320 watts for about a year now, and I finally think that number is beginning to be accurate. This is a sure sign that my zones are going up again soon, but I am enjoying it while I can. This was the workout:
30 minutes @ 235 watts
25 minutes @ 280 watts
5 minutes @ 305 watts
5 minutes @ 150 watts
5 x (1 minute @ 400 watts, 1 minute @ 100 watts) <- Holy Crap! 400 Watts!
5 minutes @ 150 watts
10 minutes @ 275 watts
Warm Down.
I was more than a little surprised by the 400 watt intervals. That’s right around 6 watts/kg for me, which is a fair bit higher than I’ve been able to sustain before, even for a minute. I had a nice swim in the evening, then filed my taxes, which was not the best way to end the day, but at least I’m done with ‘em.
The sweet sensation of feeling like ass.
1759 days agoAND I burned my toast … black, like my soul. Although I lost four days at the end of last week to persistant back problems, I’m back on the horse and...
AND I burned my toast … black, like my soul.
Although I lost four days at the end of last week to persistant back problems, I’m back on the horse and training pretty hard this week. Not that hard, but quite hard. Somewhat hard. So physically I feel like crap again, tired legs all the time and I am back to carrying around my normal sour disposition. And the weather has gone back to sucking, so life is pretty much back to normal here in Colorado Springs.
Of course, it sounds like I am not-so-subtly complaining. But I’m not: if I were really complaining, I’d kvetch about the yahoo who backed into me in a parking lot last Friday, leaving me a bit shell shocked and with a lap full of window. But that turns out not to have been too bad. His insurance company has set me up in a nice rental car (really! a Hyundai Sonata, which I really like, except for the fact that it is baby blue) while the good folks at the body shop put a new door (and window, hopefully) on my car. This is silver lining city for me, as I should have the car back in a week or two, and in the meantime the rental car is comfortable and warm. And thank god for that, because the thing that’s the real pain is the cold, rainy, crappy weather!
Or I would bitch about having lost four full days of training just when I was starting to feel normal again after a couple of very hard races. But that even had the tremendous upside of letting Steph and I go visit her parents in Boulder over Easter, and giving me a great excuse not to go for a three hour bike ride in the SLEET we had that weekend!
Really, life is pretty much grand for me right now. I’ve learned to accept the constant physical fatigue as a necessary precursor of better fitness. There are still some times when it’s hard not to let that fatigue creep into my head, but for the most part I can be happy and energetic without necessarily having the energy to, say, walk briskly up a flight of stairs. The crap weather has got to go though. Ugh!
