Iron Training Week 2: Reflection

Wow, am I tired! I have to start going to bed much earlier. Seriously, training for an Ironman is no joke. It has me  waking up every morning by 4:45 a.m. or shortly thereafter to get to the gym and get in my workouts. I admit, I do like getting the workouts done, but I also like my sleep. I have been teaching a winter sessions class every day over the break. It meets four hours every day for two weeks, with an hour break for lunch. That is a huge chunk out of my  day and leaves me pretty fatigued by mid-afternoon when it is all said and done. Then, I take a break—if you can call it that—for an hour to recharge my batteries, catch up on emails, and grade papers. After that, I write music for three hours. Every day. I get home after 7:00 p.m., help get the kiddies in bed and then have an hour and a half to unwind before I have to get ready for bed. Crazy.

In an attempt to fit more things in my day, I have come up with three possible solutions: 1) Quit training for Ironman altogether  2) Slow down the Earth's rotation by by placing planetary sized magnets at either end of the poles   3) Deal with the fact that my new part-time job—Ironman—is going to demand a lot of time, and that I am somehow going to have to manage it while not forgetting my first responsibility—my family. Oh, and no one—least of which my wife—wants to hear any whining about training!

So far, so good, but I need to get some serious Zzzzz's at some point, because it will start to adversely affect my training if I don't. On average, I am getting about five and a half to six hours of sleep, and that is just not going to get it done. I do not know how much sleep human beings are "suppose" to get, but I do know that it makes swimming at 6:00 a.m. a bit more difficult on six hours, coupled with the fact that the pool feels like it is about 150 degrees in the morning. Maybe I could start napping during my lunch hour? If I did that, I am afraid I would never get up. You say Einstein, one of the greatest minds of the twentieth, century only operated on four hours of sleep?  Smart dude, to be sure, but as far as being an endurance athlete, I am confident I have him beat.

1.21 Gigawatts and a t-shirt

Every once in a while, I like to entertain the thought of outfitting my bike, or the family minivan with either a flux capacitor, or the famed Battlestar Galactica FTL drive. I do have several debates in my mind, and with my dorky science fiction friends over which would be more useful. I mean, take the FTL—faster than light—drive. This handy item will allow any space traveling vehicle to effectively  travel from one end of the universe to the other in the blink of an eye without hitting an asteroid belt, planet, or Sputnik. Not sure what this puppy is? Think Han Solo and 'Chewy' pushing the hyperdrive levers together to outrun their Millennium Falcon from Vader's Star Dreadnought Executor—very convenient. The downside is setting a course is tedious and time consuming, albeit necessary. One miscalculation and you're space dust. Also, FTL's are relatively large, and thus, are usually equipped on larger ships: the Battlestar Galactica, Millenium Falcon, and yes, the NCC-1701. I would have the fastest bike split in Kona if I could equip my bike with one of these, but unfortunately, the FTL has not streamlined down over the years like the newest generation of iPod's from their prehistoric predecessors, ill-equipped for today's wifi world and handicapped with those outdated flywheels. Those early models are surely ready for the Smithsonian. The FTL drive continues to make advances to be sure, but economy of size is not one of them. Outfitting my ride with one might warrant some pretty beefy tires, which would of course, make me less aero. Plus, I am not sure that even my carbon fiber bike frame could withstand the heat generated from traveling at such great speeds.

On to the flux capacitor—now that is a real work of beauty. Fairly compact, simple—and with a little knowhow—can be outfitted to almost any vehicle, space-bound or not. You don't really need the DeLorean, that was just optional. Traveling back and forth through time could be pretty useful. I would have invested heavily in Apple Computer Company, McDonalds and Coca Cola thirty years ago. 


Through the years, it seems like I must have spoken about my fascination with the flux capacitor so much that it recently prompted my good friend C.R. to send me a flux capacitor  t-shirt in the mail. When C.R. lived near us, he would call me and ask what our family's plans were for the weekend. I would often respond with something along this lines like "I just need to reconfigure the molecular proton generator on the flux capacitor this weekend." He would then say "You idiot, the flux capacitor does not pair with a molecular proton generator, you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. No wonder no one likes you"

I am just thankful to have a friend like C.R. who—although lives further away then our family would like—is still one of the nerdiest and greatest guys I know. Your family is always welcome at our table for dinner. P.S. Thanks for the great t-shirt!

Crankskins.com: Dear Gearheads, Runners, Bikers, Swimmers and Wannabe's

My race sponsor at team crankskins.com are letting me share the team discount with my blog followers for the GARMIN Forerunner 310XT with heart rate monitor and optional cadence. If  any of you have been in the market to get the current "holy grail" of running/cycling gear for yourself or your favorite gear-head that must own every toy on Earth, now is the time. This is a great deal. Stop by my team member site to order four or five of these for your favorite loved ones. They make great stocking stuffers!

Surely you know someone in the market for a new crank. This shiny, pretty new Dura-Ace crank is on sale for $405. Stop by my crankskins.com team member site and check out all the specs. 

Timex Ironman Race Trainer Kit Review

A couple of weeks ago I submitted an email on the Timex website asking if they would send me their Ironman Race Trainer Kit to review on my blog. With all the watch manufacturers on Earth, what made me want to review Timex first?  As a child, growing up in the 70's, I remember the infamous Timex slogan "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking," and I always wanted a Timex watch to put through an airplane propeller, trample with a bulldozer, or submerge in a vat of  molten lava to test that theory. The first watch I ever bought when I started running was a Timex. Ten years later, it also turned out to be the last watch I would ever need. Two years ago, I handed that one down to  my oldest son and bought a new 30 Lap Ironman race watch.

About a week after I submitted my request, I received a personal email from the director of Catalyst—a public relations firm that works with Timex. He told me that Timex would be happy to supply the watch  to review—per FTC regulations. Ah, building brand loyalty starts with great customer relations. Even if they had responded with "Hi Mark, thanks for your interest, but due to the enormous amounts of requests we get similar to this, we are unable to provide you with our product," I would have been disappointed but impressed that a human being actually took the time to respond. Here is what was in the box:


Okay, let's get down to it, shall we. Here are the pros and cons of the Ironman Race Trainer Kit:

Pros: 

Cost: At $220 USD, the Ironman Race Trainer Kit it competitive with all the other leading heart rate monitor watches.


Ease of Use: For me, I could end the review right here. I like things simple. No one with a busy life—i.e. everyone—has the time or energy to sit with an instruction manual for an afternoon figuring out how to operate a television, computer, or watch—let alone someone with five children. The watch came with a pretty beefy instruction manual. If you are like me, and like to read instruction manuals as much as dinner-time calls from telemarketers, you're in luck. With as little as a second grade education, you can operate this watch with ease. How do I know? I asked my second grader, Luca, if he could figure out how the heart rate monitor system worked without the instructions. I then asked him to repeat it twice more. I am embarrassed to admit that he figured it out quicker than I did. The steps getting the actual heart rate monitor to sync to my watch was simple. That took about five minutes, but I actually had to read the instruction manual for that one. You can upload all your information to your computer wirelessly via the usb antennae , or what Timex fancifully dubs the "Timex Data Xchanger," pictured in the foreground. The process took seconds, not minutes, to upload my workout details. You can then store all of your data, say for an entire Ironman training season, to document your progress. Your information is stored on the Timex Training Peaks sight. Not only will it document all of your data (i.e. heart rate, calorie expenditure, favorite color,) but it allows you to see elevation profiles of routes that you've created. I imagine that you can sync miles and eleveation changes with their GPS watches. Hmmm, might have to check that out.

Reliability: The watch seems durable enough. You know, the usual water resistant up to 100 M, and according to the company slogan, it can "take a licking." I personally do not feel that you can call it a race watch until you get a couple of battle scars in it. Judging by my previous two Timex watches, I can vouch that the battery life is pretty good. I've only changed the battery on my first watch once in the ten years that I've owned it. The heart rate monitor was very accurate, supplying new data to the watch every two seconds.

Comfort: Honestly, I do not know the exact weight of this watch, but I can tell you that you will forget you are wearing it. One very simple feature that the watch employs is a breathable rubber strap. It seems like a little thing, but the last thing you want is your wrist to start itching midway through a race because the sweat is causing an reaction with your strap. I've been there, not fun. The heart rate monitor is comfortable to me. I am very particular—some might say 'compulsive'—when it comes to comfort. I am the kind of person that will adjust his shorts to the left or right, or pull his shirt back an inch from where it is sitting on his shoulder in order to be completely comfortable running or biking. The heart rate monitor is  comfortable and lightweight. The sensors are curved to match the physiognomy of the body and it sit just below your sternum. You know you are wearing it because it needs to be snug against your body, but the strap did not chafe at all, although I did not run more than 7 miles with it on.


Features: The watch does everything you might suspect: chronometer to track splits, three alarms, timer, interval and recovery functions, and review your HR workouts. One pleasantly convenient feature of the Timex Ironman Training watch, is that, well... it's a watch! Believe it or not, there are companies that make heart rate monitor and GPS "watches" that do not actually tell time. Anyone who has run a half or full iron distance event knows that it is nearly impossible to figure math in your head when you have been racing an entire morning and well into an afternoon. Unless they start building sun dials through my town, I am happy with the clock feature on my watch.

Style: Here is a picture of my previous watch on the left and my new Timex on the right. The bigger face makes it easier to read while racing. It will display the time, date and HR simultaneously as well. It is a pretty sleek design. I tell all my friends that I will be much more 'aero' this season because of the lower profile on my watch.








Cons: Presently, this watch can not do my taxes or operate as an ice cream maker, and as such, I am not sure should cost $220. I think if you take full advantage of the Training Peaks software, it might be worth it. The problem is that most serious, dedicated athletes are already tracking their miles, routes, and HR data somewhere else already, and unless they can easily export all of their data, it might not be worth it to start tracking that data elsewhere. 

Overall, I like the watch and the HR system a lot. Adam and I were keenly aware of our running and biking tempos this week because of the HR monitoring. It allowed us to push it, but still feel like we could have gone a little extra if we needed to at the end of our runs. Last season, we pushed every single run and had no idea, nor did we care if our HR was near or above threshold. 

IRON TRAINING: Some Perspective Three Days In

I wanted to title this post something dramatic, like... "It Has Begun," or "250 Days to 140.6," but I decided that would make the author sound a bit like a megalomanic. Admittedly, I did scour the internet  trying to find a James Earl Jones voice emulator and have it read back my post. That would have been cool. A close second would have been  to hire that guy who use to do all the old NFL films with that epic music playing in the background that sounded like it was right out some Greek or Roman epic with swords abound. It would be even cooler if I had Adam take video clips of me in the first few days of training and I could play them back in slow motion, watching the sweat drip off my brow as it were being read. I guess that is kind of how I am feeling as I start out my training this week—like an indestructible, pain-free, injury-free athlete. You know.. like some sort of gladiator.

Adam and I are officially on day three of training for the Rev3 iron distance triathlon at Cedar Point on 12 September, 2010—my birthday. Already, this plan has been much more intense than the half-iron training last summer—duh!  Day two already had us doing a 50 minute bike workout followed by a half hour run. I know, pretty low volume compared to what we are going to be doing, but way more than we did by the third week of training for our half. My legs felt pretty decent during that  initial workout, and I got to try out my new Timex Race Trainer watch and heart rate monitor. I am digging the watch big time, but I will share my thoughts on that in a separate post.

Our swim workouts Monday and today were pretty fun, if you consider a lot of one arm crawl fun. I had not swam with one arm since the months following my shoulder dislocation last March, even then it was mostly breast stroke. Pulling with just my left arm on the first full day of training was brutal. When I was not stopping half way through the pool because I was drowning, and my heart rate had exceeded my threshold limit, I would hit the hall sucking in air as quickly as possible.  Luckily, Adam and I have been swimming with Vanessa's father, Doug, a one-time—and not too shabby now—competitive swimmer. In case you need any reminding, Vanessa is my running buddy who trained a group of us triathletes for our half-iron run. Doug has shown up to our workouts and has given us some pretty knowledgeable feedback on how to make those pulls more efficient. Today was much easier. I was much more relaxed in the pool and let those left armed pulls happen. Although, apparently I did acquire the nickname "Lucky Fin" from the guards on duty this morning as I was later told. Apparently the similarities are striking.

The hardest part of training thus far has been remembering to go to bed early enough to wake up at 4:45 and get my butt to the gym by 6:00 a.m. to start training. It is difficult at first, but necessary, and after just a couple of weeks it becomes a pretty welcome routine. It is necessary because if I would like to stay married, I really need to get all my training done before 8:00 a.m. The wifey is great though, I have to admit. As the summer creeps up, she allows/tolerates the occasional mid-morning/afternoon bike ride.

Much more soon. Happy Training!

Born to Run, Part II

Whether you agree with Christopher McDougall's assertion that the modern running shoe is solely (pun intended) born out of corporate greed, increase running related injuries, and will lead inevitably to the downfall of western civilization—I personally believe it will be the world's steadily growing addiction to social networking sites—you should consider the main premise of the book to be worthwhile, i.e. human beings are  physiologically 'hardwired' to run. Not only are humans decent runners, but no other mammal on the planet is equipped with the long-term endurance capacity that we have inherited from our primordial ancestors. Okay, the running shoes will long be debated. I know runners who love their shoes, have run tens of thousands of miles in them, and have gone their entire lives without ever sustaining an injury. Of course, for me, it is very convincing that some of the greatest track coaches in the United States make their athletes practice barefooted at least part of the time. What I am convinced with—wholeheartedly—is that we are all born to run. 


The proof came to me fairly early in life. While I was a 25-year old graduate student at Ithaca College, I would ride my canary yellow Giant ATX 760 up South Hill to the music department. It was a good 2 mile climb. It wasn't Boulder, Colorado, but it was still a nice little ride that accelerated my heart rate and woke me up on many frosty fall and winter mornings. I had a lot of energy to burn. Most of my time was spent in front of a piano either writing or learning music. One time, I walked outside the music department on a unusually warm October afternoon and just had this overwhelming urge to run. I had just finished practicing and was on my way across the quad to grab some lunch when I broke into a little trot. Perhaps I am just an impatient human being, but I just want to get places quickly. When I started teaching at the university, I would run everywhere I need to go. 
I could be sporting khakis and dress shoes with back pack in tow, and I would still run just about everywhere. It always made me feel great to just go! Even now, if I go to the grocery store, I will park a little further away so that I can run. Crazy, right?  These days, I almost invariably wear my New Balance running shoes everywhere I go. I think it is pretty normal to want to run. Wouldn't it be cool if everyone just started running more often—to work,  the grocery store, school, away from five children. Kidding. What is interesting, and telling, is that my kids all run around during the summer like Kenyan runners on Red Bull. Why is that? I think humans do not learn how to run, they learn how to slow down and walk. We tell our children to slow down. Well, I seldom do, unless they are running around the house threatening to break any of the luxury items that we might own, you know piano, okay... piano. 


Timex Triathlon Race Trainer Kit: I will be writing an extensive review of the Time Triathlon Race Trainer Kit. I want to thank the nice people at Timex and Tristan Panasik who sent me the kit—per FTC regulations—to review on my blog. Adam and I are still doing some tests that we will finish up this morning with our 1:30 brick workout (50 minute bike, 30 minute run.) Did I mention we are in day two of Ironman training? Wahoo! 


Get out there!

Born to Run, Part I

Few books have left a profound and lasting influence on my life. If I were to list those that have, and place them on a shelf in my library effectively dubbed "Life Changers," it would seem that the curator would be suffering from a severe case of attention deficit—if you believe in ADD (but that is a topic for another post)—and/or multi-personality disorder. Among the few that I would list as having left an indelible impact are The Little Engine That Could, Moby Dick, Morton Feldman Says, The Giving Tree and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I can now certainly add Christopher McDougall's book, Born to Run to that short list.


When I was doing my course work for my PhD, a composition professor of mine once asked "can you think about all the musical compositions that you like, from different historical eras, that represent disparate musical vocabularies [a la Josquin des Prez to Radiohead] that you think work—for whatever reason—and find similarities between these?" I think the question he was was really asking is 'Why do you like what you like?' There are chord progressions in Handel that remind me of Jamaroqui. The descending chromatic figure (passacaglia) in "Dido's Lament" from Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas and the one in  Radiohead's Exit Music (For A Film), are both filled with a barren, austere, gut-wrenching sense of loss I find honest and sincere. Coincidentally, the latter was heavily inspired by Frédéric Chopin's Prelude No. 4 in E Minor. Still, that does not really explain what I like about the music. It only explains that I like two different pieces that share a common musical parameter, the passacaglia: a bass line that continually pervades the entire fabric of the composition; think Freddy Mercury and David Bowie's Under Pressure (or the later bastardized Vanilla Ice rip off Ice Ice Baby.) 


Now, If I think what I like about all my favorite aforementioned texts, it is that there are some deep philosophical, and moral questions at work. Every one of the texts, from The Little Engine That Could to Born to Run are more than stories. Much more. They examine life, question objectivity, and make us vulnerable in ways that leave us to confront  our own transgressions. 


Look, I am not one for hero-worship, or discussing something using glowing , or panegyric rhetoric in order to convince anyone to read a book. Well, that is not entirely true. When I feel passionate about something, I usually pester the hell out of everyone I know before they read, eat, drink, participate in something that I think is wonderful, and I want them to experience for themselves. Pushy? A tad, perhaps. I blame it on my Italian upbringing.  I am a first generation Italian-American and grew up in a family where my  mother was always feeding every friend who came over to the house, despite the fact many times we were returning to my house at dinner time  just after having eaten a bucket of chicken wings, and a large pizza.


McDougall's writing, walks the incredibly magical line of being both incredibly entertaining and unbelievably informative—not surprising considering he served as a war correspondent for the Associated Press.  He writes in an unassuming, humble way, using  both common-man colloquialisms and an Ivy League caliber vocabulary to a share a story one of the most unique underground cultures that I have ever read about—the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. But the book does not start and end there. Along the way, McDougall takes you on a journey that investigates the genesis of  "running shoes" in America by Bill Bowerman, Pat Knight and the Nike machine and the ultrarunning phenomenon. 


Ironically, about a year ago, I got into a pretty heated debate with my nephew Nicholas—a 26 year old climber who like me, documents his psychosis for all to scrutinize—about the relatively "fringe" trend of barefoot running that has been cropping up since around 2002. He argued that running with running shoes with arch support, 'shocks,' pronation support, and all the other bells and whistles are actually causing injury from weakening the foot and causing human beings to run heel to toe, instead of the way that nature intended—from the fleshy part of the ball of our feet. His evidence? Watch your kids run outside without shoes during the summer. Do they run on their heels or on the balls of their feet?  McDougall brings some other inconvenient truths to light as well. One that we all know. I don't recall where I read it now, but "In order for an object to retain currency, [it]—the commodity in question—must remain current." Ah, yes, corporate greed again. And yet, we the masses go out in droves to purchase bottled water, and expensive running shoes. Odd. My take in part deux.




Coming Up: Born to Run, Part II


Review: Timex Ironman Race Trainer Kit with Heart Monitor


Happy Training Friends!