December Mini-Training Camp update

My 2009 Mini-Training Camp is in the books, and boy was it a good one! This month was a banner training month for me. Once I wrapped up my exams and my work died down a bit I was really able to hit up VQ hard. It was like a winter break from school and work, except I didn't go anywhere, ha. It helped to clear out my brain of all the stressful stuff I've been dealing with and it was a nice change of pace.

Still, as my training camp wraps up, I know I won’t be able to train as much next month when school and work kick up again. I’m still looking for that consistency in my training. It’s just hard to get my training in when there are more urgent issues (like work and school) breathing down my neck.

Anyways, overall I’m pretty pleased with all the training I've done this month. I’m off to Tampa soon for the Outback Bowl on New Year’s Day (Go NU!) so I’ll be taking a couple days off of training. Happy New Years!

Tri Toys Wish List

Being the big tech geek that I am, I like to have technology in every aspect of my life, including my active life. I'm a big fan of fitness gadgets and own several high tech devices that help me train better and race faster. As with any other type of electronic gadgets, every year there are new models introduced into the market that are more advanced and sophisticated than the previous models. In the spirit of Christmas I thought I would put together a wish list of some cool new tri toys that I'm hoping someone will put under my Christmas tree this year.


Swim
I like to listen to my iPod while I train on the bike or on the run; music motivates me and helps me push my workout just a little bit harder. Unfortunately I can't take my iPod into the pool with me. But, with Finis's SwiMP3 player my boring pool workout days are done! The SwiMP3 is an MP3 player that works underwater! This fall Finis just released the SwiMP3.1G, their latest player with an increased memory capacity of 1GB. I can load it up with my favorite tunes and swim for hours! (Note: I can't actually swim for hours.)


Bike
Right now for my bike I have a Saris PowerTap SL. This little device sits on the rear wheel hub of my bike and measures the power output as I pedal. It lets me know exactly how much energy I'm exerting as I ride. This information is relayed up to a display unit on my handle bars so I can see it as I'm riding. During training I establish a baseline number that I then use to measure how hard I want to push myself during a race. It really lets me dial in my effort accurately and lets me know exactly where I'm at performance wise. Well, just this year they announced new advancements in power meter technology with the introduction of the Metrigear Vector Power Meter. This new meter not only measures your power, but it also measures the force vectors in every direction of your pedal stroke. This allows you to analyze your pedaling technique and find weak angles where you can improve your stroke. I personally have a weak upward pull in my stroke that I need to work on so this device would be perfect for me! Plus it's lighter and smaller than a PowerTap so it won't weight my bike down as much during a ride.


Run
For the run I definitely want Garmin's Forerunner 310XT. This GPS enabled watch collects distance, pace, heart rate and more. It's waterproof and can be worn throughout your entire race (unlike previous Forerunner models that could not be taken into the water). It's a bit on the big side for a sports watch, but it collects so much data that I think it will be worth it. Right now I have a Garmin Forerunner 50 but it doesn't have GPS and uses an accelerometer to determine distance. It's fairly accurate and is a good watch for casual runners but I have definitely outgrown it. It's GPS or nothing for me now!

I'll probably end up buying something like the SwiMP3 player this winter to get me through the boring pool workouts, and this spring I'll probably buy the Forerunner 310XT when it warms up enough to run outside consistently. The Metrigear power meter will probably have to wait a while... it's pretty expensive and I don't think I can justify the expense just yet. PowerTaps are pretty expensive too but I bought mine used from a friend so it wasn't that bad. I would probably buy a new bike first before I bought a new power meter, but that's a whole 'nother post!

Ironman on NBC

Just watched the Ironman Championship special on NBC. Always inspiring to watch the images and hear the inspiring stories behind the people who participate in the event. This year I actually followed the race live (online) during the actual race, so I already knew who won and how the race unfolded, but it was still amazing to watch the helicopter coverage on the front runners as they ran down the . What a great race by Chris Lieto and Craig Alexander. Chris, next year man, you’re so close!

A lot of people say the TV special inspired them to sign up for an Ironman themselves. I can’t say that I didn't get a rousing feeling within me that made me want to go out and swim/bike/run, but I don’t plan on signing up for an Ironman anytime soon. To be quite honest, I think some newer triathletes rush into the Ironman distance a bit too soon. Some people do it just to say they did it and check it off their list. I don’t know, I don’t want to do it just to do it, I want to do it because I know I’m ready for it and my triathlon progression has led to it. To me the sport of triathlon is a lifestyle that I plan on living for a long time, and I can definitely see myself taking on the challenge of an Ironman down the road. But right now I'm just not ready.

Also, I feel that there are so many holes in my short game right now that they would only get worse the longer I went! So to that end I’m trying to improve my speed and skills on the short course and then I plan on extending out the distance later on when I've accomplished my short course goals. Once I feel ready to move on to longer distances then I will sign up for my first of hopefully many Ironman races.

Oh yeah, also, there’s no way I would be able to find enough time right now with school. So that rules out an Ironman for at least the next couple of years.

Checking in at Vision Quest

My 3-week school break/mini training camp is going really well. I've been to VQ pretty much every day this past week and plan on keeping this up for the rest of the month.

A semi-nerdy thing I started doing recently is checking into Foursquare every time I'm at VQ. I actually put the Chicago facility location into the Foursquare system a couple weeks ago. Within a matter of visits I quickly became mayor of VQ. And now I've been there so many times that I picked up my 'Gym Rat' badge. You get a Gym Rat
badge for checking in 10 times to venues tagged 'gym' in 30 days (I just added the 'gym' tag to the VQ location on Foursquare last week).

Anyways, here's my 'Gym Rat' badge (or as I'm calling it, my 2009 Mini-Training Camp badge):

New member orientation

VQ had a new member orientation session the other day for recent new members. It was a pretty basic introduction to the spirit and approach that Vision Quest takes with its training. Nothing too earth shattering was revealed during the presentation but it was cool meeting other new members who are just as eager and excited as I am about training. I met a couple cool guys that train at the Chicago facility so it should be fun to train alongside them this winter.

Rest of December

School is almost done for the year, my work project is done (for now, the second phase of the project starts next month), so pretty soon I can kick off my December mini training camp! I will have a semi-break after this Wednesday until the end of the month, and I plan on taking full advantage of all my free time by putting in serious efforts at VQ. That means lots of indoor bike trainer sessions, strength and conditioning training, and some steady running to get my form back on track. I'm excited to get started!

First week of December

This first week of December is going to be a bit rough with school and work. I have finals at school and a work project due next week, but once I get past those thing I'll have around 3 weeks to relax and recharge before the cycle starts all over again in January. Hopefully I'll be able to pack in a lot of training in those 3 weeks, kinda like a mini training camp of sorts.

Training update

I'm not off to the best start this month with my training and VQ. It's been pretty hectic lately with school and work, and the Thanksgiving holiday hasn't helped either. I've been trying to squeeze in as much time into VQ as I can but I'm not on a consistent schedule like I would like to be. At VQ I've been doing mostly the bike trainer sessions and I try to add in strength training sessions when I can. I'd like to do more of the yoga sessions too since I need work on my flexibility. I should have more time this upcoming month when I get some time off from school and work.

Felt S32

Here's a pic of my trusty bike, the Felt S32:



I bought it used last year from a fellow Chicago Tri Club member. Prior to this bike I rode a GT Attack road bike with aero clip-ons. I love my Felt, it rides so smoothly and fits me really well.

Here's a review of the Felt S32: http://www.bikesportmichigan.com/reviews/feltS32.shtml

The swim: my third best leg

I like to say the swim is my third best leg. It’s not my worst leg; it’s just the one that I’m the least good at. It’s probably because I picked it up so late in life. I look around at other people swimming and I’m jealous at how easy and effortless they make it look. For me swimming is such a painstaking labor… I don’t dislike it but I just don’t really love it.

Growing up poor in Chicago we didn’t really have access to swimming pools so I didn’t get to spend too much time in the water. I actually had a couple near drowning experiences throughout my childhood that made me pretty fearful of water. As I got older I spent more time in the pool but I mostly hung out in the shallow end and tried not to venture too far out.

When I signed up for the Chicago Blue Dolphins I had to start out with the most basic lessons. It took me that whole summer to feel comfortable with swimming a mile in open water and I won’t even lie and pretend like I didn’t have to hold on to many lifeguard’s boats at the Chicago Triathlon that year. After my initial round of private lessons with the Blue Dolphins I kept swimming with them during their group sessions but I just recently canceled my membership this year. With the whole school thing I knew I wouldn’t have time to make the sessions and I would have to start swimming on my own. So far it’s not going so great… I haven’t been in the pool since my last race of the season, the Great Illini Half Ironman, which was in early September (9/5/2009). Yikes! I gotta get back into it soon… but again, it’s such a painstaking labor for me that it’s hard to really get motivated on my own to go for a swim.

Maybe I dislike the swim because I’m not very good at it. So if I were a good swimmer I would really like it. This just seems like such a vicious circle… I dislike the swim because I’m not good at it, which makes me not want to go and do swim training, which keeps me from getting good at it, which keeps me from liking it, because I’m not good at it, which makes me not want to do it…

Athletic background

A little bit of athletic background on me. Well, let’s see… I wasn’t very good at any sports in grade school, high school or college. I don’t think we actually had any real sports programs at my grade school (go Chicago Public Schools!). Come to think of it… I can’t even remember the name of our school’s mascot or if we even had one. Sad, really. In high school I tried out for soccer but quickly realized I have wonky ankles and poor foot/eye coordination. I played a little bit of ultimate Frisbee after school but that was the extent of my extracurricular activities. The one shining light on my otherwise dismal athletic report card was the summer job I picked up my junior/senior years. I don’t remember how it all started, but somehow I ended up picking up a job as a bike messenger in Chicago. Easily the coolest job I had ever had at the time and it actually paid pretty well if you were fast and could haul ass on the streets of Chicago. Armed with a used road bike I hit the streets and starting earning some nice spare cash flying in between cars and pedestrians all throughout downtown Chicago. I messengered during my summer breaks and winter breaks (winters were pretty hard). Unfortunately after a couple run-ins with cabbies (literally) I decided to hang up my messenger bag. In college I kept riding my bike casually and tried to run every now and then but nothing too serious. Oh, I started boxing too, and that was a lot of fun until I got too serious into my training and got my ass kicked several times during sparring sessions. At some point I realized I would probably need my brains for the future so I hung up my competitive boxing gloves.

After college I realized my life would involve a lot of desk sitting so I decided to try and get active so that I wouldn’t live a complete sedentary lifestyle. I saw there was a running group named CARA in Chicago that did marathon training so I set the 2002 Chicago marathon as the first real training goal in my life. Several months later I completed my first marathon, but not after a long grueling season of running. I had a lot of injuries that year, especially dealing with knee pain and I decided to dial down the running distance and incorporate a bit more cross training into my overall fitness routine.

Fast forward several years to 2007. I was still running and biking (and boxing) a bit, but I hadn’t done any real races in a while. I was in decent shape but I was getting bored with my routine and wanted to set a goal that I could work towards that would help motivate me. I had wanted to get into triathlons for a while now but there was one small problem. I didn’t know how to swim at all. I had never really learned how to swim and over the years I had grown a healthy fear of water. I knew I could do the bike and the run but the swim was the thing holding me back. But 2007 would be my year, and without knowing how to swim I signed up for the Chicago Triathlon that year. I signed up to train with CES (Chicago Endurance Sports) and also signed up for private swim lessons with the Chicago Blue Dolphins. By the end of that summer I was proud to call myself a triathlete. And from there a healthy obsession began.

Fitness assessment report

I got my fitness assessment report back the other day. I was kinda hoping it would say I have huge untapped potential but unfortunately it pretty much states that I’m a pretty average athlete. Sad trombone for me I guess. Now I have to work on changing my average numbers into above average. Oh, another not-so-good item that came up during my fitness assessment: apparently my lactic acid levels take longer than normal to return to regular levels after I hit my lactic threshold. That means it takes my body longer than normal to recover once I've hit max efforts. That sucks :(

Here are some of the specifics from the report:

My body fat is in the “Athlete” range of 5-13%. My Body Mass Index is right in the meaty part of the “Normal” range (18.5-24.9). My required daily calories are around 2300. My resting heart rate is 80 bpm.

My threshold power on the bike is “Average”. I’m just a little below “Good” though, so that’s something I can easily work my way into. My peak power on the bike is “Good”, which should help in my training to bring my overall threshold power into the “Good” range. For my goal of going “faster” its recommended that I incorporate short, maximal intervals (1-2 minutes) into my overall training schedule to improve my tolerance for high intensity efforts and to train my body to more effectively handle processing the by-products of this intensity. In other words: hard painful efforts. Bring it! :)

Fitness assessment and goals

I had my performance fitness assessment with Robbie Ventura last Friday. I don’t think he was blown away by my current level of fitness but luckily he was too nice to say that. We talked about what I currently do for training and what I hope to accomplish through VQ. He asked if I had any target races next year and unfortunately I didn’t really have anything in mind. Really I just want to go faster and be better. I have specific goals for the swim, bike and run but no real A-race in mind. To be quite honest I don’t know what my race schedule is going to look like next year. The past two years I’ve done Olympic distance races and half Ironman races. I don’t think I’ll have time to really train for half Ironman races next year so I’ll probably just stick to Olympic distance races for a while.

Regarding my specific goals for the swim, bike, and run… for the swim I want to bring down my mile swim time from ~36 minutes to less than 30 minutes. On the bike I want to bring up my W/kg (a measurement of power on the bike) from 3.10 to above 3.5. On the run I want to bring my 7 minute mile pace down to below a steady 6:30 pace. Oh yeah, and I want all that in my first year, haha. Yeah, some of those goals might be a bit out of reach for my first year at VQ but it’s good to have reach goals, right? I don’t know, I’d like to think these goals are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. I guess time will tell how well I do.

Background Info

A little bit of background on my last post. Vision Quest is a training center in Chicago and Highland Park for cyclists and triathletes. The founder and owner of the place is Robbie Ventura, a member of the US Postal Service cycling who was teammates with Lance Armstrong. VQ offers coached workouts throughout the week in cycling, swimming, strength training and yoga. I've taken several 8-week classes at VQ (they call them Taste of VQs) over the past year and so far I've been really happy with the training and the strength I've gained through these classes. Over the course of these 8 week sessions we met once a week. The director of the Chicago facility, Dave Noda, has been super helpful and encouraging throughout this past year and even invited me to join the VQ team for several outdoor rides and races. All of this gave me a good idea of what VQ is all about and eventually I reached a point where I wanted more. So, that’s when I started thinking about joining VQ as a full fledged member.

Up to this point my triathlon training has been pretty unstructured. I try to squeeze in a little swim, bike and run during weeknights when I can and then try to get in a long bike and/or run on the weekends. The length and specifics of my training sessions were dependent on my next target race. This worked out relatively well at first, but my progress has felt like its hit a plateau lately. I started doing triathlons in 2007 and after a rocky first year I felt that my next year went a lot better. My times improved and I felt stronger at all three disciplines. This year has been different though… now that I have a bit of experience under my belt my goals are bigger than just finishing races. Now that I have baseline times to measure myself off of, I want to beat those times. I want to go faster and harder. This year the goal was to beat my times from last year, and although I did get faster I feel like I can do so much more. So that’s why I started looking into stepping up my training and taking it to the next level at VQ.

Add in the fact that I just started the Part-Time MBA program at Kellogg in September and you see where I needed to change up my training to fit my new goals and my new lifestyle. I don’t have as much free time as I used to and I want more structured workouts. My new training philosophy is quality over quantity, and this is where VQ comes into the picture. So, we’ll see how this whole work, school and training thing go together. Again, hopefully I’ll get my money’s worth out of VQ and get my time’s worth out of my training.

Starting things off

So, I finally made the decision to join Vision Quest. After hemming and hawing for a couple of months I finally took the plunge and took my training up another level. Now the real question is whether or not I’ll actually get my money’s worth and use my VQ membership as much as I should. VQ ain’t cheap, I’ll tell you that much. I’ll have to go at least 2-3 times a week to really make it worth my while. And to that end, I’m going to start keeping this blog to track my training and my progress so I can keep myself accountable to myself. Hopefully I’ll update a lot and maintain a high level of commitment to my training. If not I can always look back at past entries and use that as motivation to get my butt back on track.

I’m setting up a time to do my fitness assessment with Robbie Ventura next week. Hopefully he tells me I have limitless potential and takes me under his wing as his next protégé. Ha!