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.