I Hate Wild Animals

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I hate wild animals.
Ever since I got molested by a monk seal off the Big Island of Hawaii, I just hate wild animals. Can’t stand encountering them in the wild. Don’t want them near me.
This last Friday, I was running in Rancho San Antonio. I was about 1:30 down in my 2:30 run and I was in my second half of my negative split. I proceeded to enter into my favorite hill loop on Coyote Trail. I feel pretty good and am maintaining a good clip up to the top and right before the top, half in the trail lays about a third of a big ass rattlesnake!
I screeeeeech to a halt.
I see the rattle itself; it’s almost 3 inches long and the tail it’s attached to is about 2 inches thick. Crap I thought, I don’t want to get bit! I look at it. It’s just laying there. No movement at all. Is it dead? Or just laying there in the sun. But rattlesnakes are pretty sensitive; it should have picked up my stomping up to it well before I saw it. Still, it’s just laying there. Taunting me? About to spring a trap on me? Should I move closer? Check it out? Maybe it’s dead. The rattle isn’t rattling. Don’t rattlesnakes do that to warn off predators and stupid humans like me? Should I try to run past it and maybe it’s not fast enough to strike me if I’m sprinting past?
This all goes through my head in about 5 seconds.
I say no way. I do a 180 and hightail it out of there back the way I came. No way am I going to risk getting bit by a poisonous 4 foot rattlesnake!
I hate wild animals.
Last year in the fall, I was running in Rancho San Antonio again. I’m on the trail from the parking lot to the farm and I’m behind this other woman. We’re running along and all of a sudden, I hear this clopping of steps from ahead of us. It gets louder and louder and I realize it’s a doe, running at full tilt. About a length behind her is this buck, with about 7-8 points on its antlers. I see the woman ahead of me duck to the side and let them pass.
But then, the doe flashes past me and the next thing I see is…antlers! Crud! I leap aside and the buck just races past and my heart rate leaps as I realize that a full speed running buck, probably weighing a few hundred pounds, driving it’s antlers ahead of it would have probably put some big holes in my torso and tossed me 15-20 feet behind me. Ack!
I hate wild animals.
You know – you see them in zoos and in the movies. They look so tame and cute. They’re always doing good things.
But then reality hits. You see them in the wild and you realize they are really dangerous animals. All of them. Even the plant eaters. They are all schooled in kill or be killed. Us humans, we’re stupid. Spoiled. Can’t even put up a decent fight against a charging buck or a rattlesnake. Worthless.
I hate wild animals. I run as fast as I can the other way when I see ’em.

Importance of the Negative Split

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If there is one training principle I have come to both love and hate, it’s the negative split. It’s also one of the most important.
In short, it means that you increase effort and, thus (hopefully) speed, on the second half of your workout or race. Workouts can also be gradual in increasing effort, resulting in descending time so it is some times called descending workouts or intervals (ie. in swimming, you can do a set at descend 1-2-3, which means you descend time over the next three intervals). No matter what you start at one pace, but you end up at increased pace/effort.
Our bodies race like we train. When we go all out during a race, we often put out the most effort and have the highest speed during the first part of the race, when we’re fresh. Then when the second half of the race comes, we find ourselves getting more and more tired and often slow down as we hit the finish line.
This is bad! Slowing down as you approach the finish line, often starting from miles out, means:
1. You’re getting tired and depleted. Maintaining speed becomes a grinding experience or impossible. Your heart rate starts leaping higher and higher and you have no choice but to slow down or else you’ll flame out…or pass out.
2. Your better trained opponents are now passing you. That sucks right? You try to pick it up and you can’t!
3. As you get depleted, your muscles get stiffer and stiffer as lactic acid builds up. It just becomes a painful experience as you force your muscles to keep going, and you may be reduced to walking, or weak spinning for cycling, or for swimming your stroke rate just keeps dropping as your arms feel like lead.
4. Mentally, it just makes the race feel like the worst experience ever. You’re glad to hit the finish line and you wonder why in the world did you ever subject your body to that kind of torture.
However, training via negative splits or descending intervals means you condition your body to be able to perform while tired and give more energy during the latter half of the race. You learn to pace yourself and not go all out in the beginning, and your body learns to give that extra kick in second half while your energy levels begin to wane.
In every workout I do, I try to always finish with more effort than I begin. I slowly ramp effort and speed throughout a workout and then by the end of the workout, I am sprinting towards the parking lot where my car is. Or I’m on the way home on my bike and after doing laps on Kings Mountain, I’ll raise my energy level pedaling and get close to sprinting home on the bike.
It’s a tough workout, but over time your body gets used to it. Come race day, you’ll be thankful for training this way. During races you’re always putting out 100%+ effort and you need to be conditioned to give extra effort even while your energy level is dropping.
What a rush to be accelerating and passing other competitors and feel like a million bucks as you accelerate towards the finish line!

Notes on Recovery and (Old) Age

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I just read an article in the NYTimes about Dara Torres, the swimmer who made the Olympic swim team at 41 years of age. The first amazing thing is her age, which challenges the notion that as we grow older we must slow down. In fact, the NYTimes article cites many studies that refute that claim and that we can maintain high performance levels well into advanced age. At some point, I want to post about that once I dig more into age and performance. But the second amazing thing I read was her recovery regimen, which consisted of having two essentially full time trainers who stretch her out and massage her muscles after each workout.
Yesterday I (half) joked with my physical therapist on what would it take to be my personal recovery specialist, meeting me every day (including weekends) after my workouts and then doing her therapy magic on me so that I could recover faster for the next day’s workouts. I wasn’t able to find a model that worked, but I’m still thinking about it!
In absence of having a personal therapist, we must all bow down to the fact that recovery is important and that it does change over time as we age.
My first clue on this was last year, when I began doing laps up Old La Honda, a 3.3 mile steep climb. I would find that this workout was quite extreme, by my body’s standards, and that one day off was not enough to recover me for my normal middle of the week workouts.
Oh I did try though. I would take my usual Sunday off completely doing absolutely nothing. Then on Monday morning, I’d hit the pool and try to run. Sometimes my Monday sprinting workout would be ok, and that was topped out at 2000 meters anyways so the length of the workout did matter. But after that, I would switch into running clothes and hit the treadmill for a workout and found that I could not maintain any sort of endurance workout, let alone a threshold workout at all! I would inevitably peter out at around 20min or less and head to the shower. During these workouts, my heart rate would climb very quickly and my ability to sustain the aerobic, or anaerobic, effort was nearly impossible. Even on the next day when I would ride on my Computrainer, I could not sustain a normal bike workout; high wattages were impossible to maintain, let alone attain them.
Eventually I gave up and listened to my body. I’d take Sunday completely off, and on Mondays, I would try for a swim sprint workout and sometimes I’d be ok. After that, I’d run a form workout on the treadmill for about 20 min. On Tuesdays, I’d do a pedaling efficiency workout for about 30 min and that’s it. Then by Wednesday morning, I’d be pretty fully recovered for a great swim and run workout at normal levels.
I’m 42 now. I need more recovery time. But I am also getting faster as my Ironman times have been whittling down race after race. I am pretty sure I have not maxed out my ability yet either, as my marathon time has also been dropping as well. Yet, our conventional thinking has us believing that older people can’t still perform and should slow down, and that we can’t speed up unless we’re stressing our bodies practically every day.
I think conventional thinking is wrong, and many others are thinking that too.
Here are my notes on recovery, and especially for us 42 year old folks who refuse to believe that we can’t race Ironman when we’re 90:
1. You gotta listen to your body! But you also have to have the right intuition about your body, which can be learned. Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I have developed the ability to really know what my body is capable of at the time. I know when I feel really great (the easiest) and can go out and do a normal workout. I also know that when I just don’t have it. These are the times when it’s obvious I can’t sustain a normal workout and I’d be frustrated quitting in the middle. And then there are the unknown times when I feel a bit tired, but am not sure how much. These are times when I go out facing a normal workout but decide after I warmup. During warmup, I test my body and see how it responds to the efforts. If it doesn’t seem to have it, then I either stop or just do a form workout, or just go for an easy ride, run or swim.
2. You need to accept that you may need more recovery days. It was hard for a while, thinking that I was doing something wrong. But I gave up with that notion and proved to myself that I was still improving despite not having a “normal” set of workouts throughout the week. Even this year, as I ramp up laps up Kings Mountain, I find that I need Sundays and Mondays for recovery. As I increase my laps, I may add Tuesdays which was similar to last year. But that’s what my body needs and that’s what I give it.
3. Recovery doesn’t necessarily mean do nothing. Sundays are the days I absolutely do nothing. After the long hard workout on Saturday, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try anything on that day. But on Mondays and Tuesdays, I practice active recovery, which is do a light workout which activates the muscles and gets circulation going to flush out bad stuff and promote healing. It also lets the body know that you’re not going into non-active mode and keeps the body in that place of athletic improvement.
4. Work on neural muscular activation at a minimum if you can’t do a normal workout. Instead of running a normal fartlek workout, I might do track form workouts like strides, kick backs, etc. This stimulates my nervous system but doesn’t stress my aerobic system which hasn’t fully recovered yet. On the bike, I’ll do pedaling efficiency workouts which consist of one legged pedaling drills and high RPM spinning. For swimming, it means form practice drills to improve my form. Proper form in all three sports is super important and it is always possible to practice them in lieu of aerobic workouts.
5. Use physical therapy to help your muscles recover. I know we’re not all pro athletes, but I go to physical therapists every week and they use ART and Graston to take the tension out of muscles, and help scar tissue realign faster. Otherwise, I would need too much time for my muscles to relax and release tension by themselves due to my age. They help me get back to doing a great workout over the second half of the week. I would love to be Dara Torres and have someone work me over after every workout for recovery. Still working on that!
6. Ice is awesome for recovery, especially ice baths. They really help get the bad aerobic by-products flushed out of muscles faster.
7. I have not found anything that helps my aerobic system recover faster though. It just seems like time and rest are the only thing that really get it back on track. I’ll keep looking though.
8. Taking Sportlegs anti-lactic acid capsules also helps to prevent accumulation of lactic acid in your muscles, which increases stiffness and soreness.
The important thing is to acknowledge that we are growing older. We need to be aware of this and accept that we can’t train and recover like when we were 20. But the good thing is that if you do this right, you’ll still get faster. I know I am.

Yield to Life

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Whoo hoo! Got my Yield to Life bike jersey today, signed by Dave Zabrieskie himself.
I’m proud to be a donor and a part of Yield to Life, whose mission is to promote safe cycling everywhere. The popularity of cycling and triathlon has put an enormous amount of people on the roads on bicycles. Add to that soaring gas prices and now you have even more a reason to go out and bike. The unfortunate consequence of this is that simply because there are more people on bicycles that probability says that there will be more bicycle accidents.
Of course, every bike accident sucks and every death to a cyclist is even more tragic. We must do what we can as drivers and as cyclists to help prevent the collision between bike and auto.
Organizations such as Yield to Life promote safety on the road and the fact that cyclists and drivers must co-exist on the roads. While probability makes more accidents inevitable, we must do what we can to drive the odds in our favor such that preventable accidents be reduced or totally eliminated. Support Yield to Life! Donate enough money and get a cool cycling jersey plus socks!

Training HOT

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Global warming is in full force this year. These last few weeks in Palo Alto have been in the 90s, which is really unusual as Palo Alto tends to be much cooler than San Jose. This morning, I got to Rancho San Antonio by 830a and it was already 82 degrees by my car’s thermometer. By the time I finished my run 1.5 hours later, it was showing 88!
In years past, I have avoided training in hot weather. I would go do treadmill runs in air conditioned comfort, or train in the early mornings when it was cooler. I’d almost never be out midday when the temps run much higher (California weather is very much like desert weather; it can be in the 50s in the early mornings and it shoots up to the 90s midday). It was just too hard to train then.
Lately I’ve changed my opinion about training in hot weather. I’ve done 4 Ironmans and numerous smaller races. The longer the race, the more likely us racers will experience the hot temps of the midday sun and that’s where our spirit and our bodies break down in the face of heat.
With global warming playing havoc with our weather systems, I think we’ll be forced to race in overly hot conditions more and more. Acclimatization will be key.
So now I skip the comfort of air conditioned gyms and early morning cool temps in favor of training midday under the blazing sun. The more I condition my body to produce effort in those temps, the better off I will be come race day. I have already had my body shut down due to high temps and high humidity. I’m not normally a person who can function well in those conditions. But I hope that this year, by training more in hot weather, I will be better prepared for a hot race day which will still be hard, but hopefully I’ll also be able to perform in case race day is cool.
No more air conditioning in my home – I just sit and swelter in my room to help continue the acclimatization outside of training (it saves on my electric bill anyways). And I schedule around training outdoors in the middle of the day.
I love to sweat now, and enjoy the pain of forcing my body to perform when it feels like collapsing. I risk heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Nice. All in the name of Ironman.

Compression Works Part II

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This last week, after my long ride, I decided to try a pair of compression tights which cover my entire legs instead of just my calves. I was curious to see if they would work on my entire legs, versus just in my calves.
I had a pair of 2XU Tights which I hadn’t tried before and put them on now.
It was a warm day in Palo Alto and those tights were kind of warm to wear. I wonder about racing in them during hot climates, but perhaps I would just get used to them. I walked around all day with them and only took them off to go to sleep.
I think they definitely worked. My legs weren’t feeling as tight as on days that I didn’t wear those tights. The next morning, they were definitely less wiped out and felt fresher than without wearing those tights all day.
I think combining the tights with ice baths, which I will start to do once my ride times get longer, should help my recovery a great deal.

My Fascia, My Nemesis

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Fascia is this connective sheath that surrounds and holds all of your muscles together. It can contract and relax and helps support the function of the muscles within.
As I train for Ironman, I find that this year, my fascia is creating some more interesting problems. It seems to be tightening up more this year than in previous years.
It’s been tightening down on my kneecaps in response to heavy training and causing some pain there during the morning after. My solution is to grab my trusty spoon and give spoonage to the area around the kneecap, which magically causes the fascia to relax and release its clamping down on the kneecap. I also experience the fascia just literally tightening up to a point where my legs are super stiff from running. I have to remember to loosen them up by accentuating my kick back during running, which seems to lessen its pressure. Also, in my calves, the fascia doesn’t relax fast enough in the next day; I often have to use my TP Massage Roller to loosen up the fascia around my calf muscles.
No matter what, I go each week to ART and Graston which helps my fascia to release after hard training and gets me going for the next workout. Without it, I would not be able to keep up with training day after day.

Compression Works!

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This last month I’ve been slowly ramping out of the base phase and getting my running up to about 1.5 hours. I’ll maintain this for many months and don’t really need to run more just yet, as I’ve still got about 6 months to go until Ironman Florida and don’t want to burn out.
Last week, I ran my 1.5 hours and the day after my calves felt a bit tight and sore. They felt kind of overworked and it was a bit unusual as I had been running 1.5 hours for my long run for a few weeks now. But it was more warm than usual and I thought that this may have contributed to a bit of extra soreness.
I thought about ways to remedy this and then I remembered my Zensah calf compression sleeves. I got those and put them on and it worked great! First, the compression seemed to relieve the immediate soreness somewhat. By the end of the day, my calves felt much more fresh and a lot of the soreness went away.
This is truly magical! I hope to use my compression sleeves more in my training for Ironman Florida, and I plan on using them during the race, no matter how dorky I look.

Computing Grade

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One thing that has always confounded me is percent grade.
When I’m on the treadmill, I always run at 1% grade which supposedly simulates a flat surface due to the fact that the treadmill’s moving surface changes the dynamics of running slightly (versus you moving across the ground). When I train hills, I hit the up button on the grade and increase the % percent grade. Seems simple, but when I go outside to run and try to equate a treadmill grade to whatever hill I’m running on, I get confused.
It’s the same when I bike. For instance, on the Tour De France, they talk about Category 1 through 4 climbs:
In general terms, Category 4 climbs are short and easy. Category 3 climbs last approximately 5 kilometers (3.1 miles), have an average grade of 5 percent, and ascend 150 meters (500 feet). Category 2 climbs are the same length or longer at an 8 percent grade and ascend 500 meters (1,600 feet). Category 1 climbs last 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) with an average 6 percent grade and ascend 1,500 meters. Beyond category climbs include an altitude difference of at least 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) from start to finish and have an average grade of at least 7 percent.
Since I’m nowhere near a Tour De France class rider, I’m assuming that these climbs are pretty brutal, especially the Category 2 and 1 climbs. I might be able to get up them, but I certainly wouldn’t be winning any races anytime soon.
But what do these percentage grades actually feel like? Last year, I did laps on Old La Honda and it’s about 3.35 miles long and climbs 1280 ft. According to Stanford Cycling, it averages 7.3% grade.
OK. Old La Honda is tough for me and now I sort of know what 7% grade feels like. Still there are portions which feel even steeper than that.
Now onwards to the computation. I finally figured out that grade is rise in height over a given distance, and then you multiply by 100 to get percent.
So 7% grade is a rise of 7 ft. for every 100 ft. travelled. Hmmm still tough to visualize. Let’s convert that to an angle from the horizontal. So taking the arctan of the triangle formed by 7 ft. high over 100 ft of distance, that’s an arctan of 7/100, that’s about a 4 degree slope from the horizontal. Doesn’t seem like much but definitely hell to pedal!

The Dreaded DNF

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Watching my friends race Ironman China yesterday was really painful. The heat index reached 115 which is a combination of temperature plus humidity. It was an unbelievably hot and humid day on Hainan Island and for the 500+ racers, it was a nightmare.
One of my buddies DNF-ed. He was feeling blurry eyed in the heat, not able to take down any nutrition at all. Even dumping ice water on himself didn’t do enough to get his body out of this heat trauma. Add to that the nausea of almost throwing up really made him wonder about the reality of finishing. Reaching T2 where inside the changing tent it was 100+ degrees, he wandered over to the medical tent and called it quits.
In a painful email to me, he relayed to me how he felt. Although I haven’t DNF-ed yet, I could definitely relate.
Often times, I have wondered whether I would stop during a race, either due to injury or the body just calling it quits under the conditions. Under any circumstances, Ironman is extreme and you never know how your body is truly going to be on race day, even after physically preparing for it for months before. But I just can’t imagine stopping….ever.
The image of Julie Moss crawling across the finish line, never calling it quits no matter what, has always inspired me. I saw the spirit of Ironman embodied in that crawl and resolved to never quit in Ironman no way no how no matter what. In my first Ironman, my call to arms was “Stopping is not an option.” It kept me going even when I almost stopped and my resolve just fizzled.
However, sometimes our resolve and desire to reach the finish line aren’t enough. If our bodies just aren’t up to finishing the race for whatever reason, there is nothing we can do. Whether we are not able to take down nutrition and keep throwing up, we got sick right before the race, we’re not acclimatized enough to the heat, or if the weather is so bad that we cannot continue safely, we have to stop because dying in an Ironman is probably not worth it.
But man it feels like shit.
You just spent the last 6 months preparing for this event. You’ve used every weekend going out and riding for hours, beat up your body on long runs and swims. All that time and mental energy spent preparing for the race, only to reach race day and not make it to the finish line.
Where is “Stopping is not an option?” Julie Moss didn’t quit; how could I?
All that time and energy just wasted. Down the tubes. No finish line, no medal, not even a damn finisher’s t-shirt. All that money wasted on the plane tickets and hotel. Food. Time off from work. Fuckin’ A.
Even knowing all that, I know that someday, at some race, I too will DNF. Probability says that it will happen the more I race. I’ve been lucky so far, racing in pretty decent conditions and my body never letting me down….yet.
So as painful as it is, I mentally prepare now. I say to myself, “Someday I will DNF. It will suck. I will hate myself. I will feel like shit.” Then I go out and race. Somehow, repeating this to myself makes me feel better about DNF-ing, if it happens. Or so goes my theory. Let you know the day after I really do DNF….