Sharon's Ride/Run/Walk for Epilepsy

Yesterday, I put in my registration for Sharon's Ride for Epilepsy. It's a multi-sport event happening here in Honolulu on Jan. 29 and, according to the website, six other sites across the country (so rare someone remembers Hawaii is actually part of the country). The event is named for Sharon Rosenfeld, a nurse and teacher who cared about epilepsy and who was killed during a cross country bicycle ride in 1993.The event is made up of a 100/75/35k bike ride, a 5/10k run, or a 1 mile walk. I am naturally doing the metric century.

The reason I'll be participating in this event is not, honestly, because I have any special place in my heart for epilepsy. That is to say, I don't know someone directly affected by this. It's not that I don't care about epileptics, it's just that I'm not identifying with it as strongly as I would a ride to raise money for, say, cancer research. But to be a part of something with a real purpose, which raises money for a good cause, that's pretty awesome. Feels less selfish than some other event might.
Honestly though, the event is a perfect training opportunity. 100k is just over 62 miles, which is just over the Honu course distance and right around where I'll be training at that point in January anyway. So I basically paid money to ride a distance I would have ridden anyway for free. But its for a good cause. And Andy is going to play too, and I think Sean will as well, so that will be fun. I like big organized rides. Sure, dealing with so many other people can be a hassle, but training in groups is good preparation. And its for a good cause! And the aid stations will probably have better snacks than my normal GU.
Also, I talked Super Awesome Wife into joining the fun. She's not going to ride, but she will be walking the 5k. I'm happy she's doing another one of these events with me (Ok, this is much less "with me" than the biathlon was, but we are doing the same event thing at the same time and we'll have matching shirts. Close enough). The registration is pretty reasonable and I think everyone should get in on this. Should be a good time.

Thou Shalt Flip Turn

Swim Day
1 x 200- Warm-up
5 x 100- 5, 7, 9
3 x 300- 5:15
4 x 50- Sideline kick
1 x 100- Cool down

Today I swam with Sean at Richardson pool on base. This is important for two reason. 1) Richardson is currently set up for long course (50m instead of 25yd). I haven't swum long course in about nine thousand dog years. This means that I spent the first few hundred yard looking for the wall and seeing it waaaaay off in the distance. Takes adjusting. And B) Richardson is not heated, which you wouldn't think is a problem until you realize that a 50m x 50m pool which is about 4.5 feet deep has...let me see...carry the two...divide by the power of pi...adjust for the position of Jupiter in relation to Mars...101,250 cubic feet of water for the sun to warm. That's a lot of water. So no, it's not all that warm. If you take too long between sets your muscles will become solid blocks of petrified sinew.
Long course swimming, however, it great for endurance practice and its even better for most triathletes. Why? Because there are way less walls getting in the way of all the yardage you want to do. And since most triathletes don't come from swimming backgrounds the wall is the enemy. "Why is that, Coach Dirtbag?" you ask. Because getting to the wall means you have to turn around. There are two basic ways to do that. The Right Way- a flip turn. Or The Way that Makes Micheal Phelps Cry Into His Bong Water- an open turn. And non-swimmers think flip turns are hard to learn. But they aren't! A halfway decent flip can be taught in fifteen minutes and then it gets practiced every 45 seconds of a workout.
"But Coach Dirtbag," the non-swimming triathlete whines, "I'm going to be racing in the ocean so this skill is useless to me." Wrong, my little tadpole. You may be racing in the ocean but you will be doing the majority of your training in a pool, so you might as well do things correctly. A good flip turn means you can get off the wall and get back to swimming faster. It makes your stroke smoother because an open turn is disruptive and breaks up the rhythm of a good stroke. It means your can set your times just that tiny bit faster, making you feel a tiny bit faster, making you swim a tiny bit faster, and all those tiny bit fasters add up on race day. Flip turns teach better breath control, good body position, good streamlining, and allows you to do a ton of mini-squats every workout.
Most importantly, it means you are doing one more thing correctly in the water, making you a better Whole Athlete. Triathletes love to talk about how the sport makes them adaptable, how you have to be good at three different things and be able to switch between them quickly, but swimming is the only one of the three where its generally ok to leave out major parts of the sport. And I do say parts because non-swimming triathletes never get to learn the backstroke, breaststroke, or butterfly, even though these will make their freestyle faster too. (I realize these take a lot of time to learn, but I think if you want to be a complete swimmer you need to have at least a basic understanding of them. They aren't first year Big Rock skills for a triathlon-only swimmer, but they are something one should learn eventually.) But more than fly, back, and breast, a flip turn is key to a well-rounded swimmer. I don't care if you are never going to compete in a pool, you are willingly training improperly by not taking fifteen minutes to learn a very basic skill.
Here, I'm going to teach all of you. Caps on? Goggles on? Ready? Good.

Step One- Sight the wall through the top of your goggles, don't lift your head., take one or two stroke past the T at the end of the lane.
 
Step Two- As you reach with your last stroke and begin the pull section, allow your head to follow your hand under your body. Your shoulders, chest, hips, knees, and feet will have no choice but to follow. There is no need to flutter your hands around in a circle.









Step Three- Plant your feet firmly on the wall. At this point your body position is chest and knees towards the surface with hands tucked against your chest but ready to launch straight out. Facing up-ish at this point is fine. Stop trying to rotate down.

 










Step Four- Push off the wall with your arms shooting towards the opposite wall into a streamline position. As you push off rotate your body, doing both actions (pushing and rotating) together until you are fully off the wall and fully facing the pool floor at the same time.
 
Step Five- Glide in streamline, kicking, until you break the surface. Now swim.

I had a great time swimming with Sean today, who does do flip turns, though they are self-taught and therefore not as efficient as they could be. He pushed me hard and I haven't gotten that from a workout in a while. And he's nearly as fast as I am between the walls. But I gained a body length on him every turn. And when he mentioned it I told him the truth, "Dude, I'm going to take advantage of you on every wall." And that is going to make the difference.I will be less tired because I will get to the wall faster. Meaning I will get a few more seconds rest. Meaning I will be more ready for the next set. Meaning overall I will have a slightly better workout. Every. Single. Workout. You don't think that transfers to an open water swim?

Trainers- All the Pain, No Fun

Ride Day
time- 60min
distance- 0 ft

Sean lent me his trainer in a transparent attempt to get me to buy it, but also, as I stated yesterday, because he is a stone cold badass tri Jedi willing to help a brother out. And he likes the thought of my bored and sweating in my living room. Or maybe just sweating in my living room...
Anyway, he also let me borrow a trainer workout dvd he never used but, seeing as it was my first time, I went with some Dream Theater instead, using their Scenes From New York live DVD. Not as brutal as Slayer or Black Flag, but more conducive to a stretch of time on the bike. Speed metal works better for sprints. Or Yanni, because then you run/bike as quickly as possible because, "God I hate this and if I finish faster I can turn it off and not be listening to Yanni anymore."
So the plan for today was there was no plan. Get on, see how I liked it, go until I felt like not going any more. That turned out to be an hour. And I did some small interval work, cruising then cranking and spiking my heart rate (I used the Garmin to track HR but having uploaded the data yet. Poor little thing looked so confused. I could almost hear it, "Why aren't you going anywhere? I'm a GPS, damnit! Let me position something!"). At 30 minutes I decided to climb a hill so I popped the chain on to the big ring/lightest gear and every two minutes shifted up, trying to keep my cadence consistent and my HR above 160. The former was tough, the latter not so much. Once that set was over I spun light for ten minutes, maintaining a HR of 140-ish and rocking out to virtuoso prog metal.
I'll probably mess with the video and some other fancy trainer things later. And I would run tomorrow but my pinkie toe is still sore so I'm resting that. Which is a bummer because I was feeling very run-positive after the trail run and was ready to get back out there and now I can't.

I would make a joke about knowing how to spread towels on the floor for proper coverage...

...but that would be dirty and my parents read this sometimes.

Coupla Workouts and some Whining

Ride Day (Sunday)
time-
distance-

Swim Day (Tuesday)
1 x 150- Warm-up
3 x 200- 3:00
1 x 50
2 x 300- 4:30
1 x 50
4 x 100- 1, 2, 3, Swim
1 x 500- 8:00
total- 2500 yards

Sunday was supposed to be a long ride, maybe 50 miles. But my neck had been killing me for the last few days and I really didn't feel like going that far. So I sat on the couch instead. But then Super Awesome Wife called from town and said she was feeling sick and could I come drive home? An excuse to ride a little over 30 miles and not feel like a complete bum for skipping a workout AND get Good Husband Bonus Points? Done and done. It was a pretty nice ride. I was worried about it getting too hot in the mid-day but it actually stayed pretty nice. No rain, but no pounding sun. Traffic was light until I hit Honolulu proper and even then only one guy really seemed like he was trying to kill me.
And my swim today wasn't fast, wasn't even all that smooth, but at least it got swum. Right now I'm in that Stroke Broke Into Pieces phase of getting back in the water. Normally, this feeling lasts about two weeks of regular work and then everything starts clicking again, so it's all about staying patient and staying with it. I was barely making my time standards, but I was making them...mostly. And I didn't get yelled at in the locker room today, so I had that going for me. I had planned a 400 instead of the 4 x 100 set, but because my stroke felt slippy and choppy (these are technical swimmer terms) I choose to go with the 1, 2, 3, Swim drill to get some feel back in my hands. That and slapping the offending appendages palm-down onto the water to, I dunno, wake them up. Both approaches worked well enough and I finished with a slightly better stroke than I started with, but a slower stroke too because I was wearing down.
No running recent;y because I'm pretty sure I jammed my pinkie toe on my left foot during the trail run last week. Seems little, but freaking hurts. No bruising, mostly full range of motion, and it seems to get a little better every day so no hypochondria Oh Crap I Broke My Foot yet. But I'm not going to run on it until I can stand on it for an hour with soreness.
Sean is a badass, stone-cold tri Jedi and lent me his bike trainer so I'm going to play around with that tomorrow and see just how bored I get.

Don't Yell Near a Naked Man

Swim Day

1 x 150- Warm-up
3 x 500- 8:00

 

 Friday I went straight from school to the gym for my swim. I was giving two lessons that afternoon and wanted to get a workout in myself before I started. I don't know how it is at your gyms, but the 24 Hour Fitness locker room is pretty nice. Plenty of space, TVs playing ESPN or Fox Sports constantly, all the good stuff. 

When I got in to change there was one other dude in the section I was in. He looked like he was ready to work out but was sitting on the bench fiddling with his iPod so I ignored him. Rule #1 of the Men's Locker Room: You don't talk or make more than passing eye contact. It's like the Men's Room. Eye line high, get in, get it done, get out. I start to change. And right when I'm naked, literally between boxers and swim trunks, this dude looks up and shouts, "HERE IT COMES!!!" 

To be clear- I could not be more naked at this moment. I'm in profile to this guy reaching into the locker to grab my suit. And he's shouting what now?

I froze. What the hell!?! I glance over at him and he's not looking at me, but up at the TV where the Ducks/Bruins game is about to begin. And he keeps talking excitedly and loudly. To me? To the TV? To no one? I don't know. But he's awfully pumped about this game and is going on and on about it. For myself, I'm not too proud to say I jumped into that swin suit as quick as possible. Of course, as always happens when one tries to dive feet-first into lycra, my feet got all tangled up in the suit and it took me twice as long as normal, pretending not to struggle and curse under my breath as brother continues to go on about HOW BIG THIS IS. And then my stupid lock doesn't lock right away because Hawaii makes things rust and today is the day it chooses to stick on me and I'm cool, I'm cool, it's alright, but what the hell, dude? 

Was I wrong to be rattled? No. It wasn't a gay thing. And it wasn't a confidence thing. (Trust me, you don't know anymore with a higher level of body confidence than me. If there is a level above narcissism, it should be named Dirtbagism. When I become All High Grand Emperor of Earth and Beyond I shall decree it so.) It's simple- You do not yell at a naked man. I repeat- You Do Not Yell At a Naked Man.

I heroically shook it off and had a good, if short, swim. Not too fast but that's not where I'm at right now. And both lessons went well too. I'm looking forward to the growth the triathletes I'm working with will be showing soon. They are going to be shocked when their strokes really start coming together. Right now there's still a lot of, "Are you sure? This feels weird/hard/different." But swimming takes a long time to get right. Lots of laps, then more laps, then even more laps. But the returns are going to be awesome.

Trail Running With My New Toy

Trail Run Day
time- 1:45
distance- 7.8mi

Press Power...hmmm...honey!

Today started out yesterday. Wait, that didn't make any sense. Let me go back. To yesterday. In my DeLorean. It's aluminum, it conducts electricity the best. ...Anyway, yesterday I started playing with my new toy, the Garmin Forerunner310XT. It does everything. Pace, mileage, GPS, heartrate, multisport. Everything. Except like Linux OS. Fail, Garmin. Fail. This seriously threw a wrench into the installation of the software onto my laptop, which runs a thousand times better on Linux than it ever did on Vista. But Garmin is not software agnostic and only likes the two major religions of Mac and Windows. Luckily, the Super Awesome Wife's desktop runs XP, and she spent a lot of time helping her slightly technologically inept Dirtbag husband get the whole thing up and running.

Why does none of this look right?

Honey!

And last night Sean (aka Dirtbag Diesel whether he likes it or not) told me he was planning a trail run with some of his ultra-runner friends today and asked* if I wanted to come along.
(*asked in this case means "come on, it'll be fun, no backing out, you'll love it, we'll see you at 4, ok great)
So of course I agreed. To go trail running, which I've never done. With ultra-runners, who run 100km for fun. Right.
And it was a great time! I love trail running with ultra-guys. Did you know they like to walk up steep inclines? They are used to thinking, "Well, I have 90 more miles to go. So I can run up this steepness and blow a bunch of energy. Or I can walk up it, conserve, and run longer later." This is philosophy I can get behind. We ran at a conversational pace for the majority of the run and I only spent a little bit of it huffing and puffing, unable to participate in said conversation. This my kind of running, especially for the big base building I'm doing right now. Sean and I met up with some friends of his after a mile or two (you'd think I'd be more sure but my fancy new Garmin had trouble locating a satellite right away and started me in the ocean. So I have a map of the end of the run, but not the first five miles. Whoops.) and we ran with them for a while along the ridge and to an old '40s military bunker with one of the best views of the North Shore I've ever had. Then they split off and we ran back to the car.
I did discover from them the one thing Super Awesome Wife would like about ultra-running: Gummi Bears. They are a cheap, easy, light source of straight sugar energy. And these guys had a little baggie they happily shared. What swell guys.

And I'm not that sore yet. If I had run nearly two hours on the road I'd be hurting. But trail running is completely different. This only pain I feel right now is in my feet. And that's not the fault of my VFF TrekSports, its the fault of a Dirtbag runner unfamiliar with trail running and constantly trying to kick roots out of the ground. Roots which are firmly, well, rooted. So aside from some kick-stumble-ouch it was an excellent time out and I can't wait to do it again.
Below is the partial GPS of today's run. If you click on the View Details link at the bottom it takes you to a more detailed look at heart rate, pace, etc. I'm really looking forward to using this as a training tool, without coming to be completely dependent on it. Remember, I'm the guy who thought RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running By Feel was the greatest thing between two covers since Super Awesome Wife and I.  

Damn, It's Dark

Bike Day (Monday)
time- 1:40
distance- 32mi

Winter came up and smacked me in the face last night. I should have seen it coming. The temps here in Hawaii were down to 73, sometimes 72. Christmas decorations have been up for two months. The Lions lost on a Thursday. And it gets dark damn quick.
I normally ride into town to meet Super Awesome Wife Monday nights. It's a good thirty miles, which I can add to if I feel like it. Some short climbs, mostly decent roads aside from the stretch of Kam around Pearlridge Mall, and its nice not to do a lap. I leave the house at about 4:50 and plan on arriving at Ward Center at 6:30, maybe a little later if the traffic lights are against me.
Yesterday it was dark by 5:30.
Dark. Like street lights. Like taking my sunglasses off so I can see the road. Like wishing I'd put the light back on my seat before I left the house. Whoops.
So the ride was good, I held a decent pace, got the blood pumping, and climbed well. And I'm not doing that again until the sun stops running for the horizon before at least 6pm. I could put a light on the back and a light on the front, but I don't trust the morons driving around this island when its bright and sunny, so I don't expect them to notice my little flashing headlight heading towards the intersection at 20mph. God forbid they realize my light is green and they are blithely making a right turn right into my front wheel. Don't mind me. So until two-a-days kick in again I'll be riding right after school, around my neighborhood, still getting my mileage in but getting it done under the sun.
I would also like to encourage all of you, my dear readers, to check out Jason's Triathlon Blog. He just finished a five part race report on his experience at Ironman Arizona which I really enjoyed. My favorite part has to be the report on his Epic Battle With Eric Byrnes. This level of beautiful delusion and sense of fun inspires me to find my own famous person to challenge at the Honu. So Jason, if you're reading this, I'm completely going to rip off your idea in a few months.

Who Fears the Dirtbag in June?