BUBBLES!

Swim
1 x 200- Warm-up
Ladder
200- 3:00
300- 4:30
400- 6:00
500- 7:30
400- 6:00
300- 4:30
200- 3:00
1 x 100- Cool down
total- 2600yds

Bike
time-
day-


Reason #71 You Should Learn To Flip Turn- If you have gas during your workout, flip turns will help ease your pain.

BUBBLES!!!

This ladder went about as well as I could have expected considering my lack of swim time. I made it through the front end of the ladder just fine, but missed the 500 by about ten seconds. Then I missed the 400 by almost a minute, which makes me think I fell asleep during it and did at least 50 yards too many. But the final 300 and 200 were ok. Like I always go on and on (and on and on and on) about, the most important part of long swims is keeping technique consistent from beginning to end. And my stroke went wonky in the second 400, which I've noticed happens nearly every time I do this set, but I got it together at the end.
Normally, Thursday's are run days. But Wednesday as I was preparing for my ride I noticed the back tire was flat. Living room flats are the worst! Stoopid slow leaks. But I knew that I had a spare tube in my bag so I pulled it out. Something was wrong. This tube is, like the blonde in the story says, much too big. I look at the white paint on the side. "700x28-32c" Holy crap. My tires are 23s. I, somehow, bought the wrong size tube. D'oh! Makes me feel like a speshul snophlake. So the ride was ditched in favor of hitting the Bike Shop and Costco. Bummer.
The ride plan was two scoops of Pineapple, with the option of bailing after one of the weather got bad. It was one of those days where the big dark clouds did hover, and it was hard to tell if they were coming or going. I'm ok getting rained on from Dole to my house, that's easy. But I did not want to get caught on the hill in a downpour. Luckily, it dried out while I was rubber side down.
My focus for these laps was cruise the climbs, power the flats. Diesel preach preach preaches this every time we are out now and it's good climbing advice. So I'm down in the saddle, light gear, spinning uphill, then as soon as the road levels out I pop the gearing up heavier, get out of the saddle for some stomp action, and try to get going until the road rises back up. This ride was the first time I really felt like I was making a difference on the flats, and I felt it on both laps. In fact, I felt pretty fresh even on the second lap. I could have gone for a third, but light would have become an issue. Take a look at my Garmin information, you can see the spikes on the blue graph. Good stuff.

Weather Its Good Or Weather Its Bad

Run
time- 1:18
distance- 7.08mi

I am conflicted on the subject of weather. You know, the subject everyone supposedly automatically reverts to whenever there is nothing else to talk about. Yeah, on that topic I experience cognitive dissonance.
It's not the weather's fault, per say. I would never blame Thor. He's James Tiberius Kirk's daddy. He is above complaint.

SAME DUDE! Kirk's dad is the God of Thunder!

My conflict stems from challenge vs training. You see, storms are blowing in again over my part of Oahu and temperatures are dropping. Running is so much easier when it's cool out. The heat sucks your will to live faster than any planned distance and more effectively than any climb. I feel better, faster, smoother when it's a little overcast, maybe even sprinkling. It's great. Plus, that means more opportunities to skip through mud. A Dirtbag never passes up a chance like that.
BUT, the Honu will NOT be cold. It will NOT be cool. Odds are very high it will NOT be overcast. It is going to be life-suckingly hot. That side of Big Island in June? Life. Suckingly. Hot. There are no trees over there, the lava destroyed them and they never grew back because Kona gets half an inch of rain a decade*.
What that means is, while I'm getting in good runs and I'm feeling strong for the most part during them, my training is only half complete. I am not really being heat trained right now. Oh, I have an advantage over those triathletes flying in from the mainland for the race. The humidity alone is going to draw their souls from their skins. And I'm well aware that melting will occur on the run, its unavoidable. But I'd like to get a little time under the hot hot sun in.
...That felt like a really stupid thing to ask for. Please tune back in two weeks from now when I'm bitching and moaning about how hot it is.
As for today's run, it went really well up until half a mile from home. A mile from home I decided I was feeling strong and I wanted to pick up the pace a little, see if I could stir it up for a mile. And after half a mile my left calf said, "I have had enough of this," and POOF like magic turned into a softball. Which is ok, I guess, since my right AT was also beginning to whine. So I limped home, hoping for the ominous clouds to hold their water for just a few more minutes.
Foam roller- I love you, I hate you, please keep fixing this knot.
(*all numbers approximate)

Drilling For Technique

Swim
1 x 200- warm-up
4 x 200- 100-0, 1, 2, 3/100- alt. fingertip drag/thumb drag*
5 x 100- 5, 7, 9
1 x 500- 7:39
1 x 100- cool down
total- 2100yds
*1 & 3- thumb drag/ 2 & 4- fingertip drag

Bike
Trainer- 1hr

 Drill, baby, drill! Oh, Sarah, if only this is what you meant when you brainlessly chant at hordes. I would have so much (read: any) respect for you. I'm all about preaching technique over speed in the water and I'm trying damn hard to practice that. My swim numbers have dropped like the Marianas Trench in recent weeks and I'm trying to fix that. Like I've said many times, the swim is my lowest priority discipline in my coming triathlons, which means I'm comfortable losing workouts there. But I think that mindset has let me miss workouts without guilt, and guilt is sometimes a decent motivator. I would never say that guilt is GOOD, but it can help. So I've made a decision- to help myself get enough rest I'm going to drop my Tuesday morning swim completely. I'll be swimming Monday and Thursday only. That little extra Tuesday rest should translate into better runs Tuesday. And even though I sell myself sometimes as Joe SwimmerGuy, I still need to do stroke work like anyone else.
Yesterday afternoon I cranked an hour on the trainer listening to Bill Simmons on the BS Report already panic about the Red Sox starting 0-3. Listening to guys complain about their baseball teams might not seem like the most gung-ho go get 'em trainer motivation, but it makes the time pass easier. Simmons is one of my favorite sports writers and while I don't care about the Sox and I hate the Yankees, I'm just happy he isn't talking about basketball. If you're interested, President Obama did a short BS Report at the beginning of March that is very good. Look at that, two political things in one post. Guess the cat's out of the bag!
Speaking of baseball- GO DODGERS!

How to Fuel For a 5K

Dirtbag friends, your favorite Dirtbag has again been allowed on to someone else's website posing as a figure of authority and knowledge. 
How to Fuel For a 5K is now up on active.com. Just like all my other wonderful article, read, share, reblog, repost, retweet, and smoke signal this to all your friends. Unless you don't like it, then do all of that stuff but to the people you're trying to beat at your next race. Hey, views is views, right? 

A Surprisingly Amount About Hips

Swim (Thursday)
1 x 200- warm-up
2 x 500
1 x ?- Stroke check

Ride (Sunday)
time- 3:38
distance- 53.05

First, don't ask me where Thursday's run went. I don't know either. Somewhere between school and the couch it completely disappeared. And there is a Saturday run. 
Thursday was a test swim. I found an article is this month's Inside Triathlon about a coach who slows his athletes down in the water and focuses nearly exclusively on stroke technique for huge amounts of training time. And these athletes, as you would expect if you've been following along here, get faster anyway. Swimming IS NOT ABOUT VOLUME. It's about smoothness and proper technique. To steal from The Fit Life, "more is not better. Better is better." And one of the drills this coach uses on his swimmers to isolate their hips is a kickboard drill. But not in the way you think. He has them tuck the board between their legs so half sticks up out of the water like a fin and half down into the water like a rudder. Then they swim and the submerged part of the board give immediate feedback and resistance straight into the hip/core area. Brilliant! I must steal use this.
And so I did. I first tried it on the Grey, but that didn't work well because I hadn't done it myself first. So he threw the board away and Thursday's ? set was my experimenting. I have no idea how many laps I did. I would do a 25 with one board one way. Stop, readjust, do another 25, and so on. There are two different types of boards at my pool and after I settled on the right one I needed to figure out seating. But once I figured it out it is really great. Swimming with the board like a rudder, not too deep but not so you've got a big waving tail, communicates directly into your core exactly what your stroke is doing. Its a workout, because there is oblique torsion happening, and its also a drill because you can feel how much of your stroke is being driven through your hips. Good stuff.
Today's ride was good, pretty much the same course Diesel and I normally ride. Felt a little slow up Pupukea, got rained on headed down Pupukea and all the way back to Haleiwa, but both directions of Dillingham felt strong and Pineapple went well. Saturday's trail run was pretty tough and my hips today, especially on the left, are sore. Doesn't impact the riding too much, until I swing my leg over the bike. Then it's all kinds of joy joy.

Vi's Top of Tantalus HURT Trail Run Report

Fact- I really like trail running.
Fact- I am really not very good at it yet.

Saturday morning I joined (read: was told by Diesel and the Grey to show up to) the Hawaii Ultra Running Team's (HURT) second race of their season, Vi's Top of Tantalus 7 Miler. Technically, this was a race, but you would never know it from looking at the runners that morning.
Ultra runners are special. These are people who run marathons through trails back to back (to back to back) for fun. So while they have "races", what the really have are fun runs. Everyone shows up, pays their $10 entry fee, gets marked with a sharpie, and that's about it. No one really cares if you run or walk, as long as you finish. Take 50 minutes? Wow, that's awesome. Take two and half hours? Great job!
Listen, at this point I've been in lots of starting corrals. I know what a start feels like and I know what the morning of a race feels like. It does not feel like a picnic where everyone there happens to be athletic. But this race did. Seriously, runners rolled in to Pu'u Ulaka'a State Park at around 7am for a start time of 8:00, and everyone just mingled and hung out. There was laughing and joking. There was not nervous jittering and stretching and "Oh, look at that guy, he looks fast, he's my rabbit." Just a nice day out.
This atmosphere is awesome. The $10 paid for food, which there was plenty of, and sharpies. Timing we'll get to later.
Anyway, we started at one end of the park where the race director gave a short speech about Vi, to whom this race was dedicated. I don't really know too much about her and don't want to get anything wrong out of respect to the team, so that's really all I'm going to say about it. But after the dedication the group was loose and having fun. Being a trail race we were told to follow the orange markers, then the white ones. "If you're following blue, you're way off course." Naturally, I assumed I'd be off on a blue trail in no time.
The start was like the rest of the race: Keep It Simple, Stupid. As in, "Ok, we're going to go in 3, 2, 1, Go." And we went. After a very short run through the park we hit a bottleneck that led down the hillside and into the trail. At the bottleneck I caught up to Diesel and the Grey, but didn't figure on staying long with them. I know when we run together I keep up because they let me, not because I'm as fast as they are. So I figured I'd hang for a while, then do my own thing.
"For a while" was about a mile, then bu-bye guys. The problem isn't so much that they are a ton faster than me, though that is part of it. The problem is that I'm not part mountain goat yet, I don't have the experience and therefor the footwork to feel comfortable running over parts of the trail. Uphill is actually easier to run, aside from the whole running uphill thing. Downhill is easy to run, aside from the steps and rocks and roots thing. And flat is easy to run except for see downhill. What I'm trying to say here is, I did a lot of walking.
I walked uphill most of the climbs after mile two, and there was a lot of climbing. Check out the elevation profile.

I went in to this without any ego, so my slowness doesn't really bother me. Along with walking uphill, there were many parts of the trail that, to me, seemed very technical. That is to say, lots of root root rockrockrock water root rock. I am not running over that. Simpler parts I can, but complicated stuff? Not for Dirtbag. If I twist and ankle during a fun run I'll be (more) pissed (than normal) for the next four weeks. So I'm picking my way around. And again, nobody cared. I spent the whole race hearing, "On your left," which meant that someone behind me was making their move to pass and on such a narrow trail they needed to let me know so I didn't accidentally knock them into the bamboo. I followed one girl for a mile and a half or so, then I passed her, or maybe she got away, I can't remember. Then I ran near another dude for a while until we got to the top of a climb and we on our way back down. "You a good descender?" he asked me. "Uh, no, I don't think so. You go ahead." And with a, "Coolthanks," he was off.
I brought along one of my handheld water bottles with a baggie of Gummy Bears for energy and wore my Garmin, but that was all I had. There was but one aid station and it was very late in the race. Everyone came prepared with water in bottle or camelback form. I never checked my Garmin except for distance. I never looked at my speed. I didn't care and I knew it was slow.
The hardest part of the run for me was between mile three and four. Right dead in the middle. I think it might have gotten a little technical in there, plus there is a good chunk of up there, and it's the farthest part from the start or end. Mentally, that's always been a weird place for me.
Around mile six I slipped and fell on a metal bridge. There were a few of those along the trail, easing stream or gap crossings, and most of them are just wooded boards with metal grating along the top for traction, I guess. What really happens is they get mud in the grates, which makes them slick. I hopped off a rock onto the bridge and my feet went right out from under me and I went down, BAM, right onto my left hip and elbow. There was a guy right behind me who grabbed me and picked me right up and made sure I was ok, which was very cool. He even called back to me as he ran around the next bend to be sure. And I was fine, just needed to walk it off. After I got home and got a good look at the hip I saw that the soreness I'm still feeling is earned. Working on a nice bruise. And I never bruise. Elbow is sore still too.

The impact zone

Super Awesome Wife came along too, though she didn't really do the race with the rest of us. Diesel brought along his dog and let Super Awesome Wife walk her on the trail. So she set off in the opposite direction of the rest of us and when Diesel got to her she handed off the dog and started back. I caught up with her about half a mile from the end, right after she'd taken a spill of her own, and walked to the final climb with her. I ran up the hill and finished a minute or so in front of her. Have I mentioned I love finishing races with my wife? It is so cool.

Way to go, baby!

Bonked knees

 My final time was 1:51, which isn't great but like I've been saying, I don't care. I had a good time. The way the race directors recorded the finishing times without chips was very simple- they hung out in lawn chairs at the finish and the wife would call the numbers on our leg to her husband, who would type them into his iPad with the time. Simple. Diesel says they are the original Hawaii ultrarunners, the founders of HURT.
So for $10 I got a nice day out and plenty of food at the finish. Can't argue with that. I guess there is another coming up in May, and eight-miler. Might do it. Diesel says I am. Who am I to argue?

Wherein I Torture a Music Analogy

Run 
Time- 1:11
distance- 7mi

Yesterday (actually, earlier this morning), I made a comment in this space about how if I wanted more readers I would focus on one topic instead of being widely self-reflective in nature. After reflection, this may sound like kind of a dickish thing to say. To someone, it might sound like I'm taking the piss on some of the more popular bloggers out there, and that couldn't be further from the case. Writers like Swim Bike Mom and The Maple Grove Barefoot Guy, to name two of many (see sidebar) normally stick to one topic and kick its ass all over the internet. Saying I'm not worried about being popular and I'm more worried about being me is kind of like an unsigned punk band claiming Green Day sucks because they signed to a major label. This is obviously not true. Green Day sucks because they write awful music. And both the unsigned punk band and I secretly wish we had half the followers Green Day does.
To stretch the music analogy further, clarify my point, and justify the title of this post, let's look deeper into my pathology, shall we? If I had to pick a band/artist who's career trajectory and choices I would like my triathlon/writing/teaching career to mirror there is only one option.
*Waits while my sister and closest friends roll their eyes and guess correctly without trying*
Mr. Henry Rollins.

Henry first rose to semi-fame as the final and arguably best front man of the California-based punk band Black Flag. A take no shit aggressive but self-reflective madman, Rollins destroyed audiences and himself across the world. During this time he also started doing spoken word shows, a different but no less intense experience. When the mighty Flag broke up Henry got back on the horse and started the Rollins Band, basically rebuilding himself and his music career. He constantly experimented and pushed himself to different places, both geographically and functionally. He's appeared in movies, cartoons, and television shows, always keeping himself busy. He only had one semi-hit, Liar off the album Weight, but he never stopped. Even after putting his music behind him Henry is on the road doing over 200 spoken word shows a year. He doesn't give a crap what anyone says, he does everything he can to stay intense and on point, and he understands self depreciation and humor help you stay within yourself. He also wrote the best fucking thing about working out I've ever read.
I want that focus, that drive, that intensity, and that will to understand myself, break it down, and build it back stronger. I want everyone to come along for the ride, but I'm gonna shout into the dark emptiness if I have to.
Still, thanks for reading. And I know it doesn't seem like it from this post, but I had a really good, pain-free run today.
Here's some Rollins for you.