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.

Like They're Going Flat

Ride (Saturday)
time-3:41
distance- 53.24mi

Run (Sunday)
time- 1:11
distance- approx. 7mi

Swim (Monday)
1 x 200- warm-up
2 x 500- stroke check

Ride (Monday)
time- 1:46
distance- 29.77mi


Dirtbag fanatics, how have you been? Me? I'm pretty good. Training hard, yada yada yada. The pervious workouts were all decent to good, with the exception of Monday's swim, which was kind of lame but important. I took last week off because of some strange twinging in the right elbow and of all the disciplines, swimming is the one I can back off of without worry. So Monday was about checking my stroke for strange. Verdict? Feels good, seems to be better. I did get so involved in the self diagnostic that I got lost in the swim, so I'm pretty sure I did two 500s, but the second one might have been a 400 or 450. No biggie.
Saturday I cranked out an early but good ride with Diesel, the Grey is preparing to win his age group at the North Shore marathon so he is training differently for the next few weeks. It was the same ride as last weekend, but harder, I think. Less rest time, and I feel like we pushed more. Windier too, which is good for training but suuuuucks for climbing. Dirtbag get strong. Diesel and I spent a good 40% of the ride chatting too, which is something we rarely do because its hard on the bikes. After the ride the workout continued as I was the muscle in a friend's move. You never really know who your friends are until they get up at 6am to ride 50+ miles and then help you move.
Sunday was exciting because Super Awesome Wife completed her second half marathon, the Run Like a Diva Wahine Half. I'm so proud of her for going out and doing these events. She walks them, but who cares? She does them. Thirteen miles is a long way either way. And it was hot Sunday, with a shadeless course. She kicked ass in her Batman cape and underroos.

Pink boa, tiara, and a medal the size of a manhole cover. Women's races are awesome.

 While she was out on the course I ran around Ala Moana park. Never run down there except for the Honolulu Tri and it is nice. My plan was to run until it hurt or I was done and, to my surprise, there was very little Achilles pain during my hour ten. This is good and it might mean I can get back on the stick now.
Yesterday's ride was ok, I cooked a lot of it. I came up with the idea that I should ride like my tires are going flat. What that means is, sometimes flats happen. And sometimes when flats happen it ruins the ride and you need a pick up. So if you spend the ride pumping and you do have a catastrophic flat, you still feel like you got a workout in. It's a theory in progress.
*Note- See, if I was more interested in building a big audience I would have led with the Going Flat theory and left the post at that. It would be instructive and bite-sized and still interesting. But I need to use the blog as an attitude check for myself. Reflective training is the Big Point. I like being able to look back and see how I felt during ride x when I repeat it to see growth or issues. So I fill the posts with thoughts and feelings about the workout details. Numbers are nice, I like having the data and love my Garmin, but I also do a lot of training by feel. Which means that you, lovely and patient reader, sometimes get to slog through a paragraph about my run in the park to get to the point. Which I do appreciate.
The only other thing I want to say about the ride is that everyone should ride safe out there. I had a close, but safe, call. Not trying to worry anyone. But be safe out there, keep your head on a swivel, and remember the lights on the back of a car don't turn on when the car is turning, even though they should, and you're a vampire in their mirrors. Ride safe and keep the rubber side down.

How To Recover From a 10K

New active.com article up from your favorite Dirtbag. 
How to Recover From a 10k
I'd like to thank again Sister Dirtbag, Official Trainer and Consultant of Dirtbag Fitness, for her help with this article. Read, learn, enjoy, retweet, Facebook, print and post on someone's wall, email to Inside Triathlon.