I Touched It!

A while back Lucho and I were talking and he suggested that I 'stay in touch' with the long run this winter... primarily because endurance is harder to gain than it is to maintain... so I didn't need to do a 20 mile run every week or anything but just to make sure it didn't get too far away and let it once again become some big epic training day that scared me. Last year I was afraid of 20 mile runs because they hurt me... but I did enough of them that eventually they became quite common place and not only did I not blink when I saw one on my training schedule, I got to the point where they didn't even really hurt me too much. THAT was cool.

So I went into my Training Peaks calendar and wrote in 'Long 18-20 miles' as a run workout and copied and pasted it rather randomly throughout my winter/spring like every 4th or 5th week just to remind myself that I didn't want to get too far away from those. The thinking behind that of course was that once Ironman training actually started in earnest I would already have this base of some long runs which would allow me to jump right into specific pace work on those 18-20 milers instead of just trying to drag myself through them one foot in front of the other style.

I can't remember why I bailed on the long run written in for last month... I had a reason but don't know what it was now... this month I decided not to skip it though so I headed up with some trepidation this afternoon (I asked my boss if it was cool if I bailed on work to go run and luckily she is cool with that kind of thing- she totally gets it- lol- the beauty of being self employed!) with an extra gel hoping it wouldn't completely shell me to run 18 miles. (See? I was afraid of 20 so opted for just 18. Exactly what I was trying to avoid.)

You know what's cool? My long run endurance didn't go anywhere! Phew. It was actually pretty fun at mile 7 I started looking at my garmin to see what pace I was running... sometimes I play a little game and try to guess my pace... when I'm on I can guess almost to the second now... so each mile when the garmin would beep I would look down and check and see that I was nearly spot on... so then my goal became to hold that exact same pace for the rest of the run... and wouldn't you know it- every.single.mile for the next 9 miles- even as I hit some rolling hills- I was within 3" of that same exact pace. Like a freakin' metronome!! It's the little things on a long run that make one happy I suppose. :) Then the last 3 miles I picked it up a bit just because I knew I could and that was such a cool feeling. I felt like I was floating back to my house and finished feeling completely in love with running.

So I know I'm not like breaking any land speed records or anything but at least I can go pop off an 18 miler at will and call it running vs jogging. That makes me happy! I am positive it was all that consistent work last year on my run that allowed me to do that today which feels cool b/c its like proof that years build on years with endurance sports like these. And having a deep base pays dividends for years to come. It's still ~27 weeks til IM Canada. Is St. George still open?

Next up is 38x200's in the pool tomorrow morning. Nalani is imposing a late fee on the 38x100's we were supposed to do last week for my birthday but didn't get to because I was sick. That's a pretty steep late fee I think but whatever- it'll be epic and fun!

Obviously I do all this long stuff because I love it. Even if there was no Ironman on my schedule at all this year I would still be doing all this type of training... Because I love it. :)

Ironman Athletes

This afternoon I was out riding and the wind was ferocious (again) and it got me thinking. (I do a lot of thinking about my athletes when I am training...) all the local ones have been dealing with this crazy wind for the last few days and writing comments in their notes explaining the 30"/mile difference in pace (with same HR) as "well I was running with that awesome tailwind and THEN I turned around..." Ha! Nice to be able to write back that I totally understood b/c I was running in the same wind, etc. Got a comment this weekend from one who had an ocean swim and the words 'Victory at Sea' were fairly prominent. I know a couple others on the mainland were dealing with cold rain and total crap conditions (literally- crap in the pool in one case- he had a fair pass on that swim workout) but across the board what I read this weekend was Got 'er done.

So I was out there battling the wind this afternoon, getting it done, and just feeling so inspired by these other athletes who were also out there getting it done... and it occurred to me that pretty much across the board these were Ironman Athletes. Ironman Athletes have this never say die attitude that I just love (Honey badger don't give a shit!) It's 50 degrees and pissing rain? She'll do part of her bike workout on the trainer and then get the rest done outside. The winds are blowing at 30mph? He'll plan on it taking an extra 20' to ride home. Pools are closed b/c it's a holiday and there's a Small Craft Advisory in the ocean? He'll wear his wetsuit and stay close to shore. Cast on his wrist so can't ride outside? He'll do wall squats between intervals on the bike trainer. Many athletes would just totally bail on the workouts in those conditions. But Ironman Athletes get it done. And THAT is why I love working with Ironman Athletes.

I have been working with 2 local guys who are doing IMNZ in less than 2 weeks now. They both have quite a bit of IM experience (each having done 6 already) but I sat down with one of them for ~90' this afternoon going over If/Then scenarios and pacing and nutrition planning, etc and I got so excited. I love Ironman. I can't wait to start watching these athletes put their hard work together for some great race performances very soon! I'll be a mess all day- so nervous- watching that race in NZ.

And speaking of race performances, let me brag a little more here... Great Aloha Run this morning... 8.1 miles... Patrick (IM Athlete) ran 47' (do the math that's 5:48 pace!) and was 2nd in his age group, Armando (IM Athlete) ran 51' and was 8th in his age group, Karen (former IM Athlete) ran 57' and was 2nd in her age group, Elizabeth (future IM Athlete) also ran 57' and was 3rd in her age group, and Josh (IM Athlete) ran 59' and was 27th in his age group. Given that there were 1000+ runners in each of those age groups, there's nothing to be but proud of those gals/guys! :)))

OK enough sap. What this post was really going to be about was just how cool I think it when people remove the excuses (and there can be many if a non-IM athlete is creative enough!) and just go figure out a way to get it done.... It's a Shout Out to YOU- you know who you are- if you battled through a bunch of crap this week but got it done anyway without any creative excuses... Well done.

38

One good thing about getting older is that (for the most part) we get smarter. I'm 38 today and without a shadow of a doubt I can say I am smarter than when I was 28. :) And comparing myself now to myself at 18... well, let's not even go there.

I pulled the plug on my bike block this week b/c I caught a virus that Scott brought home last week. It started off fairly minor early in the week and I thought maybe I could press on and ignore my way through it (what am I, like 28??) but by Wednesday it became clear that in this battle I was having with the virus, the virus was going to win. I started my ride that day and for the whole first hour I argued with myself b/c my gut was saying You are being an idiot but I can be fairly stubborn when I set my mind out to accomplish something and I just wasn't willing to pull the plug on my bike week... but then I had this epiphany about how I should be smarter now that I am turning 38... and I read some sort of quote on Twitter about how the only time(s) we go wrong are when we ignore our gut feelings... So I pulled the plug on the bike week... turned around and rode home and then spent the next few days curled up in a ball in my pajamas feeling sorry for myself while letting that damn virus run its course.

Blah.

In good news I am feeling more like myself today... though not quite all the way there yet. And of course since it's my birthday I wanted to do this big epic workout... I don't know why, exactly, that pull is there... the need to do an epic birthday smashfest... but it is there. Given my physical state I was just not up for anything huge today so I just rode 38 miles then ran 38 minutes. Maybe the most epic thing about that is that I am a 38yo mom and the reality of riding 38 miles and running 38 minutes doesn't even hardly qualify as a real workout in my mind. That struck me as kind of funny today, in a satisfying way. :)

Scott and Moana and I are going camping at a nearby park tonight... It's the Botanical Gardens where I run all the time and where Scott and I got married 3.5 years ago. I think it will be awesome to wake up there tomorrow morning near these mountains... with the two people who mean the most to me in the world... while listening to the birds chirping. And drinking campfire coffee. Perfect!

Bike Week

It's Bike Week! Which means I'll be fairly quiet on the blog this week b/c just about all my 'free' time will be spent riding my bike (read: I'll be neglecting most if not all of my household duties this week in exchange for more time pedaling)... and then maybe won't have my normal energy levels for a while but that is TBD... I'm sort of curious about how I'll respond to an overload block like this so I'll pay attention and maybe write up something on here later about my impressions of riding what I would consider a fairly ridiculous amount of miles in a week...

In the meantime, check out this super cool video I saw on Facebook this afternoon... It was taken by 2 local athletes (and bike mechanics! and super photographers!) Mike Flartey and Colin Cross... It's of a decent I do fairly often (today in fact!)... I actually don't even know the name of the road but cyclists around here call it Snake Rd b/c of the way it twists and turns... It drops ~1000ft over ~5 miles and I think my max speed going down is something like 45 mph if the winds are right. Anyway, just a little view of what riding on Oahu is like in case you're stuck on a trainer right now! Enjoy!

And, um, pass the chamois cream please.

Hope

Well there sure has been a lot of buzz about Lance coming back into triathlon, huh? I have to say, when I read one of the articles yesterday morning I yelped out loud when I saw that Honu was on Lance's schedule for this year! I think that is just flat out awesome. We get to race with Lance!

As if I wasn't excited enough about Honu this year. :)

I know there's some controversy about him and the doping thing and all that... And while it might be naive of me, I am glad that there has never been any definitive proof of cheating because it allows me to continue to live in my world where Lance is still a cancer-surviving Super Hero.

I remember very well watching Lance win the prologue of the 1999 Tour de France... I was sitting on the floor of my grandma's living room about 2 feet away from the TV with tears in my eyes... At that time I was 25 and had raced 4 seasons of triathlon and 1-2 seasons of bike racing... and was five days post my first (of 8) chemo treatments for Hodgkin's Disease. I swear to you if the only thing Lance ever won in cycling was that Prologue, he still would have been my hero for life because the hope I felt that day was something I will never forget. Cancer can be cured! There can be life after cancer! And it can be better than before! These are things a 25 year old going through cancer treatments needs to hear/see/know. So the fact that he went on to win the whole damn race... and then 6 more in a row after that... well, I'll just say I was cheering for him whole-heartedly every year.

So now... now... what is it like 13 years later and I've been racing triathlons ever since and now get to start Honu at the same time as Lance? Wow.

I hope he kicks ass. I also hope that some of the top pro men give him hell and make him work. I hope he suffers. I hope the other guys kill themselves to run him down. I hope WTC doesn't gift him a Wildcard spot to Kona. I hope he earns one fair and square. And I hope he wins.

No Really, It Was *Easy*!

This afternoon I went out for an easy run. It was dumping rain and crazy windy all day but that seemed okay to me. It was just an easy one after all.

You know what's interesting? I think I have finally actually truly embraced easy running. You probably all thought that I embraced it at some point last year since I did so much of it, huh? But you know what? I didn't actually ever really embrace it. I *did* it, diligently, but not really because I wanted to... I did it because Lucho told me that is what I needed to do to actually build myself a real aerobic base and I trusted him. And he was right. I built an enormous aerobic base.

All that easy/slow aerobic base running did not make me as fast as I wanted to be, but it did make me durable as hell. And it did set me up so now I have the capacity to literally try to rip myself apart in training in a way I would have considered to be suicide several years ago. You don't even want to know what I've done the last couple of days... I wrote it up on my calendar and while I figured I'd probably be able to get through it all, I didn't think I'd rip through it all the way I did. It was awesome. Now I have the capacity to not only do work, but to recover from work... and then to do work again the next day, and the next day, and the next day, which is what will (hopefully!) lead to some big smiles at some finish lines this year. :) Though I will tell you, even if it doesn't, the satisfaction I have gotten out of the training I have done recently is enough for me. I'd easily choose to bag racing and just train if I had to make that choice! I know some of you think that is nuts but that's ok. :)

But that's not what this post is actually about. It's about my ah-ha moment while I was jogging this afternoon... That true realization that what allowed me to do what I did these last 4 days was spending much of last year jogging. Those easy efforts- the ones that are meant to be aerobic- need to actually be easy. I know I've said this before but the goal is not to go (or be) slow. And I will tell you- I know that holding back and going slow when you want to go fast is not an easy ask. It's frustrating and it's not confidence boosting and you have to swallow your ego (a lot). But do it anyway. Build yourself a real base. And once you've got that built you can then go crazy dreaming up all the hardest back to back to back workouts of your dreams... which you are then capable of executing! I think that part is so cool- and it's worth the ego sucking slow-ass jogging you have to do to get there. Trust me. :)

What A Difference A Draft Makes!

I am loving loving loving riding my bike these days! Part of that is definitely due to the fact that we have had a very dry winter so far... dry roads all through January is definitely something new and while I'm sorry that the Big Island has been declared a Disaster Area due to draught, I am selfishly thrilled about the blue skies. It also didn't hurt that the winds were on the lighter side again today. I am going to be spoiled and soft if these conditions persist!

The other thing that is making riding more fun these days is Oia'i'o. Going out and having power goals to hit with every ride totally makes riding every bit as much fun as swimming! :) This morning I headed out with Patrick which was awesome for several reasons... partly b/c the workout I wrote for him was one I wasn't altogether sure I could do myself (so that made it exciting) and partly because Patrick is a dedicated athlete who has his shit together... which means he shows up on time and completely prepared to execute the workout exactly as planned. I love smart athletes who pay attention to the details.

Anyway, the lesson learned today was mostly about drafting. I think I always knew that drafting provided significant benefit to the rider in the back, but I've never really been able to document concrete proof of that before today. So Patrick and I are about the same size, which theoretically means that we would both have to be putting out about the same wattage to go the same speed... but he is stronger than I am so the wattage goals that were appropriate to him would be impossible for me to hit... But I figured I would just try to hang on to his wheel for as long as I could? Interestingly though as we compared numbers after each interval, I was able to hang on no problem because I was saving average ~50W while sitting on... I never would have guessed that the drafting advantage would be so high! But we proved it over and over on every interval today. For you math/science geeks out there, the equation looked something like this:
(PW = MW+50) Where PW = Patrick's Wattage while pulling and MW = Michelle's Wattage while sitting on.

Some key take-aways in my own brain:

~The drafting advantage is greatest when on a flat road into a headwind.


~The drafting advantage is significantly reduced when riding even a little uphill (like maybe 20W vs 50?) Patrick is a good climber so I felt this for sure on every slight incline today.


~If you are a woman and in training you are constantly drafting off of men who are not significantly stronger than you, you are not working nearly as hard as you could/should be. 


~Now I'm going to have a harder time controlling myself and not being even MORE PISSED when I witness draft packs in Ironmans. Gah! Drafting really is a significant and blatant form of cheating. Don't do it during an event that calls for an "Individual Time Trial".

So all in all another Super Saturday of bike/run! I am feeling awesome.