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The Base-Build Trasition

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

It is that time of the year people!

For most people, the triathlon racing season is just kicking off, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. For this guy whose main focus is on that big 140.6 mile race in September, the base training season is OVER.

Time to ratchet up the training volume and intensity to see exactly what my body can handle.

Besides just cranking out more hours and more hard intervals, I’ve got a bunch of other training goals that I’m trying to hit along the way.

Focus on recovery just as much as training.

Going hard one day isn’t worth much if you are so wasted that you can’t hit your workout targets for the next three days. I’ve been addicted to Ultragen after all of my hard workouts and I’ve been liking it a lot. I was big into chocolate milk as a recovery drink last year. Ultragen is obviously a little pricier than a glass of chocolate milk, but there is no sense doing all this training if I’m not fueling with some top quality stuff, so I think it is worth it so far. Plus, the cappuccino flavor is so freaking delicious it is something great to look forward to as a reward after beating up my body for a few hours on the weekend.

I’ve also been pretty awful about stretching, except when something starts to bother me. No excuses here. I just gotta make it a more regular part of my post-workout routine to keep me healthy and loose.

Anticipate raging food cravings so I can make responsible choices

The hunger is already coming. I feel like I have only seen the beginning of the ironman food cravings. The one major thing that I learned from my #i8this challenge is that the easiest way to eat healthy is to simply stock your fridge and pantry with healthy godies. If you have crap in the house, it will get eaten. Or even if you don’t have anything good in the house and need food fast, you are probably going to make some bad choices.

Start my experimentation with OptygenHP.

So far I’ve loved everything that I’ve tried from my new nutrition sponsor, First Endurance. Beyond killer race nutrition and recovery stuff, I really wanted to test out their OptygenHP supplement. All their stuff is based on tons of research, so I trust ‘em. They haven’t let me down yet. You can check out their site for details on it, but it has some special goodies in it that Tibetian sherpas use for climbing Everest and helps increase oxygen utilization, reduce lactic acid buildup and helps adapt to high levels of physical stress.

For the first two days, it did give me this strange tingling all over my body, especially on my face and ears. The site says that this is caused by one of the ingredients (Beta-Alanine) activating some neurons or something like that. All this time they were just hitching a ride and not carrying their own weight?! Shenanigans! Their whole explanation is over here.

I’ve only been taking it for six days so far, so it is too early to tell how effective it is, but I’ll definitely report back if I feel that it helps me get through hard training days (and ultimately race day) any easier.

Get my legs smooth n’ race ready.

Nuff said. Soon it will be time to lather up and get these doggies race-day smooth!

Balance both my training and social calendars

Except for a few hiccups, I think I’ve been doing pretty good about keeping a relatively normal social life during my base training. Keeping Sam posted on when my long workouts will be, having a shared Google calendar and doing lots of pre-dawn workouts has helped to keep things pretty sane. It isn’t going to get any easier now that the weekly training hours will be jumping up, but definitely something I need to keep my attention on.

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I’m not going to lie. I was thinking about this blog post while doing hill repeats the other morning and was singing this song to myself (in my head).

Happy training kiddos. More training stories from the road to come.

Tags: base phase, build phase, first endurance, ironman traiing, leg shaving, on like donkey kong, OptygenHP | Posted in Ironman, Life, Nutrition, Training Log, Triathlon | 2 Comments »

Lessons From The Road

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

I started off a solid weekend of training with my old pal, Kim. I read her blog pretty regularly, so it feels like I see her all the time, but last week we realized that it has probably been three years since we’ve actually ridden together.For someone that lives 5 miles away from me, that is unacceptable. Time flies, eh?

We immediately amended this with a 50 mile ride on Saturday morning. Besides just catching up on all the “life” that happens between each other’s blog posts, I did some major brain picking about tips for ironman training. She rocked a major PR at ironman at Cozumel last year and I absolutely respect her training dedication. I tried to act like a sponge as much as I could during the whole ride.

This is what we decided.

I admitted that I NEVER pee on the bike during races, even half ironmans. Nver. This is apparently a problem. I know that I need to get better about my pre-race hydration, and if I’m not peeing on the bike, I still probably haven’t fixed it. The goal is to have to pee somewhere around mile 35-45. This needs some testing, but should give me a good idea of how hydrated I actually am so that I can adjust my intake on the fly and I can rock the run.
Don’t spend the day before bumming around the expo without a bottle of fuel in my hand (and probably another in my back pack) to make sure I’m properly pre-hydrated.
Keeping a semi-normal social life while rocking an ironman is possible. She is proof. Now I’ve just gotta repeat what she has proven.
Pre-lubing with chamois cream is essential.
Dropping some $$$ on swim stroke analysis will probably do me way more good than the same amount on coaching, V02 max testing or anything else. My swim stroke is almost definitely the low hanging fruit of places I can improve on to get my finishing times down.

We shot the shit about local triathlon club gossip, her latest boy stories and It also gave me a chance to show off my new Trakkers cycling kit that came in the mail this week. Gotta love some fresh threads.

Playing with my camera while Kim “takes care of business” off in the woods.

Here is to hoping that all these lessons learned transfer into some faster race times this year! I’m starting to feel a little more confident about making the potentially insane decision to coach myself to my first ironman.

Tags: ironman coach, triathlon coach | Posted in Cycling, Ironman, Life, Nutrition, Running, Training Log, Triathlon | 5 Comments »

Trail Running Love

Monday, March 29th, 2010

One of my Trakkers teammates, Jessi, had a great short post about trail running and I couldn’t agree more. I first got hooked on running with my high school cross country team and we would hit the trails at least twice a week. I think if we didn’t get off the roads and into the mud as much as we did, I don’t think I would have stuck with it through high school, let alone through college and now into this strange phase of “adult” life.

Wow, just imaging if my mom didn’t force me to pick a sport each season in high school so I didn’t just come home and sit on the couch all afternoon, this whole “journey to ironman” thing might never have happened.

Scary.

I was back home in Connecticut this weekend visiting the family and decided to hit some of the same trails I ran in high school that got me hooked on running.

Trakkers Trail Run

Saturday I did a short run around two loops while Sam and my mom were hiking. I met back up with them half way through the second loop to hike the rest of the way back to the car and catch up on life.

Good Times.

Sunday I had big plans of waking up just before dawn and running to a steep overlook (the pinnacle) and watch the sunrise, until some serious clouds put a major damper on that idea. Oh well… Some other time I guess.

Instead I waited a few hours for it to warm up and keep it safe.

First way point: An old quartz mine with tons of bright green moss and icicles hanging everywhere. None of the spring leaves have sprouted yet, so the green moss against all the brown practically made the trail glow. It was really cool.

Next stop: The Pinnacle

Almost to the top…

Overlooking half of Connecticut.

The best part of the run was that while my quads and lungs were screaming from the hills and completely drained me, the scenery kept giving me tons of motivation to keep pushing so I felt stronger at the finish than when I started. (my legs still might tell a different story, but my head felt great…)

Runners high? Musta been. I haven’t had one of those in a while…

And of course, the essential post-run recovery time with my nephew, Carter.

(Yes, I’m totally bribing you for blog comments with cute baby pictures.)

Tags: bee brook, cross country running, hidden valley preserve, trail running | Posted in Life, Running, Triathlon, Videos | 5 Comments »

Austin Trip Pictures

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

The last week down in Austin was so crazy that I can barely remember everything. Instead, I’ll just tell the story in between what pictures I took over the last 5 days.

Here is the sunset over the Congress Ave bridge. I hung out under the bridge watching the bat colony swarm out as the sunset while chowing down on a burrito. The perfect ending to a long day.

One of my favorite things about Austin was the trail around Lady Bird Lake. There were people constantly out running, biking, walking their dogs or canoeing, kayaking or rowing down the lake. Loved the super athletic vibe all around town. “The fit shall inherit the earth.”

After another hard tempo run around the lake, my doggies were hurting pretty bad and I decided it was time to return back to my ice bath routine. Ice baths in a hotel room poses some special challenges, specifically obtaining said ice. It took at least eight, no lie, trips back and forth to the ice machine to fill up the bath tub. I was tempted to use a garbage can since it could hold at least twice as much ice, and would require half as many sketchy trips back and forth to the ice machine, but I decided to use my better judgment.

Man I sure missed that burning chill of frozen toes. I stuck it out for 5 minutes this time before I had to jump out and dethaw.

Later I met up with one of my Trakkers teammates, Doris, for the first time at a karaoke party. I have a tendency to be really introverted and antisocial sometimes, so the fact that we chatted and tossed back beers into the wee hours of the morning with someone I just met says a lot. She is one awesome chick. Plus, she can totally party harder than me. We even sent some late night tweets to try and get Michael and Amanda Lovato to come join us for a swim the next morning since we knew they were in town.

The next day was beautiful, so I took a stroll off to Barton Springs to check it out as planned. As I walked over, I ran into this HUGE kite fest and remember that Amanda had Tweeted about going there. (Yes, Doris and I turned into total Twitter stalkers). More harassing of the Lovatos continued, but our efforts were fruitless.

Relaxing on the side of Barton Springs. I’m pretty proud to say that I peer pressured Doris into joining me. She was even at a restaurant and chased after the waitress to cancel her order to rush off to join me for a dip. Margaritas can wait. Swimming with teammates in an awesome natural pool on a beautiful day wins every day.

I’m not sure why, but I think this picture is funny. It looks like this little kid is taunting me saying that he can swim faster than me or something.

And now I’ve made it back to Boston and am trying to get back into my normal routine. Goodbye Austin, you were a fun city, but this New Englander has some Ironman training to get to…