Training Log Archive: Bash

Congrats to our youngest Tree Hugger, VO2Max, on kicking off his XC ski racing season in style. He made it to a Sprint A Final for the first time, finishing ahead of some National Ski Team members and a few other good sprinters. Lots of racing coming up over the next two weeks. Go, Pate!

Palgrave is just barely snowy enough to rock-ski so we drove 30 minutes north to Dufferin Forest where we could play in 15 cm of snow.



We did some twisty single track then switched to double track to avoid any surprises to 'Bent's knee. For the same reason, I did most of the trail breaking which was slo-o-o-ow going on my waxless rock skis (which I didn't need in such good conditions but that's what I'd brought). It was a great workout anyway - like a NordicTrack with the resistance turned way up. Unlike last weekend, this felt like actual skiing. Yay, winter is here!!



It was quiet but near Airport Road we saw a couple of hunters with crossbows. 'Tis the season (deer) until the end of December.



We found a wonderful, quiet single track trail with a small sign that said, "Ken's Trail 1966-2010". I'm wondering if this is the same Ken who was the manager of Mansfield Outdoor Centre. I worked with him a couple of years ago to put on our mountain bike orienteering event there and I also talked with his wife who was the Dufferin County Forester for the adjacent public land. Whoever Ken's Trail is for, it must be a sad story since the man was only 44. Does anyone know about this?

When we got back to the nearly deserted parking lot, another vehicle was arriving. Turns out it was a couple of our Caledon friends, Rocky and Slowrunner heading out for a snowshoe. Nice surprise!

'Bent and I joined the C3 triathletes for their Saturday morning spin. I was afraid I'd get bored but this was their annual session where Gary (surname?) spoke about exercise physiology and racing and occasionally jumped off his bike to draw graphs on the whiteboard. There was a fair amount of review, since I read about sports science on most days, but it was all good and you can't be reminded of that stuff too often. There were some different ways of looking at things that were useful.

A key concept in today's discussion was "decoupling" - the phenomenon where your power output decreases during a race while your effort/heart rate increases. Winners in events like the Ironman World Championship have a constant power output during their 180 km bike ride. They start out with a low perceived effort that increases then levels out and stays constant for the rest of the ride. They go slower up hills and accelerate down hills.

Even in the top 10 in the world, it's not unusual to find racers whose power output starts out too high, then decreases during the race - and they feel steadily worse as the race goes on. Studies have shown that racers who choose and maintain the correct power output will have the best race result. The jury is out on whether a negative split is desirable but you definitely don't want a positive split.

There are several reasons for decoupling:
- Starting at too high a pace
- Dehydration (stroke volume of heart decreases with dehydration so the heart needs to beat more often to push the same amount of O2 to the body)
- Nutrition (mostly a factor in races over 2 hours)
- Heat (80% of your effort goes into creating heat. Above 16C, heat starts to degrade performance and you need to choose a slightly slower pace to compensate)
- Slow twitch muscles tiring out due to insufficient training for the chosen pace, forcing fast twitch muscles (which need far more glycogen and are not well-trained in endurance athletes) to take over

Random thoughts:
- In a long race, avoid even short bursts of anaerobic activity such as pushing up a hill, since this will reduce your body's capacity to perform aerobically over the long term.
- Most endurance athletes have sufficient glycogen stores to race for up to 2 hours without taking in calories. (Nothing much, anyway.) If you are racing longer than 2 hours, start eating earlier to postpone the exhaustion of your glycogen stores. For example, I may not need any calories for a 2-hour run but I may expend 600 calories if I continue for 3rd hour. Rather than waiting until the 3rd hour to eat, I should try to take in 200 calories per hour from the beginning.
- In the days leading up to a race, work harder than usual to preserve your glycogen stores. Even if you go for a short run, eat something during the session or within an hour or two of finishing.
- A power meter is one of the best investments you can make for your bike. It will make more difference than, say, buying lighter wheels.
- Base training - at least 40 km/week of running and 100 km/week of road biking (for triathletes) for 6-8 weeks. Long run should not be more than about 35% of total weekly running and should not increase more than 10%/week.
- Ironman finish rankings almost always = Ironman bike + run rankings. You can't make a big difference on the swim but you can over-exert yourself on the bike and wreck your run. You need to think of performance on the bike/run together as a unit.
- When it comes to training, the priority is running. If you don't have enough time for all the training you want to do, keep the running and reduce other activities.
- Visualize and prepare.

There was more but that's all I can think of for now. I couldn't take notes because I was busy pedalling. Interesting, interactive discussion with lots of people in the room drawing on their own racing and training experiences. No chance of getting bored!

I am such a weakling...

Note
End-of-month report card on 2010 training resolutions:

GOOD:
- Goal was 450 hrs total annual training and I'm at 568 hrs with a month left to go - the most since I started logging on AP in 2005. Training for Coast to Coast has inspired me put in a lot more hours than usual this fall.
- Crash and I have revived our Bash & Crash 500s, which means both intervals *and* training before breakfast.

NOT SO GOOD:
- Strength training - min. 1 hr/week. Nope. But doing more as the weather makes indoor training more appealing.
- In bed by midnight at least 4 days/week - Fail. Some might even say it's an "Epic Fail" - but anyone who reads NewPatrick's log wouldn't dare.

I am loving the novelty of training for Coast to Coast. I've never been a hot weather vacation person but it was awesome fun to do a high volume training week in Florida. Tomorrow 'Bent and I are joining the local triathlon club for the first time for their Saturday spinning session and Frankenjack and I are planning a winter paddle on Georgian Bay over the holidays. I'm also looking into some whitewater paddling in January, which is another first. New adventures keep things interesting!

While watching The Amazing Race.

Upstairs while Frankenjack and 'Bent worked out in the Adventure Basement.

Blatant promo request. We'd love to get the 2010 GUATS Logs Rocks & Steel soft bamboo shirt voted "Best Event T-Shirt" in the annual Get Out There Magazine Readers' Choice Awards.

Here's the shirt (click on the mini-photo):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29904&id=114...

And here's the Survey. Best T-shirt is #9 and there are lots of other categories you can vote in to recognize other events, organizations, stores and outdoor facilities you like.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K5PYPW7

Hard Core Live with Caron

Lots of hip flexor, twisting and side core work tonight. We're going to have live music at our pre-Christmas class - the same guy who wrote and performed the music for Caron's Power Yoga 2 DVD!

Got up in pitch blackness and left at first light to meet Crash at our post on the Bruce Trail for another edition of Bash & Crash 500s. We revived them a couple of weeks ago and our times were significantly slower than they had been in summer. Today my times were back to where they had been and Crash had moved in the right direction (sub-2).
2:13
2:09
2:08
2:08
2:08 (huge perceived effort - I was sure I'd set a new record but it was exactly the same as the previous two)

I've noticed that some New Zealanders are hiking up mountains on weekends to prepare for Coast to Coast. So when I got home, I scaled Mount Tobler twice, once by the usual southern route and once up the rarely-climbed north face.

I somehow managed to make it this long without ever seeing "Gone With The Wind" so it's my trainer movie this week. It is almost 4 hours long so I've got another couple of sessions left. I decided to pedal at higher intensity during any bad dialogue or acting and as a result, I got a really, really good workout.

Caledon Navigators urban adventure night designed by Prez Rocky. It was a miserable rainy evening so it was great to have some peer pressure to get me out the door in running clothes. The start/finish was at the Black Bull Pub and we were sent out to run up and down the hills of Bolton, taking all sorts of little paths between streets and seeing neighbourhoods I'd never visited. At each checkpoint along the route, we found an envelope and selected a playing card which was sealed in half so we couldn't see its value.

Phatty and I met up after a few checkpoints and ran most of the course together. You might think that would be an advantage but we got chatting and sometimes got a little slack with our map and instructions. Also, he kept trying to push me into a picnic table because it worked so well to neutralize the competition on Sunday. ;-)

The every-wiley Goose snuck past us and arrived at the pub first - only to learn that the winner would be determined by a Snakes & Ladders game using the playing cards we had collected. Of course, Snakes and Ladders using random cards is entirely based on skill, not luck, so it was no surprise when I crushed the opposition and took the victory.

Nice to see Leanimal completing the course just 17 days before her due date! 'Bent and Coach LD joined her for a slightly slower Tour de Bolton. Leanimal was not in last place - there was another group that didn't finish the course. At this point, I think it's safe to say that she'll never be last place in anything!

Paddling in the Everglades was cool but the very best place in the world to paddle is our basement. At least that's what I'll have to keep telling myself because I need to do a lot of paddling between now and February! I got the new cordless headphones working so now I can commune more closely with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert while I train.