Monthly Summary - September 2011

Here's September:

Swim: 5,004 meters
Cycling (outdoors): 100.2 miles
Cycling (indoors): 0:30 (hours)
Run: 102.5 miles
Strength Training/Yoga: 8 sessions

Approximate monthly total training/racing time: 28.75 hours

Weight:??

This was a relatively low volume month. Between traveling to New York for two weeks, including an extended taper for SOS, and then recovery from SOS, I spent about half as much time training as usual. But that certainly doesn't make it a "bad" month! In fact, I ran more in September than I have in any month since April. And generally felt good doing it.

September 21 marked one year since my spinal surgery. Someone I don't see all that often asked me about my back the other day and it took me a minute to realize what they were talking about. I rarely think about it at all!

The highlight of the month was S.O.S. Triathlon and my second place age group finish.

After finishing my final triathlon of the year, I decided to dedicate the rest of September and October and November to running, especially trail running. Between now and December, the bike and the swim goggles will be in semi-retirement, probably only coming out to play once a week. I've put in some good miles on my feet over the last two weeks and am planning on slowly increasing my weekly the mileage in preparation for the Catalina Eco Marathon on November 12. So far, so good on that front. In fact, during the last two weeks I've had some of my best runs of the year.  The trick is going to be keeping that up without getting too excited and pushing too hard!

S.O.S. Triathlon (Survival of the Shawangunks) Race Report

It’s unusual for me to wait this long to post a race report. And I definitely don’t have a good excuse. I don't have very many pictures and am hoping that some official ones will be posted at some point.

Summary: I had a fun day at S.O.S. It's a great event and I’m pretty pleased with my result. I think that with more determined and focused training (and without a slight hiccup at transition) I could have raced faster and more comfortably, but I pretty much say that after every race. Hopefully I can take this as a lesson for next season.

Week pre-race:

We flew to NYC on Thursday, September 1, ten days before SOS. It was a busy ten days and it ended up being more a "break" than a "taper". First, we went out to Princeton, NJ for Gal and Jenny’s wedding. The wedding was a blast and we got to spend time with a bunch of good friends we don’t see very often. On Saturday I got out for a ride in Princeton. I went looking for some hills, but the best I could really do were some bumps. Nevertheless, I'm really glad I got that ride in, because I didn't touch the bike again until race morning! Sunday (our anniversary!) we drove into the City and checked into our hotel in Union Square, where we were staying for the week. My plan was to taper for the week, but still get in a few good, short, intense training sessions. In the end, the only of those adjectives I achieved was "short". The weather was abysmal pretty much all week – I’m not afraid to train in the rain, but I wasn’t interested in being out and about in the City in the pouring rain that was came down most of the time we were there. I ran a couple times on the hotel treadmill, did some strength work and ran the stairs in the hotel. My legs were definitely well rested for the race!

The weather cleared up just in time for Gen Art's fall fashion show on Friday evening. Elizabeth had been working around the clock all week to make it happen and I was excited to see that it was a huge success.

Saturday we drove out to New Paltz for SOS. During the week, Don Davis, the race director, sent out an email explaining that Hurricane Irene had destroyed sections of the course so the race would be changed from eight stages to four, cutting out two swims and two runs. Then, at the pre-race meeting, we heard that due to Tropical Storm Lee, some of the roads were closed and the bike course was changed.

Race Morning:

Up at 4:30. A Clif Bar, an apple and a coconut water for breakfast and we were off to the Ulster County Fairgrounds for the start. It was already in the low-60’s by 6:30. SOS is a wave start, with the waves starting one minute apart. The first wave was the Open division and men under 30. I was in the second wave.

Leg #1: 28 mile bike: 1:32:43

I biked well. I was maybe a little too conservative at the beginning. In SOS, especially with the shortened course, there was a real opportunity to push it on the bike. The primary difference between this course and the “normal” one was an additional hill early on – it started at about mile 4 and climbed about 750 feet over 2.2 miles. After the climb, there was a fast descent. While going about 40mph down the hill, the dude in front of me hit some loose gravel, slowed down on the side of the road and fell over. I considered stopping but he didn’t fall hard, looked OK and I was going 40 downhill. Stopping would have been dangerous. It turned out he passed me around mile 17 and then ended up coming in 4th place overall. I talked with him after the race and he agreed that I shouldn’t have stopped!) After the descent, there are 12 flat/rolling miles and then the final climb. You climb about 1,100 feet in 6 miles. It’s tough and a lot different than the rest of the course, but I feel like I’m a decent climber and got through it just fine. I was the first in my age group off the bike.

Transition: 3:17

Transition at SOS should be really quick. Hand off your bike and helmet to your crew person (every racer has to have a crew person), grab running shoes and goggles and go. My transition had a little snafu and I lost at least two minutes there.

Leg #2: 10-11 mile run: 1:16

When I finally got off for the run, I was feeling great. I passed a few guys right away and settled into a just-barely-uncomfortable pace. The first seven miles of the run were downhill or flat. For the entire run I ran with or slightly behind a guy in my age group named Brian McDonald. About two-thirds of the way through, someone passed us and Brian made a little surge to stick with the guy. I didn’t go with him. Instead, from that point on, I was thirty or forty feet back. He was always in my sight, but I never pushed to try to catch him. Just like at Wildflower, I’m a little upset at myself for not making it hurt more. Brian got into the lake about 30 seconds ahead of me.

Leg #3: 0.5 mile swim: 13:28

My swim sucked. Wow. Granted, I lost a lot of swim fitness because of the broken collarbone, but if I'm gonna race triathlons next year, I need to put in some serious pool time. The other part of the reason it sucked was that I swam with my shoes on. When I did SOS in 2008, for each swim, I took off my shoes, shoved them into the back of my shorts and then put them back on after the swim. That worked great. But this year, since it was just the one swim, I decided not to waste the time taking them off and putting them back on. Swimming with shoes – even light ones like the K-Ruuz – is not fun. My feet were heavy and dragging, but the worst part was that every pull felt like I was wearing massive paddles or pulling through thick pudding. If I go back for SOS in 2012, I’ll have to think hard about the shoe strategy. On the other hand, the water was a perfect temperature and it felt great to be in the lake.

Leg #4: 0.7 mile run: 5:53

The final run was tough. And it’s supposed to be. It’s a short 0.7 miles run, but it’s essentially straight up hill. You’re dizzy from just getting out of the lake and trying hard to will your legs to move at all, let alone carry you up the hill. I was a little slower than 2008. I did get a little "assist" up part of the trail by an awesome three year old boy who paced me for a few hundred feet!

Final result: 3:10:50
Age group: 2/14
Overall: 22/141

Post-Race:

I crossed the finish line mostly feeling relieved. And extra relief that Hurricane Irene forced the course changes so that I only had to swim half a mile instead of 2.1 miles.

Brian came over and told me that we’d taken first and second in the age group. I had spent the race assuming there was at least one person in front of us. Podium! Goody!

The post-race lunch at the awards ceremony is as fantastic as everyone says it is! Even my sorry-ass vegan self found plenty of delicious stuff to eat.

After the race we drove out to Wainscott to spend a few chill days at the house there.  The weather was beautiful on long island and we spent a few hours each day on a the uncrowded, post-Labor Day beach with the dogs.

Were you looking for me?

You can find me here (yes, that's the front page of Franco Bike's redesigned website):

And if you're too lazy to follow the link, here's the photo:

That picture was taken the same day earlier this summer as this video:

Our Backyard from Franco Bicycles on Vimeo.

Franco's doing some pretty cool stuff with bikes and southern California cycling these days. Top-notch personal customer service.  Customizable builds. Their Triunfo Speed TT bike is now on the market and looks just as pretty as the Balcom road bike featured above. I'm super stoked about mine.

p.s. Today marks the one year anniversary of my spinal surgery. It's been a pretty wacky year. 

14 weeks later

I "graduated" from clavicle surgery this morning. Dr. Modabber looked at the X-ray and pronounced the bone "at least as strong as it was before the crash".

I've been feeling - and acting - that way for a bunch of weeks now, but it was still good to hear from the doctor. The spot of the fracture is pretty much impossible to miss (but I added the arrow just in case!). It looks like there are some gaps in the bone, but Dr. Modabber said it's pretty well fused.

Also, today I'm starting an eight-week training plan for the Catalina Eco Marathon on November 12. No, eight weeks isn't really enough time to properly train for a marathon. And no, I don't really have the run fitness currently to "fake it". So, I'm gonna try to find a smart mix of getting enough miles under my feet without doing too much too quickly. In other words, I'm going to try to train "smart". This is the third year in a row that I've signed up for the race.  In 2009, achilles tendinitis took me out, and last year, I had to bail because of spinal surgery. I'm sure hoping that the third time's the charm!  With all that in mind, I'll start the training with a rest day!

This weekend I spent a lot of time spectating at the Nautica Malibu Triathlon. I had a bunch of friends and Pablove Triathlon Team members racing both days. I tried getting a bunch of good pictures, instead I mostly ended up with blurry, poorly composed shots. This post-race one of the group of friends from college who do the race most years is one of the better ones (of course I didn't take it!)

You can see the rest of Saturday's pictures here in an album on Facebook. Hopefully I'll upload Sunday's photos to the same album tonight. Watching a triathlon is friggin' stressful - the anxiety of trying to catch multiple people come through on a bike for a split second each is exhausting! In three years of living in LA, I'd never made it to Malibu to race or watch the triathlons.

After watching both days, I got a little more fired up for racing in general. Depending on how I work out my 2012 race schedule, I'm going to try to fit the International Distance race (Saturday) in next year. It looks like a nice course, is definitely competitive and I'm sure to know a bunch of people out there.  On the other hand, the "Classic"/sprint race (Sunday) is not one I see myself doing - it seemed like there were just way too many people and it just looked like chaos, especially around the transition area.

Welcome home!

After two weeks of traveling, we got home yesterday afternoon.  There are a lot of reasons why I'm happy to be home, but these are among the top:

Thursday morning Coyote trail run.  This week was Los Liones.  Tyler and I lollygagged on the way up but pushed a bit towards the top and then hustled on the way down.  I was hoping for a great view of the Malibu coast, but we were completely fogged in.

Breakfast at home.  Getting back to my morning Vitamix fruit and veggie shake.  This morning was kale, celery, carrots, apple, pineapple, ginger, pepitas, Vega Sport protein, chlorella, maca, chia seeds, Udo's oil, nutritional yeast and water. Yum!

SOS - Results

The race went really well today. I ended up 2nd in my age group (35-39) and 22nd overall. My time was 3:10:40 (or so).  The picture above is from the awards ceremony - from left to right Brian, me and Park, 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the age group, separated by something like 1:30.

The official splits aren't posted yet, but as I expected, the bike felt good, the run felt good and the swim felt like sh*t.  If I'm gonna race triathlons next year, I've gotta spend a lot of time this winter in the pool!

I'm pretty thankful they cut out those two swims this year!

Special thanks to Elizabeth for crewing me today!

I'll post a full report with some more pictures soon!

SOS, here I come?

I'm sitting in the lovely Super 8 New Paltz.

The SOS pre-race meeting is done, all my stuff for tomorrow is fairly well laid out and the alarm is set for a 4:30am wake up.

In addition to the changes to the run and swim legs I wrote about last Saturday, heavy rains this past week have flooded a section of the usual bike course, so that's been changed now too!

Here's the revised-revised course:

- 28 mile bike, now with two climbing sections instead of just one. Click here for the course map and elevation profile. The first climb (the new one) is near the beginning of the race and is about 2.5 miles long with 750 feet of gain. The second climb (the same one as in the usual course) comes around mile 22 and is 5.5 miles long with 1,100 feet of gain.

- 11 mile run, finishing at the end of the usual third run leg

- 0.5 mile swim across Lake Mohonk (same as third swim)

- 0.7 mile run to the usual finish line

Although I am disappointed not to do the "real" SOS course, this revised course should work in a little in my favor. I like climbing on the bike and have been doing a fair amount of it in training. A single 11 mile run doesn't make much difference to me. I haven't been swimming enough, so reducing the total swim from 2.1 miles to 0.5 miles works well! On the other hand, since it's shorter, the intensity should be higher, which does scare me a little.

I definitely do not feel anywhere close to tip-top racing shape. During our travels, I've been taking "taper" to the extreme. I got on the bike last Saturday in Princeton for a nice little ride, but haven't been on the bike since (the constant rain was a good excuse). I didn't search too hard for a pool in NYC and haven't been in the water for 10 days. I did run a few times, but never with any purpose. I've done more than my share of eating. And my sleeping has been a mess - going to bed late, up early some days, sleeping in some others. This is definitely not how you prepare for a race!

Between the new course and how I'm feeling, I have absolutely no idea how long tomorrow will take me. In 2008, I finished the real SOS course in 5:11:17. But there's no way to compare that result to tomorrow's race. If I race well, I'm guessing tomorrow will be somewhere around 3:40. But it could just as easily take me over four hours.  The shorter course should mean that the top racers, including pro triathletes Rebeccah and Laurel Wassner, won't beat me by as many minutes!

Tomorrow is just another chapter in what's been a very "interesting" season!

Vegan Traveler

I made it through my Vegan Challenge and decided that I'm sticking with it. I like the way I feel. I have great energy, feel lean and fit and my athletic performance hasn't suffered one bit. (We'll see what I think about suffering next Sunday at SOS, but that's another story!). To the contrary, August was a relatively high training-volume month for me and the plant-power kept me fueled and strong. I'm ready to keep this "experiment" going!

When I started the Vegan Challenge, I wrote that the environmental and ethical concerns weren't my primary motivation. But as I get more "into" this diet and spend time educating myself about it, I'm finding those issues increasingly impossible to ignore. There is no question that a plant-based diet is better for the environment and for everyone living on it. And that is becoming part of my motivation to continue the vegan diet. I've been trying to avoid being preachy here, but I'm sure I'll write more on those thoughts soon.

Right as the Vegan Challenge ended, a few weeks of heavy travel began. Flying to the east coast with a fair amount of traveling while there. I'll be mostly staying in hotels without my refrigerator full of fruits and veggies and without my precious Vitamix. We went to a rehearsal dinner and a wedding in Princeton over the weekend. During this coming week I have more time in a hotel, some work events and meals out with friends. It will definitely take a lot more focus and determination to stay on a vegan diet while I'm away than it does while I'm at home. I have to accept that during travels I won't be "perfect". And that's fine.

During the weekend in Princeton, I did pretty well. When we got into town, I did some research and found the Whole Earth Center Grocery Store. That place is awesome. In addition to tons of organic and natural grocery items, they have a nice juice bar and good prepared food. They have this delicious salad with kale, almonds, brown rice, tofu, carrots and some other yummy stuff. There's also a Whole Foods in Princeton, but the beauty of the World Earth Center is that it's right near the middle of everything on Nassau Street. I did break down a little at the wedding itself. For dinner, they actually had a vegan option (a delicious lentil and beans dish), but there was some cream in the pasta during cocktail hour and I bet there was a pound of butter in the tiny piece of dessert I had.

Yesterday afternoon we drove to the City and are staying near Union Square. The location is totally hooking me up! There's a Whole Foods a five minute walk from the hotel. I'd read about Liquiteria - a juice bar in the East Village. I went over there today and had one of their green juices for breakfast. Frankly, I was disappointed. First, now that I'm used to the "meaty" juices I get out of the Vitamix, whole fruits and veggies, fortified with goodies like maca, chia, chlorella, green protein, nutritional yeast and coconut oil, the juice at Liquiteria didn't really do it for me. Second, paying the exorbitant prices they charge was a little unsettling when I was thinking about what exactly I was getting! Tomorrow morning, I'll walk over to Jus instead. Their juices still won't compare to the Vitamix, but if memory serves, they're better than Liquiteria. Tonight, I had a delicious falafel sandwich and sweet potato fries from Maoz. There are a few well-reviewed vegan restaurants around the City. I'll try to hit some of them during the week while we're here.

Things will get tougher for the rest of the week as the social commitments kick in. But again, I'll do the best I can.

SOS update

The new post-Irene course description was posted to the race website today.

There will be more detail posted soon, but what I know now is that the race will be:
- the same (or very similar) 30 mile bike
- a long run
- one swim across Mohonk Lake
- Then the final uphill run to the usual finish line.

We're losing two runs and two swims.

I know that the race directors are doing everything they can to put on a good race and I'm trying not to be disappointed, but it is a bummer. On the other hand, a shorter course is probably better for me and my deficient fitness this year! And I guess I'll just have to come back next year!