Exercise Junkie??

Have been "radio silent" on the blog for a while and it comes down to "just too much going on"!    This past week was a classic "perfect storm" of everything coming together at the same time...     something had to give and it was workouts!

In addition to it being winter break for my girls, I have been pulled in to a corporate acquisition diligence exercise at work that has involved spending long hours in electronic data rooms and four regularly scheduled conference calls every day.  It's an international thing, so calls have started early and finished late.  I narrowly missed having to be on a plane to Switzerland on Sunday evening.   Let's just say that it has been more than a little busy.

Although SWMBO sometimes questions it (!), I have always said that family>work>triathlon, and I stand by that, but boy is it hard sometimes.  I managed to get in just one swim early on Monday and one session on the trainer, but absolutely nothing else this week.   I guess that I'm at peace with that - I'm not training for the Olymoics after all - but it's amazing how "itchy" I have been to get out there and do something!   I guess that what they say about the endorphin rush is true - exercise has become a bit like a drug!   Can't wait to get out for a short run this morning and take the girls for a ride on the American Tobacco Trail this afternoon!



Talking about drugs, I can also give a quick update on my "give up booze and lose a few more pounds" initiative.  I started on Monday  and....   so far, so good!  Not a drop has passed my lips and, to be honest, it hasn't been much of a problem.   Have taken to drinking flavored sparkling water in the evening as a "displacement activity" for that wine glass tipping that I had become used to and I quite like it!  The only issue I'm facing is that I'm getting "the munchies" in the evening and am having to fight the urge to snack.  I have managed to win that fight so far.  I haven't seen much evidence of improvement on the scales yet, but that could well be coupled with the lack of exercise this week as detailed above!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's card from my eldest daughter.....       I guess she has me pegged!   :-)

Yep...    that swim stroke looks a lot like mine!  
My bikes are marginally cooler that the one she drew (and my seat is too high!).
But my run form looks awesome!

I like him, I like him not.......

I just can't make up my mind about Lance Armstrong......

This past weekend he did his first half ironman event as a pro. in Panama and, to the great surprise of many, put in an amazing performance, coming in second by under a minute.   He swam well and, of course, did well on the bike, but on top of that he put in a 1:17 half marathon at the end at the age of 41.   Pretty damned impressive - he's undoubtedly a freak of nature!   Hats off to New Zealander Bevan Docherty who ran an amazing half marathon split to become the only pro. who could catch Armstrong off the bike.

Crossing the line yesterday at Panama 70.3. Not sure why he got to break the tape for second place?
 Just another promotional photo op. I guess.

Lance seems to be an incredibly polarising figure (at least in the cycling and triathlon worlds).  Take quick look at forums such as http://www.slowtwitch.com/ and you will see dozens of threads about his performance and almost all of them will feature a heated debate about whether he "doped" or not when he was a professional cyclist.  It seems that you have to love him or hate him, but there's very little middle ground.
I so want to believe that he raced clean, but I just can't.   So many of his peers have been "busted" for drug use and blood doping and several (including the disgraced Floyd Landis and the more believable Tyler Hamilton and, apparently, George Hincapie) have implicated him.   Just this past week both Alberto Contador and Jan Ullrich (two of the recent greats) were banned and fined.   It really does seem that "everyone was doing it".  Yet a two year case against Lance Armstrong was dropped by federal prosecutors this week.  No reason was given.   The US Anti-doping Agency (USADA) continues to investigate and cycling great Greg LeMond is on record as saying that he believes that there is "overwhelming evidence" againts Armstrong.

Doing his thing in the Tour de France with admitted doper Jan Ullrich in tow.

Could he have come back from cancer to win seven Tours de France without "pharmaceutical assistance"?   I doubt it, but what do I know?

This brings me to the point of my post....   Is it good news for the sport of triathlon that Lance Armstrong is getting involved?   He has a business arrangement with the company (WTC) that puts on the Ironman branded events and there's no doubt that he will bring huge amounts of publicity to the sport.  It's also very difficult to fault Lance's Livestrong organisation and the huge of amounts of money it raises and good it does for cancer sufferers and survivors.   Yet he's undoubtedly in my mind a flawed character (just read his book "It's Not About the Bike" and think about some of the things he said when he wrote it, now that we have the benefit of hindsight with respect to his personal life etc.).   What happens if he starts winning races (including, perhaps, even the Ironman world championships in Kona - it's not completely beyond the realms of possibility) and he's subsequently shown to be doping or to have doped previously?   What does that do for triathlon?  

Even though Lance Armstrong is undoubtedly an amazing athlete and quite possibly one of the fittest guys in the world, I also think about what it says about top current triathlon pros when he starts smoking them on not only the bike, but also quite possible the swim and the run as well?  What sort of message does that send about the current state of the sport?  He is undoubtedly freakishly gifted and he has trained hard with the help of the best coaches, equipmet etc. that money can buy, but "Joe Sixpack" won't see that....

So, is he a hero that is good for the sport of triathlon or some sort of pariah that will be hugely detrimental and bring the sport in to disrepute?  There are well known Angels and Devils on the pro cycling tour:  which one will Lance Armstrong most resemble on the triathlon scene?

I guess that time will tell!

No Taunting Coach!

So I'm trying to lose a few more pounds and get down to my target "race weight" for this season.  Fitter legs carrying less weight = more speed!

I eat pretty sensibly and (obviously) work out, but I seem to have hit some kind of plateau on weight, so it's time to take it to the next level.  Workouts will ramp-up over the coming months, but in the mean time I need to cut out a few more calories....   what to do?

The very obvious target is wasted calories through alcohol.  I really enjoy my red wine and it's very easy for "just one glass" over dinner to morph in to two or three (and, OK, in the spirit of full disclosure, occasionall four or five!).  That's a lot of unnecessary calories!   There are (according to caloriecount.com) about 85 calories in a small (3.5 oz) glass of red wine and let's just say that my glasses of red wine are typically a bit more that 3.5 oz!

So.....    perhaps rashly (we'll see) I decided that I will give up alcohol for lent and see how it goes.

Bye bye red wine...

Now this is certainly not in any way a religous sacrifice (I would have to remain very alert for lightning bolts if I made that claim!).   It's just good timing and, in addition to cutting out the calories, there are a few other good reasons too:

•   Cutting out the alcohol itself can't be a bad thing
•   SWMBO has had to stop drinking because of a drug she is taking to prevent migraines.  I can show support or, at the very least, prove to myself that I can do it too!

So, you heard it here......   after our neighbors' awesome annual Mardi Gras party next weekend, I will go cold turkey on alcohol until Easter.   There, I said it!

But the main reason for making this post is to tell you about something The Puppeteer did yesterday.   I mentioned in a post script to an email message to her that I was thinking of doing this and her response was...

"Hahahaha, yeah right!"

What?   I call a 15 yard taunting penalty!

15 yards for taunting on The Puppeteer!

If I was wavering at all on this decision, that response sent me over the edge.  The Pupeteer will learn never, ever, ever, to challenge me by taunting.  I immediately threw out the possibility of a wager, but as yet she has been too afraid to respond.....     Game on Puppeteer!   :-)

So remember coach:

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We Were Young and Carefree

As mentioned in my most recent post, I have read a lot of books recently about the classic years of the grand tour races and the one day classics from the 50s through the 80s, including biographies and autobiographies of some of the greats:  Coppi (Fallen Angel); Tom Simpson (Put Me Back on My Bike);  Jacques Anguetil (Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape) and Slaying the Badger, the story of the rivalry between Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond.   I've also read probably too much about one Lance Armstrong - perhaps I'll write my feelings about him one day soon...

Perhaps my favorite of these biographies is We Were Young and Carefree, the autobiography of Laurent Fignon (translated into English by William Fotheringham).

Cover of the English Language Version

...and the original French

Fignon was born in Paris less than a month before I was born and, sadly, passed way of pancreatic cancer in 2010.   I never really liked him when he was riding to his two Tour de France victories in the early eighties or when he famously lost the Tour by a mere 8 seconds to Greg LeMond in 1989 when LeMond used "aerobars" for the first time [can you imagine riding 3285 km around France and losing by just 8 seconds??].   He was well known for being intensely private and was seen by the media as awkward and often aggressive.  Consequently, he was frequently awarded the "Prix Citron" by the press for being the least likable rider in the Tour.

In many ways then, reading this book I had the opposite experience of when I read Dana Torres' "Age Is Just a Number".....   in that case I started with a positive opinion of Dana and ended up liking her less; in this case I had a relatively low opinion of Laurent Fignon and ended up liking and having a lot more respect for him.  The primary reason is simply that the book comes across as straightforward and honest.   Fignon doesn't sugar coat things and is at least as hard on himself as he is on rivals, coaches, and so on.

Shadowed by LeMond in 1989

 Fignon (rightly in my opinion) points out that he rode in the last great era before epo and growth hormone started to rot the sport of professional cycling to its core.  That said, he doesn't shy away from discussing amphetamine use (including getting caught once himself) and some of the darker sides of pro. cycling. His insights are fascinating, insightful and often biting.  He was clearly still bitter at the time he wrote this book (published 2009) about LeMond's use of technology that he believed to be illegal and even more vocal about how the Italian Cycling Federation prevented him from winning the Giro one year via all manner of dirty tricks - great stuff!   The politics and antics of the Directors Sportifs in French teams make todays Republican Presidential candidates look positively genteel! 

I really enjoyed this one both as an insight into the professional cycling tour in (primarly) the eighties and also as a human interest story.   The often maligned Laurent Fignon lays it all on the line and still comes across as an honest and decent guy.  I give this one an "A".

When Laurent still had hair!

Age Is Just A Number - Book Review

I've been doing a huge amount of reading on endurance sports recently (mainly cycling, but also running and swimming and triathlon) so it occurred to me that I should probably write a brief book review when I finish books from now on.   So here's my first one!

I was in Barnes and Noble the other day and saw "Age Is Just a Number" in hardback on the discount rack for $4.99.   Seemed like a bargain, so I picked it up along with Johan Bruyneel's "We Might As Well Win" for the same price (more on that one once I've finished it!).

Don't judge a book by its cover....

For those of you unfamiliar with Dana Torres, she is the American sprint swimmer who made two Olympic comebacks after her original Olympic appearance and won medals each time, most notably at the age of 41 in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.   I have always admired her and I was looking forward to reading the book, which was co-written with Elizabeth Weil of the New York Times.   Unfortunately, I was ultimately disappointed......

I understood going in that this was an autobiography, with focus on "the comeback years".   What I expected (and wanted) was an inspirational tale with lots of insight in to how she managed such an amazing feat, but this is where I felt the book fell flat.   It just didn't do it for me and I found myself thinking of her as a little "strange".   Dana's troubled relationships with both of her husbands is glossed over and I can't help but think that these must have had some material impact on her decisions and motivations.   Her second husband (her dying father's physician) barely gets a mention and the father of her daughter is essentially relgated to just a name.  Her relationships with her coaches are discussed in a little more detail, but I still found the book lacking in this area.  She somehow made things sound like a giant tea party, but there's no way it can always have been wine and roses.  The competitiveness and "bitchiness" between swimmers is there, but again it's as if she's trying to brush this under the carpet.  There is some detail of the sort of workouts she was doing, but not all that much.  The fact that Dana used some sort of a psychic as part of her training routine turned me off big time.   I found the whole thing shallow and somewhat selve-serving.  Yes, I'll be honest, I wanted more suffering! 

The one area that I found somewhat interesting (as an "older" athlete) was her description of changes she made to her diet, supplements she took, how she changed her rest strategies and so on.  I was also very interested in her stretching routines and the fact that she paid two "stretchers" to accompany her to China for the Olympics.

Pre-race stretching - looks painful!

Unfortunately I didn't derive an ounce of motivation from the book, which was disappointing.  I wanted to like her, but somehow I couldn't.

Just my $0.02 - take it for what it's worth.

Now that I have somewhat panned the book, I have to say that she is an incredibly impressive athlete and what she achieved (losing the gold medal in the Olympic 50 M feestyle by 0.01 second at age 41) is so very impressive.  

I also have to say that she's in pretty damned good shape for her forties!  :-)


Wish I had those abs!



Posing

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Inspirational? Moi?

OK, so I'm doing this whole triathlon thing for a host of essentially selfish reasons....   to get fit; to have fun: to meet cool new people: to become competitive within my age group; to lose a few pounds and look better; as a reason to brag; to hang out with women wearing Spandex....  :-)        Perhaps some of those translate into some secondary benefits like being a good role model for my girls and (hopefully) being there for them for many years to come but, never-the-less, I think there's a good deal of selfish motivation for most "triathlon types".  I certainly don't think of it as being a particularly noble cause!

Today, however, for about the fifth time in as many weeks, someone said that I had "inspired" them to start working out and get fitter and I have to say that, on reflection, this may be one of the best and certainly a very gratifying reason for taking on this crazy triathlon thing and writing this blog.

I have two friends who credit me as their reason for starting to run and lose a few pounds recently.  Another friend has returned to his bike and my boss, who is of a similar age and lives in the UK has committed to doing the Outer Banks Sprint Triathon with me in September of this year!  Far more gratifying though, is another friend and ex-colleague of many moons ago, John Yonkin, who said nice things about how I made a difference in his decision to take on the challenge of climbing 69 flights for stairs in full firefighting gear at the Columbia Center in Seattle to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society http://www.llswa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FF_homepage.   John comes from a long line of firefighters and his son (another volunteer firefighter) will be doing the event with him.  John's oldest brother lost his life fighting a fire and he participates in support of family members who are afflicted with Leukemia/Lymphoma.   You can read about his exploits in his blog:  http://jyonkin-seeyouatthetop.blogspot.com/2012/02/full-gear.html

Mr. Yonkin in full garb!

So, while it's nice to help encourage others to get off the couch, it's people like John and the many volunteer firefighters and first responders who are really inspirational.  I hope that you might consider supporting John's fundraising efforts.