Cough, splutter, wheeze.....

Cough, splutter, wheeze......     this doesn't only describe the way I have sounded until fairly recently because of the nasty bug that has been going around (and which is really difficult to shake off!) but it also fairly accurately describes my attempts to get back into some sort of rhythm with my off-season training.   I manage a day or two and then something seems to come-up that gets in the way....   sick wife; work travel; construction going on at the house; general holiday season stuff; visiting in-laws....    the list goes on!

Still trying to get in my core strength and flexibility routines; have managed the occasional run; one decent bike ride with Fratboy and Compass and no swimming at all!  Yeah, I know, suck it up buttercup, HTFU and get your ass in gear! 

I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself - I do need some rest and now is the time to get it in, but somehow I feel as if I am being forced into it instead of planning and controlling it.   I will need to step it up in December or by the time "real" training starts again in the New Year I am going to be a complete mess.

There are a few positives though.....  

I have (for a change) been able to stay on top of "fall tidy-up" in the yard.   Those long hours of raking, hoeing (sp?), mowing, blowing, tilling and digging must count for something, right?



As you can see in the picture of me mowing above, my weight has actually dropped a little. despite the fact that I am burning fewer calories.

And finally, we did the Outer Banks Gobbler 5k on Thanksgiving morning in Nags Head, NC.  As usual we did it as a family event and had a good time - we haven't missed one yet since the event started!  A fun, if chilly, race and it's great (and a lot less work!) to watch the girls growing-up and able to run the event instead of being carried or pulled in a wagon! 


Go team!

 At least neither of them can quite beat me....      yet!

Running AND arithmatic.... it sounds as if this will be an ugly post!

As posted previously my swim has improved considerably and I think I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do to continue to improve my technique during the off-season.   A popular addage for improving bike times is "TITS" (time-in-the-saddle - basically, if you want to get stronger, ride more!) - I can do that!  But what about running?.....

Yeah, right!

There's something to be said for the running equivalent of "TITS" - just get out and run more!  That will certainly pay dividends if I start ramping-up mileage again in the new year, but during the off season I need to give my legs some rest.  Not only that, but I know that my run technique is pretty poor.  I am probably well described as a "plodder" - a carthorse!.  I can churn out the miles, but I never look the same as those annoyingly effortless, lythe runners who simply glide gracefully around the planet seemingly flying and barely making contact with terra firma.  What the heck do they have that I don't?

Well, one thing is almost most certainly less weight, and I'm going to address that during the off-season, but it's more than that.  There are guys who weigh the same as me who are much smoother and faster runners and also smaller guys who seem to "plod" like I do.

The next popular issue for discussion at the moment is foot strike.  In addition to being more likely to avoid injury, mid foot strikers are apparently also likely to be faster than rear foot strikers (or "heel strikers") for the simple reason that they spend less time in contact with the ground, where resistance slows you down, and more time "flying".  Joe Friel talks a little about it here http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2007/12/more-on-footstrike-in-running.html and it will only take about two nanoseconds on google to be completely overwhelmed with articles on barefoot and natural running; low profile running shoes; foot striking and so on.  Now, as it happens, several coaches and the guys at Bull City Running have analyzed my foot strike and, by pure luck I guess, I tend to be a fairly neutral (not much over- or under- pronation) and relatively mid foot striker.   Could I be better - of course! - but heel striking isn't the fundamental cause of my plodding.   So what else is there?

I think that it basically comes down to technique and mechanics.  The Pupetter has told me many times that my running is "stiff" or that I "run like a plank" and I have been doing a lot of rotational stretching exercises to try to improve my "contralateral rotation" - basically have my left shoulder work better in tandem with my right leg and vice versa.  I know that I need to "toe off" more and, in particular, to "finish" each stride.  I also need a slightly higher leg lift on the fore stride.  Basically this all adds-up (in my mind at least) to a more fluid "circular" leg rotation.  That's all great in theory, but trust me, it's a lot to think about and I have found it very difficult to put into practice.  Now that I'm in the off-season, however, and not particularly worried about distance or time, I'm going to try to focus every run session on technique and incorporate as many drills as I can think of - high steps; strides; cross-overs; butt kicks etc into every session.  Hopefully the strength and, in particular, flexibility work that I am doing will also help.

The two primary reasons for doing all of this of course are to avoid injury and, in particular, to get faster.  My enthusiasm for the off-season mission was brought home to me when I started thinking about running the Outer Banks Half Marathon (which I didn't end up actually running because of illness).  I think that for the first time it really dawned on me that run speed is a pretty simple combination of stride length and cadence (number of strides per minute).  It's really a pretty simple equation - if you take more strides of the same length in a given time, you will travel further.   Equally, if you take the same number of strides in a given time, but each one is longer, you will also travel further.  If you can take more strides and each one is also longer, you will travel even further! (gee get this guy on the phone!)

"That Roger guy is a freakin'genius!"

Now clearly, trying to achieve the stride length of Wilt Chamberlain over night while running like Roadrunner is a recipe for injury and disaster....

I must increase my cadence!

....but just for fun I started to do some simple arithmatic based around a half marathon.   I'm a bit faster than this, but let's say for the sake of arguement that with my current technique I run a half marathon in two hours. 

How many strides do I take?   Well, I have no idea, and it obviously depends on my leg length, technique, flexibility, muscle mass and various other factors.   I'm 6 ft tall and, as noted above, I'm a plodder, so I'm going to assume that I take more total strides than "good" runners.   A quick internet search gave quite a variety of answers for number of strides in a full 26.2 mile marathon, ranging from 41,280 to 55,334.  For a half marathon-specific search I quickly found 26,218 and 30,240.   Given my plodding and for simplicity's sake, let's call it 30,000 strides in a half marathon.  

There are 63,360 inches in a mile, so in a 13.1 mile half marathon there are 830,016 inches.

If I were to take 30,000 strides, that would make my stride length approx. 830,000/30,000 = 27.66 inches.   I do not have a remote idea if this is correct, but it seemed at first to "pass the sniff test".   A quick look at the Livestrong website gives a formula for determining approx. stride length (in men) as height in inches multiplied by 0.415   I am 72" tall, and 72 x 0.415 gives an approximate stride length of 29.88 inches....    but that's a walking stride length.   

Given that we are talking about a half marathon being run towards the end by a tired old fat guy, we'll take the 27.66 inches as our approximation for this exercise.

What about cadence?   This I have a better idea of, as The Puppeteer has had me measure this many times during workouts.  In general, my cadence isn't too bad.  When I concentrate over shorter distances I can relatively easily maintain a cadence of 88 to 90 "right foot plants" in a minute, but we're talking about a half marathon here, so let's re-assess and sanity check:

A 2 hour (120 minute) half marathon requiring 30,000 strides would require 30,000/120 = 250 strides per minute.   We must remember that cadence is the number of "left right cycles" i.e. count every right foot strike or every left foot strike, not every foot strike) so we must divide by two.....   125?  No, somethings clearly wrong here.

Pretty sure that it's that damned stride length.....

OK, so let's put down a slightly more "real" half marathon time of 01:55 (115 minutes) and look at it another way.....   if I maintain a "real" run cadence of 80 per minute for 115 minutes, over 830,000 inches - what's my stride length?   

80 x 2 strides per cycle x 115 minutes =  18,400 strides.       830,000/18,400 = 45.1 inches

So the stide length divided by the square root of the hypotenuse......

Damn, my head is going to explode!   Could I really have a 45 plus inch stride length?    The simple answer, it turns out, is yes.   Sprinters have a stride length of well over 6 feet, so a "plodding" stride length of 45.1 inches over a long distance isn't that unrealistic.  Certainly good enough for this exercise!

So, what the heck is the point of all of this I hear you ask?  It's quite simple really, I was quite interested to see what even small changes to my stride length or cadence would do to my "theoretical" half marathon time and use it as motivation to work on flexibility, core strength and run technique (in my book, all three have to be there before I can speed up!)

Being the data geek that I am I whipped-up a simple Microsoft Excel formula and soon had this 3D surface graph plotted to show the relationship between stride length and run cadence on my theoretical (and I stress, theoretical!) half marathon time...

I have to say that the results are pretty stunning and provide a great deal of motivation for me to improve my run technique!

First thing to say is that it would not be sensible to deliberately try to "force" a longer stride - in fact it would almost certainly be counter productive, but it's interesting to see that if improved toe-off, finish and flexibility gave me an increased stride length that was increased by just one inch (that's about 0.5%) then if I maintained the same cadence my theoretical half marathon time would drop from 01:55:15 to 01:52:45.

Where it gets really interesting (and achievable!) is when you look at what happens if you keep the same stride length and increase cadence.   Increasing cadence from 80 to 85 takes you from 01:55:15 to 01:48:30.   If you run all 13.1 miles at a cadence of 90 while maintaining stride length, you would run a theoretical 01:42:30!

So what's realistic for me?  I certainly think that with training and effort I could maintain a cadence of 85 and get that 0.5% increase in stride length.   That combination would have my theoretical finish time at around 01:46 - a pretty impressive improvement!   If there happened to be a 1% increase in stride length (it doesn't sound like a lot, does it? roughly two and a half more theoretical minutes would dissolve from the clock.  I am stoked by this!   Looking at things this way (for me at least) makes a 01:45 half marathon seem much more like an achievable goal.  It will take a lot of work, and no one said that it would be easy or that there is a "magic cure for plodding", but somehow I can visualise it!

Now what happens if I loose another 10 lbs?..........
OK, I'll save that for another post!

Maybe I won't have to become an honorary member after all!

Welcome to the Pain Cave. Off season blues and short-term objectives.

Yesterday should officially have been the first day of my "off season", but because of illness and my inability to run the Outer Banks Half Marathon on Sunday, I have essentially been in a forced off-season since I competed in Rev.3 SC on October 14th.

I had visions of putting my feet up a little, having a few beers and enjoying the Autumn weather, but instead I have been fighting off a nasty bug; dealing with contractors trying to put our house back together after we had water damage from a blown boiler and generally having a lot of "real" work to do as well.  Ah well, so much for a leisurely few weeks off!  At least my legs should be rested as, other than one eight mile run, a couple of shorter runs and some spinning on the trainer, I have done very little over the past month.

Anyway, it's time to get back on the horse (or, perhaps more accurately, the bike) and start my off-season program.  It's amazing how different I feel when I don't get to do my workouts - definitely a kind of "funk"!  I am going to be self-coached for a while (more on this and my plans for the 2013 season later) and so need to get my act together and plan what I will be doing between now and the New Year.   Conventional wisdom says that "a change is as good as a rest" and that it's good to stay active, but to change things up a little from the daily grind of an intensive training program. Mountain biking instead of the tri bike;  trail running or hiking instead of road work and so on.  While I subscribe to this and intend to keep-up my swim, bike and run or a slightly more casual basis than usual, I also have plans to address two of my key limiters:  core strength and flexibility.

Yes folks, it will be of little surprise to many of you (especially those of you in my age bracket - you know who you are!) but I am not exactly this person.....


...or this one:



...but I intend to do something about it before "real" training starts for next season.  OK, so I'm realistic enough to realise that I'm never going to be able to bend over backwards like that or turn the ladies' heads on the beach, but I sure as heck can try to get myself in better shape and "training ready" to start the 2013 season.  

Along with this, I am determined to lose a little more weight and break the 190 lb barrier (I think that somewhere around 185 is probably a good early season race weight for me).   For some reason I have been able to get down to around 190 (and to generally maintain things there or thereabouts) but I can never quite break through into the 180s.   Now's the time!

So, how am I going to go about things in the off season?   Firstly, and importantly, I will still swim, bike and run, just on a somewhat reduced schedule and with less intensity.  Hopefully I will still be going on my Sunday morning adventures into the NC counytryside with Compass and Fratboy (and, hopefully, Snort?).  I'll still be doing lots of drills at the pool and still running the hills around home.  The big change, however, is that I am going to start a serious program of strength and flexibility work.   For six days a week between now and the New Year I will alternate between a flexibility session and a strength session based primarily on Mark Verstegen's Core Performance series, but with a good measure of TRX and yoga thrown in!  Lots of low weight, high repetition work to start out.

Now I suck at going to the gym and, quite frankly, don't really enjoy the "vibe" at a lot of local establishments, so over the weekend it was time to dust off some of the equipment that I have had in storage and to set-up the "Pain Cave" in my workshop!   Not the prettiest surroundings, but it now looks something like this:

Free weights, weight bench, TRX, Swiss ball and Concept 2 ergometer.   That should do it!

Reflections

So, as posted yesterday, my race season has come to a somewhat inglorious end as I languish at home feeling unwell when I should be heading down to the Outer Banks to run the Half Marathon this weekend as my last race of the season.  Ah well....

Looking back I can say that this has been a really good triathlon season for me and I have greatly enjoyed it.  It's not that I'm winning races (or even sniffing the podium!) but I continue to learn, get faster and to take on longer distances.  If I had to list some of the more notable achievements I would say:

• Really improving my swim - both technique and endurance (and, of course, they are related).  I attribute this to great coaching by the Puppeteer and my willingness to finally put in the time at the pool - I actually started looking forward to my swim sessions! 

and, because of that:

• Finishing my first Olympic distance race (White Lake)
• Finishing my first Half Iron (70.3 mile) distance race (Rev.3 South Carolina)

and, best of all:

• Encouraging my friend and colleague Crawford to come over from the UK to compete in his first triathlon (Outer Banks) - he's hooked!
• Finding some wonderful new friends and speedy training partners (hi Compass, Snort, Fratboy and the rest of the gang!).   It has been great not only hanging out and training with you guys, but also watching so many of you race so fast and reach so many milestones.  I'm in awe of how talented so many of you are!

What a fun year it has been!   I'm now looking forward to a little rest and preparing to come back stronger and faster next year (although I guess that I do actually have one more race - the annual "Gobbler 5k" in Nags Head on Thanksgiving morning with the girls).  I haven't planned my season yet, but I know that at the very least I am signed-up for Ironman 70.3 Raleigh and that will be one of my "A" races.  I will post my off-season plans soon.

Finally, I thought that it would be fun to go to www.trainingpeaks.com to look at my training totals for this year to date.   If anything these numbers are a slight under-estimate, as not everything made it on to Training Peaks, but here they are:

Bike:     2,389 miles
Swim:   158,393 yards
Run:      488 miles

Plus walking, strength work, flex/stretch etc. 

I'm off for a nap to start prepping to up these next year!

Finishing Rev3 SC

Crawford "bringing it home" on the Outer Banks

So that's it then....

....another season is in the books and it has ended somewhat on a down note....

I was supposed to be running the Outer Banks Half Marathon this weekend, but I have had to pull out and stay home.  Lots of good reasons, but I'm disappointed as it was to be a chance for a "fun run" and to hang out with friends, drink some beers and celebrate the end of what has, otherwise, been a very good season.  It will also break my string of successive runs in this event. 

Anyway, not much I can do.  Not only can I not shake this nasty bug (aches, breathing trouble, cough - yuck!), but SWMBO is even worse than me and there's really no way that I can leave her for the weekend with our marauding daughters!  On top of that, because of being unwell, I have done next to no workouts recently.   Oh well......

Good luck to all of my friends running this weekend - have fun and tip a few beers for me!  

I Didn't Die.... So I'm Calling That a Success!

I went out and ran eight miles this morning - the first "real" workout that I have managed since Rev.3 SC 70.3.  It certainly wasn't fast; my breathing is still a bit labored and I was a bit tight here and there, but at least I managed to get out there.  

I'm condident that with another week to recover from this nasty bug I will be able to run the Outer Banks Half Marathon next weekend, but at this point it will definitely be just a "fun run".  Anything around two hours will be fine with me considering how bad I felt just a couple of days ago.

In another sucess, I wore my new Brooks Racer ST5s this morning, with their neat new color scheme....


I love this shoe!  Very light and with a nice wide toe box for my big ol' flipper feet.  My old pair were showing signs of wear and these new ones have been sitting at home un-used for the past two weeks.  Pleased that I can wear them in a bit before next weekend.  They felt like slippers this morning!

OBX Half Marathon - Deja Vu

Ugh....   it has happened again!   What is it about this time of year?

My last race of the season is the Outer Banks Half Marathon on November 11th.   I'm treating it as an end-of-season jaunt but, never-the-less, thought that I probably had a personal best in me after my training for the 70.3 triathlon (which I still need to write a race report for!).

Not sure that will be possible now as I just did a light spin on the bike trainer - my first workout for a week - and I feel as if I have just pedaled up Alp d'Huez!  

Just like last year at about this time, I seem to have picked-up some sort of bug (or, more likely, a virus).  It started with our eldest daughter and then She Who Must Be Obeyed was knocked out by it over Fall Break.  Trouble breathing, the chills, aches, a cough and it seems to be a tough one to shake - I know several others suffering the same malaise locally.   The really annoying thing is that it's enough to make you feel like crap (and stop working out), but it's not quite enough to stop you working (at home), so for the past week I feel as if I have been fighting it, but getting nowhere, while still having to take calls, attend conference calls, review legal agreements and deal with other people's crap (as usual!).

Fingers crossed that I can get out for a few runs next week, otherwise November 11th may be ugly!

"come on, we can finish this in under six hours!"