Tag: training

Letting Go of the Perfect Workout

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inTent on VacationWhat’s wrong with this picture? It’s a beautiful day. No rain, no snow, mild temperatures in the mid-70s…and I’m on a fluid trainer. While I spin away at least ten other “riders” cycle past me…on my fluid trainer.

As they pass, I think about how I “should” be on the road today. I try to rework the day’s schedule in my head. I should’ve gotten up earlier so I could’ve done both my swim and my ride. I should’ve done the ride in the early morning and then squeezed the pool into the afternoon plans, somehow. I sure Kelsey would be on the road today.  Ugh, if I was really as committed to my training…

What you can’t see in this picture are my kids, but they’re there. They’re on the other side of the screen door, mostly getting along nicely. In addition to training, I have the secondary task of refereeing. Will bonked Hannah on the head. Hannah’s not letting Will see the screen and he can’t see the video. Will’s turn is longer than Hannah’s.

The whining and peace-keeping adds an interesting dimension to intervals. For sure it isn’t perfect.  It is damn good, though.

So why do I do this to myself? I was in the pool at 6:00am and had a great workout. I’m here on my trainer, working hard and focusing on my goal to improve my cycling strength. And I’m beating myself up by comparing myself to stories that I’m making up about other people. Contrary to some competitive thinking – this isn’t motivating me to dig in and train harder. I’m just feeling badly about the good work that I’m doing, right now.

No one likes feeling this way. I don’t want to ruin the workout. It’s time to “cough up that hairball” of crappy thinking and refocus.

 1. I’m an amateur athlete. I compete against other amateur athletes. We all have lives and responsibilities outside of triathlon. I like this about my fellow tri peeps.
2. I have other options. I could add more childcare, but I really don’t want to. I choose to mash-up my training with my family life. It makes me happy.
3. It’s called a PR. Personal Record. It’s not a record for training in someone else’s life or anyone else’s body. It’s doing my best with my own life, my own training, my own ability, and my own circumstances.

Hairball gone, I focus on pushing through the burning in my legs. I enjoy the view of the salt marshes across the road and the occasional cyclist and runner passing. I smile at the complaints about the slow internet and stalled videos as they sail through the screen door.  I take extra special pleasure in my 10 year old daughter’s warning that people are going look at me funny in the driveway. I’m letting go of perfect, and it’s damn good.

As a sports performance coach, I know this stuff. As a human being, I forget, I’m human.

Triathalife

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Pinch me. Is it really the end of May, already? Time since January has evaporated. My words and posts must have evaporated, too.

This break from writing for inTent, was unplanned and has felt beyond my control. My training didn’t come to an end, but it often didn’t match my training plans during the 2nd half of the off-season. What happened?    My life.Triathalife

Triathlon training is a juggling act – the natural state of training in three different sports. And sometimes life throws in more, additional (curve) balls than it’s possible to juggle without something dropping.  This has been my 2014.

While managing family challenges this winter and spring, I missed workouts. Frequently, I easily blamed our ridiculous winter, pool closings, etc. But a good deal of time, my body felt fatigued and I just didn’t “have it” that day. I was in my head a lot, trying to figure out how to get re-inspired and questioning my motivation and my commitment to my goals. I was always hoping the worst was behind us and that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. But 2014 just continued like a roller coaster ride.

About a month ago, I changed tactics and decided to accept my circumstances as my new norm. I looked at the big picture of my life and my personal values.  Understanding my intentions as a parent, provider, and athlete helped.  I went through my calendar and emails that were waiting for replies and started pulling back from the number of things I was trying to do. It wasn’t easy; I like to help people. But being halfway involved wasn’t really helping anyone. Being realistic about the time I have available for my whole life, has helped a lot.

I grabbed a Triathlete magazine on a recent flight to visit my 94 year old grandmother. The Performance Paradox, by Matt Dixon was the perfect read for me to put all of my 2014 experience with stress into a healthy perspective.

[For amateurs]…the goal is to maximize sporting performance within the restrictions imposed by the need to maintain a balanced and successful life. After all, if you win your local Olympic-distance triathlon but  you get fired, or your spouse leaves you, or your house is repossessed, it would be hard to argue that the win represents “success.” Thus, for most of us, success can be more broadly defined as improving in the sport, performing at work, thriving socially, and nurturing positive relationships (with spouse, partner, children and friends).  With this outlook, the goal of the amateur triathlete should be to maximize training load as one part of a vibrant, passionate and engaged life.  …the full picture of your life inside and outside sport [is] your global stress environment.  The amount of training you undertake needs to fit within the constraints of that environment in order for you to be successful.

Unintentionally, I’d been balancing my global stress.  There were simply periods where my recovery was slower and where non-training stress was enough to create fatigue. This is my triathalife. My training is just “one part of a vibrant, passionate and engaged life.”

The Performance Paradox article was based on elite triathlon coach Matt Dixon's forthcoming book, The Well-Built Triathlete.

 

plan B: mental conditioning

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Power of thoughtsI read an article last week about mental conditioning and competitive athletes. The inspiration in this piece was a 2008 Olympic swimmer who missed the wall on her turn during a medal race.  This cost her important time, but she recovered and made the podium.  The author described how she was not just physically, but mentally prepared for this moment.  She had missed the wall in trainings before, had practice working through the experience, and had trained herself mentally to overcome the negative thoughts that typically come with such a mistake.

About 200 yards into my  warm up, this morning, my left shoulder came out of its proper track and I was in pain. I tried another couple of strokes to see if it was just a random tweak, but it wasn’t.  The shoulder wouldn’t stay in track and the pain was enough that I knew working through it wasn’t the best choice for my long term goal.

My immediate response was implosion.  I was mad and could only see all the time I had invested as a waste.  With this stupid shoulder, I’d probably never be able to swim fast enough to be competitive at the level I was trying for.  I felt cursed and like there was no longer any point.  I was going home.

Falling apart in the deep end was a good thing;  I needed to swim back to the other end, anyway.  I went slow, slow, slow. And in the quiet, defeated 25 yards, it occurred to me that I may not be the fastest, but I still could swim.  And even if I needed to stay at my previous speed, with my crappy old stroke, it wasn’t the end of the world or my goal. There are lots of people (Kayla Wheeler came to mind) who swim competitively with fewer limbs than I’m lucky to have.

I fretted in the shallow end for a while.  Mid-fret, I started to massage the muscles in my back, down my arm, and around my shoulder.  Everything was tight and the pain was sort of radiating.  I stretched and massaged my left side for 5 minutes or so.  Optimistically, I decided to try again and just see what happened. It pulled out of the track with sharp pain right away.  So, I flipped on to my back and fretted some more.

The article about the mental recovery of the Olympic swimmer came to mind.  My situation was probably more mental than physical – even though I could identify my shoulder and the pain as the problem.  This is my shoulder.  It just has structural issues that aren’t going to be fixed without surgery and it’s not really bad enough to warrant surgery.  It’s gotten stronger with 6 months of physical therapy, but it’s not cured. It’s possible, actually likely that this will happen again and during a race. It is the only left shoulder that I have to work with, so what did I want to get out of this training-this practice? I need to stop fretting about what I can’t do. I need to figure out what I can do.  What can I do,  when this happens, to finish as strongly as I can.   I need to figure out my strategy and practice it. During a race, I won’t have the shallow end for a 5 minute fret and massage. How do I want to respond when / if this happens mid-race? And then I’m going to start practicing my answer, so I can be able to respond more competitively in the future.

My new intents for this training became: 1. to figure out what I can do when this happens, 2. to start talking myself through the strategy, and 3. to practice the combination of the adapted swim and a new mental message.  Each stroke was very deliberate as I paid close attention to my shoulder and to trying to understand what the limits were today.

I realized that my  torso rotation had a significant relationship to the pain in the shoulder when the left arm was out of the water.  I also realized that I experienced no pain or dislocation when rotated fully and took a breath on the left side.  I could reduce the pain with more rotation when my right arm was out of the water, but not when I took a breath on my right side.  I experimented and tried as many things as I know to try (which isn’t that much), but today breathing on my right side wasn’t going to work.  So I swam breathing every four breaths on the left and every two when I got winded. After a short period of time, I felt able to maintain this rhythm without straining my brain too hard.

For the last set, I decided I wanted to glimpse what I could accomplish with the back-up strategy.

8 x 50 @ 1:05 (descend 1-4 and 5-8)
1 -4:  :50, :49, :47, :45
5-8:   :45, :44, :42, :40

Trepidation is the best word I can come up with to describe what I felt in the first few 50s. Once I hit  :45, I knew I had a little more, without risk of additional injury or pain.  I was right.

Does this session mean I won’t shut down and throw my pool toys if this happens again? Doubtful.  I’m just hoping the practice of the stroke and the new mental strategy gets me back in the game sooner. And un/fortunately I’m sure there will be other opportunities to practice this.

There was one other thought that probably helped me get back in the game and deal with this.  I thought, if I can’t be a strong swimmer, then the bike is going to be even more critical to my time. Oh, crap, I’ve got to figure this out.  (I still hate the bike.)

Negative Splits – Positive Thoughts

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Garmin - lap 1Workout #1: Endurance Run with negative split
Type: Run Planned Duration: 1:20
Description: 15 min gradual warm-up, the keep effort in check, last 15:00=steady state effort (aim for ~half marathon pace, strong and steady)

As I was “gradually” warming up, I started thinking about my target pace for the run. I was thinking 8:40/8:45 for the first 1:05:00 and then maybe 8:25/8:30 for the 15:00 negative split.  Do-able, I thought.

About 15 minutes into the run, I realized that my pace was under 8:40 and feeling like pretty low effort.  I started to worry that I was going too fast and that I wasn’t going to have enough left in the tank for the negative split. This is also when I realized that I have this worry a lot.

Mental instruction review: “keep effort in check”.  Ok, I decided to primarily pay attention to my heart rate (note: I haven’t used heart rate for training before).  I decided that I felt like my effort was in check around 142 bpm – high 130s on the flats/downhills and up to 145 on the uphill.  It felt like a happy run.  25 min into the run, my pace was down to 8:29, but my heart rate was “in check”.  I started my worrying again and trying to figure out why this was happening.  Maybe it was just one of  those really great runs.  Maybe it was just the perfect temperature – I do love 45 degrees. Maybe I was getting stronger.  maybe I didn’t go as hard as I thought I had on the computrainer the day before. Whatever it was I decided to try to just accept  it and enjoy it.  I was keeping my effort in check, I kept telling myself that I’d have plenty in the tank for the negative split. (And it was pretty awesome.)

The course was an out-and-back.  At the turn around, I was still feeling strong, fast and still pretty awesome. And then it hit me; woosh!   Damn, it was a tailwind!

As I turned into a full face of cold wind, it was so clear I laughed out loud. With all my theories and worries I,  tailwind never came close to crossing my mind. Wow! What a dope slap. (I’m still cracking myself up.)

On the return, I kept my plan and maintained the same effort level.  I watched my pace creep up, of course. And I had to fight my impulse to kick it up to keep the faster pace showing on my Garmin. Every workout has a purpose – this workout was a negative split at 1/2 marathon pace, so killing myself for the Garmin display’s sake, was the wrong choice. I finished the split and maintained my 142 bpm average.  Pace: 8:37 for the first split.

Garmin - lap 2The negative split  portion of the run was almost a loop, so I assumed the wind would be heads & tails.  I decided to run the negative split by heart rate vs. pure pace and targeted between 145 & 150 bpm for an average pace – which seemed like a reasonable bump up for simulating a 1/2 Marathon race pace.  (I was completely making this up, too – I have no idea what my heart rate has ever been in a 1/2.)  It panned out interestingly.  My pace was 8:10 – which was lower than the 8:25 I had guesstimated.  But I felt great – had plenty in the tank and was feeling pretty awesome again.

I can’t actually recall a single time when I completely emptied the tank and run out of energy to finish. And still, I’m always worrying about “saving enough to finish”.  I think that in this realization, there’s a huge opportunity for me to train differently.  If I want to go faster (which I do), I think it’s time to start using something other than moving pace – and saving enough to finish as my primary metrics.

Let the research begin – HR, Power, Thresholds – bring it on! Any suggestions for books, websites, or places to start?

New Year’s Wisdom

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Winter WaterA Polar Bear Swim to kick off 2014!

This sounded like the perfect way to start a year that was filled with bold goals and all sorts of crazy wishes.

Jeff & I couldn’t make the Christmas Day swim, so making our own event just a week later seemed like a decent balance of daring and reasonable. (this is “reasonable” per the endurance athlete, endorphin brain, of course.)

We picked our time: 10:00 am.  There was discussion of a possible run after we warmed back up.  The perfect start to the year.

The beauty of moving up into the higher age groups, is gaining experience and wisdom.

“We should probably check to see if the reservoir’s frozen.”

nICE 2Freezing cold water is one thing,
frozen is entirely different!

Neither Jeff nor I were chipping through the ice to carry out this mastermind plan.

Plan B: Kick off the New Year with a day of rest.  Makes sense.  It’s going to be a very busy year. I’ll need my energy.

Tomorrow she moves mountains

More on Swim Pacing

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Set back to come backAfter reading my last swim post, “All in a winter’s swim“, my coach commented,

Pacing takes practice.

She also included the following link to a great blog post about the value of swim pacing.  http://www.feelforthewater.com/2013/12/but-i-was-just-chasing-ray.html.  (for those of us who love data this article will not disappoint.)

Reading this completely confirmed my summary: Finally, in hindsight I can figure out that …this means I went out faster than I could maintain.

Coincidentally, the next workout my coach had planned was a perfect opportunity to test this hypothesis (and my willingness to slow down to go faster).

Workout #1: Swim
Planned Duration: 0:45
Description: (warm-up) 3 x 100 @ 1:45 100 easy (25 backstroke/ 25 free) 3 x 100 @ 1:45 100 easy (25 backstroke/ 25 free) 100 BTTW FAST

My Post Workout Comments:
Rather than focusing on speed, I focused on good form and being strong. Specifically: “head down, don’t lift head on breath, relaxed hands, core engaged like vacuum exercise, rotate, & kick from butt” –  repeat

1st 3×100@1:45: 1=1:30, 2=1:38, 3=1:40
ok – still went out too fast on the 1st 100 – regroup, try again.
2nd 3×100@1:45: 1=1:35, 2=1:35, 3=1:37  YES!
What struck me most was that both sets actually averaged 1:36.  BUT…I wasn’t as fatigued on the second set AND I felt like I could have kept going and maintained the pace for another 200 yards.  I can only imagine this bodes well for wishing to ride a bike and then run after a swim, as well. I was incredibly pleased with the results.
100 BTTW fast: 1:25 (a personal best)

I was thrilled with a PB on this 100, but even more so with having maintained my even pace.  This feels like amazing progress for me.

Swim Smooth logoOn a side note.  The website, Swim Smooth, that Kelsey sent me to is a fantastic resource for swim information. This is another great post on how the most improved swimmers made the greatest improvements in 2013.