March 2012 – The Indefatigable Iron Rogue

March 29, 2012

Burbathlon Thoughts

Last week I got a chance to do not one, but two Burbathlons, and I tried a few new things.

On Tuesday the weather was warm enough for shorts (in March! in Toronto!) so off I went. I had a water-bottle belt packed, but I’d been missing the bottle itself and I figured I’d hydrated enough in the morning to not need anything along the way… WRONG!

I found my mouth parched fairly soon after starting. I ended up doing a little extra hill work with a climb straight up the Centennial Park Ski hill and another going up the service road (in addition to the hill that takes me out of the Etobicoke Creek Valley to the park, and the berm near Eglinton road. I mixed in some squats, single-leg squats, push-ups, spiderman crawls and sprints (not necessarily in that order) into the overall run. I also took the opportunity to start to prepare for the Spartan Race by practicing some jiu-jitsu rolls.

Jiu-Jitsu practices a lot of break-falling to avoid being hurt when being thrown, but at higher levels you can use them to dive over obstacles and land in a roll. Unfortunately I’m so rusty that I was mostly practicing them in the grass from a walk. Still, if I keep up the practice, maybe I’ll pull one off on race day.

For Friday’s workout, I swore I’d be better hydrated. Pulling off random jumps and strength exercises (never mind jiu-jitsu rolls) with a bottle in the small of my back didn’t seem too comfortable, but it gave me a chance to try out a piece of equipment I bought last season with this sort of thing in mind…

Salomon hydration packs seem to get good reviews (and I’ll write up and post my own soon enough)… I liked the idea of this one not only for hydration, but as a good way to have extra pockets for gadgets like my phone, camera, iPod, whatever. Pockets are always hard to find on running gear, don’t you think? I decided not to do rolls while wearing it though, since the hydration bladder might burst.

Speaking of gadgets, this was the first outing with the new Garmin Forerunner 910XT. I’d lost my Forerunner 305, and I think I bought the new one out of some kind of bout of self-pity/retail therapy. After the workout I joked with someone that my dirty little secret is that I’m only into multi-sport fitness for the toys. Yet another gear review post for me to write, but I will say that I got up and running with it without having spent a lot of time to set it up beforehand.

The other bit of gear I stuffed into the vest pockets was a skipping rope. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m interested in some of the benefits barefoot/natural running has to offer without being willing to go ‘all-in’ on the craze. This video really caught my attention:

What struck me is that he’s actually going pretty fast and his technique looks much closer to ‘normal’ running than most stuff I’ve seen. I have real problems not heel striking even when I’m actively working on this sort of thing, but I loved the idea of using the jump-rope to implement the ‘natural’ stride, so I gave it a try for around 100m or so on this workout.

With the spring coming, I’m looking forward to doing more Burbathlon workouts, and maybe getting some of my own video to share.

March 15, 2012

Bunch of Links

Some Good Reads for Your Web-surfing (do we still call it that?) pleasure:

Over at Healthy Tipping Point, Caitlin witnessed a (Modern) Pentathlon and did a nice little write-up of this multi-sport anomaly.

This season has been lousy for snow and skiing, but still I enjoy reading about it from time to time. Here’s an article about the Birkebeiner cross-country ski race in Wisconsin from Outside Magazine. They even go over how you can prepare for the race (training, nutrition and general skiing guidelines).

I now realize I’m sourcing two articles from Outside (from the same author even!). Here they talk about the benefits of triathlon to health and fitness in general, and why this is a great time for the sport.

March 14, 2012November 27, 2016

Best Laid Plans

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” – Woody Allen

After building this year’s Race Calendar, the next logical step was to build a training plan. Obviously the way to attain goals is to stick to a plan that will build you up to the point where you can achieve them. I wanted to write something up that was structured, and stand on the shoulders of giants by following or adapting something made by professionals.

I like the book Training Plans for Multisport Athletes by Gale Bernhardt. Each chapter is a different training plan for a different scenario: they differ by athlete’s level of experience, the event type and length, and the athlete’s goals/expectations. Looking into the book, I figured that my plan should resemble one of three plans:

Faster Olympic Distance Performance. This is basically what I want to achieve, but the plan involves 2 workouts in different disciplines a day, even in the General Preparation phase (where we basically prep the body for the training to come). It just isn’t terribly realistic for my schedule and life, and most structured training plans look more or like this one.
6 Weeks to an Olympic Triathlon for Athletes with Limited Time. This one is nice and simple and also geared not only to my race type/distance, but also my schedule. I do have more than 6 weeks to play with, and the plan isn’t structured with regards to types of workout (speed, tempo, long distance/endurance). I wanted to get a little better in regard to having more specific training sessions, so this one isn’t ideal.
Multisport Fitness Plan. This is my favourite as it is more of a lifestyle plan for athletes who like to do multisport, and allows for some cross-training (e.g. basketball, hockey, or jiu-jitsu in my case) in your schedule. It isn’t geared for specific race goals, but it is 24 weeks long, which was just about right at the time I made my race calendar plan.

I struggled with trying to hybridize these plans as the structures got pretty complicated, but I liked the idea of a general preparation phase (of about 4 weeks) so I decided to focus on that.

		Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
Week #	DATE	27/02	28/02	29/02	01/03	02/03	03/03	04/03/
1	Main	Swim	Run	Spin	Rest	Spin	Run	Circuit
	Backup	Spin	Circuit	Yoga	Pushups	Swim	Yoga	Bike Trainer
	Sec. Backup	Jitsu	Body Blast	Circuit	Jitsu	Yoga
	DATE	05/03	06/03	07/03	08/03	09/03	10/03	11/03
2	Main	Swim	Run	Spin	Rest	Spin	Run	XC Ski
	Backup	Spin	Circuit	Yoga	Pushups	Swim	Yoga
	Sec. Backup	Jitsu	Body Blast	Circuit	Jitsu

Knowing how chaotic my life was I tried to match each day to what might be available in terms of work schedule (meetings near lunch would eliminate lunchtime workouts), gym group exercise schedule (spin classes for bike workouts, spacing strength workout apart appropriately), and other extra-curricular considerations like when I would most need to be at home. Each day had not only a backup workout in case I missed my first shot (pool closures, bad weather, work related rescheduling), but a backup-backup workout. So every day had a primary, secondary and tertiary workout option. I included possible workouts like Yoga, the 100 pushups workouts, group exercise at the gym, and jiu-jistu. I tried not to plan rest days (the purple field is a tentative/possible rest day), because I knew they might happen unbidden (based on experience), but boy did I ever underestimate that!

Here’s what happened.

		Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
Week #	DATE	27/02	28/02	29/02	01/03	02/03	03/03	04/03/
1	Main	Swim 1500m	REST			Spin	Run
	Backup
	Sec. Backup
	DATE	05/03	06/03	07/03	08/03	09/03	10/03	11/03
2	Main
	Backup
	Sec. Backup

I started off sticking to the plan, but by Wednesday, Shark Boy had gotten sick with a fever and throat infection which kept him miserable throughout the day and woke him up several times a night. After waking up, he was generally inconsolable for almost an hour each time. Through visits to 2 after-hours clinics and his pediatrician, we ruled out strep throat and ear infections. The wake-ups continued when the fever was down through drugs, and when he had no fever at all anymore. Without turning this into a family drama post, suffice it to say that sleep was hard to come by – to a degree I hadn’t experienced since he was a newborn. The red in the table represents days I didn’t do any exercise at all – forced rest days.

I managed to get it together enough to attend a spin class on the Friday and on Saturday I decided I would use the scant time I had to do a tempo run. My thinking was that since I couldn’t go long, I could at least go fast. I had obviously contacted some kind of infection of my own; I was coughing throughout the day, but I had read that you can train with a cold, as long as it’s not in your chest. Does having a cough count? Apparently it does, because I was sick as a dog by Monday and took Tuesday off work. I spent the rest of the week recovering and trying to help Shark Boy do the same.

I’m not sure when I felt physically up to training again, because mentally I had just about given up on the idea of committing to anything (even though I’ve paid for a couple of race registrations already – see the Race Calendar). I was really down in the dumps, and I guess I needed the entire week to regroup.

The good news:

Shark Boy still wakes up a few times a night, but he’s much easier to get back to sleep again. He’s feeling well and his disposition during the day is delightful; just like it used to be.
I lost about 3-4 pounds somehow during all this.
At the time of this writing I’ve gone for a run and a spin class this week already.

Getting back into training after a hiatus is an injury trap for me; I had to tell myself the following to make sure I eased back into it (yes, apparently I talk to myself on Twitter):

I’m happy to be doing something physical again. I don’t feel up to anything hardcore (or doing any strength work) yet, and I don’t have a structured plan, but I do have the desire again at least.