Triathlon training, equipment and tips from a wannabe/dilettante/family man.
Best of luck to all participants!
Bracebridge will be my last triathlon of this year. I decided I couldn’t do any more triathlons until I can make bike rides of 2 hours or more a regular part of my lifestyle. I knew this about a week before the race, and to be honest, I found it liberating. I love triathlon and I hope to be doing it the rest of my life, but leading up to the race, and pretty much all season long, I felt guilt about miles I wasn’t getting in (especially on the bike).
I had done a pretty good job of exercising on the whole, but when I wanted to do Yoga or Pilates or Crossfit or Burbathlon I often did, yet at the end of the week (or whenever) I’d look at my mileage on Endomondo and cringe. I don’t want to cringe anymore, I want to have fun.
I (or I should say, we) do have a few runs and endurance races in our near future. First is the Levac Attack back for 2013. We’ll be running the ‘Hard Taco’ event at 11.2 km. We’re hoping Shark Boy will bike it beside us, with the Lightning Kid in the Chariot except for the last few hundred meters where we’ll try and get him to run/walk. It’s on September 7th; if you’d like to donate, please click here. We’d love to have you if you’d like to run it too, registration ends August 29th. There’ll be great t-shirts, a bouncy castle for the kids, post race food from the Pickle Barrel, you name it.
The next week is a double-header with the Terry Fox run for the whole family on the Saturday. We’ll probably do 5 km with both boys in a combination of Chariot and Bike, much like last year.
The next day (Sunday) I’ll be doing a trail run with the 5 Peaks series. I had great fun with them last year, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to fit in more of their races this year. There’s a kid event I’m hoping I can get Shark Boy to do… maybe even the Lightning Kid, who knows?
Last but not least, Shark Boy will have a return appearance at the Kids Of Steel Duathlon run by Family Fun Fit on the weekend of September 21st. That day has another big event, but I’m not going to talk about it in this post.
Triathlon season may be over for me, but the multi-sport fitness adventures continue!
On Sunday, I tried this WOD from AllAroundJoe, which combines swim intervals, burpees and sit-ups.
I completed the 5 rounds of 200m swim, 10 burpees, 10 sit-ups in 25 minutes flat, then did the 800m swim (after stopping to put on my wet-suit... doing burpees in a wet-suit on a hot summer day isn’t ‘hard’… it’s stupid… important to know the difference).
On Tuesday, I did a modified bike #WorkoutHack with less hill repeats due to the crazy heat and humidity. Check this out:
On Wednesday I tried our corporate gym’s ‘Tabata’ class. A warm-up, then 6 different Tabatas (most involved altenating whole body exercises on the 20 second work intervals). It was… intense, to say the least.
Friday was another hot day, and my weapon of choice was a Burbathlon. I’m hoping training in the heat gets my body acclimatized to it should the weather be as punishing on race day. I used this article to shape the kinds of strength work I’m trying to build into my Burbathlon workouts.
Fitness bloggers love to discuss what their mantra is; what do they repeat to themselves to keep digging deep and find the strength to keep going when they simply don’t want to anymore? Seek The Hard… I may have found mine.
What’s Yours?
To prepare myself for the day, I’ve actually set alerts on my Garmin which I never do, but I’m hoping they keep me mentally focused: swim alerts for every 500 m so I know how I’m doing, and a bike alert to let me know if I let my cadence get below 75 RPM. I wanted one for my run too, but they don’t seem to have one for pace, and the heart rate one is based on Zones as opposed to straight percentage of maximum, and I just didn’t have the confidence to peg my run performance that way. Some things can still be done by ‘feel’.
Where’s your personal line on how much to go by ‘feel’ and how much to track the numbers? Can a race be a tune-up, or should the attitude always be ‘there is no tomorrow’ on Race Day? Can it be both?
It’s hard for me to write about an event that I know will be covered by others (and they’ll do a better job of it too) and since this was a social event rather than a training session or a race, it’s even more out of my wheelhouse, but here goes nothing…
Saturday May 4th (happy Star Wars Day!) was the eve of the Goodlife Toronto Marathon, and several Fitfluential Ambassadors were getting together to welcome Brian, the Pavement Runner to town and wish him good luck on the race. The whole thing was put together by Krysten, the Darwinian Fail. They’re both great sources of leadership and inspiration in the running community, so any meeting of the minds between the two was sure to be the place to be!
The choice of venue/activity was carbo-loading at the Old Spaghetti factory; I don’t need a race as an excuse to eat pasta… let’s hope this doesn’t set my DietBet back too far! One of my blogger heroes, Janice the Fitness Cheerleader got in touch and we carpooled to downtown Toronto for the event. (You’ll notice I always include their blogger name – luckily my brain managed to stick to actual given names, but my instinct was always to use online handles, like they were superheroes with secret identities or something!)
We sat at the end of the table and were soon joined by Phaedra from Blisters and Black Toenails who organized the great #BostonStrongTO run, in short, another online running community leader (do you see a pattern yet?). Go to her blog for another recap of the night.
It was the first time I’d met people who I only knew online in real-life (unless I count the old days of internet dating *shudder*). I have to admit there’s an underlying awkward vibe that goes largely unacknowledged, but I think everyone feels it all the same. The good news is that the crowd is so like-minded in their interests – running, social media, triathlon, blogging, health and wellness that good conversation is pretty much non-stop. There was just a lot of warm, fuzzy feelings as everyone wanted to support the racers, who wanted to support the community of Boston. If you weren’t racing, you still had training or wellness or blogging goals that everyone wanted you to be able to achieve too. I even learned about a couple of kids Tri events that bear further looking into…
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| It starts with a hill and a path into the woods…. |
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| The Big Hill to Climb |
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| Dips in the trail… |
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| This pic was taken in a colder season… but you can see the lunge with a swing. |
Lindsay from the Lean Grean Bean had the wonderful idea to leverage a little Pinterest and help a bunch of bloggers bring attention to some of their older posts. Blame me or my equipment, but I generally don’t have the most jaw-dropping pictures… I do know that visuals are important in blogs, as walls of text turn people off.
I picked 5 posts based on 1.) they had to have a ‘Pinnable’ image and 2.) they represent the real heart of what this blog is about. Here are my 5 posts:
I also went to SquareOne Crossfit for the WOD. It was Snatch focused (I promised myself I wouldn’t laugh…) and that worried me a little. I was eager to learn, but I knew it was highly technical and I had no experience. I probably even under-estimated it, as it involved every part of the body in complex, compound movements. I practiced with just a PVC pipe, then a bar, then a bar with 10 pound plates (for a total of a mere 35 pounds) just to get the form down. I found I’d either do a good ‘jump’ where you rise from the first squatted position to get the bar flying up high, but not get good positioning under the bar for the latter squat, or the reverse – I’d drop nice and low, but before really fully popping my hips out.
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| The WOD |
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| That one guy always forgets to count… |
That session was a lot like my first, where I wasn’t completely demolished by the end, because working on skill meant taking a lighter weight. I’m glad, because the snatches frankly terrified me. Lower back, shoulders, knees are all ripe for injury on that move from what I could tell… plus there’s always the chance you’ll pull the bar into your face or drop it on your own head. If I’m smart (I’m not) I’ll work on practising the moves for my muscle memory.
Friday: As of this morning, I have lost 4.8 lbs in my DietBet which puts me about 59% of the way there 8 days in. Basically, I’m counting calories. I’m an engineer, and I believe in the laws of thermodynamics. When calories burned > calories ingested, weight comes off, and every other kind of weight loss trick is merely gaming that system. It also helps me to know just how much I can get away with during the day. I don’t have a cheat day or cheat food really because this is a temporary measure (the whole explanation is here). So booze and sweets are off the menu (some of Shark Boy’s ice cream may have fallen into my mouth on Sunday) and I try to keep portions under control with small healthy snacks (cottage cheese, fruits, veggies) between meals.
I also went to SquareOne Crossfit for the WOD. It was Snatch focused (I promised myself I wouldn’t laugh…) and that worried me a little. I was eager to learn, but I knew it was highly technical and I had no experience. I probably even under-estimated it, as it involved every part of the body in complex, compound movements. I practiced with just a PVC pipe, then a bar, then a bar with 10 pound plates (for a total of a mere 35 pounds) just to get the form down. I found I’d either do a good ‘jump’ where you rise from the first squatted position to get the bar flying up high, but not get good positioning under the bar for the latter squat, or the reverse – I’d drop nice and low, but before really fully popping my hips out.
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| The WOD |
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| That one guy always forgets to count… |
That session was a lot like my first, where I wasn’t completely demolished by the end, because working on skill meant taking a lighter weight. I’m glad, because the snatches frankly terrified me. Lower back, shoulders, knees are all ripe for injury on that move from what I could tell… plus there’s always the chance you’ll pull the bar into your face or drop it on your own head. If I’m smart (I’m not) I’ll work on practising the moves for my muscle memory.
Friday: As of this morning, I have lost 4.8 lbs in my DietBet which puts me about 59% of the way there 8 days in. Basically, I’m counting calories. I’m an engineer, and I believe in the laws of thermodynamics. When calories burned > calories ingested, weight comes off, and every other kind of weight loss trick is merely gaming that system. It also helps me to know just how much I can get away with during the day. I don’t have a cheat day or cheat food really because this is a temporary measure (the whole explanation is here). So booze and sweets are off the menu (some of Shark Boy’s ice cream may have fallen into my mouth on Sunday) and I try to keep portions under control with small healthy snacks (cottage cheese, fruits, veggies) between meals.
Dieting is generally decried as a method to lose weight. The right way to do it is to adapt good nutritional principles and exercise regularly to avoid any ‘yo-yo’ effects. Dieting generally tries to get desired results within a limited time frame, often by introducing extreme, dogmatic restrictions – no this, no that. Smart lifestyle decisions are like financial investments – it’s best to take a long view.
Something called Dietbet came along a little while ago. The premise was simple: put money down on the idea of you losing weight. The goal is to lose 4% of your current body weight in 4 weeks. Somebody smarter than me decided that was realistic and within healthy limits. You can not ‘weigh out’ early, and there is a system to date-stamp the weigh-ins using pictures and ‘words-of-the-day’. The pot, which is the sum total of everyone’s bet buy-in minus the administration fee is split by everyone who makes the goal.
The idea caught on like wild-fire; having cash on the line seems to be a great motivator, and it also taps into our social instincts like wanting to be part of a group and competitiveness. I’ve had several opportunities to join Dietbets with other fitness bloggers, but I’ve always turned down the opportunity. There’s the anti-diet reasons I mentioned above, there was the lack of real desire to lose weight and the knowledge that with life being as it is, I wouldn’t stick to all the restrictions I’d need to in order to achieve the goal.
I signed up for a bet that started April 17th. Why? Tell ‘Em Jerry!
Long story short (on details at least), I had an old friend let me know he felt I was letting myself go, and while I first accepted the message as heartfelt concern, the razzing and jokes that preceded that and followed it got on my nerves. You can rib me, and I will let it roll off my back and laugh along, or you can speak earnestly and have me listen to what you have to say, not both. So I’m going to let my annoyance be my motivation; the best revenge is, as they say, living well.
Furthermore, I know there’s going to be a period where I’m going to deviate from the nominally healthy long-term lifestyle in the other direction. On vacation for example, there will be less workouts, less intensity, and more calories. It’s a fact of life, so why not swing once to the skinny, then to the not-so-skinny. My life just has a certain amount of variability, and while that can be stressful both mentally and physiologically, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
You can follow the bet here, but I won’t be posting about it on the blog that much – I simply don’t find the topic of weight loss to be that interesting. If you’re thinking about joining a game, I can recommend Katy from Fit In Heels, hers is starting in a few days.