I love data analysis. Here’s a look at a snapshot of my week 17 volume and pace comparisons from three different 18 week training periods.
Notes:
The other two periods were 2003/2004–I’m much older now.
I’m down 20-25 pounds now from where I was for the other two periods.
I’m running 3 days/week now instead of 4 back then
In 2004 I pretty much stopped training at the end of the program…only 50 miles of running the last month, and that included two 20s. That doesn’t come into play here, but explains the different performance on race day between 2003 and 2004.
I don’t plan on doing this often, but I’m hoping it puts me in a good frame of mind to set a PR.
Michael Phelps doesn’t owe you a damn thing. He doesn’t owe you/us/anybody another gold medal or an explanation about “what happened”. Stop using words like “disaster” and “disappointing” to describe anything he does or doesn’t do at the Olympics.
Ditto for every other athlete competing there in every other sport.
Ditto for every other athlete competing at any other level.
I swim, but I’m not really a swimmer. My longest workouts of an 18 week triathlon training plan are about what real swimmers–even the ones who are a long way from being Olympic athletes-do as a warmup before their main set. And I go about half their speed.
And they do this daily.
At 4:00 am.
And again at 4:00 pm.
For years.
With no real off-season.
What these athletes do is nothing like the trip to the gym that most of us take to “work out”. They aren’t chatting with friends between sets, listening to a 10 song playlist and calling it quits, or watching “Saved By The Bell” reruns on the screen of the cross trainer while they work to the point of almost sweating. I’ve had swimmers who weren’t even D1 level tell me their stories about swimming through their teammates’ vomit floating on the surface of the pool and having their goggles fill with tears from the pain they were suffering during training.
During the cycling road race, I heard one of the commentators mention an East German training tactic of putting a cyclist on the trainer in front of a concrete wall and having them ride for hours looking at nothing, just to build mental toughness. How mentally tough do you have to be to spend all your training staring at a black line on the bottom of a pool?
So, in closing, get off the guy’s ass. He’s been staring at the bottom of a pool for 20 years. So what if he wanted to coast into this Olympics with (relatively) little training and just enjoy the experience of being there and have some fun? He’s done this long enough to know he’ll get what he earned, and that’s something he has to come to terms with on his own (*UPDATE* Coach Vance points this out better than I did after Phelps’ post-race interview). He’s smart enough to know that he isn’t going to be the best in the world for the next 300 years either.
He doesn’t have to answer to anyone but himself.
The second we see swimmers jump into the pool and splash around like idiots instead of actually trying to win a race, it will be time to complain. Until then, anyone who is “disappointed” when watching (from their sofas or broadcast chairs) any of these athletes’ performances should hit the off button, get up , and go do something about it themselves.
Rinse and repeat for NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA sports, and all little league competition.
Here’s the “more with less” personified. Or wait, maybe this is less with more considering the production quality. Either way, if you’d like to play along with Fred Eaglesmith’s “Spookin The Horses”, here’s a play along video. I will do more of these by request if the demand is there. As Ol’ Roadhog once said, “I got a lot of requests for this one, but we’re gonna do it anyway.”
We had a pretty rainy weekend here with Debby sitting out in the Gulf. No storms, just a slow rain. Maybe not the optimal weather to go out and run in, but at least it wasn’t hot…right?
I did 8 miles in the rainiest part of the day yesterday and took it pretty easy up until the last mile. I’m hoping to test out with an 8:3x 10k in a couple of weeks, so I was happy to get that last mile in at 7:35 after having run 7 already in squishy wet shoes. I used to run in squishy shoes all the time and it didn’t seem to bother me, but I’m not liking it so much lately. The upside is that I only have one pair of runners right now, so they’re too squishy to go do anything today other than swim, bike, stretch, or do yoga. So I don’t feel any pressure to work out at all.
70.3 tapering doesn’t drive me nuts the way marathon tapering does for a few of reasons. First of all, the taper is two weeks instead of three. I think I’d actually do better with a two week taper for the marathon as well, but I’d have to train for another one to prove that, and I’m not that interested in it right now. Ouch.
Also, the taper doesn’t provide much rest for the training program I’ve been using. The workouts let up a little, but not that much until the second week. It’s just a slight drop off for the first week, and I’m so eager to be lazy at this point that it doesn’t feel like enough. I can’t wait until next week when the real drop off happens. At least for the first couple of days anyway, then I’ll start freaking out and thinking my fitness is going to disappear.
The biggest sanity saving factor for triathlon tapers is that you can use up all that extra energy practicing transitions and freaking out over how you are going to pack. Inevitably, this leads to searching the internet, reading blogs, and watching people give transition advice on YouTube.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far: 90% of the people on YouTube have no idea what the hell they are talking about and pack way too much crap.
I saw one video that was touting a 30 second transition. Now, after the guy got his wetsuit off (that doesn’t count for transition time?) there was 34 seconds of edited video showing him transitioning. He didn’t have his shoes in his pedals and spent most of his time on that. I do give them props for using music that sounds like it’s from “The A Team” or “C.H.I.P.S.” though.
And the bags people pack are amazing. I’ll admit to packing two pair of goggles, but that’s about where my excess packing stops. And I eat a lot during one of these events, but I get as much of that as I can from the aid stations. I’ve even cut back on the things I packed for my last race. Not bringing my own post-race beverages this time. No HRM either.
That’s right homie…I’m going for broke on the bike. I’ve decided on a minimum speed I need to hit my time goal, and I’m going to maintain it. If I bonk the run because of it, so be it. Bike is my best opportunity to meet my goal.
Speaking of the bike–a bento box with a couple of GUs, one sports drink bottle and one water bottle are all I bring with me on the bike, and the water is mostly used for, ahem, “flushing”. I’ve seen bikes with gallons of liquid on them and GUs taped all over the frame. I do have one other bottle on my bike, but that’s packed with a spare tube, tire change tools, and CO2.
I plan on picking up a couple of minutes off my last race just by practicing transitions.
T1 should be pretty fast, it’s basically three actions.
Put on helmet
Fasten race belt.
Unrack bike
I’ll be wiping my feet while I’m doing these and will use my water bottle to clean any remaining sand off my feet out on the course before putting them in my shoes. There’s no problem having enough food and liquid to get to the first aid station at 18 miles.
T2 will be take a little longer–six actions, and I’m wearing socks for the run.
Rack bike
Sit down
Remove helmet (while wiping feet)
Put on socks
Put on shoes
Grab visor while standing up
The biggest hiccups I’ve had in my practice transitions so far have been not leaving my shoes wide open enough (on bike and run) to get my feet into them easily.
And I won’t leave you hanging. Here are two videos that are actually helpful from Dave Scott, who knows a little bit about going fast.
The ubiquitous multi-touch edge-to-edge displays and pv-celled roofs are cool, but I think my favorite thing about the future is that all adults will be attractive and all children well-behaved.
A guy came by yesterday selling a cleaner than works wonders on just about everything. I stared at the sun for a second, hoping I could muster up a sneeze I could aim in his direction and ask, “How is it with germs?” No dice.
Sad day. Whether you are with Apple or again’ ’em, you have to admit that Steve Jobs did more that any other single person to raise our expectations of Apple and every other tech company.
And now, a 1984 episode of “The Facts of Life” entitled “Dear Apple” where Jo has a Siri-esque conversation with a computer named “Steve”. “The Facts of Life” writers were visionaries as well.