Critique My Swim

My thoughts from watching the videos:
1- Hand alignment: I need to prevent my hand/arm from going so wide, especially when I breath. The best way to accomplish this for me is to focus on the position of my elbow -- for some reason I have an easier time judging my elbow's position than my hand position. Another way I will work to achieve proper hand position is to focus on pulling straight back and getting my hand lower in the water. (Watching the video again, my hand on my non-breathing side crosses over a tad and could be a bit wider.)
2- My hand is pointed nearly perpendicular to my direction of travel toward the end of my stroke. I think this issue is related to my wide elbows, and I think focusing on pulling down and straight back may help my hand position.

Here are two great photos (circled in red) of what I'm going for, courtesy of the Swim Smooth blog:



Two other things I will keep in mind are (a) flexing my wrist to initiate my pull and (b) keeping my elbows pointed toward respective forward corners of the pool during my catch and pull. Both these should help my high-elbow catch/pull.

In other news, I'm running up to 4 times per week now. I've run 30 minutes as 3 min. running/15 sec. rest, I've run 25 minutes straight, and I've run 20+ minutes with 3 minutes at <7:00/mile. So, the run is coming along. The heel is better, but not perfect. Still, it's getting better every week, so things are heading in the right direction. In fact, I'm heading out for my second run of the day today to see how 40 minutes in a day feels.

Cycling is hit and miss. I had an awesome ride one day (a trainer ride with intervals at 220 W while my HR is in the low 130s), and then the next day my power to HR ratio was crap again (250 bpm wasn't even getting 240 W). Hopefully more consistency and volume will help. I did have a killer 2.5 hr trainer ride culminating with a painful 5 minutes at 285 W.

Two final notes:
(1) Ozzy is now 32+ lbs and gaining 1.5 lbs a week. How big will he get?!?


(2) This week's song of the week:

(Marc Bolan called -- he wants his riff back.)

A Nice Ride

Yesterday Stacey and I headed up to Boulder to take advantage of the 55 degree weather (it was in the high 60s on Friday!). We were planning on riding up to Ward via Lefthand Canyon, but I decided to lead us along an alternate route through Jamestown, then south on Peak-to-Peak before descending into Ward.

The Jamestown route is quite a bit tougher than Lefthand. After passing through the town of Jamestown, the road pitches up more steeply, and the remainder of the ride alternates between what I'd guess are 5 and 10% gradients. The 5% gradient allows a bit of rest before cranking the effort back up again to surmount the next steep section.

At about 8,500 feet a few miles East of Peak-to-Peak we were rewarded with some of the best riding I've encountered. A smooth dirt road passed by an idyllic wood barn sitting toward the end of a prairie in the forefront of snow covered mountains. I stopped here for a moment to enjoy the quietness and take a few photos:



Even if I weren't training for an Ironman, I'd need to be fit enough to pedal to locations like this.

After nearly 3 hours of climbing, we reached Ward and rewarded (ha!) outselves with a nice cookie and orange soda. My legs felt the effort of 4 hours in the saddle, and I needed an easy day today.

Overall, training is going well. I am once again able to shift into the 53 x 12 when doing big-gear efforts, and on Friday I averaged 250+ W for each of my ten 5 minute big gear efforts.

I made one little mistake of running a bit too hard. My ankle was sore for a day, but now is feeling great again. I've got to remain disciplined and view my running as rehab and not as training. On the plus side, running is still easy (though I am going very slow).

On a final note, I registered for Triple Bypass (the Avon --> Evergreen edition) and am filling out my 2011 race schedule. I'm thinking of making the 70.3 World Champs my main goal for the season since I'm not confident I'll be going into CdA in perfect condition. Plus, I'll have the summer to train like a pro.

Running mostly pain free

I can't remember what info I included in my latest Achilles update, but here's the latest:
- for the next week, I'm to run 20 minutes as 2 minutes running/30 seconds walking every other day;
- the following week, I can run 20 minutes as 3 minutes running/15 seconds walking every other day;
- my PT expects that I'll have no Achilles pain, even when pressure is applied directly to the sensitive part of my heel, within two weeks; and
- I should be back to regular run training within six weeks.

All very good news. I did my second 20 minute run today and I had no pain whatsoever. There was a slight Achilles stretching sensation at the start of the run, but once that dissipated I felt good as normal. Even better, after the run I still had no pain. Running feels odd, and Stacey says I don't look nearly as smooth as I used to, but I'm just happy to be able to move again.

In other training news, I'm starting to gradually build my volume. Between traveling for Christmas and then being sick all last week, my training has been inconsistent at best. This week is off to a good start, however, with almost nine hours of riding, an hour and a half of swimming, and 40 minutes of running over the past three days. My power to HR ratio is still not good (e.g., 230 W during a 6 minute, 150 bpm big gear interval instead of the 250+ W I produce when fit), but I think a month of consistent training will have it back to acceptable ranges.

There are just over 5 months until IM CdA, so I've still got plenty of time to get fit.

Test Post

I just got the new MS Office and accidentally created a new "Blog Post" document. This post is a test of whether or not I've got things configured correctly.

I Ran!

On Friday, for the first time in about 4 months, I went for a run. I can't say "I ran so far" -- my PT limited me to five reps of 1 minute walking, 1 minute running. Still, there was no noticeable pain either while running or later on. Good news.

I've got another PT appointment this week, and I hope it'll be my last. Ideally my therapist will suggest immediately beginning a gradual built to regain my running strength that minimizes the risk of re-injuring my Achilles. I know that for the foreseeable future my routine needs to include calf exercises and stretches.

In other news, Ozzy, my 4 month old puppy, is putting on 1.5-2 pounds a week and now tips the scales at just under 25 pounds. He is looking more and more like a German Sheppard and less and less like his Border Collie mother.

IM Effort Test

In the next few weeks, I need to start upping the training volume (esp. on the bike on weekends) in preparation for IM CdA. As a baseline, today I did a trainer ride including 1 hour at 145 bpm -- right about IM effort for me -- to see what sort of power I'm putting out.

Results in 10 minute intervals:
143 bpm -- 227 W -- 79 rpm
146 bpm -- 225 W -- 77 rpm
146 bpm -- 222 W -- 78 rpm
146 bpm -- 220 W -- 75 rpm
146 bpm -- 217 W -- 76 rpm
145 bpm -- 216 W -- 75 rpm

So, overall 220 W at right about 145 bpm and 77 rpm, with a PE of 6.5/10. My wattage dropped by about 10W over the course of the hour, which is a bit more than I'd like to see at this duration and effort level. Anyhow, I expect these numbers to improve quite a bit once I get back into a more rigorous training regimen.

My Achilles continues to improve. I'm now doing run simulating exercises at physical therapy. My favorite exercise, although it doesn't simulate running, is standing on a balance board and throwing a medicine ball back and forth with my therapist. It's seriously entertaining and would probably make a good drinking game.

Running may be in my immediate future, perhaps as early as Tuesday. Right now I use aqua jogging as a test to see if it produces any pain, and after 20 minutes plodding up and down the pool this afternoon I was fine.

In other news, there's an interesting article about Chrissie Wellington over at the Guardian. The photo in the article reminds me of an ESPN video showing Wellington's freakish body:


Finally, for Lauren, a photo of this evening's dinner, Cobb salad (named after Robert H. Cobb, the salad's creator):

The recipe is from the cookbook you gave Stacey for Xmas.

A ride I'll hold off doing again until I'm near race-fit...

...but first, the boring stuff: My Achilles is doing pretty well. I've been to PT twice now, and there was some improvement in just the three days between sessions. The therapist is optimistic I'll be running again within the next couple of weeks. However, he wants me to do some aqua jogging in chest deep water first to see how that goes.

Otherwise, I'm doing a few lower leg stretches as well as some heel drops (though only to neutral -- i.e., I do the exercise on a flat surface so it's impossible for my heel to drop far enough to create an acute angle relative to my leg). I also do an odd exercise where I hold my ankle stable with one hand and rotate my heel to the side with the other. At PT today, I could feel a drastic improvement in movement while doing that exercise, which the therapist tells me is a good sign.

Without running, I'm left with riding to keep me sane. (Swimming is no help in this regard.) The weather in Denver has been unseasonably warm, and I've been able to ride outside every weekend in December. I had today off work, so I took advantage of the weather and drove up to Boulder for a trip up Flagstaff. From downtown Boulder to Gross reservoir is right around 13 miles, but it took me about an hour and a half to make the trip up. The trip down is much quicker -- 30 minutes, and I descended even slower than normal because of wet, sand-strewn roads.

The problem with this ride is it forces my HR up beyond my FTP HR. One section in particular had me up to 175 bpm at 4 mph, and that's with a compact crank. My fitness isn't great right now, but this ride would be tough even in pretty good shape. Still, it's a fun ride if you've got proper gearing.

Today's atypical cloud cover made me feel like I was back in Michigan, at least until I looked West:



A leg-burning climb (well, the entire way up is basically like this):


Damage from one of the many fires to scorch Boulder this fall:


Gross Reservoir, situated at just over 7,000 feet:




After Gross Reservoir, I was hoping to reach Peak-to-Peak Highway, but after heading down this dirt road for a while I came across a sign informing me that I still had 6.5 miles of dirt road climbing to go...no thanks:


The elevation profile and my HR -- I tried not to go much over 160 bpm:


I started heading up Gold Hill after descending Flagstaff, but I was too exhausted to get further than a few miles up. Following a few months without much training, I'm far from indefatigable.

Oh, and here's some grainy footage set to a bad Daft Punk remix of Tom Danielson setting a record for the climb: