Easy rider

I took it easy the past couple of weeks. On Monday April 26, I rode 18 miles on the mountain bike and found that it needed a new cassette. The new chain kept on slipping over the older cogs. Since I did not have a mountain cassette I used a SRAM 9 speed road cassette. The biggest cog is a 23, which on a mountain bike looks minuscule.

On Tuesday I rode on rollers for an hour, including a hard 20 minutes. I also recalibrated my power meter and was able to ride 320+ watts for 20 minutes.

On Wednesday I ran 6.5 miles in the hills.

On Thursday I did some coaching on the Bear's loop in preparation for the upcoming Berkeley Hills Road Race. We practiced several skills and overall I had a great time.

Friday I rode 31 miles to the top of Redwood.

All in all it was a pretty average week.

On May 1 we went to Los Altos for Cat's Hill, and then took off after to Monterey for the NorCal mountain bike league race at Fort Ord. Both days I rode around Fort Ord on my Kuota, exploring the Sea Otter Road Race course. On Sunday I rode over to Laguna Seca and watched the cars for a while. There was quite a bit of wind coming off the Pacific and under those conditions riding was pretty hard.

Monday, May 3rd I rode 45 miles through Orinda and Moraga and up Redwood. On Tuesday I rode another 35. Then on Wednesday I flew to Chicago to lead a panel on neurogenesis at the BIO meeting. I spent most of my day traveling but was able to go swimming for 45 minutes in a hotel pool that was as hot as a sauna. Even though the pool was a lap pool designed for workouts, the water temperature made any hard effort impossible to sustain.

On Thursday I swam another 45 in that same pool, which by the way was located on the 30th floor and had a great view of Lake Michigan. I also rode for 15 minutes on a stationary bike. Today, I rode 40 miles to Lafayette and back. This weekend is the Berkeley Hills Road Race in Orinda.

10,000 hours

In his book "Outliers" Malcolm Gladwell introduces the 10,000 hour rule. It isn't his idea but he devotes a whole chapter to it so he deems it very important. The long and short of it is quite simple: To become world class in any field, be it violin playing, computer programming, hockey, basket ball, piano, mathematics, or what have you, about 10,000 hours of practice is required.

10,000 hours is a lot of practice.

And what's more he says, in study after study, authors never found any "naturals," i.e. individuals who can get by with a lot less, nor "grinds," or individuals who worked a lot harder than everyone else but never made it to the top. All of that makes a lot of sense.

I do want to point out that there is such a thing as innate talent. Although a lot of practice is required to become good at something, it does matter where you start from.

Some people are born with the innate ability to run 5:30 miles, while others are clocked at 7 and up. The same applies to reading skills, mathematical ability, hand-eye coordination, dexterity, and musical ability. There are differences that matter and these differences have a genetic basis. There is such a thing as natural selection.

Although Gladwell appears to agree with that statement, he tends to underestimate its weight. Partly that is because he has an individual-centric view. He wants to stress how important an individual's environment and timing is for that person's own success. It does matter when you are born -great cycling talent did not do anyone much good before the invention of the bicycle. It even matters what time of year you are born -hockey players tend to be people born in January and February. And it does matter where and how you grew up and how well your parents took care of you.

These conditions are not mutually exclusive. It still takes a lot of training and good luck for the gifted to make it to world class. From a gene perspective this does not matter much. There are several individuals to pick from. Each is a role of the dice. But I digress.

For you as an individual, it is good to know that no amount of training is going to get you from being a natural slowpoke to becoming a world class runner. All we can do here is invoke the property of self-similarity at scale. If you are a natural 7 minute miler, practicing for 10,000 hours will get you to the top of your (innate 7 minute miler) class. It won't get you to challenge Gebrselassie.

Which brings me to triathlon and swimming. It is true that I have achieved much in this discipline although I never qualified for Hawaii. I would have loved to qualify for Hawaii. But it isn't going to happen without a major improvement in swimming. And although I have swum a lot since 2004, I am light years away from 10,000 hours of swimming. It would take me 2 years almost non-stop swimming to get even close to half that level. And that is not something I want to do now. It is not something I enjoy all that much in any case.

Instead I plan to focus on distance cycling. That is the sport I truly like and enjoy. It is the sport that I want to devote my energies to. That is another reason for building my KOM.

Today I rode 1:10 on rollers. I burned 1,221 calories. It is raining outside (again).

Stroke? Try muscle

Another image to make the same point: what counts in swimming is muscle. Take a look at those deltoids. Michael Phelps in the pool.

Today I rode 56 miles at an average speed of 16.8, which is not bad given all the hills. I got a flat in Alamo, but fortunately there was a bike store nearby. I was a bit shocked at having to pay $5.40 for a tube, but the store people were quite nice and they helped me change my tire.

Yesterday I rode 20 miles on my mountain bike, essentially the redwood loop except that I went straight back on the West trail instead of making the extra loop that follows Redwood Rd. I was a bit pressed for time so I had to make concessions. The straight trail however, makes up for lost distance by inserting a lot more climbing.

On Wednesday, I came home early from the Neurotech meeting and took the kids to the pool. I ran 8.5 miles on the treadmill while they swam. On Tuesday I swam 164 laps or 3,000 meters. On Monday I took a rest day.

More record sunshine

The records keep falling. Monday was great, and so was today. Earlier, when I picked up the kids from school, the thermometer read 71F (nearly 22C). It just keeps going and going (although it is supposed to get cooler on Thursday).

Yesterday I did a second 4,000 yd swim. It took 1:15 approximately -it is hard to time at the pool- but it sounds about right. All freestyle, non-stop, and feeling a whole lot better after I finish than just six months ago. I guess the long swims are working for me. I am more convinced than ever that swimming is about power.

Here is what John Cobb wrote: "Swimming is just futile, every now and then you get a few laps where it's all working, you feel the water rushing over you, then, suddenly you're not doing you elbow right or something. More laps is all I hear for advice." 

I think he captures it just right. One does get sloppy and then the magic disappears. I have described similar experiences and I think others experience it too. That may give one the impression that swimming is all about form. But the reason why one gets sloppy has a lot to do with being tired or not having the muscle stamina to keep one's form. It is really more about muscle power and endurance. The form "finds itself," i.e. your body figures out a way that works for you.

Today, I rode my mountain bike for a good 30 miles. Went through Redwood, down Pinehurst, to Bort, up the grade and back on Goldenrod. After a short stretch on Skyline, back into Redwood park and on home. With a little extra loop down to Fish Ranch.

Ironman USA Lake Placid-TeamCindy

It's official. I am committed to compete in Ironman USA Lake Placid 2009 as part of Team Cindy. It will be my second fundraiser for the Brain Aneurysm Foundation (BAF), a charity in Hanover, MA. I just signed up and they already posted my picture on their site.

Today I swam 180 laps or slightly more than 2 miles freestyle, non-stop in the pool. I think I am getting better. Not faster perhaps, but better. An easier swim that is. And I can hold the freestyle for extended periods of time now. That is good.

Yesterday I tested Alistair's Tarmac and it feels really nice. We will cut the steering tube tomorrow and wrap the handlebars. I think it is pretty much ready for prime time. We rode 35 miles together and I burned in excess of 1,800 calories. My NP was 254 and the average close to 200W. The ride took 2:20, not including the stop at the bike store in Montclair. We climbed the Berkeley hills one extra time in this process.

2009

Happy New Year Everybody !

I finished the year with a non-stop, 1.75 mile freestyle swim at a good pace. By the end, my lower leg and foot were near cramping. Not sure why that happens as I do not use my legs all that much while freestyling. Probably need to swim a bit more and add in a bit more distance. These are some of the longest all-freestyle swims I have done, ever.

Not sure yet what I will do today. Unlike yesterday, the weather is a lot cooler and there is plenty of fog. We had some clearing earlier and some sun but it did not last. Tomorrow it may rain they say, but then the weather should improve. I may go to the club and run a bit on the treadmill later on.

Added later: I did run for about one hour on the treadmill. Covered 8.2 miles, not bad, but I had to work pretty hard to get there. To my credit, I can add that the exercise room at the club is quite hot and so running there is rather stressful. I think we will have to bite the bullet and buy a new treadmill for home.

Storm clouds

Yesterday it threatened to rain all day, but it never did. At least not until late in the evening. I rode my Griffen on the road for the first time in a long while. First, I did not feel like a long ride and I was debating whether to take the short loop through Orinda and up Wildcat, when dark clouds gathered over Grizzly. So I decided better go South to Redwood.

It was pretty cold, especially on the Redwood descent. Once again, I thought of going short and returning on Pinehurst, but then at the bottom I went straight. At least to Bort Meadow I kept saying to myself. Then to the first top and finally I ended up on the very top. I turned around and got home well before the rains started. Several times it looked quite ominous and even at the top of Marlborough I thought I was going to get drenched in the short remaining stretch. 30 miles in all.

Today I went to the pool and swam 1.75 miles, all freestyle without a break. It took a little over 1 hour so I was swimming at "race" pace. My race pace that is. There was nobody at the pool, and even though it was overcast, the air was plenty warm. The water too was quite hot. Especially in one spot right down the middle of the pool. This time around I dreaded going through the hot river on every lap.

I am not sure what gets into these people that run the club. At times they keep everything overheated, the exercise room, the pool, everything is way too hot. I had expected the opposite as they will be closed tomorrow and the day after. You'd think they would drop the temperature a bit to save money since it will be sitting out there in the open, but no. Let's turn up the heat.

Back in the water

Another splendid day today. Even warmer than yesterday and quite a bit less windy. A great day for a dip in the pool. I just found out the people at the club will close the pool for 12 days starting Wednesday. They need to install some special valve because a new Federal safety law is taking effect soon. Never mind all the wasted water when they drain the pool. 

I decided to take everyone along. Surprisingly enough, we were almost all alone. I guess the other club members were all out shopping and consuming. It is really amazing to me how we live in this wonderful place, with scenic views, ample nature resources, and near perfect weather and yet everyone feels the need to drive to the mall to buy stuff or sit in a dark movie theater watching some boring predictable Hollywood feature.

I swam 1.5 miles today, all of it freestyle, and with only two short breaks. Once to clear my goggles and the other time to talk to the kids. The kids did a fair amount of swimming too. Alistair swam more than a mile and the little ones did half a mile each.

Today went so-so. Not very fast but not too slow either. I felt a little tired and my arm is hurting too (esp. the right elbow and shoulder with the AC separation). It is frustrating to think that swimming is what stands between me and a slot in Kona. There are an extra 20 minutes there that I can't get rid off. My swimming is totally out of whack compared to the other disciplines. Fitness wise I should be around 1:05 instead of 1:25.

I am sure muscle has a lot to do with it. When I compare myself to other triathletes, the lack of shoulder and arm muscle is very clear. Swimming is a power sport and recent research on dolphins has made that quite clear. Those findings have debunked older myths that ascribed dolphin speed to some elusive skin and hydrodynamic properties.

Never mind those books on technique. It is sad to see that nearly all books on sport are wide of the mark and full of errors. Just think of nutrition, hydration, and nearly any other "explanation" of human physiology. It is mostly garbage.

Going straight

Perhaps the most important thing distance racers can learn is to go straight and minimize distance. The current web dispute over a human power 24hr endurance event between a kayaker and a pedal boater proves as much. But the issue has also raised its head at the Olympics of all places. Several years ago, a researcher showed that gold medal winners in track events tend to run shorter distances than their competitors. So even in 400m it matters how far (and in this case wide) you actually run. Running on the outside adds significant extra distance compared to the optimum, and that distance is often enough to cancel the difference between the winner and the runner-up.

No caption needed

But the effects of not going straight are nowhere as obvious (although invisible to spectators) as in the iron-distance swim. Whereas top competitors swim an absolutely straight line between buoys, the further back you go in the pack the more swimmers start looking like drunk drivers on a Saturday night cruise. Freestyling straight in open water is a challenge for everyone.

I always found that the one advantage of breast stroke is that you can see where you are going. So if your breaststroke is almost as fast as your freestyle, you may want to consider swimming breaststroke instead. Once you are out of the initial melee there is often plenty of lateral room for a good breaststroke. And what you lose in speed you will more than make up in distance saved.

Furthermore I would postulate that all improvements in swim time that age-groupers brag so much about, come from swimming straighter and closer to the optimal path, rather than from speed per se. The more comfortable a person gets, and the more experience they have in open water, the better the line they pick.

Going straight is also something triathletes should practice on the bike. Often "triathlete-geeks" incur the wrath of "serious cyclists" by wandering all over the road. And the more aero their position gets, the worse the wandering becomes. Nothing is as iconic as a guy zig-zagging all over the road in his aerobars at 12 mph.

Straight?

On the bike, going straight and being predictable is about more than winning races or riding in packs. It is also the key safety measure and all cyclists should be taught and should practice riding straight. The more predictable a cyclist becomes, the less likely he or she is to die in a traffic accident. Weaving in and out of parked cars, swerving when looking back or grabbing a water bottle, and otherwise surprising motorists is not a good practice and one that you can pay for in blood.

Riding straight requires practice and nothing is better than a country road with good markings to acquire this skill. You should try to ride there (preferably when there is no traffic) and practice looking down, looking up, looking behind you, etc. while staying on the white line. It is natural for your body to turn when you turn your head. It is a built-in reflex and it requires conscious intervention to stop it. But nothing separates an experienced cyclist from a cycle tourist or casual commuter like riding straight and steady.

First ironman

Your first iron-distance triathlon can be a scary proposition. You don't know what to expect. Or what to focus on. This is not as simple as riding a double-century, or running an ultra-marathon, or doing a 10k swim. Triathlon has all three events and you need to be ready to do all three. That means training enough for each, and balancing your training appropriately.

I would strongly recommend that you do a half-distance event before attempting an iron-distance. Preferably do a very hard half, such as the Wildflower, or the Auburn triathlon. It will give you a better idea.

If you are new to endurance and your goal is just to finish within the time-limit, then you should focus on cycling. Especially if you are not a cyclist to begin with. Cycling is the longest event and it is one that offers no alternative. You need to finish on the bike. In the marathon you can walk, but on the bike you need to ride.

Many people worry about the swim, but that should be the least of your worries. If a mass start makes you uncomfortable, you can either choose a smaller, non-WTC event, or you can start way of to the side and far in the back. Smaller events have a lot going for them, and many are every bit as nice as the "real" ironman races.

Either way you will have clear water. Don't worry if you are an extremely slow swimmer, the time alloted is very generous and hardly anyone is disqualified for not making the cutoff. The swim may be a bit tiring, but it isn't going to wreck your day. Chances are it will be over in an hour and a half.

It is important to remember that, even if you take up all your swim time, you still have plenty of time to finish. You only need a 14 mph average on the bike, and you can "run" a 6 hour marathon (slightly faster than walking pace at around 4.4 mph !).

Biking is easily the most tiring event, and although a 14 mph average is sufficient that is faster than untrained commuter speed. So you do need to train. And you need to ride long. I would recommend riding several centuries beforehand. When you do, do one of the following: either try to ride continuously with very brief stops (just fill the bottle and go), and no drafting; Or, ride several 5-7 mi stretches at high speed (22-24 mph). It is Ok to draft and ride a pace-line when you do that. The intensity is what you need. You need to get used to riding long and putting in some intensity as well.

You should be able to ride a century at a reasonable average (19 or higher) and minimal breaks (no more than 30 minutes total), and still feel good afterwards. The best way to judge that is to put on your running shoes and run a few miles. There is no need for long runs, just a mile or two at a good clip will do. If you can do that, you can be confident that you will finish the ironman well within the time-limit allowed.

Just remember, it this is the extent of your training, you will finish well, as long as you don't attempt to race hard. The harder you go, the more likely you are to not finish, or not finish well. That may seem counter-intuitive but it is true. Racing ironman (i.e. going hard the whole time) is very different from finishing ironman (even if you finish with a good time).

Best is to try to finish well the first time. Next time, you will know better and you can prepare for a good hard race. Don't worry, once you do one, you will want to do it again, no matter how painful it was!

Misfits?

Triathletes are a special kind. Most come from swimming or running backgrounds. Very few were cyclists like me. It is pretty obvious why. The cyclist body type is not well adapted to swimming -no arm or upper body muscle- and generally not well suited for running either -too much power muscle. Cyclists who ride in packs do a fair amount of anaerobic exercise. Pack riding is very nonlinear. When you're in the pack you can draft and go fast without burning too much energy. A pack moves at a pace that an individual rider cannot sustain for very long.

There is a great premium to staying in the pack while cycling. And that means you have to sprint a lot. Because packs accelerate and slow down continuously. They respond to attacks and breakaway attempts, and they slow down and speed up through turns (an accordion effect). Every time that happens you have to sprint. Distance runners hardly ever sprint. They are all about aerobic and sustained effort. No redlining here lest you want to pay for it later.

Because triathlon was "invented" by runners, the cycling they do is limited to time-trialing, i.e. no drafting allowed. Many people think this is to prevent cheating, i.e. you cannot benefit from other people's work, you have to do it all yourself. Even though it makes sense at first, it is clearly not the main reason. For one, triathletes draft in swimming. For another, pack riding is not necessarily any easier than solo riding. I actually think that most people would do worse overall if drafting was legal -that is different from sneaking in an opportunistic illegal draft.

If drafting were allowed, the whole dynamics of the race would change. Those who could form packs would move much quicker, so there would be a premium for sprinting to get into a pack. Once in there you would have to work hard on a regular basis. Then attacks would develop and you would have to respond. All that means a lot of anaerobic exercise. Not good if you have to run a marathon later.

Furthermore, the sport to concentrate on when completing a triathlon is the run. Here is the event that lasts long enough and moves slow enough that one can really gain or lose a lot of time. Cycling is too fast and too nonlinear to gain much time. Even though the biking leg is longer, it is pretty hard to make up 10 minutes here.

The swim is another event where you can lose or gain a lot of time. But unlike running, you either have it or you don't. If you don't, you may as well forget it.

According to a recent NYT article, triathletes are misfits who found a something to compete in. They are pretty good at everything but not good enough at any one thing to succeed at the top. Perhaps this can be phrased otherwise: triathletes are people with excellent cardiovascular fitness but they lack the specific body type or adaptations that would make them top competitors in a particular sport.

Swimming

Swimming is often a frustrating sport for triathletes. It is an area where many spend a lot of time and money without seeing any real progress. According to Ed Neely, a swim coach, many triathletes cannot keep the swim in perspective. They devote way too much time to it. He recommends that if your swim is less than 10% of your total iron-distance race, you should only spend 10% of your training for the swim. If you swim slower, he says, spend only 15%. If the blogs are to be believed, that is not what most people do.

Ed points out that "the correlation between swim performance and overall race time is poor, which means your swim time does not have a big impact on your placing." The event is simply too short to have a material impact on the race. But it can make all the difference if you are vying for one of those coveted Hawaii spots. I am a poor swimmer and I regularly finish in the last 1/3 of the swim. Since I often finish in the roll-down spots, my slow swims have definitely kept me from going to the Big Island. Therefore, I fully understand the desire to "do something about it." Five minutes would make all the difference for me.

What further confuses people is all the attention paid to technique. Technique implies something you can learn to master. There is no doubt that technique makes a big difference in Olympic swimming events, esp. when reaching for the wall touch. But such things matter little in long open water swims.

Humans are incredibly slow swimmers and water is a really dense medium. Any small amount of excess resistance can really slow you down. What we really are talking about here is slow and slower so efficiency is key.

For all the talk about Michael Phelps setting "a blistering pace," and "sprinting to gold," few people realize that the average adult could out-walk him without too much effort. And that is for short events. The "long swims" in this category are about 1/4 mile. For any real distance, a "speed" of 2.75 mph is considered world class.

Over the past five years I have watched a lot of swimmers, and learned a lot about swimming. Here are some things I learned.

1. Body type is the most important attribute of a swimmer. It is something you are born with and there isn't much you can do about it. It helps if you are tall, have a long torso with relatively short legs, big feet, a small head, and a wide arm-span.

2. Lie. Body type is the number one determinant of how you lie in the water. The flatter and higher you are the better but despite all the recommendations about keeping your head down, and pushing on your chest, etc. , your build is key. Some people stay flat even when their head is up, while others hang down despite their best efforts.

3. Muscle. Swimmers benefit the most from weight lifting. The more muscle you can pack on your upper body the faster you will swim. There is little or no penalty for the excess weight -many swimmers are overweight by athletic endurance standards- and more muscle means more power. The upper body is less subjected to gravity so "specialized training" such as weight lifting helps more here. Some swimmers look like weight lifters or wrestlers.

4. Body sense. People with better body sense, i.e. people who "instinctively" know where their body is in space tend to do better. But it is hard to see what is cause and what is effect. Good dancers make better swimmers.

Corollary: if you can get objective feedback (from a mirror or video) it can help a lot. Observers are not nearly as good. Many can tell you that you are doing something wrong, but very few can put their finger on it, or tell you how to correct it.

Some triathlon/open water guidelines:

5. Wetsuits. Wetsuits help but not all that much. They help the better swimmers more than the poor swimmers. You can gain about 5 minutes on an iron-distance leg. You can lose almost as much if you can't get out of the wetsuit. Still, better to wear one to keep warm unless the water is tropical.

6. Draft. Drafting is legal in (triathlon) swimming and it helps a lot.

7. Stay calm. Many people panic in a mass start. Then they run out of breath.

8. Swim straight and swim the shortest line. This is the area where the most gains are possible. It is also what fools most people into believing they can swim faster. As they become more comfortable, athletes start closer to the best line and further ahead (where it is more crowded), hence they swim shorter, straighter and get a better draft.

Everything about swimming is slow so it should not surprise you that swimming is a sport where making progress is agonizingly slow too. The rule is that once you can easily swim an iron-distance, you will also know your best swim time for the event. I.e. your gains after that will be minimal, even if you spend inordinate amounts of time in the pool, or spend inordinate amounts of money on coaching. As a matter of fact most of your gains later on will come from unrelated sources. Better draft, less current, less wind, straighter swim, shorter course (yes it happens, the opposite happens too believe me!), etc. all matter a lot more than your actual swim prowess.

Going Long

In this blog I hope to highlight some of the things I have learned about endurance racing.  Most of these come from personal experience. I learned the hard way, without the benefit of a coach or guide. In some sense I am happy I did. It may not be the fastest way, but I certainly figured out what works and what doesn't.  I hope that by reading this blog you may avoid some of the mistakes I made. 

One would think that with all the information out there, things would be easy. However, I found that much of it is misguided and a lot of it is quite wrong.  The field is also driven by advertising and the desire to make money and much of the "information" one can find is nothing but blatant advertising for products that you don't need and that in some cases can harm you. These products are often portrayed as breakthroughs based on scientific insights. In almost all cases they are neither breakthroughs nor scientific.

I have been an endurance racer for a while now. I started out more than 10 years ago as a road biker, then I took up running and more recently I have been competing as a triathlete. I am by no means a natural talent. I also started quite late in life and never practiced any sports until I was well into my 30's. I did not start competing until I was over 40.

Over the last 4 years I have tried to improve my performance and despite being "over the hill" as some might think, I have been able to improve every year since, both in absolute (time) and relative (position) terms. I guess I must be doing something right.

The focus on this blog will be on endurance racing, not just finishing endurance events. The goal is to be competitive in events that pretty much take up a whole day. I will clarify my definition of an endurance event more in the posts to come.