Swim

Went swimming twice today. In the morning I swam 1.5 miles, the first mile continuous and all freestyle. Then some kicking and some alternate breaststroke-freestyle laps. In the afternoon, after I picked up the kids I swam another 1.25 miles, alternating freestyle with breaststroke.

I think that finally -after all those years- my swim is getting (a bit) faster. I am not sure if it will hold for the entire 2.4 miles of the ironman, but I am cautiously optimistic. I do swim easier and faster at least over shorter distances. The big tossup in all this is my right shoulder with its AC separation. I am not sure how that hold out in the race. I have swum 2.4 miles in the pool since the incident but never all freestyle.

The other big unknown this year is that I have done zero open water swimming. I did not do a single triathlon all year and I did not swim the Del Valle or the Catfish competitions either. In short, I never even put on my wetsuit this year.

You may also wonder why I mention freestyle, but up until five years ago the only stroke I knew how to swim was breaststroke. It is not ideal for triathlons, although it is not all bad. The key advantage of breaststroke is that you can see where you are going, but that turns out to be a big win (at least among the slowpokes). I see triathletes zig-zagging all over the course and adding useless distance.

Freestyle does not come naturally to me. I really struggled with it. For some odd reason I always get cramps in my legs when I freestyle for a long time. That never happens when I breaststroke. 

Up until very recently my breaststroke was faster than my freestyle and I was a lot less tired on top of it. I have swum breaststroke in all my races, except for a few Olympic distances, and in some races I swam more than 3/4 of the distance that way. Needless to say, I am one of the last ones to exit the water. Swimming has kept me from qualifying for Hawaii more than once. 

While one can lose five minutes anywhere, my swim is just too slow to qualify. It is not on par with my other events. Not by a longshot.

economic woes

The economics woes are hitting North America Sports, better known as Ironman. For the first time in so many years, Ironman Canada had excess slots. Not just once but twice. First, they did not sell all the slots that were available at the race. 400 were left open, so they put them on the internet. These went fast enough and demand was high, rumored to be 3,000 or more. Still, in previous years you had to travel to Penticton and stand in line to get a slot for the next year.

Then, a large number of people who did pick up a ticket in Penticton, decided not to buy their slot. You get a few weeks to actually complete the sale once you take a slot. So there was a second internet sale. That one too closed soon thereafter. Clearly there are people waiting in line. But times are changing. Now there are excess community fund slots for Coeur d'Alene, Lake Placid, Wisconsin and Canada, all very popular venues. Granted these babies cost $1K a piece, but once again these were never to be found except on race day or maybe the week there after.

Triathlons are an expensive sport. A race easily costs over $1,500-2,500 once all said and done. To say nothing of the equipment, training, and other paraphernalia needed to compete. A bicycle, wheels, a wetsuit, running gear, it's not for the faint of heart. The stress on one's pocketbook is greater than the stress on one's body. That is saying something for what people call the most grueling race on earth.

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.

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.

Endurance races

Let's define upfront what we mean by an endurance race. This turns out to be more tricky than one would think. Years ago, the marathon was the quintessential endurance event, but these days, that is no longer the case. It seems the iron-distance triathlon (IronMan) has replaced the marathon for those in the know. For runners, the ultra-marathon, covering 50 or even 100 miles is quickly becoming synonymous with endurance. But what about multi-day, self-supported events such as Badwater, RAAM, etc? Clearly these races need a whole new level of preparation and training.

For practical purposes I would propose that an endurance event is an event that takes anywhere between 8-36 hours to complete. I.e. it is an all day event that requires food and drink intake during the race, but is not interrupted by sleep or recovery. Multi-day events with mandatory rest periods, such as stage races are also included even if the individual stages are less than 8 hours in duration.

However, I do exclude self-supported events that run over multiple days. These are races where the participants are responsible for logistics and need to bring their own support crews. Furthermore, I want to exclude supported multi-day events, such as randonneur rides that don't have fixed rest periods.

The emphasis of this blog is on races or timed-events, where participants attempt to finish with a certain placing or within a certain time. Most races are identified as such, but some are not, often for unrelated reasons having to do with permits or liability insurance. I prefer to ignore these fine points and call the event a race once a substantial number of participants see it that way. 

This blog is for those seeking to improve their performance as measured by time or standing, rather than just worrying about getting to the finish line.

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.