@)(*$($)!!!! $!$&(), q)$(&), #)()!@#))$$&!!!

The first snowfall of the season!  So what in the name of Our Lady of the Icy Gonads was I doing out biking in it?

If anyone has seriously tried to live their life rather than merely exist their way through it they should, if they chance to look back at the halcyon days of their youth, be utterly appalled.

One of the hallmarks of youth is that you will, inevitably, engage in all sorts of inadvisable, possibly insane, often life-threatening behavior out of a deep-seated sense that you are indestructible.  Another hallmark of youth is that you will often engage in death-defying stunts and ill-advised forays into moral turpitude–sometimes both together–under the delusion that you’re doing so after soberly assessing the potential risks.  When onrushng danger is glimpsed, like the Exxon Valdez weaving its way toward a seal colony, the possibility that all might not end well is safely tucked away with a single, all-purpose, deliberative assessment: “Cool!”

Time was, this kind of behavior was largely the provenance of adolescent males (the same group that still makes up the bulk of the audience (and, usually, the participants) for Jackass and any movie by Judd Apatow or the Farrelly brothers).  But one of the great things about the hard-fought victories gained by the feminist movement is that women everywhere have also been liberated to get in touch with their inner twelve-year-old male.

Now, I can’t really speak to the experience of older women, but at a certain point in a man’s life, he yearns for those dearly departed, carefree days where he used to try and kill himself on a regular basis.  He grows tired of over-thinking and under-living his life.  He misses the days when he could revel in an utter lack of responsibility toward self and others.  This stage is what many women unfairly characterize as “mid-life crisis” or, less generously, “male menopause.”  I prefer to think of it as Phase 2 of a Grand Existential Quest to Plumb the Chaos of Modern Existence.  So what does a man do?

He purchases a Maserati.  Or he purchases a mistress.  Or, if he can afford the payments and the insurance, he purchases both together.

In my case, I purchased a Team Z membership.

This is how I found myself standing in the parking lot of the Mary of Nazareth school near Dranesville, Maryland, with a bunch of my fellow Zers, contemplating the rapidly thickening snowfall and saying to myself: “Cool!”

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Today was the second Team Z time trial, and we all knew going into it that the conditions were going to be less than optimal.  The forecast, right through last night, was for cold (mid-30s), and rain, turning to snow after midday (by which point we would all be done).  I didn’t have a ton of spare time this week (tragic, since this was a recovery week) so I’d prepped the bike as well as I could by cleaning and oiling, using a heavy, wet weather lube on the chain.  I rode a race last year where the standard lube had washed off after about 15 miles, leaving me with some none too reassuring rattling, clanking, and grinding for the remainder of the ride.  I wasn’t feeling in top form.  During Thursday’s swim my right calf had seized up with probably one of the worst cramps I’ve ever had, and afterwards my calf felt as if someone had been at me with steelcap boots.  I knew I wouldn’t be using those muscles a whole lot on the ride, but it was still a concern.  Plus, I was feeling a bit phlegmy, signs that I was perhaps finally coming down with Mary’s cold that I’ve been resisting for the better part of a week.  But I was still pretty keen to give it a go, and be out there with the team, and I wasn’t at all surprised to find it raining pretty steadily as I drove out towards the ride start.

What was surprising was when some of the rain began to make a distinct splattering sound against my windshield.  That’s the sound that is usually made by. . .snow.  By the time I reached the parking lot, it was snowing lightly but with intent.  People were bundled like Everest explorers.  I didn’t even recognize Jackie when she came up to me until she mumbled “Hi, it’s Jackie” through her balaclava.

Damon got us all organized in pretty quick order and in the random drawing I was slated to go number 20 out of 21 (I think).  I tried to get in a quick warmup, noticing as I did so that the snow was now falling a lot more heavily.  Visibility was deteriorating rapidly, and with my glasses it was minimal.  I made a final pass by the car to shed my outer layers; I knew I’d warm up pretty quickly, so I had planned to ride relatively lightly clad.  I just can’t bike with any speed in rain paints and a jacket (even the lightest jacket tends to turn into a sauna for me).  So I was wearing a balaclava, my super-warm long-sleeve Underarmor with a bike jersey over the top, shorts, leg warmers, booties and mid-weight long-fingered gloves.  I was all set to go but as I tried to leave the parking lot, I jammed up my chain.  Got to the start line to find everyone had already left.  Damon announced “You start in ten seconds.  Nine, eight. . .”

It was bad from the get-go.  The roads were wet (expected) but the snow was icy and stung, and the odd flake that hit me in the eye had me streaming tears.  But eventually my face went numb, and I found the right head angle to protect myself from the worst of it.  Going at speed downhill was just miserable.  It was like being sandblasted in a meat locker.

But I felt pretty good in the first part of it.  Perhaps stupidly–well, let me change that, definitely stupidly–I was still thinking that I could TT this ride.  So I was feeling pretty good, those parts of my body that weren’t numb were nice and toasty and I felt I was pushing it a little harder than the last ride, particularly in the climbs.  But there were already signs of trouble; the snow continued unabated and I could see places on the road where it was beginning to accumulate (the last forecast had said that wouldn’t happen for several hours).  I made a mental note of those places for the return journey and pushed on.

I reached the turnaround, and uttered a string of expletives in the direction of Kate and Nelson who were doing the timing at that point, and then settled back into my tuck for the return journey. . .only to find that I had lost a large portion of my gears.  I was down to about 6, split between the two chain rings.  Looking down, I couldn’t see parts of the bike frame for the amount of snow and ice.  One hand was getting seriously cold (interestingly, my hands didn’t start to freeze until the points where I got out of the aero position and up on the pursuits).  Worse still, there was now substantial snow build-up on the road, and it was thickening by the minute.

I made it safely down the bottom of the hill, discovering in the process that any attempt to use the back brake produced a violent juddering and a sound like being smacked on the arse.  There was probably ice jammed up around the rear brake at that stage, but it felt as if the whole wheel was unbalanced.  As we hit River Road, I gritted my teeth and tried to ride in the wheel tracks that cars had left.  I caught up with Annie, who seemed to be having a great ride, since she’d passed a ton of people.  I passed her and hit one of the rollers, downshifted to my lower chain ring. . .and found myself spinning air.

I pulled off to the side of the road to get my chain back on, and Annie passed me (after first seeing if I needed help) and then someone else I couldn’t recognize (when everyone is dressed like Shackleton it is hard to tell who is who).  Looking at my bike, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Most of the lower part of the frame was coated with slush.  My entire front chain ring was one big icy mix.  Both derailleurs were completely iced over.  I banged some of it off, but much of it seemed to be there to stay, and by this point I was just hoping to be able to finish the ride in one piece.

The roads were treacherous and when we came to the long hill before Riley’s Lock (where I’d normally expect to be chasing 40mph) I backed way off and road the brakes lightly all the way down.  I’d back the Michelin Pro 3s in the wet any day (having ridden them in a race during a torrential downpour) but the icy buildup on the roads was another matter, and I couldn’t see a clear line of tire tracks all the way to the bottom.  I caught Annie again, passed her, and then promptly dropped my chain again.  I was now down to one gear: big chain ring in front and second largest cog in the rear; not ideal for the last part of the course which was all uphill, but it could have been worse.  Well, not much actually.  In fact, I was just thinking it couldn’t get any worse when a van passed me and showered me with frozen sludge from head to toe.

I sniveled my way across the finish line and then rode the last part to the school.  I wasn’t sure Damon had got my time because he was busy checking in a few people who had been sagged in, but I didn’t care.  I’d completely forgot to hit my stop button anyway.  And I was actually far more worried for the people still out on the road.  But either people were bailing or Damon had sensibly started pulling people off the road, because by the time I was finished the conditions had become truly treacherous.

I leaned the bike against the back of the car, jumped inside, cranked up the heating, and proceeded to strip out of my wet clothes.  One hand was completely frozen and as circulation returned I was literally screaming in pain.  I was also shivering violently and uncontrollably, something that has only ever happened to me once before after a ride.  I packed on every single item of clothing I had with me, then stepped back outside to see to the bike.  While I was standing there, half crazed with cold, Nelson snapped a picture of Mabel and I:

Kate came up to me, helped me load the bike, and said “I knew it was getting bad when you came through.  You said something like “This is stupid. . .”

“I think what I actually said was “Jesus Fucking Christ.” “

“Yes, something like that, and I was thinking he’s usually a joking sort of person, and he’s not joking!”

My teeth were chattering, and my voice sounded croaky and stuttery.  I knew I was probably borderline hypothermic at that point, and I had to get warm, so I hope Nelson and Kate weren’t too offended when I mumbled some excuse and rushed back into the car.  While I tried desperately to warm up, I snapped another picture of the bike with some of the post-ride snow accumulation knocked off.  Take a close look at the rear cassette and you can see why I was having trouble shifting.  What you are looking at there, my friends, is a solid block of ice.

You can also see the amount of ice on the frame, and a pretty good reason why the rear wheel was feeling unbalanced to me.  I also had ice worked into the folds of my shorts, and the most amazing wind sculpted ice block on the front of my helmet, about an inch thick at its deepest point, and covering the entire front, including the vents (not that cooling was an issue today!).  My neoprene booties were so ice-encrusted that they cracked when I took them off.

When I managed to warm up enough to stop the uncontrollable shaking, I started for home.  I’d intended to hang around, see the last people in, and join the team at the nearby barbecue joint, but I’d over-done it, and I knew it.  It was now snowing heavily and I was also worried about the drive home.  I felt bad abandoning the team, but as it was, after a long, crawling trip back down River Road, it wasn’t until about ten minutes from home that I finally stopped shivering.

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So, if I had to do this again. . .I wouldn’t.  This now ranks as my worst ride of all time.  Worse than the 90-miles-which-became-80-in-the-rain last year with the team.  Worst than last year’s blowing-like-forty-bastards-century.  Worse even than the duathlon raced for three hours in a sleet storm.  At least on that ride I wasn’t worried about dying.

Food for thought.  On the next TT, even if it isn’t snowing I will bring a thermos of coffee for after the ride.  Which I may end up using to take a warming shower.

Mabel suffered badly under these conditions, as you can see.  Everyone’s bikes were getting ice encrusted, but the people I passed on road bikes didn’t seem to be producing the kind of spectacular iceberg formations I was, and still seemed to be able to use most of their gears.  The problem here seems to be the aero tubing.  When water hits the downtube it doesn’t simply splatter down or off to the side as with a standard road bike.  Rather, it is shaped around that nice aerofoil into a fine mist that slides smoothly over all the rest of the components at the back. . .unless they are ice cold in which case it freezes to them.  I’ve noticed this in past races when the road surface has been dirty, you can see the debris trailing in lovely smooth shapes along the bike frame, as if they are wind-tunnel directional strips.  In retrospect I should have stopped as soon as I felt the shifting problem and knocked as much of the ice off as I could.  But I was cold, eager to get home, and still laboring under the illusion that this was a TT rather than a “try and extricate yourself safely from your own stupidity” ride.

Several team members had rear blinkers on their bikes.  That was smart.  I was less so.

Pretty happy with what I wore, except I should have gone with the heavier weight gloves, which I had with me.  If I’d known it was going to snow I would have taken my shell vest.  I would probably also not go with the leg warmers but opt for tights pulled over my shorts to give my lower torso a little more warmth.

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So I think I’m done with the Mid-Life. . .er, Grand Existential Quest to Plumb the Chaos of Modern Existence, for the time being.  Until next week.

And another crazy Team Z ride passes into legend.

Rookie Mistakes

I’m no stranger to heavy training schedules.  I’ve been racing multisport events (some of them quite long) for the past several years, and have now trained for and completed two marathons.  But, it is one of the most tragic aspects of the human condition that experience does not necessarily lead to wisdom.  I’ve read the books (re-reading Friel and Byrn’s Going Long at the moment, which I first bought for Mary when she had just started triathlons.  She laughed in my face and said there was no way she was ever going to do something like an Ironman.  Now, I don’t want to suggest that I could foretell the future or anything. . .but I foretold the future!).  I’ve read the blogs.  I’ve followed Coach Ed’s advice to the aspiring Ironmen over the last year and talked to many of them.   All that has made me more informed.

To judge from the evidence of the last week, however, it has not made me any smarter.

This week’s lesson: you cannot train for an Ironman, even in the early stages, and expect your life to function the way it did before you started.  Pretty obvious, huh?  However, knowing is not doing.

Last week was heavy.  It started off with a weekend where I basically did two races.  There was a short (4K) trail race at Potomac Overlook Park.  The event was being held to benefit the Branch Nature Center which is in danger of closing due to Arlington County’s budget woes.  A lot of Zers were participating, and Ed was also grilling up a storm and donating the proceeds to the cause.  There was an 8K event also but since I’d never done any trail racing before I opted for the shorter, safer (so I thought) option.  Even the 4K was bloody hard work.  It had been raining constantly for two days, was drizzling during the race, and the trails were muddy and covered with leaves (plus all the usual off-road hazards of tree roots, rocks, steps).  The name of the park should have clued me in to the nature of the terrain in advance: where there is an overlook there will also be a what . . .underlook?  uplook?  At any rate, it was steep uphills, steep downhills, stream crossings. . .  Once the race was over, I loved it.  At the time, I thought I was going to die.  And die less than a mile into the race.  However, I loved the fact that you couldn’t switch your mind off, you had to be thinking all the time.  I really loved the downhills.  I found that if I just relaxed and reacted rather than trying to over-think things I just flowed down the hills, catching and passing several people (who then passed me smoothly on the uphills as I gasped and wheezed in their wake).  I was pretty pleased with the result: time of 23:07, sixth overall (out of 37), second in my age group (and yes, there were more than two people, there were a whopping 5, in fact!), and I didn’t have a seizure.  I did, however, feel as if I had been sat on by an elephant.  I said sat on, although the other would work just as well.

Another reason why I only ran the 4K is that we had a bike time trial the following day: 23.6 miles across rolling terrain with a couple of short, moderate climbs.  This was an organized team event and it was great to see so many people giving it a go.  This kind of event, particularly if it is repeated several times (and that is the plan) can give you some valuable indication of changes in your form and fitness as they result of training.  Plus, the fact that so much of the training that multisport athletes do is long and slow means that the rare opportunity to get your fast on can be a welcome break from the normal training routine.

There is, however, a good reason that you don’t do time trials every day of the week.  They destroy you.  This is supposed to be a test of how fast you can go leaving absolutely nothing in reserve.  It is balls to the wall and beyond.  It is also a test, however, of your mental discipline, your consistency, and your pacing.  You can’t blow it out of the water in the first ten miles or you will have nothing left for the last part of it.  I was pretty pleased with the way it went for me.  My plan was to start out in high zone 3 and try and keep it there for a few miles, but that pretty much went by the wayside and I settled in to low zone 4.  Except for the climb I kept it there, and then pushed it toward the end (aided by the fact that it was mostly uphill) so that I was in zone 5 (which, typically, is very hard for me to reach on a bike) for most of the last three miles.  Final time: 1:13:58.  I was also happy that I was only 50 seconds slower on the second half than on the first half.  Ideally I’d want to be faster on the second half, but I felt that I was a lot slower than I obviously was.

However, that weekend left me pretty much wrecked for the rest of the week, and just trying to get by.  Typically my week looks like this:

• Monday and Wednesday: biking to and from work, with the bike home transitioning immediately into a short session of strength training at home (since I am warmed up);
• Tuesday: track workout in the morning, and swimming in the evening;
• Thursday: track in the morning, spin class and swimming in the evening;
• Friday: Off.
• Saturday: Long Run
• Sunday: Long ride and, ideally, swimming in the evening.

A time trial or a race typically leaves me feeling pretty buzzed the day after the event, one of the after-effects of having your body drenched in adrenaline.  It is two days after that it really hits me. . .and it did.  Felt like complete shite on Tuesday for both the run and the swim.  Things began to look up a little on Wednesday, and by Thursday I managed to get through the day, although I was pretty happy to be doing nothing on Friday.  Long run went well on Saturday.  However, after the long bike I was exhausted, so much so that I couldn’t even contemplate swimming.  I felt completely fatigued and my legs ached.

So, yes, the race/trial weekend had a lot of lingering effects.  But I compounded this with two huge mistakes.

1) By all that is holy, turn off the TV, put away the computer and haul your exhausted arse to bed!  I’ve been trying to stick to my usual routine, which typically involves staying up pretty late.  I am used to about 6-7 hours of sleep max.  I find it harder to sleep longer than that, normally.  However, when training for an Ironman you have definitively entered into the realm of the non-normal.  You need sleep.  Lots of sleep.  More sleep than you think you need.  I know this, so why I haven’t been doing it is a little mysterious.  There is, perhaps, a large part of me that is still in denial about the Ironman and trying to pretend that I’m just training for some short race.

1) You are not 133t, you will never be 133t, so stop trying to pretend that you are 133t.  Made a big mistake on this weekend’s ride.  Well, a couple really.  I keep forgetting how hilly some of the parts around Poolesville are.  As usual, I was so glad to be on the bike that I jumped all over it from the get go as if I was doing another time trial instead of a slower ride in heart rate zone 2.  But I also for a while tried to keep up with the lead group.  I have to face the fact that I am never going to have a zone 2 ride trying to keep up with the likes of Sebastian, Damon, and Chris.  I obviously have this mental picture of myself as a cyclist which bears only a passing resemblance to reality.  Whether or not those guys are really riding zone 2 on these rides is not an issue.  The point is, everyone needs to be riding their own ride, working their own zones.  This, I think, is going to be the hardest part of the entire training for me.  I love the bike.  I love going fast on the bike.  I love long rides on the bike.  But the bike in the Ironman has one goal and one goal only: to ensure that you get off the bike in reasonable shape to complete an additional 26.2 miles.

Waking up this morning too fatigued to be bothered biking to work has made me see that I need a change in game plan.  Some of this will get easier.  Picking up the swimming on a regular basis is a huge change both in training style and overall workout volume for me and it will take a while for my body to adapt.  So there will be a few more weeks of tiredness, no doubt.  But normal training tiredness is a different thing from being completely wiped.

Well, look at the time, it’s almost 3pm.  If you’ll excuse me, I need to be getting to bed.

That’s one small splash for a man, one giant cannonball for mankind

At swim practice last night I managed to swim 50 metres continuously for the first time.  I couldn’t do it often, and I didn’t do it well (toward the end of the interval my precariously maintained excuse for an approximation of a masquerade of correct freestyle form disintegrated completely and was replaced with my best impression of an out-of-balance washing machine) but I did it.

Who knows, maybe one day I may even be able to do the listed workout for the day!

Important Tip for New Triathletes and Wannabe Ironmen

Your swim workout will be much improved if you start by putting on your swimsuit the right way round.

Fortunately, I figured out why my suit was riding so high at the front before I left the locker room and, more importantly, before I had to bend over to do anything.

Ironman training is all in the details.

In other news, this was the first week where I started to a) add in some strength training (a sadly neglected component of my training in years past), and b) do two workouts on some days.  As a result I’m tired and I ache in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles.  Actually, I probably don’t have muscles there–with “there” meaning “anywhere above the waist”–which explains why I ache.  Growing pains, of a sort.

I also almost perhaps maybe tentatively felt something vaguely like a sense of rhythm in the pool last night.  And no, I’m not Catholic, and no, I wasn’t wearing my headphones and listening to Graceland.

Then again, I may have been mistaken.

"as you touch the Holy Gospels of Christ."

From time to time I’m going to incorporate material into this blog that (gasp!) doesn’t have to do with training for an Ironman.  This is partly to reassure myself (something that will become increasingly necessary as time goes on, I suspect) that there is more to life than the next workout.

I’m in the middle of teaching a freshman writing course that is designed to look at the impact that various new media and information technologies are having on libraries and the research process.  Recently we read “The Once and Future Library,” a chapter from Nicholas Basbanes’ engaging Patience and Fortitude: Wherein a Colorful Cast of Determined Book Collectors, Dealers, and Librarians Go About the Quixotic Task of Preserving a Legacy.

The chapter describes the debacle surrounding the building of the new San Francisco City Library in the late-1990s.  Designed to be a technology-laden gateway to the shiny information future, the library was beset with problems.  A visually stunning architectural design did not make up for the fact that there proved to insufficient shelf space for the library’s collection, resulting in a wholesale and largely unsystematic dumping of books (many of which were carted off to a local landfill before angry residents intervened).  Add in labor problems, rebellious staff members, the discovery of a chunk of the library’s collection residing in a leaky parking basement, bad national publicity and local criticism, and it wasn’t a surprise that a special panel was commissioned to try and sort the mess out.

The chapter was useful for a couple of reasons.  As we began working on the research project it was a way for me to show that yes, there are controversies associated with libraries (after all, you think “library” and you don’t typically think about pistols at ten paces).  The chapter was also a great teaching tool because Basbanes makes an argument in that chapter but never actually does the standard move of stating the argument up front.  Yet you are in no doubt by the end where he stands and what he is advocating.  So it was a way of being able to talk about how an argument can be made by selection, editing of quotations, juxtaposition, and so on.

Anyway, the scan I’d done of the chapter also included the first page of the next chapter.  The epigraph to that chapter was the 1610 version (slightly modified) of the patron declaration for the Bodleian library at the University of Oxford.  For generations, patron would have to affirm the following orally upon their first visit to the library:

You promise, and solemnly engage before God, Best and Greatest, that whenever you shall enter the public library of the University, you will frame your mind to study in modesty and silence, and will use the books and furniture in such manner that they may last as long as possible.  Also that you will neither in your own person steal, change, make erasures, deform, tear, cut, write notes in, underline, wilfully spoil, obliterate, defile, or in any other way retrench, ill-use, wear away or deteriorate any book or books, nor authorise any other person to commit the like; but so far as in you lies, will stop any other delinquent or delinquents, and will make known their ill-conduct to the Vice-Chancellor or his deputy within three days after you were made aware of it yourself: so help you God, as you touch the Holy Gospels of Christ.

A shortened version of the declaration is still required, although today patrons usually sign a written version.

I was really struck by the language in this piece, but also the way in which it places a weighty responsibility on the shoulders of every patron.  It’s a vision of the role of the library, books, and scholarship that seems almost completely alien now.  I was taken with the idea that the library was envisioned as a place for which you need to prepare yourself in advance (“frame your mind”) and that scholarly study was characterized by “modesty:” something all to rare in the chest-thumping competition we’re all subtly (or not so-subtly) forced into by the publish or perish (or, these days, not infrequently publish and perish) model.  Also striking here is the fact that the reader/scholar’s task is very simple: to preserve both the library and the books.  Even here the declaration acknowledges the power of time.  It doesn’t say that we’re obliged to preserve everything until Kingdom Come, or in perpetuity, or anything theological or legalistic like that, but simply for “as long as possible.”  This pragmatism sits rather oddly with the laundry list of possible ways that a book could be despoiled.  But this is all a reminder that one of the things that made the Bodleian famous in its early years was that it very aggressively refused to lend its books to anyone, a policy maintained even when it offended nobles and high profile clergy who asked to borrow books.

The declaration is also a fragment from a time when books were one step removed from Holy objects, and looking after them was still regarded as a sacred trust.  I’ve never been particularly invested in that view of books myself and I abuse my own books dreadfully, committing most of the crimes listed in the declaration plus several others of my own casual devising.  I’m also not especially romantic about books even though they have been one of the gravitational centers of my life for as long as I can remember.  I can’t wait to get my hands on an E-reader, for example.  I’ve always felt that predictions of the disappearance of the book were massively overblown to precisely the same degree as bold predictions about the transformative potential of new information technology.

Books will be with us for many years. . .in some form.  But it’s becoming pretty clear that the print book is now teetering on the brink of obsolescence in a way that it hasn’t before.  The print book offers many advantages when compared with its electronic competitors: it is permanent, relatively hardy given everyday usage, and it is a non-proprietary format.  There’s a tendency to look at it as an out-dated technology.  But if we look at it purely as a form of technology it is in many respects a superior technology compared with what is out there at the moment.

However, recent history is littered with vastly superior technologies that have been cast by the wayside by a seemingly insatiable appetite for and an unstoppable drive toward efficiency and convenience.  Betamax was technologically superior in terms of picture quality to VHS.  Laserdiscs were vastly superior in terms of picture and sound quality to DVDs.  Only a tiny percentage of geeks or aesthetes care about such things.  Most people just don’t care about quality (look at the cars we drive and the new houses we buy).  In fact, if you hear people talking about quality, that isn’t usually what they are talking about at all (more commonly, its something like a list of “features”).

So that patron declaration spoke to me in unexpected ways.  It spoke to me of slowness.  Of a world of study that embraces inefficiency.  Of a world where knowledge is measured in the weight and heft of its components.  A world which would hardly comprehend the way we tend to read now: on a relentless quest for “information”–data-scraping our media until they are raw and bleeding–or driven by a feverish consumption, sucking up our books like milk through a straw.  It’s a world dedicated to solidity and tangibility where knowledge was peculiarly vulnerable (think of that laundry list of way books can be “ill-used”).  Now, we’re engaged in this headlong rush to make all our knowledge as light, transient, and yet oddly permanent as these pixels when you navigate away from this page.  Books may become truly immortal and invulnerable in ways they have never been before, yet that may come at the price of becoming increasingly insubstantial, taken for granted, disregarded, discarded.

For the first time, I’m starting to wonder seriously what we’ll lose with the disappearance of print, which may be arriving a lot sooner than I had thought.

Back to the Pool

The title of this post sounds a little like the title of a B-grade horror flik. 

“The old woman warned them. “Beware the pool,” she cackled, “It will destroy your will, gut your pride, suck you under.”  But the rowdy, disrespectful, drunken, over-sexed kids with their loud music and bad eighties hair wouldn’t listen.  The pool looked so warm and inviting.  And now, it’s too late. . .”

Yep, B-grade horror probably describes swimming quite nicely.

Still, I ignored, the voice of cackling doom and took myself back to the pool.  The aches and pains from Marine Corps have subsided completely and while I’m still really fatigued I’m not completely shattered, so I’m fast running out of excuses.

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Speaking of Marine Corps, I was on the Blue line today as we whizzed through the open-air section around Arlington Cemetery, paralleling the 110 where the race started and finished.  The Marines had done a great job cleaning up the area but there was still the odd space blanket blown into the trees here and there, and the occasional item of clothing including–God help me–what I swear was a jockstrap.  Now I don’t even want to ask why you would bring a jockstrap to a marathon, let alone when and how you would remove such an item.

Of course, maybe it was a Halloween decoration.  Because nothing says scary like a jockstrap dangling from a tree.

</tangent>

Anyway, there I was back at the pool.  It was great to see so many other members of the team there, most of them the Ironman Florida people getting an “easy” workout in.  I took one look at the workout pasted to the kickboard at the end of my lane and thought “Sod this for a game of soldiers.”  Given that I can just make it 25 meters and that only when I’m so out of breath that I need to stop, the chances of me being able to swim continuous 100s was, well, about as likely as me leaving a jockstrap hanging in a tree next to a Metro station.

Instead, I just concentrated each length on trying to get the basics down.  Last week was really overwhelming for me (could you tell?) so today, since there were only two of us in the noobs lane I was able to just concentrate on one thing at a time.  My biggest success was just to slow things down, not try and power down the pool like a Marlin threshing on the end of a sport line.  Soon I was finding that I was arriving down the end of the pool not so out of breath, that I didn’t have to hang off the wall doing my best impression of someone having a seizure.  I tried to get a feel for the body rotation, for what Ed meant by stretching out.  Gradually I also started to notice my own bad habits (resisting the tendency to try and look ahead, working on my habit of corkscrewing my head after breathing (although, who knows, when it comes to learning sighting, I may need to relearn that!)).

Since the coaches were there, I asked questions.  I learned that I was radically shortening my stroke on my breathing side, and that was causing me to sink.  Joe pointed out when we were dropping our non-stroke arms, and told me about tucking my head into my shoulder (I’m getting a fair amount of water when I breathe).

I tried not to look at any of the Florida people in the pool, cruising along confidently and calmly.  I’ll get there one day.  But for now I don’t want to know too much about how big is the gap that needs to be crossed.

By the end, I began to feel that at least I understood the theory and I could see how it was all supposed to work.  I can still only do one 25m length at a time, but at least I managed 24 of them.

Next major goal, 50m of continuous swimming.  Which, as I recall, I could do quite comfortably at the age of 12.

After the Agony there was. . .well, more Agony, actually.

The 24th Marine Corps Marathon, October 25 2009

Final Time: 4:19:28

The really important lesson I learned is that it is a helluva lot easier to do a marathon after you’ve already done one.  I felt a lot more prepared, both physically and mentally for Marine Corps this year than I was for Richmond last year.  I thought I was well prepared last year, and this year showed me how far I fell short of that goal.

Phase 1: Loitering with Intent

Before the race, I’d talked with Margie Shapiro, one of the coaches at Potomac River Running about race strategy.  I’d run roughly the first 8 miles of the course, and I knew there was a lot of up and down.  In particular I was a little concerned about the fact that the first 2 miles were all pretty steeply uphill.  When you are doing a marathon you don’t want to waste a lot of your energy in the kind of warmup you would normally do for a shorter race; the last thing I wanted to do, however, was pull a muscle going up or down that first hill.  Margie suggested a brisk walk and wearing a lot of warmer-than-usual clothing for as long as possible before the start.

So I walked from our place to the race start (about 25 minutes or so) wearing oversized op-shop sweats that I had acquired for Richmond last year (but didn’t need because the day was a sauna).  It was pitch dark, and I had the streets almost to myself until I crossed the parking lot leading to the access tunnel under the 395.  I could see a few people walking across the Pentagon South lot and I followed them thinking that the crowds weren’t as bad as I had expected.  Then we reached the Pentagon Metro.

There was a dense river of humanity flowing out of the exit, more people than I have ever seen on the Metro with the exception of New Year’s Eve.  I joined the huddled masses yearning to experience pain and suffering and we circumnavigated the Pentagon toward the race staging area, a process which took an unexpectedly long time.  That is one big building!

It was just starting to get light when we reached the Runner’s Village.  I dropped off my finish line bag, then joined the line for one of the many portaloo installations located around the parking lot.  The line moved pretty quickly, not surprisingly, because when I looked around it seemed as if there was one portaloo for every single racer.  I’m sure that if there was another event taking place somewhere in the region today they probably had to make do with holes dug in the ground.  After nearly leveling someone with the door of the portaloo as I exited, I stretched, and then ditched the sweat pants in the parking lot (some time passed between these last three actions, just to make that clear!).

The PA instructed us to start making our way to the start line, and it was as I walked along 110 that I began truly to get a sense of the scale of the race, as I passed each of the starting corrals labeled according to projected finish time.  There were so many!

It was, as expected, going to be a gorgeous day weather-wise.  Not a cloud in the sky, and temperatures staying in the 50s until well after midday.  There was a bit of wind, but nothing that you’d notice in the middle of 22,000 people (where, of course, you might have to worry about another kind of wind, particularly if people’s nutrition wasn’t sitting well with them!).  The race commentator began revving up the crowd and the runners and asked us all to introduce ourselves to our neighbour.  I met Dave, who was running his first marathon.  An ex-marine, he was understandably excited and a little emotional about this race; he’d also vowed that he would run a marathon when he turned 50, so this was something of a life-goal for him.

The wheelchair racers were sent on their way and I took a pre-race gel.  Then the PA announced that Marine Corps Ospreys would be doing a fly-by.  This got me almost as excited as the prospect of starting the race.  For those of you who aren’t an aircraft geek like me, the Osprey is, technically, a plane, but its two engines swivel to allow it to take off, land, and fly like a helicopter.  Then it is able to transition to normal forward propeller motion while in flight.  It’s a tough trick to pull off, from an aeronautical engineering point of view, and when I finally saw the two aircraft it was with mixed emotions because a lot of pilots were killed in the early testing phase of the Osprey.  We saw them once in helicopter mode, and then once in a low-level flyover in normal configuration.  Unfortunately, we didn’t see them actually transition.  That would have been cooler than the race itself.

Five minutes to go, and the crowd pushed forward.  Both lanes of the 110 were packed with people, and the air was suddenly filled with a blizzard of discarded clothing, water bottles, bags, and a variety of food containers.  I pitied the marines and supporters who were walking up and down the median strip; you would definitely want to have body armor for that assignment.

Phase 2: It starts with a bang

The starting howitzer barked (I love races that start with actual artillery; this is my second consecutive one; the Patrick Henry half marathon started with a replica cannon that almost caused me to crap myself), there was a plume of smoke in the distance, and we were off.  Which is to say that we started walking.  After several minutes we began running. . .for 20 metres and then it was back to walking again.  We eventually crossed the start line about 8 minutes later but, thankfully, by that point, we were indeed running.

My target pace was about 9:10, give or take.  So for the first 2 miles I backed off that, to almost 10 minutes.  When I had run this portion I had run up the right side of Lee Highway and I was pleased to discover that we went up the left side since this was not as steep and included a little downhill recovery portion in the middle.  When we turned on to Spout Run, I didn’t push it at all, just letting gravity carry me down.  However, that portion was pretty damn steep so without even trying I just about evened up my account.

When we made it across Key Bridge I began to be conscious of the crowds.  They were huge!  People cheering and shouting, it was all a little overwhelming.  As we left them behind temporarily and moved on to Canal Road it seemed to me that Fall had suddenly decided to ramp up in the last couple of days while I wasn’t looking.  It seemed as if all the trees were red and gold, each sharply defined in the early morning light (it was hard to believe that it wasn’t yet 9am).  Several people nearby said that this stretch made them feel as if they were running in a nature preserve.  As we turned up the incredibly-steep-but-mercifully-short Reservoir Road hill, Dave, a new Team Zer caught and then passed me; it was on this stretch that we also caught and passed the tail end of the wheelchair field.

I felt I was running really well, by this point.  I was sticking to my goal times, I felt relaxed, I was focused, no muscle aches and pains of any kind, breathing well.  I was taking Sustain every couple of miles, and an extra endurolyte tablet every four miles.  I’d reset my Garmin so that it was only showing me distance and average lap pace.  While training to my HR has been invaluable, I’ve found in previous races that if I see my HR I sometimes get locked in a bad kind of feedback loop where I get anxious, and that raises my HR, which makes me more anxious. . .  you get the idea.  I’d practiced racing with just a pace goal and it had worked pretty well, so I was feeling confident.  I’d also set my lap split to every two miles rather than every mile, so that it would even out the rises and falls and I wouldn’t be tempted to micromanage my pace.  So here is the data I pulled from my watch at the end:

Mile	Time	Pace	HR
2	19:53	9:57	148
4	17:46	8:53	151
6	18:16	9:08	152
8	18:36	9:18	151
10	18:07	9:04	150
12	18:17	9:09	151
14	18:36	9:18	153
16	18:23	9:12	156
18	18:48	9:24	158
20	19:58	9:59	156
22	20:41	10:21	155
24	23:19	11:40	150
16	23:13	11:37	148

HR Zone2=130-139, Zone 3=140-153.

Phase 3: Uh Oh

As you can see, things went just swimmingly through mile 16.  This took us all the way around Haines point and even though this is the part that most people seem to think is pretty boring, I was always conscious of what a glorious day it was, and how beautiful was the scenery.  I can’t say I stopped to smell any roses, but around Haines point I did stop to piss on some.  I’m reminded of Jeff Goldblum’s character in The Big Chill: “I love nature.  It’s like one giant toilet.”  Let’s just say that if I were a parent I wouldn’t let them play anywhere along the edge of Spout Run or Canal Road.  At least not until after the next big rain.

By this stage some of the wheelchair athletes were catching us again after struggling on the early hills.  What really impressed me was the courtesy that people showed.  A group of runners would start yelling “Make a lane!  Wheels coming through” (ex-military, obviously) or “Make a hole” (from the coffin service?) and this mass of people would part and leave a gap in the middle.  It was quite amazing.

Then we were onto the Mall, a part of the race I’d really been looking forward to.  However, it was at this point I began to be aware that everything was not well in the Kingdom of Mullen.  The citizens were definitely getting restless and rebellion was a-brewing.  I was still feeling pretty good, muscle-wise, and I felt as if I was still running well, but my pace was definitely beginning to slip, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.  I was getting flavor (or lack-of-flavor) burnout from the Sustain by this point; I took in some of my last flask, tried to finish it and involuntarily spat it out.  I was starting to cramp a little around the middle.  A hot spot on the bottom of my left foot had definitely blistered by that point.  I was pushing on regardless, but was always conscious of it and it was probably throwing my form off a little.

Still, helped by a little downhill stretch to the Capitol I managed to keep it reasonably together.  But you can see that by mile 18, my pace was falling and my HR was rising (I didn’t know that, but I could feel it).  Mile 18 brought two kinds of relief.  According to plan, I switched over to coffee-flavored (therefore, caffeinated) Hammer gels.  Hammer gels are so thick that it was lying drinking Turkish coffee; a little awkward in the middle of a race, but there are worse things!  The second form of relief came in the form of my blister bursting.  You know how even the tiniest stone in your shoe feels ten times its size?  Well, imagine the sensation of a ripe, juicy grape bursting inside your shoe.  But I ran a little easier afterward.

At mile 20 I caught sight of Alison, who had agreed to run the last 6 miles with me.  I was desperate to see her; in fact, and I was so scared that she hadn’t seen me that I’m ashamed that I snapped my fingers rather peremptorily at her.  But she had seen me, and clutching a water bottle in one hand and busily texting with the other, she joined me as we started our assault on the 14th street bridge.  Holy crap but that sucker is long, almost 2 miles.  And while it is exposed, the temperature was still pretty cool and I don’t remember there even being any wind.  I’m actually pretty proud of the way I ran the bridge, because I fought for it.  I’d slowed to 10 minute miles by 20, but despite the gradient of the bridge I didn’t hemorrhage too much more time.  Alison’s encouragement was really important, and so was the fact that it was at this point that we started passing a lot of people walking.  My biggest problem, however, was that I would occasionally get these stabbing pains in my abdomen, like someone had knifed me; the pains would be so sudden that they would literally stop me in my tracks.  This happened once just after I joined Allison, and then once more about 2.5 miles later.

Phase IV: It ends with a whimper

By the time we came down the exit ramp off the bridge, however, things were breaking down all over the place.  Alison and I were joined by Diane who kept pace with us through the madness of Crystal City.  There was a bit more wind in the concrete canyons, but I all I can really remember of my surroundings was an impression of constant noise.  The world was pretty narrow for me at that point.  In fact, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed Mary if Alison and Diane hadn’t pointed her out.  She was leaping up and down, screaming like a crazy woman.  In fact, her leaping was downright impressive; Diane and Alison were both of the opinion that her next athletic endeavor should be pole-vaulting or the high jump.  Drew jumped in with us near the mile 24 aid station, dressed in street clothes and clutching a large coffee, oblivious to the fact that most of its contents were slopping all over his hand.  It was really great to see him as well, and reminded me of when he jumped in with me at Richmond and ran a cruel mile with me when I was really starting to hurt around 14.

Drew and Diane hopped out soon after, leaving Alison and I to continue the long final stretch up the 110 toward the finish.  I walked briefly after mile 25, chiefly so I could save some energy for the uphill finish.  Alison and I hit the last aid station. . .and that was the last I saw of her.  One moment she was heading off to get water, and then the next she had disappeared.  (That must be the Bermuda Aid Station, because Alison later told me that she lost our friend Amy at exactly the same point the year before).  I reached the climb up Iwo Jima hill, and charged up.  And I mean charged.  It wasn’t so much that I was thrilled to be at the finish, because I couldn’t even see the finish.  I was just so sick of running on the flat that the hill just felt really good; for a brief moment I felt in sync again, and passed a ton of people.

And then it was over.

But it took quite a while to register.  My immediate concern was staying warm, so I grabbed a space blanket, and walked up to the half dozen chutes where people were queuing up to have their medals handed to them by a second lieutenant.  And it was at that moment that I felt the only really strong emotion of the day.  Looking up the chute at the young officer (looking very young) ahead of me, the Iwo Jima memorial behind him, I found myself tearing up.  This marathon is not quite like any other.  Throughout the entire race, all around me were people running with a variety of signs, labels, and sometimes specially printed shirts, with the names and/or photos of dead servicepeople in whose memory they were running.  And there were so many of them.  We’re engaged in this bizarre war that is largely invisible to most Americans, and each of those runners was a reminder that the war had come all too close to home for someone.  And as I prepared to get my medal, from this kid, all I could do was wonder if he too, would join the ranks of those not coming home, to become a photo on the back of someone’s shirt, in next year’s race.

There were all the formalities: finisher line photo, drink, a bag of food, and then we were trudging toward the finish line festivities in nearby Rosslyn.  That was a long walk.  However, I’m very glad the race was organized that way because it almost forced you to keep moving.  I hated it at the time, because every muscle in your body is screaming at you to sit down, get off your feet.  And I noticed a lot of people around the memorial itself who had just dropped to the ground, wrapped in their space blankets, and fallen asleep.  Bad move.  You have to keep moving, get the blood circulating, and although my body resisted it, the trudge to Rosslyn is one of the major reasons I didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as I expected the next day.  I changed into some warmer clothes, caught the bus back to Crystal City and walked home.

Things I’m Most Happy About

1. The Event.  I would recommend this marathon to anyone and would love to do it again some day.  Flawlessly organized, massive crowd support, plus it appeals to the part of me that likes taking control of areas of the city normally completely dedicated to cars.

2. Executing my race plan.  Until the wheels fell off around mile 18 I did exactly what I had planned to do.  I didn’t fight the course at the beginning, let the hills come to me, settled quickly into my goal pace, and kept it steady.  Whether or not it was the right race plan is open to question.

3. My consistency.  You get a better sense of how consistent I was during the first part of the race if you look at the official race splits:

5K=29:35; 10K=58:18 (28:43); 15K=1:27:00 (28:42); 20K=1:55:49 (28:49); 25K=2:24:44 (29:05); 30K=2:54:16 (29:28). . .and this next part is where it gets ugly.  35K=3:26:40 (32:24); 40K=4:03:36 (36:54). . .

Moreover, the consistency of my HR suggests that I was running at a consistent effort level, and moderating that according to subtle changes in the course without too much thought.

4.  The Fourteenth Street Bridge.  I’m happy that I really fought my way through this.  I ran the whole thing when so many people around me were walking, and wasn’t fazed by the initial climb and the dispiriting length of the thing.

5. My early pace.  It has been a struggle for me to really believe that I could sustain a pace higher than my comfortable zone 2 pace for any length of time, and I finally proved to myself that I could.

6.  Better than last year.  OK, so the conditions in Richmond last year were apocalyptically awful.  And for a marathoning newbie they were soul-destroying.  I had expected to do better than this year.  Still, improving by 20 minutes over last year is nothing to sniff at.

7. Physical Condition. I was in much better shape for this race, thanks to all the training with Team Z.  Muscle-wise, I didn’t experience any pain in my legs until mile 24, when I started to feel my quads aching.

8.  Finishing. Last, and certainly not least.

Lessons Learned

1.  Going out too fast? I had realized that my target pace would have put me in zone 3 for most of the race.  However, my HR shows that I spent the better part of 3 hours in high zone 3 tipping over into zone 4.  One reason for my collapse, then, seems simply to be that I went out too fast.  It would have been much better to be doing the race in low to mid-zone 3, so perhaps a target pace of something like 9:20 might have been more appropriate.  Still hard in the final stages, but possibly sustainable.

2. Pace setting. I need to rethink the way in which I arrive at my goal pace for long races like this.  All of my training had suggested, and my PRR coaches agreed, that my goal pace of 9:10 was reasonable.  But perhaps on the day it wasn’t.  So maybe my training paces don’t translate into goal race paces in quite the same way as other people’s?

3. Blister issues. This is an interesting one.  I have great shoes.  And they have never, ever produced even a hint of a blister or hot spot.  Not when running hard at interval training, on the long marathon prep runs, or in a half marathon in heat and humidity.  But somehow, something to do with that marathon pace produced blistering.  And yes, I wore the socks I trained in, the Belaga’s, which have been great.  It may simply be that I need to tighten up the shoe on that side.

4. You can never have too much body glide. I Body Glided pretty much every part of my anatomy and was really comfortable for the entire race (the only “injury” being a scrape on my collarbone causes by rubbing of the zipper of my tri-top.  But Mary told me (after the race, natch) that she also applied body glide to her feet.  I wonder if that would have helped with the blistering?

5. Rethink nutrition? I was definitely carrying enough nutrition (based on calories for my body weight, etc.) and was using everything that I had trained with for the last couple of months.  I’m not totally convinced, however, that the Sustain is working as well as it could for me.  I had mixed it to about 1.5 times strength (and therefore took the Sustain with a little extra water at each stop)  to get me through 3 hours, at which time I would switch to gels.  And on long easy bikes and runs I can take Sustain with no problem, although I definitely start to get sick of it by about the 3 hour mark when running, hence the switch in race plan.  But somehow, running at a high intensity, it doesn’t feel as if it processes as well as it should.  This is a hard thing for me to really explain.  I don’t have any horrendous GI issues, I don’t feel bloated or overly full.  But somehow, it just feels different when I’m working at a higher intensity.  It feels like I am not getting as much energy from it, that’s the only way I can explain it.

6. Respect the distance. As I said in another post, my goals for this race really changed after signing up for the Ironman, and I think that was a sensible adjustment.  But I also think that in my mind I was thinking that since I had signed up for an Ironman that this was “only a marathon.”  There is no “only a marathon.”

7.  Psychological Discipline. Mentally, I’ve usually been pretty strong in races, even when things have gone wrong and/or the conditions have been horrendous.  (And those of you familiar with my races in previous years know that I’ve had a lot of practice with those scenarios!).  But I think my mental strength is honed to deal with things that go wrong when I can actually understand why something is going wrong.  In this race, the speed of my collapse took me by surprise, as did the fact that in the initial stages it still felt really comfortable but I was slowing rapidly for some inexplicable reason.  Very possibly I also don’t have the mental strength to push through that kind of pain and discomfort.  Something tells me I’m going to need to develop that.  First step?  100m of continuous swimming in the pool.

8.  Just not a marathoner? I know this sounds odd.  I’ve completed two marathons.  The first one was a grim sufferfest that I still kinda enjoyed.  This last one I really enjoyed.  But I just don’t think I’m a “marathoner.”  I used to think that I was built for endurance.  But one of my biggest revelations when doing track workouts was that I have great speed over very short distances (i.e. 200m).  Since that revelation, I’ve begun to suspect that I’m actually a sprinter struggling valiantly to become an endurance athlete.  That said, I feel my sweet spot for running is the 10mile to half-marathon distance.  The distances are short compared with a marathon, but long enough that I can use my intelligence and discipline to be reasonably competitive.  Is that just a temporary stage on the way to marathoning greatness?  Or will marathoning always be a struggle to complete something for which I’m not ideally physiologically developed?

Postscript: Reason to Run

On the bus from Rosslyn to Crystal City I sat next to a guy, George, from somewhere in Pennsylvania.  He said this was his 6th Marine Corps Marathon.  Each year he does this race.  And this is the only race he does.  No other marathons.  No other road races of any kind.  I asked him why he started, and he said that he used to be in the Marines.  Their unit had been deployed to Iraq and within a week of arriving one of their pilots was killed in the air, shot through the neck by ground fire.  George said that he wasn’t in Iraq, his job was back in the US notifying families of the killed or injured, making sure that they had support, etc.  He repeated several times that it was hard because, as the casualties mounted, he was in the rear.  And he said “Finally, I decided that I just had to do something with all this. . .”–it looked as if he wanted to say “anger”–”energy, so I started training for a marathon.  For this one special run.”

I thought back to David, that I had met at the start of the race, running to celebrate his 50th birthday.  The odd feeling that I was left with at the end of the day was this: why am I doing this?  What is my reason for running?  It has become something I just do.  Sure, I enjoy it, but training seems as natural to me now as breathing.  But I can’t help feeling that I’m going to need something a little more compelling than some watered down Nike slogan to help me through 140.6 miles.

Twas the night before Christmas. . .

Christmas is probably not the first thing that leaps into someone’s mind when they are contemplating a marathon the next day, but today it felt oddly like being a kid and waiting for Christmas morning to arrive.  The sense of anticipation, the excitement of something familiar that would nevertheless be different in myriad ways.

Training has been scaled right back this week (with the exception of the unfortunate swimming episode); even the biking went by the wayside.  I’ve been trying to take it easy, although that’s been a little difficult; had a set of student papers to read and that meant some long days on top of the usual teaching schedule.  I’ve concentrated on all the usual race week prep: upping the carb intake slightly, drinking gallons of electrolyte enhanced water, and loading with extra sodium (the latter meant becoming reacquainted with Ramen noodles for the first time since university; you can’t go wrong with 2/3 of your daily salt requirement in one tiny packet).

My goal for tomorrow is to finish somewhere between 4 hours and 4 hours and ten minutes.  I don’t know how well that plan will go, since the first part of the course is really hilly, and that coincides with the part where things will be most congested.  Even more so since the long Lee hill at mile 2 will be an early indicator for a lot of people that maybe having done only 14 miles as their longest training run might not have been the best idea.  But since signing up for the Ironman, my goals for this race changed completely.  I’m not so worried about the final time now; it is more important for me to run the race smart, to practice staying disciplined over a long distance.

It should be great day, weatherwise, pretty much as good as you’ll get for running a marathon in this part of the country.  So tomorrow, it will be just the road, me, and 22,000 of my friends.

Ten Reasons to Try a Duathlon

This was originally published in Cat Tales, the newsletter of the now defunct Capital Area Triathlon Club (TriCats) in the fall of 2007.  I thought I’d offer it again here to celebrate my new found love of swimming.

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Done every tri in the region? Done most of them twice? Looking for a different kind of athletic challenge? Consider including a duathlon or two in your race plans for next year.

1. There is no swimming involved. Many athletes I have met express a profound horror of having to run twice for God’s sake, instead of having to swim once. But you only have to take one look at the Eagleman competitors clambering out of the Choptank, faces black with toxic sludge, and running a second time starts to seem like an eminently sane option.

2. Take Back Your Life. As we all know, multisport training is time consuming.
Duathlons allow you to push yourself and experience the challenge of bridging different competitive disciplines … but you only have to train two sports instead of three. Bike training, as we all know, is fun. Run training is fun. Oddly enough, however, I’ve yet to meet anyone who tells me they enjoy swim training … So if you are looking forward to spending more time with your family (genuinely looking forward to doing so, and not simply because you’ve been caught with your snout in the political trough) or wondering what it would be like to have a life outside training, do the Du.

3. Experience a more relaxed style of competition. Duathlons are typically smaller scale events (even when they are coupled with a tri), and as such have a more relaxed feel to them. Athletes who specialize in duathlons are well aware that they constitute a rather oddball minority in the multisport community, so there is a degree of camaraderie often evident at
events. In every race I’ve been in, competitors routinely compliment, encourage and motivate one another, often going out of their way to do so if they see another athlete flagging.

4. Experience a more intense style of competition. Duathletes race sprint dus in particular at a very high level of intensity, with an effort more typical of an extended time trial. Arguably the intensity is even greater than sprint tris. With no neoprene to shed, both transitions tend to be brutally fast, and without the swim heaviness in your legs, you hit the bike leg with an elevated HR and your legs fully warmed up.

5. There is no swimming involved. Let’s face it, most of America’s bodies of swimmable water are by now polluted messes, however idyllic they may look on the surface. As a result, duathletes save a small fortune on visits to the ear, nose, and throat specialist. So if you don’t like wondering whether that object you just glimpsed beneath the water’s surface was a giant Kielbasa or something worse, give duathlon a try.

6. Experience new bodily sensations. And I mean that in a good way! Triathletes are familiar with that distinctive feeling of the transition from bike to run, the heaviness in your legs, the sensation as if you are moving in slow motion. You still get that, obviously, in duathlons. So don’t worry, the suffering is not lessened. But you also get something else. In every duathlon in which I’ve competed, the transition from run to bike is almost the inverse feeling. You get this indescribable feeling of suddenly flying, of having been released from
your earthly bondage and at last being able to move as fleet and fine as nature intended.

7. Level Up! Long course duathlons, although they are few and far between, can be a useful bridge between Olympic distance tris and longer distance events, such as a half Ironman. While long course distances tend to vary, the
Powerman distance (currently raced in Alabama, Ohio, and (intermittently) in North Carolina) typically feature two 8K runs and a 35 mile bike ride. Long course dus also seems to favor rolling or hilly bike courses, increasing the
challenge level.

8. You can never do too many bricks. In most parts of the country (with the exception of the South where, inexplicably given the temperatures involved, they race duathlons all  summer long) duathlons tend to be confined to the spring and fall (most major sprint duathlons in the mid-Atlantic region are over by the beginning of May, and don’t begin again until late August). Duathlons are, then, excellent preparation for triathletes contemplating races in the Summer. At the other end of the year, they are a fun way to begin to wind down your competitive season without going completely cold turkey.

9. So what is it that you do again? Because they tend to be smaller scale, more intimate and (often) more spectator friendly, duathlons can be an excellent way to introduce bemused loved ones—or, just as important, people who are contemplating becoming involved in the multisport lifestyle—to the sport. Events like Columbia are wonderful spectacles, but they are often a little overwhelming and it is often very hard for spectators to get round the course and see their athlete in action. With duathlons, spectators typically can get a good view of each and every athlete in the transition area, and move around the start/finish area very easily.

10. There is no swimming involved. The swim leg in triathlon is an odd concession to a completely different kind of sporting tradition. It is the moment at which a sport which is supposed to be about isolated, individual effort, suddenly and inexplicably becomes a fully body contact sport. So if you would rather watch World Extreme Cage Fighting than experience it, head on over to duathlon.com and start planning a less confrontational season.

Taking the Plunge

I had my first session of swim training yesterday,  And it was pretty much what I expected.

It sucked.

Which is to say, I sucked.

Which is to say, it was a suckful of suckiness from the great annual suckfest at sucksville sucksylvania.

As my brother would say, it didn’t just suck, it hoovered.

But perhaps I am being too subtle here.

The “highlight” of the training sessions was when we were doing catchup drills; the triathletes in the audience will know what this is.  For the rest of you. . .it’s not really important.  All you need to know is that I was motoring (ha ha) down the pool with a kickboard clenched between my thighs (and all I can say is thank God they don’t call them flutterboards in this country; it is hard enough to keep your dignity in the pool as it is) and the next thing I knew the pressure of my manly buttocks had fired the kickboard two lanes across the pool.  And the crowd went wild.

On the plus side I was relieved to discover that I don’t have to wear a speedo.  That was a real concern.  The world is definitely not ready for the sight of me in a speedo.  In fact, the world isn’t ready for the sight of any man in a speedo.  Yes, I know that champion triathlete Faris Al-Sultan races in one.  But he looks like a tool.  And I’m sure he’s only a champion because when he passes people they are instantly stricken blind.

So I’m facing the sorry truth that, like most New Zealand kids of my generation, all we actually learned when we were being taught to swim was, in essence, survival swimming.  Enough technique so that if we fell off the back of the inter-island ferry while chundering up our breakfast we could stay afloat long enough for the ship to turn around and run us over.

One of the things I have really enjoyed about being involved in multisport is that it doesn’t remind me at all of the horror days of school sports.  Those were the days where I was useless at everything and felt useless. 

Well, my first day in the pool was exactly like that.

I’m sure it will get a little easier (it bloody well better!).  But one of the things I’m struggling with is that up until this point I’ve been used to being reasonably competent at something (cycling) and moderately competent at something else (running).  But now I’m engaged in an activity where it would probably be more productive to harpoon me, filet me, and send me straight to a Japanese street market. 

It’s going to be a long year.