Internal Mono(b)log

Another great article from Joe Friel on the importance of training on the bike with power.

Joe Friel – More on Power Meters.

And, by the way, I still have a power meter for sale.  Leave me a comment with your contact info if you’re interested.

As promissed, here’s the vid of yesterday’s bike ride.

Today’s swim was much like yesterday’s: open water, fighting chop and wind on the way out, faster and easier on the way back.  Life was pretty grand until I swam straight into a jellyfish!  At first I thought I’d hit a piece of seaweed, and then my arm lit up.  That was no seaweed, that was a fully jellyfish!! Fortunately not a Portuguese Man-O-War 🙂

Anyhow, other than my arm feeling like I’d slept in a bed of stinging nettles for about 2hrs it was all good.

Enjoy the vid.

I’ve been here for a few days and have done some training, hit the grocery, and visited with my friends, Richard and Jamuna, but haven’t really been out exploring yet.  Tomorrow I’ll be in Panama City for a 10k race in the morning and take in some of the city sites and sounds in the afternoon.

What I have seen of Panama, I’ve really liked.  The people are friendly and industrious. The economy is booming, signs of crazy growth are everywhere, but the cost of living is still pretty low.  Best, for me, is the climate.  Sunny, warm, breezy, a bit humid but manageable. So far, absolutely loving my stay here.

I’ll post more “Impressions of Panama” toward the end of the trip as I have a chance to see, do, and experience more of what Panama has to offer.

Heat acclimatization has been going well.  Swam in the ocean yesterday at the beach off Playa Coronado (where I’m staying). Here’s a youtube vid of the beach:

I’m back there today and pretty much daily until Friday.

Yesterday I did another training ride out to Punta Chame along a country road.  It’s a nice ride and cranking along on the bike you don’t feel the heat or humidity.   I wore a GoPro camera as a helmet cam and shot the ride, unfortunately the camera’s angle is a bit low so the scenery isn’t as well depicted as I’d like.  I edited the 1.5 hrs down to about 12 minutes.  I’ll post the youtube link once it’s finished uploading.

This morning I did my 1st shakeout run since arriving.  Just a quick 30 minute run.  I went early in the day (8am) and OH MY GOD!  Heat management during tomorrow’s 10k and the 12th’s 20k is going to be SUPER important.  I was a bit surprised, having been misled by the cooling effect of the wind while cycling, just how hot it was.  Sponges, hydration and nutrition are going to be key on both Sundays.

I’ve also had a chance to do a shakeout of the Sportiiiis.  I took them on yesterday’s bike ride and this morning’s run.

On the bike, I had it monitoring primarily my power and during my quick run this morning, pulse.  Just a teaser for now, more detailed review to come, but quckly: ME LIKEY!  This device is everything it’s promised to be.  It seems to work very well and is quite configurable (I need to spend some time, having now used it a bit, to tweak it more to my liking).   Like I said, just a teaser for now.  Stay tuned.

Training for Ironman in Coronado.

I got written up in the news down here in Coronado, Panama 🙂  Fun

Sorry for the blog spam, but hey – we could both win a macbook air.

Follow this link: http://www.appsumo.com/~PSyha/ and signup

Today is another light day of heat/humidity acclimatization.  Pretty much the same as yesterday’s, but today I plan on hitting the beach and doing a bit of an ocean swim rather than the pool.

Last night I charged the GoPro’s, put one in the wrist mount and mounted the 2nd on my aerobars on the bike.  So, with some tech-luck, I’ll have some images/video footage to share tonight.  The wireless connection I’m on is Wi-Max and not super stable, so, whether or not I can successfully upload the images will be a different story, but I’ll cross that bridge later 🙂

So Race Day Nutrition:

I’m not talking here about carb loading, I will talk about that later, here I’m talking about what I eat and drink, and when, during the actual event.  I’m going to break this up into 5 sections: Pre, Swim, Bike, Run, and Post.

Pre

The night before the race I’ll probably try to get to sleep around 8pm.  I’ll sleep with a couple of bananas beside the bed.  I normally wake around 2am for a bathroom break and if I do, I’ll eat the bananas.

I’ll wake around 4am and have a BIG cup of coffee, this will be my first caffeine in 2 weeks and the coffee will help stimulate (ahem) nature’s call.  I’ll also eat a bunch of berries (strawberries and blueberries if I can find them) with yogurt for breakfast.  I’ll omit my normal bran buds from this morning’s breakfast as I don’t want the fibre in the way.

As I head down to the shuttle bus and checkin, I’ll start sipping a bottle with Hornet Juice and EFS Sport Drink.

Swim

Of course you can’t take on nutrition during the swim, at least not a short swim like this (sure if you’re doing a lake crossing or something you’ll figure out a way to eat and drink, but not here).

About 25 minutes before my wave enters the water, I’ll consume a flask made up of 1/2 flask of EFS Liquid Shot, 1 scoop of EFS Pre Race and water.  Ultimately I want these hitting my blood stream just as my wave kicks off and this timing seems pretty good.

Bike

On the bike, through experimentation, I’ve found that I can consume approximately 800 calories per hour without getting an upset stomach.  This can be a mix of liquid, gel or solids and it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference; however, in the last 1/3 of the bike I try to switch to liquids only because my gut isn’t as nice to me when running 😉

My bike nutrition is made up of Hornet Juice, EFS Sport Drink, EFS Liquid Shot and, as a mid-race boost, EFS Pre-Race.  I’ll typically mix up very concentrated water bottles of:

• 1 or 2 Hornet Juice
• 3 scoops of EFS Sport Drink
• 3 or 4 scoops of CarboPro

Each bottle being approximately 800 calories of fuel.  A flask of EFS Liquid Shot is 400 calories and the 3 chia chargers that I’ll have represent another 400 calories.  With 2 bottles that gives me 2400 carried calories.  I burn approximately 700 calories per hour when riding at race pace, so if I consumed all my carried nutrition, I’d come into the run with a bit of a surplus.  Based on history, it’s unlikely that I will get through it all, but I try 🙂

Run

On the run my nutrition is made up of EFS Liquid Shot, and Hornet Juice carried in my FuelBelt.  Running I burn about 650 calories per hour and I’ll be carrying 900 calories.  Which, again, if I (unlikely) consume it all puts me at only a minor deficit out of the run.

Post

Post race I have EFS Ultragen waiting for me to immediately replenish some protein into the system.  I’ll look for some “real food”™ to eat.  Not eating grains or unidentifiable meat cuts (no hamburgers, ground meat, sausage, etc) probably means I’m eating whatever fruit I can find.  At this point, I’d kill for a grilled chicken breast or 2 on a bed of mixed greens with some other raw veg and no dressing, but I doubt that I’ll be successful in finding that at the post race.

Notes

I haven’t talked about hydration here, it’s super important.  I onboard water at every aide station on the bike, regardless of whether my speedfil is full/empty or anywhere in between.  There are 4 bike aide stations on this 90k ride so I have no excuse for running out of water.  On the run the aide stations are every mile.  At the run aide stations I typically just grab water to cool myself down and sometimes some water to drink.  I carry my own hydration to a point, but given the heat down here, I know it won’t be enough.  So I’ll likely drink some water at each aide station and rely on my carried water for the gaps between the stations.

I don’t rely on course aide stations for nutrition.  I have experimented with different gels, drinks, and solid foods and have discovered through, at times pretty uncomfortable, experimentation what works for me.  It’s been said a million times and I’ll add my voice to it: nutrition is very personal, what works for one person may not for another.  You have to find your optimal solution and check your limits to figure out what works for you.

Today was my 1st day of training in Panama. Oh my it was wonderful!

The focus today was really to just burn off yesterday’s travel and to start, for real, my heat/humidity acclimatization.   I have been doing regular steam bath sessions in Toronto, but being surrounded by, and exercising in, inescapable heat/humidity is pretty different.  Fortunately we are very adaptable creatures and I have 9 more days to get my body primed for the 12th.

Today’s shakeout was an easy swim for 45 minutes and an easy ride for ah hour.

Did the swim in the Playa Coronado pool, a 32 meter pool that was completely empty except for Richard and I (awesome!)

Did the bike ride, starting about 4pm, on a nice quiet country road not far from their place with quiet rolling hills, a few chickens, and some dogs. Fortunately most of the dogs weren’t interested in lending chase, but of course there were 2 that decided chasing a bike would be fun.  I barked at them and they gave up though, so it was ok.  Having real road under my wheels and the tropical breeze in my face today was absolutely amazing.  After months on the computrainer in my pain-cave with fans blowing on me, it was just so nice to be in a real™ environment. 🙂

The weather here is roughly the same as Toronto in August.  Yea it’s warm, and humid, but there seems to be a persistent breeze and it’s all pretty easy to take. I have to tell you, I’ll take this over February in Toronto ANY DAY!

The only glitch today was that my Garmin910xt just shut itself off about 60% of the way through my ride and then couldn’t re-establish GPS lock… it was odd.  Gonna have to keep an eye on that over the next few days.  Brought my 310 as a backup (yea I know – freaking boy scout), but hopefully I won’t need it.

Tomorrow’s a 1:20 ride.  Gonna try to do it during a little warmer part of the day and also going to try to use the sportiiiis  to give them a shakeout ride.  Should be fun.  Stay tuned 🙂

Hydration!  So key when traveling, especially so when traveling by air.  In my short 2 hr flight from YYZ->EWR I pounded back 2L of water (and 1 Nuun electrolyte tab) and I’m STILL THIRSTY!   Worse than that I feel dry.  Ah well…  I had 3 hrs in EWR to cool my heels, hydrate, eat, stretch, walk about and write.

I’m writing this from  the long leg of the journey: 5 hrs from EWR to Panama (PTY). It’s gonna be a whole lotta no fun.  Hopefully I sleep a lot of it away.  That’s my plan anyhow 🙂

So new products?  Oh yea 🙂

So I have one of these with me, to train with for the next 10 days, and hopefully race with on the 12th.  The other stayed home and will get reviewed when I return.

Item 1: From 4iiii.com the Sportiiiis.

These are such a great product. I fell in love with them when I first read about them at CES last year.  Sportiiiis are a device that attach to your sunglasses arm and position a heads-up-display of programmable LED lights just barely in your field of view at the bottom of your sunglasses.  You program the LEDs to light in different colours based on ANT+ data received from power meters, heart rate monitors, and cadence sensors.   With some setup this means you never have to look at your training watch during an event or training. In fact, if you aren’t concerned with collecting and reviewing data, you don’t even need a watch!

I had this idea years ago, but had no idea how to get it to market.  I’m so glad that 4iiiis did what I wasn’t able to, to be in their beta program and to be testing and reviewing this product.

Item 2: Finis Positive Propulsion Fins

These fins look… well funny, but because of their design they are billed as useful training aides for all swim strokes.  I swam 50m in them on Tuesday just to give them a super-quick test and from my very early first impressions, I can say they definitely seem to work as promised.  Further, the design is said to supinate the foot a bit to get a better propulsive kick, which I noticed.  Finally, the design is a “foot pocket/heal strap” design rather than a moulded full-foot design.  I found this design much more comfortable.

I’ll be working up a full comparative Zoomers vs Propulsion fins review. Once I’m back from Panama.

I’m writing this entry during my YYZ->EWR (New Jersey) flight, the 2nd leg of my 4 leg journey today.

1st leg was home->YYZ which was pretty flawless.  Driver showed up early, and helped Kim and I load all my gear.  Said “Bye” to the dogs. Had a nice, cheery (no tears) g’bye moment with Kim  was away.  At Pierson I picked up one of the luggage carts and managed to sherpa myself to the checkin.

At checkin I was told that my kit box was 5 lbs TOO HEAVY.  Fortunately my carry-on was well underweight, so I moved my case of Clif Builder bars and tub of EFS Sport Drink (Grape flavour in case you were curious) to my carry-on and all was good.  $225 in baggage, and bike handling fees (expected and not crazy – only $50 extra handling fee for the bike).

After checkin I got to whiz thru immigration thanks to my Nexus pass.  I loaded all my checked baggage onto the oversize conveyor and with a tear and a wave sent my bike to parts unknown.  Parts unknown that is, hopefully ended in Panama, intact and complete, with me tonight at 10pm 😉

Then off to security theatre.  I truly question the value that this “service” offers, but if it keeps the sheeple flying because it makes them feel safe, ok.. whatever.  Today it was a breeze, no line, friendly competent staff, in and out faster than I could doff and don my shoes (and they have speed laces)!

Next stop Starbucks and currency exchange. Starbucks for a decaf Americano (yea there’s a little caffeine in it, I know, but its going to be a long day, so shoot me!) and to the currency exchange to have some US$ in my pocket for misc expenses, groceries in Panama, etc.

1st glitch (and hopefully only one) of the trip… I try to take out funds and the ATM tells me my card has been cancelled.  WTF?!!!  So I’m on the phone to the bank, on hold, waiting, transferred, waiting more, security questions, transaction history questions, et voila! Card fixed. (Phew!) Seems that my attempt to withdrawal a larger than normal amount of money in the airport tripped their loss prevention systems and locked down my account.  On one hand, awesome that they’re so efficient, on the other hand – AAAAH STRESS!!!!    At least dealing with that helped pass the time at YYZ.  🙂

A little while sitting in the boarding area waiting to board, consuming some of the free airport wifi (thanks Boingo and Rogers) and here I am.  Sitting in 15A, looking out the window at the sea of cotton-batton. Just woke from a power nap.  Life’s pretty rough.

More from EWR…  I have two new products that I’m going to be reviewing that literally just arrived as I was packing yesterday.  I’ve had almost no time to even look at them.  But I’ll tip my hand a bit and show you what’s “coming soon”.

Oh my goodness, I’ll be happy to be out of this plane and stretch my legs a bit.  Wonder if I’d get strange looks doing a yoga routine on the floor of the waiting area in the airport.  I doubt I’d be the 1st 🙂

Travel day today.

Home to airport at 8:30am.  YYZ->EWR at noon. EWR->PTY at 5pm, arriving at 10pm.  It’s gonna be a LOOOONG day.

Odds are good that I’ll be online in Toronto while I wait to board and in Jersey during my 3hr stop there.   More later.