Internal Mono(b)log

Fridays have seemingly turned into my L(S)D swim days. Constant pace, focused on efficiency. I eat a Gel before I leave for the pool and another 50 minutes into the swim. Both for nutrition and for gut-happiness-testing. Once I do the 2nd gel I commit myself to finish 2 hrs.

Got a chuckle this morning that I’m swimming more distance (on each swim day, but esp on Fridays) than once I could run without a walk-break.

There’s an awesome thought to start your day with, eh? 😉

Make your day a great one!

You know, I really felt that I had a good shot at the @racermate #computrainer (see I’m still flogging the brand):

• I have a good and compelling story
• I make solid use of social media
• I train hard and my training is publicly visible on my blog and on dailymile

I can honestly say, I don’t get it. I’m happy for the winner, congratulations to Maria, but having looked at her blog and her dailymile stats, I’m perplexed. I don’t want to sound like a bitter loser, but I definitely feel that way. *sigh*

On a different note, over the last few weeks I started seriously looking at power meters, and while I think that the computrainer is a great device able to provide you a lot of information on your cycling while on a trainer in you workout room, they fall down as soon as the weather improves and you want to be on the roads.

For consistent training data, you probably want to look more to an on-board power meter, like the Cyclops Powertap or some of the units built into the crank arms. Of course, if you have multiple bikes and/or multiple wheelsets this can get very spendy, very quickly. Still deals are to be had on ebay, craigslist and the like.

So, now that I’m an official loser, I’ll turn my attention to deal-finding-mode and content myself with Spinervals, Sufferfest, IM Kona, and other PVR’d tv shows.

*grumble*grumble*

If you’ve known me for a while, you probably know that I used to be a very active technical scuba diver and instructor. I’d dive deep, and long, in dark waters where the shoreline wasn’t visible and hadn’t been for some time, this includes night dives and ice dives. It’s great experience that I bring to my triathlon training. Unlike so many triathletes, I have no fear of swimming where I can’t see the bottom, or even, for that matter, the shoreline.

A lot of triathlon training sites talk about what to do when you get to the site and are preparing for the swim: Things like stretching, doing some warm-up lengths, looking around at landmarks so that you can sight while you’re swimming, landmarking your bike in the holding pen, etc. All good stuff to be sure. But something I haven’t yet seen anywhere, is a discussion of “Mammalian diving reflex”.

Quoted from wikipedia, highlights added by me:

The mammalian diving reflex optimizes respiration which allows mammals to stay underwater for a long time. It is exhibited strongly in aquatic mammals (seals, otters, dolphins, etc.), but exists in a weaker version in other mammals, including humans… Every animal’s diving reflex is triggered specifically by cold water contacting the face – water that is warmer than 21 °C (70 °F) does not cause the reflex, and neither does submersion of body parts other than the face. Also, the reflex is always exhibited more dramatically, and thus can grant longer survival, in young individuals.

Upon initiation of the reflex, three changes happen to the body, in this order:

1 Bradycardia is the first response to submersion. Immediately upon facial contact with cold water, the human heart rate slows down ten to twenty-five percent… Slowing the heart rate lessens the need for bloodstream oxygen, leaving more to be used by other organs.

2 Next, peripheral vasoconstriction sets in… Toes and fingers close off first, then hands and feet, and ultimately arms and legs stop allowing blood circulation, leaving more blood for use by the heart and brain. Human musculature accounts for only 12% of the body’s total oxygen storage, and the body’s muscles tend to suffer cramping during this phase. Aquatic mammals have as much as 25 to 30% of their oxygen storage in muscle, and thus they can keep working long after capillary blood supply is stopped.
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When the face is submerged, receptors that are sensitive to cold within the nasal cavity and other areas of the face supplied by cranial nerve V (trigeminal) relay the information to the brain and then innervate cranial nerve X, which is part of the autonomic nervous system. This causes bradycardia and peripheral vasoconstriction. Blood is removed from the limbs and all organs but the heart and the brain, creating a heart-brain circuit and allowing the mammal to conserve oxygen.
In humans, the mammalian diving reflex is not induced when limbs are introduced to cold water. Mild bradycardia is caused by subjects holding their breath without submerging the face within water. When breathing with face submerged this causes a diving reflex which increases proportionally to decreasing water temperature. Activating the diving reflex with cold water can be used to treat supraventricular tachycardia. However the greatest bradycardia effect is induced when the subject is holding breath with face submerged.

In the swim leg of the race, you may experience diving reflex as the feeling of the inability to breathe, gasping for air, the closing of the throat, cramping and panic. Clearly something you want to avoid 🙂 Fortunately, you can prepare yourself for the shock and teach your body to handle it in a manageable way.

When we’re scuba diving in very cold water, we’ll submerse our faces (with our masks off) and force ourselves to breathe through the regulator or a snorkel to get past the bradycardia and autonomic response to hold your breath or breathe quickly and shallowly in response to the cold and dive reflex. This body training will last 30-60 minutes after the “familiarization training” and greatly reduce your body’s negative reactions to the cold water. In much the same way, you should spend a few minutes pre-swim preparing your body for the shock of the water temperature.

Start by standing at a comfortable depth, bend over and with your goggles off put your face in the water and relax. Breathe out with slowly with your face submerged and turn your head as though you’re free-style breathing to inhale. Try to breathe deep and steadily, using your diaphragm, pulling air deep into your belly. Continue breathing in this position until you feel calm and relaxed in your breathing and comfortably accustomed to the cold shock of the water and air.

By acclimatizing yourself to the cold water on your face (including around your eyes), you’ll be much less likely to suffer negative reactions of mammalian dive reflex during the race, especially if you somehow loose your mask during the swim.

If you haven’t tried Chia Chargers yet, you owe it to ourself to go to their site and order some RIGHT NOW.

No, seriously, these little pucks of glory pack quite the punch. For the endurance athlete, camper, rock-climber, or any activity where you want sustained release, healthy natural energy in a small and portable package, the Chia Charger is for you. With all the good fats and super-foods in these guys, you’ll definitely notice the difference in your longer workouts and your recoveries. Very few simple carbs here, so if you’re looking for fast uptake carbohydrate, you’ll be looking for a glucose:fructose gel blend, but for longer-term sustained output, I really like the Chia Charger.

It’s been a few weeks since I did a product review. I’ve been meaning to talk about swimmer’s conditioner for a while now, and so here and now, the two thought bubbles collide 🙂

When I started swimming in a chlorinated pool I found that my hair was really (I mean really) taking a beating. It’s already “salt and pepper” – age-grouper you know – but the pepper was getting bleached out by the chlorine and worse, it felt like dry straw: brittle, and fragile. I tried a few drug-store and grocery store conditioners and they were… alright… but figured that there had to be something out there more targeted at swimmers and those dealing with really harsh conditions for hair.

A little googling and forum reading later I found “Aubrey Organics: Swimmer’s Conditioner“. I picked some up from a local healthfood store and tried it after my next swim session.

1st impressions: this stuff is thick. Like Elmer’s glue or silicon caulking thick, that said, it isn’t greasy and works through your hair pretty easily. After just 1 use I found my hair significantly happier and after about a week, my wife mentioned that the colour was returning to my hair! Gotta like it. I’m not ready to be a silver fox yet! 🙂 I’ll keep my salt and pepper for just as long as I can, thank you very much 🙂

Anyhow, if, like me, you’re in the pool a lot and your hair is getting ravaged by it, I strongly recommend Aubrey’s swimmer’s conditioner. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, I know I’m not.

Great article over at Triathlete Mag.

Balance is important when running, this article gives some background and some tips. Good reading.

Yesterday my ebay win for a set of bullhorn and aerobars arrived at the house. Super excited it was all I could do to finish my work day before running off to tinker with my bike. A few well placed phone calls had located a great deal on some bar-end shifters for the aerobars, amazingly, at a little bike shop just around the corner from my house called HoopDriver.

Immediately after I was done work I walked a dog up to the store, grabbed some handlebar tape, the bar-end shifters and some handlebar shims (the bullhorns are 26mm, but my stem is a 30.5mm), and zipped home to install. I’ve done basic bike maintenance before, but never anything like removing Shimano Tiagra brifters and recabling deraileurs. With a little advice from my friend Paul, it went swimmingly and in seemingly no time my bike was refit with new bars, break levers, and bar-end shifters on the aerobars. Super exciting! I didn’t bother with the bar tape yet, but will probably do that tonight. Not really so important as I wanted this configuration for spinning in the trainer and don’t want to be on my hands but rather down on the aerobars building stamina and tweaking bike fit in that position.

This morning I took the new setup for a 75 minute test spin. My coach had only planned for a 60 minute zone 2 spin for me, but the aero setup felt so good that I was happy to sit in it and finish watching 2006 Ironman Kona for the extra 15 minutes. With luck, I still hope to be picked as RacerMate‘s Desperate Athlete and win a computrainer and year’s training program, but for now, I make do with a borrowed Cyclops liquid trainer and old tv shows. Hey! It passes the time and does the job, right? 🙂

Thursdays are brick days, cycle for a while, then run to work. Running today, in the -12C and snow from the last 36 hours was challenging. I ran in my cycling rain pants, pulled out my yaktrax, and replaced my new orthotics with my older ones. (My new orthotics have been wrecking my feet and, while I think they’re better now, my feet are still pretty destroyed and so letting them heal seemed like a good idea.) I also wore my neoprene face mask to start the run. Outside, waiting for my gps to sync up, I was cool, but far from cold, so I felt that I’d dressed appropriately for the weather.

It’s funny, I caught myself with an interesting thought form this morning. While I was walking the dogs after by ride/before my run, as I was dressing to take them out, I found myself thinking: “Brr! Looks cold out there, guess I’ll judge how warm I need to dress for my run, while I walk the dogs.” and then I caught myself and laughed a bit. I think many would go outside to see if it’s too cold to run, I just wanted to know how warm to dress. Awesome! 😉

Perceived level of effort (confirmed with my HRM) this morning was significantly higher than normal. I was trying to keep mid zone 3 for the 5.7k long route to work and was generally successful I think. My legs felt like lead the whole way in, but having just watched Kona, and seeing blind athletes and dual leg amputees complete an IM, I wasn’t about to let 5.7k and some snow shut me down! I’m sure that part of my lead feet was the extra weight of the yaktrax and the snow/ice bound up in them, but such is life. We’ll just call this hyper-gravity running 🙂 Some use ankle weights, I come by it more… naturally 🙂

Which brings me to “Annoying Pedestrians”: ok folks, I know it snowed and that there’s snow and slush on the sidewalks, but nowhere on my entire run in, was the sidewalk only cleared 1-person wide. Yet, frequently I found myself having to dodge around people, (or later in the run yell at them to move aside) because they were shuffling zombie-like down the middle of the cleared path. Is it so hard to share?! Come on! Really?! Sheesh!

Something great from the Kona show this morning. 1st 2 letters of IMpossible are “I” “M”: IronMan. Impossible? Ironman: Possible! Love it!

Ok… done ranting and raving now. Coffee time. Y’all have a good day. I’m pretty pumped for a good one myself. Tonight, a 8k run home. Booya!

I’ve often wondered about what people do on Ironman or Ultra races when “nature calls”.

Seems I’m not the only person concerned with that.

LavaMagazine has a nice writeup on Racing GI upset, Fiber and how to help “manage” 🙂

I recently joined the Toronto Triathlon Club, tonight they held an openwater swim techniques class that I attended, and I’m so glad that I did.

The class started with some slideware that was really nothing new to me (set measurable goals, be disciplined, etc.), but in the pool I learned so much!

We covered sighting, drafting both directly behind and beside another swimmer, techniques for turning around buoys and did a bunch of drills to get experience swimming in a pack in the water and specifically around buoys.

Sighting, not that hard: every now and then, while maintaining your swim cadence, look forward (or around), by lifting your eyes (but not your nose) out of the water. I.e. stay down, you’re not dog paddling or breast-stroking, you’re continuing to swim freestyle/crawl, and just moving your head slightly differently.

Drafting: it works! It really works! In the foot wash is perhaps a little better than beside, but comes with the risks of getting a foot in the face and the annoyance of seeing little but bubbles. Drafting to the side takes more focus as you need to synchronize your stroke with the leader and get right into their side-wake, but also works pretty effectively.

Turning around buoys: generally something you want to do quickly, as they get choked up with other swimmers. Stay in tight, sprint around the turn. Turn either by pulling hard with one of your arms (I found the outside arm easier, but not everyone had the same experience), or by flipping quickly to back stroke for a beat and then back to freestyle. The latter method really worked well for me. I found I could drive around a buoy quickly, regardless of whether there were other people there or not.

The group swim stuff we did was probably the most useful to me though. Having never swam in a racing group before (around corners) it was interesting to see how physical and assertive you have to be to not completely loose your place, and time, cornering around the buoys. Think full-contact swimming or WWE meets swimming and you’re not far off. I think if the 1st time I’d experienced that were in a race or even in open water, I’d have been taken by such surprise that I would have stalled completely. By the end of today’s session I definitely had the right level of “assertiveness” going around the buoys. 🙂

Tired now. 1.5 hrs on the bike this morning, jobs around the house during the day and 4 hrs swim techniques in the evening. Bedtime 🙂

Realized this morning while I was showering, post swim, that I’m really hooked on data and using it effectively to inform and guide my training toward Ironman Muskoka this fall.

At times I feel a bit like a cyborg, but I really think that the data-driven results don’t lie. Here’s the current level of my cyborg-y-ness:

• 7×24 (except when swimming) I wear a bodybugg
• when running or cycling I use a Timex Global Trainer GPS/HRM
• when swimming I use a SportCount lap counter
• I track exercise and nutrition online at TrainingPeaks.com

A few words about each of these tools and the data they provide me:

Bodybugg
The bodybugg, through a bunch of different sensors, tells you how many calories you’re actually burning while sleeping, awake, exercising, watching TV, what have you. They claim it’s 95% accurate, and to me, 95% is way better than generalized estimates based on METS or some other random equation. Unfortunately the bodybugg doesn’t work in the water (and isn’t waterproof) so it’s off and in the locker when I’m swimming.

I started with the bodybugg and the wrist receiver and “upgraded” to the bodybuggSP when it came out. The SP is still pretty rough around the edges on my Android phone, but they’re working on it. Had I known I’d be paying to beta test their software, I’d have probably waited. There are still nagging issues with the trip functions of the software on Android that are pretty annoying.

The great thing about the bodybugg is that, because you know what you’re burning, you can eat appropriately. Making sure you consume the right amount of nutrition to keep the machine functioning efficiently. More on nutrition in a minute.

Timex Global Trainer
Probably the biggest watch on the planet, the Global Trainer is an ANT+ compatible HRM, bicycle computer, and GPS device. I really like it, it does a great job, of tracking my heart-rate, speed, distance and on the bike cadence (and speed while in the trainer).

Recently I went for VO2max testing with Ian at ImFit.ca, so now I can really dial in my training to target my aerobic capacity and work at moving my anerobic base. Good stuff.

If I had an ANT+ powermeter, the Global Trainer would integrate with that too and provide even more (super useful) data to help guide my training. I’m not sure if Computrainers are ANT+ compatible, but if they were this would be über! 😉 No, I don’t currently own a computrainer, but Racermate is having a contest at the moment, so if I’m really lucky, I may win one combined with a year’s training!

The computrainers provide even more data that I’d love to sink my teeth into, like pedal stroke analysis, power output and a whole slew of others. All that combined with virtual-reality interactive cycling that would certainly make the miles pass by faster.

Sportcount
When I’m swimming I probably have the least tech helping me out and gathering data. Currently I just have a (blue) sportcount lap counter. This gives me average, fastest, slowest and total swim times and that’s about it. It’s a useful tool because after the 40th or so lap, I generally lose count. That, and counting laps tends to pull me away from focusing on technique or just zoning out to the swim. So, while not providing a lot of data, the sportcount is still super useful.

Now, Finis have released the Swimsense, which looks pretty amazing! Unfortunately with all the other training and gear expenses (read: desires for a time-trial bike), a swimsense just isn’t in the budget. Perhaps Finis would loan me one for a blog review (ahem! nudge, nudge).

TrainingPeaks.com

TrainingPeaks seems to be pretty much the de facto online tool for endurance athletes. It’s feature rich with a lot of graphs and analytics for monitoring your training, stress levels, diet, weight, nutrition over time. I generally like the site now that I’m getting used to it. It’s cool that my Timex Global Trainer interfaces directly with the site and that my coach can directly see my workouts, plan sessions for me, see my nutrition info, etc. Pretty slick.

My biggest complaint with trainingpeaks.com is that it’s built in flash. Flash was probably a great choice 5-8 years ago before html5, ajax, javascript and modern browsers, but now flash just makes websites hostile and heavy weight. Hopefully someday they fix this, but for now, I’ve grown used to the odd quirks and slow load times.

I track my workouts, my bodybugg daily data, and nutrition on trainingpeaks.com. So, onto Nutrition:

Those of you who know me, know that in Aug of 2009 I was a “pretty big guy”™. I tipped the scale at just over 250lbs and, while I considered myself pretty fit (for a guy my size) I was a long way from being a healthy weight. My wife and I did the Dr. Bernstein diet for 4 months and I lost 85lbs. More important than the weightloss, I discovered things about my diet and how I related to food and most importantly, how my body reacts to specific foods. I now maintain a diet that I strictly monitor. I closely track sodium, and the 3 macronutrients (fat, carb, and protein). My daily nutrition plan isn’t really set in stone, but does follow some pretty hard guidelines, as follows:

• I target a 500 calorie deficit based on activity and bodybugg data, I (try to) measure by weight (uncooked) all food that I eat
• I eat <= 15% of my daily calories from fat (good fat, bad fat, doesn't matter, just <= 15%)
• I try to eat between 120 and 150g of protein daily
• I fill the rest of the calories with carbs, typically of the veg variety. I stay away from processed grains as my body doesn’t react well to them (breads, pastas).
• I limit my sodium (or try to) to less than 2000mg daily – more and I bloat like the “Staypuff Marshmellow Man”

That’s about it, I’m pretty anal about it, but it gives me a lot of room to play too. I definitely don’t feel constrained by it and eating in this plan keeps my energy levels up, my digestive system happy, and my bloat down.

Have to say, I’m pretty happy with my feedback system. There are some places I’d love to improve it if I had the funds, but I definitely feel armed with more than ample data to guide me strongly forward to Ironman Muskoka.

Oh… and just because I have to… I am Iron..Man… 😀