Halloween Haunting 10k

Success. I was ambitiously wishing for a 35:00 10km today after running a 16:44 5km over thanksgiving. I missed that time (likely due to poor pacing) but I still managed a respectable 35:29. That put me in 9th overall, 1st AG. Additionally I was going for top 10 and 1st age group. Again, success.

I programmed my watch to carry me through the first 5km at just above 17:30 so I could negative split into my 35 minute goal. I ran through the first 1500m following the absolute leaders (who came in around 31 minutes). Despite my watch screaming at me to slow down I was finally running with people in a race and my brain stupidly took over. I let the lead 8 go and started running with 2 other guys. We traded leads through to nearly 4km holding about 3:25/km. Still too fast. At the first turn around (3.5kmish) I let them go to try and salvage my pace. The course was 2 loops of 5km so coming into the second lap I slowed right down and crossed at 17:30. Right on pace... sort of. The last 1.5km were at a much slower pace than I wanted so I told myself that was a little breather, a reward, and now I would have to hold a real pace. This was easier said than done as for the next 3km my watch would be screaming at me to speed up. At about 6km I had caught one of the guys who had passed me earlier. He told me he was finished, I told him he was not. However I would go on to beat him in the end. The next person up the road was quite far ahead so I set my sights on carrying myself to the turn around at a pace under 3:35/km. From there I was banking on adrenaline to put me back on track. What I wasn't expecting was the motivation to finish coming from a very fast female hunting me down. I think she ended up around 36. That really woke me up though. At the turn around I told myself I would find my 3:30 pace until 9km then I would dig deep and smang the last km. I spent most of my training doing kms. I can crush one, it's only one. However it was all slightly up hill. I thought I heard 10th behind me and I absolutely refused to be caught so I surged on every incline and held the pace to the next one. By the final turn I was flying however the clock reminded me of my pacing mistakes and seeing the clock counting up from 35:20 gave me all the reasons I needed to sprint for the finish. 10th was 4 seconds behind me and gaining. I made it.

Adam "2-weeks of rest and swimming" Fortais

New PB, racing almost done

Dear reader,

I've cut about 30 seconds off my 5km PB, I learned how to swim proper, and I've safely increased my swimming and running weekly volume to great effect. I am racing in about 2 weeks and then I'm taking a couple weeks off.

Swimming:

I decided that this winter (and fall I guess) I would dedicate myself to improving in the pool. The game plan was essentially to increase my volume, spend most of the fall and winter increasing my max speed, then continuing through the standard build parts of the year getting faster at middle distance stuff. I think my best 800m time ever was around 1:35/100m and my fastest ever 100m was about 1:30. In the past couple weeks I've gone from about 3-4km/week up to 11.5km in my biggest week. I would like to make 10ish/week the norm but I'm not foolish, I'm not going to just jump into that kind of distance. Therefore during my last 3-week build I started at about 5, then 7ish and hit 11.5, took an easy week and am starting over at about 7. This block I may try and build to 12-15. We'll see. Regardless, the most interesting and rewarding part of this swimming thing came 2 weeks ago. At a big 5k practice coached by friend Alex Vanderlinden, he noticed my right arm was way too close to my body during the pull. He told me to pull a little wider and POW, huge difference right away. Lately I've been enjoying 100 splits in the ballpark of 1:25-1:30 with very little trouble. Weird how a simple technique change can help so much.

Biking:

I bike to work every day and occasionally do an endurance workout. Nothing noteworthy really. During my rest week I did a CP20 test (critical power) to ballpark my FTP (functional threshold power). Surprisingly I managed 270W over 20 minutes giving an estimated FTP of about 250W. Not super high but good all things considred.

Running:

I really want to be up to 50km/week comfortably but I'm not quite there yet. I will generally hit one week at 50km per block, with the other two around 35-45. As long as I'm still improving and not getting injured... Which brings me to my last run test. I decided I would run a straight 5k to test my current fitness and to decide which event I wanted to race at the end of the month. I decided I would try to hold a sub-17 pace with 16:40 being the fastest I would allow my pace to go (thanks, gps watch). I did this at home in the Sault around my neighborhood. There is a 2.7km loop I like that starts at my house and then my block is exactly 1km so I set to do the loop + my block 2.3 times. I had the benefit of a little tailwind at the beginning and my pace was about 3:15. Woah. It didn't even feel that bad. The last half was pretty tough though. However I managed to keep my pace to 3:21/km for a positive-split 16:44. That made me very happy. That also convinced me that it's time to update all my other PBs this year. I mean, I've cracked my 20k bike time, 5k run... Might as well hit the 10k run and 800m swim right? Right. So the next run performance will be October 28th in Springbank Park for the Halloween Haunting. What's better is that the UWO tri club will be there as well as my parents. I'm not sure when my parents saw me compete last, but I'm always excited to show off for them. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll crack the top 10!

Sincerely,
Adam "Volume isn't everything... but it might as well be" Fortais

You shouldn't have to wait this long (and neither should I)

There just hasn't been much to say. To tide you over until the next real post, I pose you this question:

You are quite hungry and have a workout to do. Do you run on empty or push the workout off until you're fully fuelled and digested? This is the reality that I live in almost every day. Hurry up and invent Jetson food already, science.


Adam "Impatiently waiting" Fortais

Half-marathon race result

Just kidding. I hurt my foot in the last week and a half leading into the race and haven't been able to walk on it very well until today. I could hardly even bike on it actually. So I stopped running for a week now and obviously dropped the race. A little upset but it happens. No use over-doing it now, for a very unimportant race.

Instead of run training I've started getting back into pool shape. I don't have a whole lot of swimming knowledge so for the time being I'm working on getting myself up to a reasonable amount of volume (say, ~10-15km/week?). I will be joining the Western Triathlon Club again for swim practices and hopefully I will be able to stay consistent with it.

At the moment I'm trying to decide when to get started with real base training for each sport which is hard when I don't really have any specific races planned. I think I'm going to have to go pretty hard all winter in the pool, take a little break in the spring and get back at it for race season. Bike training went fairly well this year but I will have to adjust the timing since I will be tri-sporting all year. What I'm really trying to decide right now is if I give my foot a bit of time to heal and seriously go for the 5k (maybe 10k?) at the end of October or not. If I do I can focus on running and swimming until November, take a break and start it all over again around January which is where my bike training started this year.

Another thing I'll have to decide is what, if any, Tri Club races to do this year. There is a duathlon in the fall I could do for fun (I would seriously under-perform on the bike by then) as well as some indoor tris during the winter. I will certainly be thinking about the aquathlon in March though.

That's pretty much it I guess. Here, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47xbkT3calM

Adam "Today's Supernatural" Fortais

Fall is my favourite season

Anyone who loved high school XC season has to agree with me to some extent. However it hasn't been since high school that I've raced in the fall... But this is a strange year I guess. I finished up bike racing by the middle of August (hold on, I'll get to that) and now it's full-on run season. I am exactly one week away from my first half-marathon and my final race will come in the form of a (hopefully) ultra quick 5k at the end of October.

My build-up to the half-marathon was not a solid, real half-marathon training program... but I'm not particularly interested in half-marathons and long distance stuff right now. Rather I know I'm quite weak at the longer stuff and I suspect that is holding me back so I figured I would work on that this fall. And what's better motivation than committing to a race you know you don't currently have the ability to race? So I'm going to do my best and use the rest of the fall leading into the end of October.

In terms of race predictions, I don't really know. I'm certain I'll go under 1:30 since I've pretty much done that a couple times this summer as a LSD run. I would really like to try and keep it in the range of 4:00min/km but I think that may be a bit quick for where I'm at right now. My peak volume for running this year has been 50km (lifetime record!) and I have been fairly comfortable in the 40km/week area if that is any indicator. I've done a couple race pace tests in the last couple days with sore legs 4:00min/km seems like a really good, tough, ideal goal. Friday was a straight 10km tempo run at 4:00min/km. I went under 40min with a bit of trouble, but my legs were ultra sore and truthfully, I was limping all day. Still limping today I went for my last long run before the race, 8km easy out, 5km race pace (pfft) and 3km cool down. I went through the 5km in 19:10 huffing a little too much... But on the bright side, a long run like that would have ruined me at any other point in my life so at the very least I'm working toward my real goals.

So what of this biking? Had some pretty good times but noticed some interesting things that only my power meter could have told me. I will show you in the form of a picture.

I hope this isn't too small. Pink is training stress, blue is fitness, yellow is "freshness" or "form". The red squares with lines are top 10 power over 1 min. The black squares with lines are top 10 power over 20 min. The first point I will make is about peaking. My original plan was to do two races per week for 3 weeks. I only managed to do 4 races/simulations but they all took place in a week and a half or so. It was too much for me I think, and my performance dropped with time. It may have gone up if I continued, but I doubt it as I was feeling very rough at the last TT.

The more important point is less of a point and more of a point I have to look into. Interesting fact: out of all my TTs this year, my highest average power came from my very first race. In fact, it's so much higher than any other race (about 15W higher) that I feel like it might even be a mistake. Especially considering the time. This has to have something to do with starting running training after this point, and having a very strong winter and spring training plan... Another picture.

Yellow lines indicate kms/week on bike starting Jan 1. Quite clearly a stronger beginning. However, my speed kept increasing all season. Obviously the last two times are partly due to the new bike, but fact is I was definitely getting faster (crits got easier and more successful with time as well). So perhaps my drop in power as the season progressed was due to the running and less training but maybe there was some benefit coming from the running, such as weight loss or something. I don't know. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

I almost forgot to give you some of these times and some details. Best 15km? 22:3-something. Best 20km? 30:20ish. Another interesting thing, I went out one Saturday to sprint around and try and claim some Strava KOMs. T'was very successful and pretty tough, but upon returning home I decided I wanted to turn it into a brick workout. My plan was 30 minutes easy. When I left the apartment I felt pretty good. about a minute into the run I checked my pace and it was about 3:45min/km... and it felt completely fine. So I decided 20 minutes tempo would be a cool idea. I checked my pace again a little later... 3:40min/km with no increase in effort. So then I decided 2x10min. I hit about 6min and noticed my average pace had dropped to 3:30. Then it was game time. I changed my plan to doing a 5k as fast as I could. It was tough but I finished up with a time of 17:20. Off the bike. My best ever 5k time is 17:17, no biking included. Sweet.

Anyway, I have a little time out of the saddle before I get started again and my run training is all planned out. I have been swimming once a week for a little while and plan on increasing that slowly so that I can take November easy and jump into a true triathlon plan starting some time near December. I've yet to plan out next year, but that's coming soon. Fall is the time to start planning... I love planning.

Adam "Enjoy the Pictures?" Fortais

The picture's far too big to look at, your eyes won't open wide enough

So find a couple more to help you.

I've been talking to a lot of friends and have come to the conclusion that now is not the time for marathon training. I haven't put my all into getting ready for the race and leaving 2 months to get the appropriate milage in is silly. It's too expensive and draining to throw myself into on a whim. Rather I will continue running and use this as a springboard to keep building a super-solid base. As a reward, instead of signing up for the marathon I think I will do a couple races this fall:

http://www.runnerschoice.on.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=11

http://www.runnerschoice.on.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86&Itemid=60

I haven't run a race in a while and I'm curious where my fitness is. Besides, I have the base for the half-marathon.

This was a semi-tough decision made much easier by talking to people who care about me. Even if they were just nodding and agreeing. I hear from friends with coaches that just having another set of eyes and opinions is worth it.


Maybe  I'll describe my VO2 max test now.


So I was put on a bike with a nose clip and snorkle in my mouth and told to ride until I couldn't any more. The effort was constantly ramping at a rate of 100W/3min. We started at 30W. I was told for the sake of the data try and stay around 80 rpm. Fine. So how did it go? Pretty well. I made it to 430W before I was toast, with the last 4 mintues being complete hell. From this I got the data presented on the left bar. To put these numbers into perspective:

http://www.thresholdsport.com/vo2max.html

So I'm a bit of a natural or somethin'! Thanks mom and dad!


Some other odds and ends?


So I got that bike! I've yet to race it though... Thursday after my 3.5 hour day was supposed to be a 15km TT but thankfully it rained which was as good an excuse as any to go to bed early. So far I've riden it about 200km and every time I take it out I find something new to like about it. I just can't wait to use it for what it was made for... Next Thursday can't come soon enough.

My 3.5 hour day was one of the most fun training days I've had in a while. I was up at 5 am and out running by 5:15, 4x10 min tempo with 2 min rest around Vic park, in the dark with an onslaught of sprinklers. The soundtrack was Young Machetes by The Blood Brothers. I came home from work and went out for 2.5 hours on the new bike with some friends I met at UWO tri club in first year who have since gone on to bigger and pro-ier things. I made it home and flopped into bed, well spent. The specifics are available on Strava.

So what are my plans for the weekend? Pfft, I don't know. I might go for another run. Maybe not though. I don't really have any obligations to do anything.

Adam "Lazy weekend" Fortais

What do you do the day before a race?

I do an hour run in the morning including 40 minutes of intervals at tempo pace, then I go for a 2.5 hour group ride with some solid efforts after work.

You gotta do what works best for you.

Adam "Just ride, dummy" Fortais

Do you like to hurt? I do I do...

Peak week 1 of 2. I will disclose my training plan leading into my month of races now.

          

                  Week 1                                           Week 2

Mon             Rest                                                Rest

Tues             Crit                                               Quality run

Wed           Easy ride                                         Easy run/bike

Thurs            Rest                                              15km TT

Fri               Easy run                                         Rest

Sat          5x2min @300W, 30min run               Easy ride

Sun           Easy Run                                          Quality run

Hopefully that comes out ok on your screen. If not, we'll see if I re-edit it. So where am I right now? Right on schedule, feeling pretty good, feeling a little fresher. 

I have a couple interesting things to report, I will tell them to you in reverse-chronological order therefore we start with the criterium I participated in on Tuesday.

So the race was around a pretty wide-open 4-corner 1.8km loop, 35min+3 laps. I decided before hand that I would not be in the sprint at the end, I would finish all alone whether that be in the front or the back. To do this I would sit in the pack for the majority of the race unless someone wanted to make a long break with me (fat chance). In the more likely scenario that everyone else wanted to sit and kick, I would use the corners to get a little bit of a lead and pop off the front into the headwind, hopefully solo-ing to victory over the last 3 laps. And that's exactly what I did... or uh, tried to do. 

The first lap went fairly well, I waited until we pulled in a half-hearted attempt at a break just after the 3-laps-to-go mark and made a fairly strong, 600-or-so Watt attack. I kept a gap of about 10 seconds until the start of 2-laps-to-go. At this point 2 others bridged up to me and drafted off me for pretty much a whole lap. Convinced that we could make it, I flicked my elbows wildly for someone to give me a freakin' hand with this as I have been pulling at about 350W for a lap now. Eventually a very angry older man pulled to the front a little quicker than someone hoping to pull for a bit (but only a little bit). I got on his wheel thinking this would be a nice little break, only to see our speed plummet. Was this a cruel tactic from a sprinter's team stuck in the pack? Or an attack out of our break group? Either way I knew he was not helping me at all and I launched another mini attack to shake the dead weight. Unfortunately this little distraction gave the pack enough time to cut my break into a "you're not quite able to draft off me yet" distance by the last lap. So I made another short acceleration to give me a bit of distance, banking on my aggressive cornering to keep me far enough away to avoid being swallowed by the sprint (which was about 75 meters long after the last corner). This worked well, every corner I gained a little bit, every straight the group re-organized and made it back. Coming into the last corner (a little up-hill too) I had maybe 15 meters but it just wasn't enough. Half-way down the finishing stretch I heard the zip of carbon wheels and clunks of under-stress shifts and was swallowed. 

One day I'll hold them off. Feel free to check Strava for my race data. This happened this past Tuesday.

This post is getting a little long so perhaps I'll quickly say that I had my VO2 Max tested a couple weeks back and got some pretty cool data! I have a VO2 max on the bike of about 67mL/kg/min (I think those are the units) and of the subjects tested my aerobic threshold was the highest. I don't know who was tested, but I got that number as well as my anaerobic threshold. Training with this data has been pretty nice. This is good motivation to retest myself during my off-weeks in the future. Not a lab-quality test like I did this time, but at least a short TT or something to get the right numbers for my next block. Next post I will go into a bit more detail about the test as well as some other odds and ends. 

Adam "Name that song!" Fortais

What's goin' on? or, Style Points

Yesterday was a pretty strange day. I couldn't really keep concentrated on anything and found myself staring into space more often than not. It was really getting a bit dangerous. A couple times after crossing a street I couldn't remember if the light was green or red. It seemed like my brain had it's own plans. Maybe it was busy thinking about this:

Yeah. That's probably it.

With my internship position now seems like the time to upgrade (or specialize) my training and racing gear. Earlier this summer I splurged on a set of used powertap wheels (Mavic Open Pro rims, powertap pro+ hub) and now I think I ought to make the jump to a real TT/Tri bike. Currently I am riding (and am very happy with) a 2009 Cervelo S1. Although advertised as a great road/tri convertible, it's not really all that feasible unless you want to spend a whole load of time making the switch a couple times a week and re-setting your position constantly.

An embarrassing aside:

I purchased my power wheels in May and have been happily riding them since. However I have had some shifting problems that I've been ignoring. Things like having to shift then "coax" with a half-shift movement to get where I want, or shift, have the chain double jump then "coax" down to the correct gear. Oh, and it's impossible to shift into the highest gear. A couple weeks ago I found the source of my problem. 9-speed drivetrains are not happy to be spinning a 10-speed cassette.

Anyone looking for a 9-speed ultegra set-up? I'll throw in some shimano R-500 wheels too!






...what's goin' on? What else is going on?






I'm exiting my last "build" phase (for cycling) this week and heading into a month of 2-a-week club races. This year has been pretty good on the bike, highlights so far being my first crit (didn't win, but I award myself most aggressive rider) and a 15km TT in 22:30 ish in the middle of a build period. The latter giving me the utmost confidence I could pull a 30 min 20km TT, not counting the new TT bike. 

Next week and the week after I am "peaking" I guess. I'm not really sure how to go about it. I have the opportunity to do a couple races (crit next week, TT week after) as tune-ups, but then how are these weeks different from my race month? Maybe it's different 'cuz I'm only racing once a week versus twice? Let's go with that.




Enough bike stuff for now.




Running is going all right, although not typically for marathon training.

My weekly milage has dropped to about 35km a week (higher than last year), usually divided into 3 runs. 2 quality days and 1 easy day. Sometimes a Q day is a long run. Typically it's looking like 8km, 8km, 20km. The game plan is as follows:

Keep the quality, try and keep a long run, then come September really start logging the miles.

Sounds a bit backwards (and it is) but I'm banking on my cycling working as cross-training endurance work, quality as err... quality, so when I get into the last month or so I can work on lasting the whole race. Not ideal, but I think it will work.

I still want to go under 3 hours.

I think next post I will talk a little bit more about specific training, and my updated goals for next year. If you want to see exactly what I've been doing check out my Strava profile, on your left.


Adam "On your left!" Fortais

Doing nothing

Not a lot has happened since I last posted.

I am 21 and feel like a completely different athlete. I haven't done a quality swim workout in about 9 months and my last brick workout was my last race... Just about 1 year ago.

1 year ago I won my local triathlon with a personal best time of 1:05:something. The next fall I planned on taking a little break and hitting the pool hard. That never happened though. By January I had decided I would exclusively ride bikes from then on. I kept true to my word too. At least until June.

This is almost exactly what happened to me coming out of grade 12. I decided to be a biker full-time and managed to go only a couple months before I couldn't avoid putting the shoes back on. They're on a lot more often now than ever before. I'm going to run a marathon.

The reason I chose a marathon is on the surface strategic but I think it really comes down to raging narcissism. On one hand I think I quite running every 2 years because I feel like I plateau and that's a sad feeling. During my retirement from the sport I thought about my running limiters and there was one glaring problem with all of my running training, ever. The biggest running week I've ever had was about 45km. I have no idea how I've been as successful as I have been running an average of 30km a week during my hardest weeks but it's worked... sort of. 

So that's the reason I tell people when asked "why a marathon?". The first reason I picked a marathon? It seems like everyone has done one and when I tell people I do triathlons (sprint at that), there's a chance 1/50 people think "yeah that's good... but it's no marathon. I've done a marathon, heh...". Plus Oprah's done a marathon. I find it hard to consider myself and endurance athlete knowing Oprah has run further than me in one go. 

After finding the right way to answer "why a marathon?" I started thinking... Maybe I've been neglecting real base work in all my disciplines. Wouldn't it be a good idea to up the milage in all of my sports? I can hammer out a good short workout like you can't believe, but I know I can do better. Maybe this is the missing link? It was a very short jump to deciding a 70.3 was the right decision. Obviously not right now, I haven't done any honest work in the water for the better part of a year, but why not? What makes this proposition even more attractive is the massive amounts of time I will have coming next September. For new readers, I have just finished the 3rd year at UWO studying physics. This didn't leave a whole lot of training time during the school year. Now for the twist - I am currently on a 12 month internship. Sorry, I mean a 12 month PAID internship. Well paid internship. This means freedom between 5pm and 7am and all weekends. This means an entire next summer without the obligation to work so that I can survive the next school year. If I want to make an athletic breakthrough before my mid-20s this is the time to do it. 

Now, it's not as black-and-white as that. I am very sure about my marathon plan, in fact I plan on racing the Scotia Bank Toronto marathon in October however the 70.3 plan may not happen. Right now it sounds appealing but there are other fish I may be interested in trying to fry. For instance, wouldn't next summer be a fantastic time to try having a race season like real triathletes? I would like to see what I can do racing more than once in the summer. I even have an extremely ambitious race I would like to do that would require a lot of money (which I will have):

http://www.appletriathlon.com/

At this point I start to get all giddy about the future and lose my train of thought because then I start thinking about things like how I want to transition to racing olympic distance primarily, then I realize that I really really like biking and maybe I just want to do that and then...

I realize I haven't done anything and I'm still just sitting on my couch thinking about stuff. To that end, it has stopped raining finally and my delicious chicken-and-avocado sandwich is just about digested so I ought to head on on my bike. Tonight it's 4x10 mins at 260Watts. 

Maybe next post I'll update you on things that I've actually done.

Adam "It's so much easier in my head" Fortais