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