The foundation is built, and learning how to say no

This is week five. I gave myself nine weeks to make serious running gains. Three weeks of base, three weeks of solid work, three weeks of sharpening. Though it is only Friday of week five, week five is done. I'm sick.

Base training was a little scary but I managed it well. The first week I simply upped my run frequency and took on only as much as my body felt comfortable with. That's a lie. By the end of the week I saw that nice round 70km mark and went for it. I felt it at the beginning of week two, my legs weren't quite ready for that, so I started a little easier, but by the end of the week that 70 was coming up again. However, this time I didn't feel quite so beat up. The third week was easy. 70 again. As you may or may not know, for most of my running life I've muddled around the 30km mark. Seeing that number more than double was such a cool feeling.

Weeks four-six are the hardest. I'm supposed to hold that volume and introduce hard workouts. Due to my time constraints I omitted the slowly-building-intensity phase and jumped right into serious work. This was somewhat daunting, but hey, I only have to do it for three weeks right? And heck, I'm a 70km/week runner now! Week four had some solid running at 3:15/km pace, some tempo intervals at 3:34/km pace and a 5km race. Week five had the same 3:15/km intervals, a 30-40 minute tempo run somewhere around 3:40/km and a bunch of fast 400s. 

An important concept in training is to introduce new stresses slowly so as not to shock the system. Of course there are always exceptions but a standard, conservative training plan won't have you crank up intensity and total volume. Last week I bumped up to 75km. Sure, what's an extra 5km right? I also started going to UWO Tri Club practices. I also started going out more. And of course school is starting to pick up. This week I don't think I've been home for dinner more than twice. I'm getting good at finding free food on campus. I'm also getting good at falling asleep in weird places. And making beds out of things. Sunday night I was out until 2:30 yet up by 5:30. I got more sleep during the day and went to bed early so I wasn't totally wrecked for Tuesday. I got home at midnight on Wednesday and was still up Thursday morning at 6am for my tempo run. By the end of it I could feel a tickle in my chest. The rest of the day I was seriously sleepy so had another early night. This morning I got up fairly quickly but had that thick throat feeling and didn't feel all that rested... but not sleepy. So I made my way to the track, hammered 400m intervals in the dark and cooled down on the spin bikes with Tri Club. The rest of the day was garbage.

There are all sorts of stresses. Some of it will push your body to adapt and become faster or stronger, but most of it won't. At the end of the day all of these types of stress are poured into the same vessel. When you're pushing your limits in training, that cup is always nearly full. You pile school on there and you get a nice display of surface tension. Add an extravagant social life and after a little while you might find yourself on the couch the Friday night of homecoming weekend editing a blog that no one reads.

Don't worry, me, you'll figure it out.

Adam "Lesson learned" Fortais

Mixed berry chutney

To be served atop meat or fish. 1-2 servings

Frozen mixed berries - 1-2 cups

Brown sugar - 1/4 cup

White vinegar - 1/4 cup

Lemon juice - 1/2 a lemon

Chopped onion - 1/4 cup

Chopped ginger - 1 tsp

Salt - 2 tsp

Heat all ingredients in a sauce pan. Mash berries. Simmer until thick. 

Building up, slow and stead

After succumbing to foot aches almost all of last week, I've slowly but steadily been able to start running. Each day I've been going out with no distance, time or (by definition,) speed goals. I would run short loops until I felt my foot begin to respond negatively. Then I would shuffle home immediately and ice it. Each day the general discomfort would be less and show up later in the run. I am now only having a bit of warm up aches which disappear by about 2k and I am able to hit 10k easily without any foot pain. I am still icing it and being very careful not to become stranded far from home with an aching foot, but I think it's more or less fixed.

Interesting thing I've noticed since coming back from no running - my endurance pace is sort of locked into my muscle memory, but the combination of slightly de-training and allowing my body to recover has my heart rate higher than I'm used to, by somewhere between 10-20 bpm. With that in mind I've slowed my pace a bit, but it's very hard to keep my heart rate under that 170 mark (I suspect this is the transition from predominantly burning fat to burning carbs). I guess I just have to be patient and let my body get used to training again.

Soup, this officially marks my first week of base training for my run block. The main goal is to push up the volume of running from what I'm used to (30-40km/week) to something closer to what good runners do (a lot more). Week one is all easy running, as much as I want but not trying to push the volume too high. However, if I feel comfortable going high, I'll keep going. So far I'm at 40km and am plenty comfy. If I don't feel like I'm getting any negative, over-doing-it bodily feedback, I will allow myself to go as high as 70k. Since missing my first week I may take a quality week out of the plan to ensure I get those 3 solid base training weeks, or I might just take out a base week... But either way I still have a couple weeks of increasing volume to go. I don't want to max out in the first week.

As a final note, I may slot in a trail race in the fall so I have been taking advantage of the awesome trails around Sault Ste Marie. Hiawatha park is where all my high school XC races were and has some of the most intense, hilly, sandy and generally best trails I've been on. Amazing mountain biking and xc skiing as well, though I've never really done either of those. For instance, Within 1800m you get the opportunity to meet the Sand Hill and Cement Hill. Sand Hill is about 300m of sand, averaging a 13% grade, and the Cement Hill puts the nail in the coffin with 1k averaging 6%. In about 1 hour of running you'll get maybe 10-15 minutes of flat. You're typically on a gradient of +- 2%. Good luck keeping a low heart rate.

Adam "Sand Hill" Fortais

Running block, if only I could run...

I'm still waiting for my foot to feel better. I'm getting anxious to start running. I'm starting to get irritable. Here is my running block plan to date. It will likely change but this is it as of now. It's mostly adapted from Daniel's Running Formula, a book I highly recommend. Enjoy!

Adam "http://www.amazon.com/Daniels-Running-Formula-2nd-Edition/dp/0736054928" Fortais

Check the course map, dummy, or, 10th St Joseph Island Triathlon (Race report #9)

As previously disclosed, serious racing ended with Toronto but I had the intention of racing one more triathlon this summer. This was a race at home, so obviously I was going to have to try and win it. Originally I was planning on doing the sprint distance event since I would be taking some down time between Toronto and then... but ahhh... I just couldn't. I had to do the olympic event.

Since I thought I would be somewhat low on speed the main goal of this race was to nail my race fuelling and hopefully be able to scrape through with a high placing. Check and check. However, for every success it seems there is another area to improve on. More proof of the theory of conservation of racing problems.

I love my wetsuit. It makes me a pretty good swimmer! Check in, transition set up, warm up etc went smooth and quickly. I donned my beloved wetsuit and got on the line. The swim was a beach start with two loops around some bouys in this little beach inlet. The water was more smooth than usual. Horn, dolphin dives, and I was off. I cleared the pack nearly immediately save for one guy about 3 body lengths ahead of me and one guy just barely ahead of me. Reaching the first bouy I knew the first set of feet I was on was too slow so I tried very hard to get around him. There was some veering so getting around was tough, and upon getting side by side he decided to accelerate to stay with me. This made for some light swim-skirmishing... which I won. This was all within about 300m. Next step was to close down the distance to the leader, who had about 10 body lengths at this point due to my battle. Slow and steady, through the power of good sighting and smooth body rotation I managed to close down the distance on the long stretch back into the beach. At the start of the second loop the water was too shallow to swim so I had a chance to jog the rest of the distance to the leader and get a look at the guy behind me... Not that far behind, perhaps 3 seconds. At the start of the second lap I had no problem getting out in front. I knew I had 2 guys directly behind me, but I didn't really mind letting them draft. Coming around the final bouy with the long straight into the beach I decided I wanted to claim the fastest swim of the day. Mission accomplished with a personal best 21:31. Second out of the water was a relay team swimmer, then about 15 seconds was 2nd place.

Transition was slightly slowed due to my wetsuit catching on my chip timing anklet. Not a huge deal. I was out on the bike with the fastest transition. I had chatted up the relay team before the race started and decided that it was unlikely I would be able to catch their biker so I just caught my breath and settled into pace. 2nd place was now 20 seconds behind.

The bike course was very rough and uncomfortable for the first 10km then smoothed out a great deal. There were 2 substantial hills on the course but nothing I couldn't handle. However, at the top of the second hill (15km) I was presented with a choice... Do I continue straight along the road or veer left. In my fake sense of security before the race I had neglected to even look at the race map. I assumed it would be marked, or be easy enough to figure out. Each way was a bit downhill and I couldn't see the relay team cyclist anymore so I was on my own. I stopped, made a decision, turned around about 30 seconds later and saw 2nd place moving into first, around the bend I did not take. I was furious and started imagining losing due to this mistake. I checked my watch and realized this had tacked on about 60-90 seconds on my bike leg. In a blind rage I sprinted to the correct corner, sighted the now-first-place rider and resolved to catch him and put myself in first again at all costs. This was actually done a lot easier than I expected and by the 20km turn I was in first again. At this point I was seeing some of the duathletes and duathlon relays, so I had some added motivation to keep the pace up. Right when I felt my race was getting back on track, my powertap battery died. Oh well. Race by feel. My mom was racing the sprint duathlon that day and at about 35km I saw her go by. We waved. It was nice. I pushed and tried to hold my heart rate between 170 and 180, and with about 2km to go I shut off the power and spun the legs out to get ready for the run. With the very slow, bumpy roads for half the course and the additional 1-2 minutes from getting lost, I reluctantly accepted my bike split of 1:10:49.

T2 was smooth as butter... Except there were large stones littering the path into the transition zone. It really hurt running on it but the adrenaline made me forget almost instantly. I whipped my shoes on and I saw my next closest competitor doing the same. Over the course of the ride he had dropped my lead to about 8 seconds. I know I'm a strong runner, but thought he was another local runner I knew who is very very fast. Getting on the run course I was getting very nervous, but when I heard a different name being yelled, I relaxed slightly.

On the run course I was tired, but ready. I told my body to hold the comfortable floating pace, and locked in. I checked my watch and found the pace was perfect, right around 3:40 and pretty comfortable. The game plan was to hold this pace unless someone forced me out of it. The course was 2.5km out and back and out and back so I had ample opportunity to correct my pace. At the first turn around I found myself comfortably extending my lead so resolved to hold this pace a little longer. I was feeling a little light and wiggly, usually a symptom of being a little low on calories so I had some on-course gatorade. I had another a little later on the course and was feeling good. It was starting to heat up so I also doused my head in water. Every turn I saw my lead getting bigger and bigger, so for the last 750m into town I as able to enjoy coming down the final stretch of spectators. I crossed the line comfortably on the beach and had a little sit down in the water. I returned my chip and shook out my legs a little. I checked my watch, the run was about 400m short, which made my split of 35:29 more reasonable. This made for a pace of 3:44 min/km. Just a little slower than Toronto, but I'll take it! There was some off-road running, 3 180 degree turns and some undulation. What made this better, I had zero cramping and got my heart rate into it's proper zone, which is suggesting proper bike pacing.

So I managed to take the race by 4:51. Very happy with that. While awaiting results, I helped take chips off and present medals to the little kiddies racing. That was kind of fun. There was a division for kids 0-3 years old!

So how did I solve my bike fuelling? Turns out I don't need many calories... I drank about 600mL of sports drink on the bike, ~80 calories. That's it. I packed a gel, but I didn't really need it. I had my pre-swim gel as well, and was able to just go, no problems. I drank on the bike whenever I felt like it, never on the uphills, and if I felt I was taking too much I stopped. That works I guess! I guess if I were recommending a fuelling plan, I would suggest experimenting with too little and work your way up. I think I would have benefited from a few more calories, but this was better than having too much.

One final issue... remember those rocks? Well, they ganked up my foot real bad. It is about 4 days out from the race and I'm still unable to walk proper. I don't think there is any break or fracture. Yesterday morning it felt healed so I ran 11km of trails. BIG mistake. It feels like I'm back to square one now. I guess my running block will just have to wait.

So in recap - 1) If the training really doesn't matter, don't rush recovery!
                     2) Too little is better than too much for race nutrition. Start low.
                     3) Look at the race course map!!!

Adam "Magellen" Fortais

Local business

http://www.saultstar.com/2013/08/17/fortais-runs-swims-bikes-to-victory

Practice practice... race nutrition that has not worked for me

With the main competitions on my calendar behind me, it's kind of relax season. However, I am still keeping active and do indeed have a race coming up! This coming Saturday I will be doing the classic local triathlon just outside Sault Ste Marie: http://www.stjosephislandtriathlon.com/

This is its 10th year and I'm very excited to be back racing after missing the 9th. Originally I was planning on taking on the sprint distance as it has been 2 years since I've done so... but I can't help it! I've had a taste of the olympic distance and I can't get enough. Also, I still need to figure out nutrition on the bike.

I feel like I'm comfortable with my dinner the night before, my breakfast, and my pre-swim routine. I'm content with a stirfry, chicken breast + pasta or otherwise similar dish for dinner. A little bit more carb than normal, probably just out of habit, but a good dose of protein, a mix of animal and plant. In the morning, yoghurt with hemp seed or other plant-based protein, some honey, a banana, home made power bar (recipe forthcoming!) and a cup of coffee. So far I've only had bad coffee on race morning. Perhaps I will experiment with good coffee in the future, if I'm lucky. 15 minutes before the swim I'll gulp down a gel. At all times I am drinking water. However, this is where my certainty ends.

In training, I'm fairly used to a rather dilute sports drink, but I tend to need a little bit more fuel for optimal performance racing that hard for 2 hours. With that in mind, I've been trying to figure it out. I've found that the things I've tried in training work a lot better in training than in racing... So that is proving to be a less-than bullet proof method of "knowing myself". Here are two things I've done in races that did not work.

Mistake #1: The double-strength sports drink, as seen at Muskoka 5150

This is a bad bad bad idea and I should have known better. Really, don't do this. In short, if your drink has a higher concentration of solute than your body environment, it will tend to draw water out of your gut and whatever and you'll die. Or at least you'll dehydrate, have trouble digesting anything and subsequently cramp up. For more on this: http://www.infinitnutrition.ca/information/osmolality101.asp

Mistake #2: Eating up a hill, as seen at Toronto Triathlon Festival

This is a bit more of a subtle problem, but has moved me to try something new. Many people can eat gels and race well. I've tried them in training and been totally fine. My goal at the race was to eat one at about 10km, then a second at 30km, washing it down with water. I was riding fairly well, was hitting a nice decent and got all tucked in and aero and bombed it! What fun! Then I looked down and noticed it was time to eat, yum! But now I was at the bottom of a hill and going up. Wanting to get my power up again, I started pedalling hard and ripping into that gel. My heart rate was up around 180 bpm while I was gulping down that warm, creamy goo. About 10-15 bpm higher than normal race rate. I tried to wash it down with water but was breathing hard. The problem this time was that it just wasn't going down. I've had plenty practice eating at lower heart rates and effort levels, but I was working too hard and my body just wasn't taking it properly. This manifested itself with burping and a conceivable belief that one of these burps may contain vomit. Luckily, I think I nailed the amount of calories I need since (aside from the temporary gut ache), I didn't feel like I was crashing and was able to take on gatorade as needed on the run. However, I've come to believe that my personal gel consumption is a fickle business. The next experiment will be simply 100C worth of sports drink on the bike inside about 700mL of fluid. Drink the whole thing.

Mistake #3: How much is too much? as seen while running today

Today I did a swim-run workout. After coming out of the water I was feeling a little "wiggly" which I associate with low blood sugar. I consumed 100C of sugar and took another 100C with me on my run. After 20 minutes I began my 4km of tempo running and decided to try another 100C of semi-solid food as an experiment. Disaster. Very debilitating gut pain and feelings of vomit. Heart rate was around 180-190. Too high and too much.

Slowly but surely I think I'm zeroing in on my ideal fuelling. This is one of the major reasons I want to do another olympic distance race. I want another chance to nail my feeding plan. It's a subtle detail at this point, I doubt my time will increase by more than a couple seconds... But I shouldn't have to feel any stomach pain.

Adam "blah blah food" Fortais

Unstructured training and the "off-season"

Since completing the Toronto Triathlon Festival I have entered into a sort of off-season. For 5 days immediately following the race I don't think I did any training. I was planning on giving myself 7 full days, but I started itching to move around so I cheated. Until August 17th I will be in a strange phase of preparing for a local race while still being in off-season recovery mode. I know I will not be peak performing, I fully expect to lose some threshold ability. The goal is to maintain some general endurance and tweak up my higher end power and speed without too much stress on my body. This summer I have been focusing on upping my endurance from a sprint racing to olympic, so for this race I will be moving back down to the sprint distance. I will go into a bit more detail below.

As I've mentioned above, this year I've put a lot of effort into increasing my volume to make the transition from sprint to olympic distance racing. With that in mind I have put a premium on combining workouts to increase workout times, and in general just increasing duration. With this in mind, I should be able to carry a good amount of this new-found threshold endurance through to my next race. During the competitive season long, slow efforts took a backseat in order to get all the threshold quality I wanted in, so these will be making a return for the next little bit.

In order to drastically increase my muscular endurance work this season I have had to reduce intensity compared to my previous years. I went a little overboard and almost completely wiped out VO2Max intervals from my training, especially in cycling. In this next block I will be focusing much more on these high power, low duration intervals. These intervals can be very strenuous, especially in what I would call my off-season, so I am attacking these workouts in a fairly unstructured way. I am either doing them in a fartlek style workout, or I am going out with no goal number of intervals to complete and calling it a day when I think I've had enough or the quality starts to drop. Always making sure there's at least one more in the tank.

Since this is still an off-season, workouts come on an as-desired basis. I'm finding I require at least some physical activity every day or else I'm not really nice to be around, so this isn't a huge detriment to staying fit. Additionally, hard days are unplanned. If I go out for a run and feel great, I will take this as an opportunity to get some quality in. If not, I'll ride it out a little bit and stay out for the endurance. If it's still no good, I'll call it a day. Case in point - I was planning on cruising around on my friend's bike this afternoon but it started raining. I don't really want to get wet, and I certainly don't want to ride the trainer so I am writing this post.

Finally, I'm doing things in training I wouldn't normally do. This morning at the pool my main set was 5x200m IM. I never do IM. However, I do believe being proficient in all the strokes is probably a good idea so why not now? I polished it off with a couple 50's of sprinting. It was a hard workout! But not hard in the way I'm used to. It was refreshing.

The off-season doesn't have to be boring, and you don't have to get fat and lazy. It just has to be different. Don't let the lack of structure be stressful.

Adam "Have fun, go fast" Fortais

Accumulated knowledge from a successful season #2: Cycling face-palm

In my time off I am slowly putting together my training plan for next year. In essence I am scheduling out the macro cycles of the plan. In looking forward it's helpful to look back, and since I really need work on my cycling that is where I am starting. As I've been complaining a lot about losing power through the summer, this is the number one thing I'm trying to avoid next year. Initially I attributed this to halting strength training, and this is true... in a broad sense. More specifically I've noticed a glaring fault. I basically lost all VO2max intervals after May. Pretty much all but... five workouts were threshold workouts. This would certainly explain why my lower intensity riding kept increasing but everything above threshold kept dropping. Amateur mistake! Back in the day none of my workouts included intervals longer than 5 minutes, now I have gone in the complete opposite direction. This just makes me more excited to start training again.

Adam "Oops" Fortais

Accumulated knowledge from a successful season (AKFSS) 1, Strength Training

After breaking the ice with this new data analysis/training tips segment, I think I'm ready to start unloading some of the things I've learned this season. I'm more or less wrapping up dedicated tri training for the year, so I will likely find more time to wade through the backlogs of topics I've accumulated. I will be presenting topics in no particular order, and again, I do not claim any sort of divine knowledge on the subjects covered here. Rather I am offering some anecdotal tips and whatnot explained the best I can through the lens of articles and books I've read.

Strength training seems to be a fairly controversial topic with endurance athletes, and rightfully so since clearly there is no one size fits all answer. In fact, I would hesitate to say there is even a one size fits most answer. However, I believe I've found the current fit for me, for next season. That's another thing. I think your strength training needs to be assessed every year, especially for time crunched athletes. One year shoring up on a specific weakness might be all you need before being able to dedicate all of your time to swim-bike-run.

So, step one I guess is to determine if you think you need any strength training at all. Of course if you find muscular force, high-end power, pull sets, low cadence/stroke and hill climbing tough you may benefit from some time at the gym. Another thing to consider is your predisposition to injury. If you find you're unable to put on the miles without an overuse injury, you may be suffering from some kind of muscular imbalance. Get that checked out and consider some time to correcting that. In my case, I'm a very ectomorphy-type guy, and a runner-turned-cyclist. As is probably common with my type, I suffer on the bike due to lack of strength. I would consider myself a fast runner, not a strong one. To illustrate the difference, the former would excel at a race on the track or a flat road course. The latter could whoop you off-road, through sand, in ankle-deep snow, etc. So assess your weaknesses and decide if that weakness would be helped by getting a little more strength. And don't assume you will put on weight. You might, but if you're a triathlete... I doubt it. If you're not sure, I'd say pepper some strength training in your earlier cycles of the year and record how it makes you feel. Who knows, you might need it and not even know it.

You have decided to take me up on strength training! Awesome. Here the topic diverges for me based on your reasons for making this choice - to go faster or to be less injury prone. The latter is a shorter topic so I'll hit that first.

Let's play sports doctor. Rewind to 2006. I am in grade 10 (I think) and believe I'm going to be a runner. I start putting on more milage but once I start hitting 30km/week I begin developing shin splints. I assume it's just a normal part of building up milage and train through it, despite every run starting with an agonizing 10 minutes or so of warming up my shins, and steady pain walking around day to day. They get worse and worse and I can hardly lay my hands on the insides of my shins without wincing. I go to physio and whatnot... Nothing helps. I show no signs of unusual biomechanics. "Coincidentally" I also develop anaemia and am sidelined for a couple months. Sounds like overtraining right? Here's the kicker - I never even hit 40km/week. All of this was happening at very low milage. So what was happening? This final clue should drive the point home. I was 6'2" and a bit under 140 lbs. Throughout the rest of my high school years I slowly managed to put on some weight, and all my problems began improving. However, it wasn't until my first year of university where I was introduced to the UWO Triathlon club and full body, balanced training. Blam, all my leg problems disappeared and I managed to increase my weekly volume by probably around 100%. Agreed, this is an extreme case, but at the very least it demonstrates the point that if you're injury prone perhaps bulking up a little will help. On the other hand, too much weight will make every footfall harder on your joints and ligaments so keep that in mind as well.

For the record, I am still 6'2" but peak at about 160-165lbs.

As for speeding you up, this is probably the least agreed upon aspect of strength training. However in my case, I have definitely seen an improvement in cycling from strength training. In the last two years I have dedicated 2-3 months in the winter to focusing on in the gym, actual weights training. Four weeks of low weight, high rep work to get the skeletal system and ligaments ready for real training, two weeks of low reps, building weight, then two to four weeks of low reps, low weight extremely explosive movements as well as on-bike sprinting. The goal of this last phase is to translate the raw strength gains into on-bike power gains. I did a similar though reduced routine for the upper body. This progression would usually finish around March and I would go into a strength maintenance phase until about May. Through the summer I would completely ignore strength training and go exclusively swim-bike-run. I believe this is the typical way triathletes go about strength training. In my first two years I saw big gains. In the last little while I found myself reaching peak fitness on the bike around June and slowly losing my ability to put out power as the summer progressed. This does not seem to make sense as I increase volume and specificity of cycling training during these months, so I should be seeing an increase in power. Since the only other change is removing strength training all together, I can only guess that this is what is draining my power. It is this reason that I plan on making strength maintenance a part of my training year-long. I have proven to be a sub-par cyclist so I will be putting an emphasis on maintaining strength all year.

I will be doing this in two ways - weekly bodyweight circuit sets during the summer, and sport specific strength workouts. The first is simple enough. Squats, lunges, pushups, etc. This can be done on a recovery day. The second will be things like sprinting on the bike, paddles and elastic bands for swimming etc. This should help me maintain my hard earned strength and not take too much time away from swim-bike-running.

In the winter during my in-gym strength building phase, I stick to the basics. Multi-joint lifts that simulate movements I will be doing in my sport are emphasized. Bonus points for free weights. Squats, leg press, lunges, leg extensions and hamstring curls I find are enough for the lower body. Bench press, lat pull downs, seated rows, shoulder press for the upper body. For all of these exercises, if you push, make sure you keep it balanced with a pull. As in, bench press coupled with seated row. You should work to move the same weight for leg extensions and hamstring curls. Core work I keep as bodyweight with many reps.

Hopefully this is helpful.

Adam "Get swole" Fortais

Toronto Triathlon Festival (Race report 8), Skip to the end for training tip

Skipping much of the uninteresting bits about the progression leading to the day of competition, I can say that it was relaxing and offered nothing unexpected or detrimental to my performance. As is becoming the custom, I pre-prepared dinner the day before the day before so I did not have to risk the unknown when in Toronto. Chicken and rice stir fry prepared at my girlfriends apartment in London - satisfying and seemed to do the job just fine. Two nights out I went for an unstructured run with some pick-ups... I went sans GPS but I could tell I had my legs back. The night before I went for a hesitant ride through downtown Toronto... The roads were surprisingly empty so I cranked out a bit of time at race pace. Again, all engines seemed to be firing. The temperature had been red-hot all week but were just beginning to dip on Saturday. Sunday was set to be a perfect day.

Transition opened at 5:30 the next morning with my wave off at 6:50, so I was up and eating breakfast at 4:00. Yoghurt, muslix, hemp hearts, home-made power bar and coffee - perfect light but calorie dense. Upon arriving at transition I did not have to fight for a spot on the rack - they were all predetermined based on age/number/wave/whatever. I just had to find my sticker. Easy. Quick bike around the run course for warm up, run around the bike exit/entrance, and almost zero line at the portapotties... Man, everything was going smooth.

Due to the nature of the swim course, they did not offer a swim warm up. Being a somewhat inexperienced swimmer, I have not developed a must-do warm up routine... and sometimes I pretty much forgo warmups in practice anyway, finding myself doing tempo pace swimming instead. UNFAZED (sp?).

My wave included males under 29, relays and para-athletes. This meant that I would be starting with Simon Whitfield, as he was doing a relay. For a second I considered starting near him and wasting myself in the first 25 meters so I could say I swam over Simon... but came to my senses. There is no way I could swim that fast, even for 10 meters. 

This was my second race in a wetsuit, and I am loving it. The first 200m was a bit of a washing machine. I took a couple face-kicks but managed to get over all the slower people and find a pair of feet to guide me for the rest of the 1300m. Otherwise, uneventful. I came in with a split of about 22:10, a personal best in or out of the pool. This would be good enough for 30-something on the swim.

Transition was smooth. Not lightning, but smooth. Maybe 10 seconds slower than the fastest person through, but solid.

The bike leg was along the Gardiner Express. I was expecting pancake flat. It was never literally flat, always moving up or down, but never more than about 3% grade so an easy course. Headwind all the way out, tailwind back. The first half of the ride I was averaging about 255W, and came back averaging about 240W. Looking at my power chart from the race, after halfway my power was clearly trending downward as was my heart rate, so I really should have been pushing more. I was passed by slightly more people than I passed, but held a higher power than last race so all was not lost. Regardless, I was worse than 80th on the bike leg, so I have a lot of work ahead of me. Great, since I love riding.

This race I decided to try a different nutrition plan. The goal was 1 gel before the swim, then 2 gels on the bike and one bottle of water. Nutrition as needed on the run. At 10km on the bike I took my first gel. I took water no problem, but could not stop burping and tasting the gel. I couldn't convince my body to put down another gel so I left it on the bike. I still had gut cramps for the first 4km of the run, so I've got to figure something else out.

Run transition was again, smooth, but not the fastest. I could work on this a bit I guess.

Now the run. Despite cramping for nearly half the run, I did not let that slow me down. I was running with a tailwind for the first half, headwind for the second and that is reflected a little in my speed data. Luckily I had a few carrots just ahead of me to work my way to for the first 2km, and a steady stream of bodies to jump to through the rest of the run. I was only passed by two guys, but I think I passed one of them back. In the last mile I caught a guy in my age group in a team Canada suit. Every time I pass someone I assume they would jump in on my pace and let me drag them... This guy let me blow by him, extending my lead to about 25 meters. I thought I was going clear but with about 800m to go I checked back and he had held that 25m. I knew my muscles were wiggly and tired meaning I wouldn't have much sprint so I had to put enough gap into him to discourage the sprint... However he was still able to hold that 25 meters after my final surge. Coming around the final bend into the wide, grassy finishing chute, I just had to take one more look back... and there he was on my shoulder. I had to counter the sprint and I held him on my shoulder for a while. Unfortunately he had just one more second worth of glycogen on me and managed to edge me out by about 1 second on the line. This put me, as previously reported, 5th in 20-24 and 33rd overall. Although I wish I would have podiumed, I improved on my first olympic attempt by 10 minutes and still placed rather competitively at nationals. This was a huge success. Onwards to some rest and recovery, a small build up to a local sprint race, and then a fall running block. I am tres excited.

Training tip/Data analysis 

I think I'm going to add a new feature to my posts. A training tips/data anaylsis section, hopefully directly related to the above post. In this instalment I will use my heart rate data from the race and compare it to the rest of my season to determine my triathlon run leg limiters. I may not always be right, but this is my attempt of making sense of the data I have gathered on myself.

In the past I've done max HR tests to determine threshold running HR, but lately I've been basing the number on my total collected HR data all year. Looking at time spent in zone vs HR range (bin size ~2bpm) you should see two distinct downward steps. The first, at the lower HR would be your aerobic threshold, or, where you transition from burning predominantly fat to glycogen. The next is your anaerobic threshold, or, what would be associated with a 10-15km race or 45min all out effort... give or take. For me, these two numbers are about 173 and 185 respectively. For my 10km at this race, my average HR sat at about 183bpm, including the time it took to raise from my naturally lower bike HR. If I was fully rested and running an all-out 10km I would have expected a higher heart rate, but due to muscular fatigue from biking, I was only able to push my aerobic system to that threshold pace, corresponding to a 37 minute 10km. Being that my running threshold heart rate should correspond to a race lasting about 45 mintues, in theory I should be able to push a higher heart rate. I think this is telling me that my limiter for a triathlon run is definitely my cycling and strength. If I was seeing my heart rate maxing out, I would know that the limiter in my running is that my aerobic system can't keep up. Another possibility is that I was so aerobically taxed during the swim and bike that I just didn't have any more to give. This is possible, but my cycling heart rate showed no evidence of this as I sat right at my threshold HR (after allowing it to slowly drop from the swim) until the last couple of km where I allowed my pace to drop a bit to spin out my legs.

Adam "R&R" Fortais

CDN Nationals in a paragraph or less

I did my best, no podium, no top 20, but 5th ag and 33rd overall. The bike was slightly short at 39km, but 2 hours, 6minutes is nothing to scoff at! More comments to come about each leg, I will be prepare a full race report this week. I will be taking a week off, put in a couple short, fast weeks and cap my triathlon season off with the local St Joeseph Island Triathlon, the sprint. It is the Sault's local triathlon, and it will be celebrating its 10th year! I'll hopefully retain enough endurance and be able to tune myself up for a solid sprint race. Should be fun!

Adam "rest week" Fortais

It's official

Peaking...

Yesterday I went out for a short run, 30 minutes or so including 5 minutes at post-bike race pace, just to keep the feel. I did not consult my gps watch during this interval and went only by feel. It was "comfortably uncomfortable", as my runs have been over the last week... but to my surprise it turns out this same feeling that was just barely giving me 3:36/km pace earlier was giving me 3:18/km pace. When I got home, I decided I needed to do 1km at actual race pace. This was a joke.

In the water I am comfortably cruising at 1:30-1:35/100m, and blasted a 100m in 1:12 for fun.

Tonight I'm going to sit at the hopefully comfortable 265W on the bike for a bit.

Adam "Trust the taper" Fortais

Getting nervous...

One week to go before AG Nationals in Toronto. I'm trying to peak right now and I'm getting a little worried. I gave myself 2.5 weeks to peak... The first week off I felt pretty good, but lately I've been feeling like garbage. This morning I went for a short 8km run. At 4km I decided I wanted to touch race pace for about 5 minutes, for fun mostly... I don't know if I was dehydrated, tired, or what but I started getting a little dizzy and well, it just wasn't there. I shuffled home.

From the end of my bike block onwards my riding has seemed to have gotten worse as well. I'm just not putting out the power. I haven't lost any weight, but it's just not there.

I've been more tired than usual over the last little bit as well. And very irritable. Muscles aching in ways they hadn't before.

I shouldn't be "testing" myself during these 2-3 weeks, and especially not now. I just have to trust all engines will come back and be firing better than ever by next Sunday.

To reassure myself I've been reading articles.

http://www.triathlontrainingarticles.com/Taper.html

This sounds familiar. I'm not doing Ironman-type volume, so hopefully my progression will be a bit quicker. I think I'll just go for an easy swim tomorrow.

Adam "Taper" Fortais

Post-race bike block

After a fairly dismal, but adequate race at Muskoka, I targeted my bike as the weakest link. Unfortunate since I thought I was a fab biker... but more-so because it's ~50% of the race. Something needs to be done.

First thing was first. Could I find any free speed anywhere? I checked my position... this dude's got the flattest back in the West. I thought about what I did with my head... I keep it low and out of the way. I don't have an aero helmet... but are those really that important? Seriously. I don't know. I recently purchased a wheel cover. I can't afford new wheels. I've moved my bottle between my arms on my bars and got rid of superfluous bottle cages. I've made a tiny flat-pack, wrapped it up ultra-small and zip-tied it under my saddle. Super out-of-the-way. I think I've optimized that side of things...

But still! I'm somewhere under 160lbs, have a nice, well-fit TT bike... and yet, even 290W doesn't get me going 40km/hr. I don't know what to do. Maybe I am "cursed" with a wide body. Maybe my practically concave-chest acts as a sail. I don't know. All I can think to do is train harder.

With that in mind, cue bike "crash" block. Probably not the greatest name considering the sport... Never the less, I went for a very easy ride the Monday after the race and started from there. I road every day for 11 days (if one includes race-day as part of this week (who wouldn't)). I reduced my swimming and running during this phase, but did not eliminate them. Here is the breakdown:

Monday: 1 hour bike, easy

Tuesday: 10min @ 250W, 5min @ 300W, 10min @ 250W, 5min @ 300W -- 7:30 rest -- 20min @ 280W INTO 10 min moderate tempo run

Wednesday: 45min easy ride
                    9x200m swimming, various pull/paddles/swim, 1500m TT pace

Thursday: INDOOR - 15min @ 280W -- rest -- 3x2:30 >320W w/2:30 rest
(Deceptively hard. Holding 280W for 15min did not feel particularly easy as it probably should have been.)

Friday: 40min @ 280W -- 3-4 min rest -- 2:30 > 320W INTO 5km up-tempo run (17:46)
           Later that night, 30 minutes easy running to shake the legs out a bit

Saturday: various HARD hill repeats. Anaerobic stuff for sure. 4x 3ish minute intervals. Finish it off with a little bit of threshold time.

Sunday: 40 minutes of moderate-hard fartlek running. Mostly moderate to be honest.
             70 minutes easy riding

Monday: 20min @ 285W -- 10min rest -- 15min @ 285W -- 7:30min rest -- 10min @ 285W -- 5min rest -- 5min @ 285W
               Later, 20min tempo run, 5ish mins rest, 1km fast

Tuesday: 50 min easy ride
               10x200m swim intervals at around 1500m TT pace, 15 seconds rest between

Wednesday: 20km TT, all out. Power plumeted in the second half of the trial, only could average about 270-ish Watts and 31:30. Very tired, legs destroyed.
                    2x1000m swimming, long, slow, fairly easy stuff, broken up a bit into various strokes

This lead me into my "peaking" phase. I'm prepping for the Toronto Triathlon Festival, which I have learned is AG Nationals this year. Better get it right this time. More on peaking later. After the race. As a bit of a teaser... I'm feeling like I'm recovering... nervous I'm detraining... and not really feeling like I'm getting fast yet. Perhaps this crash week was a little too much and I just need some time... Come Monday I go into "race week" meaning dedicated recovery, so maybe I'm right where I need to be. We shall see...

Adam "Too late to fix anything now" Fortais

Muskoka images

I have just recently finished a fairly intense bike block, details to follow. In the mean time, enjoy some Muskoka stuff.

Race morning

Into T2

Heading out on the deathmarch

The most comfortable I felt all run

Let them see you suffer and they'll tear you apart

T-Dead

A BEE STUNG MY EYE, My first olympic triathlon, and other short stories (Race Report 7)

Muskoka, or as I would learn, the city of Huntsville (Muskoka is NOT a city), was to be the setting for my first attempt at Olympic triathlon. This was part of the 5i50 series - as I understand, and off-shoot of the Ironman brand, heralded as the largest non-drafting olympic distance triathlon series freakin' anywhere! Additionally, 1st place in each AG secured the winner a slot at AG World's next year, and top 5 in each AG got a complimentary slot at 5150 championships in Iowa. What better place to try the distance out?

I travelled with my ever supportive father. We drove down the day before, a simple 6 hour drive. We travelled with dinner since all I wanted was chicken breast and pasta, and like hell I'm gonna pay $20 for that if I don't have to! This was all planned in advance.

We checked into out nice little hotel, unpacked some stuff and headed to the race course. After some aimless driving (we're men, of course we don't need an address, directions, a map, or any inkling as to where we're going...) we found the course was less than 3km from our room. Nice! I got my race kit, scouted the transition area and decided to come back later, after the racing was done for the day to preview the 5150 course.

We drove the majority of the bike... It was either uphill or downhill. I defy you to find any flat on that course! I thought that this may be to my advantage... I still don't know if it was. We'll get to that later. 225m (~750 feet?) of climbing over 40km doesn't really sound like much I don't think, but it certainly isn't a typical time trial course. The run was sort of all over the map, involving some off-roading (which I love) and lots of turns (which I hate), a 5km loop done twice (which I think I like). All in all a tough course (which I'm indifferent to). We "peaced-out", went back to the hotel where I ate dinner pt II, watched some TV and had an early sleep.

The next morning I was up at 5:00am to eat and digest. Yogurt+hemp seeds, a banana, a coffee and a piece of toast is all I really want. We packed our stuff and made our way to the course. Transition was set up nice. Each age group had its own rack (COOL) and mine was second from the end, closest to the bike exit, right after the elite men. I got a spot second from the edge which was perfect, did some warming up... All systems go. Body marking ensued. Age: 22, number: 22. Cool! In all this time I never got pre-race jitters. Just calm, collected, and ready to do work. I had no fitness setbacks leading to this race, my prep was as good as I could have had, all I had to do now was go as hard as I could. The only thing standing in my way at this point was squeezing into my freakin' wetsuit, but that was fairly easily done. I proceeded to do a little swim warm up and "baptise" myself as a true triathlete. I peed in it.

Wave 1 consisted of pro, AG elite and Junior athletes. They went off 4 minutes ahead of wave 2 (me). My wave was 20-30 and some group of 60ish athletes. The swim was about 150m downstream, left hook around 2 bouys then a straight shot against the current to the transition zone.

I did some solid swimming this year but was unsure how that would translate to this race. I knew I wanted to be better than mid-pack out of the water but wasn't sure how close to front I would be... So rather than having to swim over people I thought I would prefer to be swam over. I'm a nice guy like that. I'd rather draft off you going 20 seconds/100m too slow than accidentally bump your shoulder. JUST KIDDING. I started on the far left side to get a better, closer turn on the two buoys, but that required me to be two people back. I got stuck behind the first person and boxed in on all sides... unfortunately for him at one point I was literally on top of him. Sorry dude. I did feel bad, for real, but all's fair in a mass-start swim amiright? Anyway, I got on the next set of feet but they started drifting to the right... and pulling away. I kept sighting, and refused to believe they were going the correct direction. In fact, all the people ahead of me were drifting away from the buoy. We got there and because of my proper line I had made back the 15m or so gap they had put on me. I got back on those feet and then the same thing started happening again! Got that distance back on the turn. Weird. For the rest of the swim I stayed within striking distance of that person (first woman out of the water from my wave). In the process we passed a number of Wave 1 swimmers... and this lead me to being the 4th out of the water from my wave in a time of 24:3-... passable considering we were supposedly swimming against a current... and later I would find, 21st overall. Needless to say I was pumped. A bit of fumbling with the suit and I was into transition.

I believe transition went fine. It wasn't the fastest time, but it was fairly close. I fumbled getting my paddle-like feet out of my suit but big deal. There is video of this forthcoming.

The bike... I don't know if it was the fatigue from swimming, or ... iunno. But I just couldn't keep my power up. I ended up averaging about 240W, far below my ftp of 280W. This was the only place of my race I took any form of nutrition. I had a double-concentrated bottle of sport drink mix. I would later find out that this was a big mistake. I drank all of it, but never felt like I was getting hydrated. I never felt strong during the bike. I got passed quite a bit, but I never saw anyone from my age group go by. Not a lot to report here. I just kept my head down and tried to push the power out, to no avail. A disappointing 1:10 (39th...) and I was into the run.

I had a bit of trouble with the shoes, but I was ready to go. I scouted the rack and was pleased to find only my bike. I was tired, but I'd run feeling more tired before I think. I got out on course and started making up for that bike. However, after about 1km I was feeling weary. Not brick-workout tired, but just drained of energy. I took a gel before the swim and 200 calories on the bike so I reasoned that it's not likely due to fuel. I passed on everything at the aid stations for the first 3km and I started cramping in my gut. I tried to take on some water but ended up choking on it. To top it off, at about 3.5k a large insect crash-landed on my face and stung me below my left eye. An unfortunate combo of expletives erupted from my mouth. I hoped no one heard that. The rest of the run consisted of me trying my best not to slow down (which I did. Big time.) and trying to splash water on my face to sooth my acutely aching eye. Never the less, at my dismal pace I was still picking off other athletes left and right, and was never even close to being passed. Surprisingly, 39:30 was enough to give me the 11th fastest run on the day. Brutal.

So where did this put me? 2:16:47 for the day... which was good enough for a 20-24 win! 17th male overall. Fantastic! I earned my World's spot! Plus I think I made my Dad proud. I was worried he would be a bit bored during the race, but he commented how really enjoyable the whole experience was. He photographed the whole event and commented on how nerve-racking the waiting period between times he saw me was. Always counting the athletes and keeping track of my place. I really enjoyed having him there too. I wish my mom could have been there too. Hopefully next time.

Regardless, not the time I'd hoped for, but I accomplished my goals for this race. I was upset with the last 2/3 of the race, but I believe nutrition had a large part to play. Regardless, I've been putting in a big 10-day bike frenzy to get ready for Toronto on July 21, and I've been practising with nutrition. Hopfully I can get these things sorted out and have a really steller showing. I think Toronto is Nationals.

Adam "Thanks everyone for helping me do something really fun like this!" Fortais

EMERGENCY RACE REPORT (Race report 6) and race week!

As per last post, I had a last minute race race. A local 5k in Sault Michigan. I may have mentioned eariler that I was coming to the end of my last big training block. My legs were nice and tired but I had enough juice to race. I didn't think a PB necessarily, but I knew I would have a good workout.

The course was more or less flat, though officially "downhill" for the first 1.5 miles, slightly uphill and on dirt road then flat for the last 800 meters. Pretty much one of the faster courses you could expect to find for a 5k road race. Looking around at the field prior I decided I would take it out at about 16:20 pace to potentially get into the lead, then get into a comfortable (as comfortable as a 5k race will allow) pace, then just go for it for the last mile or whatever. I took it out fairly hard as I had hoped, and found I was being chased. There were a good number of bends around this forested, nice neighbourhood course so I tried to lose him around each bend, but every straight stretch I would see him behind me again. It started to feel like that Twilight Zone episode with the hitch-hiker, I would get comfortable and feel like I'm alone and then he would be there. Never the less, I held out to the end, crossed the line in 1st. The best part? PB. 16:16. Splits are as follows.

3:08 - 3:13 - 3:20 - 3:25 - 3:23

I blame the 3rd and 4th km on the dirt road, though I'm not upset. Not upset at all.

ADDITIONALLY:

The race proceeds went to charity! How dare I forget to mention that!
http://www.girlsontherun.org/
Sounds like a good one, I'm happy to have my race fee go towards that.

Also! I won a rock. It's about the size of my fist and has a bit of a gloss to it. They put a sticker on it. I won a rock.

In other news, it's big race week 1! Yahoo! This has been my easiest week since iunno, January, but by no means has it been easy. As anyone can attest to, cutting back... and the way you feel before you really recover... not so great. But I'm finally feeling like I'm getting all rested and recovered. Yesterday I went out for another frigid swim, open water. I managed 10 minutes this time, but exited with hurting hands and feet, and a wicked ear ache. Today I had my last solid race prep workout - 30 minutes riding at goal power (~270W) into 10 minutes of goal race pace running (3:36/km). This was done indoor due to the rain in the Sault. People seem to think that indoor riding is more difficult and I hear things like it takes away around 5% of your power. I don't believe this, it makes no physical sense. I think its all mental (possibly another post), so I just ride the watts I want to ride. It was tough, but it was enough to keep sharp I think. Tomorrow I'm going to do a bit of quality swimming, Saturday I head out to Huntsville with my dad, and Sunday I race! Sweet! I have to admit though, I'm getting nervous. This is my first olympic distance race and second TT-style 40k. I'm feeling very confident with my run, I know I'll do my best in the water... But I'm nervous I'll explode on the bike or something. Anyway, I'll do my best and see what happens!

Adam "A rock!" Fortais

Emergency race!

A friend brought to my attention a 5km race happening tonight in Sault Michigan. I'm at the tail end of my last build week and feeling pretty tired, but I needed to get one more quality run in. What a good opportunity! Don't expect any PBs... but let's do this!

http://www.summersolstice5k.org/index.html

Adam "Race!" Fortais

Multimedia explosion!

On Sunday I tried getting out into the water for a little open water swimming and wetsuit practice. I lasted about 10 minutes. I don't know much about water and stuff, but I've deemed 45 degrees (F) unpleasant and to be avoided if possible.

On Monday I decided it was high time to try my hand at the ole' 40km TT. It was windy with a fair number of short, steep hills littered throughout the course (182m of elevation gain), but managed to hold 278W (-7 from my calculated ftp) and come in at 63:00. I've looked at other people's race reports online for 40km TTs and they seem to go much faster than me at lower wattages. I have bad wheels, but a fairly decent bike, and I believe a pretty good aero position. What gives?! Don't get me wrong, I'm satisfied with my result and it's in the ballpark of what I expected, but is there some sort of free speed to be had somewhere? I want it. I am currently looking into a disc wheel cover. Perhaps that will help.

I've dumped a couple pictures from the TAG TT below, as well as some video evidence of my swimming misadventure. Enjoy!

Adam "instagram" Fortais

(Arguably) The hardest week

As this is essentially the final chance for a build week before I throw myself into A-race season, I'm trying to make the most of it. I abridged my recovery week from my last build period to three days, and threw myself into some hard training and a race prior to this week. Since, I've been up to:

Monday
BIKE - 100min - 2x20min ftp w/ 10 min recovery, long cool down
SWIM - 60min - 50-100-150-200-250-250-200-150-100-50 on 50sec/50 (in on 45sec/50)

The biking was miserable, I had to wear winter clothes and not to mention very tough after my 10k the day before, but I pushed through and hit my power numbers. I felt sluggish and crappy during my swim warm up, but found once I started the real workout I was hitting my paces. It was a good tough workout, but I got through it!

Tuesday
BRICK - 60min - 5km bike - 2.7km run - 5km bike - 1km run - 5km bike - 1km run, all as fast as was reasonable, practicing transitions

I saw a post on slowtwitch, someone was asking the relevance or usefulness of multiple short brick intervals. My opinion is that they are useful to some extent for fitness, but much more so for working on T2 skills. So that's what I did. I didn't look at my power on the bike, but it ended up being around 270W or so... but the runs were about 3:20/km then 3:05 and 3:05. It was pretty tough, especially on tired legs but I got some quality running in and transition practice which were the goals of the workout. I managed to treat myself to a massage afterwards!

Wednesday
SWIM - 50min - 300 tempo (in <4:30 -="" 1min="" 2x50="" 300="" 3x50="" 4x50="" 5:15="" in="" on="" p="" paddles="" pull="" tempo="">
Another swim workout I was happy with. I needed a rest from the run-bike stuff and this was good.

Thursday
BIKE - 3 hours, 10 min - Long, hard Sault Cycling Club ride

Pulls in the range of 300-400 Watts with a hill sprint half way through... then I finished out the night getting the distance up to 100km because that's a nice round number! My legs were completely toasted. I woke up in the middle of the night because my legs were so sore. I got some water and went back to sleep.

Friday
RUN - 45min - 4.5km @3:32/km - 1min rest - 2.7km @3:32/km - 30 seconds - 1km in 3:27

I was very tired today and not highly motivated... but I guess I must have been because I got out and I did it, and I did it well. Recovery tonight? The movie Identity Theft. Terrible. So bad. Possibly the worst movie ever made. I can't believe how bad.

The rest of the week? I am going to try and get into the open water. I need to try out this wetsuit! I've been hunting for good places. I'm going to do another easier ride on Sunday I think, and a bit of easier running tomorrow. I need a bit of a recovery.

Good talk.

Really though. Identity Theft is so bad it's making me feel physically ill.

Adam "Movie review blog" Fortais

Run the Great Lakes 10k Road Race, or, NEW RECORD! (Race Report 5)

Am I the only person who runs in their running glasses even if it's overcast? I don't know if it's just habit, or a comfort thing from working in labs that required all-day goggle wear, or if I'm really worried an errant sun ray will pierce the clouds and blind me... but I'm over being worried about looking like a dummy. I'm wearing them.

This morning was particularly overcast and I noticed some rain earlier on while I ate breakfast. Do you wanna know what I had for breakfast? No, didn't think so. It was kind of cold too, 10C, but moved up to probably around 13C by gun-time. I went for the business-time look today, settling on purple shorts, white-and-orange singlet, black arm warmers, red shoes, and obnoxious running glasses. I had to make sure everyone knew I was there to race... or possibly entertain children with balloon animals. Sorry, I don't think there are any pictures of this. Shame shame...

So there I was, on the start line. No wait, rewind. I warmed up with buddy Scott whom I believe I will be training with in the near future. We did about 5k of easy running with some longer race-pace efforts. Nice. I felt a little light and wiggly.. whatever that means... but knew this would later be replaced with heavy and stiff. All right, so we get to the start line, ready to roll. Wait, one more thing. During the warm up I strapped myself up with the ole' HR monitor and flicked my GPS watch on and surprise! It didn't charge overnight. Also, it was completely dead. I don't have a backup or any other kind of watch for that matter. For the significance of this detail, please refer to the previous post where I in detail explain my race plan and pacing strategy. Needless to say, all that was out the window. Bro, we're running by feel today.

More specifically, we're running the other people's race. I could do nothing else but let them set the pace and try to out speed them in the final kms (unless they were running too slow at the beginning (which they weren't (just wait, I'm getting to that.)))

So we're at the start line. I find a guy who looks pretty darn fast and follow him into line. He lines up near the front. I analysed the finish times from the last year or so and expected to be near the front of the 5k race going into my second 5k, so I didn't let nobody push me off the front of the line! That, or no one wanted to go near me. Anyway, gun goes off, a 5k-er literally sprints off the line. 5 of us take a more conservative approach and start running. I realize I'm in a group of 2 other 10k runners, a 5k runner and being led by a 5 and trailed by a 10. We all run fairly well together for the first 2km. I'm sitting on heels, feigning leads here and there. This is weird, how fast do I think that first 2k was? It feels pretty good. Just shy of the first 2.5k turn around the only other guy with arm warmers makes a surge of a hill... though not a convincing one. I don't really make any effort to increase the pace to match. He falls back into line. Still lead by a 5er and trailed by a OH CRAP. The guy who was behind blasts by my group of three to catch the leader. I've never seen someone make an acceleration like that, but all of a sudden he seems like he's a contender. Coming around 4k, other-arm-warmers guy has fallen back (highlander rules, there can only be one) but otherwise no change in positions. The 5er I was with made a small surge to finish off his race, but was too far back to catch the other guy. Coming around the corner past the finish line timer I predicted a slightly faster than anticipated 17:20 or something. Nope. 16:50. What the... Still about 15 seconds down from the leader, and running strong with an old ex-teammate... who I had a sneaking suspicion had gone out too fast and was on the verge of crashing. With 5k to go I decided I would just sit at this pace because if he does crash, great, but if he doesn't, we've got to work together to catch the leader. However, at about 6k the route got twisty and he crashed. By twisty I mean actual right-angle corners along a bike trail. Wide open field/parking lot between corners though so I could see the gap between me and the leader. Actually, I could see the gap falling. And falling. And falling... Until we slogged uphill about 400m to the final turn around at 7.5km. I caught him at the turn. The goal was to hold on to his heels until about 1k to... woah, where's he going? He must have seen me at the turn and decided he did not want this to come down to a sprint because the pace was lifted. He got a gap again... but not by much. Maybe 5 seconds. I knew I had to close it, but I didn't have much in the tank and I could feel myself slowing... By 1km to go he had put a comfortable lead on me and I knew I was in that no man's land of 2nd place. I barely made it through the last km, but to my surprise as I turned the corner into the finishing shoot, the clock was reading 34:40... 41...42... I had very little left but I tried my hardest to keep it under 45. No dice, but close. I think 46. I found out (after some speculation) that the winner was one of the great local runners, Nathan, who typically hangs out around the 20-40k distances. We both went well under the previous winning time. I found him afterwards and tried to thank him through giddy and tired gasps for dragging me along for a PB. I don't know how much of that he understood, but we shook hands anyway.

So, how would things have been different were I running my own race? Iunno. I probably wouldn't have run 16:50 for the first 5k. But I also may not have pushed myself as hard. Being forced to stay with the group, regardless of their idiotic pacing (sorry guys... but I had a 55+ second positive split. everyone but Nathan was worse) probably forced me to dig a bit deeper? I don't know. I probably have a better PB in me somewhere, but I'm extremely hesitant to say I could have had the win. I am extremely happy with my performance, glad I had a chance to run by feel, grateful for the competitors who helped drag me to a PB... and uhhh.... thanks for putting on the race, race people!

I got a nifty long sleeve shirt for winning my age group.

There was a bit of a wind but it wasn't a big deal. headwind for 2.5, tail for 5, head for 2.5. I guess it was fairly unpleasant in the last 2.5k but what final 2.5k isn't unpleasant?

Adam "Maybe if I write a race report before the results are up I'll get more hits..." Fortais

Summer Races, Explained

I guess there isn't a whole lot to explain, my A races are the Muskoka 5150 in three weeks, followed by the Toronto Triathlon Festival three(?) weeks after that. They're coming up!

Why these races? Well... I don't have the ability to travel around and race tonnes every summer, for better or for worse. I decided I didn't want to piddle around with low attendance races. I worked really hard this year and want to see what I'm really made of! So I picked two Ontario races that I thought would be the most competitive. Also, they're AG World Qualifiers. Don't get me wrong, this fact isn't the biggest thing... But I mean come on! That's really cool! And by virtue of World's being in Edmonton next year, this is as good a year to try and qualify as any - I may even be able to go. Never the less, they're both Olympic distance because I also figured, I might as well "do it right". Not to belittle the sprint distance, I just think the Olympic distance will be the most competitive.

I'm running a 10k tomorrow as a sort of final run-prep thing. After this point I'll pretty much be finished with single sport stuff. Bricks will abound. That's what really matters.

This really only brings me to August. I am debating a bike bike block, I'm debating a big run block. I want to run the Halloween 10k again this year, so it might make sense to move into a solid run season, reduce the other sports a little, you know. But depending on my race performances, it may become evident that cycling has become a limiter... It's well established by now that I will be doing a lot of pool work over the winter, but I will have some good weather to use up. Maybe I'll continue with some solid bike work, but move into a base-building run phase, reduce the speed work and just try and hit a new volume-high. Actually, yes. I like that. I think I'll do just that. Thanks guys.

Uhhm, so as far as race specific work goes, I will have two weeks starting Monday to get in some last minute quality, then I will take the week of the race easy to recover. I'll take a day or two (max) off after the race and use the 7 days directly after as a sort of crash week. Then I have two taper weeks and it's back to race week! A little break from training, perhaps a week, and I'm back to training. I might do a local race in August (St Joseph Island Triathlon) because it's the best. I might do a half marathon in September to say I did it. I dunno. Stay tuned I guess.

Adam "Race season!" Fortais

Ballin' on a budget

Take a break. Have a coffee, Pal.

This is what I hear every day at work. I have a mighty work ethic, be it training or shovelling iron-making materials into metal bins. I can definitively say I've earned a recovery in training - I've finished out my second tough build week. 12.5 hours this week, and tied for the highest training stress in a week (against my 14 hour week). Today I'm taking the day off completely, then will slowly ease into training. I expect a pretty quick recovery, then it's back for two more weeks of work. Actually, two and a half weeks. I plan on starting some good quality this Thursday. Three days should be enough.

My Friday-Saturday-Sunday were as follows:

Friday
SWIM - 50min - 800m wu (standard 1k minus the 50's), 2x (3x100m on 2min, 2x50m on 2min from blocks, 100m kick easy, 100 swimdown)
RUN - 30min - easy, treadmill run

Saturday
BIKE - 120min - Moderate, hilly ride with a couple hill sprints and some long steady climbs

Sunday
RUN - 45min - easy 10km
SWIM - 45min - 400m warm up (IM stuff), 2x (50fists-50swim-50paddles long slow, low stroke count
50fists-50swim-50paddles hard, try to match stroke count 100 kick), 300m cd w paddles, IM stuff

My last couple days weren't all that high-impact, but I consider it steady, aerobic icing-on-the-cake and done on pretty tired legs. Today I've got that dull, aching pain in the legs. It's a good thing.

This week I'm going to keep working on the swim, but won't do a dedicated hard run until Sunday. On Sunday I will be racing a local 10k to get the second build week started. Thursday I plan on doing some quality riding with the Sault Cycling Club. Always do a bit of running off the bike. Always always always.

Last year I had a personal best 10k time of 35:28. I had paced this poorly as I got over-excited chasing some really fast guys. This Sunday I'm likely going to be in a good position to run my own race so I should be able to see another new PB. In contrast to my last 10km attempt I'm going to start conservatively, something around 3:30-3:32/km for the first 2km. If I'm coming through the first 5km in 17:30 after that, I know all I have to do is sit at that pace. Any extra speed I can find will just put me even further under that 35min mark. Last year the winning time was something like 36, so I'll hopefully have someone around to help me push the pace in the last 5km. Before then I should think about getting a racing singlet or something. I don't want to be that guy in a tri jersey again.

Anyway, I still have a nice chunk of content I'd like to write out but there has been a good amount of current stuff to write about. Maybe the next thing I'll post is something about my summer race schedule. In short, I'm racing the Muskoka 5150 and Toronto Triathlon Festival olympic distance event. These are both AG World Qualifying events.

Adam "Time to roll the legs" Fortais

Quick training update

I lost a couple pounds when I got sick a few weeks back, and I've finally put them back on. Last I checked I'm right on 72kg. In likely related news, I'm really starting to hit my stride with training. Last week took a bit of time to get moving again, but I'm hitting all my times, intensities, volumes, and coming back fresh each day. All this on top of adding 40 hours a week of labour at my new steel mill job. Some specifics...

Starting May 13:

Monday
RUN - 45min - 4x (2 on-1 off-1 on-30 off-30 on-30 off) on = 3:20/km pace, off = easy  running
SWIM - 30 minutes, rotation and catch drills, low cadence 50s (down to 14/length), 100 hard kick for fun

Tuesday
BIKE - 1 hour - steady tempo ride (~230W) and some 1-leg stuff
SWIM - 1 hour - 1km warm up (various things), 4x400m (swim-pull-pull-swim) on 6:45, 7, 7, 6:45 (swims in on 6:10)

Wednesday
BRICK - 75min - Bike (warm up, 2x Maki hill which is about 3km of steady climbing) into run (25 minute tempo at 3:38min/km pace)

Thursday
SWIM - 50min - standard 1km warm up, 3x100m on 2min, 2x50 on 2min all out from blocks, 100easy kick, 100 easy swim, 3x100m on 2 min, 2x50 on 2 min all out from blocks, 100 easy kick cd

Friday
OFF

Saturday
BIKE - 70min - TAG TT
RUN - 100min - Loooong run

Sunday
BIKE - 90min - moderate, hilly ride, unstructured

Monday
BRICK - 100min - Bike (4x6min 5-10% above ftp (300-315W), 4 min rest, 10min 300-315W), Run (30min tempo off bike (3:38min/km))

Tuesday
SWIM - 1 hour - standard 1km warm up, 3x200 on 3:10 (under 3:00), rest, 4x200 w/10 sec rest (swim-pull-swim-pull), swims under 3:00, 100m cool down

Wednesday
BIKE - 80min - 2x20min at ftp (285W), 5 min rest in between

Thursday
SWIM - 75min - 1km warm up, 5x400 with masters team (pull, kick, even 100s sprint, 6th 25 fly, hard for time), 100m cd
BRICK - 2:30 - Bike (long warm up, group ride with Sault Cycling Club, 10km uphill TT, short recovery ride), Run (5x1km between 3:13 and 3:16, 1:30 rest)

It wasn't until about Thursday that I really felt like I was coming into my own. Now, however, I may wake up tired if I had a long day before, but I feel ready by the evening to put in some more good work. I am sticking to my initial plan, but if by the end of the week (I admit, I front-loaded this week) I am still feeling great, I will add more work. Today I am scheduled to only do a swim, however I may add in an easy run or bike later tonight depending on how I feel. My legs are certainly tired from yesterday's great work, but I think I could benefit from a recovery workout.

I have a feeling this great block of training is due in part to getting back to that 72kg mark. I felt like I may have been just slightly under weight for a little while. I'm also back at home in the Sault which makes taking care of myself a little easier. That has got to help. I think the best training tip I can give someone is to let their parents take care of them. Haha...

You may notice that I'm doing a lot of "brick" workouts. I'm happy where my pure running is right now. Now is the time to make sure I can run off the bike. That's what I'm really training for, so I might as well make sure I'm great at that. I've pretty much moved all quality running to the back half of a cycling workout. In scheduling these weeks, I didn't write out any particular brick workouts. I wrote out workouts that would target the energy system I want to exercise, then arranged them... To create the brick workouts I decided what the most important pure cycling workout was and left it alone. Then I coupled bike and run workouts that would stress me in slightly different ways so I could still try and hammer both of them. I matched short, fast intervals on the bike to a tempo run, and a hilly time trial to a VO2Max interval run. In the coming weeks I will be moving even more towards very specific training. I am planning on practising my race-pace and hard, steady riding in my brick workouts and doing my over/under distance intervals in isolated sport workouts. The opposite of what I'm doing now. This transition will happen in the next week or so as one of my big important races is in about 4 weeks.

Here's a picture of me leaving the house in cycling gear to go run:

...my house has surveillance cameras.

Adam "You can never be too safe" Fortais

TAG Time Trial (Race Report 4)

Welp, what more can you do but pace yourself correctly, stay aero and hit a new highest average power for 30ish minutes? I didn't win, and I didn't set a new 20km PB, but I can't help but call this a success.

http://www.sooeveningnews.com/article/20130520/NEWS/130529964

My previous best CP20 test yielded a watt average of 294. I haven't been very focused on cycling lately, but I have been doing an all right amount, so I endeavoured to hold 290W for the 20km time trial (higher by 15W over last year's PB, which was at the very end of the season). The weather was a brisk 12 degrees C with a slight wind. The course was more or less flat with one very small hill at the end and a riser over a highway somewhere near the middle.

I rode around the race area for a couple minutes to shake my legs out before anyone else in the area started warming up, but quickly moved onto my trainer. Typical warm up, do a couple race-pace efforts. Chatted with some Sault Cycling Club members, and just generally relaxed. I felt pretty good and ready to hurt.

I started fairly near the back, 1 minute gaps. I made sure to keep warm and did a couple efforts while waiting. I got up the start ramp and POW, off.

I started the first 2 minutes strong to get up to speed and all that. 320W. This brought me to the first corner where I regrouped and got ready to get into a rhythm. The next 9 minutes I held 293W comfortably hard. It was tough but not stinging-hard, and that brought be to the second corner. I chickened out of my aero bars on this corner and surprise, that's where the event photographer was waiting. SPOTTED - out of the aerobars. Oh well. The next 12 minutes featured a tiny riser, and this probably accounted for my 295W average over this section. Only one turn, took it like a boss but no one was where to see it. The last section was headwind and this is where my pace and rhythm started to suffer. However I still managed to crank out the power. I was suffering at this point, but a new batch of "carrots" started appearing in the last 5 minutes which helped keep the motivation high. With about 500m to go I knew I wasn't going to be cracking the course record, or my PB, but I knew I threw down the best TT I could on the day, and was satisfied.

I ended up coming in at 30:33, averaging 293W. Good enough for second place. I was bested by one Tim Best, with a time of 29:24 or something.

I'm happy with this race, and it has provided a good re-test of my cycling zones. I'm starting to feel it's time for a cycling specific period fairly soon. I'm happy where my run is right now, and I'll never be happy with my swim, but I think I can do some good work on my riding. I can't right now, but after my two A-races I think I'll dedicate a month to solid riding. I'll ride like, a billion kms. I'll ride all the kms.

Adam "All the KIMS" Fortais

(Very late) Race Report 3 - CN Tower Race

Race 3 was up the freakin' CN Tower!

It was a fundraiser for WWF, required a bit of donation money and my family and friends certainly stepped up to the plate on that one. I needed $75 raised to participate but got to $100 almost instantly. Thanks everyone!

So the race was vintage chip-timed, as in, you were given a card which was time-stamped at the bottom, then time stamped at the top.

But wait, let me rewind. This was obviously in Toronto, and it was April 27th. The rules required you to arrive to receive your race kit between 6 am and 10 am. I decided I didn't want to go the day before, so I resolved to just wake up super early and suck it up. That meant waking up at 3:00 am to be on the bus at 3:30 am. Whatever, I survived. I rolled into Toronto at approximately 5:30 am, laced up my shoes and strapped my backpack on nice and good and warm-up jogged to the tower (3 km or so). What I encountered upon approaching the tower was quite surprising.

The line of people leading up to registration was literally* as long as the tower was high! This isn't actually a very interesting story. I'll skip to actually running it.

I have never done this before, so I had no idea what to expect for time. A friend of mine had done 15 minutes, and I saw the World record was just shy of 8 minutes... So I figured I would be somewhere in there. I decided I wanted to shoot for single digits. Under 10 min... I calculated how long it should take to run each floor... but that number was too small to keep myself on pace. I resolved to break it into quarters - 36 flights - 2:30 each. After surfing lines and trying to get ahead of the giant girl guides group or whatever (so they wouldn't hold me up in the tube), I got my card punched and was off!

Pow! Reminiscent of high school track season (we did a lot of early season stair running because many people didn't have snow running gear), I began sprinting up 'dem stairs! ...and I mean sprinting. I got very excited, and was going all out man. I got to flight 30 and realized I was in the red-zone and right on the verge of being toasted. Crap. 114 flights to go. I didn't even check my watch since I knew I blew the race already. There were also a heck of a lot of people in the way. From here on in, I would "jog" up the stairs the best I could, then be forced to walk a flight whilst being stuck behind groups of people walking two-abreast (despite the rules oh so clearly asking you to stay to the right if you will be walking). Regardless, I felt like I had ample ability to go fast. I may have been able to reduce 20 seconds at best if it were an empty tower.

Half way up the tower I was nearly weezing. I don't normally get sore, hurting lungs when I run, but this was certainly the feeling I had. By about 70 flights my ears popped from elevation. I was really suffering. I really underestimated this challenge... However, I kept the countdown going as fast as I could.

With about 10 flights left, it was imminent I would be passing a very tall, strong looking man amidst a horde of specimens of a physically lesser quality. He who would refer to himself as "Coach J" started hollering and clapping. Coach J wanted everyone to know that "this ain't hard!" and that "no matter what your fitness level is, this IS NOT HARD WOOT!" He did this by yelling it non-stop until we reached the top of the tower. He also took the time to make the comment "Toronto's finest! Emergency response. Give it up!" very loud, into the face of one of the volunteer emergency responders. Coach J, I love the enthusiasm. Really, I do. But please please please, some people don't find that kind of reinforcement helpful. In fact, I can imagine someone who could find it derogatory and offensive. I personally don't care, I've got enough self-motivation for everyone. What I really care about is how obnoxious this guy was!

Ways for Coach J to improve:

1) If it's not hard, keep up with me.
2) Keep your clapping arm in your own lane so I don't have to dodge it and get slapped
3) Say thank you to people you would like to thank. Don't shout impersonally compliments into their face.

I'm not mad at Coach J, I liked that he was there because it gave me something to be exasperated about. It's like being held up by the driver so hopelessly trying to back into their space that it becomes funny. Hold on, I'm bad at describing this. Here, this is Coach J:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf4TIWECZ30

So how did I do? Just a hair under 12 minutes. That was good enough for 6th out of about 4000 on the individual climb day, 3rd for the team climb. 8th out of everyone. That's kind of cool! But pretty far from randomly-assigned-goal-pace. Whatever, it was fun!

So uhm... when I got to the top, my lungs had collapsed, felt like they had been clawed by every animal that WWF has ever tried to save, and I tasted blood. Daaaamn. And this lung pain lasted for about a day and a half. I could barely take a full breath and I had wet coughing for about the same amount of time. If anyone knows why I would get this kind of reaction, I would be interested in knowing. I hypothesize that on top of going very anaerobic, maybe the number of people in that tube and elevation change caused me to have a simulated asthma response? Anyone? Bueller?

Adam "The Elevator" Fortais

*Using literally figuratively