There Aren't Any Cobwebs to Shake... (Race Report 1, UWO Splash and Dash)

Preamble: I have just completed my first race this season. I went into it this morning at my lifetime peak swimming fitness (not saying much) and EXACTLY 100 miles of easy running as of January 1st. No quality whatsoever. The goal was to use the Western Splash and Dash 1km swim, 10km run as a swim test, and a shake-of-the-cobwebs, get-ready-for-some-real-running effort. This is the last day of my first week of Base 2 training, so was the tail end of a decent 9 hour week of training. I decided to do a full 2 hour swim workout last night since a race at such an early point in the year was not a top priority for me... So without further adieu, the classic Race Report

Classic Race Report 1: UWO Splash and Dash, (1000m swim, "10 km" run)

5:00pm Saturday - Begin long swim workout. Anticipated a full 4-5km workout but Zorian came prepared with a <3km 100m="" 200m="" 2x200="" 2x50m="" 33sec="" 34sec.="" 3:08-3:10="" 400m="" 4x100m.="" 5x200m="" a="" about="" after="" all-out="" and="" ankles="" because="" between="" blocks.="" both="" buoy="" but="" choice.="" definitely="" do="" ellen="" extend="" had="" i="" im="" in="" intervals.="" into="" just-shy-of-4km="" kyle="" less="" main="" more="" nbsp="" need="" next="" no="" off="" opted="" or="" p="" pace="" people="" per="" proceeded="" pull="" pulled="" race.="" recovery="" rest="" set="" sets="" short="" some="" strong="" swim="" tempo-paced.="" territory.="" the="" then="" there="" these="" this.="" through="" time="" tired="" to="" was="" were="" whatever="" with="" work="" workout="">

Hahaha what happened up there?

7:30pm Saturday - Wait in Monte's Pizza for what seems to be my traditional Saturday night pizza. I wonder if this is turning into a habit...

8:30pm Saturday - I finally remove myself from my couch and begin setting out my things for the race

5:45am Sunday - I am awake, again, as I have been waking up nearly hourly since I went to bed at 10:00pm. I decide I might as well just get up since I was going to start moving at 6:00 anyway. I finish packing, eat some yoghurt and berries and muslix and hemp seed and am out the door, off to grab a 7-11 coffee (meh...) and get to the Rec Centre.

7:45 am - I'm all registered, I have set up my transition zone, and begin my run warm up. The race is set to start at 8:30 so I plan for 15-20 minutes of running and 20-25 minutes of swimming.

8:00 am - I arrive at the pool deck, ready to start my warmup. As I am about to enter the water, I notice a large group of girls are also ready to enter the water. They fill every lane. The women's race is starting right now. I am promised warm up time once they start exiting the pool. I wait and finally get a chance to hit the water. I swim 200-300m then practice a dive and do 2x50 accelerations. I head to the bathroom to blow my nose with plans to do a little bit of easy back stroke before the start. I get back out to the pool and am told "25seconds to go"... Yikes. I find my lane and am stepping on the blocks as they count down from 5. Good job, me!

It's long-course so I'm expecting slow, but I find myself hitting the wall after the first 100m at 1:27. Woah. That didn't even feel hard. I decide (smartly) to slow anyway, and hit my first 200 around 3:03 I think. From there I lost track of time, but I knew I was holding nice and steady through 500m. 600-700m was a tough mental exercise but I made the best of it as I could tell I was beginning to lap the guy in the lane beside me. I pulled on through to 800m and used the "only 200m to go, only 150m to go..." game. I popped out of the water with an alarming 15:30! Even more alarming was that aside from Kyle and Zorian in the relays, I was first out of the water.

Transition was somewhat relaxing as they insisted we take 5 minutes before leaving. I opted to run in my jammers, but put on some long sleeve underarmour-type shirt, and my UWO triathlon jersey. The shirt was hard to get on, but I had plenty of time to get everything in order. I had time to watch the other guys come out of the water and saw I had 1:00, 1:30 and 2:00 on the next three. I've yet to have someone come out of the water after me and pass me. I was determined to keep this streak.

My GPS watch was unable to get a signal for the first 200 meters or so, but it didn't matter really. I was more interested in my heart rate, though I didn't really look at my watch at all. Started quite hard, and consciously backed down the pace by about 400m. So I'm getting better at that. There is not much to be said for the run, I saw the other guys but only at turn-arounds. I tried to ballpark how far behind me they were but wasn't having much luck. Interesting note, adding the 200m I believe it took to get a signal, the 10k course was only 9.4km. This makes sense as I finished my run split in 33:40. Either way, assuming I held that pace I would have come in for 10km at about 35:48. Only 20 seconds slower than my 10km, exclusive, only-running PB. What cobwebs, homie?

As per usual, I had a theme song today. Actually, two. Kinda:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w4y1ekS_LE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LywyW0gLRX8

I won an XXL Sugoi tri top. It fits like a running singlet. Still a great prize.

So what does all this mean? Keep on swimming hard, my improvements are huge but I know I can make more. Running fitness has hardly deteriorated at all. Great news. Time to start quality training. There is a 5/10k I am scheduling myself to do in 2 weeks.

Adam "Happy" Fortais

Calendars and Things

As promised, here are my training calendars and other pertinent details about my fitness. As previously (maybe?) mentioned, I have not planned a thing past April. I likely will be moving into some build phases, but I want to race a bunch too, and I actually don't know where I will be living/what I will be doing so it's a little hard to make decisions right now. Anyway, on with the pictures.

Base training overview

Hopefully visible is the annual training plan. Things to notice are the weekly hours through each base phase, as well as races starting as soon as Base 2. I don't intend on being fiercely competitive during these early races, but I figured I might as well break up the monotony of base season with some quality. In the past I believe I have peaked at 12 hours in one week. This season I will be attempting to push that up to 14 in Base 3. Oh! I also wrote in some objectives. Testing every 4th week is a must - I always intend on doing this but push it aside. Consistency in training - I have mapped out every week with a what-sport/how-long calendar (below) so I don't have to make it up day to day. Increase volume and listen to my body and stretch - I can honestly say I have not had a time-off injury since grade 10 (horrible shin splints, lasted pretty much all through high school). I want to keep it that way. I've already fallen off the stretching wagon.

Nov-Dec Weeks

Dec-Jan-Feb-March Weeks

March-April Weeks

 These are fairly self-explanatory. Note the large weekends and easy Mondays. I understand you old people now. I don't like it.

Power to weight vs Time

I like this chart. Y-axis is my watts/kg, x-axis is duration. Dotted line is maximums from the 2012 season, solid line is this season. As a spoiler for later posts, notice how the lines meet around the 5 and 20 minute marks. These are the two times I test every 4 weeks.

Performance Manager chart

Another neat chart. WKO+ is a training program that lets you dump all your GPS/power/HR/everything data in, organize it, plot pretty much everything you could ever be interested in, and have it plot things you never knew you could plot. There are some not-so-complex-but-time-consuming-to-explain calculations it does with your running speed and power data based on your functional thresholds that allow it to estimate your training stress volume. Pink line is your acute training stress (over 7 days, accumulated stress), yellow line is essentially your restedness, and the blue line is your overall fitness. Red line with points is top-10 1 minute powers, black line with points is top-10 20 minute powers. Check out the pink line 5x peak-plateau-drop. The last three correspond to 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks in Base 1. I bet you can guess where Sat-Sun are. Notice also the progressively deeper pits I'm digging myself in the restedness department. However, there is quite a nice rise in overall fitness. I am currently on a rest week, so you can see my restedness climb and my fitness drop a little bit. Acute training stress should also drop quite a bit. This chart only tracks biking and running.

So on the whole, these are the overarching things I use to track and plan my fitness. I will refer to them often from here on out. There isn't much else to say about them, as I am saving the specifics for later posts. If anyone is reading and would like more information, please send me a message or leave a comment. I've never had either happen and I don't know how to tell if it does, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Adam "A Good Presentation Has More Pictures Than Words" Fortais