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

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