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