Only 3 Months to Ski Season!!!!!!!

I just checked out Telemark Tips this afternoon and saw this beautiful pic on the front page. It made me giddy just looking at the beautiful pow pow! I'm so psyched for this ski season. With all the triathlon training I've been doing, I think I'll be in even better shape than last year and am really hoping for El Nino to come back and give SoCal a winter more like 2005. Well maybe hoping for a bit much, but I would like to be able to ski Baldy or San Gorgornio before March this year.

Here are some of my initial ski season resolutions:
1) Continue training to be in good shape for the start of the season.
2) Do an overnight (freezing your ass off in a tent style) backcountry trip by March.
3) Do the Sierra High Route or Mount Whitney in April or May.
4) Take a couple of lessons at Alta in January.
5) Ski Silverton.
6) Make a trip up to Roger's Pass, Canada to check out all the beautiful terrain my buddy John's been talking about.

What are your resolutions for this year? I'd love to hear what some of your goals are for this year?

Triathlon Update: Knowing When to Say When

One of the ideas our triathlon coaches have been repeating throughout our training is that its better to be undertrained than even a bit overtrained. I fully understand their point. If you're overtrained, you're either going to end up injured or burned out. In both of those cases you won't perform well come race day. That being said, I have a hard time making myself stop training.

For tonight's practice, we had a swim at La Jolla Shores. Going into the practice, I had already swam ~5000 yards this week. After swimming ~1800 yards, I wanted to go back out and swim a bit more. Our coach Dave told me that since we've got a practice tri in the morning, I should just call it good for the evening and head home. I did end up following his advice. However, it took evey bit of will power to do that. After thinking it over, I've identified several reasons for this:
1) I felt great after swimming the 1800 yards. Going back to the swim practices we used to do in high school, a practice doesn't feel complete until your body is begging for you to stop.
2) On a purely quantitative level, 1800 yards just doesn't feel like a full workout. Granted most of my swim workouts these days are between 2000 and 3000 yards. But again my mental standard for swim workouts is based of the 6,000-8,000 yd workouts we used to do back in high school.
3) Even though it goes against the mantra of training smarter not harder, my gut instinct is that it takes more training volume to get better. Yes, I know that is wrong. But this is what my gut tells me and it takes a lot of work to ignore it.

Because of all of these, the feeling that came over me to night when I left (with my body feeling great no less) was one of guilt. Part of me felt like a quitter. But hopefully as I learn to take a more targeted and scientific approach to training, I will find it easier to ignore this voice.

Have any of you had common experiences?

Triathlon: Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon and AFC Half Marathon

After months of training, I finally got some real race experience this weekend. I did the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon on Saturday morning and the AFC half marathon on Sunday morning. I know that some of you are probably going to say that I was crazy or plain stupid for doing 2 races in the same weekend. Initially I was just going to do the sprint tri. However, when I heard that a number of my teammates were doing the half marathon, the competitive juices started flowing and I told myself that it was just about the same distance as my planned base building run that I'd be doing anyways. Before I knew it, I was signed up for the race.

The Sprint Triathlon on Saturday ended up being a great training race. I got some of those first race nerves out of the way. More importantly, I validated a lot of the things I was already doing and saw some things that I should work on. The swim was only 500 yds and I can remember telling my buddy Nelson before the race that the course looked really short. However the swim was a lot harder than I was expecting. The water was both rougher and colder than I had been used to over the last few weeks. I had signficant problems breathing and sighting the buoys. The swells were big enough that you had to be at the top to see the next buoy. As anyone who swims with me knows, I can't swim in a straight line to save my life. So I swam off course two times. Thinking back to what our coach told us, I did try and draft. But I had problems finding someone who was going at my pace. As I was swimming in, I did try and catch the waves. However, due to being out of breath, I had actually stopped twice after catching a wave so that I could catch my breath before the next one came. Coming out of the water, I did try and strip off my wetsuit as I was jogging out. I did pretty good getting it down to my ankles. But I couldn't get the damned thing over my feet. I actually fell over into water before I got it off. I ended up doing the entire swim in 11:59 (20th out of 80 in 25-29). Not bad, but I definitely need some more time in the ocean.

T1 went smoothly with the exception of the aforementioned wetsuit problems. The bike ride was a 20 mile out and back. There was some rolling terrain, but no significant hills. The wind was not bad at all. It was actually in the first part of the bike that I felt the after effects of the swim the most. It felt like I had just been hit in the gut. For the first 15-20 minutes, I was still gasping for air. I felt nauseus when I ate an energy gel. Over that time I was only averaging ~17 mph and getting passed left and right. Around the 20 minute point, my body seemed to settle down and I started feeling better and better. Over the second half I was averaging 20-24 mph and started passing some people myself. On the bike, I came in at 58:42 (25 out of 80). I came into the race thinking that the bike was my weak area and this result just reconfirmed it.

T2 went great. I was in and out in under 1 minutes. The run was 3 miles and consisted of two loops around the Amphibious Craft Unit Five area. Going into race, I already felt that the run was my strong point. I felt great throughout the entire run and was passing people the entire time. I came in at 19:56 (5/80). In retrospect, I definitely could have pushed it a little more. But at the time I was worried more about cramping.

Overall, I came in at 1:30.37 and had a great time. There was a lot of great competition there and I now have a better idea of what I have to shoot for to do better. The following are my lessons learned from the race:
1) The swim sucked. Need more time in the ocean. Pool workouts aren't the same.
2) More Interval Bike Workouts. Got to get faster.
3) Buy an Aerobottle. Everytime I went to take a drink, I'd slow down by 3-4 mph.
4) Set up extra towel and foot basin in transition area to clean off feet.
5) Use bodyglide on feet to help get wetsuit off faster. Must practice this more. Don't want to fall over again. Highly embarassing.

This morning I set off at 4:40 to head off to the AFC half marathon in downtown San Diego. If you're thinking about doing it next year, disregard the statement about the last bus leaving for the start at 6AM. That's not true. However, be aware that the traffic on the 163 is pretty bad. It took me 45 minutes to go a grand total of 2 miles to the parking area. The race itself was a lot of fun. There was approximately 6000 runners. Being a late arrival, I literally started at the very back. Unfortunately, I had to run through the entire field as I got started. But that was good in that it forced me to start off at a slower pace.

Initially I was worried that my legs were going to give out due to being tired from the triathlon the day before. So I started out at an 8:30 pace my first two miles. My initial plan was to eventually speed up to a 7:30 pace and hold it there. But I got caught up in the moment (it's so fun passing people!) and to my surprise, my legs kept feeling better and better as the race went on. So I just went with it and trusted that they wouldn't fail me. I averaged 7-7:30 for miles 4-7 and 6:30-7:00 the last 5 miles. The hardest part by far was the hill at mile 12. By the time I got to the top of it, I was genuinely gasping for air. It was very similar to how I felt after the swim yesterday. But luckily it was just a short coast into the park from that point. I ended up with a time of 1:37:15 which was good for 47th out of 406 in my age group. I feel pretty good about my performance in the race. I can't keep but wondering how I would have done if I wouldn't have run a triathlon the day before.
As for lessons learned from the half marathon, the big one is that I obviously didn't push it enough in the triathlon. If I would have truly been pushing my limits on the bike and in the run, I wouldn't have been able to run as fast in the half marathon. What I need to do in my next triathlon is to dig down, push through the pain, and go harder. Maybe my next brick workout goal should be to push myself until I find that limit where my body gives out.

Triathlon Update: Is There Such a Thing As An Easy Butterfly?

Every week, one of my triathlon teammates Emily sends out a couple of swim workouts. When we started out, they were entirely freestyle. I like freestyle. Freestyle is easy and its fast. However as the season has gone on, she's increasingly mixed in a stroke of our own choice in some of the sets.

Normally, it would be no question and I'd choose the backstroke. However, I normally workout at the USD pool over lunch (outside with the sun overhead) and am almost completed blinded by the sun whenever I try the backstroke. The other problem with doing the backstroke at USD is that they only have the flags at the end of the pool on one side. For those of you who aren't swimmers, the flags let you know when you're approaching the wall on the other side of the pool. I realized that one day when I was moving along at a nice pace and my head hit concrete. So there you have it, two reasons not to do backstroke over lunch at USD.

I could also do the breastroke. However, the breastroke is just so slow. I'm normally in a hurry to get in my workout over lunch and don't want to waste any time. So that leaves me with one other stroke...butterfly. It is fast. However, everytime I do it, it feels like I'm in an all out sprint. I'm fighting just to finish 25 yards. More often than not, my last few strokes look more like an impersonation of a dying whale than someone actually doing the butterfly. I actually kind of like it....yes I'm into putting myself through excruciating pain. I just wish that it would be possible to do the fly at something less than 100% effort. I look forward to the day when I can joke about doing a 50 fly cool down. My question for the day, is there such a thing as an easy butterfly?

Competition: Against the Clock or Your Competition?

This morning I saw a comment that did get me thinking some more about competition. Like I said before, I definitely am motivated by those I'm competing against. But I do also compete against certain benchmarks (the clock in the case of Saturday's time trial) to see if I'm doing well when compared with previous performances. In the case of Saturday, I did see a big improvement. In June we did a 20k time trial that I finished in ~40 minutes for an average speed of 18 mph. On Saturday, I completed 40k in just over 1 hour and 10 minutes for an average speed of 21 mph. So that was a big improvement. I should be happy. But psychologically, I saw my battle against the clock and my battle against the other riders as two seperate races. I could be glad that I had improved. But I wasn't going to be satisfied unless I at least caught up with the two riders in front of me (one being our 60 year old coach) going into our last lap.

Competition

I have to admit that I've really caught the triathlon bug and hope to continue with it next year following ski season. Earlier, I wrote about my addiction to endorphins. However the high from an endorphin rush is not the only reason I've been having such a good time with triathlon training. This other reason has been simmering in my brain the last few weeks. Quite simply, I love competing against other people.

In races, you are either the rabbit or you're chasing the rabbit. If you're the rabbit, you want to work as hard as you can to keep the others from passing you. I know this sounds incredibly unfriendly. But the best part of being the rabbit is when you break the people chasing you. At the moment, I look back and see the look in their eyes that they can't catch me, I feel an instantaneous sense of joy. Although we weren't racing, this is the same feeling I had when going on ski tours and pushing the pace to the point where others would never be able to catch me. (Yes, I realize that this isn't exactly safe in the backcountry and only did it during extremely conditions where everyone knew where they were going.)

While being the rabbit brings a moment of euphoria if you win, I feel that the greater pleasure (and pain) comes from chasing the rabbit. On our triathlon team, I've established a pretty competition with a girl named Cassie. On Saturday, we had a 40k time trial. Although I started out ahead, she passed me by the end of lap two and due to a series of mistakes I was still far behind going into the final lap. I don't know what came over me, but somewhere inside I found a ton of untapped energy, was able to increase my speed by a few mph, and passed her with 1/3 of a lap to go. Although she ended up beating me by 30 seconds in the actual time trial, it was an awesome feeling to have caught up to her, passed her, and opened up a comfortable lead. It's the pleasure of setting a goal, executing a plan, and seeing it succeed.

Even though I'm talking about competition, I'm not going to talk about losing because losing sucks. The only good thing about it is that it provides you with motivation either to stay ahead (if you're the rabbit) or to catch up (if you're chasing the rabbit).

Triathlon Update: Iron Mt and More

I'm too lazy to write a whole update for my training over the last two weeks. So here's a copy of the most recent update email I just sent out to friends. For those of you who are new to my page, I am training for a triathlon with Team in Training which raises money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Research as well as patient services. My goal is to raise $5000 by August 18th. It's a great cause. If you'd like to make a donation, you can visit my fundraising website at: http://www.active.com/donate/tntsdh/leister



Everyone,

Hello, I hope you all are doing well. The triathlon training continues to go well. Thankfully, it has cooled off considerably over the last 2 weeks here in San Diego. That's made the training much more pleasant. There's still a lot of pain involved, it's just that the risk of passing out from heat stroke has come down a bit..

My workouts continue to go well. Last consisted of a fun 20 miles running (can't believe my knees aren't hurting yet), 85 miles biking, and 4 miles swimming. As I said before, I feel pretty good on the run. I just need to get a little faster on the bike. This past weekend, we completed the Iron Mt brick workout, which is the most difficult workout we will do all season. We met up at 6:30 AM on Saturday. Yes, I am aware that I said 6:30 AM and Saturday in the same sentence. Unfortunately, in the interest of getting the workouts in before it gets too warm, triathlon training involves a lot of early mornings on the weekend and giving up late nights. (I promise to make up the late nights once the race is finished!) The bike portion of the workout consisted of a hilly 29 mile ride. The fun part was a twisty turny section where we reached speeds of 45 miles per hour. Unfortunately, on a bike, what goes down, must come back up. So the last 9 miles was pretty much one continuous hill climb and it was pretty painful. Being a brick workout, as soon as we got off the bike, we threw on our running shoes and ran up a mountain (3 miles up, 3 miles back). As we ran up, we ran past lots of hikers who looked at us like we were absolutely crazy. When I think about it, we must be a bit crazy for beating up our bodies like that.

I feel pretty confident in that as much pain as I was in, I was able to stay at the front of the pack and never ran out of gas. One of the biggest things our coach talks to us about is "fuel". Fuel is triathlon speak for food. It surprised me how much we're really supposed to be eating throughout the workout. For example on this workout, I ate 3 Guu Energy Gels (by far the tastiest gels) and one Lara Bar (pricey, but very tasty energy bar) and drank 80 oz. of water.

Upcoming Events: Just to get some of my race butterflies out of my system, I decided 2 weeks ago to enter the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon on Saturday August 19th. I'm pretty excited as this will give me the first opportunity to practice my transitions (going from swimming to bike and bike to run) in a race envrironment. The transitions are key because its time that you can make up (or lose) without expending a lot of energy. It makes know difference if you have a killer swim if it takes you an extra 2 minutes to get out of your wetsuit and onto your bike. Additionally, it will give me an idea of how I stand competitively. I previously said that I was aiming to be in the top 10% of my age group. Looking at last years results it means I'll have to finish around 2 hours 20 minutes. That might be pushing it. In my efforts to meet my goal, I swear that I won't resort to any "Landis" like tactics. (Not all San Diego residents are dopers.) Me being the type who finds it hard to say no to any athletic challenge, I've also pretty much decided on entering the "AFC San Diego Half Marathon" the following day, Sunday August 20th. It'll be a good base building run and a few of my teammates are already doing it.

On the fundraising side, I'd like to thank all of you who have contributed an awesome $800 over the last 2 weeks and $3155 total. You are all awesome! Last weekend, I set up a bike trainer in downtown San Diego for 3 hours and asked for donations from the people walking by. All in all, it was a great experience. I was literally set up right next to the bums on 4th and Broadway. (The bums know all best places to beg for money!) I ended up raising $131 while getting in an easy 45 miles in. The memorable part was the people I met. Some of the bums were certifably insane. The two best were JFK's personal lawyer and the guy who tried to sell me steroid enhanced orange juice. (formerly Lance Armstrong's smoothie specialist) But I also met a number of people who were cancer survivors. The most memorable was a family with a 7 year old daughter who had been suffering from Leukemia and just went into remission. As you all know I'm not one to normally show much emotion, but meeting her almost brought me to tears (while I was pedaling away) and really reminded of why we are out here. Its not just to do a triathlon. We're trying to save lives. The donations that all of you give are helping to save lives and improve the lives of families whose loved ones have leukemia or lymphoma. Without all of the scientific progress that we have made over the last 30 years, she probably would not be alive today.

As I've said before, I have committed to raising at least $4000 and I would still love to have your support. My fundraising deadline is August 18th. (At that point, I'll be making a personal donation to make up for whatever I am short of my committment. If you would like to donate, you can visit my fundraising website at: http://www.active.com/donate/tntsdh/leister. Take care and I hope all of you are doing well.

Doug

More Thoughts on Why We Love Gear

As I was on a bike ride yesterday trying to rationalize why it was absolutely necessary for me to shell out $120 for a heart rate monitor, I inevitably came back to pondering my last entry when I put it out there that men love shopping just as much as women do. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed to clarify my thoughts a little more.

First, why is it that it's so much fun to buy gear? The way I see it, gear is the adult version of toys. While it may help professional athletes perform better and earn more money, for the rest of us, it just helps us to play our games better and to one up our friends. Just as getting a supersoaker squirt gun instantly made you a force to be reckoned with in the neighborhood squirt gun battles when you were 9 years old, the $5000 carbon fiber road bike gives you that much more of an edge over the other guys you ride with.

Second, I think the reason that the belief persists that men don't like shopping is that we really don't like the act of shopping. We like spending the money for the new gear. But whereas women will spend an entire day shopping for one shirt, we like to make each shopping trip a quick in and out mission. We research what we want to get, find it, and buy it. We don't try on 30 other jackets or go to 10 other stores to see if we can save $5. Generally, we don't just go to REI just for the sake of seeing if there's anything we're interested in. If we're going to go, its for the purpose of buying one specific thing that we've decided on before we get there.

Women Love Gucci, Men Love Gear

We men are always bitching about women and their shopping. We are flabergasted at how they could spend so much money on shoes and handbags. But I have to admit that the truth is, we men are just as bad. Women's weakness is clothes where as ours is gear. I have to admit that I am very fond of it. I'm in to my hobbies (skiing, bicycling, travelling, etc) and I love buying all the gadgets that go along with it. I often tell my friends that the quality of your bike or your skis only makes a small difference as to how good you actually are. I firmly believe that. However, I still enjoy splurging and treating myself to a new sleeping bag or pair of gloves. Last year was a particular good year as I was updating my alpine ski gear for the first time in 7 years and just buying all of my backcountry gear for the first time. November's credit card bill was absolutely horrific. It's looking like this year is going to be a little easier on my mastercard. The past few weeks have been especially fun as I took advantage of the Sierra Trading Posts' 20th anniversary sale and got some black diamond gloves for $19 and a Sierra Designs Down Jacket for $55. The biggest items I plan on buying this season include a new fleece jacket, GPS device, and altimeter.