Triathlon

Workout Plan in Google Spreadsheet

Monday, April 21st, 2008

That’s a summary of my triathlon training plan for 2008 published as a Google gadget. I built a Google spreadsheet to plan my year, based largely on Joe Friel’s methodology.

I estimate my weekly hours, marking the events I want to race. Then breakdown the weekly estimates into real workouts. Then track the actual workouts.

If you want to build your own plan, I’ve published a copy of it here. Take it and make it your own!

Update: Here’s an XLS download as well.

Awesome viral movie with a message I love

Friday, March 14th, 2008

Watch this short video and see if you can answer the question at the end.

And then tell me you won’t hit me on my commute…

Thanks Brooks!

Race Report: Black Diamond Half Ironman

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

Saturday I did my first half Ironman and it was quite an experience.

transition

It was a nice morning, and it wasn’t raining. It was a damp Northwest 50 degrees, so it felt pretty cold. I did an Olympic distance race on this course in June and it was cold and raining, so dry was a vast improvement.

I was wearing a tri-specific wetsuit for the first time, so I didn’t know what to expect. When the gun went off, I bobbed to the surface like a cork. The suit kept me in perfect swimming form the whole time–thanks Blue Seventy!

The swim went really well. I felt good and navigated fairly well. I found myself thinking about things other than not drowning, which was good. The field was smaller than the tris I did earlier in the year, so I wasn’t bumping into people after the first quarter mile.

lake

I came out of the water feeling great after 0:35:40–faster than I had expected. At the bike, I decided to dress warm as I had had two experiences this season with very cold bike rides and I did not care to repeat. I wore my neoprene biking jacket and lobster gloves. That was the best decision I made all day. I was gloriously comfortable for the entire ride.

The ride was really a blast. My bike is a speed machine, and there is nothing like freshly paved rural roads and surrounding competitors to make you go fast. The first 28 mile loop went well. I felt great, and was smiling thinking just how much further I had to go. I kept telling myself to take it easy on the second loop, and I did. My second half of the bike was definitely slower than the first. I have no idea by how much–I came in with a total bike time of 2:52:00, an average speed of 19.5 mph.

On the bike I drank Nuun and ate Shot Blocks. I ate on a schedule and tried to drink all the time. My stomach started to feel a little weird so I stopped eating with about 45 minutes left on the bike. I ate some more on the run, and generally my nutrition was pretty good, I think, for my first real effort at it.

I got to the run and pretty quickly realized I was in for quite a challenge. I’ve only ever run 13 miles once–I had more training planned but had some injuries in August that kept me off the roads. I expected the first mile or so to be a slog after having been on the bike for 3 hours. I started to feel better and my first couple miles were at a 9 minute pace. I walked at every water station, taking a minute or so to rest and drink. They had 4 stations on the course, and I damn well visited them all.

At 5 miles there was a false flat that took it out of me. It was about a mile long and made me feel like I was dragging a spare tire on a rope. I think this was the first time I walked out of fatigue. I ran some more, then walked some more, and them came to the 6 mile mark where they had inserted a very large hill. I walked to the top, and ran down then continued to run back down the false flat I had trudged up before. At the 7 mile mark, I first felt an overwhelming desire to stop running and take a nap by the side of the road. At one point I was running with my eyes closed, or I should say shuffling.

It wasn’t really pain, just this heavy feeling that I could barely resist. I’ve never experienced it before. I mean, every run I do I wish I could stop running, but this was qualitatively different, like irresistible sleep. So I walked some more, then ran a bit, then walked some more.

The course was out-and-back, meaning that there was a constant stream of runners on the other side of the street running in the other direction. Lots of waving and words of support was going on–that was nice. As I was dealing with my inner struggle to keep running, and being surprised at just how hard it was, I had the realization that everyone else was somewhere in their own struggle. Whether they looked great or were struggling, we all were pushing ourselves just for the sake of doing it. It was a voluntary test were had all decided to put ourselves through, for our own reasons. And we were all in the midst of it, supporting each other, and counting out the steps and the minutes with some goal in mind.

I didn’t think too much about it at the time, as I had other things to deal with, but since the race I’ve been thinking about it more. I was in the midst of really intense personal struggle on a vast scale. Amazing.

At 8 miles, I felt some pain in my right foot where I had injured it in August. The pain wasn’t intense, so I walked a bit and then ran. I was dull, so I decided not to abandon and keep going.

The 11 mile mark was pretty close to the park entrance, and I did the math and knew there was some sort of loop in the course that I didn’t know about, but my mind was trying to convince me that we were going directly to the finish line and that somehow that would miraculously add up to 13.1 miles. But no, they brought us to within 300 feet of the finish, where you could hear them calling out the finishers, and then sent us off on a mile and a half loop around the lake. Cruel!

Only a mile left, but I couldn’t run. I ended up walking probably half of that last mile. I just had nothing left. I started running as I recognized how close I was to the finish. I crossed over to the announcer saying, “Steve Andersen of Seattle, 70.3 miles…Finished!” 2:17:00 for the run, or 10 min pace. My total time was 5:57:00–I had guessed I could do it in 6 hours.

I was so glad to be done I didn’t really get excited. Relief was the primary feeling, followed by hunger. I ate a ton immediately and discovered that it was really hard to get up from the picnic bench–my legs didn’t really work. The person serving food asked me if I was OK.

Unfortunately the desire to nap continued on the drive home–next year I’ll get a ride or at least a triple latte before I get on the road!

I’ve been asked, will I do another one? Maybe, but with more training. If I had to answer today, I’d say I’ll focus on Olympic distance because of my limited training hours, what with work and kids and all. But I’m so glad to have done it. It was a struggle with myself for the last couple hours, and it was so nice to cross the finish line.

A special thanks to my wife and family who put up with all the hours of training. I couldn’t have done it without your support!

70.3

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

I think that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done–70.3 miles. The hardest part was fighting off the incredibly powerful urge to stop running and curl up for a nap by the side of the road. I almost couldn’t resist it. But I finished!

I’ll write a longer post later, when I’m less completely spent, but a couple key thoughts:

  • How the hell do people do full Ironman races? Seriously.
  • Blue Seventy wetsuits make you go really, really fast
  • I found I can come up with possible solutions to a Plone/Salesforce/Paypal integration problem we’re up against, all while swimming in a pack of triathletes. Geek.
  • Triathlon bikes are some of the coolest machines I know. They are speed demons and so efficient. What a blast to ride one.
  • Don’t drive yourself home from your next half Ironman–it’s hard to stay awake.

Now to bed.

1/2 Ironman tomorrow

Friday, September 21st, 2007

By this time tomorrow I hope to have completed my first half Ironman triathlon. This has been the goal of my training since early May, so I’m pretty excited that it’s finally here.

It will consist of:

  1. 1.2 mile swim - not very painful
  2. 56 mile bike - fairly painful
  3. 13.1 mile run - I suspect this will be very painful!

My training was right on track until August, when I got derailed by a series of events. A bike crash, a tooth extraction, a sprained foot, and finally tonsillitis. So I’ve basically had a 6 week taper. Before that I put in 13 miles in the pool, 253 miles running, and 892 miles on the bike.

I think I’ll be OK, but the biggest concern is that foot pain will show up at some point in the run. I did 3 miles on the treadmill today and didn’t feel a thing, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

It’s going to be a bit cold at race-time, and it might be raining. So think warm thoughts and wish me luck!

Killer Brick

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

Just got back from vacation in rural Wisconsin. What a joy to run on rural roads!

Road

And how about this for a morning swim? It’s exactly a mile around the shoreline. And it’s 80 degrees…

Lake

I didn’t have my bike, which was a real drag with the roads the just beckoning, so I ended up swimming every day. It was fun to focus on just two sports.

Science on my ipod

Friday, July 20th, 2007

I was recently prompted to buy an iphone thanks to a bunch of folks in the Salesforce community who chipped in money for the purchase. The phone is great, and it’s the first ipod I’ve ever owned.

I’ve been running a lot in my triathlon training and I’ve been listening to podcasts on my hour plus runs. This American Life, of course, but my favorite is one called Radiolab out of WNYC in New York. It’s an hour long show that takes broad topics and looks into the current state of our scientific understanding of them, and does it in a highly produced format.

It’s a killer show and I’ve found myself looking forward to my runs just because I’ll get to listen to another Radiolab. I’ve been talking about the thought-provoking topics so much at work that I’m sure they’re all as sick of me talking about it as they were sick of me talking about Critical Mass 6 months ago. Oh well, at least I don’t talk about triathlon at work…

Try out Radiolab–you’ll dig it.

SeaFair Sprint Triathlon

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

Beth and I did a sprint tri today. It was a lot of fun. Got to see John Seasholtz and Patrick Shaw there as well.

I was happy with my results–13th out of 135 in my age group. 87th overall, with a total time of 1:13:15. I had guessed I could do 1:15, so it was nice to beat that.

Swim split: 0:14:04 159th overall
T1: 1:51
Bike split: 0:33:56 93rd overall
T2: 1:17
Place after bike: 90th overall
Run split: 0:22:07 177th overall

I got to draft on the swim, which was something I wanted to try out. It worked great–I found a fast guy who didn’t kick a lot and just hung on to his feet for at least half the swim. The bike felt awesome (and burned) and was my best leg vs. the field. I was in a nice back a forth with a guy on a Cervelo with Zipp wheels–he won in the end. Have I mentioned that I love my new bike? And the 5k was by far the fastest one I’ve ever run with 7:10 7:35 splits. I couldn’t believe it when I checked my watch.

It was nice to do a sprint–it was over so fast, and I got to focus on going fast rather than just surviving. I hadn’t planned to, but I may do another one this year.

Morning Ride

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

Nothing like a bucolic 30-mile ride to start the day right…

Sauvie Island Road

Race Report: Cascades Edge Olympic

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

I survived my second Olympic distance triathlon today. And I knocked 27 minutes off my previous time, so I’m pretty pleased.

The race was down in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, and the weather sure felt that way. It was 50 and raining as I set up for the race. I did a warm up run, but didn’t pull the bike out at all ahead of the start. I was planning on doing a full warm up, but bailed because of the weather–I couldn’t face the water before the start!

We ended up having to stand in our wetsuits at the water for 20 minutes as the race director gave instructions, and then launched 3 waves before mine. My wave looked like about 100 guys. What I didn’t realize was that this race was an official qualifier for USAT National championships, so the field was a bit stacked. The start showed the level of competition and it was a bit of a madhouse. I hung back from the initial rush, but there wasn’t any avoiding it. I’m a middle of the pack swimmer, so I ended up in the middle of the pack. Each time we came to a buoy the field pinched down and I was reminded of my basketball days, boxing out underneath.

The water was cold, but I didn’t really notice in the heat of it all. It was almost half a mile before I really got into a groove, and then the swim was half over. I faded a bit at the end, but made it out of the water in 29 minutes, which was about what I had hoped for.

The transition to bike was good. I didn’t have the wobbliness I had last tri and got onto my Felt in just a couple minutes. Then things got cold. It was drizzling, and turns out going 20 miles per hour in cold wet conditions causes your hands to stop working very well. I had trouble eating and drinking on the bike because of it. But, because it was so cold, dehydration wasn’t really an issue.

The bike was awesome! As I predicted, my new wheels subtracted greatly from my time. There were a few points with a headwind where I could tell it would have stopped me dead on my old bike. The bike was perfect–it was a bit hard to shift, but that was because my hand’s didn’t work, not because the bike didn’t!

The transition to run was smooth as well. I tried to put on my running socks, but bailed due to dexterity problems, and headed out for four laps around the lake. It was a bit muddy on the trail, but running through the woods on soft needles was nice. It was strange passing the finish 3 times, but the fourth was sweet, and I had a nice 250 meter kick that made me feel like I had something left.

As I said, my time of 2:33:00 was 27 minutes faster than my last Olympic distance. The courses were different, but I feel like they were pretty comparable, so I’m really stoked. I finished 18th in my age group, but like I said it was a stacked field…

Can’t wait for the next one!

Update: Official results are in.

I finished 87th out of 182 finishers with a total time of 2:35:32.

Rank in age group: 18 out of 25
Swim split: 0:29:40, place of 97th, 1.5K
T1: 3:15
Bike Split: 1:15:32 (19.8 mph), place of 89th, 40K
T2: 2:36
Place after Bike: 94th
Run Split: 0:44:28 (8 min mi), place of 79th, I think this leg was shortened to 9K because of weather…