Winter Training coming to an end

There are no miracles in running - Running with the Buffaloes

As Mark Wetmore told his CU runners "there are no miracles in running". You get out what you put in. When it comes down to it what counts are the early mornings, the late nights and the foot prints you leave in the snow. Lacing up day after day is not the easiest thing in the world but its these small, incremental investments that add up overtime.

This winter has been a season of incrementals. Incrementals which at the end of the day, I'm hoping to add up to be greater than the sum of its parts. It is with these baby steps that I have gotten where I am today. Where I go from here is just a matter of how I decide to structure my training. I'm in uncharted territory now and I feel that I need to decide on a game plan soon.

I have no intention of relying on miracles.

Weight of the world

"When you wake up and you're tired, think, they all want to be you." – Running with Buffaloes

If I only had someone read that to me this morning. I woke up grumpy and tired, and worse- with an elevated heart rate. The thought of going back under the covers fleeted through my head, just for a second- I promise. Then I realized what I had to do.

I know I’m inching towards the finish line, however it is during these times that the doubts start clouding your mind. It was no different this time. My biggest fear, as usual is of injury. Perhaps this is not just any ol’ doubt, but a legitimate concern. Milestones are good and all but not at the expense of injury. Even after two years, I’m still having a difficult time deciphering the signals my body is giving me. Where is the line drawn between courage and folly? One step too far each season and you end up a perennial underachiever.

Toeing that line has always been something I’ve always been prone to do- not out of some foolish need to prove myself day in and day out, but because of an inflexible mind towards following a plan towards achievement. Hmm... perhaps there is a component of foolishness there. What I need to realize is that once the most direct path to the destination leads through a war zone, it’s probably time to draw up a new set of directions.

Or maybe not… in a way this mindset is a double edged sword. It has brought me to where I am now, but to take it to the next level I need to harness the fool within.

Obsession

In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly... For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that's irresistible... As a result of his or her infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic's worldview; a narcissistic sense of self assurance displaces all doubt. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture. - John Krakauer

I read this quote today and it struck a chord within me. For the past couple years since I picked up triathlon training I’ve had many people approach me and tell me that my hobby was bordering on obsession and that my life was out of balance. The scary thing is that this included people within the triathlon community. I’ve always struggled to respond to these comments, and more often than not ended up apologizing for straying away from a life of normalcy and balance.

For good or bad, it’s refreshing to see an articulation of such a mindset. I’m not sure if I can afford the singleness of focus as written in the passage, but I sure as hell can relate to the effect it has on me.

There’s a part of me that wonders how far I can go if I gave it everything I got.

The Countdown Begins

One more week till I reach the goal of the off-season. It didn't occur that I was on track till this past few days. The thing is not only am I on track to hit it, I actually have a chance of surpassing it. Whether I do or not is immaterial though- I'm just delighted that I'm in the position to see it through.

It's odd that just a few months ago I thought that all was lost. Coming off a painful marathon finish I could barely run 5 miles before my heel started to hurt. November was a totally lost month. Watching the fall days fly by was one of the hardest things I've had to do. However, in retrospect it was probably a good idea that I kept off my feet entirely. It's hard to believe how everything came together and worked out so well.

For the Love of the Game

For years now I have maintained that I don't enjoy running. Whenever someone asked me why I ran, I would say that it was because it's the third leg of the triathlon. And it was true. I used to hate putting on my running shoes and slogging out on the pavement. To me every step was heavy and the whole ordeal was a chore.

However gradually, even imperceptibly, I came around to the discipline. For the first time yesterday, I actually looked forward to running. Sitting there at work I pictured myself flying down the trail (whether I actually do or not is irrelevant) and I realized that I couldn't wait to run later that evening. That realization was a breakthrough in my mind.

This shift wasn't something that happened overnight either. It was slowly built up through the process of learning how to run. I would say it was set in motion by my marathon training last year. Step after step, mile after mile, my body kept on adjusting itself so that my form was no longer as terrible as it once was. When it began to feel effortless was when it started to get fun. Then this year, following the Lydiard principles, I've taken fun to the next level. It was running for the sake of running. Pace be damned. Heart rate be damned. If it felt right I opened up, if not I took it easy. When I did open up it felt like I was running on air.

I love running.

Training Philosophy Evolution

I've recently had the opportunity to go through my earlier posts and I found it interesting to see how my training philosophy has evolved over the years. It seems like I've been slowly accumulating pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle and trying to put together a picture of how training comes together to result in peak performance.

My first year of training I was heavily influenced by Joe Friel's "The Triathlete's Bible". From that book I learnt the basic principles of periodization and how to approach training with a grander goal in mind (microcycles, macrocycles and seasonal cycles, etc). My swim training, however, was the byproduct of Terry Laughlin's "Total Immersion" program. I totally bought into the idea of imprinting good technique into your swim stroke, while aiming for efficiency. Being used to the old college swim team suffer fest, this approach felt like heaven. The pool was no longer a torture chamber- hallelujah!

My first year results were mixed. I wasn't able to periodize as well as I had hoped due to race schedules and my inability to control the need for anaerobic workouts. Another important factor was that my overall fitness was really too low to have any semblance of a varied routine. In the end, I think most of my improvement can be attributed to the fact that I actually swam, biked and ran. At the level I was, any amount of training would've helped.

Heading into my second year of training I started reading a book by Brad Kearns, an ex-pro triathlete, called "Breakthrough Performance". The book promoted the concept of training intuitively and designing your training around key "breakthrough workouts". That sounded simple enough, and it would allow me to be less beholden to a schedule. I figured that since I couldn't stick to Joe Friel's heavily structured training, something more flexible like this might work better.

At this same time, my swimming was hitting a plateau and I started searching around for something outside of TI to take me to the next level. At that time Team TBB was destroying everyone in races around the world, so I hopped on the bandwagon and started looking into Brett Sutton's swim philosohpy. Unfortunately it led me back to where I dreaded most- hammering in the water. The thing with swimming is that you can build up incredible amounts of lactic acid in your muscles without risking much injury. For the most part, coaches take advantage of this fact and use it to destroy a psyche of a swimmer (while elevating pool specific LT tolerance to sky high levels, of course). It works in theory, but I was swimming solo and there was no way in hell I could've pushed myself to that level.

Heading into my third year, I've discovered Arthur Lydiard. I have to say that he is reason for a great deal of optimism. Unlike Hal Higdon (who's training I followed for my first marathon), Arthur Lydiard's teachings wasn't focused around specific races for amateur runners with specific amounts of time to train. Arthur's philosophies lay a foundation on how to train in general. The great thing about it is that it is based on very fundamental physiology, so the learnings apply to cycling as well (not as much to swimming, but thats a whole different post).

In a way, I feel that he has provided some critical missing pieces to my jigsaw puzzle. Now let's put it to work and see how it goes. As they say, race results are the ultimate barometer of a training philosophy.