Fashion Update

I know there are people reading my blog for the first time this year, so I should probably explain what a "fashion update" is. Years ago, while working for PeopleSoft (which no longer exists as it was bought by Oracle where I now work), there was a group of us who were good friends. This was back in the late 90's, and it was then acceptable to have a fridge stocked with beer for employees to raid whenever they felt appropriate. We only did it on Friday, beginning around 3PM. Anyway, anyone who works in an office (which I no longer do) knows there is always a lot of gossip and grapevine stuff going on. So whenever one of our group had "news" to share, we would use the code "fashion update" to signal to one another that we had important information to be shared--at the time, it may have been during a smoke break (yes, I smoked from 1995-1999 after getting divorced SO FUCKING KILL ME).

I have remained friends with many of those people, and my best friend, Susan, was in that crowd. We adopted the fashion update term for whenever we would just want to share news about our lives, since we now live far apart (she's in Nevada). I will be the Maid of Honor for Susan's wedding next April.

So this post is a Fashion Update. Say that phrase aloud about 10 times and it will start to sound weird.

This is week 2 of my ATP. I started hating my coach (me!) this past weekend, as the assigned workouts are NOT easy except for the Monday and Friday runs. Everything else has some (and by "some" I mean "a lot") hard efforts included, so recovering from the shit is super important. But the hard shit is fun, you know? It sucks, it sucks, it sucks while you do it, but when you're finished and you executed the intervals properly, it's a fucking awesome feeling!

Saturday was a 2:30 ride including some suck-ass intervals followed by a :30 brick run. I was hating the bike ride only because the goddamn SRM keeps telling me just how much I suck, so I try and overcome it by going as hard as I should and maybe then some. The brick run actually felt GOOD! I hadn't done any brick runs since early September when I did a duathlon, and oh well I guess I forgot about TDD 2 weeks ago. I constantly tell triathletes that you don't need to do bricks all the time--running well off the bike is about, well, running well and frequently. When you are used to running frequently, then you just...um...RUN.

Sunday was a progressive long run, where you start out easy and build. So far, only building to Z3, but the Z4 (aka tempo) will come soon enough. Those runs are fun! Even when I do them on the treadmill! After the run (only 1:40, as I've stepped back a little on the running), I went and swam :30 just to relax and recover.

Monday is now a swim and easy run. I do the swim AM and the run mid-day. I thought I had a pretty good swim, and I felt like my form was good. As you know, I've been getting coaching from Magic Mike and while it's only been 4 weeks, my stroke has changed dramatically, and it's really cool to feel the difference as well as see some increased speed!

Tuesday is a hard bike ride. Right now on Tuesdays, I'm doing my typical warmup and then a Sufferfest video. Those things are fucking hard. If you aren't hanging your tongue out and just looking down at your power meter and hoping to die when you are :20 in, then you're doing them wrong! When I finished on Tuesday, I began choking/dry heaving, which is always a good sign that I worked hard enough. I also did some strength training on Tuesday. I'm finding I need to NOT do any on Mondays, as I'm usually trying to recover from the weekend.

Today was a swim and track workout. I do them both in the morning, because it's winter and I like running on the indoor track at my Y. I had a late start for a variety of reasons, but was in the water at 5:55 with coach Mike. The way it goes is he stalks me underwater whenever he feels like it, when we are both at the wall I ask stupid questions and try and get a reading for how I'm doing, and he stays until about 6:30 and then I keep swimming.

Well today, he'd watched me for awhile, and we were at the wall and he said, "You look good." I'm like WTF and all giggly inside like I'm 12.  I subsequently swam a fast 100 (for me) and I was like WTF is happening? That was when he told me I looked good. So I said, "So now what?" And all he says is "Keep doing that." I must have had the hugest stupidest grin on my face. I'm not there yet, but what the hell, I KNOW that my stroke is much changed from what it was! I am so fucking happy! I asked Mike how long before it feels "normal," and I know it will be awhile.

Meanwhile, I got my Bitch all doctored up:

The wheels are, well, how can I say this best? FUCKING AWESOME!!!

Now I am waiting for my new Hed wheels to be artistically doctored--they will go on Skull Kingdom:

But I digress. After today's swim, I did the track workout, and I hit the same paces as last week, which are paces I have not seen in about 5 years! I was wondering today whether I would be able to have a repeat performance, and apparently so!

I think I really played out the last 5 months by holding back on specific intensity workouts, so that I was well-prepared for the SUCK. I sit here writing this with sore pecs and wasted legs, and I couldn't feel better!  Tomorrow I get to do a "regular" bike interval workout (no fucking Sufferfest), and I'm now looking forward to it!

The thing is (that was a favorite saying of my Mom) that when the shit is working, you need to WORK THE SHIT.  I have finally learned that when shit is going well, to just keep going. Believe that it will keep going well and keep pushing on.

On the sleep front, apparently I am still good on 6-7 hours. I don't know whether it's because I am just so happy (for numerous reasons which I will go into in another post), or because I'm finally training hard again, or because I feel like I've locked into a rational training program for the next 2 years, or because I finally gave into who I am and that ultra-endurance is my thing, or because I am gathering only those people who support me around me. But it's working, and I am loving life right now. What a great feeling! I wish it on everyone reading this!

Another Challenge Met and Nearly Conquered and Crackhead Nutrition 101

So, I've been puzzled by some weight gain since August--about 4 lbs.  There is no way I could be gaining weight at the level I'm training at, while being hungry most of the time and nearly bonking during many workouts.  I asked the nurse at my doctor's office last week, and she said maybe it's muscle.  Um...NO.  I told her we need to figure this out or else I am going on a crash diet, and she shouldn't want me to do that because I will starve myself and disappear!

Still, I figured this was an opportunity to clean up my diet a little bit, so last week I started watching what I was eating--eliminating any candy, less beer, less pasta.  Weight was not budging, and it should have at least .5 lb.

On Saturday morning, I put on a pair of bike shorts that just a few weeks ago fit fine and they were TIGHT!  I was like WTF is this?  So I got on the scale, and THREE MORE POUNDS ARE THERE!!!  Clearly this is not regular weight gain, and on Friday I'd realized that I'd been drinking my sodium-laden (although not excessive for intense exercise on a hot day) Infinit a lot more than I ever have at this time of the year, and I typically get all salt cravy (cravy is a new word I just invented--you're welcome), so I thought I might be OD'ing slightly on sodium, but still...

I ordered a reduced sodium custom Infinit mix on Friday, but it hasn't arrived.  It has 32% less sodium than my "hot weather" mixture.  I am going to make one more custom formula with even less in it that I can use during winter months.

I talked with my nurse friend, Lori, about this while I was on the bike Saturday, and she suggested I just drink clear water during my ride.  But I was riding 5 hours, no way I could survive that without calories--I know my body pretty well.  So I looked at what I could switch to, and I ended up eating a Clif bar and one gel.  For the 5 hour ride I took in only 600 calories, but I had 750 in before I started so I was OK and didn't bonk, and I even did hard intervals.  But, I have so much HTFU, don't I?

I tried to eat well right after the ride, and then I had sushi for dinner with my brother Mike, and fuck, I really wanted the soy sauce, but I only let myself have a tiny bit.

Yesterday morning, I weighed myself, and those 3 additional lbs. were still there, and I rode Death Machine for 3.25 hours on 366 calories of Infinit, so I had some sodium going there AND CAFFEINE!  For lunch, I had some mostly plain pasta with barely any homemade salmon sauce, which still probably contained a good hit of sodium, but not too terribly much.

I baked some banana wheat germ muffins to begin eating for breakfast, as it turns out my beloved English muffin has too much sodium for my own good.  I even left out the pinch or so of salt in my muffin recipe because as it turns out FUCKING NO SUGAR ADDED ALMOND MILK HAS A BUNCH OF SODIUM IN IT!   Not enough to be lethal to me, but enough that it warranted not adding additional salt to my recipe.  You see what's going on here--you try and eat/drink something you THINK is healthy, but it really isn't.  Ugh...  I started using almond milk in my muffins 2 years ago as a way to reduce the fat in them, but guess what?  EXCESS SODIUM!  Fuckers...

For dinner, I had a salad with no added sodium and some sirloin steak with no salt, and then I had a Fage yogurt, which FUCKING YAY, barely has any sodium in it.  Not sure if I got enough calories, but today I only have to swim so I should be OK.

I was feeling puffy still, though, so I talked to my friend's wife, Nancy, since I know she is all over various sorts of things with her body and figured she might have some advice for me.  She did, and suggested some natural diuretic pills, which I immediately went out and bought and took one with dinner.  THANK YOU NANCY!!!

I don't know if it was the pill by itself, or the pill plus my reduced sodium yesterday, but I weighed myself and 3 lbs. is gone.  FUCK YEAH!  Now I need to see 4 more go.  It will be interesting to see what my "real" weight is--I'm guessing maybe 111--but we shall see.

So I'm now watching my sodium intake like a hawk--I still want some during training, and cut my Infinit by half so I still get some plus some calories, and Coke is OK since it isn't sodium laden (THANK GOD OTHERWISE I WOULD KILL MYSELF), and I can even do Gatorade.  I just need to keep my non-training sodium intake to a minimum.

At the moment, I don't know if this sodium episode is a direct result of the hypothyroidism, or whether it's just that since this is the first time I've trained for a winter Ironman and used so much Infinit during training that I just kinda OD'ed on sodium.  Whatever.  I will report this to my doctor today (including that I'll be taking a mild diuretic for a few days), and see how I do with less sodium during training the next few weeks.  I have a feeling I will be OK using the full-strength Infinit on race day in Cozumel since it will be hot.  I don't care if I"m puffy for a few days after that race--I just need to be sure my body can handle it, so this will require a decent discussion with my doctor.

I thought I'd reprise some of my general nutrition wisdom in this post as well. I try as best as I can to follow the guidelines for carb intake based on training hours from an older version of one of Monique Ryan's sports nutrition books.  Here's the table for low to high training hours:

And here's the table for excessive amounts of training, i.e., a Crackhead:

In order to achieve this easily (i.e., without keeping track of precise calorie intake daily) at different levels of training throughout a season, I've made some rules for myself:

• If I'm training < 12 hours per week, no rice or pasta at dinner.  Just salads loaded with veggies.
• If I'm training 12+ to 14 hours per week, I can have rice at dinner.  Gives me a boost in carbs.
• If I'm training 14-16 hours per week, I can have pasta 1 or 2 times per week at dinner in addition to rice the other days.
• If I'm training 16+ hours per week, I can have pasta as often as I like.
• If I'm training 18+ hours per week (as I have almost every week for the last 17 weeks), then I can even have things like candy, Cheetos and Twinkies.  Again, not excessive amounts, but just as "treat" foods, because at this point, it actually becomes difficult to EAT ENOUGH calories, especially on days when I train > 4 hours.

Now, you must realize that as training hours increase, the amount of carbs you are taking in DURING TRAINING SESSIONS naturally goes up, and you have to consider your total carb intake including all regular food PLUS all the training nutrition.  This is really important, and why some people (I even did this once) PUT ON WEIGHT while training for an Ironman--they think they can eat with abandon, and you really CAN NOT.  Especially a small person like me.  

Now some other things I do include:

• I drink Endurox R4 as a recovery drink on days where I train 1.5 hours or more, which is pretty much every day until I rest a few weeks after IMCOZ.  But I only use 1.25-1.5 scoops, as I am small, and the serving size of 2 scoops is calibrated for a larger person.  I have used Endurox for years.  It's expensive, but I feel better for using it, plus it has a good dose of vitamins in it.
• I use Ultrafuel before training sessions of 4+ hours.  If I'm doing 4 hours, I will use 3 scoops (300 calories), and if I'm doing 5+ hours I will use 4 scoops (400 calories).  This stuff also has some vitamins and minerals in it.  It's basically sugar with some flavor and vitamins, and is relatively inexpensive.  It was recommended to me by my very first triathlon coach, and I swear by it for preloading on heavy training/racing days.  I know so many people who begin an Ironman with maybe 300 calories in their bodies and that is just FUCKING STUPID, and they wonder why their performance suffered.  When you do this, you basically dug yourself a hole that you cannot get out of that entire day!  You burn through 300 calories maybe halfway through your swim meaning you are starting the bike depleted already.  So before a 1/2 or full IM, I will have about 800 calories in the tank before I start--400 calories of Ultrafuel, plus about 400 calories of actual breakfast plus sips of Gatorade.
• I have had my BMR measured so that I know that I am dialing in my calorie intake appropriately.  I want to get it done again, but not until we have my thryoid meds dialed in.  No sense doing it until that happens, because I will get a false reading.  The last time I was measured, my BMR was 1950, meaning when I do nothing for a day I need that many calories, and then I expend on average 500 calories/hour doing any form of exercise, so you can see that when I'm training 2-2.5 hours on weekdays, I need to take in over 3,000 calories!  If you don't know your BMR, though, your nutrition can be a crap shoot, which is why I suggest you go with the tables above FIRST, and then see how you do.  If you get it right, it becomes stupid easy to lose weight--you just drop say 200 calories per day, and in 2.5 weeks you should lose 1 pound.
• I always fuel during workouts, even if they are 30 minutes, just so my brain is happy.  The biggest user of sugar in our bodies is our brain, and it's the reason we bonk, too.  Unless you are training like 5 hours a day or something like that, you have plenty of fat reserves to power you for a long time, but your body won't switch over to full fat metabolism any time soon.  Your brain will shut down your muscles, though, in an effort to save itself when it thinks you are low on sugar.  Now, I would not recommend this to someone training only 10 hours per week.  In that case, none of your sessions are very long, and so you can go plain water much of the time.  But I would say that 12+ hours per week, you might want to always be taking in some sugar, but don't forget this counts towards your daily carb total.
• If I'm swimming 1.5 hours or more, I will switch from Gatorade to Infinit, because the longer the session, the more your body needs the calories especially if you are going to do another workout the same day.  I learned this while training for Ultraman, when I was swimming 2+ hours on most Fridays.  I also had to eat another breakfast right when I was done with those swims, because even though 2 hours of swimming doesn't burn the same calories as 2 hours of running, the fatigue on your body is nearly the same, and so you EAT.
• The calories per hour I shoot for while biking are about 35% of what I'm burning, which I can know from using a power meter.  All other ways of measuring are WRONG--so unless you ride with a power meter, you probably have no clue how many calories you are burning because CALORIES = WORK and the only way to calculate WORK is by POWER EXPENDED.  Some people can go higher than 35%, but in an Ironman I would never go higher than that, as it can be a recipe for GI distress.  Remember that the faster you go, the less calories your body can process, so slower people can generally take in a higher % of calories burned than the faster folks, and liquids are always better than solids because your body can process them easier.
• The calories per hour I shoot for while running are maybe only 25% of what I'm burning, because jostling makes it tougher for your system to digest, and during a triathlon, if you've nailed your bike nutrition, that's sufficient calories to get you through the run.  You never see pros eating fucking sandwiches on the marathon, do you?  You also don't see them chewing bars and shit--too hard to digest.  Plus they are going so fast that it's hard to digest much of anything.  So again, all liquid, unless you really want something else, and don't forget to give yourself SOME sodium on the run if your race is warm, since you WILL need it.  This is why they serve chicken broth at Ironman races.  Because some of us idiots will revert to all Coke, which doesn't have enough sodium to support the electrolytes we are sweating out.

I have guidelines for the day before and morning of a race as well--if you want that, I have a .PDF of a nutrition presentation I've given several times to athletes with all that in it, just message me on Facebook and I'll send it along.

If you are training for Ironman or I would even say half Ironman, and you think you can just wing it on your nutrition, I would tell you that you are DEAD WRONG.   This training places heavy demands on your body, and to treat it any less than the beautiful, complex, awesome machine that it is is to fuck with your karma!  Do you put crap into your car?  Do you feed your pets crap? Just as I believe that daily stretching and frequent massage fall into the category of "cost of doing business," so does good nutrition.

Even me, who thinks I'm doing everything right, can always improve my nutrition.  And so I am.  I'm going to be extra careful about sodium now, and that means the Cheetos and Pringles are off the table.  I can look forward to that McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with Egg after IMCOZ!

Yeah, Fucking POWER!!!

Hit this 1:30 bike workout today dead on:

WU: 15' warmup, 3 x spinups. 3x2' (1') Z3. 3' ez.
MS: 3x5' FT (5'). 10' 88-90%, 5' cd, 10x30/30. CD 5'.

I'm using my FT as measured late last summer, so it hurts a bit. But I'm sitting on FT, and when I did the 30/30's, I went well into VO2 territory...

I AM SO FUCKING HAPPY!!!!!

There's just something about being able to work out really hard that puts a huge smile on my face. And this was after I put the hurt to myself this morning with another almost :45 of strength work. All of the cylinders appear to be firing now, despite my back issues.

Speaking of which, I found the most excellent .PDF file all about the iliopsoas. There is something in there for EVERYONE. I highly recommend you read it, especially there are direct references to triathlon. And I'll put a link on my sidebar, since I think this is so important.

Yesterday's Ride and I Had One of "The Dreams"

I got EIGHT HOURS of sleep last night!!!! See, I was so exhausted and sore yesterday, I figured I'd sleep well, and I did. Even though I woke up at 12:30AM to a lot of lightning and thunder, I fell back asleep pretty quickly as it was a quickly passing storm.

Yesterday I was planning on driving north to do this ride called BCLC Ramble. I enjoyed it so much last year that I thought I'd repeat. But when I looked at the weather forecast, it called for a higher chance of rain up there (pretty much due north) than by me, and then I thought how nice to not spend 3 hours driving, so I bagged it and decided to ride to Fermilab from home.

My legs were fucking tired at the get go. But I thought that with a nice 1 hour warmup they should come around. They never really did. About 2 hours in, I started having the thoughts of gee I could just bag this--if I only rode 4 hours it would be enough. But then that little HTFU guy was sitting on the other shoulder telling me that I needed for this to be a huge training week. So I pressed on, even though I wasn't riding particularly well.

And then the winds really picked up. I mean REALLY PICKED UP! Look at the graph below and notice what starts happening around 9:30AM:





On Saturday, the winds were around 15MPH, which is still pretty good wind for working hard (and I did), but when this shit started, I was like OMG! When I was riding east, the cross winds didn't bother me, but riding west or south were crazy! Since I wasn't feeling too great anyway, at first I didn't acknowledge that it was the wind causing me to suck so much, but as I came on other riders, I'd ask if it was worse than yesterday, and they said hell yeah!

I pressed on, planning on doing 4 loops, which would give me 94 miles. When I was midway through the last loop, the sky began to look a little menacing, but it looked like it was to the north. Still, we've been stuck in this thunderstorm factory for about a week now, and I decided that with all the wind, even if I didn't do a full loop I'd still get in plenty of riding.

As I continued around now, I cut out 2 east-west sections, as I just couldn't face riding west into the headwinds anymore. As I neared my exit, the clouds began gathering above me now, so it was time to hammer the hell home.

It's been a few years since I've done rain sprints, and good thing I hadn't been riding too hard because I had plenty of giddy up in my legs once I got through the 1/2 mile south leg before I turned east.

And when I turned east, it was all good. I just put the hammer down because now I was trying to beat a storm. At one stoplight, I was next to a car and a little girl was smiling at me. Dad rolled down the window and told me she had said, "That boy is going really fast." Well, from the back, it's hard to tell. I took it as a compliment because I was riding really fast. They did, however, notice that I am a girl, and I said to the little doll, "See? Girls can ride really fast, too!" She smiled, the light changed, and off we went again. More hammering.

About 7 miles from home, 3 roadies (not FRP's) came up on me at a stoplight, and we chatted about the wind, etc. I asked them how much riding they'd done and they were at about 80 miles. One of them looked at my Ergomo and saw the time on there and said, "Oh, looks like you've been out for awhile, too." Yep. So I latched onto their wheels for about 3 miles, one of them split off, and I stayed with the other 2 for about another mile.

Then it started raining. I'm 3 miles from home now, and the rain is coming a little hard. I made an executive decision to duck into a parking garage, and it was a wise move. Then the deluge began. Rain dumping down going every which way, but I was all safe and snug in my parking garage. I even did a few laps in there! The clouds looked to be moving fast, so I knew I wouldn't have to wait very long. I didn't time it (I no longer wear a watch while on the bike; the Ergomo has a clock, but I don't bother making intervals), but I figure it lasted 20 minutes? Thing is now when I have to wait like this I'm pretty relaxed. Actually I was glad for the break, but I wasn't too happy about riding on soaked roads, but what are you going to do? I figured I had to make a fast break because there would probably be more rain coming.

I made it home pretty filthy from all the road spray, and I took everything off Bitchie and wheeled her into the garage to clean her off a bit (full cleaning sometime today).

When I showered, there were bugs all over me as well as some nice road grime, and then bike grime since I'd wiped down my rims and that stuff got all over my hands. As always, though, it was the best shower ever, and then I made myself a big plate of nachos, and decided I wasn't into the Endurox R4. I mean, how can you drink that with nachos? So I cracked a beer, and it tasted, well, great.

I noticed pretty quickly than in stopping exercising that my legs were pretty fucked up, and that I would need to lay down. I checked the TV listings (no, still don't have cable; I barely watch TV anymore as it is), and saw that Jackie Brown was on. But on network, meaning they would need to censor pretty much every line. Still, I wanted to make it without passing out to the scene where Louis shoots Melanie. Below is a funny scene and then a summary of the movie with all the shit that got censored from the movie.





And I pretty much laid around and then stretched and then passed out for good. When I woke up this morning, I had just had a dream that I was doing IMLP and I had just got my bike to go ride. My legs felt bad, I couldn't pedal, and then I look down and notice my power meter is gone as are my aerobars! In the dream I then stopped and was sobbing uncontrollably. And then I woke up.