drawing by Kane Lynch (kanelynch.com)
Today is the first day since Langkawi without some sort of pain. It took six weeks to get back into fighting shape. Celebrated with a run with the huskies. Roads are icy and snowy, better for their feet than gravel.
93 days to Port Elizabeth, we are training 12 hours a week or so, nothing heavy just yet.
Written on December 4, 2016
Back in training finally. Not at 100% percent, but close enough. I spent 45 minutes on the trainer yesterday and I ran somewhere between 6 and 7 miles with the huskies today. Here they are, ready to go:
I have the new season sketch out now. After two race transfers, we are set to race South Africa (4/2), Cairns (6/11) and Tremblant (8/20). They are about 9 weeks apart, which should be enough to recover, allow four months to get ready for the first one and close the year early for a longer off season which I will need by late August.
I will go alone to Port Elizabeth and Cairns, which sucks, but also the reasonable thing to do, I guess. Then we close the year in Tremblant together, our favorite race, with the family.
Goals? Race them all well. Enjoy them. Get a PB as close to ten hours as possible. Except if I beat ten, in which case I want ten as far away as possible.
Langkawi is still lingering in the back of my mind. I went there greedy and a wreck. The theme of 2016, right? Langkawi was during US election week.
Written on November 19, 2016
It is about 2am, on a Saturday morning. I have climbed out of bed to scribble down a few notes on business that was keeping me awake. That is now done, but there is a bit more scribbling to do.
The day after I got back from Langkawi, I went for a massage to relieve that stiff neck. I signed up for an hour of the deep, painful kind that is called “therapeutic” around here.
I had a few of these before, the last one probably back in June. And that is an important point to note.
About a minute into the massage, eyes bulging and tearing up for the pain, I started to suspect what may have been another contributor to the DNF in Malaysia.
This first post-Langkawi massage was used up entirely trying to release knots and lumps in a relatively small area of my neck and upper back. An hour of hard work only provided some relief, but anything approximating normal is still far away. I went back today, for another dose of the same. The neck and upper back soaked up another hour of hard physical labor on the therapist’s part, while I focused on sphincter control, nearly losing the battle multiple times. More progress, yet far from being back to normal. At this rate, it will take another half a dozen to a dozen sessions before I will be put together again. I can’t wait to find out what is going in in my lower back, hips and legs…
This is interesting, because I was not aware of any of these issues, despite how serious and obvious they were. They were veiled off somehow, and it required the navel-staring following a DNF to have that veil drop away and reveal the truth. The truth being that my body is battered and beaten to the point of total dysfunction. And dysfunction being not being able to hold aero for any length of time, or pedal in Zone 2.
This is a big truth, one that should be discovered by somebody with medical training and an interest in endurance sports. But endurance sports require you to put up with shit. They teach your body or mind - whatever it is that talks inside your head - to look away, to put up all sorts of veils. So it seems that the more I trained, the more I disconnected from my own body. I got really good at ignoring much of what it was telling me.
Now, the rub is that I do believe that ignoring what the body has to say is a good idea – to some point. My body loves to whine and usually contributes the following arguments to sport relates decision making:
And most importantly:
So, what should be ignored? Hard to say, but perhaps anything that starts or ends with “Why not?” or “Can’t…” or contains a suggestion that an effort prescribed for a specific day could be more suitably executed at a later time should be carefully scrutinized. Negative, acute decisions that reduce immediate effort or pain are suspect, in other words.
What should be taken seriously? Equally hard to say. Well, what did I miss, were there any signs that I could have picked up? Yes.
First of all, at some point this year, every bed in the house became uncomfortable. I just could not find a comfortable position in any of our beds, or a spot to just curl up for a nap. All hotel beds were also uncomfortable.
Second, there were some weird, nagging aches and pains that did not stop me, but were there, reliably in the background, week after week. I guess my mind learned to mute these signals, only their tip could break through. But the fact that they were there day after day, in retrospect makes them significant.
Third, in the past month or so, my bike position started to feel different. It my particular case, I felt that my seat moved closer to the aerobars. It is nearly inconceivable that this really happened. (That said I am going back to check my bike fit….) I guess my body started to warp changing what I can comfortably tolerate. To the point that under race stress in Langkawi, I could not hold aero for a mile at a time.
Ok, so what to take seriously? The chronic nagging issues, that appear inconsequential, yet fail to go away after a while, probably warrant a look. The acute stuff, the screams and shouts about the sky falling down unless I immediately stop or delay or postpone I will just continue to ignore.
A disclaimer on the last point: If you snap your femur in two in Zone 7 on the trainer, your eyes pop running intervals and roll under the treadmill, you pee blood or drown in the pool, you should probably stop and analyze these acute signals.
Written on November 13, 2016
What have I learned?
Hard to say.
After the disaster of IM Langkawi, it would be great to be able to claim that it was at least a learning experience. But was it, really?
I went in with the goal of riding my heart out and hitting a specific time target. Swimming and running as usual before and after, and all in all doing rather well in my age group. The goal was reasonable, I should have been able to deliver that ride. Except that I wasn’t, that particular day. It was clear after a few miles that the power is not coming on. I forced it for another 60. Then bailed out, feeling ashamed, disappointed. It still burns, my first DNF.
Would it feel better if I finished? No, because my goal wasn’t to finish. That original goal was fulfilled before. The goal now was to chase time on the bike. I would feel less ashamed, but only by a little. And there is nothing wrong feeling a bit ashamed when I fail to reach a goal, right?
Was the goal wrong? No. At the end, this is a game, my way of getting away from the daily grind. The goal can be whatever I make it. And the goal was reasonable, as established above. So, don’t blame the goal.
Was it ok to drop out? Yes, under the circumstances.
Was I insufficiently prepared? Unlikely, all the races this season improved on the others before. Power and speed was climbing steadily, if marginally, on the bike and run. We will blush over the swim, just this once. Plus legs felt good in practice a day or two before the race itself.
So why was there no power? Three possible explanations. One, the legs only felt good in practice, but they were really cooked after a heavy season, and this manifested under stress, in the race. Two, the myriad of unfavorables, or as it is called "death by a thousand cuts": the drama with the dogs at home, the stiff neck and back, the mild but persistent pain in the left groin, the cold with the cough and all the DayQuil and NyQuil used to exorcise it, the cut on one leg and the missing skin on the other heel, the broken visor and melting bottle cage despite my usual anal gear prep, compounded by the heat, the hills, the time difference, the strange food, the sweet Lucozade, the often rough road surface, the traffic on the course... Three, choking at the proximity of attaining said goal. In short, physical degradation, perfect storm or stress getting to me. The classic causes of not doing well in an endurance race. Any way to decipher which one? No. Learnings? Zip.
But honestly, one by one: Overtraining – unlikely, I believe Yoda got that right for me again. Perfect storm – nothing on this list was significant enough to sink me like this. Stress – are you kidding? Read my resume. (Well, you won't be able to, as I am not going to bore you with it. But let's just say I can handle stress.) It is this unknowable mixture of identifiable and unidentifiable factors resulting in an unexpected outcome. Life, in other words…
What would I do differently, if given the opportunity to do it all over again? I would fix the fence so that the huskies can’t run away.
Takeaway for the next race? I should really learn to swim, finally. And fix that fence.